Osip Mandelstam

20-8-2001

Osip Mandelstam

Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам

(1891 - 1938)

in Deutsch, hier

born Jan. 3 [Jan. 15, New Style], 1891, Warsaw, Pol., Russian Empire [now in Poland]
died Dec. 27, 1938?, Vtoraya Rechka, near Vladivostok, Russia, U.S.S.R. [now in Russia]

Mandelshtam also spelled Mandelstam major Russian poet and literary critic. Most of his works went unpublished in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era (1929–53) and were almost unknown outside that country until the mid-1960s.

Mandelshtam grew up in St. Petersburg in a cultured Jewish household. After graduating from the elite Tenishev School in 1907, he studied at the University of St. Petersburg as well as in France at the Sorbonne and in Germany at the University of Heidelberg.

His first poems appeared in the avant-garde journal Apollon (“Apollo”) in 1910. Together with Nikolay Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova, Mandelshtam founded the Acmeist school of poetry, which rejected the mysticism and abstraction of Russian Symbolism and demanded clarity and compactness of form. Mandelshtam summed up his poetic credo in his manifesto Utro Akmeizma (“The Morning of Acmeism”). In 1913 his first slim volume of verse, Kamen (“Stone”), was published. During the Russian Civil War (1918–20), Mandelshtam spent time in the Crimea and Georgia. In 1922 he moved to Moscow, where his second volume of poetry, Tristia, appeared. He married Nadezhda Yakovlevna Khazina in 1922.

Mandelshtam's poetry, which was apolitical and intellectually demanding, distanced him from the official Soviet literary establishment. His poetry having been withdrawn from publication, he wrote children's tales and a collection of autobiographical stories, Shum vremeni (1925; “The Noise of Time”). A second edition of this work, augmented by the tale “Yegipetskaya marka” (“The Egyptian Stamp”), was published in 1928. That year, a volume of his collected poetry, Stikhotvoreniya (“Poems”), and a collection of literary criticism, O poezii (“On Poetry”), appeared. These were his last books published in the Soviet Union during his lifetime.

In May 1934 he was arrested for an epigram on Joseph Stalin he had written and read to a small circle of friends. In addition to describing Stalin's fingers as “worms” and his moustache as that of a cockroach, the draft that fell into the hands of the police called Stalin “the murderer and peasant slayer.”

Shattered by a fierce interrogation, Mandelshtam was exiled with his wife to the provincial town of Cherdyn. After hospitalization and a suicide attempt, he won permission to move to Voronezh. Though suffering from periodic bouts of mental illness, he composed a long cycle of poems, the Voronezhskiye tetradi (“Voronezh Notebooks”), which contain some of his finest lyrics.

In May 1937, having served his sentence, Mandelshtam returned with his wife to Moscow. But the following year he was arrested during a stay at a rest home. In a letter to his wife that autumn, Mandelshtam reported that he was ill in a transit camp near Vladivostok. Nothing further was ever heard from him. Soviet authorities officially gave his death date as Dec. 27, 1938, although he was also reported by government sources to have died “at the beginning of 1939.” It was primarily through the efforts of his widow, who died in 1980, that little of the poetry of Osip Mandelshtam was lost; she kept his works alive during the repression by memorizing them and by collecting copies.

After Stalin's death the publication in Russian of Mandelshtam's works was resumed.

His wife, Nadezhda Mandelstam (Nadezhda Mandelshtam), Hope Against Hope (1970, reissued 1989; originally published in Russian, 1970), and Hope Abandoned (1974, reissued 1989; originally published in Russian, 1972), memoirs by his wife, were published in the West in Russian and English.

Encyclopædia Britannica

Мы живем, под собою не чуя страны,

Наши речи за десять шагов не слышны,

А где хватит на полразговорца,

Там припомнят кремлёвского горца.

Его толстые пальцы, как черви, жирны,

А слова, как пудовые гири, верны,

Тараканьи смеются усища,

И сияют его голенища.

А вокруг него сброд тонкошеих вождей,

Он играет услугами полулюдей.

Кто свистит, кто мяучит, кто хнычет,

Он один лишь бабачит и тычет,

Как подкову, кует за указом указ:

Кому в пах, кому в лоб, кому в бровь, кому в глаз.

Что ни казнь у него - то малина

И широкая грудь осетина.

Ноябрь 1933

We live, deaf to the land beneath us,
Ten steps away no one hears our speeches,

All we hear is the Kremlin mountaineer,
The murderer and peasant-slayer.

His fingers are fat as grubs
And the words, final as lead weights, fall from his lips,

His cockroach whiskers leer
And his boot tops gleam.

Around him a rabble of thin-necked leaders -
fawning half-men for him to play with.

The whinny, purr or whine
As he prates and points a finger,

One by one forging his laws, to be flung
Like horseshoes at the head, to the eye or the groin.

And every killing is a treat
For the broad-chested Ossete *.

* Ossette is a reference to the rumour that Stalin was from a people of Iranian stock that lived in an area north of Georgia.

Куда как страшно нам с тобой,
Товарищ большеротый мой!

Ох, как крошится наш табак,
Щелкунчик, дружок, дурак!

А мог бы жизнь просвистать скворцом,
Заесть ореховым пирогом...

Да, видно, нельзя никак.

октябрь 1930

Que grande medo temos, tu e eu,

Seu boquinha de raia, amigo meu!

Oh, como se esfarela este tabaco,

Quebra-nozes compincha, meu velhaco!

E eu podia ter assobiado a vida,

A bolinho de noz acompanhada,

Pois, mas não pode ser nada…

Outubro 1930

Мы с тобой на кухне посидим,
Сладко пахнет белый керосин.

Острый нож да хлеба каравай...
Хочешь, примус туго накачай,

А не то веревок собери
Завязать корзину до зари,

Чтобы нам уехать на вокзал,
Где бы нас никто не отыскал.

январь 1931

Nos sentaremos na cozinha quieta,

Tem cheiro doce o petróleo violeta;

Uma faca aguda, um pão redondo inteiro….

E tu avivando à bomba o fogareiro,

Se não, desencanta aí um cordel

P’ra atar uma trouxa antes de alvorecer,

E a estação do comboio será norte

Para ir onde ninguém nos encontre.

Janeiro 1931

Когда городская выходит на стогны луна,
И медленно ей озаряется город дремучий,
И ночь нарастает, унынья и меди полна,
И грубому времени воск уступает певучий,

И плачет кукушка на каменной башне своей,
И бледная жница, сходящая в мир бездыханный,
Тихонько шевелит огромные спины теней,

И желтой соломой бросает на пол деревянный...

1920

Quando sai para os céus a lua citadina,

E a noite prenhe de cobre e mágoa cresce,

E de lua a cidade espessa se ilumina,

E a cera canora ao tempo rude cede,

E na sua torre de pedra o cuco chora,

E a pobre ceifeira – no mundo dessangrado –

Ajeita de leves agulhas da sombra enorme

E as lança, palha amarela, no sobrado…

1920

Дано мне тело - что мне делать с ним,
Таким единым и таким моим?
За радость тихую дышать и жить
Кого, скажите, мне благодарить?

Я и садовник, я же и цветок,
В темнице мира я не одинок.

На стекла вечности уже легло
Мое дыхание, мое тепло.

4
Запечатлеется на нем узор,

Неузнаваемый с недавних пор.

Пускай мгновения стекает муть -
Узора милого не зачеркнуть.

1909

O corpo me é dado – e com que fim,

Meu corpo único, tão de mim?

Pela alegria chã de respirar,

Silenciosa, a quem devo louvar?

Sou jardineiro e sou flor – cativo

Na prisão do mundo sozinho não vivo.

E já nos vidros da eternidade

Cai meu calor, meu sopro respirado.

Nela se grava um desenho p’ra sempre,

Irreconhecível de tão recente.

Escorra do momento a água turva –

O desenho amado não esbate à chuva.

1909

Только детские книги читать,
Только детские думы лелеять,
Все большое далеко развеять,
Из глубокой печали возстать.

Я от жизни смертельно устал,
Ничего от нея не приемлю,
Но люблю мою бедную землю,
Оттого что иной не видал.

Я качался в далеком саду
На простой деревяанной качели,
И высокие темные ели
Вспоминаю в туманном бреду.

1908

To read only children's books,
To have only childish thoughts,
To throw everything grown-up away,
To rise from deep sadness.

I am deathly tired of life,
I will accept nothing from it.
But I love my poor land,
For I have seen no other.

I rocked in a distant garden
On a plain wooden swing,
Tall dark fir trees
I recall in a hazy fever.

Мы живем под собою не чуя страны,
Наши речи за десять шагов не слышны,
А где хватит на полразговорца, -
Там помянут кремлевского горца.
Его толстые пальцы, как черви, жирны,
И слова, как пудовые гири, верны,
Тараканьи смеются усища,
И сияют его голенища.

А вокруг его сброд толстокожих вождей,
Он играет услугами полулюдей.

Кто свистит, кто мяучит, кто хнычет,
Он один лишь бабачит и тычет.
Как подковы кует за указом указ -
Кому в лоб, кому в бровь, кому в пах, кому в глаз.
Что ни казнь у него, то малина
И широкая грудь осетина.

ноябрь 1933

Vivemos sem sentir o país sob os pés,

Nem a dez passos ouvimos o que se diz,

E quando chegamos enfim à meia fala

O montanheiro do Kremlim lá vem à baila.

Dedos gordurosos como vérmina gorda,

As palavras certas como pesos de arroba.

Riem-se-lhe os bigodes de barata,

Reluzem-lhe os canos de bota alta.

À volta a escumalha – guias de fino pescoço –

Nas vénias da semigente ele brinca com gozo.

Um assobia, o outro geme, aquele mia,

Só ele trata por tu, escolhe companhia.

Como ferraduras, lei ‘trás de lei ele oferta,

Em cheio na virilha, olho e sobrolho e testa.

Cada morte que faz – crime malino

E o peitaço tem amplo, ossetino.

Novembro, 1933

Это какая улица?

Улица Мандельштама

Что за фамилия чертова -

Как ее ни вывертывай,

Криво звучит, а не прямо.

Мало в нем было линейного,

Нрава он был не лилейного,

И потому эта улица,

Или, верней, эта яма

Так и зовется по имени

Этого Мандельштама...

Апрель 1935

Que raio de rua é esta?

É a rua Mandelstam.

Mas que diabo de nome,

por mais voltas que lhe dês,

soa torto, enviesado.

Ele era pouco linear

e de jeito nada brando.

É por isso que esta rua,

ou melhor, este buraco,

se conhece pelo nome

de um tal Mandelstam.

Abril de 1935

De FOGO ERRANTE, Antologia poética, Óssip Mandelstam, Tradução de Nina Guerra e Filipe Guerra. Relógio de Água, Lisboa, Julho de 2001 ISBN 972-708-628-4

Московский дождик

     Он подает куда как скупо

     Свой воробьиный холодок —

     Немного нам, немного купам,

     Немного вишням на лоток.

     И в темноте растет кипенье —

     Чаинок легкая возня,

     Как бы воздушный муравейник

     Пирует в темных зеленях.

     Из свежих капель виноградник

     Зашевелился в мураве:

     Как будто холода рассадник

     Открылся в лапчатой Москве!

The Soft Moscow Rain

It shares so stingily

its sparrow cold –

a little for us, a little for the clumps of trees,

a little for the cherries for the hawker’s stall.

And a bubbling grows in the darkness,

the light fussing of tea-leaves,

as though an ant-hill in the air

were feasting in the dark green grass;

fresh drops stirred

like grapes in the grass,

as though the hot-bed of the cold

was revealed in web-footed Moscow.

1922

Translation by Richard McKane

Cf. Mandelstam’s prose sketch “A Cold Summer”: “[It seemed] as though a sack of ice which just wouldn’t melt was hidden in the thick greenery of Neskuchnyi Gardens, and coldness crawled out across the whole of the web-footed Moscow”. The tea-leaves convey the impression of birds in the sky; the ant-hill as an image of the populous city has its earliest Russian precedent in Dostoevsky.

Note by Michael Basker

Translation and Notes from “Ten Russian Poets, Surviving the Twentieth Century”, edited by Richard McKane, Anvil Press Poetry, London, 2003, ISBN 0 85646 328 0

А небо будущим беременно...

Опять войны разноголосица

На древних плоскогорьях мира,
И лопастью пропеллер лоснится,
Как кость точеная тапира.
Крыла и смерти уравнение, -
С алгебраических пирушек
Слетев, он помнит измерение
Других эбеновых игрушек,
Врагиню ночь, рассадник вражеский,
Существ коротких ластоногих
И молодую силу тяжести:
Так начиналасть власть немногих...

Итак, готовьтесь жить во времени,
Где нет ни волка, ни тапира,
А небо будущим беременно -
Пшеницей сытого эфира.
А то сегодня победители
Кладбища лета обходили,
Ломали крылья стрекозиные
И молоточками казнили.

Давайте слушать грома проповедь,
Как внуки Себастьяна Баха,
А на востоке и на западе
Органные поставим крылья!
Давайте бросим бури яблоко
На стол пирующим землянам
И на стеклянном блюде облака
Поставим явств посередине.
Давайте все покроем заново
Камчатной скатертью пространства,
Переговариваясь, радуясь,
Друг другу подавая брашна.
На круговом, на мирном судьбище
Зарею кровь оледенится.
В беременном глубоком будущем
Жужжит большая медуница.

А вам, в безвеременьи летающим
Под хлыст войны за власть немногих, -
Хотя бы честь млекопитающих,
Хотя бы совесть ластоногих.
И тем печальнее, тем горше нам,
Что люди-птицы хуже зверя
И что стервятникам и коршунам
Мы поневоле больше верим.
Как шапка холода альпийского,
Из года в год, в жару и лето,
На лбу высоком человечества
Войны холодные ладони.
А ты, глубокое и сытое,
Забременевшее лазурью,
Как чешуя многоочитое,
И альфа и омега бури;
Тебе - чужое и безбровое,
Из поколенья в поколение, -
Всегда высокое и новое
Передается удивление.

1923

The Sky is pregnant with the Future

Once more the cacophony of war

on the ancient plateaux of the world,

and the propeller’s blade glistens

like the sharpened bone of a tapir.

The equation of the wing and death,

having flown from the feasts

of algebra, remembers the measure

of other ebony toys,

the hostile night, the enemy breeding-ground

of short creatures, web-footed,

and the young force of gravity:

here began the power of the few.

So, prepare to live in the time

where there is no wolf, no tapir

and the heavens are pregnant with the future –

with the wheat of the sated ether.

For today the conquerors

went round the cemeteries of floght,

they broke the dragonfly wings

and executed with little hammers.

Let’s listen to the sermon if thunder

like the grandchildren of Sebastian Bach,

and let us place organ wings

in the east and in the west!

Let’s throw the apple of the storm

onto the table for the feasting earthlings

and let us place on a glass dish

a cloud in the middle of victuals.

Let’s cover all anew

with the damasked tablecloth of space,

talking things through, rejoicing,

giving food one to the other.

At the round Court of Peace

the blood will turn to ive at dawn,

in the deep, pregnant future

a huge honey-bee is buzzing.

And you, flying in timelessness

under the whip of war, for the power of the few –

if you only had the honour of mammals,

if you only had the conscience of the flipper-footed!

And the more sad, the more bitter it is for us

that bird-people are worse than beasts

and that unwillingly we have more trust in

carrion-crows and kites.

Like a hat of Alpine cold,

year in and year out, in the heat and summer

the cold palms of war

are on the high forehead of humanity.

And you, deep and sated,

having become pregnant with the azure,

scaled, many-eyed,

the alpha and omega of the storm,

to you – alien and eyebrowless –

from generation to generation

always a lofty and new

surprise is communicated.

1923, 1929

Translation by Richard McKane

Written against the background of the Hague and Genoa Peace Conferences, the Rapallo Treaty between Germany and the USSR, and Mussolini’s rise to power. Section 1 describes the emergence of the aeroplane, the key to power, observing a foreshortened enemy from the Sky. Sections 2 and 3 seem to deal principally with anticipation of a Golden Age of peace, a higher phase of evolution, where poetry (wheat, honey-bees) can flourish in an organized, cosmic concord with distinctly Khlebnikovian overtones. There is reference to the destruction of German aviation under the Treaty of Versailles; the term for food in the third verse paragraph, brashna, suggests a meatless feast, in which (via Tyutchev) the chaos of night is covered over by the damask cloth. Section 4 begins despairingly: “timelessness” (via Blok) is the present anti-historical age, in which destructive pilots lack the conscience of beasts and war oppresses aspiring humanity. The conclusion seems deeply ambivalent: the pregnant sky may still promise harmony – or prove grotesquely indifferent and frighteningly unpredictable.

Note by Michael Basker

Translation and Notes from “Ten Russian Poets, Surviving the Twentieth Century”, edited by Richard McKane, Anvil Press Poetry, London, 2003, ISBN 0 85646 328 0

Пeшеходъ.

     Я чувствую непобeдимый страхъ

     Въ присутствiи таинственныхъ высотъ,

     Я ласточкой доволенъ въ небесахъ,

     И колокольни я люблю полетъ!

     И, кажется, старинный пeшеходъ,

     Надъ пропастью, на гнущихся мосткахъ,

     Я слушаю -- какъ снeжный комъ растетъ

     И вeчность бьетъ на каменныхъ часахъ.

     Когда бы такъ! Но я не путникъ тотъ,

     Мелькающiй на выцвeтшихъ листахъ,

     И подлинно во мнe печаль поетъ;

     Дeйствительно лавина есть въ горахъ!

     И вся моя душа -- въ колоколахъ --

     Но музыка отъ бездны не спасетъ!

             1912.

    I feel a fear that I cannot defy

     In presence of the secretive above.

     Like swallow I am happy in the sky

     And loftiness of towers I love

     It seems as though the ancient overpass

     Over abyss on bending beams that groan

     I hear. A snowball grows and gathers mass,

     Eternity sounds on the hours of stone!

     When would it be! But it is not my role

     To dance on faded leaves and scream and hiss

     And sadness sings in me without control -

     I feel an avalanche in heaven's bliss!

     And in the bell tower you can find my soul

     But music will not save from the Abyss!

пешехoд

Я чувствую непобедимый страх

В присутвии таинственных высот.

Я ласточкой довoпен в небесах

И копокoльни я люблю полет!

И, кажется,  старинный пешехoд,

Над  пропастью, на гнущихся  мосткх,

Я спушаю, как снежный ком растет

И вечность бьет на каменных часах.

Когда