Alexander Blok Quotes

When rowan leaves are dank and rusting
And rowan berries red as blood,
When in my palm the hangman's thrusting
The final nail with bony thud,
When, over the foul flooding river,
Upon the wet grey height, I toss
Before my land's grim looks, and shiver
As I swing here upon the cross,
Then, through the blood and weeping, stretches
My dying sight to space remote;
I see upon the river’s reaches
Christ sailing to me in a boat.

O, my Russia! O, wife! The long road is clear to us to the point of pain. Our road – like a Tatar arrow of ancient will has pierced our breast.

Blok was probably the greatest Russian poet since Pushkin; although internationally less well known than Rilke and Valéry, he is of their stature and importance. He revolutionized Russian versification by making use of a purely accentual technique. He knew, as so few now know, that only the poetry of suffering – whether it is a poetry of joy or not – can be great. His own poetry, for which he burnt himself out, demonstrates this.

Grip your gun like a man, brother!
Let's have a crack at Holy Russia,
Mother
Russia
with her big, fat arse!
Freedom, freedom! Down with the cross!

What message, years of conflagration,
have you: madness or hope? On thin
cheeks strained by war and liberation
bloody reflections still remain.

Hell and damnation,
life is such fun
with a ragged greatcoat
and a Jerry gun!

So they march with sovereign tread…
Behind them limps the hungry dog,
and wrapped in wild snow at their head
carrying a blood-red flag soft-footed where the blizzard swirls,
invulnerable where bullets crossed –
crowned with a crown of
snowflake pearls,
a flowery diadem of frost,
ahead of them goes Jesus Christ.

My spirit is old; and some black lot awaits me
On my long road.
Some dream accurst, inveterate, suffocates me
Still with its load.
So young – yet hosts of dreadful thoughts appal me,
Sick and opprest.
Come! and from shadowy phantoms disenthral me,
Friend.