Stages Of Grieving In Anna Akhmatova's Requiem

Requiem is about Anna Akhmatova going through stages of grieving over her son being imprisoned and later killed by the NKVD, the soviet secret police. She experiences the different stages of grieving. In this particular section she is confronting death and accepting the fact that it is inevitable for her son as well as herself. It is as if she is welcoming it upon herself as she gives up hope for a different outcome. In this piece Akhmatova, a Russian poet, is attempting to create a memorial in a time where speaking against the government was punishable by prison and/or death. Her work was published first in Munich, Germany, without her permission, and then in Russia. A Requiem is a Christian religious ceremony for a dead person, but Akhmatova was writing about her son who had not yet been killed, but she wanted to make sure
She even goes as far as listing the possible forms that death may come in for her such as, “burst in a gas shell or, like a gangster, steal in with a length of pipe, or poison me with typhus fumes. Or be that fairy tale you’ve dreamed up” (572 lines 10-13). She has experienced so much pain and suffering throughout this process of losing loved ones and losing her son is the last straw for her. She is ready to give up because the burden of carrying all of this pain is too heavy for her to bear any longer. The grief she and others alike feel is so powerful that even nature can feel it but the antagonist, the prisons holding many loved ones, feels nothing as she states, “Mountains bow down to this grief, Mighty rivers cease to flow, But the prison gates hold firm, And behind them are the “prisoners’ burrows” And mortal woe” (568, lines 14-18). The only ones that seem to find peace are the many who can finally rest after death has taken them. They are “the ones who smiled” (569 line 17), the ones free of suffering any