"instead of a preface"

"in the terrible years of the yezhov terror i spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in leningrad. one day somebody in the crowd identified me. standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):

‘can you describe this?’
and i said: ‘i can.’
then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.

- leningrad, 1 april 1957"

russian poet anna akhmatova famously wrote this at the start of her "requiem," a poem which then begins with the line "such grief might make the mountains stoop." this poem, recounting the trials of russia through the second world war, is tragic-beautiful-stunning-overwhelming-all-encompassing-transcendent-invigorating-consuming poetry at its best. it aligns with what pasternak said of his own epic dr. zhivago: "i made the world weep at the beauty of my country."

what is so critical and important about poetry like this is that it expresses that despite all, and defiant in the face of pain, we still cry: we are human, and we are worth something more than this. i wouldn't pretend to say i have understood suffering as those akhmatova or pasternak describe, but isn't it incredible to think that these artists did in all degrees suffer, and yet their art prevails?

one of james' characters in portrait of a lady says "i'm afraid there are times in life when even beethoven has nothing to say to us." i hope that is never true. i don't want to believe adorno's reprimand that "there can be no lyric poetry after auschwitz." surely mankind rallies again. surely pain is not the deepest thing. and surely poets like akhmatova can describe what has been, as requested by this anonymous russian woman in line to survive in dismal leningrad.