#NYRBWomen25 #Teffi
"People often complain that a writer has botched the last pages of a novel, that the ending is somehow crumpled, too abrupt. I understand now that a writer involuntarily creates in the image and likeness of fate itself. All endings are hurried, compressed, broken off." (229)
#NYRBWomen25 #Teffi
The writing gets increasingly darkly lyrical as her journey continues. At the beginning, it felt like a lark - a jaunty adventure, but the severity and inevitability of the change seem to be reflected in the elements.
#NYRBWomen25 #Teffi
Memories
"My memories of those first days in Novorossiisk still lie behind a curtain of gray dust. They are still being whirled about by a stifling whirlwind—just as scraps of this and splinters of that, just as debris and rubbish of every kind..."
1.
#NYRBWomen25 #Teffi
Memories
"My power to conjure up storms had never particularly troubled me. I enjoyed storms at sea and suffered little ill effect from them. But in the Middle Ages, I would certainly have been burned at the stake." (189)
#NYRBWomen25 #Teffi
Albert Zabel - Harp solo from the opera "Lucia di Lammermoor"
Maybe not the same solo Teffi is writing about, but....
youtu.be/n8KbhGhR3Do?...
#NYRBWomen25 #Teffi
Memories
"What’s got into you? The Bolsheviks are coming and we have to leave. Are you telling me you’re going to leave without having your hair done first?"
#NYRBWomen25 #Teffi
Memories
Now I am dead. I am the book you're holding,
a page to turn.
The chains of love are taken off your shoulders,
though cinders burn...
Hence, flip through me in times of stormy weather,
when in dismay...
(Maximilian Voloshin)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximil...
#NYRBWomen25 #Teffi
Memories
"After he left, I wrapped myself, like Sonya Marmeladova, in a drap de dames shawl and lay all day on the couch, mulling this over. The check lay on the mantelpiece. I tried not to look in its direction."
#NYRBWomen25 #Teffi
Memories
"Never mind who your companion may be—at least there’s a human hand, a human shoulder, close beside you."
#NYRBWomen25
#Teffi
Memories
"The new arrivals are in the buffet, partaking of the culture of a free country. They slurp away with deep concentration. With their elbows jutting out to either side as if to ward off any encroachment, they seem like eagles hovering over their prey."
#NYRBWomen25
#Teffi
Memories - Chapter 6
"So what if they’re writers! You’re not going to see inside them and on the outside they’re no different from me. Ri-ight?"
#NYRBWomen25 #Teffi
Memories
"But what a splendid banquet fate turned out to have prepared for you! You drank warm, sharp human wine. You’ve drunk deep and long, until you’re intoxicated. Good, isn’t it? You’ve quenched your thirst, your sick, black sensual thirst."
...
1/2
#NYRBWomen25 #Teffi
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea
"But there is a mysterious law that does not allow us to disrupt the appointed order, the decreed rhythm. And this is in no way mere egotism or indifference—sometimes it would be easier to stop than to walk on by."
MEMORIES: FROM MOSCOW TO THE BLACK SEA BY Teffi
“Heroism and service to the people – these are words best avoided. It is in the name of service to the people that the Bat has been stripped. Art and beauty are surer ground.” (p8) #NYRBWomen25 #Teffi
#NYRBWomen25
#Teffi
"Those who can adapt, who can maintain life’s forms even in the face of hardship, can survive. In her émigré stories it is typically the women who have learned this lesson well, who hold the family together..."
1/2
#NYRBWomen25
#Teffi
"A joke is not so funny when you’re living inside it. It begins to seem more like a tragedy.”
According to the plan, I’m not walking alone. My love is with me.
#quietbuild #sotnichenko #zazzle #Teffi
Fascinating history too - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solovet... #NYRBWomen24 #Teffi #WhiteSea #SolovetskyIslands
Delightfully dark child - reminded me of myself in Catholic school, longing to be a saint one day.
#Kishmish #Teffi #RussianTales #NYRBWomen24
“It's sad to wander about the graveyard of my tired memory, where all hurts have been forgiven, where every sin has been more than atoned for, every riddle unriddled and twilight quietly cloaks the crosses, now no longer upright, of graves I once wept over.”
― #Teffi.
“It's sad to wander about the graveyard of my tired memory, where all hurts have been forgiven, where every sin has been more than atoned for, every riddle unriddled and twilight quietly cloaks the crosses, now no longer upright, of graves I once wept over.”
― #Teffi.
