К ВОПРОСУ О ФАУСТОВСКОЙ ТОПИКЕ В «ПОЛНОЧНЫХ СТИХАХ» АННЫ АХМАТОВОЙ

Abstract

This essay examines Anna Akhmatova’s lyric cycle “Midnight Poems” (“Polnochnye stikhi”, 1963–1965) as a textual space where Faustian motifs and allusions intersect with Shakespearean and other intertexts associated with erotic, oneiric, and thanatological motifs. It explores the polygenic nature of the “Midnight Poems” cycle, in which Goethe’s “Faust” (as well as texts by Valery, Eliot, Annensky, Pasternak and others) became for Akhmatova one of those “filters” of world literature, through which themes and images of Shakespeare got into her poetry. The context of the interpretation is also broadened by introduction of selected writings from Akhmatova’s notebooks and lyrics, where Goethe’s characters appear (for example, Goethe’s Margaret as one of the “mirrors” of Akhmatova’s lyrical heroine; the selected Christian topics of “Faust”, etc.). In this way, the direction of a comparative analysis of Akhmatova’s cycle in the context of Russian-German literary ties is outlined.