The Flight of Time by Anna Akhmatova: Through Personal Signature to Generational Emblem

Abstract

The logic of this article comes from the research of the intricate “crossing of destinies” in the life and creative journey of Anna Akhmatova and in the life of three generations which she witnessed and shared. The study demonstrates that the deflection of the three epochs in Akhmatova’s biography and creative work, which made her image emblematical, is integral to historicism as a dominant feature of her poetical world perception. The authors distinguish and characterise three personal signatures of the poet demanded by the time: a lunar maiden, sorceress, and prophetess of the Silver Age; a mourner, mother, and wife who took up the mission of praying for those who died in prisons and camps during the war between the 1930s and 1940s; a classic of Russian poetry, who became an authentic incarnation of the link of times for the young generation of poets in the 1960s. It is represented in the multiplicity of Akhmatova’s “imperial” signatures-insignias, which she created in her Notebooks, and her contemporaries reflected in their memoirs (sometimes with the participation of the poet). Additionally, they were realised in the visual code, namely portraits and photographs, dating back to different decades. It is important that having been reflected in the mirrors of various epochs, the poet’s image lets time itself be reflected in “Akhmatova’s mirrors”. The most dramatic moments of “not what the calendars say, but the real Twentieth Century” are mostly the parts of her private and poetic life, as her destiny was the embodiment of the “tragic symphony” of her generation. Special attention is paid in the article to the self-designation of sacral nature, which Akhmatova intends not for time, but for eternity, it is a unique secret code, which can be decoded only by poets and poetry itself.

Keywords

• Анна Ахматова
• сигнатура
• эмблема
• поколение
• время
• история.