All about Russian women - quotations - famous people about Russian women

Tyutchev
To the Russian Woman

Far from the sun and nature,
Far from light and art,
Far from life and love,
Your young years will flash by,

Live feelings will deaden,
Dreams will scatter...
And your life will pass away unseen
In the land remote and unnamed,

In the unnoticed land, -
As smoke fade away
Into the sky dull and misty,
In the fall's endless shadows...

Ilya Glazunov. Unknown Woman.
Mysterious Lady (at the restaurant).
1980. Paper, black oiled chalk, pastels.
Illustration to a poem of Alexander Blok.

The restaurants on hot spring evenings
Lie under a dense and savage air.
Foul drafts and hoots from drunken revelers
Contaminate the thoroughfare.
Above the dusty lanes of suburbia
Above the tedium of bungalows
A pretzel sign begilds a bakery
And children screech fortissimo.

And every evening beyond the barriers
Gentlemen of practiced wit and charm
Go strolling beside the drainage ditches-
Derby tilted, lady at the arm.

The squeak of oarlocks comes over the lake water
A woman's shriek assaults the ear
While above, in the sky, inured to everything,
The moon looks on with a mindles leer.

And every evening my one companion
Sits here, reflected in my glass.
Like me, he has drunk of bitter mysteries.
Like me, he is broken, dulled, downcast.

The sleepy lackeys stand beside tables
Waiting for the night to pass
And tipplers with the eyes of rabbits
Cry out: "In vino veritas!"

And every evening (or am I imagining?)
Exactly at the appointed time
A girl's slim figure, silk raimented,
Glides past the misted window grime.

And slowly, passing through the revelers,
Unaccompanied, always alone,
Exuding mists and secret fragrances,
She sits at the table that is her own.

Something ancient, something legendary
Surrounds her presence in the room,
Her narrow hand, her silk, her bracelets,
Her hat, the rings, the ostrich plume.

Entranced by her presence, near, enigmatic,
I gaze through the dark of her lowered veil
And I behold an enchanted shoreline
An enchanted hinterland, far and pale.

I am made a guardian of higher mysteries,
Someone's sun is entrusted to my control.
Tart wine has pierced the last convolution
Of my bent, labyrinthine soul.

And now the drooping plumes of ostriches,
Asway in my brain, droop slowly lower
And two eyes, limpid, blue, and fathomless
Are blooming on a distant shore.

Inside my soul a treasure is buried,
The key is here, and it is mine.
How right you are, you drunken monster!
I know: the truth is in the wine.

Nekrasov N.A.

"will stop a galloping stallion, will enter a burning house"
"You fate! - Russian woman's fate! Hard to find one harder"

Valery Bryusov
To a Woman

You are a woman; you're a book of books,
You are a scroll furled up upon impression;
Its lines replete with words and ruminations,
And every instant's wild in its crooks.

You are a woman, witches brew creation,
Which sets on fire hardly reaching lips,
But fire-swallowers subdue their own shrieks
By drowning mad torture in laudations.

You are a woman and in this you're just,
From the inception crowned in constellations,
A deity epitome within our chasms!

We serve you grinding rocky foundations,
We bear iron burden for your sake,
And pray to you with fervor in your wake!