Nikolsky, S. A. Voice and Silence. Anna Akhmatova

Abstract: One of the features of Russian poetry of the XXth century is a different attitude to the relation between voice and silence compared to what it was in Russian classical literature. In the XIXth century people were silent but kept ‘the word within themselves’ as Russian writers thought. In the XXth century people became absolutely voiceless. Was is a consequence of a ‘long historical slavery’ Alexander Herzen warned about or a result of Bolshevik transformation of the Russian world based on totalitarian grounds? Voice and silence as an expression of the national spirit are studied by the author of the article by using the methodology of ‘understanding and compassion discovery of the internal tendencies and singularity’ (Semyon Frank’s quotation). As a result, the phenomenon of Ann Akhmatova’s poetry is being studied as a result of the collective silence and collective talking of the Poet and the People. By comparing Akhmatova’s poems with the poetry of Osip Mandelstam and the prose of Andrey Platonov from this point of view, the author of the article defines the common features and the differences that have never been mentioned by other researchers.

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