“A Flash of Consciousness in the Unconsciousness of Days”: Anna Akhmatova’s Prophetic Gift

Abstract

This study focuses on From Sketches (1959), a little-known poem of Anna Akhmatova’s later work that has received no literary commentary. The fragment fits into some of the poet’s known poetic and prose predictions and is also correlated with the image of Cassandra that accompanied Akhmatova throughout her creative life. Referring to some of the poet’s memoirs and autobiographical prose, as well as to materials from the author’s notebooks, it is possible to discover some overlaps that indicate, on the one hand, the writer’s consistent strategy (from prediction to the terrible ability to draw upon misfortune), and, on the other hand, the integrity of the image of time / the end of time that is formed in Akhmatova’s notes: both in the work on variants of poetic lines, and in the secret writing of notebooks. At present, there are several versions of the poem, written at different times, some of which have a title and some of which do not, and are characterised by major and minor discrepancies. A comparative textual analysis of the poetic variations testifies to the poet’s search for increasingly powerful and precise means of describing the approach of an apocalyptic catastrophe. Despite the intonational similarity of The Running of Time, the ‘sketch’ in question appears never to have been incorporated by the poet as a separate stanza into a cycle or larger text. The study shows that the poem, highlighted by a poetic and prosaic context, reveals one of the key features of the poetics of the unfinished, typical of A. Akhmatova’s later artistic thinking. The dialogical nature and ‘semantic valence’ of Akhmatova’s poetry, and the emergence of new meanings, are stimulated by the ‘passage of time’ and are actualised when disasters and difficulties occur, each time helping to uncover the hidden visionary layers of Akhmatova’s poetry.