9. Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky (1856–1909). Russian poet and critic. Headmaster of the Tsarskoe Selo lyceum, Annensky was a superb classicist and a translator from the Greek and from the French. He was one of the inspirers of the revolt against Symbolism in the direction of Acmeism.
10. Sergei Mitrofanovich Gorodetsky (b. 1884). Early Acmeist poet, who introduced notion of “Adamism.” (See Selected Works of Nikolai S. Gumilev, trans. Raffel and Burago.) He accepted the Revolution whole-heartedly, managed to adapt himself to Stalinism, and enjoyed considerable success as well after the thaw.
Vladimir Narbut (1888–?). Acmeist poet; joined the Communist Party in the Ukraine during the Civil War; afterward, ran a small publishing house. He was expelled from the Party in 1928 and is rumored to have been arrested in 1937 or 1938.
Mikhail Alexandrovich Zenkevich (b. 1891). Early Acmeist; poet and translator. Joined Party in 1947.
11. Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (1776–1822). German Romantic writer and jack-of-all-trades. Ingenious writer of macabre fantasies and great storyteller. Substituted Amadeus for Wilhelm in his name, as homage to Mozart. The full range of his talents was most clearly displayed in his collection of stories Die Serapionsbrüder (4 vols., 1819–1821)—the name of a club of Hoffmann’s more intimate friends.
12. Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862). English historian, author of the History of Civilization in England, a monument to the hope for a “science” of history.
13. Antonio Salieri (1750–1825). Director of the Italian Opera at Vienna. Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt were his students, and they seem to have learned from him especially in the matter of dramatic composition. His intrigues against Mozart gave rise to the stories that he poisoned Mozart. (See A. Delia Corte, Un italiano all’estero [Torino: G. B. Paravia, 1936].) Pushkin uses this legend in his “little tragedy,” Mozart and Salieri. There, Salieri poisons Mozart to balance the equation of cosmic justice; i.e., he feels that the musical genius that eludes him in spite of all his incredibly hard work and perfectionist habits must not be allowed to be seen to settle on Mozart, portrayed as a “natural,” without any effort at all. It is a play in which “hard-working talent,” burdened by a sense of cosmic injustice, avenges itself on “natural genius,” Mandelstam interpreted the poetic drama differently. For him, Salieri represented the principle of hard, even superhuman, work and effort—the obligation imposed by genius—while Mozart represented “inspiration” alone. Nadezhda Mandelstam has pointed out that Mandelstam thought of Mozart and Salieri as two principles, to some degree antagonistic, yet both essential to the creative process. He tended, however, to emphasize the importance of Salieri, regarded by other readers of Pushkin as the villain of the piece. (See N. Mandelstam, Mozart and Salieri.] Mrs. Mandelstam suggests very acutely that when Mandelstam talked of Salieri the figure he really had in mind was Bach.
NOTES ABOUT POETRY
First published, 1923.
1. Nikolai Mikhailovich Iazykov (1803–1846). A major Russian poet in the 1820’s. Pushkin thought his poetry too much champagne, not enough water. But he was Gogol’s favorite poet. Iazyk means “language” or “tongue,” and Gogol wrote: “Not in vain was he given such a name; he is master of his language as an Arab is of his fiery steed” (quoted by D. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature [New York: Knopf„ 1949], p. 104.)
2. The “apostles to the Slavs”; brothers. Cyril, originally named Constantine, died in 869; Methodius in 885. They were born in Thessalonica, of Greek descent, but acquainted with Slavonic. Cyril was educated at Constantinople and went on a mission to the Jewish Khazars on the Sea of Azov. Later, both brothers participated in the struggle between the native Slavic nobility of Bohemia and Moravia against the German clergy, which included a struggle over the liturgical language, the Germans commanding a monopoly of Latin. Under the patronage of Rostislav, Prince of Moravia, Cyril attempted to translate parts of the liturgy into Slavonic. What is called Cyrillic script was probably not invented by him, though it is not unjustly associated with his name. Cyril was welcomed back to Rome, where he brought the relics of Saint Clement. He is buried in the Church of San Clemente in Rome.
3. One of the first artificial international languages, like Esperanto.
4. Pillar saints; i.e., saints who practiced the ascetic discipline of sitting for prolonged periods of time on top of a pillar, flagpole-sitters of the ancient world, though of course with a very different purpose, that being to emphasize their complete separation from the world and the temptations and distractions of the world. The most famous of these was Simeon of Syria, who, in the fifth century, built himself a pillar, climbed it, and between the years 420 and 459 remained sitting there.
5. Christoph Willibald von Gluck (1714–1787). German composer from Bohemia. Strongly influenced by Handel. By lending to recitative a special weight and an effect of its own, he gave opera a new dramatic force.
6. Afanasy Afanasievich Fet (1820–1892). Illegitimate son of a Russian landowner named Shenshin and a German woman named Foeth. Great lyric poet of nature, love, and despair, at a time when major poetry seemed otherwise to have dried up in Russia.
7. Alexander Ivanovich Herzen, or Gertsen (1812–1870). Illegitimate son, or “child of the heart,” of a great senatorial nobleman, Iakovlev. Author of one of the great books of memoirs of the nineteenth century (My Past and Thoughts: The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen, trans. Constance Garnett, rev. Humphrey Higgins, 4 vols. [New York: Knopf, 1968]). Author of an important essay, “Buddhism in Science.” Early Russian socialist, and perhaps more than any other single person the intellectual “daddy” of narodnichestvo, or Russian populism, through his conception of the mir, or village commune, as a kind of primal education in socialism. Influential as a publicist, who changed the European view of Russia: before Herzen, European intellectuals tended to see Russia as a monolith; Herzen persuaded them to make a crucial distinction between the government and the people. From London, Herzen published his Russian newspaper, Kolokol [The bell], which played an important role in the immediate background of the emancipation of the serfs between 1857 and 1861. In 1863, the newspaper began to lose influence, and Herzen was displaced in the minds of the radical Russian public as an important figure by more extreme and strident personalities. The scene referred to here is a vivid one from the early pages of Herzen’s memoirs.
Nikolai Platonovich Ogarev (1813–1877). Interesting minor poet of melancholy reflection and unfulfilled yearning; friend and political ally of Herzen’s.
THE END OF THE NOVEL
Published for the first time in the collection About Poetry, 1928.
BADGER’S BURROW
First published, 1922.
1. Alexander Alexandrovich Blok (1880–1921). Great Russian poet, to some degree a Symbolist, but above all schools, as Mandelstam indicates. He used the great themes—country, love, destiny—and wrote exalted verse often in the mode and form of popular songs. His long poem The Twelve is called by many the poem of the Revolution.
2. Razumnik Vasilevich Ivanov-Razumnik (1878–1946). Critic, historian, prominent figure in both Russian political and literary circles, closely associated with the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, a friend of Blok’s and Biely’s. Left Russia in 1943, died in a D.P. camp. Published interesting prison memoirs, My Prisons. It was he who, in one of his early books, called the Russian intelligentsia “a spiritual brotherhood.” His literary criticism was not of a kind that Mandelstam approved.