Akhmatova started her readings in the intimate circles of symbolist Petersburg particularly at “the Tower,” one of the most important centers of intellectual life in the city—the salon of the leading symbolist poet, Vyacheslav Ivanov. It was called the Tower because Ivanov’s large apartment was situated in a building with a semicircular, towerlike section. The regulars at the Tower met on Wednesdays around midnight and parted at dawn. Their gentle, golden-curled host, moving rhythmically as if dancing, greeted the guests. His legendary erudition as well as the pince-nez and black gloves, which he seldom removed because of eczema, made Ivanov resemble one of Hoffmann’s fantastic characters.
An evening at the Tower usually began with one of the guests reading a paper on a topic such as “Religion and Mysticism,” “Individualism and the New Art,” or “Solitude.” This was followed by an involved discussion. Candles were lit in the chandeliers, red wine flowed, and by morning poetry was read.
The Tower was imbued with an intensely intellectual atmosphere. As a woman poet who participated in the meetings recalled,
We quoted the Greeks by heart, took delight in the French Symbolists, considered Scandinavian literature our own, knew philosophy and theology, poetry and history of the whole world. In that sense we were citizens of the universe, bearers of the great cultural museum of humanity. It was Rome at the time of the fall. We did not live, but rather contemplated the most refined that there was in life. We were not afraid of any words. We were cynical and unchaste in spirit, wan and inert in life. In a certain sense we were, of course, the revolution before the revolution—so profoundly, ruthlessly, and fatally did we destroy the old tradition and build bold bridges into the future But our depth and daring were intertwined with a lingering sense of decay, the spirit of dying, ghostliness, ephemerality. We were the last act of a tragedy.60
The atmosphere at the Tower was heady, thanks in great part to the host’s charms. Akhmatova, who later said, “This was the only real salon I ever saw,” admitted that Ivanov “knew how to manipulate people.” When they were alone, Ivanov expressed delight in Akhmatova’s poetry, comparing her poems with the works of Sappho. Then he forced her to read for his guests, only to subject the same poems to harsh criticism unexpectedly. Akhmatova’s pride was hurt. In addition, Ivanov and company tried to break up her relationship with Gumilyov, suggesting, “He does not understand your poetry.”
Ivanov was hostile to Gumilyov, and he once publicly attacked his poetry. This humiliating incident was just one in a series of conflicts that led to the open break by Gumilyov and Akhmatova with both the symbolist leaders and the movement itself. Gumilyov, according to Akhmatova, “decided that he had to organize young pots and choose his own course.” He and his friend, the poet Sergei Gorodetsky, published a manifesto in the January 1913 issue of Makovsky’s
Akhmatova always insisted that in acmeism, practice preceded theory and that in particular, Gumilyov’s manifesto came out of his observations of her poetry and the poetry of their friend Osip Mandelstam. Akhmatova met Mandelstam, a scrawny, thin-skinned redhead with jerky movements, at Ivanov’s Tower, where Osip was very articulate, as opposed to the taciturn Akhmatova. That evening there was a heated discussion of the recent premiere of
Mandelstam may have formulated best the acmeists’ objections to “professional symbolism”—“Not a single clear word, only hints and unfinished thoughts.” He joked that the Russian symbolists “had sealed off all words, all images, intending them exclusively for liturgical use. It became quite inconvenient—you couldn’t get around them, or get up, or sit down…. A man wasn’t master of his own house anymore.”
