Dramatic relationships between A. A. Akhmatova and N. S. Gumilev as mirrored in her poem «I See the Faded Flag over the Customs House...» (Essays in realia and poetological comments).
Keywords:
Akhmatova, Gumilev, Petersburg, Maritime Customs House, flag, Crimea, St. Vladimir’s Cathedral, happiness, fame, decaying heartAbstract
The authors reconstruct the circumstances under which the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova wrote her poem I See the Faded Flag over the Customs House in 1912 and reveal the Petersburg and Crimean realia underlying its poetic imagery. Among the Petersburg realia are the Maritime Customs House with its special flag and Prof. D. Ott’s clinic founded in 1797 by Empress Maria Feodorovna and widely referred to as the “Imperial Maternity”. Among the Crimean realia are the suburbs of Sevastopol (with N. Tour’s estate Otrada and Dr. E. Schmidt’s mud cure clinic), the Streletskaya and Pesochnaya Bays, Chersonese and St. Vladimir’s Cathedral. New insights into the circumstances which inspired Akhmatova’s text are offered such as the birth of her son Leo and her estrangement (as well as subsequent official divorce) from Nicholas Gumilev; some other biographical details are clarified. The double addressee of the poem is proved, as well as a peculiar prophetic meaning of its final part. The historical and biographical methods are combined in the research with realia comments and in-depth poetological analysis. At the end of the article a commentary on the fragment of the poem where Chersonese is mentioned is offered.
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