March 5th, 2006 is the 40th anniversary of Akhmatova's death. 1On the morning of March 5th, 966, Akhmatova died suddenly because of myocardial infarction. Fortunately, at the age of 77, it is not easy to live to this age. Born in 1889, Akhmatova ushered in one of the highest honors in her life on her centenary birthday: UNESCO designated this year as "Akhmatova Year" to commemorate this poetic language of "bringing people into a better world".
An outstanding master. "
There are many versions of Akhmatova's biography in China, and I have an earlier version at hand, which belongs to a Russian scholar. Pavlovsky's "Ann; Biography of Akhmatova; The newly published biography, written by scholar Professor Wang, is illustrated with pictures and texts, and meets readers on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of his death.
Akhmatova! Akhmatova! A Russian master poet and a great Russian mother, her fate is so bumpy. When she was young, Akhmatova was very beautiful, a typical beautiful Russian girl. /kloc-When she was 0/4 years old, on Christmas Eve, she met gumilyov, a poet three years older than her. Gumilyov fell madly in love with her and tried to commit suicide four times because her proposal was rejected. Finally, Akhmatova promised to marry him. 19 10, Akhmatova married ancient Milev and soon ushered in the "October Revolution"; Shortly after the victory of the October Revolution, in August of 192 1, gumilyov was executed, and the charges were not hard to imagine. —; Akhmatova was naturally implicated in the crime of counter-revolutionary conspiracy. In 1930s, her son Lev was arrested twice, the first time was 1935, and the second time was 1938, all for unwarranted reasons. For example, he was arrested for the second time only because he refused to admit that his father had a so-called "historical problem."
To sum up the characteristics of the Soviet Union in that era, we only need three words: a big purge. It is "normal" to catch it once and then again. As early as the 1920s, thousands of people were put into prison, labor camps, political isolation places and exiled. Although most of them were released in 1934 and behaved "well", almost all of them were arrested again two or three years later, so this is not just a personal tragedy, but a personal tragedy. Akhmatova's son was one of five million people arrested for political reasons during the three-year purge.
Silver moon stands as ice, and silver moon is as bleak as water. It was in that era of great cleansing that the Russians could not bear to look back. Because of her son's arrest, the poet wrote her most important masterpiece Requiem. Wang mentioned a detail in the preface of Biography of Akhmatova, which burned in my mind instantly and could not be deleted: "At that time, in order to save this work, the poet had to write some fragments like Homer's time, and then read them to his most reliable friends, who recited them again, kept them in his mind, and then destroyed the manuscript." This is an era without computers, and requiem is preserved by human brain!
In a place where people are not treated as people, it is impossible to treat poetry as poetry, but poetry can be evidence of crime. What an era and environment it was! Dryden, an English poet in the17th century, once said: "The worst of all human despotism is the despotism that tortures the spirit." Akhmatova is suffering from such spiritual despotism. An era of schizophrenia can split a person's spirit. But requiem should resist such mental torture. Requiem is written in 1935 to 194 1. For a long time, "Requiem" became a work only circulated among the people, and it was not published in October magazine until 1987. 1956 In May, his son Lev was released home. 1957, 1 in April, in Leningrad, Akhmatova wrote a short preface for Requiem:
I spent 17 months in a prison in Leningrad in the horrible era of Yerofism. Once, someone "recognized" me. At that time, a woman stood behind me, her lips were blue. Of course, she has never heard of my name. She woke up from the numbness we are used to, leaned close to my ear (where everyone was whispering) and asked, "Can you describe the situation here?" I said, "Yes." Then, I once had a faint smile across her face.
This detail, which triggered Akhmatova to conceive and create Requiem, shows us the tenacity and greatness of the Russian people who grew up in the vast and deep black land. An ordinary tourist, she doesn't know Akhmatova, but she wants someone to write it down! Therefore, Akhmatova used the group poem Requiem to make the humanitarian spirit sound the strongest in that terrible era. "This group of poems is not only about their own destiny and the fate of their sons, but also about the suffering of the whole nation who bears the cross. In this group of poems, Akhmatova is not only Leo; Gumilyov's mother and the representative of the entire Russian mother. " Why do Russian writers have a profound humanitarian tradition? Because it was cultivated by the Russian people, it is as profound as black soil.
Another detail confirms the same "silent stone keeps the fire" Scholars mentioned in the preface of The Translation of Exiles that Yernan, a Soviet writer, went to the archives to find a shorthand record of Zuo's speech at a critical meeting decades ago after attending the activities of rehabilitating the famous satirist Zochenko. There was a recording, but it was erased. Who did this? I don't know. Geranan said: "once, I told a female stenographer I knew that for some reason, I had been looking for that shorthand record for many years, but there was no result ... after about two months, she asked me to go." When I arrived, she handed me a stack of printing paper without any explanation. This is a shorthand record of Zochenko's speech. " I got this from a female stenographer who attended the meeting at that time! A note was posted on the shorthand record: "Sorry, I wrote a summary in some places. I was so excited at the time that my tears affected the record. " No signature.
This is a detail that brings tears to my eyes every time I read Translation of Exiles. An ordinary woman, she may or may not know left and left; The criticized writer Zuochenko was then an "enemy's running dog", "rogue" and "bourgeois dirty writer"! But the excited tears are full of the honesty and kindness of an ordinary Russian woman, which is the nature cultivated by the profound humanitarian spirit for many years. Therefore, she "saved" Zuo's speech in her mind, thus saving a precious historical witness.
The bonfire has been extinguished, and the silent stone under the bonfire is still burning. This is no longer a "torch" in the general sense. It is such a "silent stone" that recites the memory of Salvation and Requiem for Akhmatova; It is common sense that such a stone can knock out a single spark, which can burn all over vilen.
What are those people who claim to represent the people doing compared with the people? 1On August 4th, 946, the Central Committee of the Soviet Union made a famous resolution on Star and Leningrad, severely criticizing the writers of the resolution as Zuo Qinke and Akhmatova, saying that these two magazines provided published works for these two writers who were "ideologically deficient and very harmful". The resolution severely condemned the two magazines for publishing a large number of "works permeated with the spirit of worshipping foreign things and admiring foreign things" and "anti-Soviet dissident works". The resolution reads: "Akhmatova is a typical representative who runs counter to our people, with empty content and lack of ideological content. Her poems are full of pessimism and decadent psychology, showing the outdated style of Sharon's poems, staying in the position of bourgeois-aristocratic aestheticism and decadence and the theory of' art for art's sake', and unwilling to keep pace with the people of her own country, which is harmful to China's youth education, so it is intolerable by the Soviet literary world. "
What's even more frightening is that zhdanov, a literary celebrity who has always been famous for his "best decission, strategic position and sweeping everything", published a famous comment in the report, saying that Akhmatova was "a nun or a * * *, more accurately, a part-time girl who combined * * * with prayer"! It was as cold and harsh as sentencing her son, leaving no room for others' dignity, and Akhmatova was doomed to hell. The following events can be imagined: Leningrad magazine was ordered to stop publishing, and the editorial board of Star magazine was reorganized; Zuo He was expelled from the Soviet Writers Association and stopped publishing their works. As early as the middle and late twenties, Akhmatova was once deprived of the right to publish her own works, so she had to start studying Pushkin to make a living. Now that she has been banned from publishing her works, she has to start translating poems to make a living.
In people's minds, Akhmatova is the moon of Russian poetry; In the eyes of literary and art officials, she is a part-time woman. However, history is ironic. As a representative poet of the "Silver Age", Akhmatova ushered in the reputation of the world after his death, while those representatives of the "Soviet Age" became the rubble in broken walls with the collapse of the privileged building. In fact, Tagore visited the Soviet Union for two weeks in the autumn of 1930, and saw the reality and future with his gentle and sharp eyes, and made a prediction that the Bolsheviks could not last: "Bolshevik policies may be a kind of treatment, but this treatment cannot last." (See page 4 of the Chinese translation of Tagore's Russian Letters, Guangxi Normal University Press, March 2004, issue 1), while the famous American journalist Salisbury commented on Akhmatova like this: "A poet knows his mission. That was telling the truth. Let the Russians hear the truth, no matter how terrible ... How proud Russia will be of their voice, their courage and their honesty in a hundred years! "
Yes, these great Russian poets and writers have won pride for a country with their unparalleled minds; Poets like Akhmatova became "unknown legislators in the world" (in Shelley's words), but all this was at the expense of great pain. "Pain is like an ancient cuneiform." In this way, the voice of requiem came: "In the face of this pain/the mountain bowed its head, the river was cut off/but the prison door was closed/'the cave of slavery'/the anxiety of death was hidden behind the door ..."
1On March 5th, 966, Akhmatova died of sudden myocardial infarction. And this day is the anniversary of Stalin's death 13 years ago. Requiem is not only a requiem, but also an era of requiem. On the vast Russian land, neva river flows quietly and the Don River flows quietly. ...