Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva. Musical dialogues and dissonances

The aim of the study is to determine the characteristic contrast in the use of musical motifs in the lyrical texts of Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva. The study was conducted on the basis of biographical information and poetic material with similar themes. The works of each poetess containing musical images, as well as facts testifying to their musical education and gradual introduction to the creative musical community, were analyzed separately. The comparison of biographical information, characteristic melody and musical images allows us to identify the features of poetic utterance using the characteristics of various musical genres and forms. The range of the main thematic aspects of the comparative analysis of Akhmatova’s and Tsvetaeva’s poetry includes several musical images, identical or similar in content: bell ringing, its figurative symbolism; songfulness, song, its role in Russian culture and society; piano and violin allusions. The poems of the poetesses directly related to music as such are analyzed, with special emphasis on references to Frederic Chopin’s works found in their works. The qualitative characteristics of music that determine its significance for the creative worldviews of Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva are highlighted. The use of a comparative approach helped to draw attention not only to the intonational and musical contrast, but also allowed approaching the answer to a more complex question about the original individual creative thinking of the two main poetesses of Russian literature. The conducted analysis determined both the kinship and the polar discrepancy between the figurative component of Akhmatova’s and Tsvetaeva’s poetry. As a result of the work, the author comes to the conclusion that Akhmatova directly addresses music as a muse, a friend, a higher spirit. This contrasts with Tsvetaeva’s poster speech, in which music is only a bright fragment of the sensual mosaic of the world. The central task in all the analyzed poems - awareness of the plot and the problems embedded in it - is solved in different ways. For Marina Tsvetaeva, music is “invincible rhythms”, precision, articulation, short and divided phrases separated from each other by pauses; music is an impulse that she transmits to the reader. Akhmatova, on the other hand, demonstrates a different mastery of the art of intonation. Her slow, even speech consists of dynamically stable phrases, often inseparable and always stable.