The power of the memory is prodigious,
my God. It is a vast, immeasurable
sanctuary.

-- Saint Augustine, Confessions

Few are those who retain sufficient
memory.

-- Plato, Phaedrus

"Est' tri epokhi u vospominanii" ("Memories have three ep-
ochs"), the sixth elegy of The Northern Elegies, ¹ is unique
among the poems of that cycle for its impersonality. In contrast to
the other elegies, it does not feature the first-person singular voice.
The circumstances of its writing are well known. The elegy was
composed in Leningrad on February 5, 1945, some eight months
after the poet's return from Tashkent. The city's destruction was a
source of profound grief to Akhmatova, but she also met with a
great disappointment in her personal life: her anticipated reunion
with Vladimir Georgievich Garshin did not occur. Garshin, who
had seen Akhmatova through the worst years of the Ezhov terror,
had remained in Leningrad during the siege; the two had corre-
sponded while separated, and Garshin had proposed marriage to
Akhmatova. Upon her return to Leningrad, she learned that he had
secretly married someone else during her absence. ²

Akhmatova responded to Garshin's betrayal in the following
poem, dated January 13, 11945:

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