A poem by A.A. Akhmatova “I am not with those who abandoned the earth…” (perception, interpretation, evaluation)
Anna Akhmatova's poem "I am not with those who left the earth" refers to civil lyrics. In it, the poetess departs from her usual intimate experiences and demonstrates her participation and involvement in the events taking place in society and the country.
Akhmatova wrote it in 1922, shortly after the arrest and execution of Gumilyov, her former husband. Having the opportunity to leave post-revolutionary Russia, like many of her acquaintances, she did not do this, not thinking of her life without Russia and without St. Petersburg. Her love for the Motherland was so great that even the persecution that began against those representatives of culture who remained did not shake the poetess.
main topic
In the lines of the work, the poetess divides into two camps those who left their homeland and those who remained, despite the upcoming difficulties. In the first lines, she also demonstrates her demon-tempter, which, due to her character and beliefs, she did not succumb to: "I will not give them my songs."
She does not despise emigrants, she feels sorry for them. The poetess tears off the veil of that romanticism that other representatives of the literary world attributed to them. She sincerely sympathizes with the emigrants, realizing that it will not be easy for them to assimilate in a new environment - "someone else's bread smells like wormwood."
In the work, she clearly demonstrates that those who remain are having a hard time. They had to stand under a hail of blows of fate.
Akhmatova realizes that such a situation in society is the tragedy of an entire generation with a series of broken destinies and broken lives.
Structural analysis
The poem consists of four iambic stanzas. The rhyme in them is cross.
When constructing the composition of the work, the poetess uses the antithesis. It sharply marks the boundaries of those who stayed and those who went abroad. She describes the subsequent fate of each group, expressing her attitude towards them. The artistic expressiveness of the work is relatively modest. Akhmatova uses metaphors, oxymoron, and neologism. Also in one poem, she successfully combines high-level vocabulary and everyday expressions.
Akhmatova also uses epithets, but they are modest and reserved. Nerve and strain in the work create means of alliteration. The selection of words with growling and buzzing sounds at the beginning of the verse creates a feeling of noise, din and general anxiety, which are supported by buzzing sounds in subsequent stanzas. At the end of the work, a clear ringing and a calling alarm, formed by the sound “z”, are heard.
Conclusion
“Not with those I who abandoned the earth” is a work in which Akhmatova exposes the feelings of her heroine and experiences associated not so much with personal dramas as with the fate of her country and people. The work is valuable in that it clearly shows the tragedy of the era and genuine love for the Motherland. This topic is relevant to this day.
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova
I am not with those who left the earth
At the mercy of enemies.
I will not heed their rude flattery,
I won't give them my songs.
But the exile is eternally pitiful to me
Like a prisoner, like a sick person.
Dark is your road, wanderer,
Wormwood smells of someone else's bread.
And here, in the deaf haze of fire
Losing the rest of my youth
We are not a single blow
They didn't turn themselves away.
And we know that in the assessment of late
Every hour will be justified ...
But in the world there are no people without tears,
Haughtier and simpler than us.
After the revolution, Anna Akhmatova faced a very difficult choice - to remain in plundered and destroyed Russia or to emigrate to Europe. Many of her acquaintances safely left their homeland, fleeing hunger and the upcoming repressions. Akhmatova also had the opportunity to go abroad with her son. Immediately after the revolution, her husband, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov, turned up in France, and, taking advantage of this, Akhmatova could leave without hindrance.
Nikolai Gumilyov
But she refused such an opportunity, although she assumed that from now on life in rebellious Russia promises to turn into a real nightmare. Until the start of mass repressions, the poetess was repeatedly offered to leave the country, but each time she refused such a tempting prospect. In 1922, when it became clear that the borders were closed, and inside the country persecution of people objectionable to the authorities began, Akhmatova wrote a poem “I am not with those who abandoned the land ...”, full of patriotism.
Indeed, this poetess has repeatedly admitted that she cannot imagine her life away from her homeland. It is for this reason that she put her own literary career and even her life on the line for the opportunity to stay in her beloved St. Petersburg. Even during the blockade, she never regretted her decision, although she was balancing between life and death. As for the poem itself, it came into being after the poetess experienced a personal drama associated with the arrest and execution of her ex-husband Nikolai Gumilyov.
The last photo of Nikolai Gumilyov without retouching
But even this fact did not stop Akhmatova, who did not want to become a traitor to her homeland, believing that this was the only thing that no one could take away from her.
The poetess has no illusions about the new government, noting: "I will not heed their rude flattery, I will not give them my songs." That is, while remaining in the USSR, Akhmatova consciously chooses the path of opposition and refuses to write poems that would praise the building of a new society. At the same time, the author has great sympathy for the emigrants who showed cowardice and were forced to leave Russia. Addressing them, the poetess notes: “Your road is dark, wanderer, someone else’s bread smells like wormwood.” Akhmatova is well aware that much more dangers and hardships await her in her homeland than in a foreign land. But the decision made allows her to proudly declare: "We have not deflected a single blow from ourselves." The poetess foresees that years will pass, and the events of the early 20th century will receive an objective historical assessment. Everyone will be rewarded according to their deserts, and Akhmatova has no doubts about this.. But she does not want to wait until time puts everything in its place. Therefore, she delivers a verdict to all those who did not betray Russia and shared her fate: "But in the world there are no people more tearless, arrogant and simpler than us." Indeed, the trials made yesterday's aristocrats become more rigid and even cruel. But no one managed to break their spirit, their pride. And the simplicity that the poetess speaks of is connected with the new conditions of life, when being rich becomes not only shameful, but also life-threatening.
“I am not with those who abandoned the earth…” Anna Akhmatova
I am not with those who left the earth
At the mercy of enemies.
I will not heed their rude flattery,
I won't give them my songs.But the exile is eternally pitiful to me
Like a prisoner, like a sick person.
Dark is your road, wanderer,
Wormwood smells of someone else's bread.And here, in the deaf haze of fire
Losing the rest of my youth
We are not a single blow
They didn't turn themselves away.And we know that in the assessment of late
Every hour will be justified ...
But in the world there are no people without tears,
Haughtier and simpler than us.
Analysis of Akhmatova's poem "I am not with those who abandoned the earth ..."
After the revolution, Anna Akhmatova faced a very difficult choice - to remain in plundered and destroyed Russia or to emigrate to Europe. Many of her acquaintances safely left their homeland, fleeing hunger and the upcoming repressions. Akhmatova also had the opportunity to go abroad with her son. Immediately after the revolution, her husband, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov, turned up in France, and, taking advantage of this, Akhmatova could leave without hindrance. But she refused such an opportunity, although she assumed that from now on life in rebellious Russia promises to turn into a real nightmare. Until the start of mass repressions, the poetess was repeatedly offered to leave the country, but each time she refused such a tempting prospect. In 1922, when it became clear that the borders were closed, and inside the country persecution of people objectionable to the authorities began, Akhmatova wrote a poem “I am not with those who abandoned the land ...”, full of patriotism.
Indeed, this poetess has repeatedly admitted that she cannot imagine her life away from her homeland. It is for this reason that she put her own literary career and even her life on the line for the opportunity to stay in her beloved St. Petersburg. Even during the blockade, she never regretted her decision, although she was balancing between life and death. As for the poem itself, it came into being after the poetess experienced a personal drama associated with the arrest and execution of her ex-husband Nikolai Gumilyov. But even this fact did not stop Akhmatova, who did not want to become a traitor to her homeland, believing that this was the only thing that no one could take away from her.
The poetess has no illusions about the new government, noting: "I will not heed their rude flattery, I will not give them my songs." That is, while remaining in the USSR, Akhmatova consciously chooses the path of opposition and refuses to write poems that would praise the building of a new society. At the same time, the author has great sympathy for the emigrants who showed cowardice and were forced to leave Russia. Addressing them, the poetess notes: “Your road is dark, wanderer, someone else’s bread smells like wormwood.” Akhmatova is well aware that much more dangers and hardships await her in her homeland than in a foreign land. But the decision made allows her to proudly declare: "We have not deflected a single blow from ourselves." The poetess foresees that years will pass, and the events of the early 20th century will receive an objective historical assessment. Everyone will be rewarded according to their deserts, and Akhmatova has no doubts about this.. But she does not want to wait until time puts everything in its place. Therefore, she delivers a verdict to all those who did not betray Russia and shared her fate: "But in the world there are no people more tearless, arrogant and simpler than us." Indeed, the trials made yesterday's aristocrats become more rigid and even cruel. But no one managed to break their spirit, their pride. And the simplicity that the poetess speaks of is connected with the new conditions of life, when being rich becomes not only shameful, but also life-threatening.
I am not with those who threw the earth at the mercy of enemies.
I will not heed their rude flattery, I will not give them my songs.
But the exile is eternally pitiful to me, Like a prisoner, like a patient,
Dark is your road wanderer, Wormwood smells of someone else's bread.
And here, in the deaf haze of the fire, destroying the rest of youth,
We did not deflect a single blow from ourselves.
Akhmatova Anna Andreevna (real name - Gorenko) was born in the family of a marine engineer, captain of the 2nd rank, retired at st. Big Fountain near Odessa. A year after the birth of their daughter, the family moved to Tsarskoye Selo. Here Akhmatova became a student of the Mariinsky Gymnasium, but spent every summer near Sevastopol. “My first impressions are Tsarskoye Selo,” she wrote in a later autobiographical note, “the green, damp splendor of the parks, the pasture where the nanny took me, the hippodrome, where little motley horses galloped, the old station and something else that later became part of the Tsarskoye Selo Ode "". In 1905, after the divorce of her parents, Akhmatova moved with her mother to Evpatoria. In 1906 - 1907. In 1908-1910, she studied in the final class of the Kiev-Fundukley gymnasium, in 1908 - 1910. - at the legal department of the Kyiv Higher Women's Courses.
On April 25, 1910, "beyond the Dnieper in a village church," she married N. S. Gumilyov, whom she met in 1903. In 1907, he published her poem "There are many brilliant rings on his hand ..." in a publication published by him in the Paris magazine "Sirius". The style of Akhmatova's early poetic experiments was significantly influenced by her acquaintance with the prose of K. Hamsun, with the poetry of V. Ya. Bryusov and A. A. Blok.
During the First World War, Akhmatova did not join her voice with the voices of poets who shared the official patriotic pathos, but she responded with pain to wartime tragedies ("July 1914", "Prayer", etc.). The White Pack, published in September 1917, was not as successful as the previous books. But the new intonations of mournful solemnity, prayerfulness, and the supra-personal beginning destroyed the habitual stereotype of Akhmatov's poetry, which had developed among the reader of her early poems. These changes were caught by O. E. Mandelstam, noting: "The voice of renunciation is growing stronger and stronger in Akhmatova's poems, and at present her poetry is approaching becoming one of the symbols of the greatness of Russia."
After the October Revolution, Akhmatova did not leave her homeland, remaining in "her deaf and sinful land." In the poems of these years (collections "Plantain" and "Anno Domini MCMXXI", both - 1921), sorrow for the fate of their native country merges with the theme of detachment from the vanity of the world, the motives of "great earthly love" are colored by the mood of the mystical expectation of the "groom", and understanding creativity as divine grace spiritualizes reflections on the poetic word and the poet's vocation and translates them into an "eternal" plan. In 1922, M. S. Shaginyan wrote, noting the deep property of the poet’s talent: “Akhmatova, over the years, more and more knows how to be amazingly popular, without any quasi, without falsehood, with severe simplicity and with priceless avarice of speech.”
Since 1924, Akhmatova was no longer published. In 1926, a two-volume collection of her poems was supposed to be published, but the publication did not take place, despite prolonged and persistent efforts. Only in 1940 was the small collection "From Six Books" published, and the next two - in the 1960s ("Poems", 1961; "Running Time", 1965).
Since the mid-1920s, Akhmatova has been much involved in the architecture of old Petersburg, studying the life and work of A. S. Pushkin, which corresponded to her artistic aspirations for classical clarity and harmony of poetic style, and was also associated with understanding the problem of "poet and power". In Akhmatova, despite the cruelty of the time, the spirit of high classics indestructibly lived, determining both her creative manner and style of life behavior.
In the tragic 1930-1940s, Akhmatova shared the fate of many of her compatriots, having survived the arrest of her son, husband, the death of friends, her excommunication from literature by a party decree of 1946. The very time she was given the moral right to say, together with "a hundred million people": "We Not a single blow was deflected." Akhmatova's works of this period - the poem "Requiem" (1935? published in the USSR in 1987), poems written during the Great Patriotic War, testified to the poet's ability not to separate the experience of personal tragedy from the understanding of the catastrophic nature of history itself. B. M. Eikhenbaum considered the most important side of Akhmatova's poetic worldview to be "the feeling of one's personal life as a national, folk life, in which everything is significant and generally significant." “Hence,” the critic remarked, “is the way out into history, into the life of the people, hence comes a special kind of courage associated with a sense of being chosen, a mission, a great, important cause ...” A cruel, disharmonious world breaks into Akhmatova’s poetry and dictates new themes and new poetics: the memory of history and the memory of culture, the fate of a generation, considered in a historical retrospective... Multi-temporal narrative planes intersect, "another's word" goes into the depths of subtext, history is refracted through the "eternal" images of world culture, biblical and gospel motifs. Significant understatement becomes one of the artistic principles of Akhmatova's late work. It was based on the poetics of the final work - "Poems without a Hero" (1940 - 65), with which Akhmatova said goodbye to St. Petersburg in the 1910s and to the era that made her a Poet.
Akhmatova's creativity as the largest cultural phenomenon of the 20th century. received worldwide recognition. In 1964 she became the laureate of the Etna-Taormina International Prize, in 1965 she received an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature from the University of Oxford.
On March 5, 1966, Akhmatova died in the village of Domodedovo, on March 10, after the funeral service at the St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral, her ashes were buried in a cemetery in the village of Komarov near Leningrad.
Already after her death, in 1987, during Perestroika, the tragic and religious cycle "Requiem" was published, written in 1935 - 1943 (supplemented 1957 - 1961).
From the first line of the poem, Akhmatova separates herself from "those." The author is fundamentally not with them. And who are they? These are those who not only left their homeland, but left it to the enemies to be torn to pieces. A terrible picture is drawn at the very beginning of the poem. Further, the poetess speaks of those traitors that she will not give them her songs, that is, she will not compose poems that would express some kind of their idea. After all, even the betrayal of the Motherland could be justified with beautiful words. And Akhmatova does not listen to rude flattery, although, it is clear that they are trying to lure a talented poetess to their side.
This, of course, is about the revolutionary events in Russia. When someone agreed with the Soviets, he went over to the side of the Red Bolsheviks.
The second stanza speaks of those who remained on the other "white" side. Here we are talking about immigrants, about the intelligentsia, with whom Akhmatova sympathized. Of course, the fate of the exile is unenviable. The poetess compares him with a prisoner, with a sick, wanderer. The epithet "dark" is used to describe his path, and his bread suddenly smells bitterly of wormwood.
But the author talks about himself and people like her. They are not traitors, but they are not exiles either. They remained in a daze, a comparison that shows the hellfire of the civil war. The words about the ruined remnant of youth hint at the fact that Akhmatova's associates are no longer young men, but not yet quite adults, but they preferred the fight to carelessness. So they did not deflect a single blow, that is, they were not afraid.
In the last stanza, Akhmatova says that later they will be appreciated - every hour of them. Real heroes are not immediately visible ... And at the very end of the line, which will become the epigraph to the poem "Native Land". Lines about tearless people. And the contrast at the end: they are arrogant and simple at the same time. Arrogant, apparently, they are cowards and traitors in everything.
This poem is about chosenness and heroism.
Analysis of the poem I am not with those who abandoned the earth ... Akhmatova
The poems of the poetess Anna Akhmatova simply conquered many people, because her works are written from the heart. She showed her thoughts in her own simple, but even to some extent complex poems.
It was this poem that Akhmatova wrote at that difficult moment when she had to decide what to choose - salvation, but meanness for her soul, or - to be true to herself, but at the same time - it is dangerous. These were the thoughts that the poetess had in her head at that moment.
And the point was that there was a revolution. And when it passed, it was possible to leave Russia, which was plundered and destroyed, since at that moment it was especially difficult to live and exist there. That is why most people packed up and left.
But Anna Akhmatova made her choice, her conscience remained clear. She stayed with her son in Russia. She was not afraid of repression and hunger, she was a strong woman.
This poem is considered by critics to be patriotic. Indeed, in her first lines of the poem, the poetess writes that she is not with those who betrayed their country in this way. In addition, Akhmatova could not imagine herself outside her country. Because I always loved and respected my homeland. The poetess even put her career on the line. And even when there was a blockade, the poetess never regretted her decision at that time. But the greatest grief and tragic event forced the woman to write this poem. Since soon her husband, Nikolai Gumilyov, was shot after being arrested. But, oddly enough, even this did not stop Akhmatova. She still did not become a traitor to the motherland.
Also, the poetess writes that she does not recognize the new government, since their flattery is so rude that it is clearly visible and so false that it becomes just rudeness. In addition, Akhmatova notes, emphasizing that they will never receive her works, which she wrote from her heart. It turns out that Akhmatova refuses the offer to write poems that would praise the new government. Since for her it is cowardice and lies.
The poem is about those people who turned out to be cowards and went abroad. The author writes about his pity for them, and expresses the idea that they went the wrong way. Akhmatova is not afraid, she writes proudly that not a single blow was deflected. In the poem, Akhmatova expresses confidence that everyone will be rewarded according to their deserts.
Analysis of the poem I am not with those who abandoned the earth ... according to plan
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