About

Anna Akhmatova (née Gorenko; 1889, Odessa -1966, Moscow, Russia) was a Russian poet, translator, and literary critic of the Silver Age, twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature (1965 and 1966).

She learned to speak French at the age of five. Many significant milestones in her personal and professional life link her destiny to Paris: a honeymoon with her husband Goumiliov in 1910, the meeting and friendship with Amedeo Modigliani, who drew her in 1911, creating the famous series of his portraits, the publication of her first poems in the literary magazine Sirius and numerous post-war publications.

Akhmatova returned to Paris only in 1965 after enduring tragic ordeals. She had to face the execution of her first husband, the death in a camp of her third husband, long years of struggle for the fate of her detained son, and repressions against her in the professional community.

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