Our Notes & References

The first edition in book form of Akhmatova’s famous autobiographical poem.

This long poem, written in 1914, first appeared in the magazine Apollon in 1915, and represents a summing-up of Akhmatova’s early manner. Akhmatova was inspired by Blok’s ‘Italian Poems’ in Russkaia Mysl of 1914 and referenced one of these poems in the first lines of U samogo moria. Blok wrote to her in 1916, congratulating her and saying that after reading U samogo moria he ‘felt again that he loved poetry’.

The action of this autobiographical poem takes place on the shores of the Black Sea, in the Crimea, near Kherson. Writing it, Akhmatova claimed, “that I bid farewell to my Chersonese youth, to the ‘wild girl’ of the beginning of the century, feeling the iron step of war”. Recalling the careless pleasures of youth and its romantic daydreams, by the time it was issued as a book Akhmatova had however grown into the deeply tragic poet we now celebrate.

Provenance

From the estate of Ksenia Muratova (1940-2019), a descendant of the celebrated art historian Pavel Muratov; Ksenia was herself a noted art historian, Professor Emerita of Art History at Rennes 2 University in France, and founder of the Pavel Muratov International Center of Studies in Rome.

Bibliography

Kilgour 6; Lesman 137; Rosanov 2062; Tarasenkov p. 25; Turchinskii p. 33.