Notes on Anna Akhmatova

Notes on Anna Akhmatova is a memoir and biography of Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya dedicated to Anna Akhmatova .

In 1938, in long lines at the gates of the Leningrad prison , friendship developed between Anna Akhmatova, whose son was arrested, and Lydia Chukovskaya , who had not been informed about the execution of her husband for a long time. In 1964, Chukovskaya helped Anna Akhmatova compose her latest collection, Time Run. In 1966, after the death of Akhmatova, Chukovskaya began to put in order her diary entries about her, which she kept for many decades. It was impossible to print them at home. In 1974, she was expelled from the USSR Writers Union . This made impossible any printing in Russia, including participation in the posthumous publications of Anna Akhmatova’s poems. "Notes on Anna Akhmatova" was published in Paris by the publishing house "YMCA-Press" : the first volume (covers the period 1938-1941) - in 1976, the second volume (1952-1962) - in 1980. The very structure of the book not immediately and clearly established itself only by the time the second volume was published. The first volume was redesigned by the author on the model of the second and reprinted in YMCA-Press in 1984. The Notes have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Polish, and Dutch.

“Anna Andreevna, visiting me, read poetry from Requiem to me also in a whisper, but in her Fountain House she did not even dare to whisper; all of a sudden, in the middle of a conversation, she fell silent and, showing me with her eyes to the ceiling and walls, took a piece of paper and a pencil; then she loudly said something secular: “do you want tea?” or: “you are very tanned,” then she scribbled a scrap in quick handwriting and handed it to me. I read poetry and, remembering, silently returned them to her. “Today is such an early autumn,” Anna Andreyevna said loudly, and, striking a match, burned the paper over the ashtray. It was a ceremony: hands, a match, an ashtray - a ceremony beautiful and woeful. ”

Chukovskaya L. K., "Notes on Anna Akhmatova." Instead of a preface (excerpt). June - July 1966 Moscow

In 1989 , the first volume of Notes began by printing in the journal Neva. In 1993 , the journal published the second volume (No. 4–9), and then put forward “Notes” for the State Prize , which Lidia Chukovskaya received in the summer of 1995 six months before her death. During the author’s lifetime, only the first volume came out as a separate book in Russia (M .: Book, 1989). Two other publications in Russia (Kharkov: Folio, 1996. T.1 and T.2 and M .: Soglasie, 1997. T.1-3) were printed only posthumously. Having received wide acclaim among literary critics and admirers of Akhmatova’s work, Notes are considered the best memoir-documentary work about Anna Andreevna. So, V. Nepomniachtchi wrote:

“The feeling that I see everything with my own eyes, hear with my own ears, know a long time ago what I never knew, and personally know people whom I knew only by hearsay, almost never left me. In this sense, this is a real drama in front of me, but not played out in the theater, even the most amazing one, but taking place in life, “today, here, now” - and, perhaps, with myself too. You do not just record, you resume life, and I understand again and again — or rather, I don’t understand, but I feel — the miracle of the word, the mysticism of the word. The image of Anna Akhmatova that confronts me, in terms of liveliness, tangibility, volume, depth, drama, I can safely compare (in literary terms) with the best achievements of Russian literature ” ^[1] .