Implications of Gumilev's works in poetry by А. Akhmatova

Each of Akhmatova’s poems considered in the article (Right by the Sea, Way of All the Earth, Requiem) is a unique example of expansion of a certain cultural paradigm, where the other’s words regulate and provoke many semantic processes. Reconstructing a dialogue of the two significant figures of the era, the author of the article systematizes the “layer” of Gumilev’s works receptively presented in the poems by Akhmatova. The role of the major pretext of the poem Way of All the Earth by Akhmatova - the poem by Gumilev The Lost Tram - is analyzed. The involvement of Gumilev’s text into Akhmatova’s poem brightly reveals the main concept of the poem - a paradoxical correlation of the live and dead, real and unreal, pre-sent and past, helps to recreate a complete picture of life of the era of transition, to express symbols of the border between life and death, absurdity of life. Making an attempt to realize that the image of the poet is introduced geographically into Requiem, penetrated by allusions to Gumilev’s works, the author of the article reconstructs a chain of geographical names referring to the poet’s biography: St. Petersburg, Tsarskoye Selo, the Neva, the Don, the Yenisei. It is proved that all of them are a peculiar code, a semantic key to reading a chapter or a part of the poem. New implications of Gumilev’s works, which have not been considered by researchers, come to light. It is suggested that the first attempt of Akhmatova to creatively rethink Gumilev’s text was connected with the early poem by Akhmatova Right by the Sea (1914), with Gumilev’s poem The Ship (1907) being one of its literary sources. It is shown that in each poem by Akhmatova, signs of Gumilev’s text decode Akhmatova’s works at least at two levels: biographic and literary itself, helping to comprehend more precise-ly and fully the scale of the artistic generalization created by the author, to see new accents and aspects, es-sential for reading her poetry.