"I learned how faces fall,
How terror darts from under eyelids,
How suffering traces lines
Of stiff cuneiform on cheeks,
How locks of ashen-blonde or black
Turn silver suddenly,
Smiles fade on submissive lips
And fear trembles in a dry laugh.
And I pray not for myself alone,
But for all those who stood there with me
In cruel cold, and in July’s heat,
At that blind, red wall."
the suffering of russian artists under stalin is something that really hasn't been fully exposed. if they were allowed to live, most couldn't be published. most died or had loved ones that died. i remember david schatz, a russian professor at new college who taught seminars in gogol & modern russian literary theory, said the poets ended up coding their poems(like the gay decadent poets of the fin de siecle)so that they could still criticize stalin w/o anyone one but the ones in the know realizing it.
akhmatova outlived stalin & saw her poems read & praised worldwide. that didn't happen very often.
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