Fairy tale Quote by Yevgeny Zamyatin
““But clouds bellied out in the sultry heat, the sky cracked open with a crimson gash, spewed flame-and the ancient forest began to smoke. By morning there was a mass of booming, fiery tongues, a hissing, crashing, howling all around, half the sky black with smoke, and the bloodied sun just barely visible. And what can little men do with their spades, ditches, and pails? The forest is no more, it was devoured by fire: stumps and ash. Perhaps illimitable fields will be plowed here one day, perhaps some new, unheard-of wheat will ripen here and men from Arkansas with shaven faces will weigh in their palms the heavy golden grain. Or perhaps a city will grow up-alive with ringing sound and motion, all stone and crystal and iron-and winged men will come here flying over seas and mountains from all ends of the world. But never again the forest, never again the blue winter silence and the golden silence of summer. And only the tellers of tales will speak in many-colored patterned words about what had been, about wolves and bears and stately green-coated century-old grandfathers, about old Russia; they will speak about all this to us who have seen it with our own eyes ten years - a hundred years! - ago, and to those others, the winged ones, who will come in a hundred years to listen and to marvel at it all as at a fairy tale. ("In Old Russia")””
About This Quote
Source Poem: “In Old Russia” (published 1918)
A lament for the destroyed forest, contrasting past natural beauty with future industrial rebirth, and the role of storytellers in preserving memory.
In simple terms: Loss of nature replaced by human progress, remembered through stories.
Preserve memory of what’s lost.
Themes
Mood
Type
When to use this quote
- environmental activism
- historical reflection
- creative writing
Key Concepts
Questions to Reflect On
- Can stories truly replace lost ecosystems?
- What responsibilities do we have to future generations?