BELLA AHMADULINA – THE BURNING PEARL OF THE SILVER AGE

In the late 1950s, when the popular passion for poetry was experiencing a new surge, a fragile figure of a powerful poet Bella Akhmadulina appeared on the literary horizon. She became one of the brightest representatives of the “Sixties.” The new generation of poets has played a significant role in the formation of public identity. It was Bella Akhmadulina who picked up the literary baton of her great predecessors and was able to restore the almost disintegrated connection of poetic generations.

Painful childhood
The Akhmadulina family belonged to the elite of the Soviet era. Her father held a leading position in the customs department, his mother worked as a translator in the KGB. Bella was born in Moscow on April 10, 1937. International blood flowed in her veins: her mother was from a family of Russified Italians, and her father — a Tatar. Passion for mothers Spain was embodied in the name of her daughter, for whom poetess Bella Akhmadulina was picked up by the royal name Isabella. Bella’s parents disappeared all day at work, so the grandmother was in charge of bringing up the future poetess.

The war broke out when little Bella was in kindergarten. Akhmadulin and his grandmother managed to be sent to the evacuation almost at the last moment – when the enemy had already approached the capital. The road to Kazan, where the second grandmother lived, was long and difficult. Relatives are not welcome, they felt a burden. And the constant hunger aggravated the already fragile health of the child. Diseases are constantly attacking Bella and snatching it from their clutches of illness helped only the arrival of the mother. In 1944, the evacuation was over, and the girl was brought back to Moscow, where she went to the first class.

She somehow went wrong with the school at once – Bella didn’t like it there, and she had been in the class very rarely for three years. Due to illness, the girl got used to being alone and could not adapt to the society of other children. The teacher who came back from the front and came to work at the school helped with this.

Bella Akhmadulina’s selfless voice
At school, Bella first demonstrated her poetic talent, then began attending classes in a literary circle, and in 1955 her poems were published in the journal October. There were also those who immediately called her works banal and irrelevant. Poetess Bella Akhmadulina However, an aspiring poetess won the hearts of readers surprisingly quickly. Her poetry was not politicized and had no keen social overtones. Even now it is difficult to explain how these pure poems, created from images and complex phrases, could collect thousands of stands of stadiums. Bella began to create at a time when the need for the beautiful and at the same time incomprehensible became acute. Perhaps that is why she hypnotized space with her voice, which sounded from the stage, and then was recognized by chance as the surviving pearl of the Silver Age of poetry.

The young poet, and later the first husband of Bella Akhmadulina, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, recalled how he saw her poems for the first time in the October magazine and was struck by touching lines: “Having dropped the head on the lever, the handset is sound asleep.” He immediately contacted the editors of the journal and inquired about Akhmadulina’s identity. He was informed that this tenth-year student from a literary association was about to become a student at the Literary Institute. Yevtushenko hurried to the lesson in the circle of young writers, where he heard Bella’s selfless voice. Then he compared it with the sound of a stretched vibrating string.

Loyalty to Pasternak
The family wanted Bella to become a journalism student at Moscow State University, but Akhmadulina failed miserably at the exams. She got a question about the newspaper Pravda on the ticket. Poeta Bella Akhmadulina She didn’t know what to say because she had never read it and honestly admitted it. The case, of course, was unprecedented for that time. Then my mother advised Bella to get a job in the newspaper “Metrostroeviets.” Not only the first articles by Akhmadulina, but also her poetry were published on her pages.

Bella entered the Literary Institute in 1956. When Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize, a real scandal broke out in the educational institution and behind its walls. The writer was called a traitor, teachers and students easily signed the letters of accusation, but Bella could not imagine that she would ever be able to do that. She was expelled from the institute for refusing to sign accusations against Pasternak, but the official reason was nevertheless a failure to follow the theory of Marxism-Leninism.

Miracle named Bella Akhmadulina
In 1959, when difficult times began for Bella, she was supported by Sergei Smirnov, the editor-in-chief of the Literary Gazette. He suggested that Akhmadulina become a poetess Bella Akhmadulina as a freelance correspondent for a newspaper in Irkutsk. There, Bella created the story “On Siberian Roads,” reflecting her travel impressions. The work was published in the Literary Gazette along with a whole series of poems about the Siberian region and its amazing people. Sergei Smirnov helped Bella recover at the Literary Institute when he sharply raised the issue of supporting young talents in the Writers Union.