Osip Mandelstam

One cannot launch a new history _ the idea is altogether unthinkable; there would not be the continuity and tradition. Tradition cannot be contrived or learned. In its absence one has, at the best, not history but __rogress_ _ the mechanical movement of a clock hand, not the sacred succession of interlinked events.

Only in Russia poetry is respected--it gets people killed.

I do not know how it is elsewhere, but here, in this country, poetry is a healing, life-giving thing, and people have not lost the gift of being able to drink of its inner strength. People can be killed for poetry here_a sign of unparalleled respect_because they are still capable of living by it.

Where to start?Everything cracks and shakes,The air trembles with similes,No one world's better than another;the earth moans with metaphors.

The wolfhound century leaps at my shoulders,But I am no wolf by blood.

My turn shall also come:I sense the spreading of a wing.

The earth is buzzing with metaphor

The people need poetry that will be their own secretTo keep them awake forever,And bathe them in the bright-haired wave of its breathing.

The Armenian language cannot be worn out; its boots are stone. Well, certainly, the thick-walled words, the layers of air in the semi-vowels.