Золотой век России

We have as many planes of speech as does a painting planes of perspective which create perspective in a phrase. The most important word stands out most vividly defined in the very foreground of the sound plane. Less important words create a series of deeper planes.

— Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938)

5 ♥

Now through all of all of Mighty Russia these words are heard from end to end. But to constantly remind the Russian people it is necessary to remove from the monument to Emperor Alexander III, an inscription that speaks of the railway achievements of the Russian autocrat, and replace it with three words: ‘Russia for Russians’.

— Aleksei Kuropatkin (1848-1925)

2 ♥

Blue is the fog, the expanse is snow-bound,
Fine is the beam of the moon that shines.
Isn’t it nice to be sitting around,
Thinking about the bygone times?!

Down by the porch is the snow thawing out.
Just like to-night, by the moonlight, alone,
Putting my cap on, the wrong way about,
I ran away, on the sly, from my home.

Now I am back in my land, oh so dear,
Some have forgotten me? Others have not?
Just like a man in disgrace I am here
Outside my house with a garden plot.

Squeezing my fur cap, a dismal newcomer,
Somehow I don’t like this sable at all.
Now I remember my granddad and grandma,
Friable snow in the graveyard and all.

All had calmed down, for “we all would be there”,
And no use to try to put back the clock.
That is the reason so much I care
So much I love them, my country folk.

I nearly burst out crying. I pondered.
And , forcing a smile, I stood in a fog,
Was it the very last time, I wondered
That I saw this house, this porch, and this dog?

— Sergei Esenin (1895-1925)

5 ♥

The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.

— Maxim Gorky (1868-1936)

23 ♥

When you are praying alone, and your spirit is dejected, and you are wearied and oppressed by your loneliness, remember then, as always, that God the Trinity looks upon you with eyes brighter than the sun; also all the angels, your own Guardian Angel, and all the Saints of God. Truly they do; for they are all one in God, and where God is, there are they also. Where the sun is, thither also are directed all its rays. Try to understand what this means.

— St. John of Kronstadt (1829-1908)

5 ♥

We, the women workers, were the first to raise the Red Banner in the days of the Russian revolution, the first to go out onto the streets on Women’s Day. Let us now hasten to join the leading ranks of the fighters for the workers’ cause, let us join trade unions, the Social-Democratic Party, the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies!

— Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952)

5 ♥

With regard to cinema, that is, moving film, the abuse of blood on the screen should be viewed as a signature of cinema workers in impotence, as a result of the failure of a number of attempts to apply on-screen revolution in terms of so-called artistic cinema.

— Dziga Vertov (1896-1954)

18 ♥

For some time the government has given its attention to the Jews and to their problems and their relations to the rest of the inhabitants of the empire, with a view of ascertaining the sad condition of the Christian inhabitants brought about by the conduct of the Jews in business matters. During the last 20 years, the Jews have gradually possessed themselves of not only every trade and business in all its branches, but also of a great part of the land by buying or farming it. With few exceptions, they have as a body devoted their attention, not to enriching or benefiting the country, but to defrauding, by their wiles, its inhabitants, and particularly it’s poor inhabitants! This conduct of theirs has called forth protests on the part of the people, as manifested in acts of violence. The government, while on the one hand doing its best to put down the disturbances and to deliver the Jews from oppression and slaughter, has also on the other hand, thought it a matter of urgency and justice to adopt stringent measures in order to put an end to the oppression practiced by the Jews on the inhabitants, and to free the country from their malpractices, which were. as is known, the cause of the agitation.

— Alexander III (1845-1894)

9 ♥

So in Nagorno-Karabakh
These were my fears
Forty thousand dead windows
Are visible there from all directions,
The cocoon of soulless work
Buried at the mountains.

— Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938)

5 ♥

We disagreed with Zinoviev and Kamenev because we knew that the policy of amputation was fraught with great dangers for the Party, that the method of amputation, the method of blood-letting — and they demanded blood — was dangerous, infectious: today you amputate one limb, tomorrow another, the day after tomorrow a third — what will we have left in the Party?

— Joseph Stalin (1878-1953)

4 ♥

I know you my homeland, oh my most beautiful sea!
My blood runs loud like the hum of your grassy meadows.
From your own sea bed my genealogical tree
In coral secretively grows.

A sharp cut sliced open my silvery scales-deed done!
Now I’m dying of thirst having sweltered in the Sun.
Even the lightest step upon the earth makes me wail,
Just like the mute mermaid in Andersen’s fairy tale.

That is why every strong wave holds me to ransom.
That is why I yearn for the memory of family ties-
And for a profound depth, seriousness and freedom
With the salty-sea waters streaming from my eyes.

— Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska (1891-1945)

11 ♥

I cannot get accustomed to war; my brain refuses to understand and explain a thing that is senseless in its basis. Millions of people gather at one place and, giving their actions order and regularity, kill each other, and it hurts everybody equally, and all are unhappy — what is it if not madness?

— Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919)

77 ♥

Yesterday, there was a Tzar and there were slaves. Today, there is no Tzar, but the slaves are still here. Tomorrow there will be only Tzars. We walk forward in the name of the free man of tomorrow, the Tzar of tomorrow. We have gone through the epoch when the masses were oppressed. We are now going through the epoch when the individual is oppressed in the name of the masses.

— Evgeniy Zamyatin (1884-1937)

8 ♥

Dyr bul shchyl
ubeshchur
skum
vy so bu
r l ez

— Aleksei Kruchyonykh (1886-1968)

5 ♥

She has not yet been born:
she is music and word,
and therefore the un-torn,
fabric of what is stirred.

Silent the ocean breathes.
Madly day’s glitter roams.
Spray of pale lilac foams,
in a bowl of grey-blue leaves.

May my lips rehearse
the primordial silence,
like a note of crystal clearness,
sounding, pure from birth!

Stay as foam Aphrodite – Art –
and return, Word, where music begins:
and, fused with life’s origins,
be ashamed heart, of heart!