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I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity and at the bottom of it all: only love poetry. Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation. It all comes with love

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
Pain
Disorder
Fear
Sheer
Comes
Clarity
Love
Chaos
Complete
Bottom
Enchantment
Poetry
Humiliation
Middle
Occasional

More quotes by Anna Akhmatova

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We learned not to meet anymore, We don't raise our eyes to one another, But we ourselves won't guarantee What could happen to us in an hour.
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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.
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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.
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You do not know just what you've been forgiven.
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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.
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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.
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I have long had this premonition of a bright day and a deserted house
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My shadow serves as the friend I crave
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All that I am hangs by a thread tonight
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Real tenderness can't be confused, It's quiet and can't be heard.
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Not, not mine: it's somebody else's wound I could never have borne it. So take the thing that happened, hide it, stick it in the ground whisk the lamps away.
Anna Akhmatova
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There is a sacred, secret line in loving which attraction and even passion cannot cross.
Anna Akhmatova
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It is unbearably painful for the soul to love silently.
Anna Akhmatova
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Poems are my link with the times, with the new life of my people.
Anna Akhmatova
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The secret of secrets is inside me again.
Anna Akhmatova
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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
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... 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
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Forgive me, that I manage badly, Manage badly but live gloriously, That I leave traces of myself in my songs, That I appeared to you in waking dreams.
Anna Akhmatova
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This cruel age has deflected me, like a river from this course. Strayed from its familiar shores, my changeling life has flowed into a sister channel. How many spectacles I've missed: the curtain rising without me, and falling too. How many friends I never had the chance to meet.
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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