Editing Anna Akhmatova (section)

==Work and themes==
[[File:AchmatovaLeiden.JPG|thumb|Poem by Akhmatova on a [[Wall poems in Leiden|wall in Leiden]]]]
Akhmatova joined the [[Acmeist]] group of poets in 1910 with poets such as [[Osip Mandelstam]] and [[Sergey Gorodetsky]], working in response to the [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolist]] school, concurrent with the growth of [[Imagism]] in Europe and America. It promoted the use of craft and rigorous poetic form over mysticism or spiritual in-roads to composition, favouring the concrete over the ephemeral.<ref name="Wells8" /> Akhmatova modeled its principles of writing with clarity, simplicity, and disciplined form.<ref Name="Who">"Akhmatova, Anna"  ''Who's Who in the Twentieth Century''. Oxford University Press, 1999. Oxford Reference Online.</ref> Her first collections ''Evening'' (1912) and ''Rosary'' (1914) received wide critical acclaim and made her famous from the start of her career. They contained brief, psychologically taut pieces, acclaimed for their classical diction, telling details, and the skilful use of colour.<ref name="Wells6"/> ''Evening'' and her next four books were mostly [[Lyric poetry|lyric]] miniatures on the theme of love, shot through with sadness.

Her early poems usually picture a man and a woman involved in the most poignant, ambiguous moment of their relationship, much imitated and later parodied by [[Vladimir Nabokov|Nabokov]] and others.<ref name="Wells6"/> Critic Roberta Reeder notes that the early poems always attracted large numbers of admirers: "For Akhmatova was able to capture and convey the vast range of evolving emotions experienced in a love affair, from the first thrill of meeting, to a deepening love contending with hatred, and eventually to violent destructive passion or total indifference. But [...] her poetry marks a radical break with the erudite, ornate style and the mystical representation of love so typical of poets like [[Alexander Blok]] and [[Andrey Bely]]. Her lyrics are composed of short fragments of simple speech that do not form a logical coherent pattern. Instead, they reflect the way we actually think, the links between the images are emotional, and simple everyday objects are charged with psychological associations. Like Alexander Pushkin, who was her model in many ways, Akhmatova was intent on conveying worlds of meaning through precise details."<ref Name="StalinYears">Reeder, Roberta ''Anna Akhmatova: The Stalin Years'' Journal article by Roberta Reeder; ''New England Review'', Vol. 18, 1997</ref>

Akhmatova often complained that the critics "walled her in" to their perception of her work in the early years of romantic passion, despite major changes of theme in the later years of the Terror. This was mainly due to the secret nature of her work after the public and critical effusion over her first volumes. The risks during the purges were very great. Many of her close friends and family were exiled, imprisoned or shot; her son was under constant threat of arrest, and she was often under close surveillance.<ref Name="StalinYears"/> Following artistic repression and public condemnation by the state in the 1920s, many within literary and public circles, at home and abroad, thought she had died.<ref Name="Harrington16"/><ref Name="Martin7"/> Her readership generally did not know her later opus, the railing passion of ''[[Requiem (Anna Akhmatova)|Requiem]]'' or ''Poem without a Hero'' and her other scathing works, which were shared only with a very trusted few or circulated in secret by word of mouth ([[samizdat]]).

Between 1935 and 1940 Akhmatova composed, worked and reworked the long poem ''Requiem'' in secret, a lyrical cycle of lamentation and witness, depicting the suffering of the common people under Soviet terror.<ref Name="Who"/> She carried it with her as she worked and lived in towns and cities across the Soviet Union. It was conspicuously absent from her collected works, given its explicit condemnation of the purges. The work in Russian finally appeared in book form in Munich in 1963; the whole work not published within USSR until 1987.<ref Name="Martin12"/><ref Name="Harrington20"/> It consists of ten numbered poems that examine a series of emotional states, exploring suffering, despair, devotion, rather than a clear narrative. Biblical themes such as [[Christ's crucifixion]] and the devastation of [[Mary, Mother of Jesus]] and [[Mary Magdalene]], reflect the ravaging of Russia, particularly witnessing the harrowing of women in the 1930s. It represented, to some degree, a rejection of her own earlier romantic work as she took on the public role as chronicler of the Terror. This is a role she holds to this day.<ref name="WellsRequiem">Wells (1996) pp. 70–74</ref>

Her essays on [[Pushkin]] and ''Poem Without a Hero'', her longest work, were only published after her death. This long poem, composed between 1940 and 1965, is often critically regarded as her best work and also one of the finest poems of the twentieth century.<ref Name="Who"/> It gives a deep and detailed analysis of her epoch and her approach to it, including her important encounter with Isaiah Berlin (1909–97) in 1945.<ref>"Akhmatova, Anna"  ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature''. Edited by Dinah Birch. Oxford University Press Inc. Oxford Reference Online.</ref> Her talent in composition and translation is evidenced in her fine translations of the works of poets writing in French, English, Italian, Armenian, and Korean.<ref Name="Who"/>

===Cultural influence===
*American composer [[Ivana Marburger Themmen]] set Akhmatova's poetry to music.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Cohen|first=Aaron I.|title=[[International Encyclopedia of Women Composers]] |publisher=R. R. Bowker|date=1987|isbn=0-9617485-2-4|edition=Second, revised and enlarged|location=New York|oclc=16714846}}</ref>
*Translations of some of her poems by [[Babette Deutsch]] and [[Lyn Coffin]] are set to music on the 2015 album ''[[The Trackless Woods]]'' by [[Iris DeMent]].<ref name="NPR81215">{{cite news|author1=Ken Tucker|title=Poetry Is Set To Melody in Iris DeMent's 'The Trackless Woods'|url=http://www.wbur.org/npr/431906542/poetry-is-set-to-melody-in-iris-dement-s-the-trackless-woods|access-date=23 October 2015|publisher=NPR|date=12 August 2015}}</ref><ref name="ND8615">{{cite news|author1=Erin Lyndal Martin|title=Anna Akhmatova Beckons Iris DeMent Toward 'The Trackless Woods'|url=http://nodepression.com/article/anna-akhmatova-beckons-iris-dement-toward-‘-trackless-woods'|access-date=23 October 2015|work=No Depression|date=6 August 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160502113351/http://nodepression.com/article/anna-akhmatova-beckons-iris-dement-toward-%E2%80%98-trackless-woods%E2%80%99|archive-date=2 May 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref>
*Anna Akhmatova is the main character of the Australian play ''The Woman in the Window'' by [[Alma De Groen]], premiered at [[Fairfax Studio]], [[Melbourne]], in 1998; Sydney: [[Currency Press]], {{ISBN|978-0-86819-593-3}}.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/work/8410|title=AusStage|website=ausstage.edu.au|access-date=20 August 2018}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=http://www.currency.com.au/product_detail.aspx?productid=497|title=Woman in the Window, The {{!}} Alma De Groen|isbn=9780868195933|last1=Groen|first1=Alma De|year=1999|publisher=Currency Press }}</ref>
*Dutch composer [[Marjo Tal]] set Akhmatova's poetry to music.<ref>{{Cite web|last=trilobiet|first=acdhirr for|title=Marjo Tal|url=https://www.forbiddenmusicregained.org/|access-date=4 September 2021|website=forbiddenmusicregained.org}}</ref>
*Ukrainian composers [[Inna Abramovna Zhvanetskaia]] and [[Yudif Grigorevna Rozhavskaya]] set several of Akhmatova's poems to music.
*Porcelain figurine: When Anna Akhmatova was at the peak of her popularity, to commemorate her 35th birthday (1924), a porcelain figurine resembling her in a grey dress with flower pattern covered in a red shawl was mass-produced. Throughout the following years, the figurine was reproduced multiple times on different occasions: once in 1954, on her 65th birthday, as she was fully recognised and praised again following [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]'s death, and again in 1965 as both a tribute to her being short-listed for the [[Nobel Prize in Literature|Nobel Prize]] in 1965<ref name="Nobel1965" /> and for her 75th birthday a year earlier. This was the last time the porcelain figurine was produced during her lifetime. The figurine was so popular that it was reproduced after her death, once for what would have been her 85th birthday in 1974, and again for her 100th birthday in 1988, making it one of the most popular and widely available porcelain figurines in the [[Soviet Union|USSR]]. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1993, there was an immense surge in Akhmatova's popularity and her porcelain figurine was mass-produced yet again, this time in a plain grey dress with a yellow shawl. Her figure now stands in almost every post-Soviet home.{{citation needed|date=August 2020}}
*Akhmatova appears prominently in [[Hélène Cixous]]'s play "Black Sail White Sail".