Anna Akhmatova and the Paris Note: On the Issue of Poetic Influence

Abstract

This article considers the influence of Anna Akhmatova on the poetics of the Paris Note. For the purpose of the study, the author employs the historical and literary approach referring to the lyrical systems of A. Steiger and L. Chervinskaya as they most fully embody the creative attitudes of the movement. Comparative analysis of the poems by Steiger and Chervinskaya and Akhmatova’s lyrical poetry of the 1910s — early 1920s in the context of its comprehension in Akhmatova’s lifetime criticism with an emphasis on assessments of G. Adamovich makes it possible to reveal the degree of assimilation of her poetic discoveries at the level of themes and style choices. Among these are content intimisation, dialogisation of composition, laconicism of poetic form, usage of special techniques to kindle the reader’s interest in the lyrical plot, and restraint of figurative and expressive means for the sake of enhancing the psychological impact and persuasiveness of the lyrical experience. The perception of Akhmatova’s creative experience by representatives of the Paris Note was not entirely free from Adamovich’s concepts concerning the ways of development of Russian poetry, which is why it is conceived in close connection with common acmeism attitudes and traditions of Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, and Annensky. This explains the significance of the motif of conscience for the poetic worlds under consideration. Nevertheless, given the fact that the main period of the formation and flourishing of the Paris Note happened the 1930s, its love poetry and the topic of creative work were more in demand in the work of representatives of the “unnoticed generation”, since their development is organically combined with the desire of younger Russian emigre poets of the first wave to express the life of an individual soul.