Anna Akhmatova: Encyclopedia II - Anna Akhmatova - Early life

Anna Akhmatova - Early life

Akhmatova was born in Bolshoy Fontan near Odessa. Her childhood does not appear to have been happy; her parents separated in 1905. She was educated in Kiev, Tsarskoe Selo, and the Smolny Institute of St Petersburg. Anna started writing poetry at the age of 11, inspired by her favourite poets: Racine, Pushkin, and Baratynsky. As her father didn't want to see any verses printed under his "respectable" name, she had to adopt the surname of one of her Tatar ancestors as a pseudonym.

Grey-Eyed King (1910)

Hail! Hail to thee, o, immovable pain!
The young grey-eyed king had been yesterday slain.

This autumnal evening was stuffy and red.
My husband, returning, had quietly said,

"He'd left for his hunting; they carried him home;
They'd found him under the old oak's dome.

I pity the queen. He, so young, past away!...
During one night her black hair turned to grey."

He found his pipe on a warm fire-place,
And quietly left for his usual race.

Now my daughter will wake up and rise --
Mother will look in her dear grey eyes...

And poplars by windows rustle as sing,
"Never again will you see your young king..."

In 1910, she married the boyish poet Nikolay Gumilyov, who very soon left her for hunting lions in Africa, the battlefields of the World War I, and the society of Parisian grisettes. Her husband didn't take her poems seriously and was shocked when Alexander Blok declared to him that he preferred her poems to his. Their son, born in 1912, was named Lyov to rhyme with the surname Gumilyov; he was to become a famed historian of steppe peoples.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Early life", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki