black
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The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable.

Boris Pasternak

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.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Blade Creation Poetry Rich Tears
Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don’t love it sufficiently.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Break Enough Seek Solitary Truth
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.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Compassionate Feeling Object Ourselves Strong Victim
And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Genuine Happiness Life Share
As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore truth.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Establishment Ignorance Man Myth Power
The whole of life is symbolic because the whole of it has meaning.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Deep Life Meaning Symbol
We must discover security within ourselves.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Discover Ourselves Security
It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience. Life has grown too cumbersome, too complicated. We have acquired values which are best expressed in prose.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Best Complication Expression Lyrics Poetry Possible Value
That’s metaphysics, my dear fellow. It’s forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won’t take it.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Funny Myself Science Stomach
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.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Himself Modern Society Survival Writing
Salvation lies not in the faithfulness to forms, but in the liberation from them.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Faith Form Liberty Loyalty Lying
To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Adventure Greatness Hero Madness Woman
Art has two constant, two unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life. All great, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St John.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Art Constant Creation Life Meditation Resemble
Immensely grateful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Astonish Gratitude Proud Touch
Love is not weakness. It is strong. Only the sacrament of marriage can contain it.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Love Marriage Sacred Weakness
He realised, more vividly than ever before, that art had two constant, two unending preoccupations: it is always meditating upon death and it is always thereby creating life.
BORIS PASTERNAK

Art Death Life Meditation Occupation Realization

The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable.

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The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable.

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