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As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves.
Anna Akhmatova
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Anna Akhmatova
Age: 76 †
Born: 1889
Born: June 23
Died: 1966
Died: March 5
Author
Literary Critic
Literary Scholar
Poet
Translator
Writer
Odesa
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko
Anna Achmatova
Anna Ahmatova
Anna Gorenko
Anna Andreevna Gorenko
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova
Rots
Festival
Festivals
Leaves
Terrible
Dead
Future
Past
Ripens
More quotes by Anna Akhmatova
No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot survivor of that time, that place.
Anna Akhmatova
Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free.
Anna Akhmatova
I have long had this premonition of a bright day and a deserted house
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In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me . . . and asked me in a whisper . . . Can you describe this? And I said: I can.
Anna Akhmatova
Natural thunder heralds the wetness of fresh water high clouds to quench the thirst of fields gone dry and parched, a messenger of blessed rain, but this was as dry as hell must be. My distraught perception refused to believe it, because of the insane suddenness with which it sounded, swelled and hit, and how casually it came to murder my child.
Anna Akhmatova
Rising from the past, my shadow Is running in silence to meet me.
Anna Akhmatova
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.
Anna Akhmatova
I myself, from the very beginning, Seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium Or a reflection in someone else's mirror, Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. Already I knew the list of crimes That I was destined to commit.
Anna Akhmatova
Sweet to me was not the voice of man, But the wind's voice was understood by me. The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul, But I loved the silver willow best of all.
Anna Akhmatova
I seem to myself, as in a dream, Am accidental guest in this dreadful body.
Anna Akhmatova
All has been looted, betrayed, sold black death's wing flashed ahead.
Anna Akhmatova
We are all carousers and loose women here How unhappy we are together!
Anna Akhmatova
Real tenderness can't be confused, It's quiet and can't be heard.
Anna Akhmatova
Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life.
Anna Akhmatova
I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now.
Anna Akhmatova
We aged a hundred years, and this happened in a single hour: the short summer had already died, the body of the ploughed plains smoked.
Anna Akhmatova
And this tenderness was not like That which a certain poet At the beginning of the century called true And, for some reason, quiet. No, not at all— It rang out, like the first waterfall, It crunched like the crust of bluish ice And it prayed with a swanlike voice, And it broke down right before our eyes.
Anna Akhmatova
Call me a sinner, Mock me maliciously: I was your insomnia, I was your grief.
Anna Akhmatova
But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you ... more proud.
Anna Akhmatova
How the miracle of our meeting Shone there and sang, I didn't want to return From there to anywhere. Happiness instead of duty Was bitter delight to me. Not obliged to speak to anyone, I spoke for a long while. Let passions stifle lovers, Demanding answers, We, my dear, are only souls At the limits of the world.
Anna Akhmatova
