Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (June 23, 1889 – March 5, 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova, was a Russian modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon. Akhmatova’s work ranges from short lyric poems to intricately structured cycles, such as Requiem (1935–40), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her style, characterised by its economy and emotional restraint, was strikingly original and distinctive to her contemporaries. The strong and clear leading female voice struck a new chord in Russian poetry. Her writing can be said to fall into two periods – the early work (1912–25) and her later work (from around 1936 until her death), divided by a decade of reduced literary output. Her work was condemned and censored by Stalinist authorities and she is notable for choosing not to emigrate, and remaining in Russia, acting as witness to the atrocities around her. Her perennial themes include meditations on time and memory, and the difficulties of living and writing in the shadow of Stalinism. [+]
❛ If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly. ❜
❛ I seem to myself an accidental guest in this dreadful body. ❜
❛ Call me a sinner, mock me maliciously. ❜
❛ I, from the very beginning, seemed to myself like someone’s dream or delirium. Or a reflection in someone else’s mirror. Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. ❜
❛ I knew the list of crimes that I was destined to commit. ❜
❛ The future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future. ❜
❛ You are untranslatable into any one tongue. ❜
❛ I was hoping my silence would fit yours. ❜
❛ See, we were never about butterflies. All about us is unearthly and radiant. ❜
❛ You do not know just what you’ve been forgiven. ❜
❛ I need to slaughter my memory. ❜
❛ Forgive me that I appeared to you in waking dreams. ❜
❛ I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy. ❜
❛ I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death. ❜
❛ Wild honey smells of freedom. But gold smells of nothing. ❜
❛ You are three times more beautiful than angels. ❜
❛ I will kill you without spilling your blood on the ground, not touching you with my hand, not giving you one glance. ❜
❛ You invented me. There is no such earthly being. ❜
❛ You’re late. Way too late. I’m glad to see you, nonetheless. ❜
❛ Forgive me that I felt forsaken. Forgive me that I kept mistaking too many others for you. ❜
❛ Real tenderness can’t be confused, it’s quiet and can’t be heard. ❜
❛ What else lived in that house besides us? ❜
❛ How unhappy we are together! ❜
❛ I defend not my voice, but my silence. ❜
❛ Without love, I’m more at ease, I’m sure. ❜
❛ I’ve got no more tears or explanations. ❜
❛ I’m not complaining. Happiness is not for me. ❜
❛ Are you not the only tie between good and evil, earthly pits and paradise? ❜
❛ In the morning we shall find out who has died in the night. ❜
w.s. merwin separation(via@lilllium) \ renee stout \ lorde hard feelings (via@lyricsilove) \ ramon haindl \ anna akhmatova selected poems of anna akhmatova (via@propertiesofjoy)
anna akhmatova (via@propertiesofjoy) \ mary oliver mindful(via@lilllium) \ leila chatti tea(via@propertiesofjoy) \ mary oliver blue horses: “i’m feeling fabulous, possibly too much so. but i love it” (via@liriostigre) \ sylvia plath the unabridged journals of sylvia plath (via@metamorphesque) \ warsan shire what we own
You thought I was that type: That you could forget me, And that I’d plead and weep And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare,
Or that I’d ask the sorcerers For some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift: My precious perfumed handkerchief.
Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul Vicarious tears or a single glance.
And I swear to you by the garden of the angels, I swear by the miracle-working icon, And by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you.
![isoflors:literature meme | poets [4/5] - anna akhmatova Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (June 23, 1889 –](https://64.media.tumblr.com/ba90fbbe1b3e148d9846a9c75988d286/tumblr_mnzuf695eL1qls88fo1_500.png "isoflors:literature meme | poets [4/5] - anna akhmatova Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (June 23, 1889 –")
