Avvakum -Orthodox priest and author of first known Russian autobiography. Throughout his memoirs he describes his violent struggles with the Great Schism of the seventeenth century within the Russian Orthodox Church. Avvakum was ultimately a spiritual purist and fought with fervor and fiery faith to protect the ancient traditions, prayers, and methods of worship within the Church. His opposition also desired to purify the Church- by correcting long-standing "errors" in translations of texts and ritual which the Russian people had been using for centuries. But Avvakum and his supporters vehemently resisted any foreign influences, be it artistic or theological. Avvakum believed that the Russian Orthodox Church was the one true Christian faith, and threatening its purity would also threaten Holy Russia, the Great Mother of all Russians. Thundering ascetic dictates and insisting on fanatical Orthodox claims, his memoirs a unique perspective on the Russian Orthodox Church's history. Avvakum is essential as it the first autobiography. The way men express themselves through art reveals to posterity something of that period. The autobiography is simply known by the priest's name : Avvakum.
Fyodor Abramov -"realistic portrayal of the hard life and the degenerating moral values of the Russian countryside", (The Russians, Smith).
Bella Akhmadulina -(1937- ) Poet. I closely identify with her perception and creative instinct, as she is revealed in the following excerpt: "[An]intimacy with ordinary miracles is something which isolates Akhmadulina, and she is intensely aware of this isolation. Her most extended metaphor is the long poem "A fable of rain" ("Skazka o dozhde"). In a drought-parched town she is the only person soaked with rain, in fact she has her own personal shower following her about. Like a monkey or a small child, it will not leave her alone. She is both impatient with it and attached to it. It embarasses her especially when she has to visit the apartment of a society hostess. She bids it remain outside, but then, lonely without it, she summons it in desperation, causing ineviteble havoc to the elegant interior. Her inspiration, her intense relationship with nature, can only cause her trouble in a soceity insensitive to such qualities. Unlike Yevtushenko, however, she does not proudly proclaim the poet's mission: rtaher she is semi-apologetic about it. In other poems, such as "A chill" ("Oznob"), she sees it as an illness of which she both does and does not wish to be cured.
As the extended rain image implies, Akhmadulina senses in natural objects an intense life of their own. in "Night" ("Noch"), as she sits at her desk seized with paralysis before a blank paper, each object beseeches her:
Its soul longs to be sung
And without fail by my voice.
Even in her attacks of "dumbness", she is aware of what she calls "the eternal dialogue between nameless things and the soul which names them."
[Geoffrey Hosking, The Cambridge History of Russian Literature, 1989]
Anna Akhmatova -(1889-1966) Her poetry was established before the Revolution, and banned "unofficially" afterwards from 1925-1940, then for a decade after the World War II. Her direct, laconic style, labeled "Acmeism", was a serious transition from the previous literary trend, "Symbolism", and helped usher in a new modern style of poetry for a new century of poets. She was denounced in 1946 during a literary purge under Stalin's direction. There is an interesting examination of her at the Messengers of Light website, entitled Temple of Anna Akhmatova. The following excerpt concisely describes work and peronsality:
"Perhaps the acmeist goal of clear words about real matters was best achieved in the work of Anna Akhmatova (real name Gorenko, 1889-1966), who left a small body of deceptively simple poems about love, sometimes about love of country. Born near Odessa, she was broght up in Tsarskoe Selo, not far from St. Petersburg, and studied in Kiev. After marrying Gumilyov in 1910 she lived for a short time in Paris, where she got to know Modigliani, and gave birth to a son, Leo, in 1912. That same year saw the publication of her first volume of verse, Evening (Vecher), which deals exclusively with love, espeically its losses and pains. Critics have described her as presenting a woman's veiwpoint in such matters, but in fact the hopes and disappointments she records are universal experiences not peculiar to one gender or to any culture. Akhmatova's poems are modern in the sense that they do not idealize love: each love is unique in its character and brings pain when it ends, but it is never the only love or the last one. Her love lyrics are lessons in courage. Some of her other poems evoke her beloved city of St. Petersburg with its beautiful architecture and illustrious past, a city which defines her identity. A less frequent but still very important theme is that of the muse, as stern desciplinarian who deprives the poet of personal happiness for the sake of a greater reward. Each of Akhmatova's poems is a separate and complete entity. Although their subject matter is apparently wuite intimate, her oeuvre as a whoe is impersonal.
Akhmatova's next collection, IRosary (Chetki, 1941, confirmed the directions in which she was already moving. To be sure, her love poems are now somewhat complicated by a new sense of sin and guilt (she speaks of churchs and insomnia). A greater narrative tendency is observable, and many of her poems resemble moments from long and unhappy fictions. She is deliberately unemotional, and emphasizes matreial details- a glove, a tulip, popular orchestral music- which remind the reader of prose works. Her settings include subrubs, restaurants, gardens and interiors as she creates scenes with a simple aplette- mostly black and white, with an occasional stark red or yellow. She is clever in catching herself in self-deceptions, or allowing the reader to do this. She speaks of growing in wisdom, or becoming indifferent, when it is obvious to the reader that she is not."
[Geoffrey Hosking, The Cambridge History of Russian Literature, 1989]
