Anna Akhmatova (1889-11)66). The classic dignity of Akhmatova’s beautiful poetry, in which even passion is held in check by logic, is associated in the reader’s mind with the sombre wist/ulness of Leningrad, the splendours of its classic architecture and the cold gleam of the Neva. For many years this poetess was known mainly for her elegiac preoccupation with one theme— the tragedy of a woman’s infinite, unconsummatcd love, the cry of a lonely soul for understanding and sympathy. The Great Patriotic War broadened the range of her themes. Akhmatova’s wartime and post-war poetry speaks of history, patriotism and human solidarity. Her writing is not flamboyant, her words and images are simple, and she leaves a great deal unsaid but merely hinted at. Spiritual phenomena, such as memory, dreams or fantasies, are so perfectly sculptured that they become tangible things. Shortly before she died Anna Akhmatova received the Taormina Prize, and a few weeks after that she was singled out to receive an honorary degree of Oxford University.