Anna Akhmatova's personality was phenomenal. It was not given to any woman in Russian poetry before her to express herself with such convincing, lyrical power, to speak out so independently that her voice added once and for all a special—Akhmatovan—note to the art of the Russian poetic word. Akhmatova triumphed in competition with many poets of the early twentieth century who were then regarded as leading figures in poetry and who occupied the center of the stage. Akhmatova's word did not grow dull with the years. None of the accidents of circumstance in which that word was born deadened it, killed it with the flight of time, as occurs with some poets. Countess Rostopchina, Karolina Pavlova, Iuliia Zhadovskaia, and Mirra Lokhvitskaia—all the Russian women poets of the nineteenth century were no more than undergrowth among mighty trees, among the giants of Russian poetry. Akhmatova was the first woman to rise to the heights in the writing of lyrical poetry. "I taught women to speak," she said as far back as the '30s, with reference to the unprecedentedly headlong development of female poetic creativity, which began in our century and in which the influence and example of Akhmatova were a most important factor.

From the very outset the profoundly psychological character of Akhmatova's verse did not flow in the channel of Russian Symbolism and Acmeism. Despite the passionate and high evaluation of "The Cypress Casket" … by Akhmatova, traces of lessons learned from the poetry of Innokentii Annenskii are barely detectable in her work, which took shape in an entirely independent fashion. The influence of Alexander Blok was of a purely general nature. Of course, in Akhmatova's eyes he was the highest embodiment of poetry among her contemporaries and its leading figure, and his many-faceted strophes could not but feed her thoughts. But who would dare assert that Blok was a leader she followed in poetry?

The proposition that the roots of the psychological in Anna Akhmatova's poetry were to be found in Russian prose, the Russian novel of the previous century, arose, in its general outlines, as early as the 1920s. To this day that exceedingly complex process of interaction and transformation has not been fundamentally investigated by anyone, nor has it been refuted; but it would seem that only there can an explanation of the genesis of Akhmatova's poetry be found. This in no way does away with our responsibility to take a closer and more vigilant look at older Russian poetry. Russian poetry is full of every conceivable kind of anticipation of what followed, in the matter of style as well. We also underestimate the purely psychological saturation of older Russian poetry, which often manifested itself even among lesser, secondary practitioners. But when Academician Zhirmunskii propounded his thesis that the creativity of Anna Akhmatova was the connecting link, the bridge between the Russian classics of the nineteenth century and the new art, the art of the twentieth century, Russian classical poetry was not the last thing in his mind. Pushkin's harmony, compelling one to recall the art of the ancient Greeks, hangs over Akhmatova's best work, And in this one feels her deep adherence to the legacy of the classics. But some of the cells, some grains of Akhmatova's style, can also be found in secondary poets of the past. (pp. 43-4)

[Although influenced to some degree by the poetry of the century], Akhmatova would not have been a major poet if her work had not shown traces, manifestations, of the gains made by Russian art, particularly poetry, in our century. Above all, this is a new ability to master color, hues, the ability to describe an object sparingly but expressively, to render the plastic nature of things seen; and—in intimate unity with all this—there was a new, considerably greater burden of meaning in the word, its density, its lapidary polishing. In this respect Akhmatova was an outstanding master. She developed and kept her own style while living alongside powerful poetic personalities at a time when various "schools" of poetry existed and functioned. Her characteristic rhythms alone always make Akhmatova's poetry distinguishable, identifiable in the flood of poetry written at the beginning of the century. (pp. 44-5)

Anna Akhmatova lived a long life, and her work underwent considerable evolution. In her late years, as is not rare with poets, she condemned and did not like much that she had written in her youth. Faced with the enormous social cataclysms that developed, Anna Akhmatova tried to embody a view of history in her words. The awesome tread of history was combined in her late verse with lofty ethical demands, a real judgment of the past, evidence of which is her "Poem without a Hero."… The maximalism of spirit that had long since appeared in Akhmatova became a constant feature of her poetry. (pp. 45-6)

In the difficult years of World War II, and even somewhat earlier, active civic notes could be clearly heard in Akhmatova's poetry. In her "Courage" …, written in February 1942, which was pasted up as a poster on the house walls of besieged Leningrad, one heard, as it were, the soul of the people in its wrath, defending its right to life and freedom … This was the path traced by the poet from closed literary circles and esthetic artists' cafes to the many millions of Soviet readers, to the people as a whole.

Native land: how much those words meant to this Russian poet grown gray and wise with the years, who held herself with great dignity, preserving to her very death the alertness in her light green eyes! Her talent did not age. Each new poem was fresh and bore a poetic discovery. In the phrase of Nikolai Rylenkov, her "will to self-resurrection" and profound awareness of the mission of the poet responsible to her native country and people, her humanism, were the soil that fed the marvelous creativity of Akhmatova for almost an entire half-century. The "Fountain House" in the city on the Neva, where she lived for many years, singing its granite embankments, awaits a memorial plaque in her honor. Her name is written in enduring letters in the chronicle of Russian literature. One need not doubt that Anna Akhmatova's poetry will always be needed. (p. 46)