Analysis of Akhmatova's poem "My voice is weak." “My voice is weak, but my will does not weaken...” My voice is weak, but my will does not weaken.
It even became easier for me without love.
The sky is high, the mountain wind is blowing,
And my thoughts are blameless.
The insomniac nurse went to others,
I don't languish over gray ash,
And the tower clock has a crooked hand
The arrow doesn't seem lethal to me.
Through wet spring ivy.
The poem My Voice is Weak was written in the spring of 1913. It is included in the collection The White Flock (1917), which brought (along with other collections: Evening, Rosary, Plantain, Anno Domini) A. A. Akhmatova wide literary recognition.
This poem, like many others, is about love. Akhmatova’s love almost never appears in a calm state. The feeling, in itself acute and extraordinary, receives additional acuteness and unusualness, manifesting itself in the extreme crisis expression of a rise or fall, a first awakening meeting or a completed break, mortal danger or mortal melancholy.
This poem reveals the heroine’s state of mind after the end of the love drama. With each line, the feeling of love in the heroine fades away, cools down: at first her voice is weak, she feels better without love, and at the end we feel that liberation is close. We see how painful love was: the heroine was tormented by an insomniac nurse, she languished over the gray ash, and even the hand of the tower clock seemed to her like a deadly arrow; and what happiness he experiences at the end of a love drama:
How the past loses power over the heart!
Liberation is near. I'll forgive everything
Watching the beam run up and down
Through wet spring ivy.
To reveal the heroine’s state of mind, A. Akhmatova uses various means of expression. For example, the alliteration of the sound [l], [n] and the assonance of the sound [e] conveys to us the lightness and calmness that the heroine experiences. Epithets gray ash, crooked arrow, deadly arrow; The insomnia-nurse metaphor reinforces the tragedy of passing love.
The accuracy of psychological observations, plot dynamics, skillful use of everyday details, aphorism, laconicism are the defining features of Akhmatova’s poetry, which were clearly visible in the poems of 1914-1921, including in My Voice is Weak.
A. Akhmatova's poems about love are almost always permeated with a feeling of sadness, but the main thing that makes them so heartfelt is sympathy, compassion, empathy in love.
Moscow writer Galina Kornilova remembers Anna Akhmatova. In the 60s and 70s, she was in charge of the poetry departments at Literaturnaya Gazeta and the Znamya magazine.
– I lived in a communal apartment on Arbat, we had a front room where everyone turned off the lights so that there was no overspending. I wander to the phone in the dark, pick up the receiver and hear her voice: “Galya, this is Akhmatova speaking, I would like to see you.”
Anna Andreevna appeared. The spectacle is unforgettable. She was wearing a long lilac chiton. She had a pose that none of our modern people can take anymore. She knew how to raise her head, straighten her shoulders and appear in such a way that everyone fell. Such supreme chic. In a deep, calm voice she said: “This is for me. Let’s go.” We frantically threw off our coats and followed her. She sat down on the sofa, we were on chairs in front of her. Out of the corner of my eye I just saw that she had manuscripts there. "What would you like?" I explained to her what we wanted. I show the magazine, braced myself so as not to tremble. She said: “Okay, then I can read poetry to you, and you think about what to take.” And she began to read.
I want to go to the roses, to that only garden,
Where the best in the world stands from the fences...
I heard poetry, but there was something wrong with my head, this voice was mesmerizing, I listened to the intonation of the voice. I feel like I’m hovering somewhere in this voice, I can’t tear myself away from it. This is such extraordinary magnetism. And she continued, looking. She was amazingly smart. We think she is such a sublime poet. This woman emerged from such poverty, from such troubles in life. Georgy Ivanov did not love her, and she hated him. When I once came to her, she was shaking French magazines, Ehrenburg sent her: “This scoundrel, this scoundrel!” I say: "Who?" She says: “Ivanov. He writes about me in his unfortunate “Petersburg Winters.” I say: “The poet Ivanov?” “What a poet he is,” she says, “he’s a nonentity.” She was simply raging, she couldn’t hear Ivanov’s name. He knew her attitude towards Gumilyov, that she stood as a wife. As her brother Victor wrote: “When she married Gumilyov, the whole family was very happy, and then things started to go again. Anya took after our dad. Dad was interested in women all his life, nothing else, eternal romances, a lot of fans, a passionate romance ". In general, I think this is a drama. The woman who sang love so much, she has such wonderful poems. And then I kept thinking: why? Maybe this is generally a characteristic of a poetess? Don't know. I once told her: “Anna Andreevna, I just read how Blok went with his mother to a sanatorium, went out to get newspapers, walked onto the platform. “The demon is teasing me - Anna Akhmatova is sitting on the steps of the carriage.” “Yes?” says Although she knew this text very well, she was pleased that she was reminded of it.
– Did she remember Modigliani?
- She spoke. She took a magazine, one of those that Ehrenburg sent her, and said: “What are they talking about, these foreign ones, what are they talking about. Me and Modigliani - what nonsense, what nonsense.” That's what I heard.
- So there was no such passionate romance?
- Of course I was. She didn't want it to be known. This is wild in the eyes of our tradition: a person goes on a honeymoon, and then as soon as her husband leaves, she goes back to Modigliani, has a whirlwind romance, and he paints her in all kinds. How was all this discovered? When someone who was in Italy told me about this, it infuriated me until they organized an exhibition where Anna Andreevna was in all her forms. Well, what can we say? It's time to shut up, that's all. She was dashing. She lived a very hard life. She has achieved everything, she has become a great poetess, everyone loves her, everyone reads her. But God forbid from such a hard life. Fate was very hard on her. She was alone. I said, I told her friends: “I’ll go to my son, to Leva, I want to talk to him. How is this possible?” They say: “He’ll throw you out. You know what kind of person he is, he’ll simply push you off the site. Don’t poke your nose in there, we’ve already tried, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone. He’ll just cripple you.” The man who spent so many years in the camp is also a completely destitute person. Firstly, she left him with his grandmother in the village, he lived there for four years, boy, she came only once in four years. A very small child. Something stays with a child for the rest of his life. His father loved him very much, he loved the Gumilevs’ house very much, when it all fell apart, he ended up nowhere. She lived in the Fountain House for the last few years with Punin. The situation there is generally wild. They were gathering at the table, the wife was sitting, Anna Andreevna was sitting, Punin’s children were sitting, and her son came and sat down at the table. Punin says: “There is no butter, it’s only Ire.” Nobody touches the oil. I was there several times, in St. Petersburg, I have the feeling that formally they treated her well, they helped with food.
-What did she love?
– I loved to drink vodka, I loved vodka. She ate little; in general, she loved feasts. Did she know how to cook something? I don't know, I'm not sure. One day, however, she cooked onion soup in front of me. She came from Paris then, when she was traveling, in Paris she bought onion soup from these things. She says: “Now I’ll go make onion soup.” So she poured this soup into a saucepan, it turned out that we were supposedly eating onion soup. This was the only time she cooked in front of me, and someone helped her. Anna Andreevna did not know how to sew, her skirt was always torn, if she did not receive, if there were no guests, her underwear had holes in it. She came from abroad, opened her suitcase, and there were a lot of young people there too: “I brought gifts for everyone, now I’ll give them out.” He pulls red panties out of his suitcase, panties in the air: “Who wants it?” I say: “To me.” To quickly end the fluttering of panties over our heads. She pulled out such things and gave them away to everyone. This, by the way, is very characteristic of her, she is always so decorous outwardly, but in fact she is not an aristocrat at all, she is such a gifted plebeian who has played an aristocrat all her life in front of her admirers. A very gifted man from the bottom who managed to make himself. She made herself a beauty, but with her data she could have been ugly, but she managed to find style from her strange appearance, because she had ambition. It is known that at the age of 12 she told her mother: “There will be a plaque about me hanging here.” And the mother said: “How badly I raised you.” And they hung up the board.
I came to her, fascinated by her poems, and left her having still received a lesson. Do you know which one? Masculinity, roughly speaking. Because this man made his way through life. She understood people instantly, as soon as a person comes, she splits him. She knew and understood everything. She lived in her circle, like most poets, she lived in the circle of her poems, her friends. She once said: “Galya, I would like you to bring Bulat Okudzhava.” And at this time, shortly before this, Bulat divorced Galya, his wife, who tragically died after that, married Olya and lived for some time in St. Petersburg. I immediately called him: “Bulat, Anna Andreevna wants to see you.” He says: "Listen, I'm afraid." - “Are you really afraid?” - "When?" - "After two days". He arrived with Olya, I met them from the train, I took them to Anna Andreevna. Bulat, I see, was completely crushed, and he did not have a guitar. If there had been a guitar, the evening would, of course, have been different. He sits with Olya and is silent, depressed, silent. Olya says. A complete failure. Then it was all over, I went to see them off to the train, I thought: how terrible it all is. I come, Anna Andreevna is still sitting like a queen in her chair and says the following words: “Your Bulat is wonderful, but his wife is no good.” Arseny Tarkovsky, so handsome then, came to me to read poetry. He read poetry to her, and I sat modestly on the sidelines. He left, she said: “Galya, how did you like his poems?” I said: “Anna Andreevna, I’m not very happy.” - “I’m not very happy either.”
– Tell me, what kind of relationship did Anna Andreevna have with Marina Tsvetaeva?
– Actually, Anna Andreevna didn’t love her. Such a case. Anna Andreevna read me a poem in Komarovo, I think it was “There are four of us.” She turns to her departed poet friends. I say: “Anna Andreevna, what about Tsvetaeva?” She says: “Tsvetaeva, yes, Marina.” And a new stanza appears: “There are five of us.”
- So she remembered?
“I reminded her of that.” But this did not happen. And there:
Two? And also at the eastern wall,
In the thickets of strong raspberries,
Dark, fresh elderberry branch...
This is a letter from Marina.
Of course, where I worked, I first of all published Akhmatova. I immediately published her elegies, a large selection. I worked at Znamya as the head of a department, I published it regularly. Then I once asked her: “Anna Andreevna, I’m planning to publish St. Petersburg poets, to make a large selection.” - “This is very good, right.” I went to collect St. Petersburg poets. As we agreed with Anna Andreevna, they were supposed to come to my hotel. And then the handsome men came. I say: “Guys, I have this idea, maybe I’ll publish it, read some poetry.” And so they read everything to me in turn, I sit and listen rather sadly, because I understand that this St. Petersburg school, a wonderful school of St. Petersburg poets, but it’s all very uninteresting, because Gumilyov described it all much better, Anna Andreevna herself, that these are such literary boys. And since I’ve been doing poetry for a long time, I’ve seen this. The last one left is red. I say: "Now you." And he started reading, and I was stunned.
Because the art of poetry requires words,
I am one of the deaf, bald, gloomy ambassadors...
...Several of her friends call me in a row: “Galya, are you going to Anna’s?” I came to her all the time. I say: “Yes, I’m going to the funeral tomorrow, I want to call on her.” - “Don’t say that Pasternak died, we are hiding it from her.” I say: “Of course, I won’t talk.” I was at the funeral, took the train home, and then went to the hospital. The room is huge, there are a lot of people. She put on her robe, we went out, sat down, there was such a long corridor, an open room, a palm tree and a bench with a backrest. We sat down. "Galya, where did you come to me from?" - she says. I can’t lie to her, I say: “Anna Andreevna, I came from Pasternak’s funeral.” I thought: God, now she will faint, she will have a heart attack, I will simply destroy her. Suddenly she turns to me and says: “Tell me.” I told her everything, how I walked, the first time I was in Peredelkino, how I found the way, how I came to this house, how they carried the coffin, how some girl sat and cried. How the coffin was carried, my husband Volodya Kornilov also carried this coffin, how the correspondents sat in the trees, all the details. And also, when I walked along Peredelkino, it was a wild state, all the windows were closed, as if the village had died out, no one came out, people were all locked in their houses. But there were a lot of young people, there were foreigners, there were ordinary people. The coffin was carried out, and a huge crowd walked across the field. A man came out and said: “He was the only one who greeted us. When he went out for a walk, he shook hands with me, but no one else among the writers.” I told you all this. She sits, silent. Then he says: “This is a real Russian funeral. This must be earned.”
– How did Akhmatova die?
“They didn’t know what to do with her.” The house was undergoing renovations, she was already very bad, what should she do with it. And then Nina came up with the idea of a sanatorium, although, of course, she couldn’t be touched. We came that day when she was leaving, with Tolya Naiman. She got dressed, a car arrived, and it was already difficult for her to walk. Tolya took her by the arm, and I walked behind her with a chair, they placed a chair on the platforms, and she sat. The two of us brought her to the car, she didn’t even turn to me, she was somehow completely different, it was clear that she was coming to an end. She is a very strong person, she held on, but it was clear that this was her completely tragic departure, her last farewell.
But I'm warning you
That this is the last time I live.
Neither a swallow nor a maple,
Neither a reed nor a star,
Not spring water,
Not a bell ringing -
I won't confuse people
And visit other people's dreams
An unquenchable moan.
Akhmatova's lyrics are one of the brightest phenomena of Russian literature of the 20th century. In its depth and philosophical richness, it rightfully stands on a par with the names of A. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, F. Tyutchev, A. Fet. With her roots in the 19th century and being a successor to the best traditions of the Russian poetic school, Akhmatova created her own, unique lyrical world.
Already from the first collections, Akhmatova’s poetry is distinguished by such features as the clarity of the meanings of all words used in the works, simplicity of vision, and the filling of the works with ordinary things. It is characterized by colloquial poetic speech, laconicism
styles adopted from Pushkin, to whom Akhmatova turned from the very first steps of her work.
The poem “My voice is weak, but my will does not weaken...” is one of the most striking examples of Akhmatova’s philosophical lyrics. The poem, in its idea, has many similarities with the poem “I learned to live simply, wisely...” and other works of the poetess, in which the influence of Pushkin’s aesthetics and his humanistic worldview is felt. Akhmatova’s sense of the world is as humanistic and close to nature as that of the great Russian poet. The naturalness and beauty of what is happening around is for Pushkin a kind of measure of a person’s spirituality. Understanding the laws of nature and accepting them as the highest arbiter in the assessment of human life is Pushkin’s main postulate. Akhmatova also compares two worldviews: one based on love-passion and another based on love for the world as God’s creation.
My voice is weak, but my will does not weaken,
It even became easier for me without love.
The sky is high, the mountain wind is blowing,
And my thoughts are blameless.
Only nature, existence gives man strength and is a source of inexhaustible energy for him. Sadness and sadness in the world are temporary, time heals all wounds. A person again becomes able to see and feel the world, to appreciate the beauty of God's creation. Passion, which drains the soul and captures a person entirely, will gradually disappear, just as it happens with a kind of “eclipse of reason” in Pushkin’s “Demons”, “Blizzard” and “The Undertaker” from “Belkin’s Tales”. Love is a wonderful and amazing feeling, but it should not overshadow the rest of the world for a person. That is why the subtext is clearly felt in the poem: the heroine, as if having survived an illness, returns to a normal state, her sight and hearing return (the famous Pushkin “see and listen”).
The insomniac nurse went to others,
I don't languish over gray ashes...
And the tower clock has a crooked hand
The arrow doesn't seem lethal to me.
A somewhat similar interpretation of love is present in I. Bunin, who also makes a clear distinction between love and passion. If love is a feeling that elevates a person’s soul, filling the world with new colors, light and joy, then passion is an obsession that dries up the soul, deprives one of strength, overshadows all of God’s creation and gradually replaces it (for example, the story “Mitya’s Love”).
Speaking about Akhmatova’s poetry, A. Blok once said that a poet should create as if he were in front of God, but Akhmatova writes as if there is a man in front of her (in God’s place).
This kind of duality has been noticed by many researchers. On the one hand, poetry as the highest purpose, “a conversation with God,” but on the other, Akhmatova’s poetry is also women’s poetry addressed “to a man.” Essentially two mutually exclusive concepts. But what is remarkable about Akhmatova’s poetry is that in it she painfully overcomes this distance, moving from “communication with a man” to “conversation with God.” It is characteristic that her poems gradually become noticeably less mannered, decadent pretentiousness and exaltation of feelings. Moreover, she seems to be polemicizing with herself, but only yesterday, contrasting ordinariness, “feelings of simplicity” with the decadent anguish of past years. Essentially, Akhmatova changes her aesthetics and undergoes fundamental changes in her creative style. In the verses, God was revealed to her, and the image of the man faded, became small and insignificant.
How the past loses power over the heart!
Liberation is near. I'll forgive everything
Watching the beam run up and down
Through wet spring ivy.
However, Akhmatova was never able to completely overcome the “feminine nature” of her creativity. And it was hardly necessary. In her poems, she captured a much more important thing: the very transition from one worldview to another, all the drama of the loss of an ideal, and then the search for and acquisition of a different meaning in life.
So, the poem is a striking example of Akhmatova’s philosophical lyrics. Assimilating the traditions of the Russian poetic school (especially through the poetic world of Pushkin), Akhmatova develops them, imbues her poems with psychologism, and gives them a special, trusting intonation.
The work of A. Akhmatova had a huge influence on Russian poetry of the 20th century. It was largely under her influence that the skill of such poets as M. Tsvetaeva, I. Brodsky and many others was formed.
