Playwrights From Russia

"By all means I will be married if you wish it. But on these conditions: everything must be as it has been hitherto—that is, she must live in Moscow while I live in the country, and I will come and see her. ... I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, will not appear every day in my sky."

"The bourgeoisie loves so-called “positive” types and novels with happy endings since they lull one into thinking that it is fine to simultaneously acquire capital and maintain one’s innocence, to be a beast and still be happy."

"A man who doesn’t drink is not, in my opinion, fully a man."

"It’s worth living abroad to study up on genteel and delicate manners. The maid smiles continuously; she smiles like a duchess on a stage, while at the same time it is clear from her face that she is exhausted from overwork."

"Tell mother that however dogs and samovars might behave themselves, winter comes after summer, old age after youth, and misfortune follows happiness (or the other way around). A person can not be healthy and cheerful throughout life. Losses lie waiting and man can not safeguard against death, even if he be Alexander of Macedonia. One must be prepared for anything and consider everything to be inevitably essential, as sad as that may be."

"When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace."

"There are in life such confluences of circumstances that render the reproach that we are not Voltaires most inopportune."

"I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them."

"Women writers should write a lot if they want to write. Take the English women, for example. What amazing workers."

"Is it our job to judge? The gendarme, policemen and bureaucrats have been especially prepared by fate for that job. Our job is to write, and only to write."

"There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined."

"You ask “What is life?” That is the same as asking “What is a carrot?” A carrot is a carrot and we know nothing more."

"Instructing in cures, therapists always recommend that “each case be individualized.” If this advice is followed, one becomes persuaded that those means recommended in textbooks as the best, means perfectly appropriate for the template case, turn out to be completely unsuitable in individual cases."

"When a person hasn’t in him that which is higher and stronger than all external influences, it is enough for him to catch a good cold in order to lose his equilibrium and begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog’s bark in every sound."

"I brought with me to Siberia books by Pushkin, Lermontov and Nekrasov. Ilyich arranged them near his bed, alongside Hegel, and read them over and over again in the evenings. Pushkin was his favourite."

"In the tiny gardens-sunflowers, rezedas, poppies,/blonde braids, beribboned cockades, Pushkin and Nadson."

"Pushkin grew with the years. Every other writer claimed descent from him. Inexplicably, the whole of Russian literature proceeded from his genius. Poetry, novels, short stories, history, theater, criticism—he had opened up the whole gamut of literary endeavor to his countrymen. He was first in time, and first in quality. He was the source. Neither Gogol nor Tolstoy could have existed without him, for he made the Russian language; he prepared the ground for the growth of every genre."

"В поэзии Пушкина метонимия и перифраза являются основным элементом стиля... В этом отношении Пушкин продолжает традицию поэтов XVIII в. ... Тема о Пушкине как завершителе русского классицизма давно уже стоит на очереди, но требуются многочисленные предварительные работы по русскому языку XVIII в., которые до сих пор не сделаны. С другой стороны, возникает вопрос о «наследии Пушкина» в XIX в. Поэты XIX в. не были учениками Пушкина; после его смерти возобладала романтическая традиция, восходящая к Жуковскому и воспитанная под немецким влиянием."

"Привычка свыше нам дана: Замена счастию она."

"Прошла любовь, явилась Муза, И прояснился темный ум. Свободен, вновь ищу союза Волшебных звуков, чувств и дум;"

"Недуг, которого причину Давно бы отыскать пора, Подобный английскому сплину, Короче: русская хандра"

"A man who's active and incisive can yet keep nail-care much in mind: why fight what's known to be decisive? custom is despot of mankind."

"Всегда довольный сам собой, Своим обедом и женой."

"Unforced, as conversation passed, he had the talent of saluting felicitously every theme, of listening like a judge-supreme while serious topics were disputing, or, with an epigram-surprise, of kindling smiles in ladies' eyes."

"Send me, Almighty, I petition, In porticoes or at a ball No bonneted academician, No seminarist in a yellow shawl! No more than in red lips unsmiling Can I find anything beguiling In grammar-perfect Russian speech. What purist magazines beseech, A novel breed of belles may heed it, And bend us (for my life of sin) To strict grammatic discipline, Prescribing meter, too, where needed; But I - what is all this to me? I like things as they used to be"

"The less we show our love to a woman, Or please her less, and neglect our duty, The more we trap and ruin her surely In the flattering toils of philandery."

"The clock of doom had struck as fated; the poet, without a sound, let fall his pistol on the ground."

"Москва… как много в этом звуке Для сердца русского слилось! Как много в нем отозвалось!"

"Что наши лучшие желанья, Что наши свежие мечтанья Истлели быстрой чередой, Как листья осенью гнилой."

"Pimen [writing in front of a sacred lamp]: One more, the final record, and my annals Are ended, and fulfilled the duty laid By God on me a sinner. Not in vain Hath God appointed me for many years A witness, teaching me the art of letters; A day will come when some laborious monk Will bring to light my zealous, nameless toil, Kindle, as I, his lamp, and from the parchment Shaking the dust of ages will transcribe My true narrations."

"Like some magistrate grown gray in office, Calmly he contemplates alike the just And unjust, with indifference he notes Evil and good, and knows not wrath nor pity."

"Ah! heavy art thou, crown of Monomakh!"

"Mosalsky: Good folk! Maria Godunov and her son Feodor have poisoned themselves. We have seen their dead bodies. [The People are silent with horror.] Why are ye silent? Cry, Long live the Tsar Dimitry Ivanovich! [The People are speechless.]"

"Why rave ye, babblers, so -- ye lords of popular wonder?"

"And shall Slavonic streams meet in a Russian ocean --"

".. you mark the fate"

"There yet remains but one concluding tale, And then this chronicle of mine is ended— Fulfilled, the duty God ordained to me, A sinner. Not without purpose did the Lord Put me to witness much for many years And educate me in the love of books. One day some indefatigable monk Will find my conscientious, unsigned work; Like me, he will light up his ikon-lamp And, shaking from the scroll the age-old dust, He will transcribe these tales in all their truth."

"Но так и быть — рукой пристрастной Прими собранье пестрых глав, Полусмешных, полупечальных, Простонародных, идеальных, Небрежный плод моих забав, Бессониц, легких вдохновений, Незрелых и увядших лет, Ума холодных наблюдений И сердца горестных замет."

"Come purge my soul, Thou Master of my days, Of vain and empty words, of idle ways, Of base ambition and the urge to rule; That hidden serpent that corrupts a fool; and grant me, Lord, to see my sins alone. That I not call my brother to atone; Make chaste my heart and lend me from above Thy fortitude, humility, and love."

"What grace could all your worldly power bring To One whose crown of thorns has made him King, The Christ who gave His body to the flails, Who humbly bore the lance and piercing nails? Or do you fear the rabble might disgrace The One."

"God grant you, friends, a helping hand— In cares of state and private plights, In rowdy feasts of friendship's band, In passion's sweet and secret rites! God grant you, friends, a helping hand— In daily woes and days of strife, On vacant sa, in distant land, In every black abyss of life!"

"When the loud day for men who sow and reap Grows still, and on the silence of the town The insubstantial veils of night and sleep, The meed of the day's labour, settle down, Then for me in the stillness of the night The wasting, watchful hours drag on their course, And in the idle darkness comes the bite Of all the burning serpents of remorse; Dreams seethe; and fretful infelicities Are swarming in my over-burdened soul, And Memory before my wakeful eyes With noiseless hand unwinds her lengthy scroll. Then, as with loathing I peruse the years, I tremble, and I curse my natal day, Wail bitterly, and bitterly shed tears, But cannot wash the woeful script away."

"The heavy hanging chains shall fall, The walls shall crumble at the word, And Freedom greet you with the light And brothers give you back the sword."

"‘Tis time, my friend, ‘tis time! For rest the heart is aching; Days follow days in flight, and every day is taking Fragments of being, while together you and I Make plans to live. Look, all is dust, and we shall die."

"And thus He mused: "From here, indeed Shall we strike terror in the Swede? And here a city by our labor Founded, shall gall our haughty neighbor; "Here cut" - so Nature gives command - Your window through on Europe; stand Firm-footed by the sea, unchanging!"

"‎На берегу пустынных волн Стоял он, дум великих полн,"

"God save us from seeing a Russian revolt, senseless and merciless. Those who plot impossible upheavals among us, are either young and do not know our people, or are hard-hearted men who do not care a straw either about their own lives or those of others."

"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths."

""The bread of the stranger is bitter," says Dante, "and his staircase hard to climb." But who can know what the bitterness of dependence is so well as the poor companion of an old lady of quality?"

"I have come to you against my wish," she said in a firm voice: "but I have been ordered to grant your request. Three, seven, ace, will win for you if played in succession, but only on these conditions: that you do not play more than one card in twenty-four hours, and that you never play again during the rest of your life. I forgive you my death, on condition that you marry my companion, Lizaveta Ivanovna."