Article

Name: «They’re not My Kind…» Anna Akhmatova and Natalia Krandievskaya

Authors: Olga E. Rubinchik

Ivan Limbach Publishing House, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation

In the section Literary Life of the Plot

Abstract: N. V. Krandievskaya (1888–1963; her last name became Tolstaya after her second marriage with a writer А. N. Tolstoy) was a Russian poet, the author of three books of verse published during her life (1913, 1919, 1922), an outstanding collection of poems dedicated to the Siege of Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and a memoir. The article is dedicated to one of the longstanding poetical conversations between Natalia Krandievskaya and Anna Akhmatova. In July 1922 Akhmatova wrote a poem “They’re not my kind who left the land / To enemies and plundering...”. The poem can be called a “late reply” or “delayed response” to Krandievskaya, and an “urgent answer” to other addressees, among whom there was Aleksey Tolstoy first of all. A 1913 collection of poems by Krandievskaya includes the following one: “They’re not my kind who meet the life, / As like a dream...”. In this poem, the author speaks about her creative independence from two mainstreams in literature of that time: an emerging acmeism and a seasoned symbolism. Being an acmeist, Akhmatova treated the poem with a strong sense of offence. Besides, criticism of 1910 contributed to the origin of the rivalry between these two young poets. From summer 1918 until summer 1923, Krandievskaya stayed out of Soviet Russia with Tolstoy and their children, from October 1921 they were in Germany. When the publishing of the “Nakanune” newspaper, which actively advocated for coming back to Soviet Russia, started in March 1922 in Berlin, Tolstoy headed its literature department, and then he became an editor of its Sunday supplement. Two poems by Akhmatova were published on the first page of the first newspaper’s supplement on April 30. In response, an open letter by Akhmatova was published on August 1, 1922 in the “Notes on Literary Life” in Petrograd magazine, in which she spoke out against the publication of her poems without her knowledge and consent. The reason was an improper political role of the “Nakanune” newspaper and some Tolstoy’s misdeeds. Thus, the verse “I will not give them my poems” in the poem published in July 1922 and the answer of Akhmatova to the “Nakanune” newspaper in the “Notes on Literary Life” are directly interrelated. The similarity of the verse by Akhmatova with the poem by Krandievskaya suggests that the head of the arrow was aimed at the Tolstoy – Krandievskaya partnership first of all. However, the text by Akhmatova has many more addressees, and its meaning spreads far beyond the boundaries of a simple war of words. It’s “a poetic declaration on behalf of those who decided to stay, not evading a single blow” (R. Timenchick).

Keywords: Anna Akhmatova, Natalia Krandievskaya, Aleksey Tolstoy, Russian poetry, “They’re not my kind who left the land…”, Russians abroad, Russian Berlin, “Nakanune” newspaper

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