Page "Anna Akhmatova" Paragraph 13

Akhmatova had a relationship with the mosaic artist and poet Boris Anrep ; many of her poems in the period are about him and he in turn created mosaics in which she is featured.

She selected poems for her third collection Belaya Staya ( White Flock ) in 1917, a volume which poet and critic Joseph Brodsky later described as writing of personal lyricism tinged with the “ note of controlled terror ”.

She later came to be memorialised by his description of her as " the keening muse ".

Essayist John Bayley describes her writing at this time as " grim, spare and laconic ".

In February 1917, the revolution started in Petersburg ( then named Petrograd ); soldiers fired on marching protestors, and others mutinied.

They looked to a past in which the future was " rotting ".

In a city without electricity or sewage service, with little water or food, they faced starvation and sickness.

Her friends died around her and others left in droves for safer havens in Europe and America, including Anrep, who escaped to England.

She had the option to leave, and considered it for a time, but chose to stay and was proud of her decision to remain.

That summer she wrote: