“Pass the Sonnet and Quatrain”: Anna Akhmatova’s Note with Instructions to Nika Glen

This article publishes and analyzes for the first time one of the three surviving notes of Anna Akhmatova with instructions to her literary secretary Nika Glen, and cites a number of other archival materials. The notes with instructions to Nika Glen are mostly “blind” lists of names of those to be addressed. It seems impossible to date and decipher the texts, but the information accumulated by Akhmatology makes it necessary to “take up the challenge” – it helps to fit these documents into the context of events. The published note is Akhmatova’s autograph, supplemented by Glen’s hand. It was written in Komarovo in August 1962 when Glen left for Moscow. The attribution is substantiated in detail in the article. The list of assignments shows to a certain extent the circle of Akhmatova’s Moscow friends of the early 1960s. This circle included people of different ages and acquired at different periods of her life: in her youth, like Mikhail Zenkevich, in her mature years and in her old age, like the young Galina Kornilova and Simon Markish. A close examination of the note allows us to partially understand the nature of Akhmatova’s concerns, problems, and interests of this time.