“The quiet Don bears quiet flood”: the Don's images in A.A. Akhmatova's poem “Requiem”

Researches have always been interested in a question why in Leningrad poem “Requiem” the image of the Don appears in the lullaby “The quiet Don bears quiet flood”. According to memoirs by E. Gerstain, Akhmatova explained it by her son's (Lev Gumilev's) life - his expeditions to the Don and his favorite novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” by M. Sholokhov. However, commentators did not trust this evidence given by the author of memoirs and offered their own versions. They supposed that there is a connection of the Don's image, which appears in the poem, either with A.S. Pushkin's poem “The Prisoner of the Caucasus”, or with O. Mandel'shtam's biography and his exile to Voronezh, or with poetry by N. Gumilev and A. Blok. The author of the paper suggests readers to believe A. Akhmatova. It was her son's life (not only his arrest, but also facts from his biography, his occupation) that became the closest context for the poem. The genre of lullaby is an evidence of this fact. Among folk lullabies there are songs which tell about mother's inner world and her worries, feelings. They are called “poems of motherhood”. In the poem A. Akhmatova creates this “maternal” motif of lullabies and it is addressed to her suffering son. The peculiar image in the lullaby - “the crescent in a cocked cap on head” - points to L.N. Gumilev's occupation. Everyone who is acquainted with Cossack culture recognizes here its specific historic-cultural realities. It is noticed that in Cossack folklore they respect the crescent and it collocates with “infant” theme of the lullaby. One of the Cossack's distinguishing features is a special way of wearing hats - they wear one's hat on one side. It is recorded both in Cossacks' folk and in author's songs. L. Gumilev started to be interested in Cossacks during his expeditions to the Don in 1935 and in 1936 years. The head of the expedition and L. Gumilev's teacher was M.I. Artamonov, the author of the book “History of the Khazars”. In this book the connection between Khazars and Cossacks was firstly set. This theme was developed in L. Gumilev's book “The Discovery of Khazaria”, where Cossacks were called descendants of Brodnicis, and they in their turn were called descendants of Khazars. Akhmatova came back to this theme in 1946 in the poem “With local scum in the ditch…”. This poem can relate to Sholokhov's “And Quiet Flows the Don” - L. Gumilev's favorite novel. Like in the novel by Sholokhov, here she talks about dissociation and war against one's own nation. So, that was the way how L. Gumilev's expeditions, his arrests, favorite novel, M. Sholokhov, mother's destiny and her poem “Requiem” became intertwined. Even one deeply personal part from this poem shows how Akhmatova's lyrics turn into epos, into a story about nations' fates.