The tragic life of the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) will no doubt be familiar to many of my readers: censored and vilified by the Stalinist regime, her first husband executed, her son and her second husband imprisoned for years in a gulag, she steadfastly refused to leave Russia and continued to bear witness to her times in poems many of which could be circulated only among friends on scraps of paper, to be memorised and then burnt lest they should fall into the wrong hands.

‘The Muse’ is one of her most famous short poems. I can think of few poets with the right to make the laconic claim that concludes it: in most it would seem like a colossal chutzpah. But if such a right can be earned by long endurance and long devotion, then Akhmatova surely had it.

The translation that follows is my own.

Муза

Когда я ночью жду ее прихода,
Жизнь, кажется, висит на волоске.
Что почести, что юность, что свобода
Пред милой гостьей с дудочкой в руке.

И вот вошла. Откинув покрывало,
Внимательно взглянула на меня.
Ей говорю: «Ты ль Данту диктовала
Страницы Ада?» Отвечает: «Я».

Анна Ахматова

Muse

In the night I wait for her, my life
Suspended now upon a single strand.
Not fame, not youth, not freedom can match this
Beloved guest who comes with flute in hand.

And now she enters. Casting back her veil
She looks me through with long attentiveness.
I say, ‘Are you the one who guided Dante,
Who gave him the pages of Hell?’ She answers ‘Yes’.