Reading between the lines: '...A ia molchu', Akhmatova's silent-speaking elegy.

Abstract

This article is concerned with the spatial, visual dimension of Akhmatova's poetry and the ways in which she draws attention to the aesthetics of the material text or uses space on the page in order to convey her ideas graphically and to amplify the discursive meaning. The discussion considers the role this visual dimension plays in postmodernist poetics, and culminates in a reading of the last, apparently incomplete, elegy in Akhmatova's cycle of `Severnye elegii', `. . . A ia molchu'. It argues that Akhmatova deliberately gives this text a fragmentary, unfinished appearance, in order to provide a visual analogue for the threatened status of her poetry and to reflect upon her own marginal status in Soviet culture.