Akhmatova was born in 1899, well-educated, of a noble, land-owning family. Evening was published in 1912, when she was twenty-three. It inaugurated a new epoch in Russian poetry. Each poem condenses into a few lucid stanzas the emotional depth one might expect in a psychological novel. Nothing like it had ever been seen, in Russia or elsewhere. It sold out edition after edition, and became the Bible of Russian lovers.
The book found many imitators among literary ladies. Told, “You have given Russian womankind a voice!” Akhmatova replied, “Yes, but now how do I get them to shut up?”
Akhmatova had a gift for depicting physical things in a way that carried psychological meaning. But she was not simply manufacturing metaphors. Her images have a photographic precision that makes them too concrete to be simply symbols. And they are not photographs, because they capture not a moment, but a narrative. They have a momentum. Akhmatova’s imagery is cinematic.