Anna Akhmatova

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2018

⏱️ 49 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the Russian poet whose work was celebrated in C20th both for its quality and for what it represented, written under censorship in the Stalin years. Her best known poem, Requiem, was written after her son was imprisoned partly as a threat to her and, to avoid punishment for creating it, she passed it on to her supporters to be memorised, line by line, rather than written down. She was a problem for the authorities and became significant internationally, as her work came to symbolise resistance to political tyranny and the preservation of pre-Revolutionary liberal values in the Soviet era. The image above is based on 'Portrait of Anna Akhmatova' by N.I. Altman, 1914, Moscow With Katharine Hodgson Professor in Russian at the University of Exeter Alexandra Harrington Reader in Russian Studies at Durham University And Michael Basker Professor of Russian Literature and Dean of Arts at the University of Bristol Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:02.0	Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:04.0	There's a reading list to go with it on our website.
0:06.0	And you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter
0:10.0	at BBC In Our Time.
0:12.0	I hope you enjoyed the programs.
0:14.0	Hello, Anna Akmatava, 1889 to 1966, was one of the most famous Russian poets of the 20th century
0:20.0	and won a few to survive Stalin's terrace,
0:23.0	banned at home, that published abroad.
0:25.0	Her first husband was executed,
0:27.0	their son was jailed as a warning to her,
0:29.0	and her third husband died in the gulags.
0:33.0	And she dared not even write down her most subversive record requiem,
0:37.0	at trusting it instead to the memory of her friends until the time after her death when Russians might read it.
0:45.0	To the Cold War west, she was a symbol of sobriety oppression of creative freedom.
0:50.0	In Russia, she was treasured for keeping alive the flame of poetry from before the revolution,
0:55.0	the nation's literary heartland, and for doing it so brilliantly.
0:58.0	We would be to discuss Anna Akmatava and Catherine Hodson,
1:01.0	professor in Russian at the University of Ektator,
1:04.0	Alexander Harrington, reader in Russian studies at Durham University,
1:07.0	and Michael Basker, professor of Russian literature, and dean of arts at the University of Bristol.
1:12.0	Catherine Hodson, what signs would there, if any, in her childhood that she might become a poet?
	...

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