Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova:
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Famous Anna Akhmatova Quotes
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
“If you were music, I would listen to you ceaselessly, and my low spirits would brighten up.”
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova Quotes about the dead
As translated by Stanley Kunitz
In those years only the dead smiled,
Glad to be at rest:
And Leningrad city swayed like
A needless appendix to its prisons.
Translated by D. M. Thomas
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Prologue
"I Don't Know If You're Alive Or Dead" (1915)
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Dedication
They led you away...
They took you away at daybreak. Half wak-
ing, as though at a wake, I followed.
In the dark chamber children were crying,
In the image-case, candlelight guttered.
At your lips, the chill of icon,
A deathly sweat at your brow.
I shall go creep to our walling wall,
Crawl to the Kremlin towers.
Translated by D. M. Thomas
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Prologue
Anna Akhmatova: Trending quotes
"This Cruel Age has deflected me..." (1944)
Context: This cruel age has deflected me,
like a river from this course.
Strayed from its familiar shores,
my changeling life has flowed
into a sister channel.
How many spectacles I've missed:
the curtain rising without me,
and falling too. How many friends
I never had the chance to meet.
Translated in Poems of Akhmatova (1973) by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward
No, not under a foreign heavenly-cope, and
Not canopied by foreign wings
I was with my people in those hours,
There where, unhappily, my people were.
Translated by D. M. Thomas
No, not under the vault of another sky,
not under the shelter of other wings.
I was with my people then,
there where my people were doomed to be.
Translator unknown.
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987)
Anna Akhmatova Quotes
I am not one of those who left the land..." (1922), translated in Poems of Akhmatova (1973) by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward
Context: But here, in the murk of conflagration,
where scarcely a friend is left to know
we, the survivors, do not flinch
from anything, not from a single blow.
Surely the reckoning will be made
after the passing of this cloud.
We are the people without tears,
straighter than you … more proud...
“A new epoch has begun. You and I will wait for it together.”
Remarks to her friend Lydia Chukovskaya (March 1956), as quoted in Joseph Stalin : A Biographical Companion (1999) by Helen Rappaport, p. 2
Context: Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree. Mute separations, mute black, bloody events in every family. Invisible mourning worn by mothers and wives. Now the arrested are returning, and two Russias stare each other in the eyes: the ones that put them in prison and the ones who were put in prison. A new epoch has begun. You and I will wait for it together.
“Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul
Vicarious tears or a single glance.”
"You Thought I Was That Type"
Context: Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul
Vicarious tears or a single glance.
And I swear to you by the garden of the angels,
I swear by the miracle-working icon,
And by the fire and smoke of our nights:
I will never come back to you.
“Now no one will listen to songs.
The prophesied days have begun.”
"Now no one will listen to songs..." from Plantain (1921), translated by Richard McKane
Context: 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.
“You've been turned in to my reminiscences
To make eternal the unearthly sadness.”
As a White Stone... (1916)
Context: I knew: the gods turned once, in their madness,
Men into things, not killing humane senses.
You've been turned in to my reminiscences
To make eternal the unearthly sadness.
“I have lit my treasured candles,
one by one, to hallow this night.”
Poem without a Hero (1963)
Context: I have lit my treasured candles,
one by one, to hallow this night.
With you, who do not come,
I wait the birth of the year.
Dear God!
the flame has drowned in crystal,
and the wine, like poison, burns
Old malice bites the air,
old ravings rave again,
though the hour has not yet struck.
"Why is this century worse than those others?" (1919), translated by Yevgeny Bonver (2000)
“Now you're gone, and nobody says a word
about your troubled and exalted life.”
In Memory of M. B.
Context: Now you're gone, and nobody says a word
about your troubled and exalted life.
Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn
at your dumb funeral feast.
“We aged a hundred years, and this
happened in a single hour”
"In Memoriam, July 19, 1914"
White Flock (1917)
Context: We aged a hundred years, and this
happened in a single hour:
the short summer had already died,
the body of the ploughed plains smoked.
“O let the organ, many-voiced, sing boldly,
O let it roar like spring's first thunderstorm!”
Translated by Irina Zheleznova
Context: O let the organ, many-voiced, sing boldly,
O let it roar like spring's first thunderstorm!
My half-closed eyes over your young bride's shoulder
Will meet your eyes just once and then no more.
Poem without a Hero (1963)
Context: This means that gravestones are fragile
and granite is softer than wax.
Absurd, absurd, absurd! From such absurdity
I shall soon turn gray
or change into another person.
Why do you beckon me with your hand?
For one moment of peace
I would give the peace of the tomb.
As translated by Stanley Kunitz
Then fell the word of stone on
My still existing, still heaving breast.
Never mind, I was not unprepared, and
Shall manage to adjust to it somehow.
Translated by D. M. Thomas
And the stone word fell
On my still-living breast.
Never mind, I was ready.
I will manage somehow.
Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer http://www.favoritepoem.org/poems/akhmatova/ from Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1989)
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), The Sentence
“Nothing I counted mine, out of my life,
is mine to take…”
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987)
Context: 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...
“He is no better and no worse,
but he is free of Lethe's curse:
his warm hand makes a human pledge.”
Poem without a Hero (1963)
Context: All the mirrors on the wall
show a man not yet appeared
who could not enter this white hall.
He is no better and no worse,
but he is free of Lethe's curse:
his warm hand makes a human pledge.
Strayed from the future, can it be
that he will really come to me,
turning left from the bridge?
Poem without a Hero (1963)
Context: Are the last days near, perhaps?
I have forgotten your lessons,
prattlers and false prophets,
but you haven't forgotten me.
As the future ripens in the past,
so the past rots in the future —
a terrible festival of dead leaves.
"This Cruel Age has deflected me..." (1944)
“This cruel age has deflected me,
like a river from this course.”
"This Cruel Age has deflected me..." (1944)
Context: This cruel age has deflected me,
like a river from this course.
Strayed from its familiar shores,
my changeling life has flowed
into a sister channel.
How many spectacles I've missed:
the curtain rising without me,
and falling too. How many friends
I never had the chance to meet.
“Sweet to me was not the voice of man,
But the wind's voice was understood by me.”
"Willow" (1940)
Context: Sweet to me was not the voice of man,
But the wind's voice was understood by me.
The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul,
But I loved the silver willow best of all.
“I am that shadow on the threshold
defending my remnant peace.”
Poem without a Hero (1963)
Context: Dread. Bottomless dread...
I am that shadow on the threshold
defending my remnant peace.
As a White Stone... (1916)
Context: 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.
“Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree.”
Remarks to her friend Lydia Chukovskaya (March 1956), as quoted in Joseph Stalin : A Biographical Companion (1999) by Helen Rappaport, p. 2
Context: Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree. Mute separations, mute black, bloody events in every family. Invisible mourning worn by mothers and wives. Now the arrested are returning, and two Russias stare each other in the eyes: the ones that put them in prison and the ones who were put in prison. A new epoch has begun. You and I will wait for it together.
"You will hear thunder and remember me...", translated by D. M. Thomas
There will be thunder then. Remember me.
Say 'She asked for storms.' The entire
world will turn the colour of crimson stone,
and your heart, as then, will turn to fire.
"Thunder," translated by A.S.Kline
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
“I seem to myself, as in a dream,
An accidental guest in this dreadful body.”
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
“Your voice is wild and simple.
You are untranslatable
Into any one tongue.”
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
"This Cruel Age has deflected me..." (1944)
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Source: The Akhmatova Journals, Volume I: 1938-1941
“You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: "she wanted storms.”
Variant: You will hear thunder and remember me,
and think: she wanted storms...
Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer from Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1989)
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), The Sentence
Context: 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.
“Regarding myself as a mere echo,
Cave-like, unintelligible and nocturnal…”
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Translated by Irina Zheleznova
“All has been looted, betrayed, sold;
black death's wing flashed ahead.”
"Looted" (1921), as translated by Dmitri Obolensky
Stars of death stood
Above us, and innocent Russia
Writhed under bloodstained boots, and
Under the tyres of Black Marias.
Translated by D. M. Thomas
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Prologue
"The First Long Range Artillery Fire On Leningrad," translation by Daniela Gioseffi (1993) http://users.tellurian.net/wisewomensweb/OnPrgudc.html
“Already madness lifts its wing
to cover half my soul.”
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987)
"I Don't Know If You're Alive Or Dead" (1915)
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), To Death
Departures (1964), translated by Michael Cuanach http://web.archive.org/20041217155724/members.tripod.com/~Cuanach/anna.html
I am not one of those who left the land..." (1922), translated in Poems of Akhmatova (1973) by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward
Variant translations:
Memory of sun fades in my heart
What is this? Darkness? Maybe! —
During the night comes
winter.
"Memory of the Sun" (alternate translation by Paula Goodman)
Thinking Of The Sun (1911)
The mountains bow before this anguish,
The great river does not flow.
In mortal sadness the convicts languish;
The bolts stay frozen.
Translated by D. M. Thomas
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Dedication
This greatest hour was hallowed and thundered
By angel's choirs; fire melted sky.
He asked his Father:"Why am I abandoned...?"
And told his Mother: "Mother, do not cry..."
Translated by Tanya Karshtedt (1996) http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/akhmatova/akhmatova_ind.html
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Crucifixion
