Voronezh’ and ‘Everything Is Looted’ by Anna Akhmatova
‘Voronezh’ and ‘Everything Is Looted’ are poems of loss which respond to the enormous tragedies unfolding in Russia in the first half of the twentieth century. ‘Voronezh’ is a bleak poem that looks intimately at the impact of exile on an artist. ‘Everything Is Looted’ is a more general reaction to the ravages of war and revolution on her country.
Osip Mandelstam was exiled by the Soviet authorities to Voronezh before his re-arrest and death in 1938. ‘Voronezh’ is dedicated to him. In free verse form, the poem tapers off towards the end, with two short lines to emphasize the horror of not knowing when exactly one will not live to see another sunrise. Frequent full stops punctuate the grim atmosphere, lending impact to the components of the quietly momentous scene Akhmatova describes.
Stark, literal imagery of how winter freezes the town, making everything heavy as lead, begins the poem. This suggests weight, the harsh conditions, and certainly might be allusive to the burden imposed by the Soviet authorities. The word “solid” emphasizes the totality of this freezing – it is inescapable. The subsequent triple of “trees, walls, snow” itemizes the interrelationship of town and nature, where “walls” are one with “trees” and “snow”, but all this seems “to be under glass”, possibly a literal image of light reflected off the ice but metaphorical of fragility, as if the scene might easily be shattered. It also gives a sense of the town of Voronezh and its surroundings being a kind of museum exhibit, emphasized by diction such as “glass” and “painted”. It is as if the town is already cut off from reality, from the present, and exists frozen as a kind of tableau – a chilling depiction.
This impression is enhanced by the image of “all at once the poplars, like lifted chalices/Enmesh more boisterously overhead/Like thousands of wedding guests feasting/And drinking toasts to our happiness.”, made into similes of past happiness at an imagined wedding, evoking a sense of the
Osip Mandelstam was exiled by the Soviet authorities to Voronezh before his re-arrest and death in 1938. ‘Voronezh’ is dedicated to him. In free verse form, the poem tapers off towards the end, with two short lines to emphasize the horror of not knowing when exactly one will not live to see another sunrise. Frequent full stops punctuate the grim atmosphere, lending impact to the components of the quietly momentous scene Akhmatova describes.
Stark, literal imagery of how winter freezes the town, making everything heavy as lead, begins the poem. This suggests weight, the harsh conditions, and certainly might be allusive to the burden imposed by the Soviet authorities. The word “solid” emphasizes the totality of this freezing – it is inescapable. The subsequent triple of “trees, walls, snow” itemizes the interrelationship of town and nature, where “walls” are one with “trees” and “snow”, but all this seems “to be under glass”, possibly a literal image of light reflected off the ice but metaphorical of fragility, as if the scene might easily be shattered. It also gives a sense of the town of Voronezh and its surroundings being a kind of museum exhibit, emphasized by diction such as “glass” and “painted”. It is as if the town is already cut off from reality, from the present, and exists frozen as a kind of tableau – a chilling depiction.
This impression is enhanced by the image of “all at once the poplars, like lifted chalices/Enmesh more boisterously overhead/Like thousands of wedding guests feasting/And drinking toasts to our happiness.”, made into similes of past happiness at an imagined wedding, evoking a sense of the