January 2011
39 posts
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“The poet takes the best things out of his life and puts them into his work....”
– Leo Tolstoy, Notebooks (via d0novan)
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“The door was shut and the windows shuttered; perhaps a fly or gnat hung buzzing...”
– Family Happiness by Leo Tolstoy (via steebadeeb)
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“When we are dead, men will fly in balloons, change the fashion of their coats,...”
– Anton Chekhov, The Three Sisters (Act II)
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“You pronounced your words as if you refuse to acknowledge the existence of...”
– Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (via brdgrl)
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“After all, nothing can happen that is worse than death - and you can’t avoid...”
– A Hero of Our Time, Lermontov (via practicalcats)
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“Why have I lived? For what purpose was I born? There probably was one once, and...”
– A Hero of Our Time, Lermontov (via practicalcats)
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“There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and...”
– Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, The Best Russian Short Stories (via khadeejafinds)
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“For in the end what are we, who are convinced that suicide is obligatory and yet...”
– Tolstoy
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Nature - is Rome, and Mirrored There
Nature - is Rome, and mirrored there.
We see its grandeur, civic forms parade:
a sky-blue circus in the clear air,
fields a forum, trees a colonnade.
Nature - is Rome, therefore,
it seems vain now for prayers to be made:
there are sacrificial...
Lot's Wife
And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."
A single glance: a sudden...
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“We do not need a dead mausoleum of art where dead works are worshipped, but a...”
– Vladimir Mayakovsky (via fuckyeahexistentialism)
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“None of us will be forgiven. No one.”
– Alexei Maximovich Peshkov/Maxim Gorky. Childhood. (via to-grill-a-mockingbird)
“Generally speaking, the significance of the indirect results may very often be...”
– Tertium Organum, P.D. Ouspensky
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“Natasha fell in love from the moment she entered the ball room. She was not in...”
– Leo Tolstoy, from War and Peace. (via memymarie)
Submit! →
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What is translation? On a platter
A poet’s pale and glaring head,
A...”
– Vladimir Nabokov On Translating Eugene Onegin
Nabokov ironically uses tetrameter sonnets like those of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin to defend his choice of translating Pushkin’s work into free verse.
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“He was a poet nevertheless, and his passion for poetry was indomitable: when he...”
– From Pushkin’s Egyptian Nights (via clancummings)
oldpewterkey asked: Just because someone is alive doesn't mean what they've crafted in their lifetime isn't literature. There are amazing authors who are still living who have created truly amazing works of art, and you didn't specify in asking for recommendations for **classic** lit, so... what makes me weird exactly for suggesting a live author..?
Recommend Russian Literature →
And get free beards!
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oldpewterkey asked: Suggestion:
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
She. Kicks. Major. Ass.
This. Yes.
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
She. Kicks. Major. Ass.
This. Yes.
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“But I’m drawn here to the lake like a seagull… My heart is full of you.”
– Nina, The Seagull (via gibaloo)
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“A good upbringing means not that you won’t spill sauce on the tablecloth, but...”
– Anton Chekhov (via redbuses-freckles)
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“In what we do – whether we act on the stage or write – the most important thing...”
– (Anton Chekhov) Nina, The Sea-Gull (via dotseurat)