Anna Akhmatova
is the literary pseudonym of Anna Andreevna Gorenko. Her first
husband was Gumilev, and she too became one of the leading Acmeist poets. Her second book
of poems,
Beads
(1914), brought her fame. Her earlier manner, intimate and colloquial,
gradually gave way to a more classical severity, apparent in her volumes
The Whte Flock
(1917) and
Anno Domini MCMXXI
(1922). The growing distaste which the personal and
religious elements in her poetry aroused in Soviet officialdom forced her thereafter into
long periiods of silence; and the poetic masterpieces of her later years,
A Poem without
a Hero
and
Requiem,
were published abroad.
From
"The Heritage of Russian Verse,"
by
Dimitri Obolensky
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