THE LIFE OF ANNA AKHMATOVA

Akhmatova was born Anna Gorenko on June 23, 1889, in Bolshoy Fontan near Odessa in the
Ukraine.  Her father, Andrey Antonovich, was a Ukrainian naval engineer, and her mother, Inna    
Erazmovna, was a Russian.  The family moved to Tsarskoe Selo, traditional summer residence 
of the imperial family, located near St. Petersburg, before Anna's first birthday.  Images of the
beautiful landscapes and architecture are found in her
poetry, as are influences of the great Russian writer
Alexander Pushkin, who studied in the Lyceum there.
Her mother may have played a role in the 
development of Anna's poetry, as she read the poems
of Nekrasov, Derzhavin, and Lermontov to her 
throughout her childhood.  She began writing in 1900,
and by 1911 she was being published under her
pseudonym Akhmatova.  The name was that of her 
maternal great grandmother, and of the last Tatar
princes of the Horde.  She said that she changed her
name to please her father, who once told her not to
"bring shame upon [the family] name.  Anna was a 
student in the girls' high school in Tsarskoe Selo, 
but she was forced to drop out when her parents 
separated and she moved with her mother to 
Yevpatoria in the Crimea.  In 1907 she completed 
her last year in high school in Kiev, and continued to 
study the history of law and Latin at the Kiev College 
for Women. In 1910, Anna married the Russian poet 
Nikolay Gumilyov, calling him her "destiny," despite
confessing indifference to him in letters to friends.  
Their marriage was not a happy one, as is shown in 
some of her poems, such as "Three Things Enchanted Him..."  It reads, "Three things enchanted him: / 
white peacocks, evensong, / and faded maps of America. / He couldn't stand bawling brats, / or 
raspberry jam with his tea, / or womanish hysteria. / ...And he was tied to me."  Akhmatova and 
Gumilyov were both becoming leading figures in the literary scene of the time, and the two of them, 
along with other members of the Poets' Guild, founded Acmeism, a movement in response to 
Symbolism.  The Acmeists rejected the elements of mysticism and overembellished style of Symbolist 
writers.  In 1912, Akhmatova published Evening, her first collection of poetry, containing 46 works.  
It was very well received, and as the respected writer and critic Korney Chukovsky pointed out, the 
youth of two or three generations fell in love to the accompaniment of Akhmatova's poetry. Soon after,
 in September of 1912, Anna bore a son, Lev Gumilyov.  However, Anna and Nikolay's  marriage continued
to fall apart. In 1914, Rosary
was published, dealing with
places in Petersburg and
Tsarskoe Selo, unrequited 
love, and the juxtaposition
of passionate, physical love 
and religion.  That summer, 
World War II broke out, and
while Gumilyov was busy 
serving for his country, Anna
was free to compose her
poetry.  It was during that
time that she wrote her first
great poema, or long poem,
At the Edge of the Sea.  That 
was followed shortly after with 
her third collection, White Flock,
in 1917, which dealt mainly with war issues and the melancholy that pervaded Russia at the time.  The
estrangement that resulted from unhappy conditions before Nikolay's departure and the separation due to
his service in the army finally ended in a divorce in 1918.  Later that same year Akhmatova moved in with 
V.K. Shileiko, living in what was then Petrograd and earning money as a librairian.  While living there she 
spent time with fellow Acmeist poet Osip Mandelstam, and produced another volume of poetry, Plantain, 
in 1921.  It was around that time that both Gumilyov and Alexander Blok, two important figures in 
literature and Akhmatova's life, died.  Gumilyov was arrested by the Bolsheviks for supposedly taking part 
in a conspiracy, and executed by firing squad on August 25, 1921.  The following year, Akhmatova left 
Shileiko and he emigrated to Berlin.  During the time of the New Economic Policy, the Party was not very much
in favor of her work, and after the volume Anno Domini MCMXXI, no more of her works were published
in the Soviet Union until after 1940.