RUSSIAN POET

Press, Volume C, Issue 29643, 13 October 1961, Page 2

RUSSIAN POET

Official View Changes

(Bv SUSAN VAUGHAN] In a small flat in a Leningrad side street lives a woman called Anna Akhmatova, her young niece and two cats. At 72, grey-haired Mrs Akhmatova is stoutish and red-faced. But there is still about her a trace of the comeliness which once attracted the painter Modigliani. His portrait of her, made in 1911 in Paris, hangs on a wall near her bed. There is still a look in her eye which goes with a reputation for having written some of the most passionate poems of this century. And there is about her a determination which makes you understand how Mrs Akhmatova, born an aristocrat. has survived Soviet rule. She was the daughter of a naval engineer, had an exclusive education and was rapidly making a name for herself among the preRevolutionary literary set. Around 1912 her love poems were the talk of Moscow. After the Revolution, her husband, a Tsarist officer, was shot, and Mrs Akhmatova went into semi-seclusion, earning a meagre living as a translator. Official attitudes towards her poems varied from disregard to abuse. As recently as 1950 the official Soviet Encyclopedia described them as “decadent.” Approved In 1901 But now. the Soviet Literary Publishing House has suddenly changed its mind about Mrs Akhmatova’s work and this month has produced a handsome volume of her banned work, together with an appreciatozy introduction. The ways of the Russians ar* mysterious and it is not easy to guess the reasons for this curious change ot attitude. One explanation may be that, in spite of the official ban on Mrs Akhmatova's work, old copies of her poems have been circulating secretly 3—and she has had quite a fan-mail from admirers all. over Russia.