Burning and invisible words

A work-in-progress/experiment/short performance. I read descriptions by Lydia Chukovskaya (Soviet writer, poet, editor, publicist, memoirist and dissident) of being with the poet Anna Akhmatova in 1930s Russia, interspersed with the lines of Akhmatova’s 'Requiem'.  Speaking through the words of these two women, I suggest that the simple act of describing is a dissident force. As well as reading sections of the poem, I read details of how it was written: scribbled in fragments which were memorised by friends silently and then burnt.

Akhmatova was one of the most significant Russian poets of the twentieth century. While she was alive, however, she was subjected to scathing critical attacks and expelled from the Soviet Writers' Union. Her work was condemned and censored by Stalinist authorities but she notably chose not to emigrate, and remain in Russia, acting as witness to the events around her while enduring personal loss, extreme poverty and ill-health. A small circle of intimate friends dared to risk continued association with her. During the many years that Akhmatova was silenced, she relied on these friends to memorise her poetry. One of those was Chukovskaya, who writes:

Suddenly in mid-conversation, she would fall silent, and signaling me with her eyes at the ceiling and walls, she would get a scrap of paper and a pencil; then she would loudly say something very mundane, ‘Would you like some tea?’ [… ] then she would cover the scrap in hurried handwriting and pass it to me. I would read the poems, and having memorized them, would hand them back to her in silence. ‘How early the autumn came this year,’ Anna Andreevna would say loudly [to foil anyone listening in] and, striking a match would burn the paper over an ashtray.

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The Akhmatova Journals, Volume 1 (1938-41)