Analysis of Akhmatova's poem "Native Land" and its background

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

1961. The poem "Native land" was written. In the Leningrad hospital in the last years of the poet's life, with an epigraph from her own poem.

Why earth

An analysis of Akhmatova's poem "Native Land" should begin with an answer to the question: "Why is it the native land, and not the country, not Russia?"

The poem was written for the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War. But Anna Andreevna writes not about the country, but about her native land, fertile soil - the nurse. By the sixties, the tradition of worshiping the earth remained in the past, but Anna Andreevna is sure that ethnic memory still lives in the souls of people. And yes, “this is dirt on galoshes,” but Russia is nowhere without it. This dirt feeds us and takes us into itself at the end of the life path. There is a great sense in the lines of the poetess. No need to write an ode about the land, you just need to remember that this is part of our homeland.

The theme of the motherland has always sounded in the poetry of Anna Andreevna. It was not just devotion, but service to the motherland, in spite of any trials. Akhmatova has always been with the people. Beside. Together. She did not look down on her native people, like other poets.

Whynot Russia, but the land? Because the poetess perceives her homeland not as a country, but as the land on which she was born and lives. It does not accept the political system, repression and war. But she loves her homeland, the people with whom she lives, and is ready to endure all hardships with them.

She already wrote about this in 1922. “I’m not with those…” - it was from this poem that the last lines for the epigraph were taken. And for four decades, in spite of everything, her attitude to her native land has not changed. And there was a lot of tragedy in these 40 years, both in her fate and in the fate of the country.

The Importance of Backstory

Analysis of Akhmatova's poem "Native Land" cannot be complete if you do not know the life story of the poetess. It is impossible to understand how courageous and devoted one had to be in order not to give up her words and beliefs of forty years ago, if you do not know what she experienced during these years.

Analysis of A. Akhmatova's poem "Native Land" should not be started in the traditional manner - with an analysis of rhymes and other things, this will not work. And you should start with what happened before writing this poem in the life of "Anna of All Russia", as her contemporaries called her. Only then will the deep meaning of the work, all the bitterness and all the patriotism invested in it, become clear.

In 1921, Anna Andreevna learns that her close friend is leaving Russia. And this is how she reacts to the departure of a loved one: she writes "I am not with those who left the earth." A poem written the following year and included in the collection Anno domini. In this poem, indignation, anger, and a fully defined civilposition. A position that should change due to subsequent events, but is only getting stronger.

Life between two poems

From 1923 to 1940, Anna Andreevna was not printed. And it's hard for her. She was subjected to indirect repression. But it wasn't the hardest part. In 1935, her son Leo was arrested. And also her husband, but he was soon released. And Lev Nikolayevich, after a brief release, was again arrested. For five years, Akhmatova lived in tension and fear - whether her son would be pardoned or not.

In 1940, the wind of hope appears; the poetess is allowed to publish, some people are released from the Stalinist camps. But in 1941, the war begins. Hunger, fear, evacuation.

In 1946, when the grip of censorship seemed to have weakened, Anna Andreevna was expelled from the Writers' Union and forbidden to publish her collections. In fact, they are deprived of their livelihood. In 1949, Anna Andreevna's son was arrested again, and again she stood in lines with parcels.

In 1951 it was restored in the Writers' Union. In 1955, a small house was allocated to the homeless poet in the village of Komarovo near Leningrad, after being evicted from the Fountain House in March 1952. However, they are in no hurry to publish it. And for several years, Akhmatova's poems have been published by samizdat.

In May 1960, Anna Andreevna begins intercostal neuralgia, she suffers several heart attacks, ordeals begin in hospitals. And in this state she is in the hospital at the time of writing "Native Land". What will and devotion do you needhad to carry through all the losses his love for the motherland and not change his civic position.

Traditional analysis of Akhmatova's poem "Native Land"

The work is about love for the motherland, but the word "love" itself is not in it. Analyzing Akhmatova's poem "Native Land", it is easy to understand that it is deliberately excluded. The poem is structured in such a way that even without this word it reveals all the love for the native land. For this, a two-part product is used, which is clear from the change in size.

Change of size is immediately evident when you analyze the poem "Native Land". Akhmatova clearly verified everything. iambic six-foot - the first 8 lines. Further, the transition to anapaest is three-foot, and after - four-foot. Iambic is a denial of what is not included in the understanding of the love of the poetess. Anapaest is the statement of a simple definition. A person is a part of the earth, and to freely consider it one's own means to love.

It is also necessary to note the meaning of the word "land" itself, when analyzing the poem "Native Land". Akhmatova used them in pairs. The poem has two meanings. The first is the place where we live and die, a place that must not be abandoned, no matter what happens. The second is soil, dust, "crunching on the teeth." Everything is simple here. Both the epithets (“promised”, etc.) and “decorative” vocabulary (“beredite”, “ladanka”) remain in the first, iambic part. The second part consists of vernacular, no epithets. Everything is much simpler, but deeper. True love does not need pathos.