SOURCE: Condee, Nancy. “Axmadulina's Poemy: Poems of Transformations and Origins.” Slavic and East European Journal 29, no. 2 (summer 1985): 176-87.

In the following essay, Condee explores some of the sources of Akhmadulina’s creative energy.

I

In the long poem “Skazka o dožde,” the poet confides that she has taught her husband sorcery. At the poet's instruction, her husband has learned to transform inanimate objects of material value back into natural things of no material value:

Igо y naucila коldоvstvu— vо mni byla taкay оtкrоvinnоsts— оn razоm оbratit lybuy iinnоsts v кrug na vоdi, v zvirsкa ili travu. 

(I taught him sorcery— / there was such candor in me— / he would at once turn any valuable / into a ripple, into a small animal or a blade of grass.)¹

This confession comes in response to another woman's question about the sources of...