“Oh, how madly I long to live…”
— Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok
“Oh, how madly I long to live—
to make eternal all that exists,
to make the impersonal human,
to realize the impossible.
Let the suffering dream of life
be pressed down upon me.
Even if I suffocate within it,
perhaps some cheerful youth
will one day say of me:
Let us bid farewell to melancholy.
Was it truly his hidden driving force?
He was wholly a child of goodness and light,
wholly a triumph of freedom.”
(February 5, 1914)
In 1982, when I was in the sixth grade of elementary school,
our homeroom teacher told us to begin writing a diary.
So I went to a small stationery shop
and bought a diary.
On the back pages were printed several poems.
Among them was one by Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok:
“Oh, how madly I long to live.”
Even now the poem is not easy to decipher.
Back then it was even more incomprehensible.
Yet the very first line
pierced my young heart.
“What does it mean
to live madly?”
I remember asking myself.
Then one day, while watching the evening news,
I saw the highlight of the final match of the
1982 FIFA World Cup.
In that game between Italy and Germany,
Marco Tardelli scored Italy’s second goal.
What followed was perhaps the most unforgettable
celebration in World Cup history.
In that moment,
I saw something I had never seen before.
For a boy who dreamed of becoming a football player,
that scene revealed what it meant to love football—
and how to love it with passion.
And suddenly,
that strange and difficult line of Blok’s poem
became clear to me.
“Oh, how madly I long to live.”
From that day on,
I made a quiet promise to myself.
That I too would live like that—
pouring out all my passion,
living madly,
living as if possessed.
But…
the circumstances given to me were cruel.
The Almighty
seemed to lock me
into a harsh place of life
and press down upon me,
as if refusing to let me live
as freely as I had dreamed.
Looking back,
I believe I have lived
rather intensely.
And yet it feels as though
I have been punching the air,
kicking at emptiness.
Everything seems strangely futile.
Perhaps I never truly lived madly.
Struggling,
agonizing,
fighting not to suffocate—
perhaps that is how I have lived.
What can I draw?
What can I leave behind?
Even today,
my passion suffocates.
Oh,
how madly I long to live.