Contemporaries Anna Akhmatova was aware of the chances of the Nobel prize – Moskovsky Komsomolets

the Author of the “Requiem” was nominated as a candidate two years in a row

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According to the documents published by the Swedish Committee in connection with the lapse of time, the number of candidates for the award of the Nobel prize for literature in 1966 was, among others, Anna Akhmatova, Konstantin Paustovsky, and Vladimir Nabokov. Then their candidate was offered a professorship of Slavic languages the University of Gothenburg Gunnar Jacobsson and Roman Jakobson. However, the award was given to the other candidates, and Akhmatova and is deleted from the list of applicants in connection with her death in March 1966.

photos: Natalia Muslinkina

According to the rules of the Nobel Committee, information about candidates is kept secret for 50 years – for example, last year it was reported that Anna Akhmatova was in the list of contenders for the award in 1965. However, this information is not entirely secret – according to the testimony of contemporaries, Anna Andreevna allowed such a thought in 1965. Wrote about it in his diaries Lydia Chukovskaya:

“– In the newspaper “Monde”, – said Anna Andreyevna in a quiet voice printed my biography. To my surprise, all true to the last comma. And ends with the words that this man – you know whom I mean? – guess: the prize of this year should be awarded to the author of the “Requiem”. He was given only out of fear that if you give Akhmatova, do not repeat the story of Zhivago?”.

Then Anna Akhmatova was referring to Mikhail Sholokhov – the message that he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature, was published in “Literaturnaya Gazeta” in October 1965.

In 1966, no one has to know whether Akhmatova informed about their chances of prize – poet, died in March, causing its candidate withdrew (posthumous Nobel prize is not awarded). Meanwhile, it is known that the work of Boris Pasternak, who in 1958 was awarded the Nobel prize for literature, but refused the award because of the reactions that it caused in the Soviet Union, Anna Akhmatova was critical – it says the same Lydia Chukovskaya, who was a friend of both writers.

“She started talking about the novel again explained why the novel fails.

- Boris fell into myself. And the novel is bad, in addition to landscapes. In all fairness, it’s Gogol’s failure is the second volume of “Dead souls”!… because in such a brutally difficult position he put his family and his companions.

maybe she’s right. But today I do not care about this objective truth, I hated to feel the coldness of this right,” Chukovskaya wrote in his diaries in October 1958. However, she notes that empathy Akhmatova fell into disgrace Pasternak must be beyond doubt – regardless of the critics works – and then, in October 1958, Akhmatova was among the first to volunteer to go to the country for Pasternak to Express your support.

In turn, Anatoly Naiman in his memoirs about the literary Russian of the mid-century, notes that Pasternak “after the global scandal of “Doctor Zhivago” and Nobel prize found themselves in the same position hunted outcast, in which Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova came decades before. Praise of the West and the sympathy of friends has been a comfort does not amount to malicious abuse of Newspapers and radio, real threatened with deportation from the country.” It is, inter alia, on the decision of the Central Committee “On the journals “Zvezda” and “Leningrad”, which has been subjected to sharp criticism the work of Zoshchenko and Akhmatova.

However, as he wrote in his works about Anna Akhmatova British poet Elaine Feinstein, Anna Andreevna allowed to compare two of the persecution that occurred with a difference in ten years, and not in favor of the Nobel laureate. “For its part, Akhmatova could not compare their fate with that of parsnip. Chukovskaya, she was saying that “compared to what he was doing with me and, of course, the story of Boris – the battle of the butterflies”. Akhmatova’s son was in prison, and the sons of Pasternak’s quite safe,” he reasoned, British poet.

Now, 50 years after the death of Akhmatova, writer and literary critic Dmitry Bykov told “MK” that the timely awarding of the Nobel prize poet could put the point in many discussions about her work, but the actual chances of it was not so much.

– is Unlikely to be a prize indeed would give Akhmatova in 1966, nobody would be two consecutive years to award it to Soviet authors. But this option was not a secret in Europe, it was discussed, and Akhmatova herself was in the loop. However, it is well remembered what happened in 1958, Boris Pasternak, and perhaps waiting for some “signal” that the Nobel prize will not hit Akhmatova as seriously. I think that if she had lived longer for several years, then she would have all the chances to receive the award – because, as you know, the Nobel prize is awarded for humanization, for the totality of merits, and this Akhmatova certainly not inferior to Sholokhov. And if it really happened, the reward would put a logical point in the dialogue of literary critics who continue to debate about whether to consider her chamber only a poet or not, and finally secured her place in the history of Russian literature, — shared his thoughts of the Bulls.