POET KNEW TSARIST WORLD

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30779, 17 June 1965, Page 2

POET KNEW TSARIST WORLD

Anna Akhmatova, the Russian poet who received the honorary degree of doctor of literature at Oxford University recently, has seen many faces of Russia, says a London correspondent.

In the 1890’s she lived in Odessa, where her father was a retired naval engineer. She knew the elegant feminine world of Tsarkoye Selo. Tsarist Russia’s most exclusive girls’ school; the literary world of St. Petersburg, where she was admired and courted as a poet. She suffered the post-revolutionary period of the 1920’5, when her poet husband was executed. Son Imprisoned Her son was imprisoned during the purges of the 1930’s and for 17 months she waited in prison queues hop-

ing for a glimpse of him. She knew the modest liberalism following Stalin’s death. Mrs Akhmatova, at 76, is regarded as her country’s greatest poet. After she received her honorary doctorate at Oxford last week, she spoke with humour, compassion and dignity. “1 taught our women to speak. But. Lord, who is

going to stop them now!” she remarked. Lyrical Style Anna Akhmatova has never been a poet of violent protest, in the same way that the younger Soviet poets, like Voznesensky, are. She has a lyrical style; the heartbreak comes from her poetry’s accurate description of the truth. She never wrote to order throughout the years of Stalin’s oppression. The nearest she came to condoning the Stalin regime was in the war years, when the Germans were pressing towards Moscow. Then she wrote some poems which were markedly patriotic. “Requiem” Her poems have been translated into Polish, Czech, French, Italian, English and

Lithuanian. She considers the Lithuanian version to be the best. One of her poems. “Requiem,” which specifically deals with the time of the purges, has been published throughout the world. But not in the Soviet Union. The Soviet press, which once denounced her as “halfharlot,” now speaks kindly of her, sometimes with love and veneration. But it is not yet ready for “Requiem.” Perhaps, though, Anna will see yet another Russia, in which it will. (All rights reserved)