Tuesday, June 18, 2013

News at Eleven: But "Requiem" [by Anna Akhmatova] was also

an anthem of the people's resistance before the power of Stalin; one of the poem's most powerful passages was written "Instead of a Preface."

"I passed seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. Once, somebody 'identified' me there. Then a woman standing behind me, blue with cold, who of course had never heard my name, woke from that trance characteristic of us all and asked asked in my ear (there, everyone spoke in whispers): 'Ah, can you describe this?'/And I answered:/'I can.' Then something like a tormented smile passed over what had once been her face."

from Russia & India Report: Anna Akhmatova: A charismatic poet for the ages

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