23 pages • 46 minutes read
Anna AkhmatovaRequiem
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1963A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Death and Oppression
Death and oppression function as linked motifs. There are two forms of death in the cycle: literal death, and a metaphorical “living death” that the Russian people experience due to living under an oppressive dictatorship.
Akhmatova frequently depicts literal death as a release from suffering. She writes in the “Introduction” poem that during the Terror, “only the dead / Were smiling, glad of their release” (Lines 1-2), as the dead are now beyond the reach of Stalin and his forces. In Poem VIII, “To Death,” Akhmatova describes feeling tempted by death as the only form of escape from suffering available. She writes that she is “wait[ing] for you [Death]” (Line 2) because “things have become too hard / I have turned out the lights and opened the door / For you, so simple and so wonderful” (Lines 2-4). In other words, Death appears “so simple and so wonderful” in comparison to the ongoing nightmare she and the other victims of the Terror are experiencing.
Akhmatova also describes life under Stalin as a form of living death, in which life has become so surreal that the boundaries between the living and the dead are blurred. When describing her son’s arrest, she mentions a funereal atmosphere, saying, “I followed you / As one does when a corpse is being removed” (“Poem I” Lines 1-2). In “Poem III” she tries to hide her trauma as though it were a deceased person or thing: “Everything that has happened / Cover it with a black cloth” (Lines 2-3). Death haunts the cycle as one of the potential outcomes awaiting victims of persecution, with Akhmatova growing disoriented by “how long / The wait can be for an execution” (“Poem V” Lines 7-8). By the cycle’s end, as the frenzied period of the Terror draws to a close, Akhmatova fully erases the boundaries between Stalin’s living subjects and those he has killed. She assures the dead that she has become one with them through her empathy and remembrance: “I see you, I hear you, I feel you” (“Epilogue” Part 2 Line 2). Akhmatova eulogizes the dead, Stalin’s victims, as the most powerful evidence of Stalin’s crimes.
The Prison
The prison haunts the Requiem cycle. It is the original birthplace of the cycle itself; Akhmatova was inspired to write of her experiences when asked by another woman if it was possible to describe what was happening to all of them. Akhmatova frequently returns to the experience of waiting in line outside the prison as emblematic of her experience during the Terror. She writes of her son’s ordeal in prison in “Poem VII,” where an ominous, ever-present threat of execution hangs over his head (Lines 7-8). The prison is important both as a setting within the poem and as a symbolic representation of how oppressive the Stalinist regime has become.
Akhmatova ends the cycle where she began it: With the symbol of the prison. She urges future Russians to build a monument to her “here where I stood for three hundred hours / And no-one slid open the bolt” (“Epilogue” Part II Lines 28-29). Akhmatova is declaring that she wishes to be remembered first and foremost as someone who suffered as one of Stalin’s many victims, turning her own legacy into a perpetual reminder of what the Russian people endured. In ending the cycle with the imagery of the prison dove, Akhmatova suggests that even in a potentially more peaceful time—as the dove is a traditional symbol of peace—the crimes that have been committed against innocent Russian people must never be forgotten.
Christ and the Virgin Mary
Akhmatova draws upon religious symbolism to describe the suffering faced by Stalin’s many victims. Innocent victims like her own son are equated with Christ. She describes her imprisoned son as being “upon your cross” (“Poem VI” Line 7)—a reference to how the Bible depicts Jesus as suffering and dying through no fault of his own. She returns to the story of Jesus’s death in the two parts of the tenth poem, “Crucifixion,” where she quotes Jesus’s words on the cross, “'Why hast thou forsaken me!'” (Line 3). Jesus’s cry embodies the despair and suffering of the Russian people, who find themselves abandoned to the persecution and arbitrary violence of their own regime.
Akhmatova also uses the Virgin Mary to illustrate the suffering endured by herself and other grieving mothers. During her son’s arrest in “Poem I,” she describes how “[a] candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God” (Line 4). The icon symbolizes the role she will now have to play as a mother loyal to her persecuted son. She revisits this symbol explicitly in the second part of the “Crucifixion” poem, in which she imagines how during Christ’s agony and death, “the mother stood silent / Not one person dared to look” (Lines 3-4). The symbol of the Virgin Mary as an isolated and loyal figure expresses the agony faced by Akhmatova and the other victims’ mothers, and elevates that suffering by association with the Virgin Mary’s spiritual transcendence.
The Star
Stalin is never mentioned directly by name in Requiem, but Akhmatova alludes to him and his power several times in the symbol of a star. She writes in “Introduction” how “[s]tars of death stood over us” (Line 9). In “Poem V” she describes “[a]n enormous star” (Line 14) “staring me in the face / And threatening me with swift annihilation” (Lines 12-13). The star allows Akhmatova to refer to Stalin in a more subtle way, while also drawing upon the qualities associated with stars— unreachability, omnipotence—as a means of describing the omnipresent nature of Stalin’s power and the sense of an inescapable threat that follows the Russians everywhere during the Terror.
