“Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova: A Critical Analysis

Introduction: “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova

“Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova first appeared in book form in Munich in 1963, though it had been composed in fragments between the mid-1930s and early 1960s and circulated privately before official publication. The poem serves as both a personal lament and a public testimony to the horrors of Stalin’s Great Terror. Its prose preface—where Akhmatova recalls seventeen months waiting in prison lines in Leningrad—sets the tone for a cycle that transforms individual anguish into collective memory. Through powerful images such as “we, made partners in our dread” and the relentless “grating of the keys, and heavy-booted soldiers’ tread,” Akhmatova gives voice to the silenced suffering of countless families. Biblical echoes in the “Crucifixion” section further elevate the grief to universal dimensions, framing political persecution within a sacred narrative of sacrifice. The poem’s popularity lies in this blending of intimate pain with communal witness, its stark evocation of fear and endurance, and its moral insistence on remembrance, making it one of the most enduring poetic responses to the Soviet purges.

Text: “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova

No foreign sky protected me,
no stranger’s wing shielded my face.
I stand as witness to the common lot,
survivor of that time, that place.

Instead of a Preface

     In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line
outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing
behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard
me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked
me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):
     “Can you describe this?”
     And I said: “I can.”
     Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.

Dedication

Such grief might make the mountains stoop,
reverse the waters where they flow,
but cannot burst these ponderous bolts
that block us from the prison cells
crowded with mortal woe. . . .
For some the wind can freshly blow,
for some the sunlight fade at ease,
but we, made partners in our dread,
hear but the grating of the keys,
and heavy-booted soldiers’ tread.
As if for early mass, we rose
and each day walked the wilderness,
trudging through silent street and square,
to congregate, less live than dead.
The sun declined, the Neva blurred,
and hope sang always from afar.
Whose sentence is decreed? . . . That moan,
that sudden spurt of woman’s tears,
shows one distinguished from the rest,
as if they’d knocked her to the ground
and wrenched the heart out of her breast,
then let her go, reeling, alone.
Where are they now, my nameless friends
from those two years I spent in hell?
What specters mock them now, amid
the fury of Siberian snows,
or in the blighted circle of the moon?
To them I cry, Hail and Farewell!

Prologue

That was a time when only the dead
could smile, delivered from their wars,
and the sign, the soul, of Leningrad
dangled outside its prison-house;
and the regiments of the condemned,
herded in the railroad-yards,
shrank from the engine’s whistle-song
whose burden went, “Away, pariahs!”
The stars of death stood over us.
And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed
under the crunch of bloodstained boots,
under the wheels of Black Marias.

I

At dawn they came and took you away.
You were my dead: I walked behind.
In the dark room children cried,
the holy candle gasped for air.
Your lips were chill from the ikon’s kiss,
sweat bloomed on your brow–those deathly flowers!
Like the wives of Peter’s troopers in Red Square
I’ll stand and howl under the Kremlin towers.

II

Quietly flows the quiet Don;
into my house slips the yellow moon.

It leaps the sill, with its cap askew,
and balks at a shadow, that yellow moon.

This woman is sick to her marrow-bone,
this woman is utterly alone,

with husband dead, with son away
in jail. Pray for me. Pray.

III

Not, not mine: it’s somebody else’s wound.
I could never have borne it. So take the thing
that happened, hide it, stick it in the ground.
Whisk the lamps away . . .
                                         Night.

IV

They should have shown you–mocker,
delight of your friends, hearts’ thief,
naughtiest girl of Pushkin’s town–
this picture of your fated years,
as under the glowering wall you stand,
shabby, three hundredth in the line,
clutching a parcel in your hand,
and the New Year’s ice scorched by your tears.
See there the prison poplar bending!
No sound. No sound. Yet how many
innocent lives are ending . . .

V

For seventeen months I have cried aloud,
calling you back to your lair.
I hurled myself at the hangman’s foot.
You are my son, changed into nightmare.
Confusion occupies the world,
and I am powerless to tell
somebody brute from something human,
or on what day the word spells, “Kill!”
Nothing is left but dusty flowers,
the tinkling thurible, and tracks
that lead to nowhere. Night of stone,
whose bright enormous star
stares me straight in the eyes,
promising death, ah soon!

VI

The weeks fly out of mind,
I doubt that it occurred:
how into your prison, child,
the white nights, blazing, stared;
and still, as I draw breath,
they fix their buzzard eyes
on what the high cross shows,
this body of your death.

VII

The Sentence

The word dropped like a stone
on my still living breast.
Confess: I was prepared,
am somehow ready for the test.

So much to do today:
kill memory, kill pain,
turn heart into a stone,
and yet prepare to live again.

Not quite. Hot summer’s feast
brings rumors of carouse.
How long have I foreseen
this brilliant day, this empty house?

VIII

To Death

You will come in any case–so why not now?
How long I wait and wait. The bad times fall.
I have put out the light and opened the door
for you, because you are simple and magical.
Assume, then, any form that suits your wish,
take aim, and blast at me with poisoned shot,
or strangle me like an efficient mugger,
or else infect me–typhus be my lot–
or spring out of the fairytale you wrote,
the one we’re sick of hearing, day and night,
where the blue hatband marches up the stairs,
led by the janitor, pale with fright.
It’s all the same to me. The Yenisei swirls
the North Star shines, as it will shine forever;
and the blue lustre of my loved one’s eyes
is clouded over by the final horror.

IX

Already madness lifts its wing
to cover half my soul.
That taste of opiate wine!
Lure of the dark valley!

Now everything is clear.
I admit my defeat. The tongue
of my ravings in my ear
is the tongue of a stranger.

No use to fall down on my knees
and beg for mercy’s sake.
Nothing I counted mine, out of my life,
is mine to take:

not my son’s terrible eyes,
not the elaborate stone flower
of grief, not the day of the storm,
not the trial of the visiting hour,

not the dear coolness of his hands,
not the lime trees’ agitated shade,
not the thin cricket-sound
of consolation’s parting word.

X

Crucifixion

“Do not weep for me, Mother, when I am in my grave.”

I

A choir of angels glorified the hour,
the vault of heaven was dissolved in fire.
“Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?
Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me. . . .”

II

Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed,
His dear disciple, stone-faced, stared.
His mother stood apart. No other looked
into her secret eyes. No one dared.

Epilogue

I

I have learned how faces fall to bone,
how under the eyelids terror lurks
how suffering inscribes on cheeks
the hard lines of its cuneiform texts,
how glossy black or ash-fair locks
turn overnight to tarnished silver,
how smiles fade on submissive lips,
and fear quavers in a dry titter.
And I pray not for myself alone . . .
for all who stood outside the jail,
in bitter cold or summer’s blaze,
with me under that blind red wall.

II

Remembrance hour returns with the turning year.
I see, I hear, I touch you drawing near:

the one we tried to help to the sentry’s booth,
and who no longer walks this precious earth,

and that one who would toss her pretty mane
and say, “It’s just like coming home again.”

I want to name the names of all that host,
but they snatched up the list, and now it’s lost.

I’ve woven them a garment that’s prepared
out of poor words, those that I overheard,

and will hold fast to every word and glance
all of my days, even in new mischance,

and if a gag should blind my tortured mouth,
through which a hundred million people shout,

then let them pray for me, as I do pray
for them, this eve of my remembrance day.

And if my country ever should assent
to casting in my name a monument,

I should be proud to have my memory graced,
but only if the monument be placed

not near the seas on which my eyes first opened–
my last link with the sea has long been broken–

nor in the Tsar’s garden near the sacred stump,
where a grieved shadow hunts my body’s warmth,

but here, here I endured three hundred hours
in line before the implacable iron bars.

Because even in blissful death I fear
to lose the clangor of the Black Marias,

to lose the banging of that odious gate
and the old crone howling like a wounded beast.

And from my motionless bronze-lidded sockets
may the melting snow, like teardrops, slowly trickle,

and a prison dove coo somewhere, over and over,
as the ships sail softly down the flowing Neva.

                                Russian; trans. Stanley Kunitz & Max Hayward

Annotations: “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova

Section	Annotation (Simple Explanation)	Literary Devices & Examples
Opening Quatrain	The poet declares she had no protection, only suffering, but she survives to bear witness.	🔵 Imagery: “no foreign sky… no stranger’s wing” (loneliness). 🟢 Metaphor: “witness to the common lot” = representing all victims. 🟣 Symbolism: survival = testimony.
Instead of a Preface	Akhmatova recalls waiting in prison lines; a stranger asks if she can describe the suffering, and she accepts the task of giving voice to the voiceless.	🔵 Imagery: “lips blue from the cold.” 🟢 Metaphor: “torpor common to us all” = numb despair. 🟣 Symbolism: her answer “I can” = moral responsibility.
Dedication	Grief unites countless women outside the prison; they share silent dread and suffering.	🔵 Imagery: “heavy-booted soldiers’ tread.” 🟢 Personification: “hope sang always from afar.” 🔴 Allusion: comparison to religious ritual (“as if for early mass”).
Prologue	Only the dead could smile; Russia suffers under oppression and mass arrests.	🔵 Imagery: “regiments of the condemned… herded in the railroad-yards.” 🟢 Metaphor: “stars of death stood over us.” 🟣 Symbolism: “Black Marias” = terror of arrests.
I	Loved one taken at dawn; she recalls wives who howled for executed men in history.	🔵 Imagery: “holy candle gasped for air.” 🔴 Historical Allusion: “wives of Peter’s troopers in Red Square.” 🟠 Personification: candle gasping.
II	Moonlight enters her lonely home; she feels utterly alone with husband dead and son jailed.	🔵 Imagery: “yellow moon… cap askew.” 🟢 Metaphor: moon = silent witness. 🟣 Symbolism: loneliness + prayer.
III	She distances herself, saying it is “somebody else’s wound,” to survive emotionally.	🟢 Metaphor: burying pain “stick it in the ground.” 🔵 Imagery: “whisk the lamps away.”
IV	She imagines her younger self, carefree, being shown her future as a suffering prisoner’s mother.	🔵 Imagery: “New Year’s ice scorched by your tears.” 🟣 Symbolism: prison poplar = silent witness. 🟢 Irony: contrast of youthful joy vs. tragic fate.
V	She cries for her son for seventeen months, powerless in chaos.	🔵 Imagery: “dusty flowers, tinkling thurible.” 🟢 Metaphor: “night of stone.” 🟣 Symbolism: “bright enormous star” = death.
VI	She remembers white nights staring into the prison where her child was held.	🔵 Imagery: “buzzard eyes.” 🟣 Symbolism: cross = suffering & sacrifice.
VII – The Sentence	The verdict arrives like a death-blow; she tries to harden herself but feels emptiness.	🔵 Simile: “word dropped like a stone.” 🟢 Metaphor: “turn heart into a stone.” 🟣 Symbolism: summer feast = bitter irony.
VIII – To Death	She calls upon death to come in any form, tired of waiting.	🟢 Personification: death as “efficient mugger.” 🔴 Allusion: “blue hatband marches up the stairs” (secret police). 🟣 Symbolism: North Star = endurance.
IX	She feels madness overtaking her; grief strips everything she owned emotionally.	🔵 Imagery: “half my soul… opiate wine.” 🟢 Metaphor: grief as “stone flower.” 🟣 Symbolism: losing son’s eyes = spiritual death.
X – Crucifixion (I & II)	Parallel to Christ’s crucifixion, evoking mothers’ grief (Mary and Akhmatova herself).	🔴 Biblical Allusion: “Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?” 🟣 Symbolism: Mary = universal motherly suffering. 🔵 Imagery: Magdalene sobbing.
Epilogue I	She describes how terror leaves permanent marks on faces; she prays for all who suffered.	🔵 Imagery: “terror inscribes… cuneiform texts.” 🟢 Metaphor: faces as clay tablets. 🟣 Symbolism: solidarity in suffering.
Epilogue II	She wishes to memorialize the nameless victims, not with a monument of glory but at the prison walls where grief occurred.	🔵 Imagery: “old crone howling like a wounded beast.” 🟣 Symbolism: monument at prison gate = eternal witness. 🟢 Metaphor: “garment out of poor words” = poetry as shroud.

Literary And Poetic Devices: “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova

Device	Example from Requiem	Explanation
Allusion (Biblical) 🔴	“Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?” (Crucifixion I)	This biblical allusion elevates victims’ pain to a sacred dimension, equating Stalinist terror with Christ’s passion and martyrdom.
Allusion (Historical) 🔴	“Like the wives of Peter’s troopers in Red Square” (I)	Refers to women mourning Peter the Great’s executed soldiers, placing Akhmatova’s grief within Russia’s long history of state cruelty.
Anaphora 🟠	“Not, not mine: it’s somebody else’s wound” (III)	Repeated “not” stresses denial and the futile attempt to distance personal suffering from the collective.
Apostrophe 🔵	“You will come in any case—so why not now?” (VIII, To Death)	Akhmatova directly addresses Death as if it were a person, revealing her exhaustion, despair, and readiness for release.
Assonance 🟢	“The holy candle gasped for air” (I)	The repetition of long a sounds creates a gasping rhythm, reinforcing suffocation and hopelessness.
Enjambment 🟣	“Whisk the lamps away . . . / Night.” (III)	The line break interrupts abruptly, mirroring the sudden engulfing of darkness in both literal and emotional senses.
Hyperbole 🟡	“Such grief might make the mountains stoop” (Dedication)	Exaggeration intensifies the unimaginable burden of grief, symbolizing the crushing scale of loss in Stalin’s purges.
Imagery 🌊	“Lips blue from the cold” (Preface)	Concrete detail conveys the physical suffering of women waiting outside prisons, making the historical horror tangible.
Irony ⚫	“Hot summer’s feast / brings rumors of carouse” (VII)	The joyous connotation of “feast” clashes bitterly with the speaker’s inner devastation, stressing cruel contrasts of life under terror.
Metaphor 🟢	“The word dropped like a stone / on my still living breast” (VII)	The verdict becomes a crushing stone, symbolizing the oppressive weight of judgment on the human heart.
Metonymy 🟣	“Under the wheels of Black Marias” (Prologue)	“Black Marias” (prison vans) represent the state’s machinery of repression, making the terror concrete.
Paradox 🔶	“Night of stone, whose bright enormous star / stares me straight in the eyes” (V)	Juxtaposes “night” (dark despair) with “bright star” (hope or death), capturing contradictory emotional realities.
Parallelism 🟠	“I see, I hear, I touch you drawing near” (Epilogue II)	Balanced phrasing underscores how memory invades all senses, keeping grief alive and inescapable.
Personification 🟤	“The holy candle gasped for air” (I)	The candle, symbol of faith, is personified as suffocating, dramatizing the stifling oppression of Stalinist fear.
Repetition 🟠	“Pray for me. Pray.” (II)	The echoed plea intensifies desperation and emphasizes the need for communal support in suffering.
Rhetorical Question ❓	“Whose sentence is decreed?” (Dedication)	Highlights uncertainty of arbitrary arrests, embodying the terror of never knowing who will be taken next.
Simile 🔷	“The word dropped like a stone” (VII)	The verdict compared to a stone conveys its abrupt, crushing emotional effect.
Symbolism 🟣	“The prison poplar bending!” (IV)	The poplar becomes a symbol of endurance and silent witness to injustice, embodying shared memory of suffering.
Synecdoche 🟥	“I have learned how faces fall to bone” (Epilogue I)	“Faces” stand for entire human beings, reducing them to skeletal remains and symbolizing dehumanization under terror.
Tone Shift 🔔	From Dedication’s lament to Crucifixion’s biblical gravity	Shifts from personal sorrow to universal lament, expanding the work’s meaning from individual grief to collective spiritual testimony.

Themes: “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova

🕊️ Theme 1: Collective Suffering and Witness: In “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova, the poet positions herself as the voice of collective suffering under Stalin’s Great Terror. She begins with the declaration, “I stand as witness to the common lot, / survivor of that time, that place,” identifying her role not as an individual mourner but as the representative of a silenced multitude. The Preface, where a fellow prisoner’s wife whispers, “Can you describe this?” and Akhmatova answers, “I can,” establishes poetry as a moral duty to testify. In the Dedication, grief is shared by women “less live than dead,” walking silently through Leningrad, haunted by “the grating of the keys, and heavy-booted soldiers’ tread.” These collective images transform personal trauma into national testimony. The Epilogue deepens this role when she recalls enduring “three hundred hours / in line before the implacable iron bars,” anchoring the poem as a monument of memory for those erased by history yet kept alive through her words.

---

💔 Theme 2: Maternal Grief and Personal Loss: In “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova, maternal grief forms the emotional core of the cycle, transforming the poet’s personal anguish into a universal symbol of loss. Section I captures the devastating moment of her son’s arrest: “At dawn they came and took you away. / You were my dead: I walked behind.” Here, arrest is equated with death, stripping her of hope. The maternal bond is further shattered in section V: “You are my son, changed into nightmare,” expressing how terror dehumanizes even love. This sorrow is magnified in Epilogue I, where Akhmatova generalizes her grief: “I have learned how faces fall to bone, / how suffering inscribes on cheeks / the hard lines of its cuneiform texts.” The transformation of life into skeletal imagery echoes earlier lines of women collapsing under despair. Through such depictions, maternal grief becomes emblematic of Russia’s mothers, turning her singular pain into a collective lament.

---

⚰️ Theme 3: Death, Madness, and Spiritual Endurance: In “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova, the presence of death, the threat of madness, and the strength of spiritual endurance intertwine to shape the poem’s emotional force. Death is personified and addressed directly in section VIII (To Death): “You will come in any case—so why not now?” This apostrophe to Death conveys exhaustion and resignation, viewing it as a release from suffering. In section IX, she admits the slow encroachment of insanity: “Already madness lifts its wing / to cover half my soul.” The wing, dark and suffocating, symbolizes the psychological toll of grief and prolonged terror. Yet spiritual endurance emerges in the Crucifixion, where her pain is mirrored in biblical suffering: “Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me.” This identification with Mary’s sorrow elevates her grief from the personal to the universal. By intertwining death, madness, and faith, Akhmatova portrays survival as a spiritual act of defiance.

---

✝️ Theme 4: Memory, Silence, and the Moral Duty of Remembrance: In “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova, memory functions as resistance, while silence reflects both oppression and resilience. The poet acknowledges the loss of documentation in Epilogue II: “I want to name the names of all that host, / but they snatched up the list, and now it’s lost.” Despite this, she creates a substitute memorial through language: “I’ve woven them a garment that’s prepared / out of poor words.” Silence, too, is imposed by terror—“if a gag should blind my tortured mouth”—but she insists that “a hundred million people” will continue to shout through her. Memory is thus not optional but a moral duty, preventing the erasure of victims. Her imagined monument is telling: “here, here I endured three hundred hours / in line before the implacable iron bars.” She refuses glorification, choosing remembrance rooted in suffering’s site. Through this, memory itself becomes an act of defiance and justice.

Literary Theories and “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova

Literary Theory	Application to Requiem	References from the Poem
Historical Materialism / Marxist Criticism ⚙️	Requiem documents the brutal reality of Stalinist repression, showing how political power crushes individuals and families. The imagery of prisons, police vans, and soldiers exposes the machinery of state terror. By recording these horrors, Akhmatova resists ideological erasure, offering poetry as a counter-history.	“We, made partners in our dread, / hear but the grating of the keys, / and heavy-booted soldiers’ tread.” (Dedication) “Under the wheels of Black Marias.” (Prologue)
Feminist Theory 👩‍🦰	The poem highlights women’s unique suffering and resilience under terror. Akhmatova gives voice to mothers, wives, and daughters silenced by the regime. She universalizes her maternal grief into a shared female lament, transforming private anguish into public testimony.	“At dawn they came and took you away. / You were my dead: I walked behind.” (I) “Where are they now, my nameless friends / from those two years I spent in hell?” (Dedication)
Psychoanalytic Criticism 🧠	Requiem reveals the psychological toll of trauma—madness, repression, and nightmares. Akhmatova depicts denial (“somebody else’s wound”), hallucinatory grief (“madness lifts its wing”), and haunting memory as manifestations of the unconscious breaking under relentless fear.	“Already madness lifts its wing / to cover half my soul.” (IX) “Not, not mine: it’s somebody else’s wound.” (III)
Religious / Mythological Criticism ✝️	Biblical and mythological allusions frame Russia’s suffering as sacred sacrifice. The Crucifixion sections cast Akhmatova as a Marian figure, mourning her son like the Virgin Mary. This elevates personal grief into universal tragedy, sanctifying victims of terror as martyrs.	“Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?” (Crucifixion I) “His mother stood apart. No other looked / into her secret eyes.” (Crucifixion II)

Critical Questions about “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova

---

Literary Works Similar to “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova

• 🕊️ “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot
  Like “Requiem,” Eliot’s poem confronts collective despair after catastrophe, using fragmented voices and haunting imagery to reflect cultural and spiritual disintegration.
• ⚰️ “Funeral Blues” by W.H. Auden
  Similar to Akhmatova’s “Requiem,” Auden’s elegy transforms private grief into universal lament, capturing the silence and void left by loss.
• ✝️ “The Shield of Achilles” by W.H. Auden
  Much like “Requiem,” this poem juxtaposes myth with modern violence, exposing the brutality and dehumanization of totalitarian regimes.
• 🌑 “Strange Meeting” by Wilfred Owen
  As in Akhmatova’s work, Owen blends death imagery and haunting voices of the dead to bear witness to suffering, transforming war trauma into shared testimony.
• 🔥 “Deathfugue” (Todesfuge) by Paul Celan
  Akin to “Requiem,” Celan’s Holocaust poem uses stark, repetitive imagery and collective witness to memorialize victims of state terror and historical atrocity.

Representative Quotations of “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova

Quotation	Context & Theoretical Perspective
🕊️ “I stand as witness to the common lot, / survivor of that time, that place.”	Context: Opening stanza; Akhmatova frames herself as a voice of survivors. Historical Materialism – poetry as counter-history, resisting state erasure.
👩‍🦰 “At dawn they came and took you away. / You were my dead: I walked behind.”	Context: Section I; her son’s arrest is equated with death. Feminist Theory – maternal grief as universal female suffering under terror.
⚙️ “We, made partners in our dread, / hear but the grating of the keys, / and heavy-booted soldiers’ tread.”	Context: Dedication; collective suffering in prison lines. Marxist Criticism – exposure of state machinery and oppression.
🧠 “Not, not mine: it’s somebody else’s wound.”	Context: Section III; denial of trauma as survival mechanism. Psychoanalytic Criticism – repression and displacement of unbearable grief.
✝️ “Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?”	Context: Crucifixion I; echo of Christ’s last words. Religious/Mythological – equates Russia’s victims with sacred sacrifice.
⚰️ “Already madness lifts its wing / to cover half my soul.”	Context: Section IX; mental breakdown under grief. Psychoanalytic Criticism – madness as metaphor for trauma overwhelming consciousness.
🔥 “Such grief might make the mountains stoop, / reverse the waters where they flow.”	Context: Dedication; exaggeration of grief’s immensity. Feminist/Universal Humanist – women’s pain is so immense it distorts nature.
🌑 “Under the wheels of Black Marias.”	Context: Prologue; prison vans symbolize arrests. Marxist Criticism – the apparatus of state terror as dehumanizing force.
✝️ “His mother stood apart. No other looked / into her secret eyes.”	Context: Crucifixion II; Virgin Mary’s grief mirrored in Akhmatova’s. Religious/Mythological – archetype of the mourning mother sanctifies personal sorrow.
🔔 “I want to name the names of all that host, / but they snatched up the list, and now it’s lost.”	Context: Epilogue II; memory against silencing. Memory Studies / Historical Witness – poetry as resistance to forgetting.

Suggested Readings: “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova

---

---