A phenomenological interpretation of Akhmatova's Requiem

What is it about?

The poet Marina Tsvetaeva, close friend to Akhmatova, once wrote to Rilke, "You are the very incarnation of poetry." The present article is a moving piece written in homage to a very strong voice and moving artwork—one that will hopefully inspire sympathetic resonances upon many readers.

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Photo by Brooks Leibee on Unsplash

Photo by Brooks Leibee on Unsplash

Why is it important?

One of the more welcome aspects of the present article is its pervasively literary, non-theoretical focus and cast. Various writer's theoretical insights are conveyed essayistically, we may say--rather than affixed wholesale--in order to amplify central points in this article about a Russian poet's heartrending masterwork about suffering, loss, and survival. It constitutes, thereby, a refreshing change from the way in which academic writers typically proceed such that that the article's fundamentally literary integrity is by and large underscored and retained. Also, none of the usual contemporary, often timeworn, suspects among the authors' list of references. This refreshing difference is a much-needed corrective to the repetition compulsion that tends to turn poetry into prose on this side of the pond and, indeed, elsewhere as well.