June 5: Oxford awarded Anna Akhmatova an honorary degree, a fact the USSR chose to ignore.
On June 5, 1965, Oxford University awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature degree to 76-year-old poet Anna Akhmatova. The British press described her as "the greatest of modern Russian poets," but the USSR chose to ignore the event.
I never stopped writing poetry. For me, it's my connection to the times, to the new life of my people. When I wrote them, I lived by the rhythms that resounded in the heroic history of my country. I'm happy to have lived through those years and witnessed events that were unparalleled.
Gorenko, who became Akhmatova
She was born in Odessa in 1889, the daughter of a retired naval engineer. Her real surname was Gorenko. She adopted her grandmother's surname at age 17, when her father asked her not to disgrace his name with poetry.
She studied history and literature in St. Petersburg. Her first fame came with a performance at the literary cabaret "Stray Dog."
In 1910, at the age of 21, Akhmatova married the poet Nikolai Gumilyov; two years later, they had a son, Lev, a future writer and philosopher.
War, revolution and the execution of Gumilyov
With the outbreak of World War I, Akhmatova saw her husband off to the front. Her most famous poem from those years is about the losses of war:
We thought: we are poor, we have nothing,
And how they began to lose one after another,
This is how it became every day
On Memorial Day, -
Started making songs
About the great bounty of God
Yes, about our former wealth.
She responded to the 1917 revolution with a poem:
I had a voice. He called comfortingly,
He said: "Come here,
Leave your land deaf and sinful,
"Leave Russia forever"
In 1918, Akhmatova divorced Gumilyov. Three years later, he was executed on trumped-up charges of involvement in an anti-Soviet conspiracy.
My beloved always has so many requests!
A woman who has fallen out of love has no requests
"Requiem" and a fate unlike any other generation
From the mid-1920s, Akhmatova's new poems ceased to be published, and her older ones were not republished. She was married to the orientalist poet Vladimir Shileiko.
Later she lived with art historian Nikolai Punin, who was repressed in the mid-1930s along with Akhmatova’s son, Lev Gumilyov (in total, he survived four arrests and 14 years in the camps).
No generation has ever had such a fate.
It was then that the poetess began writing "Requiem," one of the first poetic works about Stalin's repressions. It was not published in the USSR until perestroika.
I would like to name everyone by name,
Yes, they took the list away, and there is nowhere to find out.
Husband in the grave, son in prison
Pray for me
Akhmatova spent the Great Patriotic War evacuated to Tashkent. She performed in hospitals and read poetry to the wounded.
Expulsion from the Writers' Union
In 1946, along with Mikhail Zoshchenko, Akhmatova was expelled from the Writers' Union as the author of "unprincipled, ideologically harmful works":
Akhmatova is a typical representative of the empty, unprincipled poetry alien to our people. Her poems, imbued with a spirit of pessimism and decadence, expressing the tastes of old salon poetry unwilling to keep pace with its people, are detrimental to the education of our youth and cannot be tolerated in Soviet literature.
Oxford: The Queen Without a Cap
The USSR remained silent about Akhmatova's 1965 celebration in the UK. Meanwhile, the British press wrote about the awarding of the title to "the greatest of modern Russian poets, whose poetry and life reflected the fate of the Russian people."
From all over the Soviet Union, only Arkady Raikin and his wife were present at the ceremony; they were in London on tour.
The entire ceremony lasted about three hours. At the end, Akhmatova entered the hall. It felt as if we were witnessing the entrance of the queen.
(Raikin)
The master of ceremonies introduced Akhmatova as a poet who “represents the past, consoles the present, and gives hope to descendants.”
Akhmatova did not wear the obligatory square academic cap at the ceremony—the poet decided that such headwear was unbecoming and sought permission not to wear it. Due to Akhmatova's advanced age, another tradition was also broken: the rector himself descended the steps and presented her diploma; she did not kneel before him.
Two Nobel Prize nominations
During her lifetime, Akhmatova was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in Literature—in 1965 and 1966. The first time, Mikhail Sholokhov won; the second time, after news of Akhmatova's death arrived.
Invisible to the court and the guards,
I will enter this hall today
Past, past, terribly past...
(1965)
Anna Akhmatova died in the Moscow region in 1966, at the age of 76.
