Starting the analysis of Akhmatova's work "A Poem without a Hero", one cannot ignore the interpretation given by the author himself. A triptych is a work of three parts. Three dedications, and at the same time, at the very beginning, Akhmatova gives a personal “justification for this thing”: the memory of those who died in the besieged Leningrad. And then he explains that the poem should be taken as it is, without trying to find a secret meaning.

But after such a long preface, the text just gives the impression of a riddle and a rebus. The introduction, even before the first part, is written in different years: pre-war and besieged northern capital, Tashkent during the war years, the first spring after the Victory ... The scattered fragments are connected by the fact that they are all memories, the author's view through the years.

The poetic meter of the poem is closer to an anapaest, although the changing size of the lines, the omission of stressed positions in some places make it more like an accent verse. The same applies to the method of rhyming: two consecutive lines with the same ending are underlined by the third, which is repeated in the sixth line. This creates the impression of haste, quick conversation, "hurrying after a fleeing thought." And the fact that sometimes the number of lines with the same rhyme increases to four enhances the effect.

The main theme of the first part is phantasmagoria, the heroes are a swarm of images, otherworldly creatures, fictional characters. The action takes place in 1913, and echoing the "devil's dozen" dates, the presence of evil spirits shines through all the lines. “Without a face and a name”, “possessed city”, “ghost”, “demon”, “goat-legged” - this whole part of the poem is sprinkled with similar names, therefore, after reading it leaves a feeling of confusion, delirium of an inflamed consciousness.

The second part surprises with the words “disgruntled editor” quoted. He voices exactly those thoughts about the poem that come to the mind of the reader. And this normality, "sober thinking" seems alien in the text. But the lyrical heroine begins her explanations and again plunges into the carousel of semi-real images. The actors are the era of both romanticism and the twentieth century; the ghosts of the great ones are called to life: Shelley, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Cagliostro, El Greco. This abundance of names makes us look at the second part of the poem as an attempt by the author to comprehend the past - not his own, but a whole layer of history - through the work of people.

An unexpected remark - “The howl in the chimney subsides, the distant sounds of Requiem are heard, some kind of deaf groans. These are millions of sleeping women raving in their sleep” – makes you literally stumble, break out of the enveloping haze of words. And the word "rave" again reinforces the feeling that the poem is an incoherent, fragmentary confession of a lyrical heroine, without composition and meaning.

The beginning of the third part (epilogue) is sobering: the action takes place in besieged Leningrad. "The city is in ruins... fires are burning out... heavy guns are groaning." Reality breaks into the narrative from all over, and although it remains hasty and expressive, it no longer tells about ghosts. Camp dust, interrogation, denunciation, revolver. Siberia, the Urals, the exile and punishment of the children of a great country. The final lines of the poem: “Lowing down dry eyes, and wringing her hands, Russia went east before me” are striking in their strength and sense of the ubiquitous tragedy. After these words, the irony of the name begins to emerge: in “A Poem without a Hero” the heroine is the Motherland, history, era. And she - the one that was familiar to the lyrical heroine, whom she recalls in the first parts - is no longer there.

The huge gaping hole where the broken old had been was not filled with the new. Akhmatova did not see the prospect (and who saw it in those turbulent years?), although the poem was completed in 1962.

Twenty-two years (according to other sources - twenty-five years) this work was created, and Anna Andreevna herself became the hero, then Petersburg, to which a separate dedication was written, then the nineteenth century. But in the end, all these "heroes" are fused into a single actor — great country of which only memories remain.

The final solutions in thinking about her time, about the world and the person in it, were found by Akhmatova in “A Poem without a Hero”, which for its author became the result of life in poetry. The plot basis of its first part, the "Petersburg story" "Nine hundred and thirteenth year", was a real life drama: unable to withstand the betrayal of the woman he idolizes, the famous actress, charming and fickle O. A. Glebova-Sudeikin-na, he shot himself in love with her 22- summer poet and hussar Be. Knyazev.

Quite a trivial love drama, if not for its tragic outcome. But Akhmatova had no desire to write out interesting vicissitudes for any of her readers. She was struck by the deep - symbolic - meaning of what happened, as if by a bright beam of a spotlight that highlighted the essential features of the era. And the names mentioned above are never found in the poem: the place of real people is occupied by traditional characters of the theatrical masquerade.

An important circumstance for understanding the poem is that its characters do not live, but play life. Here everyone is wearing masks, everyone plays their role, in other words, they live an artificial life that lasts - but it only seems so - forever: "We only dream of the cock's cry, Outside the window the Neva smokes, The night is bottomless and lasts, lasts - Petersburg devilry" . However, one of the participants in this invented, funny and creepy game will have to pay for participation in it with his life.

The game of life continues outside the walls of the house, where a masquerade action takes place: “Everything is already in place, who is needed, The fifth act from the Summer Garden is blowing ... The ghost of Tsushima hell is Right There.”

Tragifarce, which is the plot basis of the "Petersburg story", belongs to its time. As the heroine of the poem belongs to him, the “Petersburg doll, the actor”, who “received friends in bed”: her alluring charm, the sensual principle embodied in her, sinful carelessness - all this attracted and possessed destructive power, turned out to be the product of intoxication, so characteristic of St. Petersburg, which stood on the verge of destruction in 1913. Thus, the features of the “pre-war, prodigal and formidable” time are revealed in the poem, there is a feeling of invincibility, from which “along the legendary embankment the real Twentieth Century Approached”.

With this new century, Akhmatova has her own difficult relationship, her own scores. His approach is given in the same tragic farce vein as the scenes of "midnight Hoffmann", only the city on the Neva now becomes the main character:

Christmas time was warmed by bonfires,
And carriages fell from the bridges,
And the whole mourning city floated
For an unknown destination
Along the Neva or against the current, -
Just away from your graves.

Akhmatova does not deny love to the city with which her whole life was connected: “I am inseparable from you, My shadow on your walls, My reflection in the canals, The sound of footsteps in the Hermitage halls, Where my friend wandered with me.” But it is here, in St. Petersburg, that the flow (more precisely, the ever-accelerating flight) of time is most palpable, the direction it is moving, what it carries with it, is most clearly palpable. After all, the tragedy of the "Dragoon Pierrot": "Who has little left to live, Who only asks God for death And who will be forever forgotten" - also belongs to time. As the fate of the author of the poem, full of drama, belongs to him. In both cases, the crisis nature of the era reveals itself, when the heyday turns into death, and ahead - “Is the vision of the Golden Age Or the black crime In the formidable chaos of ancient days? ".

Refusing to act as a judge, Akhmatova at the same time knows: "Retribution is coming anyway." The death of a young poet, who could not survive the betrayal of his beloved, is only the first act of the drama that was played out in the 20th century. in the realm of history. The fourteenth, and then the forty-first year showed its other scales. But it is no coincidence that the memory of the author of "A Poem Without a Hero" in besieged Leningrad returns to that "which has long been said goodbye."

"A poem without a hero" is plotless - it has an open ending: it is open to life. Its content is determined by the events of bygone years: “I sleep - I dream of our youth ...” But time itself is multidimensional for the author of the poem: “As the future ripens in the past, So the past smolders in the future ...” That is why the poem “dreams about something what should happen to us ... ”, then an“ incomprehensible rumble ”was heard - the echoes of the steps of history, into which the life of the people and its poet fit without a trace.

Read the poem in full:

final edition
Triptych
(1940-1965)

Deus conservat omnia 1.
Motto in the coat of arms of the Fountain House

INSTEAD OF FOREWORD

There are no others, and those are far away ...
Pushkin

The first time she came to me at the Fountain House on the night of December 27, 1940, she sent one small passage as a messenger back in the fall (“You came to Russia from nowhere…”).
I didn't call her. I didn't even expect her on that cold and dark day of my last Leningrad winter.
Its appearance was preceded by several small and insignificant facts, which I hesitate to call events.
That night I wrote two pieces of the first part ("1913") and "Dedication". At the beginning of January, almost unexpectedly for myself, I wrote “Tails”, and in Tashkent (in two stages) - “Epilogue”, which became the third part of the poem, and made several significant inserts into both first parts.
I dedicate this poem to the memory of its first listeners - my friends and fellow citizens who died in Leningrad during the siege.
I hear their voices and remember them when I read the poem aloud, and this secret choir has become for me forever the justification of this thing.

Rumors often reach me of misleading and absurd interpretations of the Poem Without a Hero. And someone even advises me to make the poem more understandable.
I will refrain from doing so.
The poem does not contain any third, seventh or twenty-ninth meanings.
I won't change it or explain it.
"Hedgehog pisah - pisah."

November 1944, Leningrad

DEDICATION

December 27, 1940
…
... and since I didn’t have enough paper,
I'm writing on your draft.
And now someone else's word comes through
And, as then a snowflake on the hand,
Trustingly and without reproach melts.
And the dark eyelashes of Antinous 2
Suddenly they got up - and there is green smoke,
And the breeze blew relatives ...
Is it not the sea?
No, it's just needles
Grave, and in boiling foam
Getting closer, closer...
Marche funebre 3 …
Chopin.

Night, Fountain House

SECOND DEDICATION

Are you, Confusion-Psyche 4,
Black and white fan of the wind,
Leaning over me
Do you want to tell me a secret
What has already passed Lethe
And you breathe differently in the spring.
Do not dictate to me, I myself hear:
A warm downpour rested on the roof,
I hear whispers in the ivy.
Someone small is going to live,
Green, fluffy, tried
Tomorrow in a new cloak to shine.
I sleep -
she is alone above me, -
The one that people call spring
I call loneliness.
I sleep -
I dream of our youth
That, HIS past bowl;
I will bring it to you
If you want, I'll give it as a souvenir,
Like pure flame in clay
Or a snowdrop in a grave ditch.

THIRD AND LAST (Le jour des rois 5)

Once on Epiphany evening ...
Zhukovsky

I'm full of fear,
I'd rather call Chaconne Bach
And a man will follow her...
He won't be my sweet husband
But we deserve it
What will embarrass the Twentieth Century.
I took it by accident
For the one who is bestowed with a secret,
With whom the bitterest is destined
He came to me at the Fountain Palace
Late at night foggy
New Year's drink wine.
And remember the Epiphany evening,
Maple in the window, wedding candles
And the death flight poems...
But not the first branch of lilac,
Not a ring, not the sweetness of prayers -
He will bring me death.

INTRODUCTION

FROM THE YEAR FORTY,
AS FROM A TOWER, I LOOK AT EVERYTHING.
HOW TO GO GOODBYE AGAIN
WITH WHAT YOU HAVE GONE LONG AGO,
HOW BUD-TO CROSSED
AND I GO UNDER THE DARK Vaults.

PART ONE
YEAR NINE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

Petersburg story

Di rider finirai
Pria dell'aurora.

Chapter first

New Year's holiday lasts magnificently,
Wet stems of Christmas roses.

We can’t tell fortunes with Tatyana ...

I lit the sacred candles
To make this evening glow
Don Juan (Italian).

And with you, who did not come to me,
I meet the forty-first year.
But…

The Lord's power is with us!
The flame drowned in the crystal,
"And wine, like poison, burns 7".

It's bursts of hard talk
When all the delusions are resurrected,
And the clock still doesn't strike...

There is no measure of my anxiety
I myself, like a shadow on the threshold,
I guard the last comfort.

And I hear a lingering call
And I feel cold wet
Stone, I freeze, I burn ...

And as if remembering something,
Turning around,
In a quiet voice I say:

"You are mistaken: Doge's Venice -
It's nearby ... But the masks are in the hallway
And cloaks, and wands, and crowns

You will have to leave today.
I decided to glorify you today,
New Year's tomboys!

This Faust, that Don Juan,
Dapertutto 8, Jokanaan 9,
The most modest - northern Glanom,

Or the murderer Dorian,
And everyone whispers to their dians
A hard lesson learned.

And the walls parted for them,
The lights came on, the sirens howled
And, like a dome, the ceiling swelled.

I'm not that afraid of publicity ...
What; me Hamlet's garters,
What; me the whirlwind of Salome's dance,
What; me the footsteps of the Iron Mask,
I'm even nicer than those...

And whose turn is it to be scared?
recoil, recoil, surrender
And atone for a long-standing sin?

Everything is clear:
Not to me, so to whom is 10?
Dinner was prepared here not for them,
And they are not with me along the way.

The tail was hidden under the coat tails ...
How chrome and elegant he is ...
However

I hope. Lord of Darkness
Don't you dare enter here?

Is it a mask, a skull, is it a face -
An expression of evil pain
That only Goya dared to convey.

General minion and mocker,
Before him is the most stinking sinner -
Grace incarnate...

Have fun - so have fun
But how could it happen
Am I the only one alive?

Tomorrow morning will wake me up
And no one will judge me
And laugh in my face
Window blue.

But I'm afraid: I myself will enter,
Without taking off the lace shawl,
I smile at everyone and shut up.

With who she once was
In a necklace of black agates
To the valley of Jehoshaphat 11
I don't want to meet again...

Isn't the last time close? ...
I forgot your lessons
Rednecks and false prophets! -
But you have not forgotten me.

As the future ripens in the past,
So in the future the past smolders -
Terrible holiday of dead leaves.

B The sound of steps, those that are not there,
E On the shining parquet
L And cigar blue smoke.
Y And reflected in all the mirrors
Y Man that didn't show up

And I couldn't get into that room.
He is no better than others and no worse.

Z But it doesn’t blow with the letey cold,
And in his hand is warmth.
L Guest from the Future! - Really
He will really come to me
Turning left off the bridge?

Since childhood, I was afraid of mummers,
For some reason I always thought
That some kind of extra shadow

Among them "without a face and a name"
Messed up…
Let's open the meeting
New Year's Eve Day!

That midnight Hoffmannian
I won't tell the world
And I would ask others...
Wait a minute

You don't seem to be on the list
In caliostras, magicians, lysis 12,
Striped is dressed up with a verst, -

Painted variegated and rude -
You…
the same age as the Mamvrian oak 13,
The century-old interlocutor of the moon.

Do not deceive feigned groans,
You write iron laws
Hammurabi, lycurgi, saltos 14
You must learn.

The creature is of a strange disposition.
He doesn't wait for gout and fame
Hastily seated him
In jubilee lush chairs,
And carries along the flowering heather,
Through the deserts their triumph.

And not guilty of anything: not in this,
Neither in the other nor in the third ...
Poets
In general, sins did not stick.

Dance before the Ark of the Covenant 15
Or die!...
What is there!
About it
Poems told them better.

We only dream of the cock crow,
Outside the window the Neva is smoking,
The night is bottomless - and it lasts, it lasts
Petersburg devilry...

You can't see the stars in the black sky
Death is around here, obviously.
But careless, spicy, shameless
Masquerade talk...

Scream:
"Hero to the fore!"
Don't Worry: The Dylde Is To Be Replaced
Definitely coming out now
And sing about sacred revenge...

Why are you all running away together?
As if everyone found a bride
Leaving eye to eye

Me in the dusk with a black frame
From which the same looks
Became the bitterest drama
And not yet mourned hour?

It doesn't all come up right away.
Like one musical phrase
I hear a whisper: “Goodbye! It's time!
I will leave you alive.
But you will be my widow
You are Dove, sun, sister!”
There are two merged shadows on the site ...
After - flat stairs,
Shout: "Don't!" and in the distance
Clear voice:
"I'm ready to die."

The torches go out, the ceiling lowers. The white (mirror) hall 16 is again the author's room. Words from darkness

There is no death - everyone knows that
To repeat it became insipid,
And what is - let them tell me.

Who is knocking?
After all, they let everyone in.
Is this a guest behind the looking glass? Or
What suddenly flashed through the window ...

Jokes of a young month,
Or is there really someone there again
Is it between the oven and the cabinet?

The forehead is pale and the eyes are open ...
This means that gravestones are fragile,
So, granite is softer than wax ...

Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense! - From such nonsense
I will soon turn gray
Or I will be completely different.

Why are you beckoning me with your hand?!

For one minute of peace
I will give peace posthumously.

THROUGH THE SITE

Sideshow

Somewhere around this place (“... but careless, spicy, shameless masquerade chatter ...”) such lines wandered around, but I did not let them into the main text:

“I assure you, this is nothing new...
You are a child, signor Casanova ... "
"On Isakievskaya exactly at six ..."

"Somehow we'll wander through the darkness,
We are from here to the "Dog" ... "17
"Where are you from here?" -
"God knows!"

Sancho Panza and Don Quixote
And, alas, Sodom Lots 18
Lethal taste the juice

Aphrodites emerged from the foam,
Moved in Elena's glass,
And the time for madness is coming.

And again from the Fountain Grotto 19,
Where love groans slumber,
Through the ghost gate
And furry and red-haired someone
The goat-leg was dragged.

All more elegant and all above,
Though she does not see and does not hear -
Doesn't curse, doesn't pray, doesn't breathe,
Head of Madame de Lamballe,

And the humble and the beauty,
You, who dance like a goat,
Again you hum languidly and meekly:
"Que me veut mon Prince Carnaval 20?"

And at the same time, in the depths of the hall, stage, hell, or on top of Goethe's Brocken, She (or maybe her shadow) appears:

Like hooves, boots trample,
Earrings ring like a bell
In pale curls, evil horns,
Cursed dance drunk, -

As if from a black-figured vase
Ran to the azure wave
So beautifully naked.

And behind her in an overcoat and a helmet
You, who entered here without a mask,
You, Ivanushka of an ancient fairy tale,
What is bothering you today?

How much bitterness in every word
How much darkness in your love
And why this trickle of blood
Does the petal roam?

Chapter Two

Or that you see at your knees,
Who left your captivity for your white death?

Heroine's bedroom. Burning wax candle. Above the bed are three portraits of the mistress of the house in roles. On the right she is Goatfoot, in the middle is Confusion, on the left is a portrait in the shade. One thinks that this is Columbine. the other is Donna Anna (from The Commander's Steps).
Behind the dormer window, the Arabs are playing snowballs. Blizzard. New Year's midnight. The confusion comes to life, leaves the portrait, and it seems to her a voice that reads:

The satin coat is open!
Do not be angry with me, Dove,
What will I touch this cup:
Not you, but myself I will execute.

Still, payback is coming -
You see there, behind the grainy blizzard
Meyerhold's blacks
Are they making a fuss again?

And around Old city Peter,
What did the people wipe their sides
(as people used to say)

In manes, in harnesses, in flour carts,
In painted tea roses
And under a cloud of crow's wings.

But flies, smiling imaginary,
Above the Mariinsky stage prima,
You are our incomprehensible swan,
And the late snob jokes.

The sound of the orchestra, like from the other world
(The shadow of something flashed somewhere)
Is it not a premonition of dawn
Chills run through the rows?

Like nothing on earth,
He rushes like a messenger of God,
Hitting us again and again.

Branches in the blue-white snow ...
Corridor Petrovsky Collegiums 21
Endless, booming and straight

(Anything can happen
But he will stubbornly dream
To those who now pass there).

The denouement is ridiculously close;
Because of the screens of Petrushkin mask 22,
Around the fires coachman's dance,
Above the palace is a black and yellow banner ...

Everything is already in place, who needs it;
Fifth act from the Summer Garden
It smells… The ghost of Tsushima hell
Right here. - A drunk sailor sings ...

How grandly the skids ring
And the goat's cavity drags ...
Bye, shadows! - He's alone there.

On the wall is his solid profile.
Gabriel or Mephistopheles
Yours, beauty, paladin?

The demon himself with Tamara's smile,
But such spells lurk
In this terrible smoky face:

Flesh that almost became spirit.
And an antique curl above the ear -
Everything is mysterious in the alien.

This is him in a crowded room
Sent that black rose in a glass
Or was it all a dream?

With a dead heart and dead eyes
Did he meet with the Commander,
Into that cursed house that you sneaked into?

And it was told in a word,
How were you in the new space,
How out of time you were, -

And in what polar crystals,
And in what radiance of amber
There, at the mouth of Leta - Neva.

You ran away from the portrait here
And an empty frame before the light
The wall will be waiting for you.

So dance for you - without a partner!
I'm the role of the fatal choir
I agree to accept.

There are scarlet spots on your cheeks;
Would you go back to the canvas;
'Cause tonight is such a night
When to pay your bill...
And intoxicating drowsiness
It is harder for me than death to overcome.

You came to Russia from nowhere
Oh my blond miracle
Columbine of the tenth years!

What do you look so vaguely and vigilantly,
Petersburg doll, actor 23,
You are one of my twins.

To other titles, this one is also necessary
Attribute. O friend of poets,
I am the heir of your glory.

Here, to the music of the marvelous master,
Leningrad wild wind
And in the shade of the reserved cedar
I see the dance of the court bones...

Wedding candles float
Under the veil "kissing shoulders"
The temple thunders: "Dove, come!" 24

Mountains of Parma violets in April -
And a date in the Maltese Chapel 25,
Like a curse in your chest.

Golden age vision
Or black crime
In the terrible chaos of old days?

Answer me now:
really
Did you ever really live
And trampled the ends of the squares
With his dazzling foot? ...

The house of the motley comedy wagon,
Peeling cupids
They guard the Venus altar.

Songbirds did not put in a cage,
You cleaned the bedroom like a gazebo
Village girl next door
The cheerful stapler does not recognize 26 .

Twisted stairs are hidden in the walls,
And on the walls of the azure saints -
It's half-stolen good...

All in flowers, like "Spring" by Botticelli,
You took friends in bed
And the dragoon Pierrot languished, -

All those who are in love with you are superstitious
The one with the smile of the evening sacrifice,
You became like a magnet to him.

Turning pale, he looks through his tears,
How roses were handed to you
And how his enemy is famous.

I haven't seen your husband
I, the cold clinging to the glass ...
Here it is, the battle of the fortress clock ...

Don't be afraid - home; not me; chu, -
Come boldly towards me -
Your horoscope has been ready for a long time ...

Chapter Three

And under the arch on Galernaya ...

A. Akhmatova

In Petersburg we will meet again,
Like the sun we buried in it.

O. Mandelstam

That was the last year...

M. Lozinsky

Petersburg in 1913. Lyrical digression: the last memory of Tsarskoye Selo. The wind, either remembering or prophesying, mutters:

Christmas time was warmed by bonfires,
And carriages fell from the bridges,
And the whole mourning city floated

For an unknown destination
Along the Neva or against the current, -
Just away from your graves.

On Galernaya arch blackened,
In Summer, a weathervane sang subtly.
And the silver moon is bright
Frozen over the Silver Age.

Because on all roads,
Because to all thresholds
A shadow slowly approached

The wind tore posters from the wall,
Smoke danced squatting on the roof
And the cemetery smelled of lilacs.

And cursed by Queen Avdotya,
Dostoevsky and the demoniac,
The fog was leaving the city.

And looked again out of the darkness
An old Petersburger and a reveler,
As before the execution the drum beat ...

And always in the frosty stuffiness,
Pre-war, prodigal and formidable,
There lived some future rumble...

But then it was heard more muffled,
He almost did not disturb the soul
And drowned in the snowdrifts of the Neva.

As if in the mirror of a terrible night
And rages and does not want
Recognize yourself a person

And along the embankment of the legendary
Not a calendar one was approaching -
The real Twentieth Century.

And now I'd rather go home
Cameron Gallery
In the icy mysterious garden,
Where the waterfalls are silent
Where all nine 27 will be glad to me
How were you once happy
That over youth rose rebellious,
Unforgettable my friend and tender,
Only once had a dream
Whose youthful strength shone
Whose forever forgotten grave,
It was as if he didn't live at all.
There behind the island, there behind the garden
Won't we meet eyes
Our former clear eyes,
Won't you tell me again
The word that conquered death
And the clue to my life?

Chapter four and last

Love passed and became clear
And death features are close.

Corner of the Field of Mars. house built in early XIX century by the Adamini brothers. It will be directly hit by an air bomb in 1942. A high fire burns. Bells are heard from the Church of the Savior on Blood. On the Field behind the blizzard is the ghost of the palace ball. Between these sounds, Silence itself speaks:

Who froze at the faded windows,
On whose heart is a “fawn curl”,
Who has darkness before their eyes?

Help, it's not too late!
Never are you so cold
And a stranger, the night, was not!

Wind full of Baltic salt
Snowstorm Ball on the Field of Mars
And the invisible ringing of hooves...

And immeasurable anxiety
Who has little to live
Who only asks God for death
And who will be forever forgotten.

He wanders under the windows after midnight,
Relentlessly directs at him
Dim beam corner lamp, -

And he waited. slim mask
On the way back from Damascus
Returned home ... not alone!

Someone with her "without a face and a name" ...
Unambiguous parting
Through the slanting flame of a fire

He saw. Buildings collapsed...
And in response, a snatch of sobs:
“You are Dove, sun, sister! -

I will leave you alive
But you will be my widow
And now…
It's time to say goodbye!"

The site smells of perfume,
And a dragoon cornet with verses
And with senseless death in my chest

Call if you have the courage...
He spends the last moment
To praise you.
Look:

Not in the damned Masurian marshes,
Not on the blue Carpathian heights...
He is on your doorstep!
Across.
May God forgive you!

(How many deaths went to the poet,
Silly boy: he chose this one, -
First, he did not tolerate insults,
He did not know at what threshold
It costs and what road
A view will open before him…)

It's me - your old conscience
Searched for a burnt story
And on the edge of the windowsill
In the house of the deceased
Put -
and left on tiptoe...

AFTERWORD

EVERYTHING'S OK: THE POEM LIES
AND, AS TYPICAL, IS SILENT.
WELL, AND INTO A OTHER HOW THE TOPIC BREAKS OUT,
A FIST IN THE WINDOW WILL RAPP, -
AND RESPONSE FROM Afar
AT THE CALL OF THIS TERRIBLE SOUND -
GRUMBLING, MOANING AND SCREAMING
AND A VISION OF CROSSED HANDS?…

PART TWO
Tails

... I drink Leta's water,
The doctor forbade me to be despondent.

In my beginning is my end.

... jasmine bush,
Where Dante walked and the air is empty.

The place of action is the Fountain House. Time - January 5, 1941. In the window is the ghost of a snow-covered maple. The infernal harlequinade of the thirteenth year has just swept past, waking the silence of the great silent era and leaving behind that disorder characteristic of every festive or funeral procession - the smoke of torches, flowers on the floor, forever lost sacred souvenirs ... The wind howls in the chimney, and in this howl you can guess very deeply and very skillfully hidden fragments of the Requiem. It is better not to think about what is seen in the mirrors.

My editor was unhappy
He swore to me that he was busy and sick,
Locked up your phone
And he grumbled: “There are three topics at once!
Reading the last sentence
You won't know who's in love with whom

Who, when and why met,
Who died and who survived
And who is the author, and who is the hero, -
And why do we need these today
Reasoning about the poet
And some ghosts swarm?

I replied: “There are three of them -
The main one was dressed up with a verst,
And the Other is dressed like a demon, -
So that they get for centuries,
Their poems did their best for them,
The third lived only twenty years,

And I feel sorry for him." And again
The word fell out after the word,
The music box rumbled.
And over that vial stuffed
With a crooked and angry tongue
An unknown poison burned.

And in a dream everything seemed to be
I write the libretto for Arthur
And there is no end to music.
But a dream is also a thing,
Soft embalmer 29 , Blue bird,
Elsinore terraces parapet.

And I myself was not happy
Of this hellish harlequinade
From afar heard a howl.
I hoped that by
White hall, like flakes of smoke,
The needles will sweep through the dusk.

Do not fight off the motley junk.
This is the old weird Cagliostro -
The most graceful Satan himself,
Who does not cry with me over the dead,
Who does not know what conscience means
And why does it exist.

Roman carnival midnight
And it doesn't smell. Chant of the Cherubim
Closed churches are trembling.
No one knocks on my door
Only a mirror dreams of a mirror,
Silence guards silence.

And with me my "Seventh" 30,
Half dead and dumb
Her mouth is closed and open,
Like the mouth of a tragic mask
But it's covered in black paint.
And stuffed with dry earth.

The enemy tortured: "Come on, tell me."
But not a word, not a moan, not a cry
Do not hear her enemy.
And decades go by
Torture, exile and execution - I sing
I can't bear this horror.

And especially if you dream
What should happen to us:
Death is everywhere - the city is on fire
And Tashkent in wedding blossom...
Soon there about the faithful and eternal
The Asian wind will tell me.

Celebrations of civil death
I'm fed up. Believe me
I see them every night, in my dreams.
Excommunicated from the table and the bed -
It's still nonsense, but worthless
Take out what I got.

You ask my contemporaries
Convicts, "stopyatnits", captives,
And we will tell you
How they lived in unconscious fear,
How children were raised for the chopping block,
For the dungeon and for the prison.

Blue clenched lips,
Crazed Hecubes
And Kassandra from Chukhloma,
We will thunder in a silent chorus,
We, crowned with shame:
"On the other side of hell we..."

Will I melt in the official anthem?
Don't give, don't give, don't give me
A diadem from a dead forehead.
Soon I will need a lyre,
But Sophocles already, not Shakespeare.
On the threshold is Fate.

I'm not afraid of death or shame
This is cryptography, cryptogram,
This is a forbidden trick.
Everyone knows which edge
Lunatically I step
And which house I'm heading to.

But there was that topic for me
Like a crushed chrysanthemum
On the floor when the coffin is being carried.
Between "remember" and "remember", others,
Distance as from Luga
To the country of satin bout 32 .

Bes beguiled in laying to rummage ...
Well, how could it happen
Is it all my fault?
I am the quietest, I am simple
"Plantain", "White Flock" ...
Justify ... but how, friends?

So you know: accused of plagiarism ...
Am I others to blame?
However, it doesn't matter to me.
I agree to fail
And I don't hide my embarrassment...
The box has a triple bottom.

But I confess that I used
Lovely ink...
I write in mirror writing
And there is no other way for me -
Miraculously, I stumbled upon this
And I'm not in a hurry to part with her.

So that the messenger of an old age
From the most cherished dreams of El Greco
Explained to me without words
And with one summer smile,
How I was forbidden to him
All seven deadly sins.

And then from the coming age
a stranger
Let the eyes look boldly
To make it a flying shadow
Gave a bunch of wet lilacs
At an hour, as this thunderstorm blows.

A centennial enchantress 33
Suddenly woke up and have fun
I wanted to. I have nothing.
The lacy one drops the handkerchief,
Squinting languidly because of the lines
And Bryullov beckons with his shoulder.

I drank it in a drop of each
And demonic black thirst
Obsessed, didn't know how
I get rid of the demoniac:
I threatened her with Star Chamber 34
And drove to the native attic 35,

Into the darkness, under Manfred's firs,
And to the shore where Shelley is dead
Looking straight at the sky, lay, -
And all the larks around the world 36
Ripped apart the abyss of the ether
And George 37 held the torch.

But she insisted stubbornly:
"I'm not that English lady
And not at all Clara Gazul 38,
I have no pedigree at all
In addition to sunny and fabulous,
And July himself brought me.

And your ambiguous glory
Twenty years lying in a ditch
I won't serve that way yet
We are still drinking with you
And I'm royal with my kiss
I will reward your evil midnight."

PART THREE
EPILOGUE

To be an empty place...
Evdokia Lopukhina

Yes, deserts of mute squares,
Where people were executed before dawn.

Annensky

I love you, Petra creation!

to my city
White Night June 24, 1942 The city is in ruins. From Gavan to Smolny everything is in full view. In some places old fires are burning down. In the Sheremetev Garden, lindens are blooming and a nightingale is singing. One window of the third floor (in front of which there is a crippled maple tree) is broken, and a black void gapes behind it. In the direction of Kronstadt, heavy guns roar. But generally quiet. The voice of the author, who is seven thousand kilometers away, says:

So under the roof of the Fountain House,
Where the evening wanders languor
With a lantern and a bunch of keys, -
I came around with a distant echo
Inappropriate embarrassing laughter
The deep sleep of things
Where, the witness of everything in the world,
At sunset and at dawn
Looks into the room old maple
And, foreseeing our parting,
me withered black hand,
How does he reach out for help?
But the ground hummed under my feet
And such a star 39 looked
To my yet abandoned house
And I was waiting for a conditional sound ...
It's somewhere out there - near Tobruk,
It's around here somewhere.
You are not the first and not the last
Dark listener of light nonsense,
What kind of revenge are you preparing for me?
You won't drink, just sip
This bitterness from the very depths -
This is our separation news.
Don't put your hand on my crown -
Let time stop forever
On your watch.
We are not spared by misfortune
And the cuckoo won't crow
In our scorched forests...

And behind the barbed wire
In the heart of the dense taiga
I don't know what year
Became a handful of camp dust,
Became a fairy tale from a terrible one,
My doppelgänger is coming for interrogation.
And then he goes from the interrogation,
To two messengers of the Maid of the Noseless
Destined to protect him.
And I hear even from here -
Isn't that a miracle! -
Sounds of your voice:
I paid for you
Chistogan,
Exactly ten years went
Under the gun
Neither left nor right
Didn't look
And behind me is a bad glory
Rustled.

And not become my grave,
You, seditious, disgraced, dear,
Pale, dead, quiet.
Our separation is imaginary:
Yastoboyuninseparable,
My shadow on your walls
My reflection in the channels
The sound of footsteps in the Hermitage halls,
Where my friend wandered with me,
And on the old Volkovo Pole 40,
Where can I cry at will
Above the silence of the mass graves.
All that is said in the first part
About love, betrayal and passion
He threw free verse from the wings,
And my City is “wired” ...
Heavy tombstones
On your sleepless eyes.
I thought you were chasing me
You, who remained there to die
In the gleam of the spiers, in the reflection of the waters.
I did not wait for the desired messengers ...
Above you - only your charms,
White nochenek round dance.
A fun word - lady -
Nobody knows now
Everyone is looking through someone else's window.
Who is in Tashkent, and who is in New York,
And exile the air is bitter -
Like poisoned wine.
All of you could admire me
When in the belly of a flying fish
I was saved from the evil chase
And over a forest full of enemies,
Like one possessed by a demon
How the night rushed to Broken ...
And right in front of me
Frozen and cold Kama,
And "Quo vadis?" 41 someone said
But he did not let his lips move,
Like tunnels and bridges
The crazy Ural thundered.
And the road opened up for me
Which took so much
By which the son was taken,
And the funeral path was long
Among the solemn and crystal
Silence of the Siberian Land.
From what has become dust
Overwhelmed by mortal fear
And knowing the time for vengeance,
Lowering your dry eyes
And wringing hands, Russia
42 was going east ahead of me.

Note. Anna Akhmatova.
"Seventh" - Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony. The author took the first part of this symphony by plane from the besieged city on September 29, 1941 - Editor's note.

‹STROPHES NOT INCLUDED IN THE POEM›

What are you muttering, our midnight?
Parasha died anyway
The young mistress of the palace.
It draws incense from all windows,
The most beloved curl is cut off,
And the oval of the face darkens.
Gallery not completed
This wedding idea
Where again under Borea's prompt
This is what I am writing for you.

And behind the right wall, from where
I left without waiting for a miracle,
In September on a rainy night
An old friend is awake and mumbling
That he wants more than happiness
Forget about the king's daughter.

I walk towards the vision
And I'm fighting my own shadow
There is no more merciless struggle.
My shadow is torn to eternal glory,
I stand as a guard on the outpost
And I tell her to go back ...
…
…
As they say in Moscow now.
I want to trample underfoot
The one that glows in a light frame,
Changeling

There are no wings over her shoulders

October 1956, Booth

Believe me or don't believe me
Somewhere around here in an ordinary envelope
With the calculation of total death
A crumpled leaf will flash.
It is not hidden, but encrypted,
But the whole world is disenchanted by them
And it's reasonably based on it
Non-existence is an invisible stream.

I haven't forgotten those yet.
I forgot, imagine, forever.
I forgot that the name
I don't dare to say them now.
So mighty is the radiance above them,
(turned into marble, cameo)
Turned into a banner and honor.

I didn’t circle in ballroom Europe,
He painted rock deer,
You are Gilgamesh, Hercules,
Geser Nepoet, amphipoet,
You were already an adult at dawn
The most remote countries and faiths.

Schoolgirl, cousin, Juliet! ...
Do not wait for you cornet
You will go secretly to the monastery.
Mute your tambourine, my gypsy,
And the wound has already turned black
Under your left nipple.

Around him are expensive shadows.
But the words of prayers are in vain,
Lovely lips in vain hello.
And shines in the diamond night,
Like one vision of temptation
That mysterious silhouette.
And with the tricks of the Byzantine
With them there Harlequin killer,
And in the local way - the master and friend.
He looks like he's in a painting
And under the fingers of the harpsichord,
And immeasurable comfort all around.

You will arrive in a black carriage,
These Tsarskoye Selo horses
And the team and iha l'anglaise
Reminiscent of childhood for a moment
And a forfeited legacy
…

Like the memory of "Narodnaya Volya".
Here already to the Hot Field,
Probably within reach.
And my prophetic voice is silent.
There are even worse miracles
But let's go - I have no time to wait.

And already, drowning each other,
Two orchestras from the secret circle
Sounds are sent to the swan canopy
…
But where is my voice and where is the echo,
What is the salvation and what is the hindrance,
Where am I and where is only a shadow?
How to save yourself from the second step...

That's the trouble, oh dear
Next to this one goes another
You hear a light step and dry,
And where is my voice and where is the echo,
Who is crying, who is drunk with laughter -
And which shadow is different?

1 God preserves everything (lat.). In the final version of "A Poem Without a Hero" the numbered footnotes refer to Akhmatov's "Editor's Notes" at the end of the poem.
2 Antinous is an antique handsome man. – Editor's note.
3 Funeral march (French) .
4 "Are you, Confusion-Psyche" - the heroine of the play of the same name by Yuri Belyaev. – Editor's note.
5 Day of the Kings (French).
Le jour des rois (French) - Epiphany Eve: January 5th. – Editor's note.
6 stop laughing
Before dawn comes.
7 Why are my fingers covered in blood?
And wine, like poison, burns?
8 Dapertutto is the pseudonym of Vsevolod Meyerhold. – Editor's note.
9 Jokanaan - Saint John the Baptist. – Editor's note.
10 Three "k" express the author's confusion. - Approx. Anna Akhmatova.
11 The Valley of Jehoshaphat is the supposed site of the Last Judgment. – Editor's note.
12 Liziska is the pseudonym of Empress Messalina in Roman brothels. – Editor's note.
13 Oak of Mamre - see Genesis. – Editor's note.
14 Hammurabi, Lycurgus, Solon - legislators. – Editor's note.
15 The Ark of the Covenant - see the Bible (Book of Kings). – Editor's note.
16 Hall - The White Hall of Mirrors (works by Quarenghi) in the Fountain House, across the platform from the author's apartment. – Editor's note.
17 "Dog" - "Stray Dog" - artistic cabaret in the tenth years (1912-1914 before the war). – Editor's note.
18 Lots of Sodom - see Genesis. – Editor's note.
19 Fountain Grotto - built in 1757 by Argunov in the garden of the Sheremetev Palace; was demolished in the early 10s. – Editor's note.
20 What does my prince Carnival want from me? (French)
21 Corridor of the Petrovsky Collegiums - the corridor of St. Petersburg University. – Editor's note.
22 Option: Through the Neva for a penny on a sled. - Approx. Anna Akhmatova.
Petrushka's mask - "Petrushka" - Stravinsky's ballet. – Editor's note.
23 Option: Goat-legged doll, actor. - Approx. Anna Akhmatova.
24 "Dove, come!" - church hymns; sang when the bride stepped on the carpet in the temple. – Editor's note.
25 Maltese Chapel - built according to the project of Quarenghi in 1798-1800. in courtyard Vorontsov Palace, which later housed the Corps of Pages. – Editor's note.
26 Skobar is an offensive nickname for the people of Pskov. – Editor's note.
27 Muses. - Approx. Anna Akhmatova.
28 In my beginning is my end. T. - S. Eliot (English).
29 Soft embalmer (English) - "gentle comforter." See Keats' sonnet "To the Sleep". – Editor's note.
Soft embalmer (English) - "gentle comforter." See Keats' sonnet "To the Sleep". – Editor's note.
30 Elegy. - Approx. Anna Akhmatova.
31 Unable to publish stanzas IX-XVI, Anna Akhmatova replaced them with lines of dots in her manuscript of The Run of Time.
The omitted stanzas are an imitation of Pushkin. See “On Eugene Onegin”: “I also humbly confess that there are two missing stanzas in Don Juan,” wrote Pushkin. – Editor's note.
32 Bauta - in Italy - a mask with a hood. – Editor's note.
33 romantic poem. - Approx. Anna Akhmatova.
34 The Star Chamber is a secret court in England, which was placed in a hall where the starry sky was depicted on the ceiling. – Editor's note.
35 The place where, according to readers, all poetic works are born. - Approx. Anna Akhmatova.
36 See Shelley's famous poem "To the Sklark". - "To the lark." – Editor's note.
37 George is Lord Byron. – Editor's note.
38 Clara Gazul is Merimee's pseudonym. – Editor's note.
39 Mars in the summer of 1941 - Approx. Anna Akhmatova.
40 Volkovo Pole - the old name of the Volkovo cemetery. – Editor's note.
41 Where are you going? (lat.)
42 The poem used to end like this:
And behind me, sparkling with a secret
And calling himself "Seventh",
A feast rushed to an unheard-of,
Pretending to be a music notebook
famous leningrad
She returned to her native air. -

In terms of the number of interpretations, Akhmatova’s last poem overtook the most mysterious works of Russian literature, but the riddle of this unique text has not been resolved, even now that Akhmatova’s “Notes” and all, without exception, her “Prose about the Poem” have been published.

Apparently, there was something unspeakable in Akhmatova's own attitude to this text - as if it were not she who dominated him, but he dominated her. When one of my friends whitewashed, bound one of the first versions of "A Poem Without a Hero", and then returned it to the author dressed up, Akhmatova responded with the following verses:

And you came back to me famous
Twisted dark green branch,
Graceful, indifferent and proud ...
I never knew you like this
And I didn't save you for that
From the bloody mess then.
I won't share my luck with you
I do not rejoice over you, but cry,
And you know very well why.
And the night goes on, and there is little strength left.
Save me like I saved you
And do not let in the bubbling darkness.

The poem saved Anna Akhmatova for twenty difficult years and let her go into darkness only in the late autumn of 1965, on the eve of her twenty-year presence in the life of the author. In the same autumn, Anna of All Russia was struck down by the last heart attack, from which she was never destined to recover.

Year of writing: 1940-1965

"A Poem without a Hero" is Akhmatova's central work, a triptych that has been subjected to the most diverse interpretations. And it seems that Akhmatova herself did not fully understand, or, in any case, preferred to hide from herself the secret meaning of this work that suddenly appeared to her.

Philologist Victor Zhirmunsky called the poem a symbolist dream come true. And in fact, the Symbolists somehow did not get along very well with a large form. The symbolist novel is, as a rule, a monstrous work because of the completely inadequate mixture of reality and the most unbridled fantasy; that is exactly what, say, Sologub's novel Navi's Enchantment is. Pasternak had to write Doctor Zhivago so that Russia would have an exemplary symbolist novel.

The situation with the symbolist poem was also unimportant, perhaps because a really serious time distance was needed in order to discern the Silver Age and comprehend it. And with such a comprehension of the Russian Silver Age became "A Poem without a Hero", where it is directly said: "And the silver month is bright / Over the silver age it froze."

But, of course, the meaning of the poem is much more complicated and much more relevant for 1940 than an attempt to comprehend the year 1913. When in 1941 Akhmatova read the first part of the triptych to Tsvetaeva, she quipped: “You need to have great courage to write about Harlequins, Columbines and Pierrot in 1941.” Meanwhile, no special courage is required for this - one has only to think about what 1913 and 1940 have in common with each other. We will see with some horror - in any case, unexpectedly for ourselves - we will see that these years are pre-war, and Akhmatova's poem could with good reason called "Premonition" Patriotic War».

Akhmatova considered her poem clear enough: “The poem does not contain any third, seventh or twenty-ninth meanings. I won't change it or explain it. "Ezhe pisah - pisah"". Its meaning is indeed quite obvious, although it could not be revealed to the people of 1940, due to the fact that their own foreboding of the Patriotic War was not as clear and not as painful as that of Akhmatova.

I must say that Russian literature in 1914 did not feel anything special. Neither Mandelstam, nor, in particular, Pasternak, with his eternally joyful outlook, could have thought that the world was on the verge of slaughter. And Akhmatova then wrote the famous prophetic poem "July 1914":

Smells like burning. four weeks
Dry peat burns in swamps.
Even the birds didn't sing today
And the aspen no longer trembles.

“... Only our land will not be divided
For your amusement adversary:
Mother of God white spread
Over great sorrows boards.

With the same sharpness she foresaw the catastrophe of 1941. And not only because in 1940 the Second World War was already in full swing (although it must be said that Akhmatova was one of the very few poets who immediately responded to the Second World War with mournful verses: “When an era is buried ...” and “Londoners”; she perceived these events as facts of a personal biography, since all of Europe was her home).

Akhmatova's painfully acute foreboding had another reason, which is not so easy to name aloud. Let us ask ourselves why Akhmatova alone was able to write the Requiem in 1937-1938? Why is all Russian poetry silent at this time? Yes, because go ahead and write a poem about repression from a humiliated, crushed state, from the state of a person who is constantly mocked.

And for Akhmatova, this lyrical pose is natural: she never seeks the right, she is in this sense an Old Testament poet - for her, retribution has no moral reasons. “I am a lyric poet, I can wallow in a ditch,” as she jokingly said in Tashkent in 1943, when she was informed that a drunken Lugovskoy was lying in a ditch. Akhmatova could say about herself the words that struck Tsvetaeva: “I am a bad mother”; "Husband in the grave, son in prison, / Pray for me"; "This woman is sick, this woman is alone." Which of the Russian poets can say this about himself? Akhmatova can.

She lives with the original consciousness of sinfulness, and therefore being crushed in 1938 is a natural position for her. This constant consciousness of sinfulness and deserved retribution always hovers over her lyrics, and it is this that allows her to feel that in 1941 there will come an absolute and universal retribution - a worldwide retribution for private sins.

For example, for Akhmatova, Mikhail Kuzmin, described in “A Poem Without a Hero”, was the personification of sinfulness. But why, not because of homosexuality, from which, by the way, he made beautiful poems? Apparently, Akhmatova did not accept anything else in Kuzmin - his clarity, his calm joy. She did not understand how one could sin so much, go through so many novels - and not be tormented by conscience for a second, write light, cheerful texts, just as easily and cheerfully surrender to new depravity.

The first part of the “Poem Without a Hero”, which tells the story of the suicide of the lyricist Vsevolod Knyazev due to unhappy love, tells the same story as Akhmatova says in an old Silver Age poem: “We are all harlots here, harlots, / How sad we are together! » This is also a story about retribution. According to Gumilyov’s memoirs, Akhmatova tormented him every morning with a conversation about never-before betrayals, telling him: “Nikola, again that night I dreamed that I was unfaithful to you,” which he then mockingly told Irina Odoevtseva. And for Akhmatova, with her painful constant consciousness of her own guilt, Vsevolod Knyazev is also the personification of that very private sin, for which everyone will soon have to pay.

The horror of the sinfulness of the Silver Age is not only that everyone has affairs with everyone. Not only that Glebova-Sudeikina - "Confusion-Psyche" - easily and naturally cheats on her husband. Not only in the fact that Pallada Bogdanova-Belskaya, the most famous Petersburg libertine, becomes the muse of all salons and the heroine of all poets. The horror is that the Silver Age is a continuous game, it is a constant carnival in which there is nothing serious. And for this game comes the most serious and tragic retribution.

"A Poem without a Hero" is usually viewed in the same context as Akhmatov's Silver Age poems, but this is not entirely true: it should be considered together with other pre-war writings of her great peers, such as Pasternak and Mandelstam. At that time, Mandelstam was writing the oratorio "Poems about the Unknown Soldier", full of the same mysterious forebodings. These things are related not only by incomprehensibility, not only by a peculiar hallucinatory nature, but by the fact that they are imbued with a premonition of enormous sacrifices. Akhmatova writes:

As the future ripens in the past,
So in the future the past smolders -
Terrible holiday of dead leaves.

And here is Mandelstam:

Clarity is ash, vigilance is sycamore
A little red rushes to her house.

Of all the interpretations of this metaphor, it seems to me the most correct one: it's just leaves falling to the ground in the same way that millions of lives, millions of corpses dissolve in the ground.

In this context, there is also the largely unexplained Pasternak cycle of 1940, the so-called Peredelkino cycle. There is the famous poem "Waltz with Devilry", which, like in "Poem Without a Hero", describes a cheerful dance with sinister overtones:

The flow of blouses, the singing of doors,
The roar of the little ones, the laughter of mothers.
Dates, books, games, nougat,
Needles, rugs, jumps, runs.

Why, in 1940, two poets, in whom both substantive and formal parallels are very rare, suddenly simultaneously turn to the theme of the New Year's sinister carnival? This, I think, reflects the terrible and festive atmosphere of the Soviet 1940, which is unusually similar to the atmosphere of the pre-war 1913. Everyone participates in the same carnival, everyone wears masks, and everyone understands that this carnival is doomed, that soon they will have to pay for this universal lie and fun.

Bulgakov, who is at the same time writing the final version of The Master and Margarita, constantly has the theme of a terrible holiday, a demonic carnival. Everyone is aware of the terror, and they celebrate with tripled vigor, because the spectacle of universal death in a terrible way turns on this holiday. Like Akhmatova and Pasternak, the main theme here is the theater of terror, the theatricality of violence.

And according to Akhmatova, the retribution, as in 1913, is a military catastrophe. It is logical to ask: what did Knyazev and Glebova-Sudeikina do that was so terrible? Why is the whole world so severely punished for the usual adultery, for the usual bisexuality, for the usual love game? But the main idea of ​​the “Poem Without a Hero” is that sin is always private, and retribution is universal: for many small private sins, there comes a retribution that is incommensurable with sin.

The universal sinfulness of 1940, when everyone is dancing and purposely ignoring the death, this terrible lining, will turn into retribution on a planetary scale. It is no coincidence that the second part of the poem, which is already closely leading to the events of the war, is called "Tails", that is, the shell, reverse, the wrong side of the festival, its terrible underground, the terrible retribution for the universal lie.

The very structure of the Poem Without a Hero suggests a triptych in a religious sense, and therefore redemption. In the first part of the triptych, in a historical digression, a terrible demonic dance of 1913 is drawn. In the second part, the theme of a gloomy expectation of retribution arises. And in the third part, written in Tashkent, the theme of redemption arises, because the war of 1941-1945 is such a feat and the revival of the national spirit that atones for the terrible sin of the universal lie of the 1930s. In this part of the poem, the hero appears:

Lowering your dry eyes
And wringing hands, Russia
Walking east ahead of me.

The hero is Russia, which has gone through a cleansing flame.

There are many decipherings of the name "Poems without a Hero". Lev Losev believed that PbG is the encrypted name of St. Petersburg, which is main character. One can see a hint that the hero of the poem is invisible, a mysterious ghost. “From childhood, I was afraid of mummers,” because someone invisible was among the mummers. But it seems to me that the meaning of the name is very simple. “A poem without a hero” is a poem of an unheroic time, a poem of a time in which there is no hero, but only a terrible carnival of mummers.

And the hero redeems this tragedy with his appearance. Appearing in the third part of the poem, the Russian people become that hero who is not enough time. This terror, this terrible theatre, this neuroticization of society by nothing but a feat, except the appearance of a hero, cannot be atoned for.

And that is precisely why the "Poem without a Hero", whose heroine is on the other side of hell, nevertheless, in general, has such an optimistic sound. The terrible theatrical ghostly carnival was over, and the country saw its own face.

The most voluminous work of Akhmatova, the beautiful, but at the same time extremely difficult to understand and complex "Poem without a Hero", was created for more than twenty years. Akhmatova began to write it in Leningrad before the war, then during the war she continued to work on it in Tashkent, and then finished in Moscow and Leningrad, but even before 1962 she did not dare to consider it completed. “The first time she came to me at the Fountain House,” writes about Akhmatova’s poem, “on the night of December 27, 1940, she sent one small passage as a messenger in the fall.

I didn't call her. I didn't even expect her on that cold and dark day of my last Leningrad winter.

Its appearance was preceded by several small and insignificant facts, which I hesitate to call events.

That night I wrote two pieces of the first part ("1913") and "Dedication". At the beginning of January, almost unexpectedly for myself, I wrote “Tails”, and in Tashkent (in two stages) - “Epilogue”, which became the third part of the poem, and made several significant inserts into both first parts.

I dedicate this poem to the memory of its first listeners - my friends and fellow citizens who died in Leningrad during the siege.

This Poem (Akhmatova always wrote this word in relation to this work only with capital letter) [9, 17] she attached fundamental importance. According to her plan (and it turned out so), the Poem was to become a synthesis of the themes, images, motives and melodies that were most important for her work, that is, a kind of Result of Life and Creativity. Some new artistic principles, developed by the poetess mainly during the Great Patriotic War, found their expression in it, and the most important of them is the principle of rigorous historicism. After all, the Poem is highly indebted to the suffering and courage that Akhmatova acquired in the 1930s, becoming a witness and participant in a national tragedy. The silent cry of the people in the prison lines never ceased to sound in her soul and in her word. “A Poem without a Hero” accepted and, like in a powerful crucible, melted down all this incredible and seemingly unbearable experience for a poet” [9, 17].

There are so many levels in this work, and it is so replete with direct and hidden quotations and echoes from the life of the author himself and from all European literature that it is not easy to understand it, especially since it was published in scattered passages and many of its readings were based on an incorrect or incomplete text. . Akhmatova herself categorically refused to explain the Poem, but, on the contrary, asked other people's opinions about it, carefully collected and even read them aloud, never showing her own attitude towards them. In 1944, she stated that "the poem does not contain any third, seventh, twenty-ninth meanings" [ 1, 320 ]. But already in the very text of the Poem, she admits that she "used sympathetic ink," that "the box ... has a triple bottom," which she writes in "mirror writing." “And there is no other road for me,” she wrote, “by a miracle I came across this one / And I am in no hurry to part with it” [1, 242].

Of course, it is most natural to think that Akhmatova was forced to use "sympathetic ink" for censorship reasons, but it would be more accurate to assume that there is another reason behind this: Akhmatova addressed not only the living, but also the unborn, as well as the inner "I" of the reader, who for the time being kept in memory what he heard, in order to later extract from it what he had once remained deaf to. And here it is no longer state censorship that operates, but that internal censor that is enclosed in the mind of the reader. We are not always ready or able to perceive the voice of extreme rightness found "on the other side of hell."

Akhmatova, who was closely connected with earthly life, at the beginning of her Path rebelled against symbolism, which, in her opinion, used a secret language. But her inability to write poetry about anything other than what she herself experienced, combined with a desire to understand the tragic circumstances own life to be able to bear their burden made her believe that her life itself was deeply symbolic. In order to find the “guess” of her own life, she introduces into the “Poem Without a Hero” a number of people - her friends and contemporaries, for the most part already deceased - and in this broad context she brings the symbols closer to reality; its symbols are living people with their own historical destinies.