23 June
Born in 1889 – Anna Akhmatova, Ukrainian-Russian poet.
Akhmatova was associated with the Acmeist school of poets, about which Mandelshtam wrote, “The artist’s proudest aim is to exist. He desires no other paradise than ‘being’, and when others speak of ‘reality’ he only smiles, wryly, knowing the infinitely more convincing reality of art. The mathematician carrying out a complex mathematical operation fills us with a degree of awe. But all too often we lose sight of the fact that the poet raises that complexity to the tenth power, and that a work humble in appearance often deceives us as to the enormously condensed reality that it possesses…
How persuasive Bach’s music is! What powers of proof! Proof after proof to the end…”
A poem by Akhmatova:
