1. Compare Sam Driver's description of Rekviem as “an amazingly powerful statement which requires no elaboration or ‘explanation'” (Anna Akhmatova [New York: Twayne, 1972], 125). Unlike Poema bez geroia, Rekviem has received relatively little critical attention. The most comprehensive study of it to date is Efim Etkind's “Die Unsterblichkeit des Gedachtnisses: Anna Achmatovas Poem ‘Requiem',” Die Welt der Slaven 29, 2 (1984): 360-394. Kees Verheul discusses Rekviem in his “Public Themes in the Poetry of Anna Achmatova,” Russian Literature 1 (1971): 73-112, especially 79-82, 89-90, 93, 98-100, 105-112. Among others who have written on it are Sam Driver, Anna Akhmatova, 125-132; Sharon, Leiter, Akhmatova's Petersburg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 90–97 Google Scholar, and Amanda, Haight, Anna Akhmatova: A Poetic Pilgrimage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 99–108 Google Scholar. Two specialized studies of Rekviem also deserve mention: Milivoe Iovanovich treats the problem of intertextual references in his valuable “K razboru ‘chuzhikh golosov’ v Rekvieme Akhmatovoi,” Russian Literature 15 (1984): 169-182, while T. Voogd-Stojanova provides an extensive syntacticometrical analysis in “Tsezura i slovorazdely v poeme Akhmatovoi, A. Rekviem,” in Dutch Contributions to the Seventh International Congress of Slavists, ed. Hoik, Andrt Van (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), 317–333 Google Scholar. For decades unpublished in the Soviet Union, Rekviem was long off-limits to Soviet specialists and could be referred to only in passing or obliquely. Its recent publication in Oktiabr', No. 3 (1987), and Neva, no. 6 (1987), however, may pave the way for the appearance of serious critical studies of it in the Soviet Union.

2. Compare Milivoe Iovanovich's dating of the beginning of Akhmatova's later period: “pozdniaia Akhmatova nachinaetsia imenno s Rekviema” ( “K razboru ‘chuzhikh golosov',” 171). Here is Akhmatova's own characterization of her later poetry: “I tak pozdniaia A[khmatova] vykhodit iz zhanra ‘liubovnogo dnevnika’ … i perekhodit na razdum'ia o roli i sud'be poeta, o remesle, na legko nabrosannye shirokie polotna. Poiavliaetsia ostroe oshchushchenie istorii” (quoted in Zhirmunskii, V. M., Tvorchestvo Anny Akhmatovoi [Leningrad, 1976], 26 Google Scholar). Rekviem reflects the new thematic concerns—in particular, the preoccupation with history and with the poet's role in society—and the turn to larger forms, which in Akhmatova's view typify the later poetry. For a fuller discussion of the poetics of her later work, see the first chapter of my “Axmatova's Later Lyrics: The Poetics of Mediation” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1983), 1-39. Verheul sees Rekviem as transitional between Akhmatova's early and later styles ( “Public Themes,” 112). While the ten numbered texts of the poema do manifest certain features of the early style, as Verheul notes, together they trace a distinct narrative progression from arrest to execution, which sharply distinguishes them from the early work.

3. Milivoe Iovanovich's “K razboru ‘chuzhikh golosov'” is the only article specifically devoted to the problem of intertextuality in Rekviem. Particularly useful are Iovanovich's remarks on Akhmatova's incorporation of reminiscences—mainly for parodic ends—from Nekrasov's “Russkie zhenshchiny,” Lermontov's “Kazach'ia kolybel'naia pesnia,” and Blok's Na pole Kulikovom (170-171). Kees Verheul explores some of the biblical and liturgical subtexts in Rekviem ( “Public Themes,” 111-112), and Sharon Leiter discusses some examples of a different kind of intertextual references in Rekviem—Akhmatova's incorporation of self-reminiscences—allusions to her own poetry (Akhmatova's Petersburg, 90-97).

4. Akhmatova herself classified Rekviem as a poema. The list of titles she intended to publish in the collection Beg vremeni concludes with a section called “Poemy,” to consist of Putem vseia zemli, Rekviem, and Poema bez geroia. See Pamiati Anny Akhmatovoi (Paris: YMCA, 1974), 29-30. For a discussion of Rekviem's status as a poema, see Etkind, “Die Unsterblichkeit des Gedachtnisses,” 362-365. Compare Verheul's remarks on the same issue ( “Public Themes,” 107-108).

5. “Vmesto predisloviia” has been widely quoted but has received virtually no commentary. Neither Verheul nor Etkind mentions it in the articles cited above. Among those who quote it without commentary are Sharon Leiter (Akhmatova's Petersburg, 91-92) and Haight, Amanda (Anna Akhmatova, 99 Google Scholar). Sam Driver quotes it and does comment on it, but only by describing the historical context (Anna Akhmatova, 125-127). The most detailed comments on the “Posviashchenie” have been provided by Etkind, “Die Unsterblichkeit des Gedachtnisses,” 387-388. Compare Verheul, “Public Themes,” 80-81.

6. Anna, Akhmatova, Sochineniia, ed. Struve, G. P. and Filippov, B. A., 2nd ed. ([Munich]: Interlanguage Literary Associates, 1967) 1: 361 Google Scholar. Henceforth, references to this edition, as well as to volumes 2 (1968) and 3 (ed. G. P. Struve, N. A. Struve, and B. A. Filippov [Paris: YMCA, 1983]), will be given in parentheses in the body of the text.

7. The epithet strashnye, the sole affective epithet in the text, does not belie the narrative's prosaic tone, since “strashnye gody Ezhovshchiny” is, generally speaking, a fixed expression.

8. Lidiia Chukovskaia has asserted that the image of the “woman with blue lips” originated in her novel Sofia Petrovna, which she read to Akhmatova in February 1940. See Chukovskaia, , Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoi (Paris: YMCA, 1980) 2: 305 Google Scholar. Milivoe Iovanovich provides an unwitting proof of the strength of the customary formula when he quotes from “Vmesto predisloviia” and twice erroneously replaces Akhmatova's “gubami” with “glazami” ( “K razboru ‘chuzhikh golosov',” 177n7).

9. In Boris Eikhenbaum's formulation, “emotsiia peredaetsia opisaniem zhesta ili dvizheniia, t.e., imenno tak, kak eto delaetsia v novellakh i romanakh.” Boris, Eikhenbaum, Anna Akhmatova: Opyt analiza (Petrograd, 1923; Paris: Izdatel'stvo Lev, 1980), 127 Google Scholar. Eikhenbaum is pointing to what Osip Mandel'shtam had described in his 1922 “Pis'mo o russkoi poezii” as Akhmatova's indebtedness to the nineteenth century Russian psychological novel. See Mandel'shtam, Osip, Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh (New York: Inter-Language Literary Associates, 1969), 3: 34 Google Scholar.

10. Eikhenbaum writes, “Poeticheskaia rech’ Akhmatovoi kak by sosredotochena na perednem artikuliatsionnom plane i okrashena mimicheskim dvizheniem gub ('molitva gub moikh nadmennykh, ’ ‘dvizhenie chut’ vidnoe gub’)” (Anna Akhmatova, 87).

11. The persona describes the name given her at baptism, Anna, as “Sladchaishee dlia gub liudskikh” and remarks on the strangeness of the lips of the “inostranka,” a Muse figure who visits her (1: 191).

12. The first volume of Chukovskaia's Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoi devotes a number of passages to the faces of the women standing in line. In the entry dated 22 February 1939, Akhmatova is quoted as saying, “Ia ne mogu videt’ etikh glaz. Vy zametili? Oni kak by otdel'no sushchestvuiut, otdel'no ot lits.” See Zapiski, 1: 18.

13. “The face of a human being represents the highest spiritual gifts: the forehead represents heavenly love; the eyes—understanding, intelligent contemplation; the ears—understanding and obedience; the nose—the grasping of the good; the cheeks—the grasping of spiritual truths; the mouth—thought and teaching; the lips—spiritual praise… .” See Dal, Vladimir', Tolkovyi slovar’ zhivago velikorusskago iazyka, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (St. Petersburg and Moscow: Vol'fe, 1881), 2: 258 Google Scholar.

14. This imagery resurfaces in the collective portrait of the faces of those who stood outside the prison given in the first part of the “Epilog,” which begins “Uznala ia, kak opadaiut litsa” (1: 368) and proceeds to trace, in a technique reminiscent of time-lapse photography, the impact of the Terror on the fragile human visage.

15. Akhmatova's early lyrics abound in reported speech, another mark of their indebtedness to the novelistic tradition. V. V. Vinogradov devotes a chapter of his study of the early Akhmatova to this feature of her work; see “ dialoga, Grimasy” in his O poezii Army Akhmatovoi (Stilisticheskie nabroski) (Leningrad, 1925)Google Scholar, reprinted with a commentary by Timenchik, R. D. and Chudakov, A. P. in Vinogradov, V. V., Poetika russkoi literatury (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), 451–459 Google Scholar. Timenchik and Chudakov's comments on “Grimasy dialoga” are directly relevant to Rekviem: “ ‘adresaty’ i ‘personazhi’ ee poezii privnosiat s soboi v tekst fragmenty i obraztsy razlichnykh stilisticheskikh sistem, ‘sbornye tsitaty’ iz literaturnykh i bytovykh ‘stilei rechi.’ Eto vvedevnie razlichnykh vidov ‘chuzhogo slova’ sluzhit glavnym sredstvom ‘polifonizatsii’ ee liriki, pridavaia ei v tselom dialogicheskii kharakter” (506). In “Vmesto predisloviia” and the “Posviashchenie,” two different types of “chuzhoe slovo” are foregrounded through the use of direct quotation, signaling their prominent role in Rekviem—discourse from everyday life and literary discourse.

16. To indicate the origins of a phenomenon is to explain it. Compare Iu. M. Lotman on the category of beginnings: “Nachalo … ne tol'ko svidetel'stvo sushchestvovaniia, no i zamena (sic) bolee pozdnei categorii prichinnosti. Ob “iasnit’ iavlenie—znachit ukazat’ na ego proiskhozhdenie” (Struktura khudozhestvennogo teksta [Moscow, 1970; Providence, R.I.: Brown University Press, 1971], 260).

17. In her entry for 10 November 1938, Chukovskaia records Akhmatova's account of an episode antithetical to this one: “ ‘Zhenshchina v ocheredi, stoiavshaia pozadi menia, zaplakala, uslykhav moiu familiiu'” (Zapiski, 1: 16). In “Vmesto predisloviia,” Akhmatova chooses to portray the contrary—the nonrecognition of her name—as typical of the 1930s.

18. “K razboru ‘chuzhikh golosov',” 176-177, n. 6. Iovanovich does not discuss the role of references to the Inferno itself in Rekviem. While “Muza” bears the date 1924, it was in the later 1930s that Dantean themes and motifs became prominent in Akhmatova's work; compare the obviously related line— “I prosto prodiktovannye strochki” (1: 251)—from the 1936 poem “Tvorchestvo “; her “Dante” ( “On i posle smerti ne vernulsia” [1: 236]) dates from the same year. For an excellent introduction to the role of Dante in Akhmatova's life and works, see M. B. Meilakh and V. N. Toporov, “ i Dante, Akhmatova,” International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics 15 (1972): 29–75 Google Scholar. The authors do not comment directly on Rekviem.

19. In Singleton's translation, “as in a callus, all feeling, because of the cold, had departed from my face.” Dante Alighieri, Inferno, trans, and with a commentary by Charles S. Singleton, 2nd ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), 354-355, 11. 100-102.

20. In Singleton's translation, “I did not die and I did not remain alive: now think for yourself, if you have any wit, what I became, deprived alike of death and life!” (ibid., 362-363, 11. 25-27).

21. According to the beginning of Rekviem's “Vstuplenie,” true death brings peace: “Eto bylo, kogda ulybalsia / Tol'ko mertvyi, spokoistviiu rad” (1: 363). Compare the suppressed tenth and eleventh stanzas from the “Reshka” segment of Poema bez geroia, which deal with the Ezhovshchina and share much of Rekviem's imagery. In stanza 11, the condition of the poet and her female contemporaries is defined in a sentence that plays on the notion of the “potustoronnii mir “: “ ‘Po tu storonu ada—my!'” (3: 116).

22. Dante, , Inferno, 310–311, 11. 103-105Google Scholar.

23. Sam Driver has described well the first line's brilliant sound orchestration: “The close juxtaposition of gutturals suggests a throat constricted by grief… . The vowel sounds are carefully ordered in a progression from front to back. The line descends in intonation as in physical articulation” (Anna Akhmatova, 155-156, n 18).

24. Tsvetaeva exploits almost the same resemblance in her Poema gory (gdre I gord); compare the phrase in English poetry “mountains mourn.” Akhmatova's gnutsia gory appears to hark back to and realize the apocalyptic prediction of the “glas vopiiushchego v pustyne” in Isaiah 40: 3-4 that “vsiakaia gora i kholm da poniziatsia. “

25. Aleksandr, Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh (Moscow, 1974-1978) 2: 97 Google Scholar. This edition will henceforth be referred to as SS.

26. Milivoe Iovanovich notes a somewhat similar line in a Russian translation of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, where Clytemnestra says, “O, tam zapory krepki” ( “K razboru ‘chuzhikh golosov',” 173). The lack of a series of textual correspondences between the “Posviashchenie” and Euripides’ tragedy in translation suggests that the parallel is coincidental.

27. The motif of hope is not entirely absent from the “Posviashchenie “; 1. 15 locates it not within the prison, as in Pushkin's text, but in the distance: “A nadezhda vse poet vdali.” What is portrayed in 11. 16-20 dashes even this distant hope. One of Akhmatova's remarks to Chukovskaia, recorded in the entry of 18 May 1939, helps elucidate this line's significance in the poema: “Vy znaete, chto takoe pytka nadezhdy? Posle otchaianiia nastupaet pokoi, a ot nadezhdy skhodiat s uma” (Zapiski 1: 24). Compare the deployment of imagery relating to madness throughout Rekviem.

28. In her metrical analysis of the “Posviashchenie,” T. Voogd-Stojanova notes this violation but comments only that the line is perceived as “contrastive in form” in relation to the rest ( “Tsezura i slovorazdely,” 318).

29. Pushkin, SS 2: 92.

30. Voogd-Stojanova suggests that the “Posviashchenie” represents a variation on what Kiril Taranovsky has identified as the trochaic pentameter theme initiated in Lermontov's “Vykhozhu odin ia na dorogu,” where the “dinamicheskii motiv puti protivopostavhaetsia staticheskomu motivu zhizni, odinochestvu i razdum'iam o zhizni i smerti” ( “Tsezura i slovorazdely,” 319). In Akhmatova's transformation of this theme, the road leads only to imprisonment and death.

31. Sharon, Leiter, Akhmatova's Petersburg, 92–93, 73-74Google Scholar. See also 61-64 for a discussion of the first occurrence of this imagery in a 1915 poem about the beginning of World War I, “Tot avgust, kak zheltoe plamia” (1: 194-195). “Sograzhdanam” appears under the title “Petrograd, 1919” with a number of substantial changes in Anna, Akhmatova, Stilchotvoreniia ipoemy (Leningrad, 1976), 149 Google Scholar. See that volume, 471, and 1: 398-399, for its publication history.

32. Compare Akhmatova's description of the city to Lidiia Chukovskaia in 1939; confessing that she is fed tip with the city, she explains, “Dal', doma—obrazy zastyvshego stradaniia” (Zapiski 1: 21). The final phrase recalls the prominent motif of “okameneloe stradanie” in Rekviem.

33. The theme of the suppression of the poet's voice, introduced obliquely into the “Posviashchenie” through the allusions to Pushkin's “Vo glubine,” looms large in Rekviem, emerging explicitly in the second part of the “Epilog “: “I esli zazhmut moi izmuchennyi rot” (1: 369).

34. Compare with 1. 6 the young Akhmatova's “Zharko veet veter dushnyi” (1: 58).

35. This conflict is vividly embodied in the sound orchestration of the text: first, the mellifluous paronomasia of 1. 6— “veet vetei svezhii “—contrasts with the first line's abrasive “gorem gnutsia gory “; similarly, the pleasing near rhyme “svezhii” / “nezhitsia” in 11. 6-7 finds a jarring third in 1. 9's “skrezhet,” which itself recalls the apocalyptic gospel phrase “tarn budet plach i skrezhet zubov,” envisaging the suffering of those in hell.

36. My thanks go to Alexander Lehrman for calling this subtext to my attention in the fall of 1986. See V. Lebedev-Kumach, “Pesnia o rodine,” in Kniga pesen (Moscow, 1938), 9-10. The lines occur in the third verse, which has since Stalin's death been regularly excised from printings of the song for praising the “Vsenarodnyi Stalinskii Zakon.” Compare, for instance, Lebedev-Kumach, , Pesni i stikhotvoreniia (Moscow, 1960), 27–29 Google Scholar. Akhmatova's use of Lebedev-Kumach's hacksong as a subtext in the “Posviashchenie” forces one to recall the lines from her “Tainy remesla” cycle: “Kogda b vy znali, iz kakogo sora / Rastut stikhi, ne vedaia styda” (1: 251).

37. See Gleb, Strove, Russian Literature under Lenin and Stalin (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), 312 Google Scholar. Featured in the popular film Tsirk, the song was played repeatedly on the radio and was “printed in Pravda, Izvestiia, Komsomol'skaia pravda, and in a number of newspapers, journals, and collections” ( Lebedev-Kumach, , Kniga pesen, 193 Google Scholar).

38. In the rest of Rekviem, the first-person plural occurs only once, in passing, making its role in the “Posviashchenie” highly marked. It comes toward the end of the “Vstuplenie” in the line “Zvezdy smerti stoiali nad nami” (1: 363). “Eto bylo, kogda ulybalsia” became the “Vstuplenie” of Rekviem only in 1962, when the first typewritten copy of the poema was prepared. See Chukovskaia, Zapiski 2: 473-474.

39. Vladimir, Maiakovskii, Sobranie sochinenii v dvenadtsati tomakh, 12 vols. (Moscow: Pravda 1978) 1: 317 Google Scholar. On the poema's failure as a work of propaganda, see Brown, Edward J., Mayakovsky: A Poet in the Revolution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973), 204–206 Google Scholar. Akhmatova's allusion to Maiakovskii calls to mind Kornei Chukovskii's 1921 comparison of the two writers (Korney Chukovsky, “Akhmatova and Mayakovsky,” trans. Pearson, John, in Major Soviet Writers: Essays in Criticism, ed. Brown, E. J. [London: Oxford University Press, 1973], 33–53 Google Scholar). Maiakovskii figures as “the poet of the colossal” for whom “words like ‘thousand, ’ ‘million, ’ and ‘billion’ are commonplace” (44), a fact that, in Chukovskii's view, reflected the cataclysmic times (45). Akhmatova, on the contrary, is the poet of “the microscopic detail” (40), in whose verse “not a single ‘million’ is to be found” (46). The appearance of the epithet “stomil'onnyi” in Akhmatova's poetry in 1940 is unprecedented, but not the theme to which it is attached—the fate of the Russian nation. As Chukovskii wrote in 1921, “When the war broke out Akhmatova … saw only Russia” (46); the same could be said of her response to the revolution. By contrast, Chukovskii calls Maiakovskii an internationalist ( “Work is our homeland! “) with “no feeling” “for the motherland” (47). Maiakovskii's point of departure in 150, 000, 000 is identical to Akhmatova's in Rekviem—the destruction of Russia: “Propala Rosseichka! / Zagubili bednuiu!” ( Maiakovskii, , Sobranie, 1: 318 Google Scholar). Rather than mourning this fact, as Akhmatova does in Rekviem, Maiakovskii immediately calls for the creation of a “new Russia,” a universal one ( “Novuiu naidem Rossiiu. / Vsekhsvetnuiu!” [ Maiakovskii, , Sobranie, 1: 318 Google Scholar]), which gives rise in turn to the poema's plot—an allegorical treatment of class struggle.

40. Lebedev-Kumach, , Kniga pesen, 9 Google Scholar.

41. Ibid., 9-10.

42. Akhmatova seems to echo “Pesnia o rodine” in other parts of Rekviem as well. To give but one example, the line “Starikam—vezde u nas pochet” is contradicted in the second part of the “Epilog “: “I vyla starukha, kak ranenyi zver'” (1: 370).

43. Ibid., 10.

44. This is yet another instance of the outside world mirroring life within the prison. In his brief discussion of the “Posviashchenie,” Efim Etkind speaks of the woman as “die Verurteilte,” without noting that she is “sentenced” only figuratively. See “Die Unsterblichkeit des Gedachtnisses,” 387-388.

45. This design vividly illustrates Akhmatova's fusion in the “Posviashchenie” of lyric and epic elements, of the personal and the national. That the two are conjoined in Rekviem is a commonplace in the critical literature, although the actual workings of this conjunction have received little attention. Kees Verheul has written that in Rekviem the “lyrical-autobiographical and the national … coincide” ( “Public Themes,” 108). According to Efim Etkind,” ‘Requiem’ ist ein episches Poem, das aus einzelnen lyrischen Gedichten aufgebaut ist. Jedes dieser Gedichte ist dem Aufbau nach lyrisch, hat aber eine Tendenz zur Epik” ( “Die Unsterblichkeit des Gedachtnisses,” 392). See also Lidiia Chukovskaia's discussion of the tension in Rekviem between the personal and the national (Zapiski 2: 473-474), and Joseph Brodsky's comments on the same in Akhmatova's poetry as a whole in “The Keening Muse,” published in his collection Less than One: Selected Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1986), 34-52, especially 42-44.

46. The close link between the dedicatory poem and that central sequence is signaled at the beginning of the fourth stanza of the “Posviashchenie,” for its first word— “Prigovor “—recurs as the title of the sequence's seventh poem. Rekviem in fact offers two versions of the same event, one as described in the third person and the other as told from the point of view of a single victim. This is another salient example of the blending of epic and lyric elements in Rekviem.

47. Pushkin, SS2: 85. In the first volume of her memoirs of Akhmatova, Lidiia Chukovskaia unwittingly hints at the importance of allusions to Pushkin in Rekviem by enciphering references to it as “Rekviem Pushkina.” For instance, she encodes a reference to the “Posviashchenie” as follows: “Potom ona prochitala mne novonaidennye pushkinskie stroki—iz ego Rekviema. ‘Lunnyi krug.'” See the entry for 3 March 1940, Zapiski 1: 76.

48. Pushkin, SS 9: 120. The source of these remarks is a letter to D. M. Shvarts dated 9 December 1824. In his commentary to Evgenii One gin, Nabokov argues that Pushkin intentionally encouraged the confusion of Arina Rodionovna “with the generalized nurse [he] gives the Larin girls” and claims that Pushkin generally “romanticized her in his verse.” See Eugene Onegin, trans, with a commentary by Vladimir Nabokov, rev. ed., 4 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975) 2: 452. In an essay called “Iavleniia muzy,” V. F. Khodasevich offers some concrete textual evidence linking Tat'iana's nanny to Arina Rodionovna. Khodasevich traces the connection between Arina Rodionovna and the poet's many-faced Muse, asserting that the Muse appeared to Pushkin in the guise of his nanny. It appears in Khodasevich's O Pushkine (Berlin: Petropolis, 1937), 8-38; see especially 37-38 and 14-20.

49. Lev Gumilev was arrested on 10 March 1937 and was imprisoned in Leningrad until 17 or 18 August 1939 ( Haight, , Anna Akhmatova, 97 Google Scholar). Compare Lidiia Chukovskaia's description, in the entry for 28 August 1939, of Akhmatova's visit to the prison to see her son on the eve of his transfer to a prison camp in the north (Zapiski 1: 38-40).

50. Friendship was for Akhmatova an expression of spiritual freedom; compare her definition of druzhba as “Dushi vysokaia svoboda” (1: 229) in “Nadpis’ na knige,” written in May 1940, just two months after the “Posviashchenie,” and dedicated to Mikhail Lozinskii.

51. The same notion is conveyed in the second part of the “Epilog,” when the speaker recalls one woman “chto rodimoi ne topchet zemli” (1: 369). The question posed in 1. 23 recalls yet another text from the period of Pushkin's exile in which Arina Rodionovna figures— “Zimnii vecher” (1825), which conjures up a snowstorm weathered by the persona and his “dobraia podruzhka” at Mikhailovskoe.

52. I am indebted here to Stephanie Sandler's discussion of the dedication of Kavkazskii plennik in chapter 4 of her Distant Pleasures: Alexander Pushkin and the Writing of Exile (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989), 155-161. Sandler writes, “To say to someone ‘I write these lines for you’ is to say that a prior relationship exists to make the addressee an especially knowledgeable or valuable reader; it is also to say that he or she has in some way made it possible for the lines to be written in the first place” (160).

53. So does the following couplet from the second part of the “Epilog “: “Dlia nikh sotkala ia shirokii pokrov / Iz bednykh, u nikh zhe podslushannykh slov” (1: 369). Not only did those she addresses impel the poet to write Rekviem, they unwittingly provided her with the material from which it was composed.

54. I am grateful to Catherine Ciepiela for calling to my attention this parallel between “Niane” and the “Posviashchenie. “

55. Akhmatova is underscoring here once more that Rekviem is a genuine massovaia poema, representing the true voice of the Russian people. The words of these women, quoted directly in “Vmesto predisloviia” and at the beginning of the second part of the “Epilog,” are called “poor” in contrast to the bombast of which official mass songs are made, as demonstrated, for instance, in the following lines from Lebedev-Kumach's “Pesnia o rodine “: “Etikh slov velichie i slavu / Nikakie gody ne sotrut: / —Chelovek vsegda imeet pravo / Na uchen'e, otdykh i na trud!” ( Lebedev-Kumach, , Kniga pesen, 10 Google Scholar).

56. The reference is to Akhmatova's “Iiul’ 1914 “: “Bogoroditsa belyi rasstelet / Nad skorbiami velikimi plat” (1: 134).