Dvortsoviy Most (Palace Bridge) over the Neva River in Saint Petersburg (Russia) painted by Anna Sokolova

I love thee, city of Peter's making;

I love thy harmonies austere, 

And Neva's sovran waters breaking 

Along her banks of granite sheer; 

Thy traceried iron gates; thy sparkling, 

Yet moouless, meditative gloom 

And thy transparent twilight darkling; 

And when I write within my room

And when I write within my room 

Or lampless, read--then, sunk in slumber, 

The empty thoroughfares, past number, 

Are piled, stand clear upon the night;

Excerpt from The Bronze Horseman

by Alexander Pushkin translated by Waclaw Lecnicki

Peter the Great Bridge across the Neva River in Saint Petersburg (Russia)

On Petrograd, sunk into darkness,
November breathed with fall cold’s harshness.
And, splashing, with the noisy waves
Into the brims of her trim fences,
The Neva raved, like the seek raves
In a bed, that has become the restless.
Now it was very dark and late;
The rain stroke ‘gainst the window’s flat.
And the wind blew with sadly wailing.

Alexander Pushkin,

about Saint Petersburg

Dvortsoviy Most (Palace Bridge) over the Neva River in Saint Petersburg (Russia)

Sobre algún puente del delta del Neva,

la noche blanca cautiva y revela

cada suspiro de Elena.

Canta una troika con voz de abedules

Y el as de espadas se bate entre nubes

para sus ojos azules.

San Petersburgo

juega al absurdo

con falsa claridad.

Y a quien no duerme

se le disuelve

la frágil realidad.

Excerpt from San Petersburgo

Song by Silvio Rodríguez

Peter the Great Bridge across the Neva River in Saint Petersburg (Russia)

I should like, Fortunatus, to live in a city where a river would jut out from under a bridge like a hand from a sleeve, and would flow toward the gulf, spreading its fingers like Chopin, who never shook a fist at anyone as long as he lived.

Joseph Brodsky

about Saint Petersburg

Dvortsoviy Most (Palace Bridge) over the Neva River in Saint Petersburg (Russia)

How can you bear to view the Neva,
How can you bear to cross its bridges? ...
No surprise I’m marked for sadness,
Since that vision of you appeared.
Sharp, the black angels’ wings,
Soon, the judgement day;
And raspberry-coloured bonfires blossom
Like roses, in the snow.

Anna Akhmatova

Finland Railway Bridge spanning the Neva River in Saint Petersburg (Russia)

"The twelve-mile long Neva branching right in the centre of the town, with its twenty-five large and small coiling canals, provides this city with such quantity of mirrors that narcissism becomes inevitable"

Leningrad according to

Joseph Brodsky

Troitsky Most (Trinity Bridge) across the Neva River in Saint Petersburg (Russia)

“There are few places where there are so many gloomy, strong and queer influences on the soul of man as in Saint Petersburg.“

  

From Crime and Punishment

Fedor Dostoievsky

Palace Bridge over the Neva River in Saint Petersburg (Russia)

We were plighted with timid fidelity
To the very same nebulous mystery
As the cityscape spreading unendingly
Far beyond the Neva, through the distances.
In that far-off impregnable wilderness,
Wrapped in springtime twilight ethereal,
Woodland glades and dense thickets were quivering
With mad nightingales' thunderous paeans.

From the poem White Nights 

Boris Pasternak

Palace Bridge over the Neva River in Saint Petersburg (Russia)

Now, city of Peter, stand thou fast,
Foursquare, like Russia, flaunt thy splendor!
The very element shall surrender
And her peace with thee at last.

Alexander Pushkin
about the foundation of San Petersburgo

Trinity Bridge over the Neva River in Saint Petersburg (Russia)

“How often, when the sky was glowing,
by Neva, on a summer night,
and when its waters were not showing,
in their gay glass, the borrowed light
of Dian’s visage, in our fancies
recalling earlier time’s romances,
recalling earlier loves, did we,
now sensitive, and now carefree,
drink in the midnight benediction,
the silence when our talk had ceased!”

From the poem Eugeni Onegin

Alexander Pushkin