Tao Te Ching
Anna Akhmatova Анна Ахматова
(Andreyevna Gorenko)
1889 – 1966 CE
Russia's most loved female poet
One of the most famous Russian poets, strikingly original and courageous critic, powerful and legendary Russian heroine; Anna Akhmatova's chose to remain in her country rather emigrate when her work was condemned by Stalinist censors, her first husband was killed by Soviet secret police, and her son and common-law husband were thrown into the Gulag. During this time her poetry was circulated on scraps of paper that were read once and then immediately burned.
Lineages
Poets Russian Women of Wisdom
Eras
Western
Post-Romantic Age (1850 – 2018 CE)Great Depression (1929 – 1941 CE)
Roaring Twenties (1920 – 1929 CE)
Chinese
Qing dynasty (1644 – 1912 CE)Generations
The Lost Generation (1883 – 1900 CE)Unlisted Sources
"Dedication"
"Memory of the Sun"
"Prayer"
"This Cruel Age has deflected me" (1944)
Quotes by Anna Akhmatova (12 quotes)
“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.”
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“Already madness lifts its wing to cover half my soul. Now everything is clear... Nothing I counted mine, out of my life, is mine to take...”
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“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—”
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“I go forth to seek —
To seek and claim the lovely magic garden
Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.”
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“Why is this century worse than those others?
Maybe, because, in sadness and alarm,
It only touched the blackest of the ulcers,
But couldn't heal it in its span of time.”
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“Give me bitter years of sickness,
Suffocation, insomnia, fever,
Take my child and my lover,
And my mysterious gift of song —
So that the stormcloud over darkened Russia
Might become a cloud of glorious rays.”
from "Prayer"
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“Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree... Now the arrested are returning, and two Russians 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.”
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“Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree... Now the arrested are returning, and two Russians 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.”
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“The willow in the empty sky spread her transparent fan
perhaps it were better that I not be your wife.”
from "Memory of the Sun"
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“... if I could step outside myself
and contemplate the person that I am,
I should know at last what envy is.”
from "This Cruel Age has deflected me" (1944)
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“what have poets, in any case, to do with sin? They must dance before the Ark of the Covenant or die!”
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“The mountains bow before this anguish,
The great river does not flow.
In mortal sadness the convicts languish;
but cannot burst these ponderous bolts
that block us from the prison cells
crowded with mortal woe...”
from "Dedication"
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