Song of the Last Meeting by Anna Akhmatova

By King Meera -
QUICK REVISION

Themes:
fate
destiny
no control over circumstances
finality
time
everything ends
grief
end of a relationship
trinity

Tone Progression:
numbness
clumsiness, shakiness
desperation
closure
indifference

Use of Nature:
cold
autumn (separation, death)
darkness (no hope)

* feminist, war, random Soviet perspectives
* reference to real-life situation 

CONTEXT:
(She met a young poet, Nikolay Gumilev, on Christmas Eve 1903, who encouraged her to write and pursued her intensely, making numerous marriage proposals from 1905. At 17 years old, in his journal Sirius, she published her first poem which could be translated asOn his hand are many shiny rings, (1907) signing it "Anna G." She soon became known in St Petersburg's artistic circles, regularly giving public readings. That year, she wrote unenthusiastically to a friend, “He has loved me for three years now, and I believe that it is my fate to be his wife. Whether or not I love him, I do not know, but it seems to me that I do.”  She married Gumilev in Kiev in April 1910; however, none of Akhmatova’s family attended the wedding. The couple honeymooned in Paris, and there she met and befriended the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.

In late 1910, she came together with poets such as Osip Mandelstam and Sergey Gorodetsky to form the Guild of Poets. It promoted the idea of craft as the key to poetry rather than inspiration or mystery, taking themes of the concrete rather than the more ephemeral world of the Symbolists. Over time, they developed the influential Acmeist anti-symbolist school, concurrent with the growth of Imagism in Europe and America. From the first year of their marriage, Gumilev began to chafe against its constraints. She wrote that he had "lost his passion" for her and by the end of that year he left on a six-month trip to Africa)


* the color yellow has a little too much significance in this poem. Find out why.
(Similar to significance of yellow in Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, perhaps?)

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