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Hands, matches, an ashtray. A ritual beautiful and bitter.
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
Matches
Ritual
Bitter
Beautiful
Hands
Ashtray
Ashtrays
More quotes by Anna Akhmatova
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
Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life.
Anna Akhmatova
A land not mine, still forever memorable, the waters of its ocean chill and fresh. Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk, and the air drunk, like wine, late sun lays bare the rosy limbs of the pinetrees. Sunset in the ethereal waves: I cannot tell if the day is ending, or the world, or if the secret of secrets is inside me again.
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
There is a sacred, secret line in loving which attraction and even passion cannot cross.
Anna Akhmatova
No, not under the vault of another sky, not under the shelter of other wings. I was with my people then, there where my people were doomed to be.
Anna Akhmatova
Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed, His dear disciple, stone-faced, stared. His mother stood apart. No other looked into her secret eyes. Nobody dared.
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
... he is rewarded with a form of eternal childhood, with the bounty and vigilance of the stars, the whole world was his inheritance and he shared it with everyone.
Anna Akhmatova
I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed... here, where I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars.
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
It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.
Anna Akhmatova
I am not one of those who left the land to the mercy of its enemies. Their flattery leaves me cold, my songs are not for them to praise.
Anna Akhmatova
The celebrations Of secret nonmeetings are empty, Unspoken conversations, Unuttered words. Glances that don't intersect Don't know where to come to rest. And only the tears rejoice Because they can flow and flow. Sweetbrier around Moscow, Alas! Somehow it is here ... And all this they will call Love eternal.
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
If you were music I would listen to you ceaselessly And my low spirits would brighten up.
Anna Akhmatova
I have long had this premonition of a bright day and a deserted house
Anna Akhmatova
This Cruel Age has deflected me.
Anna Akhmatova
I seem to myself, as in a dream, Am accidental guest in this dreadful body.
Anna Akhmatova
The triumphs of a mysterious non-meeting are desolate ones unspoken phrases, silent words.
Anna Akhmatova
