SOURCE: "Anna Akhmatova: 'Mother Courage' of Poetry," in Unesco Courier, Vol. 43, April, 1990, p. 48.

In the following essay, Byelyakova provides an overview of Akhmatova's career.

The life of Anna Akhmatova was a tragic one. Although she had her moments of glory she also experienced terrible humiliations.

She was born in 1889, and her youth coincided with an extraordinary literary flowering, the silver age of Russian poetry. Her first volume of verses, Vecher (Evening) was published in 1912. It was followed two years later by Chyotki (Rosary) which was reprinted eight times and made her name. The themes of most of her early poems are meetings and separations, love and solitude. Their style is rigorous, lucid, laconic.

Her poetry was read throughout Russia, and the critics predicted a brilliant future for this "Russian Sappho". She published regularly—Belaya staya (1917; The White Flock), Podorozhnik (1921; Plantain), and Anno Domini MCMXXI (1922).

Unlike many intellectuals in...