Anna Akhmatova: Living

Anna Akhmatova was Russian modernist poet. Explore interesting quotes on living.
Anna Akhmatova: 198   quotes 10   likes

“I have a lot of work to do today;
I need to slaughter memory,
Turn my living soul to stone
Then teach myself to live again.”

Anna Akhmatova

Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

Soul , Memory

“Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree.”

Anna Akhmatova

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.

“Forgive me, that I manage badly,
Manage badly but live gloriously,
That I leave traces of myself in my songs,
That I appeared to you in waking dreams.”

Anna Akhmatova

Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

Dreams , Forgiveness , Appearance

“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 …”

Anna Akhmatova

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.

Soul , Learning , Memory

“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.”

Anna Akhmatova

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

Dead

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

Anna Akhmatova

In Memory of M. B.

“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