Anna Akhmatova’s Implacable Requiem of Oppression

Akhmatova’s choice of the adjective “implacable” when describing the iron bars around the prison provides a whole other layer to the context of the poem Requiem (Akhmatova 48). Based on the etymology of the word implacable, there could be a double meaning to its use. The first is what might seem readily apparent: unconquerable or insurmountable as iron bars very well are. The second meaning gives a perspective on a deeper context, in that it can also mean that something is unable to be pleased (Oxford English Dictionary). The impossibility of pleasing the government provides a twist to the line of the poem.
Pleasing the government connects to the quality of immovability through the word implacable in this poem. This raises the idea that perhaps the portrayed government is pleased that the characters have no power and must stand for “three hundred hours” in front of the gulag (Akhmatova 48). After that phrase, the word “implacable” has a connotation of the powerless pleading with their relentless oppressors, who are pleased to be in the position of power. The pleased interpretation can relate to the power the implacable hold over the powerless.
The long duration of time in relation to the word implacable reinforces its unmovable connotation, while maintaining the pleasure in the power of oppression it also represents. Instead of phrasing it as nearly two weeks, it is expanded into a smaller segment of time to have a more menacing appearance on the page. It draws the reader into the oppressive quality of the situation by building up the idea larger than it could be; the picture looms over us. “Implacable” and the context in the poem draws out the oppression in the line and on a larger note, the poem.

Works Cited

Akhmatova, Anna. “Requiem.” The ECCO Anthology of International Poetry. Ed. Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris. Trans. Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. 41-49.

Oxford English Dictionary. implacable, adj. 28 August 2016 <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/92421?>.

Petrov-Vodkin, Kuzma. Akhmatova in 1922, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. Wikimedia Commons. Web. 9 October 2016 <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Kuzma_Petrov-Vodkin._Portrait_of_Anna_Akhmatova._1922.jpg>.