A. Akhmatova. Autograph manuscript of eight poems (1913-1917) written out for Salomea Andronikova, 1965

AKHMATOVA, ANNA
Autograph manuscript of eight poems (1913-1917), written out in a notebook for Salomea Andronikova, signed with a monogram at the end, London, 14 June 1965

inscribed at the beginning "Darling Salomea Andronikova...from me, 14 June 1965, London"), and at the end ("written down in London for you Salome" [translations]), in green ink, comprising

1) 'Tam tyen' moya ostalas' i toskyet' ("There my shadow remained and yearns") [cf Stikhotvoreniya 1977, p.121], (1917)
2) 'Vybrala sama ya dolyu' ("I chose myself a share"), [p.116], (1915)
3) 'Iz pamyati tvoyey ya vynu etot den' ("I'll take this day out of your memory"). [p.120], (4 April 1915 Tsarskoye Selo)
4) 'ne ottogo l', uydya ot legkosti proklyatoy' ("Is it because, having departed from the lightness of the damned"), [p.179], (January 1917)
5)'Nye budem pit’ iz odnogo stakana' ("We shall not sip from the same glass”), [p.61], (1913)
6) 'V to vremya ya gostila na zemlye ("At that time I was visiting the earth"), on pages 12-20, [p.323], (Autumn 1913)
7) 'Stikhi o peterburgye' I and II ("Poems about St Petersburg"), [p.77], (1913)
8) 'O, yest’ nepovtorimye slova' ("O, there are words that cannot be repeated"), [p.29], (Winter 1916 Sevastopol’)
24 pages, 12mo (c.15 x 9.5cm), paginated by the author (1-15 & 17-25, without any page 16), in a ruled notebook, many blanks, black cloth, browning to margins, occasionally somewhat faint, wear to top of spine

These poems were all composed during the time that Akhmatova was close to Salomea Andronikova (1888-1982), in the last years before the Revolution. A celebrated Georgian beauty of the "Silver Age" of Russian culture, Salomea was immortalized in the poems of Akhmatova and Mandelshtam ("Tristia") and in paintings by Boris Grigoriev and others. She had come to St Petersburg whilst young, married a tea merchant and opened a salon, which Akhmatova and Mandeshtam frequented, until fleeing Russia in 1917. She lived in Paris and New York, before settling in London in 1947. Akhmatova renewed their friendship in 1965, when she came to London to accept a doctorate from the University of Oxford, marking their reunion by writing out these poems from their salad days in the years 1913-1917.

LITERATURE:
Anna Akhmatova, Stikhotvoreniya i poemi [Poems], edited by V.M. Zhirmunsky with an introduction by A.A. Surkov (Leningrad: Soviet Writer, 1977)

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