and at the hour when the fly yields to the mosquito—
when he looks down into the valley,
down there perhaps where he gathers the grapes and where he plows:
with so many flames was all aglitter
the eighth ditch, as I perceived
as soon as I came to where the bottom could be seen.
And as he who revenged himself with the help of the bears
saw Elijah’s chariot at its departure,
when the horses rose straight up to heaven,
could not so follow it with his eyes
as to see anything except the flame alone,
like a little cloud ascending:
so each flame moves along the throat of the ditch,
not one showing its theft,
yet each flame concealing a sinner.”
23. Mikhail Vasilevich Lomonosov (1711–1765). Russian polymath, of peasant origin. (His father was a prosperous peasant-entrepreneur who owned many boats and engaged in trade.) Best known for his contribution to chemistry, but also a poet, grammarian, historian, and reviver of handicrafts. He played a vital role in the reform of Russian versification.
24. This is a very free version of Inferno, XXVI, 112–120. The Italian reads:
“‘O frati,’ dissi, ‘che per cento milia
perigli siete giunti all’occidente,
a questa tanto picciola vigilia
de’ vostri sensi, ch’è del rimanente,
non vogliate negar l’esperienza,
di retro al sol, del mondo senza gente.
Considerate la vostra semenza:
fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza.’”
A literal translation would read:
“‘O brothers,’ I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand
dangers have reached the West,
do not deny this so brief remaining
vigil of your senses
experience of the unpeopled world
behind the sun.
Consider your origin:
you weren’t made to live like brutes,
but to follow virtue and knowledge’”
25. “We see like one who has bad light.”
26. “And if it had already come to pass, it would not be too early.
So let it be, since it really must be so;
it will weigh on me the heavier as I grow older.”
27. Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1892–1941). Mandelstam’s friend and contemporary, who emigrated in 1922, returned to the Soviet Union in 1938, committed suicide in 1941. The quotation is from a cycle of her poems about Moscow, written in 1916.
28. “With which the little child runs to his mother—
29. “Fold on fold,” or “layer within layer.” Literally, “skirt within skirt.”
30. The Italian should read: “. . . da la Muda.” Translation: “A narrow hole in the Tower.”
31. “Never did the Danube in Austria,
nor the Don away off there under its cold sky,
make so thick a veil over their current in winter
as there was here: for even if Tambernic
had fallen on it, or Pietrapana,
it would not have given, even at its edge, so much as a creak.”
32. “O you who are two within one fire,
if I merited of you while I lived,
if I merited much or little of you.”
33. “All were saying: ‘Benedictus qui venis,’
strewing flowers up and about,
‘Manibus o date lilia plenis.’”
(“Benedictus qui venis”: “Blessed are you who come.” “Manibus . . .”:
“Oh, with full hands give lilies.”)
34. “Crowned with olive over a white veil,
a lady appeared to me, clothed, under a green mantle,
in the color of living flame.”
35. “Like birds which, risen from the bank,
as if rejoicing at their pasture,
make themselves now into a rounded, now into an elongated flock,
so within lights the holy creatures
flying, sang, and made themselves
now into a D, now into an I, now into an L in their configurations.”
36. Georg Friedrich Philipp von Hardenberg (1772–1801). Romantic poet, mystic. Studied philosophy under Fichte and history under Schiller. Later studied geology, became assessor of salt mines. Catholic. Reference is to his unfinished novel, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Ch. 5.
37. “Let the Fiesolan beasts make
themselves into fodder, and not touch the plant,
if any still grows on that dung heap of theirs.”
38. “He took away the shade of our first parent,
Abel his son, and Noah,
Moses, obedient law-giver;
Abraham the patriarch and David the king,
Israel with his father and his children
and with Rachel, for whom he did so much.”
39. Konstantin Batiushkov (1787–1855). Pushkin’s contemporary, a poet Mandelstam very much admired. The image is from his poem “Shadow of a Friend.”
About Poetry
O Poezii was published in Leningrad in 1928. The collection was chosen by Mandelstam himself, and reworked by him—but also by the censor. I have used here the texts of the Struve-Filipoif edition, which uses the texts of original publication, with variants in the notes.
THE WORD AND CULTURE
First published, 1921.
1. Pushkin, The Gypsies. In this passage the old gypsy tells Aleko an old legend about Ovid in Moldavia, without recalling the poet’s name, or age. He tells it as if it happened yesterday.
2. Ovid, Tristia, 1.3.1–4.
“When the gloomy memory steals upon me
of the night that was my last time in the city,
when I bring to mind that night on which I left so many things dear to me,
even now, the teardrops fall from my eyes.”
3. Jacques Louis David (1748–1825). French painter. Before the Revolution, leading exponent of the Classical trend in painting; court painter to Louis XVI. Became an ardent republican, was elected to the Convention, and voted for the king’s death. Later, under Napoleon, became first painter to the emperor. Under the Restoration spent his last years in Brussels.
4. Catullus, no. 46. “Away let us fly, to the famous cities of Asia.”
5. Reference is to Ovid’s Amores, I.4.65, not to the Tristia.
6. See Mandelstam’s essay “The Nineteenth Century,” which quotes in full the poem referred to here. See also “About the Nature of the Word,” note 2, concerning Derzhavin.
7. Mandelstam, no. 103.
8. Verlaine, “Art poétique,” stanza 6. “Take eloquence and wring its neck!”
9. Mandelstam, no. 104.
10. “Listen to the tipsy song.” This appears to be a misquoting of “Art poétique,” stanza 2:
“Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise
Où l’Indécis au Précis se joint.”
(“Nothing more precious than the tipsy song [or gray song] in which the Vague is joined to the Precise.”)
ATTACK
First published, 1924.
1. Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin (1875–1936). Poet, novelist, playwright, composer, critic. Author of an important and influential essay, “On Beautiful Clarity,” whence “Clarism”—the first of a series of revolts against the literary dominance of Symbolism. Homosexual, slightly decadent. A poet of the Alexandria theme, whom it might be interesting to compare with Cavafy, L. Durrell, E. M. Forster. Remained in the USSR, but published almost nothing after 1930.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893–1930). The poet of the Revolution. But a strange, complex, contradictory character. A great poet. Futurist. Committed suicide.
Velemir Vladimirovich Khlebnikov (1885–1922). Futurist. Yet also a kind of primitive mystic. Magician with words, who broke words down to their primitive roots and then built them up again. Died in extreme poverty.
Nikolai Aseev, or Aseyev (1889–1973). Second-string Futurist poet, friend and disciple of Mayakovsky, who showed more early promise than he later developed.
Viacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov (1866–1949). Poet, historian, scholar, classicist, critic, philosopher. An outstanding Symbolist poet. Studied Roman history under Theodor Mommsen. Came under influence of Nietzsche. One of the central figures of the Silver Age. Left Russia in 1924, but did not break completely with the Soviet Union until much later. Converted to Catholicism and became a Roman Catholic priest. He was mentor to the young Mandelstam, as to many other younger poets. His book on the cult of Dionysus, especially, in the popularized form in which it appeared in Novy Put’, had considerable influence.