Anton Chekhov
If you ever have need of my life, come and take it.5 —Anton Chekhov, The Seagull (Chump Change; Unabridged ed. Edition, October 1, 1896) Originally January 1, 1895.
Category: Russian Literature
Boris Pasternak
You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught. — Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (Hallmark Editions; First Thus edition, January 1, 1967) Originally published January 1st 1965.
Marina Tsvetaeva
[…] they say it is by the pull ofabysses, that you measure height. — Marina Tsvetaeva, from “Poem of the Mountain,” Selected Poems (Penguin Classics, 1994)
Vladimir Nabokov
I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness―in a landscape selected at random―is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants.… Continue reading Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Well, [Dear], our pentameter may seemto foreign ears as if it could not rousethe limp iambus from its pyrrhic dream.But close your eyes and listen to the line.The melody unwinds; the middle wordis marvelously long and serpentine:you hear one beat, but you have also heardthe shadow of another, then the thirdtouches the gong, and then… Continue reading Vladimir Nabokov
Alexander Pushkin
I’ve lived to se my longings die:My dreams and I have grown apart;Now only sorrow haunts my eye,The wages of a bitter heart. Beneath the storms of hostile fate,My flowery wreath has faded fast;I live alone and sadly waitTo see when death will come at last. Just so, when the winds in winter moanAnd snow… Continue reading Alexander Pushkin
Vera Pavlova
when you are aloneyour letters become longeryour poems shorter — Vera Pavlova, from “13″ of “22 Haiku,” Album for the Young (and Old): Poems, trans. Steven Seymour ( Alfred A. Knopf, 2017)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 12th edition June 14, 2002) Originally published November 1880.
Vladimir Nabokov
Days like this give sight a rest and allow other senses to function more freely. Earth and sky were drained of all color. It was either raining or pretending to rain or not raining at all, yet still appearing to rain in a sense that only certain […] dialects can either express verbally or not… Continue reading Vladimir Nabokov
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
= A magic moment I remember:I raised my eyes and you were there,A fleeting vision, the quintessenceOf all that’s beautiful and rareI pray to mute despair and anguish,To vain the pursuits world esteems,Long did I hear your soothing accents,Long did your features haunt my dreams.Time passed. A rebel storm-blast scatteredThe reveries that once were mineAnd… Continue reading Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
The Vale of Soul-Making 