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Alexander Blok
8 quotes
“My spirit is old; and some black lot awaits me On my long road. Some dream accurst, inveterate, suffocates me Still with its load. So young – yet hosts of dreadful thoughts appal me, Sick and opprest. Come! and from shadowy phantoms disenthral me, Friend.”
Alexander Blok (1880–1921) first seen 1899 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: My Spirit is Old" (1899); translation from Oliver Elton Verse from Pushkin and Others (London: E. Arnold, 1935) p. 175.
“When rowan leaves are dank and rusting And rowan berries red as blood, When in my palm the hangman's thrusting The final nail with bony thud, When, over the foul flooding river, Upon the wet grey height, I toss Before my land's grim looks, and shiver As I swing here upon the cross, Then, through the blood and weeping, stretches My dying sight to space remote; I see upon the river’s reaches Christ sailing to me in a boat.”
Alexander Blok (1880–1921) first seen 1907 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Autumn Love" (1907); translation from C. M. Bowra (ed.) A Book of Russian Verse (London: Macmillan, 1943) p. 99.
“O, my Russia! O, wife! The long road is clear to us to the point of pain. Our road – like a Tatar arrow of ancient will has pierced our breast.”
Alexander Blok (1880–1921) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Kulikovo Field" (1908); translation from Sarah Pratt Nikolai Zabolotsky (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2000) p. 53.
“What message, years of conflagration, have you: madness or hope? On thin cheeks strained by war and liberation bloody reflections still remain.”
Alexander Blok (1880–1921) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Those Born in Years of Stagnation" (1914); translation from Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (trans.) The Twelve, and Other Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 139.
“Grip your gun like a man, brother! Let's have a crack at Holy Russia, Mother Russia with her big, fat arse! Freedom, freedom! Down with the cross!”
Alexander Blok (1880–1921) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Twelve (1918); translation from Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (trans.) The Twelve, and Other Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 146.
“Hell and damnation, life is such fun with a ragged greatcoat and a Jerry gun!”
Alexander Blok (1880–1921) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Twelve (1918); translation from Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (trans.) The Twelve, and Other Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 147.
“So they march with sovereign tread… Behind them limps the hungry dog, and wrapped in wild snow at their head carrying a blood-red flag soft-footed where the blizzard swirls, invulnerable where bullets crossed – crowned with a crown of snowflake pearls, a flowery diadem of frost, ahead of them goes Jesus Christ.”
Alexander Blok (1880–1921) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Twelve (1918); translation from Jon Stallworthy and Peter France (trans.) The Twelve, and Other Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 160.
“Blok was probably the greatest Russian poet since Pushkin; although internationally less well known than Rilke and Valéry, he is of their stature and importance. He revolutionized Russian versification by making use of a purely accentual technique. He knew, as so few now know, that only the poetry of suffering – whether it is a poetry of joy or not – can be great. His own poetry, for which he burnt himself out, demonstrates this.”
Alexander Blok (1880–1921) said by 1921 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975) vol. 4, p. 225.