Contents
They were shy before her, transferring the power of her poems to her personality. She herself said: “Everyone considers me courageous. I do not know a person more timid than me. I’m afraid of everything … «On the day of memory of the brilliant poet and paradoxical thinker, we picked up a few of her statements that will help to better understand this woman.
Strict, intolerant of other people’s opinions, categorical — She made such an impression on those around her. We have collected quotes from her letters, diaries and interviews…
About Love
For the complete coherence of souls, the coherence of breath is needed, for what is breath but the rhythm of the soul? So, in order for people to understand each other, it is necessary that they walk or lie side by side.
***
To love is to see a person as God intended him to be. and the parents did not. Not to love — to see a person as his parents made him. Fall out of love — to see instead of him: a table, a chair.
***
If the current ones do not say “I love”, then out of fear, firstly, to bind themselves, and secondly, to convey: lower your price. Out of pure selfishness. Those — we — did not say «I love» out of mystical fear, naming it, to kill love, and also out of deep confidence that there is something higher than love, out of fear this higher — to reduce, saying «I love» — not to give. That is why we are so little loved.
***
…I don’t need love, I need understanding. For me, this is love. And what you call love (sacrifice, fidelity, jealousy), take care for others, for the other — I do not need this. I can only love a person who on a spring day would prefer a birch to me. This is my formula.
About the Motherland
Motherland is not a convention of territory, but the immutability of memory and blood. Not to be in Russia, to forget Russia—only those who think of Russia outside of themselves can be afraid. In whom it is inside, he will lose it only along with life.
About gratitude
I am never grateful to people for deeds — only for essences! The bread given to me may be an accident, a dream about me is always an entity.
***
I take as I give: blindly, as indifferent to the hand of the giver as to her own, the recipient.
***
The man gives me bread.What’s first? Give away. Give away without giving thanks. Gratitude: a gift of oneself for the good, that is: paid love. I honor people too much to offend them with paid love.
***
To identify a source of goods with goods (a cook with meat, an uncle with sugar, a guest with a tip) is a sign of a complete underdevelopment of the soul and thought. A being that has gone no further than the five senses. A dog that loves to be petted is superior to a cat that loves to be stroked, and a cat that loves to be stroked is superior to a child that loves to be fed. It’s all about degrees. So, from the simplest love for sugar — to love for the caress of love at the sight — to love without seeing (at a distance), — to love, despite (dislike), from small love for — to great love outside (me) — from love receiving (by the will of another!) to love that takes (even against his will, without his knowledge, against his will!) — to love in itself. The older we are, the more we want: in infancy — only sugar, in youth — only love, in old age — only (!) Essence (you are outside of me).
***
To take is a shame, no, to give is a shame. The taker, since he takes, obviously does not; the giver, since he gives, clearly has it. And this confrontation is with no … It would be necessary to give on your knees, as the beggars ask.
***
I can only admire the hand that gives the last hence: I can never be grateful to the rich.
About the time
… No one is free to choose their loved ones: I would be glad, let’s say, to love my age more than the previous one, but I can’t. I can’t, and I don’t have to. Nobody is obliged to love, but everyone who does not love is obliged to know: what he does not love, — why don’t you love — two.
***
… My time may disgust me, I am on my own, because I — what, I can threaten, I’ll say more (because it happens!), I can find someone else’s thing of someone else’s age more desirable than my own — and not by the acceptance of strength, but by the acceptance of kindred — a mother’s child may be sweeter than his own, who has gone to his father, that is, to the century, but I am on my child — child of the century — doomed, I can’t give birth to another, as I would like. Fatal. I can’t love my age more than the previous one, but I also can’t create another age than my own: they don’t create what has been created and create only forward. It is not given to choose your children: data and given.
Oh love
I don’t want — arbitrariness, I can’t — necessity. «What my right leg will want…», «What my left leg can do» — that’s not there.
***
“I can’t” is more sacred than “I don’t want to.” «I can not» — it’s all overdone «I don’t want», all corrected attempts to want — this is the final result.
***
My «I can’t» is the least of all infirmity. Moreover, it is my main power. This means that there is something in me that, despite all my desires (violence against myself!) still does not want, contrary to my wanting will directed against me, does not want for all of me, which means that there is (beyond my will!) — «in me», «mine», «me», — there is me.
***
I don’t want to serve in the Red Army. I can’t serve in the Red Army… What is more important: not being able to commit murders, or not wanting to commit murders? In not being able is our whole nature, in not wanting is our conscious will. If you value the will out of all essence, it is stronger, of course: I don’t want to. If you appreciate the whole essence — of course: I can not.
About (mis)understanding
I’m not in love with myself, I’m in love with this job: listening. If the other would also let me listen to myself, as I myself give (as given to me as I give myself), I would also listen to the other. As for the others, there is only one thing left for me: to guess.
***
— Know yourself!
I knew. And that doesn’t make it any easier for me to know the other. On the contrary, as soon as I begin to judge a person by myself, misunderstanding after misunderstanding turns out.
About motherhood
Love and motherhood are almost mutually exclusive. True motherhood is courageous.
***
The son, being born like his mother, does not imitate, but continues it anew, that is, with all the signs of another sex, another generation, another childhood, another heritage (for I did not inherit for myself!) — and with all the invariance of blood. … They do not love kinship, kinship does not know about their love, being in kinship with someone is more than loving, it means being one and the same. Question: «Do you love your son very much?» always seemed wild to me. What is the point of giving birth to him in order to love him like anyone else? Mother does not love, she is he. … The mother always gives this freedom to her son: to love another. But no matter how far the son has moved from his mother, he cannot leave, since she walks in him next to him, and even from his mother he cannot step, since she carries his future in herself.