When the old aristocracy was first overthrown, I had predicted its consequences to be no where near what it truly came to be. Slowly, I saw my beloved city, St Petersberg, and its cultural and artistic value being destroyed. As with many others, I endured the corrupt regime binding my hands, body and mind so that I could not breathe and I bled on the inside. A voice came to me. It called out comfortingly, it said, "Come here, leave your deaf and sinful land, leave Russia forever. Freedom was what I thirsted but I stood my ground because my sturbborn heart could not betray the motherland while others left, fleetingly. Thus, I transposed my unbendable will on to a piece of paper, I am not one of those who left the land. I pondered a lot in those dark days, as opening my mouth to express my thoughts was considered dangerous. I thought about whether this dark period will ever end and whether if the days of Russia's propserity and enrichment will ever return. Has this century been worse. Than the ages that went before? Perhaps in this, that in a daze of grief and anguish it touched, but could not cure, the vilest sore. But I knew all I could do was hope and stay strong in mind and spirit. So much had I lost and had stolen from me but I still possessed the power to form a shared connection with others whom I did not know through the tip of a pen.
Give me bitter years of sickness,
Suffocation, insomnia, fever,
Take my child and my lover,
And my mysterious gift of song--
This I pray at your liturgy
After so many tormented days,
So that the stormcloud over darkened Russia
Might become a cloud of glorious rays

Term 3 Homework Task

You should now be in a position to understand something of the forces that shaped Anna Akhmatova's life and work. Choose a poem written by her before the revolution and explain (writing in role as Anna) how this poem was born out your own life experiences and the social and cultural world you lived in. Try to give a real insight into the connections between her life and work. Publish on your blog by 4.00 pm Tuesday 20th July.
I must say, in the present day, Requiem has become somewhat of a tribute to the women of Stalin's Russia during the years of persecution and purges. When I first wrote it, it was in response to a lady who once, I, together, formed the long lines of mercy that queued up every day outside the gates of the Kresty Prison, in order to catch a glimpse of our loved ones. She had whispered, 'Can you describe this?' And those few words were enough for me to discretely endeavour to construct my thoughts and struggles in to a poem. Such heartache, had I felt, as I arranged, not just my feelings, but the pains of the women of Leningrad, in to verses of a mother's cry for her son. But because my life had been so full of losses and suffering, that to write Requiem, was as easy as stamping my grievious heart, which had longed for my son to return to my arms for 17 months, on to a piece of cigarette paper. I remember, the cold snow, rain and wind, outside those firmly shut gates, were still not able to extinguish the burning love in every mother's heart, waiting for their imprisoned son.