SOURCE: Rydel, Christine. “The Metapoetical World of Bella Akhmadulina.” Russian Literature Triquarterly 1 (1971): 326-41.

In the following essay, Rydel discusses Akhmadulina’s approach to writing and the inspiration for her poetry.

The subjectivity of Akhmadulina's poetry leads us not to her life, but to her art. In many of her poems she gives us clues to the mysteries of her feelings and her thoughts, but never discloses her biography. Even when Akhmadulina overtly sets out to tell us the story of her past, she deflects interest from herself to a time well-buried in the past: “… [since my birth] is in no way distinguished from any other births, I turn my grateful memory to the real people and events on which in one way or another it depends.”¹

However, in spite of Akhmadulina certain biographical information is known. She was born in Moscow in 1937 to a middle-class Russian family. She...