poetry is an elusive thing that can neither be hidden nor locked away. - Nadezhda Mandelstam

Nationalism, like the ideas of Leo Tolstoi, is an attempt to stop the course of history. Everything leading to separation is the result of license: it smashes what is whole, breaks and pulverizes it into tiny fragments that can never be joined together again. The truth of this has become completely apparent in our century. We have been witness to the process of disintegration. What has it brought us, apart from material and spiritual impoverishment?

I never ceased to believe in M.'s and Akhmatova's poetry. In our depersonalized world where everything human was silenced, only the poet preserved his "self" and a voice which can still be heard even now.

Now again we are not supposed to remember the past and think-let alone speak about it. (42: Last Letter)