Anna Akhmatova Quotes (99 quotes, page 2)

“Give me bitter years of sickness,
Suffocation, insomnia, fever,
Take my child and my lover,
And my mysterious gift of song —
This I pray at your liturgy
After so many tormented days,
So that the stormcloud over darkened Russia
Might become a cloud of glorious rays.”

Anna Akhmatova

"Prayer," translated by Judith Hemschemeyer in Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1989)

Lovers

“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.”

Anna Akhmatova

Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Epilogue
Context: 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.

Summer

“But lifting his dry hand
He lightly touched the flowers:
"Tell me how men kiss you,
Tell me how you kiss men."”

Anna Akhmatova

The Guest (1914)

Men , Flowers , Kiss

“The silvery tree opens
to an empty sky —
maybe it is better
that I am not your husband.”

Anna Akhmatova

Variant translations:
The willow in the empty sky
spread her transparent fan
perhaps it were better
that I not be
your wife.
"Memory of the Sun" (alternate translation by Paula Goodman)
Thinking Of The Sun (1911)

Tree

“Not a single muscle quivered
On his radiantly evil face.
Oh, I know: his delight
Is the tense and passionate knowledge
That he needs nothing,
That I can refuse him nothing.”

Anna Akhmatova

The Guest (1914)

Knowledge , Passion , Evil

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

Anna Akhmatova

Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987)

“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”

Anna Akhmatova

Magdalena struggled, cried and moaned.
Piter sank into the stone trance...
Only there, where Mother stood alone,
None has dared cast a single glance.
Translated by Tanya Karshtedt (1996) http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/akhmatova/akhmatova_ind.html
Mary Magdalene beat her breast and sobbed,
The beloved disciple turned to stone,
But where the silent Mother stood, there
No one glanced and no one would have dared.
Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Crucifixion

Secret

“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”

Anna Akhmatova

Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), To Death

Love , Star , Housing

“We thought: we're poor, we have nothing,
but when we started losing one after the other
so each day became
remembrance day,
we started composing poems
about God's great generosity
and — our former riches.”

Anna Akhmatova

"We thought: we're poor"
We thought we were beggars, we thought we had nothing at all
But then when we started to lose one thing after another,
Each day became
A memorial day -
And then we made songs
Of great divine generosity
And of our former riches.
Translated by Ilya Shambat (2001)
White Flock (1917)

God

“That day in Moscow, it will all come true,
when, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.”

Anna Akhmatova

"You will hear thunder and remember me...", translated by D. M. Thomas
That day, in Moscow, a true prophecy,
when for the last time I say goodbye,
soaring to the heavens that I longed to see,
leaving my shadow here in the sky.
"Thunder," translated by A.S.Kline

Time

“Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I,
I, sick with grief for the buried past,
I, smoldering on a slow fire,
having lost everything and forgotten all,
would be fated to commemorate a man
so full of strength and will and bright inventions,
who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me,
hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.”

Anna Akhmatova

In Memory of M. B.

Pain , Fate , Past

“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!"”

Anna Akhmatova

Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Prologue

World , Change

“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”

Anna Akhmatova

Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Dedication

Hell , Cry

“Thinking of the sun causes quick
beating of my heart —
snowy weather comes on the wind
lightly drifting.”

Anna Akhmatova

Thinking Of The Sun (1911)

Thinking , Sun , Heart , Weather

“Creature of special tastes,
you do not wait for gout and fame
to elevate you
to a luxurious jubilee chair,
but bear your triumph
over the flowering heather,
over wildernesses.
And you are guilty of nothing: neither of this,
that, nor anything..”

Anna Akhmatova

Poem without a Hero (1963)

Flowers , Waiting

“You…
you are as old as the Mamre oak,
ancient interrogator of the moon,
whose feigned groans cannot take us in.
You write laws of iron.”

Anna Akhmatova

Poem without a Hero (1963)

Law

“There is no death, each of us knows —
it's banal to say.
I'll leave it to others to explain.”

Anna Akhmatova

Poem without a Hero (1963)

Death

“That woman I once was,
in a black agate necklace,
I do not wish to meet again
till the Day of Judgement.”

Anna Akhmatova

Poem without a Hero (1963)

“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.”

Anna Akhmatova

I should like to call you all by name,
But they have lost the lists...
I have, woven fore them a great shroud
Out of the poor words I overheard them speak.
I remember them always and everywhere,
And if they shut my tormented mouth,
Through which a hundred million of my people cry,
Let them remember me also...
Translated by D. M. Thomas
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Epilogue

People

“I hear always the sad voices
of summer
passing like red winged birds
over the high grass”

Anna Akhmatova

Red Winged Birds (1917)

Sadness , Bird , Grass , Summer

“In the black sky no star is seen,
somewhere in ambush lurks the Angel of Death,
but the spices tongues of the masqueraders
are loose and shameless
A shout:
"Make way for the hero!"
Ah yes. Displacing the tall one,
he will step forth now without fail
and sing to us about holy vengeance…”

Anna Akhmatova

Poem without a Hero (1963)

Death , Angels , Way , Star

“Such grief might make the mountain stoop, reverse the waters where they flow, but cannot burst these ponderous bolts that block us from the prison cells crowded with mortal woe…”

Anna Akhmatova

Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Instead of a Preface

Mountain , Water

“You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.”

Anna Akhmatova

In Memory of M. B.

“From childhood I have been afraid
of mummers. It always seemed
an extra shadow
without face or name
had slipped among them…”

Anna Akhmatova

Poem without a Hero (1963)

Childhood

“You thought I was that type:
That you could forget me,
And that I'd plead and weep
And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare…”

Anna Akhmatova

"You Thought I Was That Type"

Forgetting

“Is this the visitor from the wrong side
of the mirror? Or the shape
that suddenly flitted past my window?
Is it the new moon playing tricks,
or is someone really standing there again
between the stove and the cupboard?”

Anna Akhmatova

Poem without a Hero (1963)

Past

“All as before: against the dining-room windows
Beats the scattered windswept snow,
And I have not changed either,
But a man came to me.
I asked: "What do you want?"
He replied: "To be with you in Hell."
I laughed: "Oh, you'll foredoom
Us both to disaster."”

Anna Akhmatova

The Guest (1914)

Hell , Change

“And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."”

Anna Akhmatova

The just man followed then his angel guide
Where he strode on the black highway, hulking and bright;
But a wild grief in his wife's bosom cried,
Look back, it is not too late for a last sight
Of the red towers of your native Sodom, the square
Where once you sang, the gardens you shall mourn,
And the tall house with empty windows where
You loved your husband and your babes were born.
Translator unknown
Lot's Wife

God , Marriage , Mountain , Housing

“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.”

Anna Akhmatova

No, it is not I, it is else who is suffering.
I could not have borne it. And this thing, which has happened
Let them cover it with black cloths,
And take away the lanterns...
Night.
Translated by D. M. Thomas
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Prologue

Night

“I do not need your loving words
or hurried kiss
as night comes down
in the place where we once lived
innocent as children,
and happier.”

Anna Akhmatova

Red Winged Birds (1917)

Love , Children , Kiss , Night

“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 supor 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.”

Anna Akhmatova

Leningrad, 1 April 1957
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Instead of a Preface

Smile

“Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.”

Anna Akhmatova

Who'll mourn her as one of Lot's family members?
Doesn't she seem the smallest of losses to us?
But deep in my heart I will always remember
One who gave her life up for one single glance.
Translated by Tanya Karshtedt (1996)
A loss, but who still mourns the breath
of one woman, or laments one wife?
Though my heart never can forget,
how, for one look, she gave up her life.
Translated by A.S.Kline
Who would waste tears upon her? Is she not
The least of our losses, this unhappy wife?
Yet in my heart she will not be forgot
Who, for a single glance, gave up her life.
Translator unknown
Lot's Wife