Anna Akhmatova's personality was phenomenal. It was not given to any woman in Russian poetry before her to express herself with such convincing, lyrical power, to speak out so independently that her voice added once and for all a special—Akhmatovan—note to the art of the Russian poetic word. Akhmatova triumphed in competition with many poets of the early twentieth century who were then regarded as leading figures in poetry and who occupied the center of the stage. Akhmatova's word did not grow dull with the years. None of the accidents of circumstance in which that word was born deadened it, killed it with the flight of time, as occurs with some poets. Countess Rostopchina, Karolina Pavlova, Iuliia Zhadovskaia, and Mirra Lokhvitskaia—all the Russian women poets of the nineteenth century were no more than undergrowth among mighty trees, among the giants of Russian poetry. Akhmatova was...