Poetry
Requiem
Реквием
Anna Akhmatova · 1963
Synopsis
A prose preface recounts the seventeen months the author spent in the queues outside a Leningrad prison, where a woman with blue lips asked her in a whisper whether she could describe this. There follow a dedication, an introduction, a sequence of numbered poems, then an epilogue. The cycle starts from the arrest of her son and the days spent waiting for news, and gives voice to the women who waited with her outside the prisons.
Context
The author had trusted friends learn the poems by heart and burned the manuscript pages, keeping the text in her memory for years. The cycle first appeared in print in Munich in 1963, without her authorisation. It was published in the Soviet Union only in the last years of the regime, in the journal Oktiabr. In French, it can be read in the translation by Jean-Louis Backès; in English, in that by D. M. Thomas, among others.
Who it is for
A brief cycle, which can be read in one sitting; the prose preface sheds light on its context and origin.
Prizes and reception
Kept secret for more than twenty years and passed on from memory, it first appeared abroad, without the consent of its author.