S. Yesenin and A. Akhmatova

Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova was born on 11 June 1889 near Odessa. Her real surname was Gorenko; «Ахматова» is her literary pen name (her great-grandmother's surname). According to the book, she learned to read from Lev Tolstoy's primer, studied at a gymnasium in Tsarskoye Selo, then entered higher courses for women in Kyiv, and later moved to St Petersburg. Her first collection «Вечер» came out in 1912, followed by «Чётки» (1914), «Белая стая» (1917), «Подорожник» (1921). In 1941, during the Second World War, she was evacuated from besieged Leningrad to Tashkent and lived there until May 1944. She wrote more than a hundred poems there, which is why people speak of the «Tashkent cycle» (this figure is the book's). Later she wrote of Tashkent that there she learned what burning heat, the shade of trees and the sound of water are, and also human kindness. In «Ташкент зацветает» the blossoming trees are compared with white, light “apparitions” that enter every courtyard, and the city suddenly grows bright; the breath of the blossoms is clearer than words. In «Я не была здесь лет семьсот» the poetess seems to have returned: nothing has changed, the sky, the stars, the wind, the mother's song are the same; her «азийский дом» is firm, there is no need to worry, she will come again. Both poems are calm and confident in mood; the first is a poem of description, the second of farewell and gratitude.