“The inner fire is the most important thing mankind possesses.””
Quotes by Edith Södergran
“My self-confidence comes from the fact that I have discovered my own dimensions. It does not behoove me to make myself smaller than I am.””
“LoveMy soul was a light-blue gown, sky-coloured;I left it on a cliff by the seaand naked I came to you, resembling a woman.And like a woman I sat at your tableand drank a toast with wine and breathed in the scent of several roses.You found me beautiful, resembling something you'd seen dreaming,I forgot everything, I forgot my childhood and my homeland,I knew only that your caresses held me captive.And, smiling, you took up a mirror and bade me look.I saw that my shoulders were made of dust and crumbled away,I saw that my beauty was sick and had no desire other than to - disappear.Oh, hold me close in your arms, so tightly that I need nothing.””
Poems
“Det anstår mig icke att göra mig mindre än jag är.””
Septemberlyran
“I am no woman. I am a neuter.I am a child, a page-boy, and a bold decision,I am a laughing glimpse of a burning sunI am a net for all voracious fish,I am a toast to every woman’s honor,I am a step toward chance and disaster,I am a leap in freedom and the selfI am the blood’s whisper in a man’s ear,I am the soul’s shiver, the flesh’s longing and denial,I am an entry sign to new paradisesI am a flame, seeking and jolly,I am a water, deep, but daring up to the knees,I am fire and water, in sincere context, on free term””
Edith SödergranEdith Södergran was a pioneering Finnish poet known for her modernist approach and her significant contribution to the early 20th-century literary landscape. Born in St. Petersburg to a Swedish-speaki...