Poets From Russia

"Here, we encounter a remarkable contemporary figure, an outstanding Russian woman. Revealing unusual qualities even in childhood, she is seen as a little girl secretly carrying away a heavy volume of Dore’s Bible. Bending from its burdensome weight, hiding it from the grown-ups, she has taken the treasure in order to study the illustrations, and eventually (when she teaches herself to read) to study the Testaments. From her father’s bookcase, at an unusually early age, she also took volumes on philosophy. Amidst the noisy, and it seems distracting, environment she was able to develop a profound contemplation of life, as if she had possessed it long ago. Honesty, justice, a constant search for Truth, and love for creative work — all this actually transformed the whole of life around the strong young spirit. And the whole house, the whole family, became directed by the same benevolent principles. All difficulties and dangers were endured under the same stoic leadership. The accumulated knowledge and striving to perfection brought a victorious solution of problems, and this led the surrounding people toward the luminous path. Ignorance, darkness, malice were always acutely sensed. Wherever it was possible, both physical and spiritual healing was performed. Life became full of true labor. Ch. 53 The Great Images"

"If we now glance back over the pages of all the religious martyrdoms, bringing sinister recollections of the Inquisition and various mass-madnesses, a not exaggerated picture of a true epidemic will emerge quite clearly. Just as any epidemic, this malady of madness flared up suddenly, seemingly from a small beginning, and grew with extraordinary speed into most violent forms. We are reminded of the various persecutions of “witches,” which are even hard to believe. In the recent writings of Dr. Lévi-Valency several curious details are related which remind one again of the possibility of an epidemic of madness. Ch. 19 Epidemics"

"In the history of mankind, epidemics of madness present a particularly curious page. In addition to many other kinds of contagions, epidemics of madness frequently appeared upon various continents. Whole countries suffered from the intrusion of malicious ideas into various domains of life. Naturally, these epidemics broke out especially frequently in the spheres of religion, superstition, and within the bounds of official suspiciousness. Ch. 19 Epidemics"

"I recall a conversation with a scientist who so insistently wanted to be the defender of modern science that he even attempted to diminish the significance of all ancient accumulations. Whereas, precisely, each young representative of modern science must first be open to everything useful and more so to all that bears the testimony of ages. All negation is contrary to creativeness. In his enlightened, constantly progressive movement, a true creator, first of all, is not negative. A creator has no time for condemnation and negation. The process of creativeness proceeds in an unrestrained progression. Therefore it is painful to see how a man, because of certain prejudices and superstitions, entangles himself with phantoms. In order that no one might suspect a scientist of being old-fashioned, in his fear he is ready to inflict anathema and oblivion upon the most instructive accumulations of the experiences of antiquity. Ch. 1 Fearlessness"

"Science, if it is to be redintegrated should primarily not be limited, and thus be fearless. Any conditional limitation will be an evidence of mediocrity, and thus will become an unconquerable obstacle on the path of achievement. Ch. 1 Fearlessness"

"Understand once again that the time of changes of continents is approaching. Maitreya is coming, in the vanguard of science, addressing its new frontiers. All the problems of science and of the evolution of all that exists are of concern to the Teacher."

"No name will provoke so many attacks as that of Maitreya, for it is bound up with the future. Nothing provokes so much fear and irritation in people as thinking about the future."

"Now, at the dawn of the age of Maitreya, there is needed a Yoga comprising the essence of the whole of life, all-embracing, evading nought. One remembers the example of those unignitable youths in the biblical legend who valiantly sacrificed themselves to the fiery furnace and thereby acquired power. You may call this the Yoga of Life. But the most precise name will be Agni Yoga. It is precisely the element of fire that gives its name to this Yoga of self-sacrifice."

"They will ask, "Can the time of Maitreya create a New Era?" Answer, "If the Crusades brought a new age, then truly the Era of Maitreya is a thousandfold more significant." In such consciousness should one proceed."

"When calculations become complex and Infinity is obscured, then will be remembered anew the simplest principle: from heart to heart — such is the law of fraternity, community, fellowship."

"Humanity must suffer very much before it comes to an understanding of the advantage of unity. Most destructive forces have been directed for the purpose of obscuring the embryos of unification. Each unifying agent is subject to personal danger. Each peace-maker is disparaged. Each worker is ridiculed. Each builder is called madman. Thus the servants of dissolution try to drive from the face of the Earth the Banner of Enlightenment. Work is impossible amid enmities. Construction is inconceivable amid explosions of hatred. Fellowship is battling with man-hatred. Let us keep in memory these old Covenants."

"The Great Helpers of humanity do not abandon the Earth so long as sufferings go unhealed. Wholehearted fellowship can easily heal the wounds of a friend — but it is necessary to develop the art of thinking in the name of Good. And this is not easy amid the day's hustle and bustle. But the examples of the Great Helpers of humanity can encourage and infuse new forces."

"The essence of striving to the far-off worlds is contained in the assimilation of a consciousness of our life in them. The possibility of life on them becomes for our consciousness, as it were, a channel of approach. Indeed, this consciousness must be dug through as a channel. People are able to swim, yet a considerable portion of them do not swim. Such an obvious fact as the far-off worlds completely fails to attract humanity. It is time to cast this seed into the human brain."

"Family, clan, country, union of nations — each unit strives toward peace, toward betterment of life. Each unit of cooperation and communal life needs perfecting. No one can fix the limits of evolution. By this line of reasoning a worker becomes a creator. Let us not be frightened by the problems of creativeness. Let us find for science unencumbered paths. Thus, thought about perfectionment will be a sign of joy."

"…there is a Russian whom I’ve read recently with great pleasure and that is Tsvetaeva. I’ve just read her two volumes of letters straight through. What a horrible life; my God, what suffering! Now there’s a suicide that doesn’t surprise me. Who could go on with such a life? And the additional posthumous blow: she asked a writer to care for her son after her death and then he didn’t lift a finger to help the child. A truly atrocious life. During the Revolution her life was horrendous, and afterwards, in exile as well. And then when her friends turned their backs on her, she was so alone. Terrible! Serena Vitali has translated her into Italian exceptionally well and the notes are very helpful and informative."

"What is the main thing in love? To know and to hide. To know about the one you love and to hide that you love. At times the hiding (shame) overpowers the knowing (passion). The passion for the hidden — the passion for the revealed."

"Freedom! A wanton slut on a profligate's breast!"

"Есть книги настолько живые, но все боишься, что, пока не читал, она уже изменилась, как река — сменилась, пока жил — тоже жила, как река — шла и ушла. Никто дважды не вступал в ту же реку. А вступал ли кто дважды в ту же книгу?"

"Тьмы низких истин нам дороже нас возвышающий обман."

"As for the war – it is like this: not Alexander Blok with Rainer Maria Rilke but a machine gun with a machine gun. Not Alexander Scriabin with Richard Wagner but a dreadnought with a dreadnought. Had Blok been killed I would have mourned over Blok (the best of Russia), had Rilke been killed I would have mourned over Rilke (the best of Germany) and none of the victories, either ours or theirs, would have consoled me."

"How can a heart expression find? How should another know your mind? Will he discern what quickens you? A thought once uttered is untrue."

"Who would grasp Russia with the mind? For her no yardstick was created: Her soul is of a special kind, By faith alone appreciated."

"Separation has this lofty meaning: if love lasts years, if but a day it takes, love's just a dream and we're a moment dreaming, and whether early, whether late the waking, the time must finally arrive when we awake."

"I love May's first storms: chuckling, sporting spring grumbles in mock anger; young thunder claps."

"After tumbling down the mountain, a stone lies in a valley. How did it fall away? Right now, no-one knows. Did it tear from the heights on its own? Or was it cast down by the will of another? Aeons have flowed by, yet no-one knows the reason why."

"Akhmatova never ceased to be astonished at the resurrection of poetry once trampled underfoot, wiped out, it had seemed, once and for all. "We never realized that poetry has such a long life," she was always saying, and "poetry isn't what we thought it was when we were young"...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."

"Anna Andreevna Akhmatova used poetry to give voice to the struggles and deepest yearnings of the Russian people, for whom she remains the greatest of literary heroines. She has lately come to symbolize for the world even beyond Russia the power of art to survive and transcend the terrors of our century."

"The importance of Akhmatova's works in the Russian poetic tradition can scarcely be exaggerated. These works also hold a place of honor in the history of artistic engagement of moral responsibility."

"I think the first discovery I made for myself which I didn't necessarily share with my family or my friends, but came upon myself, was Russian literature. I've always felt very much enthralled to writers like Dostoevsky, especially, and Chekhov. In later years, modern Russian poets like Pasternak and Mandelstam and Akhmatova have meant a great deal to me. Poetry more than prose."

"From the works of Primo Levi to the recipes of imagined foods found in the concentration camps of Terezin to the brave poetry of Anna Akhmatova written during the Stalinist era, we are forced to acknowledge the power of poetry to name the unspeakable-to enter and to illuminate the secret corridor of horrors."

"I've woven them a garment that's prepared out of poor words, those that I overheard, and will hold fast to every word and glance all of my days, even in new mischance, and if a gag should bind my tortured mouth, through which a hundred million people shout, then let them pray for me, as I do pray for them, this eve of my remembrance day."

"I have learned how faces fall to bone, how under the eyelids terror lurks, how suffering inscribes on cheeks the hard lines of its cuneiform texts, how glossy black or ash-fair locks turn overnight to tarnished silver, how smiles fade on submissive lips, and fear quavers in a dry titter. And I pray not for myself alone.. for all who stood outside the jail, in bitter cold or summer's blaze, with me under that blind red wall."

"Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed, His dear disciple, stone-faced, stared. His mother stood apart. No other looked into her secret eyes. Nobody dared. — 1940-1943"

"A choir of angels glorified the hour, the vault of heaven was dissolved in fire. "Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me...""

"No use to fall down on my knees and beg for mercy's sake. Nothing I counted mine, out of my life, is mine to take..."

"Now everything is clear. I admit my defeat. The tongue of my ravings in my ear is the tongue of a stranger."

"Already madness lifts its wing to cover half my soul."

"It's all the same to me. The Yenisei swirls, the North Star shines, as it will shine forever; and the blue lustre of my loved one's eyes is clouded over by the final horror. — The House on the Fontanka, 19 August 1939"

"You will come in any case — so why not now? How long I wait and wait. The bad times fall. I have put out the light and opened the door for you, because you are simple and magical. Assume, then, any form that suits your wish, take aim, and blast at me with poisoned shot, or strangle me like an efficient mugger, or else infect me — typhus be my lot —"

"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— Unless ... Summer's ardent rustling Is like a festival outside my window."

"The word dropped like a stone on my still living breast. Confess: I was prepared, am somehow ready for the test."

"For seventeen months I have cried aloud calling you back to your lair. I hurled myself at the hangman's foot. You are my son, changed into nightmare. Confusion occupies the world, and I am powerless to tell somebody brute from something human, or on what day the word spells, "Kill!""

"Not, not mine: it's somebody else's wound. I could never have borne it. So take the thing that happened, hide it, stick it in the ground. Whisk the lamps away... Night."

"This woman is sick to her marrow-bone, this woman is utterly alone, with husband dead, with son away in jail. Pray for me. Pray."

"At dawn they came and took you away. You were my dead: I walked behind. In the dark room children cried, the holy candle gasped for air."

"The stars of death stood over us. And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed under the crunch of bloodstained boots, under the wheels of Black Marias."

"That was a time when only the dead could smile, delivered from their wars, and the sign, the soul, of Leningrad dangled outside its prison-house..."

"Where are they now, my nameless friends from those two years I spent in hell? What specters mock them now, amid the fury of Siberian snows, or in the blighted circle of the moon? To them I cry, Hail and Farewell! — March 1940"

"For some the wind can fleshly blow, for some the sunlight fade at ease, but we, made partners in our dread, hear but the grating of the keys, and heavy-booted soldiers' tread. As if for early mass, we rose and each day walked the wilderness, trudging through silent street and square, to congregate, less live than dead."

"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."