"My renunciation has yet another name: don't descend to the existing order. The existing order in our case? To read Your book, to thank You for it with empty words, to see You again from time to time 'smiling, to conceal Your smile,' to pretend that You'd written nothing and I, read nothing: as if nothing had happened."

--Marina Tsvetaeva

fr. "Letter to the Amazon"

tr. Edwina J. Cruise

in Artes: An International Reader of Literature Art and Music 1996