Anna Akhmatova's 'Requiem'

Akhmatova’s statue opposite the prison in St. Petersburg.

Anna Akhmatova 1869-1966

‘Requiem’ is Akhmatova’s memorial for those who waited with her outside the prison in Saint Petersburg in the 1930s, hoping for news of their loved ones during ‘the terrible years of the Yezhov Terror’.

The context of the poem is explained properly in the second section, a prose ‘By way of a preface’. Some sections have titles, others numbers.

This translation, by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward is taken from ‘Twentieth century Russian Poetry; Silver and steel, An anthology’. Selected and Introduced by Yevgeny Yevthushenko, edited by Albert. C. Todd and Max Hayward. ( Doubleday 1993)

Yevgeny Yevtushenko's 'The City of Yes and the City of No'.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933-2017)

For my generation, perhaps the best known Russian Poet. Possibly better known than the more critically acclaimed Brodsky. Whether he was best known because he was marketable in ‘The West’ or because he was the best of his contemporaries in Russia is, for those of us who rely on translations, an unanswerable question. But sometimes, dealing with poetry in translation, you can be forgiven for wondering what’s being valued.

Not in the case of this poem. Even if it were English it would still work.

One strange evening I took a group from the high school where I worked to Brisbane (Australia) to hear Yevtushenko read. He was tall, elderly, wearing a puce suit and a huge, bright yellow tie. He had just published a novel call ‘Don’t die before your death’.

He didn’t so much read this poem as dance it down the aisle.

This is taken from Twentieth Century Russian Poetry. Silver and Steel, an anthology. Selected, with an introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, edited by Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward (with Daniel Weissbort) Doubleday 1993.