Anna Akhmatova Quotes

Now no one will listen to songs. The prophesied days have begun. Latest poem of mine, the world has lost its wonder, Don't break my heart, don't ring out.

In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad. Once, someone "recognized" me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the stupor to which everyone had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there):
"Can you describe this?"
And I answered: "Yes, I can."
Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face.

You’re the sinner, seeing the heavenly,
Sweetest dream, before passing away…

"All ten years of my trepidations,
Each and every sleepless night,
I placed them all in a quiet word
And I voiced it – in vain, unsure.
You walked off and with order restored,
My soul was empty and pure.

- From "Confusion", Anna Akhmatova, Rosary"

No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot, survivor of that time, that place. — 1961

All that I am hangs by a thread tonight

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.

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

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.

Έχω σήμερα πολλές δουλειές. Για μέτρα:
πρέπει κάθε μνήμη ευθύς να σκοτωθεί
πρέπει την καρδιά να κάνω πέτρα
πρέπει πάλι τη ζωή να μάθω απ' την αρχή.

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.

Lot's Wife

And the just man trailed God's messenger,
his huge, light shape devoured the black hill.
But uneasiness shadowed is wife and spoke to her:
'It's not too late, you can look back still

At the red towers of Sodom, the place that bore you,
the square in which you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows of that upper storey
where children blessed your happy marriage-bed.'

Her eyes that were still turning when a bolt
of pain shot through them, were instantly blind;
her body turned into transparent salt,
and her swift legs were rooted to the ground.

Who mourns one woman in a holocaust?
Surely her death has no significance?
Yet in my heart she never will be lost,
she who gave up her life to steal one glance.

1922-24

Natural thunder heralds the wetness of fresh water high clouds to quench the thirst of fields gone dry and parched, a messenger of blessed rain, but this was as dry as hell must be. My distraught perception refused to believe it, because of the insane suddenness with which it sounded, swelled and hit, and how casually it came to murder my child.

The angel of God, having secretly
Betrothed us one winter day,
Watches over our carefree lives
With fixed, darkening eyes

Because of this we love the sky,
Keen air, the fresh wind
And the blackening branches
Behind the iron fence.

Because of this we love the stern
Dark city with its many waterways.
And we love our partings,
And our brief meetings.

As a white stone in the well's cool deepness, There lays in me one wonderful remembrance. I am not able and don't want to miss this: It is my torture and my utter gladness. I think, that he whose look will be directed Into my eyes, at once will see it whole.