“Only in Russia poetry is respected – it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?”

—  Osip Mandelstam

Quoted in Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (1970), ch. 35

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update April 19, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Only in Russia poetry is respected – it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive f…" by Osip Mandelstam?
Osip Mandelstam photo
Osip Mandelstam 5
Russian poet and essayist 1891–1938

Related quotes

William Hazlitt photo

“He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

Lectures on the English Poets http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16209/16209.txt (1818), Lecture I, "On Poetry in General"
Context: Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.

Audre Lorde photo

“We can train ourselves to respect our feelings, and to discipline (transpose) them into a language that matches those feelings so they can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream or vision, it is the skeleton architecture of our lives.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

"Poetry is Not a Luxury"
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Tim Shadbolt photo

“In Russia - Poets are considered a danger to the political system and are sent into Asylums.
What a compliment to the Russian People
that poetry could move them so.
In NZ Poets are not considered a danger.
No one reads poetry
Poets aren't sent to Asylums but they are considered mad nonetheless”

Tim Shadbolt (1947) New Zealand politician

From the introduction to "Concrete Reality"

Yevgeny Yevtushenko photo

“A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else can be only a footnote.”

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932–2017) Russian poet, film director, teacher

Andrew R. MacAndrew (trans.) A Precocious Autobiography (1963; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965) p. 7.

Wallace Stevens photo

“Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Letter (19 December 1935) as published in Letters of Wallace Stevens (1966) edited by Holly Stevens, (No. 336)

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo

“Poetry can be criticized only through poetry.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

“Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #117
Context: Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A critique which itself is not a work of art, either in content as representation of the necessary impression in the process of creation, or through its beautiful form and in its liberal tone in the spirit of the old Roman satire, has no right of citizenship in the realm of art.

Joy Harjo photo

“There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.”

Joy Harjo (1951) American writer
Rupi Kaur photo

“People aren’t used to poetry that’s so easy and simple.”

Rupi Kaur (1992) Canadian poet

On her work in “ The young ‘Instapoet’ Rupi Kaur: from social media star to bestselling writer” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/27/rupi-kaur-i-dont-fit-age-race-class-of-bestselling-poet-milk-and-honey in The Guardian (2017 May 27)

“Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.”

Adrian Mitchell (1932–2008) British writer

Poems (1964), Preface.

Charles Bukowski photo

“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Related topics