GENERAL ENGLISH (102)

HOW REQUIEM IS AN ELEGY?

SUBMITTED BY-
Chirantan Kashyap
UID- SM0120017
1.What is an elegy?
According to Merriam Webster dictionary, “An elegy is  a
song or poem expressing sorrow or lamentation
especially for one who is dead”. It is a poem of
reconciliation and to commemorate the deceased. It is
equivalent to a funeral mass.
Examples of elegy poem are-
1. The Flea by John Donne
2. Lycidas by John Milton
3. When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom’d by Walt
Whitman
2.Background
Anna Akhmatova was a Russian poet. She was considered
to be a serious poet who wrote on various subjects. She
was latter on barred from writing and her books were
banned by the government because she wrote on subjects
which were considered to be anti-government. The poem
“Requiem” was written when her son Lev was taken into
prison during the height of Stalin’s terror, before that her
husband and her ex-husband were executed by the
government. As she was barred from writing she used to
recite the poem to near and trusted ones so that her poem
could live on. This poem “Requiem” consists of 10 poems
and three introductions namely, “By Way of a Preface”,
“Dedication” and "Prelude" and two epilogues where the
poet describes her personal feelings.

3.REQUIEM: An Elegy
When an old woman asked a rhetorical question outside
the prison gate that could anyone ever describe what was
happening with them and when the poet replied with
“Yes, I can.” This poem is proof of that statement. This is
one of her greatest works. She uses very simple phrases to
introduce her world of tragedy to the listeners, lines such
as “Husband in grave and son in prison” shows us how
simple words could evoke the deepest of emotions. She
shows us how a world of autocracy looks like, how the
people suffer when their loved ones being taken away
from them. In “Dedication” the poet discusses the plight
of those who are waiting outside the prison she tells how
they look less alive than dead, the prison waiters were
compared to that of a mass, so here she compares ‘a
mass’ which is a symbol of hope and rejoices to that of
something which has no hope left in them. She tells that
there might be a place away from her world where there
might be still hope where the sunset is not an image of
another day of the tragedy being ending but of hope that a
new day will begin with new opportunities. She says this
thought in her world is completely alien. In “prelude” the
poet talks about how Stalin’s guards tortured, how there
was violence, how a vibrant Russia looked like hell and
the only people who were at peace were the dead. The
poem then continues where the poet’s son was taken away
to the prison at dawn and she followed him, this image
was compared to that of a funeral mass. The poem then
talks about the evening after when her son was taken
away, she requested all those people who also had their
loved ones being taken away, to pray for her. This was the
connection between her and the rest of them in this period
of isolation. The next period was the night where she
realized that she was alone, grief completely
overwhelmed her, this was the darkest period in the poem.
Yet this doesn’t stop her, for the next few stanzas she
talks about how she needs to move on with her life, and to
do that she needs to forget about the grief that she faced
she needs to turn her heart into stone. She needs to do this
because she wanted to feel human again, she wants to
hope like before. In this part, we also come to know that
her son has been sentenced to death. We can imagine how
much pain the poet must be facing, she already lost her
husband now she is going to lose her only son, this grief
is far greater that anyone could bear. In “VIII” the poet
finally accepts that she can’t kill her grief, she realizes
that now death is the only escape from her world of grief.
This stanza tells about how nature is going on as if
nothing has happened this is in direct contradiction to the
dedication stanza where she tells that everything in nature
seemed to be stopped before this grief. This shows that
the poet lost her last ray of hope. The poet then takes a
scene from the bible to compare her son’s death sentence.
She compared it to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This is
not what she alone felt but this was the emotion of all the
women who lost their loved ones in the death sentence. In
the epilogues she turns her focus back on those who were
also waiting for their loved ones outside the prison gate,
she is not expressing a personal sorrow but that of a
universal sorrow where each one of them understand what
the other person has gone through. She emphasizes that
they should remember the dead through their prayers, she
tells that one day maybe a monument maybe built in her
honour, she wants that monument to be built where she
along with those women stood outside where they waited
to hear their loved ones. She talks about building a
monument because she doesn’t want to forget what
happened to them. This gave her an aim to live so that she
could be the witness to these horrors and tell the story of
those who lost their dear ones to everyone. Thus, giving
birth to this masterpiece “Requiem”.
Conclusion
GENERAL ENGLISH (102)

Shooting an elephant.
 SUBMITTED BY-
Chirantan Kashyap
UID-SM0120017

THE BEGINNING
The narrator takes us to Burma where he was posted as a
British officer, this was the Burma which was under the
imperial rule of England. So naturally all the “yellow faced”
Burmese people hated the narrator. They showed this hate not
only to the narrator but also to all the other European people by
laughing at them, ridiculing them. The narrator was fully aware
of the reason for this hostility but he was quite disturbed due to
this hostility because he felt he was on their side because he
hated the imperial rule too.