The life and poetry of Anna Akhmatova reached a turning point during Stalin’s Great Terror. Her youthful voice is hedonistic, musical and daydreaming, with prophetic glimpses of a solitary future. Those were the times for her to accrue experiences, shine in the games of seduction, wring the enjoyment out of being alive. Attracted by her irresistible magnetism, those who come and go from her life include such great poets as Mandelshtam and Gumilyov, whom she marries at a very young age, artists such as Modigliani, and scholars such as her second husband, Vladimir Shileiko. The outside world did not enter into her lyric poetry of that period, except as a backdrop for passions that she elevated to the category or art.

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