Your image, tormenting and unsteady, I could not touch in the fog

Your image, tormenting and unsteady,
I could not touch in the fog.
"Lord!" I said by mistake,
Not thinking at all of saying it.

God's name, like a great bird,
Flew out of my breast.
Ahead of me thick fog swirls,
And behind me an empty cage.

Literal translation

Osip Mandelstam

The Descent of Christ into Hell. Sketch for the icon of the iconostasis of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Saint Petersburg (Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood). Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov. Drawing, 1895

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free. So, here is the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

Your image, tormenting and unsteady, I could not touch in the fog

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s