Россия и Запад

И выходят из обители,Ризы древние отдав.Чудотворцы и святители,Опираясь на клюки.Серафим — в леса Саровские

Стадо сельское пасти,Анна — в Кашин, уж не княжити,Лен колючий теребить.

The figure of the Mother of God offers a transition to Akhmatova’s ensuing biblical poems that bring alive three Old Testament women characters: «The Mother of God sees them off, / Wraps her son in a scarf, / An old beggar’s one / Dropped by the Lord’s porch»[342]. In «Lamentation» we see that Akhmatova is already moving from her earlier conscribed role as «poet of the private chamber» into the public sphere[343]

. This milestone is best captured in «Lot’s Wife», written 1922–1924, in which Akhmatova foregrounds the wife. Lot’s wife is pictured following her husband and an angel away from Sodom, when she starts to feel anxious:

But uneasiness shadowed his wife and spoke to her:

Но громко жене говорила тревога:Не поздно, ты можешь еще посмотретьНа красные башни родного Содома,На площадь, где пела, на двор, где пряла,

На окна пустые высокого дома,Где милому мужу детей родила.

The poet then speaks up for this minor, almost non-existent, Old Testament figure:

Кто женщину эту оплакивать будет?Не меньшей ли мнится она из утрат?

Лишь сердце мое никогда не забудетОтдавшую жизнь за единственный взгляд[344].

«Lot’s Wife» is often read as an allegory for Akhmatova’s sorrow at the loss of her vanished world of St. Petersburg, in which, as she would put it in Requiem, she was the «merry sinner». More importantly, Akhmatova infuses the single famous line from Genesis 19:26 («But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt») with the pain of losing a beloved and happy home. The poem’s real strength comes from Akhmatova’s complex reading of the lesson of Luke 17:32–33, which derives from the story of Lot’s wife: «Remember Lot’s wife. Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it». As a poet sympathetic to the suffering of Lot’s wife, Akhmatova is at once saving and losing her own life. On one hand, she refuses to «save» herself by leaving Russia — in contrast to Lot and his wife, who did leave Sodom — to live a more secure life abroad. On the other, she insists on mourning the loss of her cultural home in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg and preserving it in memory in a poem that is now a classic of Russian poetry. It is worth pointing out parenthetically that after 1917 until the 1950s Akhmatova had no actual home of her own but camped out with various friends, spouses, and lovers[345]. In thus «losing» her life, Akhmatova did preserve it in the annals of great poetry.

To convey the impression these poems made on the people who heard them at a time, in which Scripture was forced inexorably into oblivion, we recall the words of the great memoirist and friend to both Akhmatova and Pasternak, Lidiya Chukovskaya The Bible, she wrote in her memoirs, was «dead to me — but Akhmatova’s „Biblical Verses“: „Lot’s Wife“… resurrect the Bible [Bibliiu voskreshaiut]»[346]. In contrast, in 1924, when the poems appeared, the not very approving Formalist critic, Iurii Tynianov wrote that in these poems «the Bible, which used to lie on her table, an accessory to the room, has become the source of her imagery»[347]. In his view, Akhmatova’s poetry thereby became tendentious and flat.