His voice, and those of an entire people We must first hear the rhythmic recitation of that voice, that of Anna Akhmatova
, poet among poets, on those strange shaky images (1):
The poem that voices Anna Akhmatova chants here, was written in 1924 in Leningrad. Jean Malaplate gave a French translation decasyllabics in rhymed:
The Muse
When I wait in the dark, Life, then, no longer counts for anything;
Never mind freedom, youth, glory ,
When his flute in hand, it occurs.
Yes, there she suddenly unveiled ...
Attached to me, his eyes dazzled And I ask: "Is this your dictation
That was Dante's Inferno?" She said: "Yes." (2)
Akhmatova had planned to include this poem a compendium of pieces written between 1924 and 1941, entitled The
Roseau, which was not published during his lifetime. (3)
The abrupt response that closes the last two lines suggests that other answer, qu'Akhmatova made herself, and she placed it in his introductory
Requiem - which would be the last section of
Roseau .
preface
During the terrible years of the reign of Yezhov * I spent seventeen months standing in line outside prisons of Leningrad. Once, someone told me so to say "recognized". That day, a woman waiting behind me, a woman with blue lips who had obviously never heard my name, suddenly emerged from the lethargy in which we were all the prey and asked my ear (there, everybody spoke in a low voice): - And that you can describe it? I told him
- I can.
So semblance of a smile touched what had once been her face.
1 April 1957 Leningrad
* Chief of the NKVD from September 1936 to July 1938. (Translator's note) (4)
If the Muse was able to dictate to Dante's Inferno
Anna Akhmatova could, she transcribed what he dictated "
low voice" all the men and those who waited "
outside prisons of Leningrad ", hoping for news of a prisoner.
For her, the prisoner was Lev Gumilev, the son she had by her first husband, poet Nikolai Gumilev, shot himself in August 1921 under the pretext of conspiracy monarchist (5).
Considered an irreducible element in bourgeois literature "too socially
irrelevant ", Anna Akhmatova, however, was never arrested, but from 1922 it was virtually banned from publication. She continued to compose poetry, often confident of prudence, to his memory and those of friends secure. "
From time to time, Akhmatova spent in review: we had to recite by heart a particular fragment. "(6)
Still hoping the release and return of her son, she would never consider exile.
She was able to place emphasis of his Requiem
this quatrain:
No, I was not under another sky,
Protected under a wing foreign
I was with my people,
Where he was for his misfortune. (7)
This cycle of poems was first published, "under a wing foreign
" in Munich in 1963, three years before the death of Akhmatova. The editors wanted to clarify that this publication was made "
unbeknownst to the author . A copy reached Anna Akhmatova, which she could make corrections. In his country,
Requiem did not appear until well after his death in 1987. (8) But
Anna Akhmatova had kept the promise, "
the wall red wall blind" to this "woman with blue lips
who had obviously never heard [his] name " ...
************ Epilogue *************** 1 I knew how faces defeat,
How we see the terror in the eye, How writing pages to the punch Emphasize the pain on the cheeks, How
loops or black cinder Resemble suddenly white metal. The smile on the lips off docile And fear trembling in a dry little laugh. If I pray, not only for me, But for all those who waited with me In the fierce cold, or under the scorching heat, At the foot of the red wall, the blind wall. *************** 2 There will be time to remember. I see, hear, I feel you there: you, we dragged to the window, You, which was not on your land to you, You who shook your head pretty And who said: "I just home here. " I want to name them all by name. But they made the list. Where to ask? I
woven for them a mainsail With these words they gave me poor. I remember them always and everywhere. What comes another woe, I forget nothing. And if they gag my mouth tortured through which millions of people screaming, While it has similar memory of me On the eve of the anniversary. And if I do not know when in this country is 'm considering drawing up a statue I give my permission for the ceremony. But I put one condition: that the place Not near the sea where I was born (With the sea all the links are broken), Not in the park of kings, near the strain Where am looking for a shadow inconsolable But here, where I waited three hundred hours Without the locks open for me . Because I fear, blessed in death, To forget what sound did the black vans, To forget that the door slammed horribly, and the old woman howled like a wounded animal. That bronze eyelids motionless Snow by melting down like the tears! That pigeon coos prison off And as the boats glide silently Neva! 1940. March (7)
Notes:
(1) These images open the movie directed by Semyon Aranovich that can be found on DVD under the title The Anna Akhmatova File
(1989).
(2) This is shown in
Poems, published in 1992 by Éditions Librairie du Globe.
(3) The Roseau
has been "reconstructed" in a beautiful bilingual edition, with the translation of Christian Mouza, at Harpo & (2007).
(4) The French text is here that Sophie Benech, who gave an illustrated bilingual edition of the only
Requiem Editions Interferences, in 2005.
(5) Her third husband, Nikolai Punin arrested in 1935 and died in a camp in 1953.
(6) Joseph Brodsky, preface
Poems (Editions Bookstore Globe)
(7) The translation is that of Jean-Louis Backes,
appearing in Requiem and Poem Without a Hero other poems, published in 2007 Poetry in the collection / Gallimard.
(8) There are, however, on the site
ImWerden a
audio file where you can hear that Akhmatova Requiem
. I do not know under what circumstances and when it was recorded. I am even unable to say what it contains poems of the cycle ...
But why try to disgust others? 
The margin for error, in person. 
