White Night (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Anna Andreyevna Gorenko
- First Published: 1912
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Despair, Hope, Reality, Depression, mental, Loneliness, Joy or sorrow, Winter, Snow, Sleep, Night
The Poem
“White Night” is a short poem of twelve lines in three four-line stanzas. The title, an oxymoron, seems to bear little upon the drama of the narrative, but can be explained symbolically in terms of “white,” often associated in Anna Akhmatova’s writing with winter snow, which brings with it a meaning of loss of memory or death, and “night,” a reference point to both time, another of Akhmatova’s recurrent themes, and the oncoming fall of night for the speaker. “White Night,” then, would be a time of loss, of a remembrance of a reality fading into the...
[The entire page is 1505 words long]
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