Akhmatova Quotes

You will hear thunder and remember me, and think: she wanted storms...

If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly, and my low spirits would brighten up.

You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree.

I seem to myself, as in a dream, An accidental guest in this dreadful body.

Call me a sinner, Mock me maliciously: I was your insomnia, I was your grief.

My shadow serves as the friend I crave.

I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again.

As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves.

Your voice is wild and simple. You are untranslatable Into any one tongue.

You do not know just what you've been forgiven.

I myself, from the very beginning, Seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium Or a reflection in someone else's mirror, Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. Already I knew the list of crimes That I was destined to commit.

Forgive me, that I manage badly, Manage badly but live gloriously, That I leave traces of myself in my songs, That I appeared to you in waking dreams.

Rising from the past, my shadow Is running in silence to meet me.

And you know, I agree to everything: I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy, Darkness will be light and sin lovely.

I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now.

Wild honey smells of freedom The dust - of sunlight The mouth of a young girl, like a violet But gold - smells of nothing.

We learned not to meet anymore, We don't raise our eyes to one another, But we ourselves won't guarantee What could happen to us in an hour.

I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry; poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity; and at the bottom of it all: only love; poetry. Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation. It all comes with love

The whole time I was hoping my silence would fit yours and exclamation marks would gently float across time and space so that boundaries would be crossed; the whole time I was praying you would read my eyes and understand what I was never able to understand. See, we were never about butterflies. We’ve always been about burning stars. All about us is unearthly and radiant.

Today I have so much to do: I must kill memory once and for all, I must turn my soul to stone, I must learn to live again--

That was when the ones who smiled Were the dead, glad to be at rest.

The word landed with a stony thud Onto my still-beating breast. Nevermind, I was prepared, I will manage with the rest. I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again. . . But how. The hot summer rustles Like a carnival outside my window; I have long had this premonition Of a bright day and a deserted house.

It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.

And it seemed to me that there were fires Flying till dawn without number And I never found out things-those Strange eyes of his-what colour? Everything trembling and singing and Were you my enemy or my friend, Winter was it or summer?

Regarding myself as a mere echo, Cave-like, unintelligible and nocturnal . . .

It's an abominable fallacy that suffering makes for greater art. Suffering blinds, deafens, ruins, and often kills. Osip Mandelstam was a great poet before the revolution. So was Anna Akhmatova, so was Marina Tsvetaeva. They would have become what they became even if none of the historical events that befell Russia in this century had taken place: because they were gifted. Basically, talent doesn't need history.

You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: "she wanted storms.

Real tenderness can’t be confused, It’s quiet and can’t be heard.

This land, although not my native land, Will be remembered forever. And the sea's lightly iced, Unsalty water. The sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk, The air is heady, like wine, And the rosy body of the pines Is naked in the sunset hour. And the sunset itself on such waves of ether That I just can't comprehend Whether it is the end of the day, the end of the world, Or the mystery of mysteries in me again.

Song falls silent, music is dumb, But the air burns with their fragrance, And white winter, on its knees, Observes everything with reverent attention.

you are many years late; how happy I am to see you

Though you are three times more beautiful than angels, Though you are the sister of the river willows, I will kill you with my singing, Without spilling your blood on the ground. Not touching you with my hand, Not giving you one glance, I will stop loving you, But with your unimaginable groans I will finally slake my thirst. From her, who wandered the earth before me, Crueler than ice, more fiery than flame, From her, who still exists in the ether— From her you will set me free.

Sunset in the ethereal waves: I cannot tell if the day is ending, or the world, or if the secret of secrets is inside me again.

All that I am hangs by a thread tonight

Let whoever wants to, relax in the south, And bask in the garden of paradise. Here is the essence of north—and it's autumn I've chosen as this year's friend.

A land not mine, still forever memorable, the waters of its ocean chill and fresh. Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk, and the air drunk, like wine, late sun lays bare the rosy limbs of the pinetrees. Sunset in the ethereal waves: I cannot tell if the day is ending, or the world, or if the secret of secrets is inside me again.

But then he touched the flowers With the dry tips of his fingers. "Tell me how men kiss you. Tell me how you kiss.

... he is rewarded with a form of eternal childhood, with the bounty and vigilance of the stars, the whole world was his inheritance and he shared it with everyone.

I defend Not my voice, but my silence

Now that you're there, where everything is known—tell me: What else lived in that house besides us?

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, who suffered death because she chose to turn. - Lot's Wife

How the miracle of our meeting Shone there and sang, I didn't want to return From there to anywhere. Happiness instead of duty Was bitter delight to me. Not obliged to speak to anyone, I spoke for a long while. Let passions stifle lovers, Demanding answers, We, my dear, are only souls At the limits of the world.

I’m not weeping, I’m not complaining, Happiness is not for me.

This cruel age has deflected me, like a river from this course. Strayed from its familiar shores, my changeling life has flowed into a sister channel. How many spectacles I've missed: the curtain rising without me, and falling too. How many friends I never had the chance to meet.

Forgive me that I felt forsaken, That grief and angst was all I knew. Forgive me that I kept mistaking Too many other men for you.

We don't know how to say goodbye, We wander on, shoulder to shoulder Already the sun is going down You're moody, and I am your shadow. Let's step inside a church, hear prayers, masses for the dead Why are we so different from the rest? Outside in the graveyard we sit on a frozen branch. That stick in your hand is tracing Mansions in the snow in which we will always be together.

The evening sky is gold and vast. I’m soothed by April’s cool caress. You’re late. Too many years have passed, - I’m glad to see you, nonetheless. Come closer, sit here by my side, Be gentle with me, treat me kind: This old blue notebook – look inside – I wrote these poems as a child. Forgive me that I felt forsaken, That grief and angst was all I knew. Forgive me that I kept mistaking Too many other men for you.

No other looked into her secret eyes. Nobody dared.

And if I die, then who Will write my poems to you?

He loved three things in this life: Vespers, white peacocks, And old maps of America, Didn't love children crying, Raspberries with tea, Or feminine hysteria ...And I was his wife.

Dostoyevsky knew a lot but not everything. He, for instance, thought that if you kill a human you'll turn into Raskolnikov. But we know now that one can kill five - ten, one hundred people - and go to the theatre in the evening.

We are all carousers and loose women here; How unhappy we are together!

We will not drink from the same cup - Neither water nor sweet wine is ours, We will not kiss as the sun goes up Or gaze at the night, on the sill, for hours. I breathe by the moon, you – by the sun

And it’s not because I’m tortured Or by some delirium swayed That I conjure up misfortune: It is just my trade.

No one else was as close and as open, No one else so boiled my blood, Even he, who consigned me to torment, Even he, who caressed and forgot.

Why is it that you still beguile me – As wind, stone, bird – and all the likes? Why is that you smile on me – With sudden summer lightning strikes?

We want what the woman wanted in the prison queue in Leningrad, standing there with cold and whispering for fear, enduring the terror of Stalin's regime and asking the poet Anna Akhmatova if she could describe it all, if her art was equal to it.

You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire. That day in Moscow, it will all come true, when, for the last time, I take my leave, And hasten to the heights that I have longed for, Leaving my shadow still to be with you.

But I am not allowed to forget The taste of the tears of yesterday.

I don’t long for anyone, But I don’t want, don’t want, don’t want To know how they kiss each other.

Flowers, cold from the dew, And autumn's approaching breath, I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids, Which haven't faded yet. In their nights, fragrantly resinous, Entwined with delightful mystery, They will breathe in her springlike Extraordinary beauty. But in a whirlwind of sound and fire, From her shing head they will flutter And fall—and before her They will die, faintly fragrant still. And, impelled by faithful longing, My obedient gaze will feast upon them— With a reverent hand, Love will gather their rotting remains.

I knew: the gods turned once, in their madness, Men into things, not killing humane senses. You’ve been turned in to my reminiscences To make eternal the unearthly sadness.

Let love be the gravestone Lying on my life.

You invented me. There is no such earthly being, Such an earthly being there could never be. A doctor cannot cure, a poet cannot comfort— A shadowy apparition haunts you night and day. We met in an unbelievable year, When the world's strength was at an ebb, Everything withered by adversity, And only the graves were fresh. Without streetlights, the Neva's waves were black as pitch, Thick night enclosed me like a wall ... That's when my voice called out to you! Why it did—I still don't understand. And you came to me, as if guided by a star That tragic autumn, stepping Into that irrevocably ruined house, From whence had flown a flock of burnt verse.

And this tenderness was not like That which a certain poet At the beginning of the century called true And, for some reason, quiet. No, not at all— It rang out, like the first waterfall, It crunched like the crust of bluish ice And it prayed with a swanlike voice, And it broke down right before our eyes.

I have much to do: I must kill my memories down to the last one, I must change my soul into stone , I must learn to live again.

I asked him then: 'What are you after?' 'To be in hell with you,' he said.

I've got no more tears or explanations.

It is good here: rustle and snow-crunch... Ski tracks on the splendid finery of the snow; a memory that long ages ago we passed here together.

How many poems did I not write? They hang in the air around me, a weird choir, And some day May suffocate me...

Without love, I'm more at ease, I'm sure. The sky is high, the mountain wind is sweeping, And all my thoughts are innocent and pure.

Not under foreign skies Nor under foreign wings protected - I shared all this with my own people There, where misfortune had abandoned us.

The celebrations Of secret nonmeetings are empty, Unspoken conversations, Unuttered words. Glances that don't intersect Don't know where to come to rest. And only the tears rejoice Because they can flow and flow. Sweetbrier around Moscow, Alas! Somehow it is here ... And all this they will call Love eternal.

He left his soul behind and told me: It’ll be safer by your side.

If I can’t have love, if I can’t find peace, give me a bitter glory.

المجدُ لكَ أيُّها الألمُ الذِي لا يهدأ ..

Once taken by her, you glowed And you drank her poisons, content. Because all the stars seemed to grow, And fields had a different scent, Autumn fields.

All's taken away: my love and my power. The body, thrown into city it hates, Finds no joy in the sunlight. With every hour The blood grows colder in my veins.

And you, my friends! So few of you remain That you are dearer daily. I rejoice In you. How short the road has become, That once appeared the longest road of all.

And in the depths of music, I didn’t find the answer, And again there was silence, and again the ghost of summer.

Will you forgive me these November days?

During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me, and of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected us all and whispered in my ear—(we all spoke in whispers there): ‘Could you describe this?’ I said, ‘I can!’ Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face.

Autumn, whispering through the maples, Pleaded: 'Die here with me!

A town loved with bitter love.

Monstrously giving birth to yourself, Admiring yourself and choking on yourself, Are you not, alas, the only tie Between good and evil, earthly pits and paradise? It seems to me that you are always on the boundary.

Seaside gusts of wind, And a house in which we don't live, And the shadow of a cherished cedar In front of a forbidden window... Perhaps there is someone in this world To whom I could send all these lines. Well then! Let the lips smile bitterly And a tremor touch the heart again.

Oh, my home is not my own – I lament and rue. Answer, stranger yet unknown, I am seeking you!

I marvel at everything as if it were new.

I’m not grieving, I’m not angry, and only darkness accompanies me. How deep it is and velvety, above all, always familiar to me…

I have long had this premonition of a bright day and a deserted house

I’m happy. But some beauty is nonesuch - The gently sloping path across the wood, The wretched bridge that’s just a little skewed And that, for which, I won’t be waiting much.

In Memory of M. B. Here is my gift, not roses on your grave, not sticks of burning incense. You lived aloof, maintaining to the end your magnificent disdain. You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes, and suffocated inside stifling walls. Alone you let the terrible stranger in, and stayed with her alone. Now you’re gone, and nobody says a word about your troubled and exalted life. Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn at your dumb funeral feast. Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I, I, sick with grief for the buried past, I, smoldering on a slow fire, having lost everything and forgotten all, would be fated to commemorate a man so full of strength and will and bright inventions, who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me, hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.

I've ceased to smile long ago, The bitter winds now chill my lips, Another hope was just let go, Another song was added since. Against my will, I'll cede this song To people's laughter and offense, Because love's silence for the soul Is too unbearably immense.

Let my heiress have full rights, Live in my house, sing songs that I composed. Yet how slowly my strength ebbs, How the tortured breast craves air. The love of my friends, my enemies' rancor And the yellow roses in my bushy garden, And a lover's burning tenderness—all this I bestow upon you, messenger of dawn. Also the glory for which I was born, For which my star, like some whirlwind, soared And now falls. Look, its falling Prophesies your power, love and inspiration. Preserving my generous bequest, You will live long and worthily. Thus it will be. You see, I am content, Be happy, but remember me.

I don't know if you're alive or dead. Can you on earth be sought, or only when the sunsets fade be mourned secretly in my thought? All is for you: the daily prayer, the sleepless heat at night, and of my verses, the white flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire. No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured me more, not even the one who betrayed me to torture, not even the one who caressed me and forgot.

There is a frontier-line in human closeness That love and passion cannot violate-- Though in silence mouth to mouth be soldered And passionate devotion cleave the heart. Here friendship, too, is powerless, and years Of that sublime and fiery happiness When the free soul has broken clear From the slow languor of voluptuousness. Those striving towards it are demented, and If the line seem close enough to broach-- Stricken with sadness...Now you understand Why my heart does not beat beneath your touch.

All's ringing, roaring, grinding, breakers' crash - and silence all at once, release: it means he is tiptoeing over pine needles, so as not to startle the light sleep of space. And it means he is counting the grains in the blasted ears; it means he has come again to the Daryal Gorge, accursed and black, from another funeral. And again Moscow, where the heart's fever burns. Far off the deadly sleighbell chimes, someone is lost two steps from home in waist-high snow. The worst of times...

I am not one of those who left the land to the mercy of its enemies. Their flattery leaves me cold, my songs are not for them to praise. But I pity the exile's lot. Like a felon, like a man half-dead, dark is your path, wanderer; wormwood infects your foreign bread. But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know, we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you...more proud...

I've learned to live simply, wisely I've learned to live simply, wisely, To look at the sky and pray to God, And to take long walks before evening To wear out this useless anxiety. When the burdocks rustle in the ravine And the yellow-red clusters of rowan nod, I compose happy verses About mortal life, mortal and beautiful life. I return. The fluffy cat Licks my palm and sweetly purrs. And on the turret of the sawmill by the lake A bright flame flares. The quiet is cut, occasionally, By the cry of a stork landing on the roof. And if you were to knock at my door, It seems to me I wouldn't even hear. (English version by Judith Hemschemeyer Original Language Russian)