Alexander Blok Quotes (8 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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The Twelve

Alexander Blok

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Famous Alexander Blok Quotes

“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.”

Alexander Blok The Twelve

The Twelve (1918); translation from Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (trans.) The Twelve, and Other Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 160.

“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.”

Alexander Blok

"Autumn Love" (1907); translation from C. M. Bowra (ed.) A Book of Russian Verse (London: Macmillan, 1943) p. 99.

“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.”

Alexander Blok

Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975) vol. 4, p. 225.
Criticism

“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.”

Alexander Blok

"On Kulikovo Field" (1908); translation from Sarah Pratt Nikolai Zabolotsky (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2000) p. 53.

“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.”

Alexander Blok

"My Spirit is Old" (1899); translation from Oliver Elton Verse from Pushkin and Others (London: E. Arnold, 1935) p. 175.

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

Alexander Blok The Twelve

"Those Born in Years of Stagnation" (1914); translation from Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (trans.) The Twelve, and Other Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 139.

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

Alexander Blok The Twelve

The Twelve (1918); translation from Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (trans.) The Twelve, and Other Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 147.

“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!”

Alexander Blok The Twelve

The Twelve (1918); translation from Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (trans.) The Twelve, and Other Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 146.