Anna Akhmatova
In Our Time
00:00
The Autobiography of Ahmaterva
How autobiographical is it, or why does it seem autobiographical? Perhaps you could read a little bit in Russian to delight our listeners. Give me a second. There's a prose forward which describes her standing in the prison queues in Leningrad for 17 months along with other women. She says, I can't even see, this can't be me. The suffering is too great for me to do. It must be someone else. But what it's about is the breakdown of personality. And so whether it's Ahmaterva doesn't really matter because everyone's personality is compromised and they lose integrity. In the end they lose a sense of self.
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