SOURCE: Ketchian, Sonia I. “An Inspiration for Anna Akhmatova's Requiem: Hovannes Tumanian.” In Studies in Russian Literature In Honor of Vsevolod Setchkarev, edited by Julian W. Connolly and Sonia I. Ketchian, pp. 175-188. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1986.

In the following essay, Ketchian proposes that one source of inspiration for Akhmatova's Requiem was a Tumanian.

Numerous literary, cultural, and historical sources have enriched Akhmatova's masterpiece Requiem (1935-1961). Some have been studied, but many more await their turn.¹ The present objective is to illuminate a source of inspiration for Requiem, the poem “Requiem” (“Hogehangist”) by Hovannes Tumanian (1869-1923).² While there is no written reference to familiarity with Tumanian's poem and its translator Naum Grebnev, the likelihood of Akhmatova being familiar with the poem is great, particularly in interlinear translation.³ For, on the one hand, attested acquaintance of Akhmatova with Armenian poetry dates to the mid-thirties, when she commenced her own...