I didn’t want to be either the cre’me de la cre’me or a martyr. I’d rather be a novelty, especially in a democracy that doesn’t understand the language I write in.
I’m 100 percent Jewish by blood, but by education I’m nothing. By affiliation I’m nothing.
I’m neither Catholic not Protestant. Protestant sounds good but I don’t think I am.
The real history of consciousness starts with one’s first lie.
At certain periods of history it is only poetry that is capable of dealing with reality by condensing it into something graspable, something that otherwise wouldn’t be retained by the mind.
As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at a basketball: one’s palms keep sliding off.
Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.
Persecution mania is still around. In your writing, in your exchanges with people, meeting people who are in Russian affairs, Russian literature, etcetera.
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.