Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Minds at War: Series 2

The Essay: Minds at War: Series 2: Episode 5: Akhmatova's July 1914

Episode 5

Episode 5: Akhmatova's July 1914

Minds at War: Series 2

Akhmatova's July 1914

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Minds at War: Series 2, Akhmatova's July 1914Close menu

Sasha Dugdale explores the impact of World War I on the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.

Poet and translator Sasha Dugdale explores the impact of World War I on the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Sasha focuses on the collection White Flock, published in 1917.

The poet and translator Sasha Dugdale explores the impact of the First War on the great Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova. 

Her focus is on the collection, White Flock, published in 1917, but written during the war. In many poems, Akhmatova mentions the war directly, and in others, echoes of loss and war sound, refracted through peculiarly Russian folk imagery. 

Sasha focuses on a two-part poem called 'July 1914'. In the first stanza, the turf has been burning for four weeks and the dry summer smells of smoke and fumes. The birds aren't singing and the aspen isn't moving. A one-legged wanderer comes to the house with terrible prophecies and predicts that 'soon there won't be room for all the fresh graves'. In the second part, the juniper's sweet smell rises from the burning wood and the widow's cry sounds. Instead of water and the rain they have prayed for, a warm red wetness floods the trampled fields. 

Sasha's powerful Essay includes a new translation of the poem and a poignant account of how some of its motifs are now reappearing in contemporary writing about the war in Ukraine.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

How great artists and thinkers responded to World War I in individual works of art

Series exploring how great artists and thinkers responded to World War I in individual works of art

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

Minds at War: Series 2

Episode 5: Akhmatova's July 1914

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3