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“When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie.”
―
―
“A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.”
―
―
“Be equal to your talent, not your age. At times let the gap between them be embarrassing.”
―
―
“In any man who dies there dies with him, his first snow and kiss and fight. Not people die but worlds die in them.”
―
―
“How can the confessor teach/ those who are lost and sick at heart,/ when he himself, among the sinners,/ is worst, and most forsaken?/ It is only a game we play/ with other people's sins./ Besides, everyone knows/ that everyone lies confessing.”
― Stolen Apples
― Stolen Apples
“He who is conceived in a cage yearns for the cage.”
―
―
“no one sleeps more beautifully than you. But i am afraid that you will waken just now, and touch me with an indifferent glance, lightly passing, and commit the murder of beauty.”
―
―
“No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.
Nothing in them in not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.
And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting.
To each his world is private
and in that world one excellent minute.
And in that world one tragic minute
These are private.
In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight
it goes with him.
There are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery
Whose fate is to survive.
But what has gone is also not nothing:
by the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.
Whom we knew as faulty, the earth's creatures
Of whom, essentially, what did we know?
Brother of a brother? Friend of friends?
Lover of lover?
We who knew our fathers
in everything, in nothing.
They perish. They cannot be brought back.
The secret worlds are not regenerated.
And every time again and again
I make my lament against destruction.”
―
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.
Nothing in them in not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.
And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting.
To each his world is private
and in that world one excellent minute.
And in that world one tragic minute
These are private.
In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight
it goes with him.
There are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery
Whose fate is to survive.
But what has gone is also not nothing:
by the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.
Whom we knew as faulty, the earth's creatures
Of whom, essentially, what did we know?
Brother of a brother? Friend of friends?
Lover of lover?
We who knew our fathers
in everything, in nothing.
They perish. They cannot be brought back.
The secret worlds are not regenerated.
And every time again and again
I make my lament against destruction.”
―
“They tell me, shaking their heads:
"You should be kinder. You are somehow furious".
I used to be kind. It didn’t last long.”
―
"You should be kinder. You are somehow furious".
I used to be kind. It didn’t last long.”
―
“I sing and drink,
giving no thought to death;
with arms outspread
I fall upon the grass,
and if, in this wide world, I come to die,
then it’s certain to be
from sheer joy that I live.”
―
giving no thought to death;
with arms outspread
I fall upon the grass,
and if, in this wide world, I come to die,
then it’s certain to be
from sheer joy that I live.”
―
“And how I flattered myself
From time to time with proving to myself
Nothing in you could be unknown to me.
You don't belong to the mind's calculations,
And you disproved each of my demonstrations,
Since to be unexpected is your truth.”
―
From time to time with proving to myself
Nothing in you could be unknown to me.
You don't belong to the mind's calculations,
And you disproved each of my demonstrations,
Since to be unexpected is your truth.”
―
“All values in this world are more or less questionable, but the most important thing in life is human kindness.”
― Yevtushenko: Selected Poems
― Yevtushenko: Selected Poems
“But history is that rare woman who doesn't like to look at herself in the mirror. History, when she finds herself in front of one, wipes and wipes its surface at though in this way she might change her face to something better”
― The Russian Century: A History of the Last Hundred Years
― The Russian Century: A History of the Last Hundred Years
“Who never knew the price of happiness will not be happy.”
―
―
“My love will come
will fling open her arms and fold me in them,
will understand my fears, observe my changes.
In from the pouring dark, from the pitch night
without stopping to bang the taxi door
she’ll run upstairs through the decaying porch
burning with love and love’s happiness,
she’ll run dripping upstairs, she won’t knock,
will take my head in her hands,
and when she drops her overcoat on a chair,
it will slide to the floor in a blue heap.”
―
will fling open her arms and fold me in them,
will understand my fears, observe my changes.
In from the pouring dark, from the pitch night
without stopping to bang the taxi door
she’ll run upstairs through the decaying porch
burning with love and love’s happiness,
she’ll run dripping upstairs, she won’t knock,
will take my head in her hands,
and when she drops her overcoat on a chair,
it will slide to the floor in a blue heap.”
―
“While you're alive it's shameful to worm your way into
the Calendar of Saints.
Disbelief in yourself is more saintly.
It takes real talent not to dread being terrified
by your own agonizing lack of talent.
Disbelief in yourself is indispensable.
Indispensable to us is the loneliness
of being gripped in the vise,
so that in the darkest night the sky will enter you
and skin your temples with the stars,
so that streetcars will crash into the room,
wheels cutting across your face,
so the dangling rope, terrible and alive,
will float into the room and dance invitingly in the air.
Indispensable is any mangy ghost
in tattered, overplayed stage rags,
and if even the ghosts are capricious,
I swear, they are no more capricious than those who are alive.
Indispensable amidst babbling boredom
are the deadly fear of uttering the right words
and the fear of shaving, because across your cheekbone
graveyard grass already grows.
It is indispensable to be sleeplessly delirious,
to fail, to leap into emptiness.
Probably, only in despair is it possible
to speak all the truth to this age.
It is indispensable, after throwing out dirty drafts,
to explode yourself and crawl before ridicule,
to reassemble your shattered hands
from fingers that rolled under the dresser.
Indispensable is the cowardice to be cruel
and the observation of the small mercies,
when a step toward falsely high goals
makes the trampled stars squeal out.
It's indispensable, with a misfit's hunger,
to gnaw a verb right down to the bone.
Only one who is by nature from the naked poor
is neither naked nor poor before fastidious eternity.
And if from out of the dirt,
you have become a prince,
but without principles,
unprince yourself and consider
how much less dirt there was before,
when you were in the real, pure dirt.
Our self-esteem is such baseness....
The Creator raises to the heights
only those who, even with tiny movements,
tremble with the fear of uncertainty.
Better to cut open your veins with a can opener,
to lie like a wino on a spit-spattered bench in the park,
than to come to that very comfortable belief
in your own special significance.
Blessed is the madcap artist,
who smashes his sculpture with relish-
hungry and cold-but free
from degrading belief in himself.”
―
the Calendar of Saints.
Disbelief in yourself is more saintly.
It takes real talent not to dread being terrified
by your own agonizing lack of talent.
Disbelief in yourself is indispensable.
Indispensable to us is the loneliness
of being gripped in the vise,
so that in the darkest night the sky will enter you
and skin your temples with the stars,
so that streetcars will crash into the room,
wheels cutting across your face,
so the dangling rope, terrible and alive,
will float into the room and dance invitingly in the air.
Indispensable is any mangy ghost
in tattered, overplayed stage rags,
and if even the ghosts are capricious,
I swear, they are no more capricious than those who are alive.
Indispensable amidst babbling boredom
are the deadly fear of uttering the right words
and the fear of shaving, because across your cheekbone
graveyard grass already grows.
It is indispensable to be sleeplessly delirious,
to fail, to leap into emptiness.
Probably, only in despair is it possible
to speak all the truth to this age.
It is indispensable, after throwing out dirty drafts,
to explode yourself and crawl before ridicule,
to reassemble your shattered hands
from fingers that rolled under the dresser.
Indispensable is the cowardice to be cruel
and the observation of the small mercies,
when a step toward falsely high goals
makes the trampled stars squeal out.
It's indispensable, with a misfit's hunger,
to gnaw a verb right down to the bone.
Only one who is by nature from the naked poor
is neither naked nor poor before fastidious eternity.
And if from out of the dirt,
you have become a prince,
but without principles,
unprince yourself and consider
how much less dirt there was before,
when you were in the real, pure dirt.
Our self-esteem is such baseness....
The Creator raises to the heights
only those who, even with tiny movements,
tremble with the fear of uncertainty.
Better to cut open your veins with a can opener,
to lie like a wino on a spit-spattered bench in the park,
than to come to that very comfortable belief
in your own special significance.
Blessed is the madcap artist,
who smashes his sculpture with relish-
hungry and cold-but free
from degrading belief in himself.”
―
“Quand la vérité est remplacée par le silence, le silence est un mensonge”
―
―
“Something dangerous is beginning:
I am coming late to my own self.
I made an appointment with my thoughts-
the thoughts were snatched from me.
I made an appointment with Faulkner-
but they made me go to a banquet.
I made an appointment with history,
but a grass-widow dragged me into bed.
Worse than barbed wire
are birthday parties, mine and others',
and roasted suckling pigs hold me
like a sprig of parsley between their teeth!
Led away for good
to a life absolutely not my own,
everything that I eat, eats me,
everything that I drink, drinks me.
I made an appointment with myself,
but they invite me to feast on my own spareribs.
I am garlanded from all sides
not by strings of bagels, but by the holes of bagels,
and I look like an anthology of zeros.
Life gets broken into hundreds of lifelets,
that exhaust and execute me.
In order to get through to myself
I had to smash my body against others',
and my fragments, my smithereens,
are trampled by the roaring crowd.
I am trying to glue myself together,
but my arms are still severed.
I'd write with my left leg,
but both the left and the right
have run off, in different directions.
I don't know- where is my body?
And soul? Did it really fly off,
without a murmured 'good-bye! '?
How do I break through to a faraway namesake,
waiting for me in the cold somewhere?
I've forgotten under which clock
I am waiting for myself.
For those who don't know who they are,
time does not exist.
No one is under the clock.
On the clock there is nothing.
I am late for my appointment
with me. There is no one.
Nothing but cigarette butts.
Only one flicker-
A lonely, dying, spark...”
―
I am coming late to my own self.
I made an appointment with my thoughts-
the thoughts were snatched from me.
I made an appointment with Faulkner-
but they made me go to a banquet.
I made an appointment with history,
but a grass-widow dragged me into bed.
Worse than barbed wire
are birthday parties, mine and others',
and roasted suckling pigs hold me
like a sprig of parsley between their teeth!
Led away for good
to a life absolutely not my own,
everything that I eat, eats me,
everything that I drink, drinks me.
I made an appointment with myself,
but they invite me to feast on my own spareribs.
I am garlanded from all sides
not by strings of bagels, but by the holes of bagels,
and I look like an anthology of zeros.
Life gets broken into hundreds of lifelets,
that exhaust and execute me.
In order to get through to myself
I had to smash my body against others',
and my fragments, my smithereens,
are trampled by the roaring crowd.
I am trying to glue myself together,
but my arms are still severed.
I'd write with my left leg,
but both the left and the right
have run off, in different directions.
I don't know- where is my body?
And soul? Did it really fly off,
without a murmured 'good-bye! '?
How do I break through to a faraway namesake,
waiting for me in the cold somewhere?
I've forgotten under which clock
I am waiting for myself.
For those who don't know who they are,
time does not exist.
No one is under the clock.
On the clock there is nothing.
I am late for my appointment
with me. There is no one.
Nothing but cigarette butts.
Only one flicker-
A lonely, dying, spark...”
―
“Career"
Galileo, the clergy maintained,
was a pernicious and stubborn man.
But time has a way of demonstrating
the most stubborn are the most intelligent.
In Galileo's day, a fellow scientist
was no more stupid than Galileo.
He was well aware the earth revolved,
but he also had a large family to feed.
Stepping into a carriage with his wife,
after effecting his betrayal,
he believed he was launched on a career,
though he was undermining it in reality.
Galileo alone had risked asserting
the truth about our planet,
and this made him a great man... His was
a genuine career as I understand it.
I salute then a career,
when the career is akin to
that of a Shakespeare or Pasteur,
a Newton or Tolstoy- Leo!
Why did people fling mud at them all?
Talent speaks for itself, whatever the charges.
We've forgotten the men who abused them,
Remember only the victims of slander.
All who rushed into the stratosphere,
the doctors who perished fighting cholera,
were, all of them, men of career!
I take their careers as my example!
I believe in their sacred faith.
Their faith is my very manhood.
I shall therefore pursue my career
by trying not to pursue one.”
―
Galileo, the clergy maintained,
was a pernicious and stubborn man.
But time has a way of demonstrating
the most stubborn are the most intelligent.
In Galileo's day, a fellow scientist
was no more stupid than Galileo.
He was well aware the earth revolved,
but he also had a large family to feed.
Stepping into a carriage with his wife,
after effecting his betrayal,
he believed he was launched on a career,
though he was undermining it in reality.
Galileo alone had risked asserting
the truth about our planet,
and this made him a great man... His was
a genuine career as I understand it.
I salute then a career,
when the career is akin to
that of a Shakespeare or Pasteur,
a Newton or Tolstoy- Leo!
Why did people fling mud at them all?
Talent speaks for itself, whatever the charges.
We've forgotten the men who abused them,
Remember only the victims of slander.
All who rushed into the stratosphere,
the doctors who perished fighting cholera,
were, all of them, men of career!
I take their careers as my example!
I believe in their sacred faith.
Their faith is my very manhood.
I shall therefore pursue my career
by trying not to pursue one.”
―
“But the system for all its cruelty and deceitfulness, turned out to be stupid. It had taught its future gravedigger how to wield a shovel.”
―
―
“Life is a rainbow which also includes black," from "Guardian," 1987”
―
―
“Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it most certainly not beautiful”
―
―
“I was someone good, young, going away.
I felt sad and clean
and sad perhaps because
of having learnt something
and not yet knowing what.”
― Selected Poems
I felt sad and clean
and sad perhaps because
of having learnt something
and not yet knowing what.”
― Selected Poems
“Мне говорят, качая головой:
"Ты подобрел бы. Ты какой-то злой".
Я добрый был. Недолго это было.”
―
"Ты подобрел бы. Ты какой-то злой".
Я добрый был. Недолго это было.”
―
“Gentleness is a posthumous honor”
―
―
“So come sei con me.
Di là da quella soglia, come sei?”
―
Di là da quella soglia, come sei?”
―
“You can't bring someone back if he's been executed through a miscarriage of justice. And if there is a death penalty, then you need executioners, even if they merely push a button. That means that in punishing murderers, we inevitably create new ones.”
― Don't die before you're dead
― Don't die before you're dead
“Gentleness is a posthumous honor.”
― Selected Poems
― Selected Poems
“Something always remains unrealized, rejecting encapsulation in words, as if there were not yet in existence words to express it all....
"I hate the idea of fixed collectivism, in which faces are erased in the name of faceless-ness.
It is a miserable parody of what overcoming isolation really means. Isolation grows even deeper if it becomes collective. But every face has its inner face, of which we are sometimes wary, or else downright afraid. If we only stopped being frightened of revealing to each other these inner faces, we would see how close and akin to one another, how inseparable we really are. Only masks hate one another. Our faces cannot hate one another; but our faces are covered by masks."- from "The Face Behind the Face”
― [(The Face Behind the Face)] [Author: Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko] published on
"I hate the idea of fixed collectivism, in which faces are erased in the name of faceless-ness.
It is a miserable parody of what overcoming isolation really means. Isolation grows even deeper if it becomes collective. But every face has its inner face, of which we are sometimes wary, or else downright afraid. If we only stopped being frightened of revealing to each other these inner faces, we would see how close and akin to one another, how inseparable we really are. Only masks hate one another. Our faces cannot hate one another; but our faces are covered by masks."- from "The Face Behind the Face”
― [(The Face Behind the Face)] [Author: Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko] published on
