Interpretation. O. E. Mandelstam Inexpressible sadness opened two huge eyes, the flower vase woke up and spilled out its crystal. The whole room is filled with languor - sweet medicine! Such a small kingdom has absorbed so much sleep. A little red wine, a little sunny May - and, breaking a thin biscuit, the thinnest fingers white. 1909 O. M. Mandelstam’s poem “Inexpressible sadness...” is one of the earliest in the poet’s work (1909). According to Akhmatova, “the twenties are a very important time in creative path Mandelstam...” (Silver Age. Memoirs. Anna Akhmatova. Leaves from the diary. M., 1990, p. 407). Indeed, the poet experimented a lot. Beginning of the century: symbolism is still in fashion, the impressionistic experiments of Innokenty Annensky are interesting. Mandelstam has many exemplary teachers, but he is proud that he represents a new movement in poetry - Acmeism, the “clear” poetic world. If we call Mandelstam's poetry painting, then it is undoubtedly impressionism. A ray of sunshine is an unheard of audacity in painting - the innovation of Manet, Morisot, Degas and many other artists. The bright lighting in the painting makes the colors of the objects rich: green water, fiery water lilies, a red bow in her buttonhole, phosphorescent white feathers of ballerinas, Olympia’s yellow body. Mandelstam names one in the poem bright color– red (“a little red wine”), but there are so many sunny reflections in the picture: the vase “splashed out its crystal” - the brightest shine, the “thin” biscuit, “the thinnest fingers of whiteness” - also white. “Unspeakable Sadness” is a small lyrical sketch in the style of a still life. The theme of the sketch is morning awakening, feelings of one’s being and connections with objects of reality: a room, a crystal vase, a biscuit, wine. A ray of sun creates movement in the painting: first it hits a crystal vase, then it illuminates the entire room, and finally wakes up the one who is in the room and plays on his fingers. There are two plans in the picture: an imaginary window through which a ray of sun penetrates and the space of a room with objects in it. This can be correlated with external and internal state lyrical hero– macro and microcosm. The hero's condition, as well as the state of things, can change at any moment: the beam will disappear, the wine will become tart, the biscuit will be eaten. This poem has a number of features that relate to all of the poet’s lyrics. Very often in the first stanzas, Mandelstam denies: “We cannot stand tense silence,” “I am not a fan...”, “There is no need to talk about anything,” etc. Here, too, the denial is “inexpressible sadness.” A very strange definition of sadness, but if you remember Akhmatova’s “Music rang in the garden / with such inexpressible grief...” or “Glory to you, hopeless pain!”, then you can put these words among the traditional maxims of Acmeism. Namely, in pain, suffering, sadness there is languor, even “languor is a sweet medicine.” Acmeists love this kind of oxymoron. Sadness opens “two huge eyes.” These could be windows that become transparent at dawn and “open.” Or these are Mandelstam’s eyes – beautiful, brown, with long eyelashes. The Acmeists called for calling everything by its proper name, unlike the Symbolists, who tried to put it into everyday words sacred meaning, thereby (according to Acmeists) devaluing the sacredness of the inexpressible. “The whole room is filled with water...” - a reminiscence of Pushkin’s “The whole room with an amber sheen / Is filled with water...”. This is an indication of the general mood in the stanzas of Pushkin and Mandelstam, which is important for the correct reading of the poem. Reminiscences, open quotation, intertexting - constant reception in Mandelstam's poetry. This makes the verses difficult to understand and at the same time enriches them. Sometimes reminiscence comes down to nothing more than repeating a combination of words in isolation from the context of the original. This is, perhaps, an allusion to Ostrovsky’s “sleepy kingdom” (“Such a small kingdom / So much... sleep”), which is difficult to interpret otherwise than as an exclusively sound play on a familiar combination of words. A little red wine A little sunny May... This reminds me of an excerpt from culinary recipe. Mandelstam loved sweets very much. This can be found in Odoevtsaya’s memoirs. For example: “...He tells how he once spring morning I was dying for eggnog. He went to the market and bought an egg from a merchant. But on the way, the man was selling Golden Label chocolate, Mandelstam’s favorite chocolate. Seeing the chocolate, Mandelstam forgot about the eggnog, he “crashed” for chocolate.” The third stanza again returns us to the technique of painting. In impressionism, the brushstroke is applied easily and quickly; tree trunks, sails, figures, and faces appear on the ripples of foliage and sky. The effect of fragmentary painting creates continuous movement in the painting. Mandelstam's third stanza is a series of verbal strokes: objects are not depicted photographically (using complete sentences), but are called one or two strokes, which unfold in the reader's mind into full-fledged elements of the picture. Mandelstam gives free rein to his imagination. Grammatically - avoids predicates, and in two last lines takes fragmentation to the limit. The poem contains some features of a self-portrait. Eyes and fingers. According to contemporaries, Mandelstam was short, with his head thrown back (“You throw your head back...”). It is quite possible to imagine that the graceful Mandelstam has “the thinnest fingers of whiteness.” On the other hand, this portrait characteristic is also indirect, like “two huge eyes.” The poem is harmonious and musical. The words play with each other, la catches up with two, as - for, etc. The syllables turn into notes (ra, cha, va, ta, na, la), and the notes into a violin solo, producing a fragile, nervous melody. So, in short poem The magical unity of the three arts - poetry, painting and music - is realized with amazing ease and skill. Christina Uzorko.
Interpretation.
O. E. Mandelstam
Unspeakable sadness
opened two huge eyes,
flower woke up vase
and threw out her crystal.
The whole room is drunk
languor is sweet medicine!
Such a small kingdom
so much was consumed by sleep.
A little red wine
a little sunny May -
and, breaking a thin biscuit,
the thinnest fingers are white.
O. M. Mandelstam’s poem “Inexpressible sadness...” is one of the earliest in the poet’s work (1909). According to Akhmatova, “the tenth years were a very important time in Mandelstam’s creative path...” (Silver Age. Memoirs. Anna Akhmatova. Leaves from the diary. M., 1990, p. 407). Indeed, the poet experimented a lot. Beginning of the century: symbolism is still in fashion, the impressionistic experiments of Innokenty Annensky are interesting. Mandelstam has many exemplary teachers, but he is proud that he represents a new movement in poetry - Acmeism, the “clear” poetic world.
If we call Mandelstam's poetry painting, then it is undoubtedly impressionism. A ray of sunshine is an unheard of audacity in painting - the innovation of Manet, Morisot, Degas and many other artists. The bright lighting in the painting makes the colors of the objects rich: green water, fiery water lilies, a red bow in her buttonhole, phosphorescent white feathers of ballerinas, Olympia’s yellow body.
Mandelstam in the poem names one bright color - red (“a little red wine”), but there are so many sun glares in the picture: the vase “splashed out its crystal” - the brightest shine, the “thin” biscuit, “the thinnest fingers of whiteness” - also white.
“Unspeakable Sadness” is a small lyrical sketch in the style of a still life. The theme of the sketch is morning awakening, feelings of one’s being and connections with objects of reality: a room, a crystal vase, a biscuit, wine. A ray of sun creates movement in the painting: first it hits a crystal vase, then it illuminates the entire room, and finally wakes up the one who is in the room and plays on his fingers.
There are two plans in the picture: an imaginary window through which a ray of sun penetrates and the space of a room with objects in it. This can be correlated with the external and internal state of the lyrical hero - macro and microcosm. The hero's condition, as well as the state of things, can change at any moment: the beam will disappear, the wine will become tart, the biscuit will be eaten.
This poem has a number of features that relate to all of the poet’s lyrics. Very often in the first stanzas, Mandelstam denies: “We cannot stand tense silence,” “I am not a fan...”, “There is no need to talk about anything,” etc. Here, too, the denial is “inexpressible sadness.” A very strange definition of sadness, but if you remember Akhmatova’s “Music rang in the garden / with such inexpressible grief...” or “Glory to you, hopeless pain!”, then you can put these words among the traditional maxims of Acmeism. Namely, in pain, suffering, sadness there is languor, even “languor is a sweet medicine.” Acmeists love this kind of oxymoron.
Sadness opens “two huge eyes.” These could be windows that become transparent at dawn and “open.” Or these are Mandelstam's eyes - beautiful, brown, with long eyelashes. The Acmeists called for calling everything by its proper name, in contrast to the Symbolists, who tried to put a sacred meaning into everyday words, thereby (according to the Acmeists) devaluing the sacredness of the inexpressible.
“The whole room is filled with water...” - a reminiscence of Pushkin’s “The whole room with an amber sheen / Is filled with water...”. This is an indication of the general mood in the stanzas of Pushkin and Mandelstam, which is important for the correct reading of the poem. Reminiscences, open quotation, intertexting are a constant technique in Mandelstam’s poetry. This makes the verses difficult to understand and at the same time enriches them. Sometimes reminiscence comes down to nothing more than repeating a combination of words in isolation from the context of the original. This is, perhaps, an allusion to Ostrovsky’s “sleepy kingdom” (“Such a small kingdom / So much... sleep”), which is difficult to interpret otherwise than as an exclusively sound play on a familiar combination of words.
Some red wine
A little sunny May...
This is reminiscent of an excerpt from a culinary recipe. Mandelstam loved sweets very much. This can be found in Odoevtsaya’s memoirs. For example: “...He tells how one spring morning he was dying for eggnog. He went to the market and bought an egg from a merchant. But on the way, the man was selling Golden Label chocolate, Mandelstam’s favorite chocolate. Seeing the chocolate, Mandelstam forgot about the eggnog, he “crashed” for chocolate.”
The third stanza again returns us to the technique of painting. In impressionism, the brushstroke is applied easily and quickly; tree trunks, sails, figures, and faces appear on the ripples of foliage and sky. The effect of fragmentary painting creates continuous movement in the painting. Mandelstam's third stanza is a series of verbal strokes: objects are not depicted photographically (using complete sentences), but are called one or two strokes, which unfold in the reader's mind into full-fledged elements of the picture. Mandelstam gives free rein to his imagination. Grammatically, he avoids predicates, and in the last two lines he takes fragmentation to the limit.
The poem contains some features of a self-portrait. Eyes and fingers. According to contemporaries, Mandelstam was short, with his head thrown back (“You throw your head back...”). It is quite possible to imagine that the graceful Mandelstam has “the thinnest fingers of whiteness.” On the other hand, this portrait characteristic is also indirect, like “two huge eyes.”
The poem is harmonious and musical. The words play with each other, la catches up with two, as - for, etc. The syllables turn into notes (ra, cha, va, ta, na, la), and the notes into a violin solo, producing a fragile, nervous melody.
Thus, in a short poem, the magical unity of the three arts - poetry, painting and music - is realized with amazing ease and skill.
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam
Unspeakable sadness
She opened two huge eyes,
Flower woke up vase
And she threw out her crystal.
The whole room is drunk
Exhaustion is sweet medicine!
Such a small kingdom
So much was consumed by sleep.
A little red wine
A little sunny May -
And, breaking a thin biscuit,
The thinnest fingers are white.
In 1913, the first edition of Mandelstam’s debut book “Stone” was published, which reflected the creative searches of the young poet, his experiences in the field of symbolism and acmeism. Greatest impact on early lyrics provided by two geniuses - Tyutchev and Verlaine. Osip Emilievich borrowed some themes from the first. From the second - lightness of form.
Often, when analyzing the first period of Mandelstam’s work, literary scholars do not take into account one very important fact— the young poet suffered from two diseases at once: angina pectoris and asthma. The situation was quite dangerous; there was even a certain prediction near death Osip Emilievich. She greatly frightened the poet. Mandelstam was afraid that the body would die without having time to accomplish the “feat of the soul.” The illness gave rise to a feeling of the fragility of existence. At any moment, the world can rock and shatter, as reflected in the 1909 poem “Unspeakable Sorrow.” The motif of fragility appears in the first stanza: the vase spills its crystal. In the second quatrain, the room appears as a whole world - a small kingdom that is both closed and limitless. At the end of the poem, the theme of fragility returns. The world described earlier, like a biscuit, can be destroyed with the help of the thinnest fingers. Who do they belong to - fate, God, man? IN in this case not so important as long as there is an opportunity to enjoy “red wine” and “sunny May”. By the way, even the disease has a peculiar advantage - it can expand vision: “Inexpressible sadness opened two huge eyes...”.
Sometimes Mandelstam is accused of being tongue-tied. Pay attention to the last two lines of the poem “Unspeakable Sorrow”:
...And, breaking a thin biscuit,
The thinnest fingers are white.
Here there is an incorrect use from the point of view of the rules of the Russian language participial phrase. Well, how can whiteness act as the performer of any action? And at Mandelstam’s she breaks a thin biscuit. The sensitive reader is captivated precisely by the irregularity contained in the image invented by Osip Emilievich. A similar idea is found in Nikolai Gumilyov, Mandelstam’s friend and his colleague in the “Workshop of Poets.”
Nikolay Gumilyov
He wrote that a poem “must be impeccable even to the point of being incorrect,” since individuality is given to a work only by conscious deviations from generally accepted rules.
Literary critic and philologist Mikhail Gasparov connected “Inexpressible Sadness” with another early lyrical sketch of Mandelstam - “In the vastness of the twilight hall...”. It shows an empty room with tall vases on the table. They contain lilies, their open flowers seeming to ask for wine. Compare with the picture depicted in the poem we are considering - a bouquet in a vase, a sip of wine, a thin biscuit.
“Inexpressible Sadness” is a magnificent example of Mandelstam’s impressionistic creativity. Not without the influence of Paul Verlaine.
Paul Verlaine
He is considered the first impressionist poet in world literature, whose lyrics marked the transition from romanticism to symbolism. “Pure observation,” which formed the basis of the new direction in art, meant the rejection of ideas in creativity, completeness, and generality. Every moment was depicted. Perception took the place of thought, reason replaced instinct. Accordingly, there was a rejection of history and plot. “Unspeakable Sorrow” is a beautiful impressionistic sketch, the images of which each reader can interpret in his own way, depending on his own life experience, perception of art and reality.
Interpretation.
O. E. Mandelstam
Unspeakable sadness
opened two huge eyes,
flower woke up vase
and threw out her crystal.
The whole room is drunk
languor is sweet medicine!
Such a small kingdom
so much was consumed by sleep.
A little red wine
a little sunny May -
and, breaking a thin biscuit,
the thinnest fingers are white.
O. M. Mandelstam’s poem “Inexpressible sadness...” is one of the earliest in the poet’s work (1909). According to Akhmatova, “the tenth years were a very important time in Mandelstam’s creative path...” (Silver Age. Memoirs. Anna Akhmatova. Leaves from the diary. M., 1990, p. 407). Indeed, the poet experimented a lot. Beginning of the century: symbolism is still in fashion, the impressionistic experiments of Innokenty Annensky are interesting. Mandelstam has many exemplary teachers, but he is proud that he represents a new movement in poetry - Acmeism, the “clear” poetic world.
If we call Mandelstam's poetry painting, then it is undoubtedly impressionism. A ray of sunshine is an unheard of audacity in painting - the innovation of Manet, Morisot, Degas and many other artists. The bright lighting in the painting makes the colors of the objects rich: green water, fiery water lilies, a red bow in her buttonhole, phosphorescent white feathers of ballerinas, Olympia’s yellow body.
Mandelstam in the poem names one bright color - red (“a little red wine”), but there are so many sun glares in the picture: the vase “splashed out its crystal” - the brightest shine, the “thin” biscuit, “the thinnest fingers of whiteness” - also white.
“Unspeakable Sadness” is a small lyrical sketch in the style of a still life. The theme of the sketch is morning awakening, feelings of one’s being and connections with objects of reality: a room, a crystal vase, a biscuit, wine. The ray of the sun creates movement in the painting: first it hits the crystal vase, then it illuminates the entire room, and finally wakes up the one who is in the room and plays on his fingers.
There are two plans in the picture: an imaginary window through which a ray of sun penetrates and the space of a room with objects in it. This can be correlated with the external and internal state of the lyrical hero - macro and microcosm. The hero's condition, as well as the state of things, can change at any moment: the beam will disappear, the wine will become tart, the biscuit will be eaten.
Sadness opens “two huge eyes.” These could be windows that become transparent at dawn and “open.” Or these are Mandelstam’s eyes – beautiful, brown, with long eyelashes. The Acmeists called for calling everything by its proper name, in contrast to the Symbolists, who tried to put a sacred meaning into everyday words, thereby (according to the Acmeists) devaluing the sacredness of the inexpressible.
“The whole room is filled with water...” - a reminiscence of Pushkin’s “The whole room with an amber sheen / Is filled with water...”. This is an indication of the general mood in the stanzas of Pushkin and Mandelstam, which is important for the correct reading of the poem. Reminiscences, open quotation, intertexting are a constant technique in Mandelstam’s poetry. This makes the verses difficult to understand and at the same time enriches them. Sometimes reminiscence comes down to nothing more than repeating a combination of words in isolation from the context of the original. This is, perhaps, an allusion to Ostrovsky’s “sleepy kingdom” (“Such a small kingdom / So much... sleep”), which is difficult to interpret otherwise than as an exclusively sound play on a familiar combination of words.
Some red wine
A little sunny May...
This is reminiscent of an excerpt from a culinary recipe. Mandelstam loved sweets very much. This can be found in Odoevtsaya’s memoirs. For example: “...He tells how one spring morning he was dying for eggnog. He went to the market and bought an egg from a merchant. But on the way, the man was selling Golden Label chocolate, Mandelstam’s favorite chocolate. Seeing the chocolate, Mandelstam forgot about the eggnog, he “crashed” for chocolate.”
The third stanza again returns us to the technique of painting. In impressionism, the brushstroke is applied easily and quickly; tree trunks, sails, figures, and faces appear on the ripples of foliage and sky. The effect of fragmentary painting creates continuous movement in the painting. Mandelstam's third stanza is a series of verbal strokes: objects are not depicted photographically (using complete sentences), but are called one or two strokes, which unfold in the reader's mind into full-fledged elements of the picture. Mandelstam gives free rein to his imagination. Grammatically, he avoids predicates, and in the last two lines he takes fragmentation to the limit.
The poem contains some features of a self-portrait. Eyes and fingers. According to contemporaries, Mandelstam was short, with his head thrown back (“You throw your head back...”). It is quite possible to imagine that the graceful Mandelstam has “the thinnest fingers of whiteness.” On the other hand, this portrait characteristic is also indirect, like “two huge eyes.”
The poem is harmonious and musical. The words play with each other, la catches up with two, as - for, etc. The syllables turn into notes (ra, cha, va, ta, na, la), and the notes into a violin solo, producing a fragile, nervous melody.
Thus, in a short poem, the magical unity of the three arts - poetry, painting and music - is realized with amazing ease and skill.
Christina Uzorko.