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caxtonianJOURNAL OF THE CAXTON CLUB VOLUME XV, NO. 4 APRIL
2007
Collecting Anna AkhmatovaR. Eden Martin
Russia is, above all, a country of lit-erature, particularly
poetry. (Devo-tees of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or Bul-gakov or
Solzhenitzin or evenRachmaninoff or Mussorgsky mightargue the
point.) Cab drivers in Peters-burg and Moscow readily quotePushkin;
and the characters and linesof his Evgeny Onegin are embedded inthe
Russian national consciousness.Petersburg alone has at least a
dozenliterary museums dedicated to preserv-ing the memory of the
writers wholived there.
Anna Akhmatova (accent on secondsyllablema) was one of the
greatestof these Russian poets. She lived fromthe late years of the
19th Century untilher death in 1966. The early years ofthe 20th
Century are sometimes calledthe Silver Age of Russian poetry.
Cen-tered in the two great cultural centersof Moscow and
Petersburg, manydozens of writers filled the pages of lit-erary
journals and turned out volumesof verse. Their names are mostly
unfa-miliar to Western audiences becausefew Westerners read
Russian, andpoetry in translation loses most of itsmusicthe
rhythms, rhymes, allitera-tions, and nuances. These Silver Agepoets
were greatly talented and enormouslycreative. Today, experts
generally regardfour or five of these at the top level:Akhmatova,
Blok, Mandelstam, Pasternak,and Tsvetaeva.
These Russian poets organized them-selves into groups or
schools: the Symbol-ists, Acmeists, Futurists (with their
manypermutations), Imagists, and many others.They published
thousands of volumes ofpoemsthick books and thin, expensive
and cheap, cloth bound and with paperwrappers, and with and
without illustra-tions.
When War and the Revolution came,many of these poets died or
were killed.Some left the country; a few stayed andfaced poverty,
persecution, censorship, andoften much worse. Mandelstam
wasarrested, interrogated, convicted because ofa poem he wrote
about Stalin, and died on
the way to a work camp inSiberia in 1938. Tsvetaevahanged
herself in 1941.Pasternak was subjectedto intense criticism
afterthe publication in theWest of Doctor Zhivago,but at least
managed todie at home, in 1960.
Anna Gorenko wasborn June 23, 1889,in a town near Odessa onthe
Black Sea Coast.1
Joseph Brodsky, theAmerican Poet Laureateand winner of the
NobelPrize in Literature, knewher well. He writes thatwhen Annas
fatherlearned that she was aboutto publish a selection ofher poems
in a Petersburgjournal,he called her inand told her that althoughhe
had nothing against herwriting poetry, hed urgeher not to befoul a
goodrespected name and to usea pseudonym. She chose aname that
could be tracedback to a maternal ances-tor, Achmat Khan, a
descendant of Genghis Khan. Brodskynoted that it was her first
successful lineAnna Akhmatovafive open as,memo-rable in its
acoustic inevitability.2
Annas father, Andrey Gorenko, was anaval engineer. The Gorenko
family hadattained nobility status a generation earlieras a reward
to Annas grandfather for hisnaval service, but the family was
notwealthy. Annas mother, Inna, was from aSee AKHMATOVA, page 2
Nathan Altman, Portrait of Anna Akhmatova, 1914. TheRussian
Museum, Petersburg, Russia
-
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family of landowners, but their means were alsomodest. After
Anna was born, her father took acivil service position in
Petersburg. From the ageof 2 to 16, she and her family lived in
TsarskoyeSelo (the Tsars village), a small market townlocated a few
miles south of Petersburgwherethe Tsar had a great summer palace
and manyaristocratic families had summer homes.
Life in the Gorenko household had its stresses.Annas younger
brother later described theirfather as a great chaser after
good-looking ladiesand an even greater squanderer of money.3
Annasmother, Inna, was a beautiful and kind womanabout whom Anna
would later write and speakwith affection. Inna was also
impractical and dis-organized in domestic matters, a
characteristicwhich carried over to her oldest daughter.
Somehow, despite the absence of literary influ-ences in the
home, Anna was inclined towardpoetry at an early age. When she was
a child shefound a pin in the form of a lyre in a park, and
hergoverness told her this signified that she wouldbecome a poet.
Her father called her a decadentpoetess even before she wrote her
first poem.
Anna learned to read at the age of seven, andwas sent to a
school in Tsarskoye Selo at the ageof 10. When she was 11 years
old, she was gravelyill; it was during this period of illness that
shewrote her first poem. She always linked begin-ning to write
poetry with that illness.4
Another influence was the memory of Pushkin,who had attended the
Lyceum School on thepalace grounds of Tsarskoe Selo almost a
centuryearlier. Today, one can visit the classrooms wherehe studied
and one of the rooms where he lived.
Although the Gorenko family was far from lit-erary, they
possessed a book of Nekrasovs poetry,and Anna knew many of his
poems by heart.Anna later remembered that it was the only bookof
poetry in the house.5 In 1900, age 11, Annabegan attending the
Maryinsky Gymnasium inPetersburg; by age 13 she was reading
Verlaineand Baudelaire.
Anna was an unusual childmore serious thanother children, more
stoic, perhaps to the point ofmelancholy. She spent her summers
from age 7 to13 in a dacha near Sevastopol, where the neigh-bors
regarded her as wildsomething of atomboy. She swam and climbed, and
cared littlefor the corsets and starched petticoats of
well-brought-up young women.
Her biographer writes that by the age of 14,
Anna had become a beauty, with chiseled fea-tures, huge grey
eyes and long, black straight hair.She had a dancers body. As an
adolescent she wasfive foot eleven inches tall, and so lithe and
supplethat she could easily touch the nape of her neckwith her
heels when she lay prone. 6
The year 1905 was a turbulent one for Rus-sians generally, and
for the Gorenko family in par-ticular. It was the year of the
destruction of theRussian fleet by the Japanese, and of the
firstRussian Revolution, which led to profoundchanges within the
government. It was also theyear in which Annas parents finally
separated.Her father moved in with his lover, the widow ofa
rear-admiral, and her mother took the childrento the Crimea.
In spring 1905, about the time of her 16thbirthday, Anna fell in
love with a student namedKutuzov, who was 10 years older than
she.Kutuzov was the first in a long series of lovers.One reads
Annas biography with amazement atthe number of serious love affairs
she reportedlyhadbefore, during, and after her
marriages.Explanations are impossible and judging point-less.
Perhaps it was part of the culture of theRussian aristocracy,
accentuated by the upheavalsof the times in which she lived.
During this stormy and stressful year, Annabecame a target of
the affections of a schoolmatewho would later become her first
husbandthepoet, Nikolay Gumilyov. Nikolayor Kolyawas far from
handsome, and was personallyawkward with people. But he was on his
way tobecoming a fine poet. Kolya was 19 in the springof 1905 when
he first declared his love to Annaabout the same time Anna was
having her affairwith the student Kutuzov. For whatever reason,she
rejected Kolyas advances, leaving him sodepressed that he
threatened to kill himselfwhich further upset and irritated young
Anna.
Given the chaotic nature of their relationship, itwas a surprise
when Anna announced in February1907 that she was going to marry
Gumilyov. Shewrote unenthusiastically to a friend,He has lovedme
for three years now, and I believe that it is myfate to be his
wife. Whether or not I love him, Ido not know, but it seems to me
that I do.7
During 1906 and 1907 Anna attended schoolin Kiev, living with an
aunt and preparing forexaminations. In early 1907, while she was
stillonly 17 years old, she published her first poem:On his hand
are many shiny rings. Gumilyov
AKHMATOVA, from page 1
-
included it in the second issue of a literarymagazine he had
started, called Sirius. Itappeared under her newly-adopted
literarynameAkhmatova. The sadness of someof the lines is
striking:
On his hand are many shiny rings from tender hearted and
submissive girls.The diamond triumphs, and the opalDreams, the ruby
glows like a miracle.On his fingers there is no ring of mine.Nor
will I ever give my ring to anyone.
Not exactly an up-beat attitude towardher upcoming marriage.
And, in fact, inApril 1907 she called it off. Kolya did nottake the
news well and spent much of thesummer trying to persuade her to
changeher mind. When he was unsuccessful, hetried to kill
himselffirst in August, andagain in December.
Meanwhile, Anna had graduated in May1907, a month shy of her
18th birthday;and in the fall she began studying law atKiev
University. The world of literature isricher for the fact that
legal studies did notagree with her.
In late 1909, Anna gave up. Gumilyovhad written to her: I
realized that only onething in the world is interesting to me.
Andthat is everything that concerns you. Sheneeded to be important
to someone whowanted her. A law career in Kiev was not anattractive
prospect; and continuing to live inKiev with her aunt and an
abusive unclewas unsupportable. She had no money andno way to make
a living. Gumilyov offeredthe chance to live in Petersburg and be
partof its literary culture.
So they were married in Kiev in April1910. None of Annas family
attended thewedding. The young couple went off toParis for their
honeymoon; and it was therethat Anna made the acquaintance of
ayoung Italian artist named Modigliani, whowrote many letters to
her after she returnedto Russia.
In 1909 Gumilyov, the poet VyacheslavIvanov and several
colleagues in Peters-burg founded a literary and arts
magazineentitled Apollon. A beautiful publication, itcontained
literary works as well as essays ofcriticism, pictures of
architecture and art,and reports on exhibitions and indeed
theentire cultural life of Petersburg andRussia. As I page through
Apollon, I am
struck by the richness and beauty of theculture of pre-War
Petersburgwhichunderscores the enormity of the devasta-tion that
was about to be inflicted on theRussian people by the evil twins
War andRevolution. Four of Annas poems werepublished in the fourth
number of Apollonin 1911. It was her first major exposure tothe
Russian literary community.
Gumilyov and Anna had not beenmarried long before, as Annas
biographerdelicately puts it, Kolya began to chafe atthe
constraints of matrimony. Anna latertold a friend that they had
been engagedtoo long, and that by 1910 her newhusband had already
lost his passion forher.8 The suspicions and tensions engen-dered
by his behavior worked their wayinto several of Annas early poems.
Forexample:
He loved three things in this world:White peacocks, evensongAnd
faded maps of America.He hated it when children cried.He hated tea
with raspberry jam, andAny female hysteria in his life.Now imagine
it: I was his wife.
Kolya also loved to travel, and by the fallof 1910 he was off on
a trip to Africa. Hewas gone six months. In 1910 one of hispoems
contained these lines: From theSerpents lair / from the city of
Kiev / Itook not a wife, but a sorceress . . . . Duringhis absence,
Anna worked on several poemsof her own that would later appear in
herfirst volume. Several of these were intimateand intense, but
whether about Kolya orsomeone else, it is impossible to be
sure.
Anna later told a friend that while Kolyawas in Africa,I wrote a
lot and had myfirst taste of fame: all around . . .he cameback. I
didnt tell him anything. Then heasked: Have you written any
poetry?Ihave. And I read it to him. . .he gasped.From that time
onwards, he always lovedmy poetry very much.9
Perhaps the most important figure inRussian poetry at the time
was VyacheslavIvanov, whose sixth-floor apartment inPetersburgknown
as the Towerwaswhere the major poets and others gatheredin the
evening to socialize, drink, and hearpoetry readings and lectures
about poetry.It is there in the spring of 1911 that Annafirst met
one of the future giants of Russian
poetryOsip Mandelstam.In March 1911, the month Gumilyov
returned from Africa, Anna was invited byIvanov to read her
poems to those gatheredin the Tower. One of the poems she read,The
Grey-Eyed King, was written threemonths earlier and would become
one ofher best known. It appeared in the pages ofApollon in 1911
(No. 4).
The other place where artists and poetscongregated was the
basement caf knownas the Stray Dog, which became a focalpoint for
the artistic and literary communi-ties of Petersburg. Akhmatova,
Gumilyov,and their fellow writers spent manyevenings theredrinking,
smoking,arguing, reading their poems, andappar-entlytaking their
colleagues sexual tem-peratures.
By this time, Gumilyov, Akhmatova, andMandelstam had identified
themselves as agroup of poets with common views abouthow to create
great poems. They calledthemselves Acmeists, and wrote
aboutconcrete objects in the world of reality. Intheir view,
clarity and details, rather thangauzy or ambiguous symbols,
representedthe way to achieve beauty through words.The Guild of
Poets, formed by Gumilyovin November 1911, became their
organiza-tional vehicle; and their artistic credo wouldlater appear
in a manifesto written byGumilyov, appearing in the January
1913issue of Apollon.
In May 1911 Anna returned to Paris fora brief visit without
Kolya. If he couldtravel on his own, so could she. In Paris
sheagain met Modigliani, with whom sheformed a close friendship.
How closecannot be known for sure. But it is knownthat he made
several drawings of herincluding one of her lying on a bed, andmore
than one of her nude. She later wrote:
I didnt pose for his drawings of me; hedid them at home and gave
them to melater. There were sixteen in all, and heasked me to mount
and hang them inmy room in Tsarskoe Selo. They van-ished in that
house during the first yearsof the Revolution. The one that
survivedbears the least resemblance to his futurenudes . . . .
10
She later told a young friend that therehad been twenty, and
that they had disap-peared. A few of these have resurfaced in
CAXTONIAN, APRIL 2007 3See AKHMATOVA, page 4
-
recent years.11 One of the drawings thatsurvived would later
appear on the cover ofone of her collections of poetry.
After her return to Petersburg, Annadecided that she had enough
poems (thosewritten during the winter of 1910-1912) tocomprise a
volume. It was published byGumilyovs Poets Workship in 1912 in
anedition of 300 copies. Entitled Vecher orEveningthe slender gray
volume con-tained 46 poems assembled in 92 pages. Onthe cover
appears a lyrethe symbol of theAcmeists. Inside is a drawing of a
womanattired in robes and looking downwardwith a melancholic
expression at flowingwaters.
One modern critic finds three principalstylistic elements in
these early poems: (1)the decorative stylization which may becalled
more specifically the manner ofRussian Art Nouveau, (2) the use
ofcommon, spoken language, including collo-quialisms, and (3) the
clean, classicalelement that was associated with Acmeism.The poems
in Vecher make use of lan-guishing adjectives and lethargic
images.12
The critics received it favorably.13 Gumi-lyov wrote one of
these reviews:[W]omenin love, cunning and rapturous, at last
speakin their own genuine and at the same timeartistically
convincing language.14 The col-lapse of their marriage did not sour
Kolyasgenuine admiration for her craftsmanship.
Anna herself was more critical. She laterwrote in her draft
memoirs:
These nave poems by a frivolous girl forsome reason were
reprinted thirteentimes. . . . And they came out in
severaltranslations. The girl herself (as far as Irecall) did not
foresee such a fate forthem and used to hide the issues of
thejournals in which they were first pub-lished under the sofa
cushions so thatshe wouldnt get upset. She even went toItaly
(1912), because she was distressedthat Evening had been published.
Sittingin the streetcar and looking at her fellowpassengers, she
thought to herself:What lucky peoplethey dont havebooks coming
out.15
Elsewhere, she wrote that she liked onlytwo of the lines in
Vecher.16
When Anna and Kolya left for Italy inearly April 1912 seeking
artisticinspiration, she was three months pregnant.In Italy, Kolya
explored Rome while Annaremained in Florence. They also
stayedtogether in Venice for about ten days. ByOctober 1, 1912the
day their son Levwas bornshe was back in Tsarskoe Selo.
Two of Annas friends from the StrayDog basement cabaret were
soon involvedin a tragic episode that would later
featureprominently in one of Annas greatestworks. The two friends
were a dancer, OlgaSudeikina, and one of her lovers, a mannamed
Knyazev. Olga was at that timemarried to an artist, appropriately
namedSudeikin. Apparently because of Olgasaggressively
non-monogamous behavior,
Knyazev shot himself in late March 1913.The whole affair seems
now to have been
characteristic of the dissolute condition ofthe Russian
intelligentsia just before thegreat catastrophes that were to wipe
manyof its members from the face of the earth.Gumilyov was a part
of this culture. Beforehe headed off to Africa on another
creativeboondoggle in October 1913, Anna discov-ered letters to him
from one of hisinamoratae. About the same time, an illegit-imate
son of Gumilyovs was born to anactress in Petersburg.
During the fall of 1913 and winter of1914, through her emotional
travails, Annacontinued to write. Some of her poemswere about her
relationships with menperhaps loversother than Gumilyov. Onewas the
art historian Nikolay Punin;another was Nikolay Nedobrovo, a
poetand critic. By March 1914 there wereenough poems to fill 120
pages of a newcollection, which she entitled ChetkiorRosary (or,
more literally,Beads).Perhaps each bead was a different poemor a
different man. The book is on my lapas I write this. Its verses are
about sin andsadness, parting and heavy hearts, shame,long days of
sadness, long walks beforenightfall, sleeplessness . . . . Anna
later wrotethat this book had sensational press butwas allotted a
life of approximately sixweeks.17
The great poet Blok, a few months later,4 CAXTONIAN, APRIL
2007
AKHMATOVA, from page 3 Vecher (Evening), 1912One of Modiglianis
1911 drawings
-
remarked about Annas poems that,Shewrites verse as if she is
standing in front ofa man and one should write as if one
standsbefore God.18
Events would soon force a broadening ofher perspective. As the
summer of 1914moved toward August, intelligent peopleeverywhere
must have had at least a faintidea of what was about to happen.
Annawrote in July:
Into my yard came a strangerWith only one leg, and he said to
me:Frightening times are approaching. SoonFresh graves will cover
the land:Therell be earthquakes, plague and
famine;Eclipses and signs in the heavens.And yet our enemies
will notRip up our lands at their pleasure,For the mother of God
herself will
spreadA white cloth over our sorrows.
Germany declared war on Russia onAugust 1, 1914. Gumilyov
immedi-ately joined the Russian cavalry, seeking achance to show
his bravery; he was at thefront within a few weeks. As with
theEnglish war poets, it took some time forthe initial rush of
euphoria and patriotismto wear thin.
In September 1914 Anna wrote herpoem,Consolation. She was now
begin-ning to write as if she were standing beforeGod:
You will have no more news of him,Nor hear about him again.And
you will not find his graveIn the fires of wretched Poland.Your
soul must be quiet and tranquil.He is no more a lost soul,But a new
soldier in Gods army.So do not mourn any longer.Your grief and
tears are a sin.Dont weep when you are home.Think, rather that now
you can prayTo an intercessor of your own.19
Despite the stresses of the early Waryears 1914-15, Anna
continued to write.She also gave readings at the Stray Dogcaf, as
did the othersMayakovsky,Kuzmin, Mandelstam, and even Gumilyov,back
from the front lines. When the StrayDog was closed because of
suspected sub-versive activity, the poetry readings shiftedto other
venues.
In January 1915, Anna read At the Edge
of the Sea to a group of friends. One of herlonger works, it
would soon appear in thepages of Apollon and in 1921 was
published
as a separate book. As the War progressedand privations mounted,
and as Anna suf-fered from attacks of tuberculosis, the rangeof her
themes continued to broaden. Herfocus was much less on herself and
herromantic attachments, and much moreabout the shared conditions
of life. One ofthese is typical:
We thought we were beggars withoutproperty
Until we began to lose one thing afteranother.
Then every day became a day of memoryAnd we began to compose new
songsAbout the wealth we once hadAnd Gods generosity in the
past.
Anna spent much of 1915 at the Gumi-lyov country family house in
Slepnyovo,caring for her son Lev and writing. News ofthe War and
the bitter conditions ofRussian life by now had dissipated
anyremaining enthusiasm for patriotic struggle.In May 1915, Anna
wrote Prayer:
Give me bitter years of illnessA fight for breath in sleepless
feverTake my child and take my loverAnd my mysterious gift of song
Thus I shall pray at your liturgyAfter so many pain-filled days:Let
the dark storm over RussiaBecome a cloud of glorious rays.
It was also in the spring of 1915 thatAnna met Boris Anrep, with
whom shesoon fell in love; he had spent years inEngland, and would
later return there. Shewrote a passionate poem dedicated to himthat
spring:You have come many years toolate / but still I am glad you
are here.Several of her lyrical poems during the1915-1916 period
were about Anrep. Theyparted when he returned to England inFebruary
1916.20
In January 1917, Anna selected thepoems that would make up her
third collec-tion. Entitled Belaya Staya (White Flock),and
containing 142 pages, the small volumeappeared in September 1917,
in an editionof 2000 copies. Brodsky says that with thisbook,
Akhmatovas personal lyricismbecame tinged with the note of
controlledterrora note which he says would laterbecome increasingly
intertwined with hermore romantic lyrics: With this
collection,Russian poetry hit the real, non-calendar
CAXTONIAN, APRIL 2007 5
Chetki (Rosary),1914
U Samovo Morya (At the Edge of theSea), 1921
Belaya Staya (White Flock), 1917
See AKHMATOVA, page 6
-
twentieth century but didnt disintegrate onimpact.21 Anna
received enough from thisbook to buy herself a dress and to
sendmoney to her mother and her son Lev.22
But by this time, there were more urgentconsiderations than the
amounts of royal-ties to be earned from books of poetry.
In February 1917 the revolution startedin Petersburg, then
called Petrograd. Sol-diers fired on marching protestors, and
sol-diers mutinied. Nicholas II abdicated inMarch. In June Gorky
wrote to his wifethat Petersburg had become a cesspit. Noone works,
the streets are filthy, there arepiles of stinking rubbish in the
court-yards . . . . There was a moment of hopewhen Russia was
governed by the Con-stituent Assembly, headed by Kerensky, butthe
hope did not last long. Kerenskys gov-ernment failed to work out a
peace settle-ment; and, by October (November, accord-ing to the
Gregorian calendar) Lenin andthe Bolsheviks were in the drivers
seat.They brought the war with Germany to anend in December 1917,
and Kerensky spenthis latter years teaching at Stanford.
As civilization unraveled in Russia, manypeople with money or
education or senseescaped, in droves. Anna Akhmatova choseto stay,
and it was a choice. She had thoughtabout it. But Russia was home.
In thesummer of 1917 she had written, withAnrep (who had escaped to
England) inmind:
You are a traitor, and for a green island,Have betrayed, yes,
betrayed your native
land,Abandoned all our songs and sacred
icons,And the pine tree over a quiet lake.
She saw Anrep in January 1918 duringhis brief return, but their
affair, if not herregret, was over. Anrep knew that Englandwould be
a more welcoming home for himin the future than a Lenin-led workers
par-adise.23
In the meantime, Anna had developed anintimate friendship with
Vladimir Shileiko,an amateur poet and noted expert onAssyria. When
Gumilyov returned toPetersburg in April 1918, Anna asked himfor a
divorce and explained that sheintended to marry Shileiko. Gumilyov
was
shocked, as were many of her other friends,but made no effort to
prevent the divorce,which was granted in August 1918. Annamarried
Shileiko in December. She laterexplained,I felt so filthy, I
thought itwould be like a cleansing, like going to aconvent,
knowing you are going to lose yourfreedom.24 The European War had
endedthe month before.
The year 1918 brought other majorchanges. Although the War was
over,life in Petersburg remained a battle zone forsurvival. Lenin
moved the capital toMoscow in early 1918, leaving Petersburgto
decay. There was no electricity, no sewageservice, no water, and
little food. (Today,tap water still cannot be drunk in Peters-burg
without boiling it first; and that takescare of the bacteria only,
not the chemicals.)There were times during the coming yearswhen
Anna was near starvation. Many ofher friends were dead, others had
left.
Annas new husband Shileiko was egotis-tical, demanding, jealous,
and harsh. Annatook his dictation and fixed his tea. She hadlittle
or no time for poetry during 1919 and1920. Shileiko wanted her
attention; he didnot want her distracted by writing. Thusshe wrote
little during the years of theirmarriage. One of her few poems says
it all:
Ice floats by in chunks;The skies are hopelessly pale.Why are
you punishing me?I dont know what Ive done wrong.If you need tothen
kill meBut dont be so harsh and stern.You dont want children from
meAnd you dont like my poetry.Let everything be as you wish.I have
been faithful to my promise.I gave my whole life to you My sadness
Ill take to the grave.There was probably justification for
Shileikos jealousy, though whether the jeal-ousy or the
justification came first isunclear and irrelevant. Akhmatovas
biogra-pher reports that she apparently had twointimate
relationships with other men whilemarried to Shileiko. One of these
menArtur Luryewas a musician who shared aflat with the actress,
Olga Sudeikina,Annas friend from the Stray Dog days.25
Sometime in mid-1921 Anna moved outof Shileikos rooms and moved
in withLurye and Sudeikina. She later referred to
Lurye as one of her husbands, though theywere never formally
married. Perhaps notcoincidentally, she resumed writing poemsin
1921. One of theseMCMXXIsays much about conditions of life in
Russiaand also Annas mood:
Everything has been plundered, betrayedor sold;
The black wings of death flicker over us.The pain of starvation
gobbles
everything,So why is it now so bright?By day the scents of
cherry blossomsReach us from the woods nearbyAnd at night there are
new constellationsIn the translucent depths of the sky.By 1921
there were enough poems to
make a small volume entitledPodorozhnikPlaintain. About half
thepoems in it were to or about Shileiko. Itwas a tiny book in
paper wrappers withonly 60 pages, and was published in anedition of
1000 copies. Of these, 100 werenumbered and not sold; mine is
numbered
6 CAXTONIAN, APRIL 2007
Podorozhnik (Plaintain.), 1921
Anno Domini MCMXXI, 1921
AKHMATOVA, from page 5
-
56 and is gracefully initialed, perhaps byAkhmatova.
By the end of the year there were morepoems; a new volume was
produced, AnnoDomini MCMXXI (with 1921 Petropolison the title page
but 1922 printed inwords on the cover). It was a bit larger102
pages, and there were 2000 copies. Itincluded the poems from the
earliervolume, Podorozhnik. Anno DominiMCMXXI, as Brodsky points
out,was herlast collection: in the forty-four years thatfollowed
she had no book of her own.26
The Bolsheviks did not wait long tocrack down on
intellectualsparticu-larly writers. In early August 1921 Gumi-lyov
was arrested along with a number ofhis acquaintances. He had
apparently saidsomething critical of the Lenin governmenta year
earlier. Imprisoned, he was brutallyinterrogated by the Cheka,
after which hewas declared to be an enemy of the peopleand
sentenced to execution by shootingalong with 61 others. His
executionoccurred on August 25, 1921. At hismemorial service, Anna
was treated as hiswidow, even though his second wifeattended as
well.27
A couple of days after Kolyas execution,Anna wrote in one of her
poems:
Terror fingers all things in the darkLeads moonlight to the
axe.Theres an ominous knock behind the
wall:A ghost, a thief or a rat . . . .
Not surprisingly, the executions encour-aged others to leave
Russia. (Or perhaps itwas the continuing general poverty, hungerand
wretchedness of living conditions.)One of these was Artur Lurye,
Annas thirdhusband. But Anna remained. In 1922she wrote:
My cheeks are sunken, and my lipswithout blood.
He wont recognize my face;I am no longer beautiful, nor am IThe
one whose songs once troubled you.
She could foresee what was coming, andfaced it:
I am not among those who left the landTo be torn open by our
enemies.And crude flattery does not influence me,I will not give
them my songs.Still I feel some pity for an exileLike somebody
sick, or a prisoner.
A refugee has to walk a dark road,And foreign bread has a bitter
flavour.
Here in the smoke of blinding firesWhats left of our youth will
be destroyedAnd we wont be able to ward offA single blow from
ourselves.Yet in the final totting upandWe know each hour will be
countedThere is no people on earth more
tearless,More simple and more proud.
Even though her personal life waschaotic, Annas poetry now moved
furtheraway from the self-focused themes of lovesexperienced and
lost, and in the direction ofthe larger themes of life shared in
commonwith the Russian people during the years ofhardship.
Meanwhile, some things did not change.As her friend Lurye was
making his deci-sion to leave Russia, Anna became enam-ored of
Nikolay Punin, a handsome art his-torian, with whom she would have
a longerrelationship than any of her other hus-bands. The only
problem was that Punin atthat time was married to Anna Ahrens,
adoctor. He never divorced Ahrens, so heand Anna never
marriedthough shereferred to him more than once as herhusband. It
appears that the pre-Warmarital practices of the Russian
intelli-gentsia were not altered much by the Waror by Revolution.
By the end of 1925, Annahad formally been divorced from
Shileiko,and had moved into Punins apartment,sharing it with Punin,
his wife and daugh-ter.28 The flat was in the former Shereme-tevo
palace known as the FontankatheFountain House, on the Fontanka
canal;the apartment now houses the AkhmatovaMuseum.
One thing that did change, however, wasthe governments tolerance
for literaturethat did not contribute to or celebrateMarxist
themes. The personal concernsthat constituted the subject matter of
somuch of Annas earlier verse were simplyirrelevant to the
construction of the peoplesstate. And irrelevant meant useless,
whichmeant unacceptable. Irrelevant writerswould find it difficult
to be published. Ifthey persisted in being irrelevant, theymight
find it difficult to workor to getfoodor to find a place to
live.
Anna felt the force of repression. She had
hoped to publish a two-volume collectionof her poems in 1926,
and proofs of thepages were prepared. But the governmentcensors
decided to limit the number ofcopies, and to insist on removal of
18poems from the first volume; later she wasasked to remove another
40 from thesecond volume. Matters drifted, but it soonbecame clear
that the new collection wouldnot be published at all. Stalin
himself mayhave made the decision.29
For the next 14 years, Akhmatova hadno new publications.
(Akhmatova calledthese the vegetarian years; the later andharsher
period is often called the GreatTerror.)
The Struve edition of Akhmatovas writ-ings lists no poems
published in journalsbetween 1924 and 1940.30 Anna was ableto do
scholarly work on Pushkin; butthough she eventually wrote essays
onaspects of Pushkins work, these were neverpublished as a book.
Her health was gener-ally poor; she had little food and almost
nomoney. In 1928 her son Lev came to livewith her and the Punins in
Petersburg. Butbecause of Levs parentage, he was deniedadmission to
academic programs.
The great peasant poet Esenin killedhimself in 1925. Mayakovsky
shot himselfin 1930. Three years later, Stalins wifekilled herself.
In 1933 Annas son Lev wasarrested briefly, and it would not be the
lasttime. In May 1934 Anna was visiting theMandelstams when her
good friend Osipwas arrested.31 After several weeks, Osipwas
exiledeventually to a place calledVoronezh.
The killings and torture became moresystematic after the
assassination of Kirov, apopular party leader, in late
November1934. Both Annas son Lev and husbandPunin were arrested in
the fall of 1935. Itwas enough that they were part of the
intel-ligentsia. Anna wrote a personal letter toStalin giving her
personal assurance thatneither of them was a spy or
counter-revo-lutionary:32
I have been living in the USSR since thebeginning of the
Revolution. I neverwanted to leave a country to which I amconnected
by heart and mind, despitethe fact that my poems are not
beingpublished any more, and critics reviews
CAXTONIAN, APRIL 2007 7See AKHMATOVA, page 8
-
give me many bitter moments . . . . InLeningrad I live in
solitude, and I amoften ill for long periods of time. Thearrest of
the only two people who areclose to me gives the kind of blow
fromwhich I shall not be able to recover. I askyou, Iosif
Visarionovich, to return myhusband and my son to me. I am sureyou
would never be sorry after doing so.[Note her use of the word
husband inreferring to Punin.]
Miraculously, her letter worked. Weknow now from the opening of
the govern-ment archives that Stalin personally wroteacross her
letter: To Comrade Yagoda. Tofree from detention both Punin and
Gumi-lyov [Lev] and reply that this action hasbeen carried out.
Stalin. Punin was able togo back to work, but Lev was not
permittedto go back to the University, and lived onthe edge of
starvation.33 Gratitude was notone of Punins strong suits. By 1936
he hadtaken a new lover, though he remainedmarried to Ahrens.
By the fall of 1937, during or followingher break-up with Punin,
Anna developedan intimate relationship with a marrieddoctor and
university professor, VladimirGarshin. She did not finally separate
fromPunin until the fall of 1938.34
In 1938 Lev was arrested again, and washarshly treated during
interrogation.Eventually he was sentenced to 10 years ina prison
camp. In 1939 his case wasreviewed to determine whether he shouldbe
executed. In the meantime, he was heldin Kresty prison in
Leningrad. During themonths of his incarceration, Anna, likeother
women hoping for news of their rela-tives or for an opportunity to
pass foodparcels to them, waited in long lines outsidethe prison.
It was often very hot, and Annawas ill much of the time. Her feet
and legssometimes hurt so much she could notstand.
One day as she was waiting in the queue,she was recognized. She
told the story inthe words she wrote in the place of apreface to
her great poem,Requiem:
In the terrible years of the Yezhov terrorI spent seventeen
months in the prisonlines of Leningrad. One day somebodyin the
crowd recognized me. Then awoman with bluish lips standing
behind
me, who of course had never heard mecalled by name before, awoke
from thestupor to which all had succumbed, andwhispered in my ear
(everyone spoke inwhispers there):Can you describe this?And I
answered,I can. Then some-thing that looked like a smile passedover
what had once been her face.
It is worth the trouble to learn Russianjust to be able to read
this poem. Her biog-rapher calls it one of the greatest
lyricalsequences in the Russian language.35 Thepoets personal
experience becomesenlarged and magnified, and in a sensebecomes an
artistic expression of the condi-tion of the entire Russian people,
orperhaps of any people stressed to the break-ing point.
Akhmatova often wrote dates after par-ticular poems or sections
of poems, indicat-ing when they had been written. Some ofthe lines
of Requiem are dated 1935 butmost appear to have been written in
1939or 1940. A few were added much laterinthe late 1950s or even
1961. The translatedlines of the Dedication will provide only adim
idea of the power and beauty ofAkhmatovas lines:
In the presence of this grief, mountainsbow down,
The great river ceases to flow,But the prison gates are
closed,Behind them are the prisoners holesAnd mortal anguish.For
someone, fresh breezes blow,Some are able to enjoy the sunset But
we wouldnt know, we who
everywhere,Hear only the scrape of the shameful keyAnd the heavy
footsteps of the soldiers.We arose as if for an early church
service,Walked through the ravaged capital,And there came together,
more lifeless
than dead,The sun is lower, and the Neva cloudy,But hope sings
from a distance.And then the sentence. . . And
immediately the tears pour forth,Already she is separated from
the others,As if life was painfully ripped from her
heart,As if they brutally knocked her down,But she goes on. . .
staggers . . . aloneWhere now are the involuntary friendsOf my two
Hellish years?What do they think goes on in the
Siberian storm,
What appears to them dimly in the circleof the moon?
I send them my parting greetings.
The poem is extraordinary. At one pointshe writes:
If you could have been shown, youmocker,
And favorite of all your friends,Gay little sinner of Tsarskoye
Selo,What would happen in your life . . . .
Life and the horrors of the Communistregime had put in
perspective the frivolityof her earlier years. Anna was now
writingas if she were standing before God.
In the epilogue, she writes that if thepeople ever erect a
monument to her, theyshould put it in the prison yard, where
shewaited so many hours. And she concludes:
And may, from unmoving and bronzedeyes,
The melting snow stream like tears,And may a prison dove coo in
the
distance,While ships quietly sail the Neva.
During the 1940s and early 1950s, Annarelied on her memory and
that of a fewfriends for the preservation of this greatwork.
Brodsky points out that the precau-tion was not excessive because
peoplewould disappear forever for smaller thingsthan a piece of
paper with a few lines on it.Mandelstams fate was vivid proof.
Also,Anna had her son to think about as well asherself. Both their
days would have beennumbered had the authorities found
herRequiem.36 But there came a time after thedeath of Stalin when,
as common withmany works of literature by controversialRussian
authors,samizdat (self-published)
8 CAXTONIAN, APRIL 2007
The authors 9-page samizdat copy ofRequiem, 1962
AKHMATOVA, from page 7
-
versions began to be circulated surrepti-tiously before the
first book publication in1963. I have one of thesea 9-page
typedversion of Requiem that Anna gave to oneof her friends in
1962. It is not signed, butdoes have a few corrections she made
byhand.
Requiem did not appear in book formuntil it was published in
Russian in Munichin 1963, in tan paper wrappers. The fulltext was
not published in Russia until itappeared in a literary journal in
1987.
The War unexpectedly brought newopportunities for Annas poems to
bepublished. Stalin and his thuggish govern-ment must have
concluded that Russia hadless to fear and more to gain from
inspiringliterature. In early 1940 Anna was invitedto publish a
selection of her poems. Whenthe publisher insisted on removal of
two ofthe poems, Anna acquiesced; she had nochoice, and it must
have seemed a smallprice to pay in the circumstances. Then,
inAugust, publication was delayed again,either by a paper shortage
or bureaucraticuncertainties. A month or so later, the diffi-culty
was resolved and the collection waspublished. From Six Books,
published inLeningrad, consisted of 327 pages. Therewere to be
10,000 copies, according toStruve. But shortly after the book was
pub-lished,on 29 October it was banned and allcopies taken from the
shops.37 Of thecopies which survived, most were surelydestroyed
during the War and its after-math, so copies in fine or near fine
condi-tion are now scarce. Interestingly, the titlerefers to six
previous collections eventhough the sixth had not previously
been
published in book form.One of the Annas great longer poems
that was not included in the new collectionwas The Way of All
the Earth, sometimesknown as Kitezhanka, the woman ofKitezh. Annas
notes say that she hadbegun this work in March 1940 while shewas
still in Leningrad. Kitezh was a mythi-cal Russian city, an island
city, which, afterhaving been defended against the Tatars,was
believed to have sunk into a lake. Thecity was said to reappear on
special occa-sions. Annas poem describes a trip by thewoman of
Kitezh, the writer, back to thefabled city. The lines of the poem
suggestthat Anna has been summoned home,through bullets, past
sentries, acrosstrenches, through burning towns,by wayof the
crucified capital. Anna laterdescribed the process of composition
as if
the poem had written itself . . .discon-nected lines began to
appear to me out ofnowhere. . . The meaning of these linesseemed
very dark to me at that time and, ifyou wish, even strange. For a
rather longtime they did not promise to turn into any-thing whole
and seemed to be ordinarymeandering lines until they beat their
waythrough and reached that refinery fromwhere they came out as you
see themnow.38
The Way of All the Earth was not pub-lished in complete form
until 1965, 25years later, although separate parts didappear before
that in Russian literary maga-zines. In the meantime, Anna prepared
afew samizdat versions to give to her friends.One of the very early
samizdat versions ofThe Way of All the Earth is in handwrit-ing,
with colorfully-decorated pages. Thecolored drawings seem to depict
scenes innaturea pool of water, water plants,perhaps a spider web,
an insect, and brightflowers. Some but not all of the handwrit-ing
appears to be Annas. The poem isbound in gray-blue wrappers, and
bears thename Anna Akhmatova on the cover,along with the place and
yearTashkent1944. The title page shows the title asKitezhanka, with
The Way of All theEarth shown in brackets as a subtitle. The
title page also shows a dedication to V. G.Garshin, Annas doctor
friend inLeningrad.
The inside of the rear wrapper of thishand-written version of
Kitezhanka con-tains Annas personally-inscribed presenta-tion to
Dear Golina LonginovnaKoslovskyin memory of our Tashkentwith love,
Anna Akhmatova. 4 February1944. Golina Kozlovskaya was the wife
of
CAXTONIAN, APRIL 2007 9
The Munich edition of Requiem, 1963
An early samizdat copy of Kitezhanka (The Way of All the Earth),
1944
See AKHMATOVA, page 10
-
Alexei Kozlovsky, a Tashkent composer.Anna was a friend of both
the Kozlovskys,and Alexei may have been in love with her.But more
of that later.
The German-Soviet non-aggressionpact freed Hitler to attack
Polandwithout fear of having to fight a double-front war, with
Russia on the East and theFrench and English on the West.
Similarly,Hitlers early success against the French inMay and June
1940 freed him to attackRussia.
In June 1941 the German air force beganstriking Russian cities.
One of the firsttargets of the German army was Leningrad.When the
long siege of Leningrad began inSeptember 1941, Akhmatova was
there.She continued to see her friends, includingDr. Garshin, who
had become more than afriend. But late in September she was
evac-uated, along with many other artists andliterary figures. She
flew to Moscow, andthen traveled by train to Kazan and then
toTashkent, where she arrived in earlyNovember; she would remain in
Tashkentuntil May 1944. At first she lived in a dor-mitory for
writers. Nadezhda Mandelstam,Osips widow, was given a room in the
samebuilding. Later, Anna shared a place withthe widow of Mikhail
Bulgakov. There werefresh fruits and flowers in the Tashkentmarket
place, but Anna and her friends hadlittle money.
In Tashkent Anna continued to write, toread her poems at
meetings, and to visitwith other exiled writers. She also madenew
friends, two of whom were theKozlovskys, Alexei, the composer, and
hiswife, Golina.
The loosened constraints that had per-mitted publication of her
collection, FromSix Books, in Leningrad in 1940 continuedto be
sufficiently relaxed to allow anothergroup of selections to be
published. Enti-tled Izbrannoe Stikhi or selections ofpoetry, the
little paper-backed volumeappeared in Tashkent in 1943.
Governmenteditors did the selecting, not Anna. Shereferred to it as
small, incomplete andstrangely put together. The little book
con-sisted of 114 pages of poems all of whichhad appeared in
earlier volumes, and sold
for only 3 rubles, 50 kopeks.Reportedly, 10,000 copies were
issued,
so the book should be very far from rare.But copies are rarely
seen; probably most ofthe copies were destroyed during the war.My
copy of this new little collection is oneAnna presented with an
inscription:Tomy dear Kozlovsky friends, and dated June20,
1943.
Anna was now thinking more aboutDoctor Garshin than Punin,
referring toGarshin as my husband, though they wereof course not
formally married.39 It will alsobe recalled that she had dedicated
hermajor poem Kitezhanka to Garshin.When the siege of Leningrad was
lifted inJanuary 1944, Anna sought permission toreturn, expecting
to be with Garshin. Sheand Garshin exchanged letters, and in oneof
these, Garshin asked her to marry him.Anna agreed, and told friends
in Tashkentof her plans to marry him on her return.
In mid-May 1944, she was permitted togo home. Friends remember
that thoughshe had gained weight, she seemed youngand happy. After
a stop-over in Moscow,Anna arrived at the Petersburg train
stationin mid-June 1944. Garshin was waiting forher at the station.
He had promised to finda new apartment for them both. But it
soonbecame evident that things had changed.Annas biographer reports
that the priva-tions of Leningrad under siege had beenterribly hard
on Garshin. His wife had diedduring the first winter of the siege.
As adoctor, he had witnessed starvation andworse. Anna later told a
friend that Garshinwas mentally ill. He apparently told herthat he
had had visions of his dead wife,and that she had forbidden him to
marryAkhmatova.40
But simple explanations are preferred toweird as well as complex
ones. Akhmatovasbiographer also reports that by June 1944,Garshin
may have been in the midst of alove affair with a woman doctor.
AlthoughAnna would have had ample ground tochange her mind about
the proposed mar-riage, it was Garshin who called it off. Aftera
10-minute conversation on the trainstation platform, they
parted.
Anna was now in war-ravaged Leningradwith no place to live and
little or no money.How she would survive was not clear. But acouple
of things are clear. One is that she
destroyed all of her correspondence withGarshin. The second is
that she removedthe dedication to Garshin from The Wayof All the
Earth.
In Leningrad, the one constant, amidrubble, sickness, hunger,
and poverty, waspoetry. Anna had begun her greatest longpoem,Poem
Without a Hero, in Decem-ber 1940, and she continued to refine it
inTashkent and Leningrad after her return.She worked on the poem
until 1963. Annalabeled the poem a
Triptych1940-1962-Leningrad-Tashkent-Moscow, and dedi-cated it to
the memory of its first audi-encemy friends and fellow citizens
whoperished in Leningrad during the siege.Her biographer says,It is
one of her fewlong poems: complex, many-layered andallusive; not a
series of linked lyrics likeRequiem, but imagined and invented as
awhole.41
The events fleetingly depicted in the firstpart of the poem
occurred in 1913 beforethe collapse of the Russian way of life.Anna
dedicated it to the young man whosedisappointed love for her friend
OlgaSudeikina led him to kill himself. In theintroduction, Anna
writes that she surveysher life from 1940 as if from a tower,as
ifbidding farewell again to what I partedfrom long ago. . . .
Ghosts from the year1913 appear, and she is back in the hall
ofmirrors of the Sheremetev Palace. One ofthe apparitions from her
past is that ofSudeikina, whose promiscuous self-cen-teredness (the
goat-legged nymph) becameboth a symbol of pre-War Russian life
ingeneral and a reproach to Anna for her ownconduct. Anna labeled
her one of mydoubles. Sudeikina had left Russia, lived inParis, and
died there in January 1945. Annawrites,How did it come to pass /
That Ialone of all of them am still alive. And,Ido not want to meet
again / The woman Iwas then. . .
Annas friend Gershtein wrote in herMemoirs42 that after Anna
returned toLeningrad, she made many copies ofPoem Without a Hero,
and gave them tofriends. On July 15, 1946, she sent one ofthese
copies to her friend Alexei Kozlovskyin Tashkent. This copy, in
brown paperwrappers, contains on the page after thetitle page, the
typed inscription toand
10 CAXTONIAN, APRIL 2007
AKHMATOVA, from page 9
-
the handwritten letters Al. F. K. with thedate 15 May. It is
initialed simply A. Thetext is typed, but contains several
notationsor changes in Annas handwriting. At theend, she signed at
the bottom her full name.Interestingly, several quotations in
Latin,Italian, and English are printed, apparentlyby Anna herself.
Presumably this is becausethe Russian typewriter did not have
theforeign-language characters, so she left thespaces blank to
permit the foreign words tobe inserted by hand.
My friend Professor Dmitry Bobyshev ofthe University of Illinois
at Champaign-Urbana (a distinguished Russian poet whoknew Akhmatova
well) told me about Dr.Natalia Kraineva, a scholar at the
RussianNational Library in Petersburg, who hasspent more than 10
years researchingPoem Without a Hero and through themiracle of the
internet, he introduced me toher. Professor Kraineva, who works at
theNational Library in Petersburg, identifiesnine versions of the
draft. When it is pub-lished, her scholarly work will supersedethe
recapitulations now found inKovalenko, Petersburg Dreams (2004),
andan Appendix to Haight, Akhmatova, APoetic Pilgrimage, New York,
(1976).
My copy (given to Kozlovsky) was one ofthe early Tashkent
versions. How manycopies of this or other samizdat versionsexist?
Professor Kraineva, wrote me thatshe had found more than 100 copies
insamizdat, and that my version was from thethird draft, which was
composed in 1944. It
is the third carbon copy of the typewritingset. She found two
other copies of thisversion.
In addition to the early samizdat ver-sions, fragments of the
poem appeared inliterary journals in the 1940s and 1950s. In1960 an
incomplete version of Part Iappeared in a New York
journalVoz-duishnye Puti43 . Then what Haight callsprobably the
first completed version of thepoem can be found in Eng-Liedmeier
andK. Verheul, ed., Tale Without a Hero andTwenty-Two Poems by Anna
Akhmatova(1973).
Russias war with Germany ended May8, 1945. Leningrad had been
almostdestroyed by the siege. After living for atime with friends,
Anna moved back intothe flat in the house on the FontankaPunins
flat. Punins former wife was dead,but he had a new wife, as well as
his daugh-ter by his deceased wife. Given the historyof their
relationship, it is unsettling torealize that Anna had no choice
but toreturn to Punins flat; but the apartmentproblem, where to
live, was a gnawingreality for virtually all Russians during
theentire Communist period. During the siege,Akhmatovas personal
library had beenburned by the person who lodged in herrooms in an
effort to keep warm.44
To make matters worse, Anna was nowunder continuing police
surveillance. Theperiod of government relaxation seems tohave ended
with the end of the Germanthreat. One of the police reports on
herstated:
Akhmatova has many acquaintances.She has no close friends. She
is good-natured and does not hesitate to spendher money when she
has it. But at heartshe is cold and arrogant with a childishegoism.
She is helpless when it comes tothe practical tasks of everyday
life.Mending a stocking poses an insolubleproblem for her. Boiling
potatoes is anachievement. Despite her great fame,she is very shy.
. . . 45
In 1945 Isaiah Berlin, later the renownedOxford scholar of
politics and history, wasappointed to the staff of the
Britishembassy in Moscow. He was born in Russiaand spoke the
language fluently. WhenIsaiah visited Leningrad, he made a point
of
visiting the bookshops. In one of these, heasked about the fate
of some of Leningradsauthors; he was told that Akhmatova wasstill
alive and that a meeting could bearranged. That afternoon, he
showed up inher apartment. The story is told in Berlinsbook
Personal Impressions (1981), andreprinted as a preface to Vol. II
of Akhma-tovas Complete Poems.46
Berlin told how he climbed the staircaseat the Fontanka and was
admitted toAkhmatovas room:
It was very barely furnishedvirtuallyeverything in it had, I
gathered, beentaken awaylooted or soldduringthe siege. . . . A
stately, grey-haired lady,a white shawl draped about her
shoul-ders, slowly rose to greet us.Anna Akhmatova was immensely
digni-fied, with unhurried gestures, a noblehead, beautiful,
somewhat severe fea-tures, and an expression of immensesadness.
Berlin had given little or no thought tothe possibility that
Akhmatova was beingwatched, or that contact with an Englishdiplomat
could easily be misconstrued byparanoid Soviet leaders as
espionage. Tomake matters infinitely worse, Berlin was atthat
moment tracked down by an oldfriend:
Suddenly I heard what sounded like myfirst name being shouted
somewhereoutside. I ignored this for a whileitwas plainly an
illusionbut the shout-ing became louder. . . I went to thewindow
and looked out, and saw a manwhom I recognized as
RandolphChurchill. He was standing in themiddle of the great court,
looking like atipsy under-graduate, and screaming myname.
Berlin had not seen Randolph Churchillfor years, and did not
know that he hadcome to Leningrad as a journalist. Berlinnoted in
his memoir that Randolph wascertainly being followed by Russian
police.And by this careless act, Churchill causedrumors to
circulate to the effect that theEnglish diplomats, including the
son of theEnglish Prime Minister, were trying to per-suade
Akhmatova to leave Russia.47
Later that same day, Berlin returned toresume his conversation
with Akhmatova.They talked about Gumilyov and Mandel-stam. Berlin
reports that Akhmatova told
CAXTONIAN, APRIL 2007 11See AKHMATOVA, page 12
Samizdat copy of Poema Bez Geroya(Poem Without a Hero), 1946
-
him that Mandelstam had been in love withher. They talked about
Modigliani, andBerlin remembered later that one ofModiglianis
drawings of Anna hung overthe fireplace. Anna recited for him long
pas-sages from her poems. She said:Poemslike these, but far better
than mine, werethe cause of the death of the best poet ofour time,
whom I loved and who lovedme. . . Berlin didnt know whether
Annareferred to Gumilyov, her first husband, orMandelstam; but I
think it must have beenMandelstam. Berlin said he asked her
aboutMandelstam:she was silent, her eyes filledwith tears, and
begged me not to speak ofhim. . . . It took some time for her to
collectherself.48 They talked about Tsvetaeva: Marina is a better
poet than I am, she saidto me.
She read for Berlin the unfinished PoemWithout A Hero. Berlin
said he realizedthat he was listening to a work of genius.He
described it as a many faceted and mostmagical poemwhich was
intended as akind of final memorial to her life as a poet,to the
past of the citySt. Petersburgwhich was part of her being . . . .
It was amysterious and deeply evocative work. Heasked her to let
him write down the lines,but she declined. And she did not offer
himone of the samizdat copies, if any stillremained.
Later, when Akhmatova was refiningPoem Without a Hero, she added
linesand a third dedication to the Guest fromthe Future, having in
mind Berlin. Someyears later, when the poem was published infinal
form within the Soviet Union, thededication was removed for
politicalreasons.49
Berlin was the first person from theoutside world who spoke her
language andcould bring her news of a world from whichshe had been
isolated for many years.Berlin came to believe that she saw him asa
fateful, perhaps doom-laden messengerof the end of the worlda
tragic intima-tion of the future which made a profoundimpact upon
her. . . . Anna believed thatStalin personally learned of the visit
andwas enraged by the fact that she had com-mitted the sin of
seeing a foreigner withoutformal authorization. . . . So our nun
now
receives visits from foreign spies,(so it isalleged), and
followed this with obsceni-ties . . . . Twenty years later, when
Annavisited London on the occasion of beingawarded an honorary
degree, she toldBerlin she heard about Stalins outburstfrom someone
who was present at thetime.50
Whether her story about Stalin is accu-rate or not, within a few
days of hermeeting with Berlin, the secret policeinstalled a
microphone in the ceiling of herroom. Also, in August 1946,
Akhmatovawas denounced by Andrey Zhdanov, one ofthe party bosses.
He said she was one ofthe standard bearers of a hollow,
empty,aristocratic salon poetry which is absolutelyforeign to
Soviet Literature. He also calledher half nun, half whore. This
denuncia-tion meant the end of any possibility thather poetry could
be published, as well asexpulsion from the Writers Union and lossof
her monthly stipend and her rationcard.51
A collection of her poetry planned forpublication in 1946 was
printed but nevermade it into the bookstores, and most ofthe
volumes were destroyed. Also, her sonLev was refused readmission to
the Univer-sity, and in 1949 was rearrested and sen-tenced to 10
years in a Siberian prisoncamp. In 1950 Anna, like Mandelstambefore
her, wrote several poems praisingStalin in the hopes that they
might save herlife or her sons. These poems,In Praise ofPeace,
appeared in 1950 in a Soviet literarymagazine.52
With Stalins death in March 1953, thesharp edge of
totalitarianismbecame somewhat dulled. Akhmatovabegan to be given
translation work, forwhich she was paid. A volume of Chinesepoetry
entitled Tsui Yuan translated byAnna appeared in 1954. Two years
later,her translation of Korean Classical Poetrywas published in
Moscow. She did notselect the poems, and did not knowChinese or
Korean. One of her friends whoknew the languages gave her the
meaning ofthe poems in Russian, and she created theverse to
translate the poems. She pre-sented her co-translator,
AlexanderKholodovich with copies of both thesevolumes, and a second
edition of the
Korean volume. In the latter she wrote:ToAlexander Alekseevich
Kholodovich, inmemory of the time when we worked onthis book, with
friendship of Akhmatova.
In 1956 Khrushchev spoke to the Twen-tieth Party Congress about
Stalins crimes,and changes in the political climate acceler-ated.
Not long after, in May 1956 Annasson Lev was permitted to return
homefrom the prison camp where he had beenheld. Lev was embittered
about his experi-ences in the camps. He blamed Anna forthe fact
that he had been imprisoned, andbelieved that she had not done all
she couldto help him. He also thought her intensefocus on poetry
had been more importantto her than his welfare. When Anna was illin
the hospital, he did not visit her.
In 1958 a thin collection of Akhmatovaspoems was published in an
edition of25,000 copies. Brodsky described it as con-sisting of
reprinted early lyrics plus gen-uinely patriotic war poems and
doggerelbits extolling the arrival of peace. Thepoems were selected
by government editorswhose aim was to convince the public
thatAkhmatova was still alive, well and loyal.53
Titled simply Stikhotvoreniya, or Poetry,this collection is, of
course, not a rare book.Though it contained nothing new, as
herbiographer put it,the movement inAkhmatovas life from disgrace
to recogni-tion and acclaim had begun.54
In 1961 Khrushchev denounced Stalin atthe 22nd Congress of the
CommunistParty accompanied by disclosures far moredetailed and
critical than his speech fiveyears earlier. The dam was starting to
crackopen. In 1960-61, parts of Poem Withouta Hero were published
in Russian in NewYork in the literary magazine, VozdushnyePuti; and
in 1963 a small section of thepoem was published in Russia in a
literaryjournal called Day of Poetry. The appear-ance of this piece
inside Russia would havebeen impossible before the party congressof
1961. About the same time, copies ofRequiem began to be
circulated.
In 1965 a collection of Annas poemsfrom 1909-1965 was published,
entitledBeg Vremenithe flight of time. It is anattractive book; and
the front paperwrapper is graced with one of Modiglianasmore modest
drawings of Anna. The col-lection includes poems drawn from seven
of
12 CAXTONIAN, APRIL 2007
AKHMATOVA, from page 11
-
her booksincluding the sixth (not sepa-rately published) book
Iva, and also aseventh (not previously published) book,Sedmaya
KnigaSeventh Book. Therewere 50,000 copies of the 471-page
collec-tion, so it is not rare.
In June 1965 (the month Anna became76) she went to Oxford, where
she receivedan honorary degree, arranged by her friendIsaiah
Berlin. She also visited Shakespeareshome in Stratford.
Back in Russia, in November 1965 shesuffered a heart attack and
was hospital-ized. In the spring of 1966 she was movedto a
sanatorium, where she was able toreceive visitors. She died March
5, 1966,and was buried in Komarova, nearLeningrad.
Today, one may visit the Akhmatovamuseum in Petersburg, located
in theapartment palace on the Fontanka whereAnna lived many years.
The rooms containfurnishings from the 1930s and 1940s, andthe
exhibition cases contain copies of herbooks and reproductions of
pictures ofAnna and her family and friends. But thereis nothing in
the apartment that is origi-nalnothing dating back to the yearswhen
she lived there.
I visited the National Library in Peters-burg in June 2006 where
I met Dr.Kraineva, the editor of the most recent andcomprehensive
edition of Akhmatovaswritings. She showed me Akhmatovas
papers, including the spiral notebook inwhich Akhmatova wrote
the original draftof Poem Without a Hero andKitezhanka, and many of
the typed ver-sions that circulated in Russia before publi-cation.
She also showed me Annas scrap-book of fading black and
whitephotographs containing pictures of her as achild with her
family, as a young woman inpre-War Petersburg, and in her
middle-age.
Isaiah Berlin, with his breadth of visionand his command of
Russian and other lan-guages, was perhaps in the best position
toevaluate Akhmatovas work and life:
Akhmatova lived in terrible times,during which. . . she behaved
withheroism. . . . She did not in public, norindeed to me in
private, utter a singleword against the Soviet regime: but
herentire life was . . .one uninterruptedindictment of Russian
reality. The wide-spread worship of her memory in[Russia] today,
both as an artist and asan unsurrendering human being, has, sofar
as I know, no parallel. The legend ofher life and unyielding
passive resistanceto what she regarded as unworthy of hercountry
and herself, transformed herinto a figure. . .not merely in Russian
lit-erature, but in Russian history in [theTwentieth]
century.55
All photographs from items in the authorscollection, most
photographed by RobertMcCamant.
NOTES
1 The basic facts of Akhmatovas life are set forth ina recent
biography by Elaine Feinstein, Anna OfAll The Russias, (London
2005), and alsoAmanda Haights earlier book, Anna Akhma-tova, A
Poetic Pilgrimage, (New York 1976). Wealso have Akhmatovas own
autobiographicalnotes, published in My Half Century, edited
byRonald Meyer (Ann Arbor 1992), as well as therecently-published
diaries of one of her hus-bands, The Diaries of Nikolay Punin,
1904-1953, ed. Monas/Krupala (Austin 1999). I havealso made use of
Nadezhda Mandelstams greatmemoir of her husband and their friends,
HopeAgainst Hope (London 1975), and Hope Aban-doned, (London 1989).
Isaiah Berlins memoir ofAkhmatova is a wonderful piece; it can be
foundas a preface to the second volume of The Com-plete Poems; see
below.
Many of the bibliographic details withrespect to her books are
set out in the notes tothe great three-volume collection of her
works,Sochineniya, edited by G.P. Struve and B.A. Fil-ippov
(Inter-Language Literary Associates,1967), which is now itself a
collectors item.
An excellent collection of Akhmatovaspoetry in both Russian and
English translationis the two-volume Complete Poems of
AnnaAkhmatova, edited by Judith Hemschemeyer(Somerville 1990).
Shorter collections inpaperback are edited by Stanley Kunitz,
Poemsof Akhmatova (Boston 1967), and D.M.Thomas, Anna Akhmatova
Selected Poems,Penguin Books, 1976. The translations in thepresent
paper may be found in the Feinsteinbiography.
2 Brodsky, Less Than One (New York, 1986) p. 34-35.
3 Feinstein, p. 12.4 Feinstein, p. 11.5 Feinstein, p. 13.6
Feinstein, p. 16.7 Feinstein, p. 23.8 Feinstein, p. 28.9 Feinstein,
p. 33.10 My Half Century, p. 80.11 Feinstein, p. 253.12 Rannit,
Preface to Sochinenie Vol. II, ed. Struve
et al, p. 7-12, 1968.13 Akhmatova, My Half-Century, p. 26.14
quoted in Feinstein, p. 37.15 My Half Century, p. 8.16 Id., p.
18.17 My Half-Century, p. 26-27.18 Feinstein, p. 52.19 Feinstein,
p. 52.20 Feinstein, p. 62-63.21 Brodsky, p. 41.22 Feinstein, p. 93,
109.23 Feinstein, p. 72-73.24 Feinstein, p. 77.25 Feinstein, p. 83,
90.26 Brodsky, p. 48.27 Feinstein, p. 94.28 Feinstein, p.
114-123.29 Feinstein, p. 126, 134.30 Complete Poems, Vol. II,
462-469.31 See Collecting Mandelstam, Caxtonian,
November 2006, Vol XIV, No. 13.32 Feinstein, p. 15033 Feinstein,
p. 151-52.34 Feinstein, p. 162.35 Feinstein, 171.36 Brodsky, p.
51.37 Feinstein, p. 178-181.38 Complete Poems, Vol II, p. 766.39
Feinstein, p. 205.40 Feinstein, p. 206-208.41 Feinstein, p. 237.
See also a recent Russian study,
Kovalenko, S.A., Petersburg Dreams of AnnaAkhmatova, Petersburg,
2004.
42 St. Petersburg, 199843 New York, 196044 Feinstein, p. 211.45
Quoted by Feinstein, p. 213.46 Somerville, 1990,Memoir, at 28-4547
Berlin, p. 26-27.48 Berlin, p. 30-31.49 Berlin, p. 35.50 Berlin, p.
38.51 Feinstein, p. 222.52 Feinstein, p. 228.53 Brodsky, p. 48.54
Feinstein, p. 247.55 Berlin, p. 43.
CAXTONIAN, APRIL 2007 13
Anna, from her last collection, BegVremini, 1965
-
14 CAXTONIAN, APRIL 2007
that you would give to someone as a smallkindness, to thank them
for something. Sooften in the volumes that I have, there willbe an
inscription on the fly-leaf: to Helmutand Gabi with thanks for
Sunday after-noon. They really became a part of theculture of the
educated and middle class.
While he certainly does spend timeleafing through and admiring
them, inanswer to the question, does he actuallyread them:No. I
like collecting thembecause theyre cheap, and I like collectingthem
because the possibilities are infinite.There are so many
variations: the same titlewill go through many editions, with
differ-ent cover designs, different typography.
I carry something with me, where Irecord what Ive got. Helmut
Musiol did a
catalog,4 a sale catalog, of variants of Insel-Bcher. I started
using this. I sat down withmy collection at the time, and
recordedeverything that I had. Immediatelydespitethe fact that hes
got about thirty-eighthundred entries hereprobably half thethings
that were in my collection or that Iadded later, he didnt have in
thecatalogthough he made no claim ofexhaustiveness. I started
interpolatingthings between his numbers. This is myconvenient
record of what Ive got. I carrythis with me as Im looking at a
shelf, so Ican look and see if Ive got something ornot, or if the
spines missing on the one thatIve got, so I can get one in better
condition.At last count, I had 864.
He displays them, spines-out, on a coupleof hallway
bookshelves,in number order,
then chronologically. This isnt the best wayto display them. I
really need to devise away so some of them you can look at
headon.
Photograph by John Dunlevy.
NOTES1 It was Paul Ruxins interview of Gwin Kolb that
inaugurated Caxtonians Collect as a series ofinterviews with
members in the Caxtonian 12,no. 12 (December 2004): 5.
2 Remembered in the Caxtonian 14, no. 6 ( June2006): 5.
3 Why 1900? Rosenthal explained his reasoningin an informal
manifesto. It was as good a dateas any other, he wrote, but was
especially attrac-tive because of the two zeros. 1900: For
col-lecting books, it was a very good year, Universityof Chicago
Chronicle, March 14, 1996.
4 Helmut K. Musiol: Variationen der Insel-Bcherei,
self-published, Murnau 1989.
Book and manuscript-relatedexhibitions: a selective listCompiled
by John Blew
(Note: on occasion an exhibit may be delayed or extended; it is
alwayswise to call in advance of a visit.)
The Meaning of Dictionaries (featuring historical
dictionariesfrom the Research Centers holdings, as well as archival
materi-als from the University of Chicago Press, this exhibit
exploresthe ways English language dictionaries have defined
meaningfrom the Enlightenment to the digital age, and what
dictionar-ies mean within their cultural contexts) at theSpecial
Collections Research Center, Univer-sity of Chicago Library, 1100
E. 57th Street,Chicago 773-702-8705 (closes 6 July 2007)
Black Jewel of the Midwest: Celebrating 75 yearsof the George
Cleveland Hall Branch Libraryand the Vivian G. Harsh Research
Collection,spotlighting their roles in the cultural flower-ing of
the Chicago Renaissance and the BlackArts Movement (includes books,
manuscripts,photographs and ephemera, many of whichhave never
before been exhibited, from theHarsh Collection, one of the finest
institu-tional collections anywhere of African-Ameri-can history
and literature) at the WoodsonRegional Library of the Chicago
PublicLibrary, 9525 South Halsted Street, Chicago312-747-6900
(closes 31 December 2007)
Science and Faith Between Observance and Censorship: TheIndex of
Forbidden Books (presents copies from four librariesof the Regione
Compania in Italy of more than 150 rare scien-tific and religious
books published between 1563 and 1765,banned by the Roman Catholic
Church) at the Loyola Univer-
sity Museum of Art, 820 North Michigan Avenue (at thecorner of
Pearson Street), Chicago 312-915-7600 (closes 29April 2007)
Type for the Tower of Babel (an exhibit of books, documents
andother materials from the Librarys collections that relate
totranslations in connection with the Caxton Club and
NewberryLibrary 2007 Symposium of the Book) at the NewberryLibrary,
60 West Walton Street, Chicago 312-255-3700 (closes28 April
2007)
Building the Future City: Past Visions (a small exhibit
featuringmaps, plans, manuscript materials, publications, and
photo-graphs from the collections of UIC Special Collections and
theUIC Archives Department that document past visions of
improvements and grand plans for Chicago)at the Richard J. Daley
Library (first floorlobby), University of Illinois at Chicago,
801South Morgan, Chicago 312-996-2742(from 19 April to 17 August
2007)
Imposters (an exhibition of materials from theAdlers collections
determined to be forger-ies) at the Adler Planetarium &
AstronomyMuseum, 1300 South Lake Shore Drive (theMuseum Campus),
Chicago 312-322-0300(closes 3 June 2007)
Czanne to Picasso, Ambrose Vollard, Patronof the Avant Garde (in
addition to tradi-tional works of art, this exhibition contains
anumber of livres d artistes created by theartists featured in the
show, includingBonnard, Degas, Denis, Dufy, Picasso, andRouault) at
the Art Institute of Chicago, 111
South Michigan Avenue, Chicago 312-443-3600 (closes 12May
2007)
Members who have information about current or forthcoming
exhibi-tions that might be of interest to Caxtonians, please call
or e-mailJohn Blew (312-807-4317, e-mail: [email protected]).
Science and Faith, Loyola MuseumSCALA, 1559, COURTESY FORDHAM
UNIVERSITY
SUTTER, from page 15
-
CAXTONIAN, APRIL 2007 15
Interviewed by John Dunlevy
Caxtonian Sem Sutter (88) came tobook collecting and to the
Caxton Club viathe route that also brought him to hiscurrent
position as Assistant Director forHumanities and Social Sciences in
the Uni-versity of Chicago Library. He came to theU of C as a grad
student in history in 1972,specializing in early modern
Germanhistory. By the timehe was writing hisdissertation, he
haddoubts aboutwhether he would behappy in a teachingcareer. He
knew hewanted to be an aca-demic,so an obviousalternative was
beingan academic librar-ian. While writinghis dissertation, hegot a
job in thelibrary, working inSpecial Collections,in 1980. He
finishedthe dissertation in1982, and by thattime I was
convincedthat I did want to bea librarian.
His boss and mentor was Robert Rosen-thal, who was Curator of
Special Collec-tions and was a very active Caxtonian.Rosenthal
advised Sutter that he should goto library school.At that point, we
still hada Library School here, so I went to libraryschool while
continuing to work full-time.It was during that period when I
workingin special collections and also was in libraryschool that I
became aware of the CaxtonClub. I started coming to meetings
some-time in the first half of the eighties whenRosenthal would
sometimes invite mewhen the topic was something that hethought
would interest me.
Sutter earned his MLS in 1985.Thenext year, the Western European
literaturebibliographer position became availableacase of the dream
job opening up at just theright time for me. He joined the
CaxtonClub three years later. A particularly mem-
orable meeting was when Eudora Weltycame andinstead of giving a
talkreadher story Why I Live at the P.O. She was avery good friend
of Gwin Kolb,1 who was aCaxtonian and a faculty member here. Hedied
last year.2 It was through him that theywere able to ask her to
come.
As far as collecting goes (one of his anti-quarian-dealer
friends in Germany calls itan affliction), he accumulates all sorts
of
books, but theres really only one thing thatI collect
purposefully, and thats books inthe Insel-Bcherei series. It was
not some-thing that I originally set out to collect. Isuppose most
people who collect dont sud-denly decide one day, Im going to
collectxand then start buying it. You find your-self attracted to
it, you find youve gotten acertain number of them, you
becomeintrigued and buy more. One early factor inmy deciding to
collect them was somethingthat Bob Rosenthal told me. He said
thathe thought every librarian ideally had to bea collector in his
or her own rightbutthat you needed to be very careful aboutwhat you
collect so that its not somethingthat could ever pose a conflict of
interest; Inever want to be in a position where Im ina bookstore,
and I pull a book off the shelf,and I have to think: Is this for me
or is itfor the library? His solution was to collectarbitrary
categoriesthings like books
published in 1900,3 books that had thename of one of the members
of his familyin the title, and books with double enten-dres in the
title. For me, collecting the Insel-Bcherei seemed to fit those
criteria.
The books are octavo format, thin, typi-cally 80-100 pages, not
particularly sturdy,and normally the texts have been publishedover
and over in many forms, so an Insel-Bcherei edition would almost
never be the
ideal thing for you to buy forthe library. The booksusually are
very inexpensive.Besides being interesting asphysical objects, the
slice ofGerman culture they repre-sent matches my
intellectualinterests. The first ones thatI would have seen
werewhen I was in Germany formy junior year of college atthe
University of Marburg.The first ones I bought werein my grad
student yearshere, running into them inbookstores in Hyde Park,and
book sales at the librarybefore I became anemployee.
I find them attractive,and Im intrigued by the
history of the series, although Ive nevertaken the time to learn
as much about thehistory of the series as a collector reallyshould.
The series started in 1912. InselVerlag had been doing a fair
amount of fineprintingthings like limited editions oftranslations
of Oscar Wilde, Hugo vonHofmannsthal. One of the partners in
thefirm had the idea that besides fine editionsfor people with
means they should doattractive, mass-produced editions of
classicworks that are so inexpensive theyre acces-sible to anyone.
They were an instantpopular success, and theyve been going
eversince.
One of the things that is interesting tome is how much a part of
German culturetheyve become. Not just German culture inthe sense of
intellectual culture, but a socialculture. Very early on it became
somethingthat you would bring as a gift to your host,
Caxtonians Collect: Sem SutterTwenty-ninth in a series of
interviews with members
See SUTTER, page 14
-
Luncheon ProgramApril 13, 2007Peter ThomasTreasures of Intricate
Craftsmanship:The Amazing World of Artists Books
Since 1976 Peter and Donna Thomas from Santa Cruz havebeen
individually and collaboratively creating artists books(including
the paper, illustrations, printing and the bindings).Their books
can be found in collections world-wide, including theNewberry,
Huntington, Harvard, Princeton and Yale Libraries.One of Donnas
books was recently on display at the Grolier aspart of the Neal
Albert Collection. Peters lecture will include:exactly what are
artists books, as compared to fine press booksand book-inspired
art; what must viewers know before they canproperly enjoy and
evaluate artists books; how necessary is text;which of the 5 senses
is uniquely important when experiencingthis art form; what are the
special challenges that artists bookexhibitions make upon viewers
and especially upon curators?Peter and Donna will be sending ahead
to the Caxton Club acomprehensive sampling of their work (including
an airplane-shaped book!). Please go to
www2.cruzio.com/~peteranddonna/to view their impressive
repertoire.
An afternoon of enlightenment.
Bookmarks...Dinner ProgramApril 18, 2007Stuart ShermanDavid
Garrick and Death
We have had many great scholars and great speakers over theyears
at Caxton, but as powerhouse combination, we havenever had the
equal of Stuart Sherman. The holder of a Ph.D.from Columbia, three
Masters degrees and a B.A. from Oberlin, heis chairman of the
English Department at Fordham University.Caxtons program chairman
has heard him speak, and assures usthat Prof. Sherman is truly an
electrifying speaker. He will tell usabout David Garrick, the most
famous actor ever on the Englishstage.Is it possible, a besotted
fan once asked,that he can besubject to Pain, Disease,& Death,
like Other Men? In one way, ofcourse, the answer must be yes.
Garrick could die, and dieaffectingly, on every night he performed
in tragedy. But Garrickalso knew how to work the prospect of his
own death for effectsother than pathos: for laughs in his comedies,
and for an abidinghold over his audience. He was the first
celebrity to harp skillfullyon the matter of his own mortality,
playing up the inevitability ofhis own evenescence against the
accumulating evidence of his ownstaying power. Prof. Shermans talk
will explore the ways in whichGarrick both won his bet and lost it,
by complex means whichhelped shape our ideas of celebrity death and
deathlessness eversince.
All luncheon and dinner meetings, unless otherwise noted, are
held inthe Mid-Day Club, 56th floor of Chase Tower, Madison and
Clark,Chicago. Luncheon: buffet opens at 11:30; program
12:30-1:30.Dinner meetings: spirits at 5 pm, dinner at 6 pm,
lecture at 7:30 pm.For reservations call 312-255-3710 or email
[email protected]. Members and guests: Lunch $25,
Dinner$45. Discount parking available for evening meetings, with a
stampedticket, at Standard Self-Park, 172 W. Madison. Call Steve
Masello at847-905-2247 if you need a ride or can offer one.
Beyond April...MAY LUNCHEONOn May 11 Lesa Dowd, of theChicago
Public Library, willdeliver a behind-the-scenes lookat a current
juried artists booksexhibition which she curated.One Book, Many
Interpretationscelebrates the 5th anniversary ofMayor Daleys One
Book, OneChicago program.
MAY DINNERRobert H. Jackson is a notedbibliophile and a founder
ofFABS. He is also an author andthe editor of the recentlypublished
Book Talk. On May16 he will talk about his interestin illustrator
Rockwell Kent,whom he has pursued even toGreenland.
JUNE LUNCHEONOn June 8th the FridayLuncheon welcomes KayMichael
Kramer, proprietor of aprivate press (the Printery),editor of the
FABS newsletterand a member of the Caxtonand Bixby Clubs. His
anecdotalpower-point presentation willcelebrate Benjamin Franklin,
asauthor, publisher and printer.
JUNE DINNEROn June 20, Gary Johnson,President of the
ChicagoHistory Museum, has beenrescheduled to talk about theMuseums
22 million objectsand the window they provide onChicago history. He
will alsotouch on his efforts to open awindow to the on-going work
ofauthors.
16 CAXTONIAN, APRIL 20007