If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet.
The delirium and horror of the East. The dusty catastrophe of Asia. Green only on the banner of the Prophet. Nothing grows here except mustaches.
Tragedy, as you know, is always a fait accompli, whereas terror always has to do with anticipation, with man’s recognition of hisown negative potential – with his sense of what he is capable of.
No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there – well or poorly.
Poems, novels – these things belong to the nation, to the culture and the people. They’ve been stolen from the people and now the stolen things are being returned to their owners, but I don’t think their owners should be grateful to receive them.
When Thomas Mann arrived in California from Germany, they asked him about German literature. And he said, ‘German literature is where I am.’ It’s really a bit grand, but if a German can afford it, I can afford it.
What’s happening in Russia is devoid of autobiographical interest for me. Maybe it’s egocentric. Whatever it is, feel free to use it.
I don’t believe in that country any longer. I’m not interested. I’m writing in the language, and I like the language.
I don’t want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process.
My poems getting published in Russia doesn’t make me feel in any fashion, to tell you the truth. I’m not trying to be coy, but it doesn’t tickle my ego.
I am losing my Soviet citizenship, I do not cease to be a Russian poet. I believe that I will return. Poets always return in flesh or on paper.
As to the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer’s patriotism is not oaths from a high platform, but how he writes in the language of the people among whom he lives .
Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one’s mental equilibrium. It is your window on time’s infinity. Once this window opens, don’t try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open.
Of all the parts of your body, be most vigilant over your index finger, for it is blame-thirsty. A pointed finger is a victim’s logo.
Believe your pain.’ This awful bear hug is no mistake. Nothing that disturbs you is. Remember all along that there is no embrace in this world that won’t finally unclasp.
Still, winter is an abstract season: it is low on colors, even in Italy, and big on the imperatives of cold and brief daylight. These things train your eye on the outside with an intensity greater than that of the electric bulb availing you of your own features in the evening. If this season doesn’t necessarily quell your nerves, it still subordinates them to your instincts; beauty at low temperatures is beauty.
For in a real tragedy, it is not the hero who perishes; it is the chorus.
What’s wrong with discourses about the obvious is that they corrupt consciousness with their easiness, with the speed with which they provide one with moral comfort, with the sensation of being right.
Mandelstam was, one is tempted to say, a modern Orpheus: sent to hell, he never returned, while his widow dodged across one-sixth of the earth’s surface, clutching the saucepan with his songs rolled up inside, memorizing them by night in the event they were found by Furies with a search warrant. These are our metamorphoses, our myths.
What paradise and vacation have in common is that you have to pay for both, and the coin is your previous life.