The “echo” of Edgar Poe in Anna Akhmatova’s “Poem without a Hero” and poems later period

Abstract

The subject of this research is the hidden allusions to the novels of Edgar Poe in Anna Akhmatova’s “Poem without a Hero” and poems later period. The research material contains the framework text of the “Poem without a Hero” – the set of epigraphs to different parts of the poem, authorial commentaries, history of used and discarded epigraphs at various stages of revision of the poem, text of the “Poem without a Hero”, as well as the author's “Prose about the Poem” and a number of poems created during the work on the “Poem without a Hero” and afterwards. A. Akhmatova was interested in the works of Edgar Poe, and researched the references to Edgar Poe in the works of N. S. Gumilyov. The article employs comprehensive methodology, such as comparative-historical and biographical approaches, as well as intertextual and hermeneutic methods for determination of literary allusions and interpretation of meanings hidden by the author. The main conclusion lies in revelation of the profoundly concealed connection of the “Poem without a Hero” with the range of narratives of Edgar Poe, united by the cross-cutting motif of being buried alive and coming back from the dead: “The Black Cat”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “Morella”, “Ligeia”, “Berenice”, “The Oval Portrait”. This gives a new perspective on the literary characters that one after another appeared to the lyrical heroine in plot of the poem; and explains the fragment of one of the most mysterious works in Russian literature of the XX century, and some other poems of Anna Akhmatova.