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A Conscious Attempt To Fall Asleep Is Sure To Produce Insomnia, To Try To Be Conscious Of One's Own Digestion Is A Sure Way To Upset The Stomach. Consciousness Is A Poison When We Apply It To Ourselves. Consciousness Is A Light Directed Outward. It's Like The Headlights On A Locomotive—turn Them Inward And You'd Have A Crash.

-Boris Pasternak

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A Conscious Attempt To

Boris Pasternak

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A Conscious Attempt To Fall Asleep Is Sure To Produce Insomnia, To Try To Be Conscious Of One's Own Digestion Is A Sure Way To Upset The Stomach. Consciousness Is A Poison When We Apply It To Ourselves. Consciousness Is A Light Directed Outward. It's Like The Headlights On A Locomotive—turn Them Inward And You'd Have A Crash.

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I Have The Impression That If He Didn't Complicate His Life So Needlessly, He Would Die Of Boredom.

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The Writer Is The Faust Of Modern Society, The Only Surviving Individualist In A Mass Age. To His Orthodox Contemporaries He Seems A Semi-madman.

It Snowed And Snowed, The Whole World Over, Snow Swept The World From End To End. A Candle Burned On The Table; A Candle Burned.

February. Get Ink, Shed Tears. Write Of It, Sob Your Heart Out, Sing, While Torrential Slush That Roars Burns In The Blackness Of The Spring. Go Hire A Buggy. For Six Grivnas, Race Through The Noice Of Bells And Wheels To Where The Ink And All You Grieving Are Muffled When The Rainshower Falls. To Where, Like Pears Burnt Black As Charcoal, A Myriad Rooks, Plucked From The Trees, Fall Down Into The Puddles, Hurl Dry Sadness Deep Into The Eyes. Below, The Wet Black Earth Shows Through, With Sudden Cries The Wind Is Pitted, The More Haphazard, The More True The Poetry That Sobs Its Heart Out.

About Dreams. It Is Usually Taken For Granted That You Dream Of Something That Has Made A Particularly Strong Impression On You During The Day, But It Seems To Me It´s Just The Contrary. Often It´s Something You Paid No Attention To At The Time -- A Vague Thought That You Didn´t Bother To Think Out To The End, Words Spoken Without Feeling And Which Passed Unnoticed -- These Are The Things That Return At Night, Clothed In Flesh And Blood, And They Become The Subjects Of Dreams, As If To Make Up For Having Been Ignored During Waking Hours.

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They Loved Each Other, Not Driven By Necessity, By The "blaze Of Passion" Often Falsely Ascribed To Love. They Loved Each Other Because Everything Around Them Willed It, The Trees And The Clouds And The Sky Over Their Heads And The Earth Under Their Feet.

Art Is Unthinkable Without Risk And Spiritual Self-sacrifice.

Our Evenings Are Farewells. Our Parties Are Testaments. So That The Secret Stream Of Suffering. May Warm The Cold Of Life.

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A Corner Draft Fluttered The Flame And The White Fever Of Temptation Upswept Its Angel Wings That Cast A Cruciform Shadow.

Mother Russia Is On The Move, She Can't Stand Still, She's Restless And Can't Find Rest, She's Talking And She Can't Stop.

We're All Time's Captives, Hostages To Eternity.

The Whole Of Life Is Symbolic Because The Whole Of It Has Meaning.

You And I, It's As Though We Have Been Taught To Kiss In Heaven And Sent Down To Earth Together, To See If We Know What We Were Taught.

You And I Are Like The First Two People On Earth Who At The Beginning Of The World Had Nothing To Cover Themselves With - At The End Of It, You And I Are Just As Stripped And Homeless. And You And I Are The Last Remembrance Of All That Immeasurable Greatness Which Has Been Created In All The Thousands Of Years Between Their Time And Ours, And It Is In Memory Of All That Vanished Splendour That We Live And Love And Weep And Cling To One Another.

Art Always Serves Beauty, And Beauty Is The Joy Of Possessing Form, And Form Is The Key To Organic Life Since No Living Thing Can Exist Without It.

I Love You Wildly, Insanely, Infinitely.

But What Are Pity, Conscience, Or Fear To The Brazen Pair, Compared With The Living Sorcery Of Their Hot Embraces?

Don't Be Upset. Don't Listen To Me. I Only Meant That I Am Jealous Of A Dark, Unconscious Element, Something Irrational, Unfathomable. I Am Jealous Of Your Toilet Articles, Of The Drops Of Sweat On Your Skin, Of The Germs In The Air You Breathe Which Could Get Into Your Blood And Poison You. And I Am Jealous Of Komarovsky, As If He Were An Infectious Disease. Someday He Will Take You Away, Just As Certainly As Death Will Someday Separate Us. I Know This Must Seem Obscure And Confused, But I Can't Say It More Clearly. I Love You Madly, Irrationally, Infinitely.

Oh, How One Wishes Sometimes To Escape From The Meaningless Dullness Of Human Eloquence, From All Those Sublime Phrases, To Take Refuge In Nature, Apparently So Inarticulate, Or In The Wordlessness Of Long, Grinding Labor, Of Sound Sleep, Of True Music, Or Of A Human Understanding Rendered Speechless By Emotion!

... The Unarmed Power Of Naked Truth.

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Reshaping Life! People Who Can Say That Have Never Understood A Thing About Life—they Have Never Felt Its Breath, Its Heartbeat—however Much They Have Seen Or Done. They Look On It As A Lump Of Raw Material That Needs To Be Processed By Them, To Be Ennobled By Their Touch. But Life Is Never A Material, A Substance To Be Molded. If You Want To Know, Life Is The Principle Of Self-renewal, It Is Constantly Renewing And Remaking And Changing And Transfiguring Itself, It Is Infinitely Beyond Your Or My Obtuse Theories About It.

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Poetry Is A Rich, Full-bodied Whistle, Cracked Ice Crunching In Pails, The Night That Numbs The Leaf, The Duel Of Two Nightingales, The Sweet Pea That Has Run Wild, Creation's Tears In Shoulder Blades.

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Even So, One Step From My Grave, I Believe That Cruelty, Spite, The Powers Of Darkness Will In Time Be Crushed By The Spirit Of Light.

I Used To Be Very Revolutionary, But Now I Think That Nothing Can Be Gained By Brute Force. People Must Be Drawn To Good By Goodness.

As In An Explosion, I Would Erupt With All The Wonderful Things I Saw And Understood In This World.

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Immensely Grateful, Touched, Proud, Astonished, Abashed.

Here They Are, All In One Place. Circle Back To Them When You Need Some Poetic Shine. It Is Not Revolutions And Upheavals That Clear The Road To Better Days, But Revelations, And Lavishness Of Someone's Soul Inspired, And Ablaze.

What You Don't Understand Is That It Is Possible To Be An Atheist, It Is Possible Not To Know If God Exists Or Why He Should, And Yet To Believe That Man Does Not Live In A State Of Nature But In History, And That History As We Know It Now Began With Christ, It Was Founded By Him On The Gospels.

No Deep And Strong Feeling, Such As We May Come Across Here And There In The World, Is Unmixed With Compassion. The More We Love, The More The Object Of Our Love Seems To Us To Be A Victim.

Oh, What A Love It Was, Utterly Free, Unique, Like Nothing Else On Earth! Their Thoughts Were Like Other People's Songs.

The Whole Wide World Is A Cathedral; I Stand Inside, The Air Is Calm, And From Afar At Times There Reaches My Ear The Echo Of A Psalm.

Gregariousness Is Always The Refuge Of Mediocrities, Whether They Swear By Soloviev Or Kant Or Marx. Only Individuals Seek The Truth, And They Shun Those Whose Sole Concern Is Not The Truth.

Literature Is The Art Of Discovering Something Extraordinary About Ordinary People, And Saying With Ordinary Words Something Extraordinary.

As Far As Modern Writing Is Concerned, It Is Rarely Rewarding To Translate It, Although It Might Be Easy. Translation Is Very Much Like Copying Paintings.

Good-bye... Why Am I Hemorrhaging ?

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In Every Generation There Has To Be Some Fool Who Will Speak The Truth As He Sees It.

Art Is Interested In Life At The Moment When The Ray Of Power Is Passing Through It.

All Mothers Are Mothers Of Great People, And It Is Not Their Fault That Life Later Disappoints Them.

He Was A Natural, And In The Russian Way, Tragically Above These Banalities.

I Am Caught Like A Beast At Bay. Somewhere Are People, Freedom, Light, But All I Hear Is The Baying Of The Pack, There Is No Way Out For Me.

The Most Extraordinary Discoveries Are Made When The Artist Is Overwhelmed By What He Has To Say.

During The Last Years Of Mayakovski's Life, When All Poetry Had Ceased To Exist . . . Literature Had Stopped.

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