“The clock of doom had struck as fated;
the poet, without a sound,
let fall his pistol on the ground.”
Source: Eugene Onegin (1823), Ch. 6, st. 30.
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Aleksandr Pushkin33
Russian poet 1799–1837Related quotes
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Context: Only if we assume that a poet constantly strives to liberate himself from borrowed styles in search for reality, is he dangerous. In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot. And, alas, a temptation to pronounce it, similar to an acute itching, becomes an obsession which doesn't allow one to think of anything else. That is why a poet chooses internal or external exile. It is not certain, however, that he is motivated exclusively by his concern with actuality. He may also desire to free himself from it and elsewhere, in other countries, on other shores, to recover, at least for short moments, his true vocation — which is to contemplate Being.
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Source: Beatrice & Virgil (2010), p. 173
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Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept.”
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