Osip Emilievich MANDELSHTAM
(1891 - 1938)
Poems about love
Unlike Blok and Akhmatova, Mandelstam wrote very little about love, although he was a “pure water” lyricist and, according to Anna Akhmatova, “fell in love... quite often.” However, poetic temperament does not always coincide with human temperament. At times Mandelstam himself complained bitterly about his own love muteness, but by force of will the nature of the lyrical gift cannot be changed.
The deep theme of Mandelstam, which he experienced especially strongly, was the theme of man and time. Whatever and whoever the poet writes about: about the “eccentric Eugene”, against the backdrop of the “hard purple” of the Nicholas state, about the “Gothic soul” of the Basilica of Notre Dame, about the staff of the wandering poet, or about the hook-nosed Turks near the small Feodosian hotels - this there has always been a dispute with the “wolfhound age”, with the prohibitively gigantic “ historical time“, against the background of which the “little man” is so invisible and defenseless: in itself, this man is not so small, but his life span is too short.
Perhaps for this reason, Mandelstam’s poems (even love ones!) are so saturated with images from history, especially from the poet’s beloved antiquity, and perhaps because against the backdrop of history, the experiences of the “man of the Moskvoshway era” did not look so tragic.
Arguing with eras and centuries, the poet literally made his way to his time, personal and historical, which turned out to be connected with the everyday life of thousands of tiny capillaries:
Try to tear me away from the century, -
I guarantee you, you will break your neck!
This path to his time, to himself, was reflected in his love lyrics, which at first were almost ethereal - just spirit! - but over time, more and more filled with the hot pulsating blood of life.
* * *
I was given a body - what should I do with it?
So one and so mine?
For the joy of quiet breathing and living
Who, tell me, should I thank?
I am a gardener, I am also a flower,
In the dungeon of the world I am not alone.
Eternity has already fallen on the glass
My breath, my warmth.
A pattern will be imprinted on it,
Unrecognizable recently.
Let the dregs of the moment flow down, -
The cute pattern cannot be crossed out.
Mandelstam's early poems are not so much love poems as they are about love. Sometimes foreign motives still appear in them, as, for example, in a poem “Balmontov” in its rhythm and vocabulary:
* * *
Don't ask: you know
That tenderness is unaccountable
And what do you call
My trepidation is all the same;
And why confession?
When irrevocably
My existence
Have you decided?
Give me your hand. What are passions?
Dancing snakes.
And the mystery of their power -
Killer magnet!
And the serpent's disturbing dance
Not daring to stop
I contemplate the gloss
Maiden's cheeks.
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam was born in Warsaw into a petty-bourgeois family. He spent his childhood and youth in St. Petersburg and Pavlovsk. Graduated from the Tenishevsky School. In 1907, he traveled abroad - to Paris, Rome, Berlin, and attended university lectures at the Sorbonne and the University of Heidelberg. He made his debut as a poet in the Apollo magazine in 1909, and three years later the first book of his poems, entitled “Stone,” was published, announcing to the world the birth of another talented Russian poet.
Mandelstam is a philosophical poet with a keen interest in history. In love with Ancient Hellas, he deeply felt the connection between Russian culture and Hellenism, believing that thanks to this continuity “the Russian language became precisely the sounding and burning flesh.”
In Mandelstam's poems, a solemn, slightly archaic, full-fledged word sounds. This is a poet of great visual precision; his verse is short, distinct and clear, exquisite in rhythm; it is very expressive and beautiful in sound. Saturated with literary and historical associations, strict in architectonics, it requires close and attentive reading.
The mood of “Stone” is melancholic. The refrain of most of the poems was the word “sadness” - “where has sadness gone, hypocrite.” Having once made a reservation: “I’m mortally tired of life, I don’t accept anything from it,” Mandelstam then firmly declares his acceptance of the world with all its vicissitudes: “I see a lifeless month and the sky is deader than canvas; Your world is painful and strange, I accept, emptiness! Both in “Stone” and in the collection “Tristia” great place The theme of Rome, its palaces and squares is occupied. In "Tristia" there is a cycle of love poems. Some of them are dedicated to Marina Tsvetaeva, with whom, according to some contemporaries, the poet had a “turbulent romance.”
Love lyrics are light and chaste, devoid of tragic heaviness. Falling in love - almost constant feeling Mandelstam, but it is interpreted broadly: as falling in love with life. Love for a poet is the same as poetry. In 1920, before finally joining his life with Nadezhda Yakovlevna, Mandelstam experienced a deep feeling for the actress of the Alexandrinsky Theater. Several poems are dedicated to her. The poet dedicated several poems to A. Akhmatova. Nadezhda Yakovlevna, the poet’s wife and friend, writes: “Poems to Akhmatova... cannot be classified as love. These are poems of high friendship and misfortune. They have a feeling of common fate and catastrophe.” Nadezhda Yakovlevna spoke in detail about Osip Mandelstam’s love for the beautiful Olga Vaksel and the family discord this caused. What can you do, Mandelstam actually fell in love quite often, bringing grief to his Nadenka, and Russian poetry was enriched with the most beautiful poems on eternal theme love. Mandelstam fell in love, perhaps, before recent years life, admiring life and beauty.
Mandelstam was one of the first to write poetry in civil topics. The revolution was a huge event for him, and it is no coincidence that the word “people” appears in his poems.
In 1933, Mandelstam wrote anti-Stalin poems and read them mainly to his friends - poets, writers, who, upon hearing them, were horrified and said: “I didn’t hear that, you didn’t read that to me...”
We live without feeling the country beneath us,
Our speeches are not heard ten steps away,
And where is enough for half a conversation,
The Kremlin highlander will be remembered there.
On the night of May 13-14, 1934, Mandelstam was arrested. He was seriously threatened with execution. But his friends and wife stood up for him. This played a role; he was sent to Voronezh. After the end of their three-year exile, the Mandelstams returned to Moscow.
On May 2, 1938, Mandelstam was again arrested and sentenced to five years in forced labor camps on charges of counter-revolutionary activities. Then Taganka, Butyrka, following the stage to Vladivostok. From there is the only letter sent in October 1938.
There is no grave of Osip Mandelstam on earth. There is only a pit somewhere where the bodies of tortured people are thrown in disarray; among them, apparently, lies the Poet - that was his name in the camp.
In the most bitter poems of Mandelstam, admiration for life does not weaken; in the most tragic ones, such as “Keep my speech forever for the taste of misfortune and smoke...”, this delight is heard, embodied in phrases that are striking in their novelty and power: “If only they loved These vile scaffolds kill me, How, aiming for death, the towns kill me in the garden...” And with what more difficult circumstances, the more tangible the linguistic strength, the more piercing and surprising the details. It was then that such marvelous details appeared, such as “ocean strings of pearls and meek Tahitian baskets.” It seems that behind Mandelstam’s poems one can see through Monet, then Gauguin, then Saryan...
My time is not limited yet,
And I accompanied the universal delight,
Like a sotto voce organ playing
Accompanied by a woman's voice...
This was said on February 12, 1937. Happiness arose at the moment of creation of the poem, perhaps in the most difficult situation, and the miracle of its occurrence is most striking.
Don't separate me from life -
She's dreaming
Kill and caress now...
It seems that a man walking on water would inspire us with less awe. It is not clear what miracles we still need, if every year in May lilacs bloom in a vacant lot, if the music of Bach and Mozart was written on the basis of poverty, uncertainty or innate oblivion, wars and epidemics, if the words of the Decembrist Lunin came to us from the “convict hole” about that only fools and animals are unhappy in this world if we have Mandelstam’s Voronezh poems at our fingertips. Experiencing poetry as happiness is happiness. Even more absurd are the complaints that it does not exist in life, that it is possible only in poetry. “There is no happiness in life” is not a human formulation at all, but a criminal formulation. All poetry, and especially Mandelstam’s, rests on the confrontation between happiness and misfortune, love of life and fear of it, which withstood the most difficult test in the history of Russian poetry.
“Life and death” he called the butterfly. He could say the same about his soul. “Sighted fingers, shame and the convex joy of recognition” guided his pen. Even to depict death, Mandelstam uses the most vivid and tangible details:
Lying for the tender, freshly removed mask,
For plaster fingers that do not hold a pen,
For enlarged lips, for strengthened caress
Coarse-grained peace and goodness...
How is love for the depicted object expressed? In affectionate, selfless attention to him. “The water on the pins and the air are softer than frog skin balloons" Such close attention, ready to change place with the thing depicted, to get into its “skin”, to feel for it, leads and warms this poetry, makes it possible to feel the ins and outs of the world and our consciousness.
“We sleep standing up in the thick night under a warm sheep’s hat...”, “Quietly ironing the wool and stirring the straw, like an apple tree in winter, starving in the matting”, “The morning clarinet chills the ear”, “It’s as if I were sagging on my own eyelashes.. ."
Of course, Mandelstam’s ability to “absorb into life” is remarkably combined with high intellectualism, but he has nothing to do with abstractions or rationality; he is immersed in life, nature, history, culture, connected with the world and instantly responds to its call.
Poetry inspires happiness and courage; it is our ally in the fight against the “spirit of despondency.”
The people need a mysteriously familiar verse.
So that he would always wake up from it.
And a flax-haired chestnut wave -
I washed myself with its sound.
Even today no one can say with final accuracy the date of his death and the place of burial. Most evidence confirms the “official” date of the poet’s death - December 27, 1938, but some eyewitnesses “extend” his days by several months, and sometimes even years...
Back in 1915, in the article “Pushkin and Scriabin,” Mandelstam wrote that the death of an artist is his last and natural creative act. In "Poems of the Unknown Soldier" he prophetically said:
... The aortas become engorged with blood,
And it sounds in whispers through the rows:
- I was born in ninety-four,
- I was born in ninety-second...
- And clutching the worn-out fist
The year of birth - with a crowd and a crowd,
I whisper with a bloodless mouth:
I was born on the night from the second to the third
January at ninety-one
Unreliable year - and century
They surround me with fire.
The death of Mandelstam - “with a crowd and a crowd”, with his people - added the immortality of fate to the immortality of his poetry. Mandelstam the poet became a myth, and his creative biography- one of the central historical and cultural symbols of the 20th century, the embodiment of art that resists tyranny, was killed physically but won spiritually, and despite everything is resurrected in miraculously preserved poems, novels, paintings, and symphonies.
Composition
Osip Mandelstam is an Acmeist poet, “a poet not for many,” as he was called. His first collection of poems was published in 1913 and was called “Stone,” but his fame was brought to him by the republication of this collection three years later, in 1916. It contained twice as many more poems than the previous one. The collection received positive reviews critics. They noted the “impeccability of form,” “the precision of the verse,” and “jewelry craftsmanship.” Indeed, the poems in this collection are distinguished by precisely these qualities, which is associated with Mandelstam’s passion for classicism. N. S. Gumilyov, with whom Mandelstam was very friendly, noted the originality of the poet’s poems. He said: “His inspirations were only the Russian language... and his own seeing, hearing, touching, eternally sleepless thought...! But there were also those who argued that the poet was imitating K. Balmont and reproached him for his inconsistency.
The entire collection of poems is imbued with sadness. In many poems there are such phrases: “Oh, things are my sorrow,” “ unspeakable sadness“,” “I slowly carry sadness into my heart, like a gray bird,” “Where is the sadness huddled, hypocrite...” In the poems of “The Stone” there is melancholy, joy and surprise, but there it is too! lines imbued with drama:
...The sky is dim with a strange glow - The world's foggy pain. - Oh, let me be also vague And let me not love you.
Another collection of Mandelstam’s “Tristia” translated from Latin means “sorrow”. Just by the title alone one can assume that the theme of the poems in this collection is mainly Roman: Italy, are you not too lazy to disturb the chariots of Rome, Flying over the fence with the cackling of poultry? And you, neighbor, don’t blame me: The eagle bristles and gets angry. What if the Heavy Stone is no good for your sling?
This collection also contains a cycle of poems dedicated to love theme. Some poems in this cycle are dedicated to Marina Tsvetaeva, with whom, as contemporaries claimed, Mandelstam had an affair.
The state of falling in love was characteristic of the poet. But it was not love in the narrow sense. this word, but falling in love with life. Anna Akhmatova and the poet’s wife Nadezhda Yakovlevna later talked about Mandelstam’s “Don Juan” list. Thus, love for him was akin to poetry. Mandelstam's love lyrics are distinguished by some special lightness and light; there is no tragedy in them.
Because I couldn’t hold your hands, Because I betrayed your salty, tender lips, I must wait for dawn in the dense acropolis. How I hate odorous ancient log houses! This poem is dedicated to the actress of the Alexandrinsky Theater O. N. Arbenina-Gildenbrand, whom Mandelstam loved. There are several poems that the poet dedicated to Anna Akhmatova. Zhona Mandelstam wrote about them: “Akhmatova’s poems - there are five of them... - cannot be classified as love ones. These are poems of high friendship and misfortune. They have a feeling of common fate and catastrophe.” Despite the fact that Mandelstam constantly fell in love, his only affection remained his wife. He dedicated poems to her and wrote letters.
However, the poet’s creativity is not limited only to love lyrics or appeals to hoary antiquity. He also wrote on civil topics. The poet did not ignore the theme of revolution, since he accepted it, it became a great event for him. In 1933, already a recognized poet, Mandelstam wrote poems denouncing the Stalinist regime. Those who heard these verses tried to forget about it, because even listening to such verses was dangerous. One of the most famous poems of this period:
We live without feeling the country beneath us,
Our speeches are not heard ten steps away,
And where is enough for half a conversation,
The Kremlin highlander will be remembered there.
His thick fingers are like worms, fat
And the words, like pound weights, are true,
Cockroach eyes are laughing,
And his boots shine.
And around him is a rabble of thin-necked leaders,
He plays with the services of demihumans.
Who whistles, who meows, who whines,
He's the only one who babbles and pokes.
Like a horseshoe, he gives a decree after a decree -
Some in the groin, some in the eyebrow, some in the eyebrow, some in the eye.
No matter what his punishment is, it’s raspberries
And a broad Ossetian chest.
For a long time this seditious work was deeply hidden in the State Security archives. And only in 1963 was it published abroad, and here - 24 years later, in 1987. This poem caused bewilderment among critics of that time. It sounded like an open challenge Soviet power, and at that time only a madman was capable of this, however, that’s what they thought about the author. However, the poet was absolutely in his right mind, he simply painted what was in reality: the atmosphere of fear that reigned in the country in those years. He saw what others did not see or did not want to see: the cruelty of the policies of the Stalinist regime, which destroyed the fate of its people. Mandelstam saw evil in this.
The portrait of the leader of all nations is given by Mandelstam very vividly: “His thick fingers, like worms, are fat,” “And his words, like pound weights, are true, cockroach eyes laugh, and his boots shine.” Next comes the psychological portrait of Stanin, concluded in the assessment of the “thin-necked leaders”, whom the poet calls “half-people”, unable to take revenge either for themselves or for the country. Next comes the line “No matter what his punishment is, it’s a raspberry.” In it, the poet reflected Stanin’s intoxication with power. But, perhaps, the most apt line in this poem is the following: “and the broad chest of the Ossetians.” This is a direct allusion to Stanin’s origins, to his clearly non-Russian roots. The poet speaks about this with sarcasm, hinting at the uncertain nationality of the leader of the peoples.
This poem is a challenge that Mandelstam challenged the system that existed in the country. He is one of the few who dared to express his point of view regarding what was happening in Russia.
Osip Mandelstam is a unique poet in many ways. With your destiny, your poems, your worldview. It seems that the words of N. Struve apply best to Mandelstam: “To be a poet, meter, rhyme, image, even if you master them perfectly, are not enough. You need something else, something more, your own unique voice, your own unshakable attitude, your own destiny, not shared by anyone.”
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam
1891 – 1938
Mandelstam's creative path is connected with the acmeistic movement. In the first stages of his creative development, Mandelstam experienced a certain influence of symbolism. The pathos of his poems of the early period is the renunciation of life with its conflicts, the poeticization of chamber solitude, joyless and painful, the feeling of the illusory nature of what is happening, the desire to escape into the sphere of original ideas about the world (“Only read children’s books...”). Mandelstam's arrival to Acmeism was driven by the demand for “beautiful clarity” and “eternity” of images. In the works of the 1910s, collected in the book “Stone” (1913), the poet creates an image of stone from which he “builds” buildings, “architecture,” the form of his poems. For Mandelstam, examples of poetic art are “an architecturally justified ascent, corresponding to the tiers of a Gothic cathedral.”
Mandelstam’s work expressed, albeit in different ideological and poetic forms than Gumilyov’s, the desire to escape from the tragic storms of time into the timeless, in the civilization of past centuries. The poet creates a kind of secondary world from the cultural history he has perceived, a world built on subjective associations through which he tries to express his attitude towards modernity, arbitrarily grouping historical facts, ideas, literary images (“Dombey and Son”, “I have not heard the stories of Ossian ..."). This was a form of leaving one’s “overlord” age. The poems of “Stone” emanate loneliness.
Speaking about this property of Mandelstam’s poetry, Zhirmunsky wrote: “One can call his poems not the poetry of life, but “the poetry of poetry,” that is, poetry whose subject is not life, directly perceived by the poet himself, but someone else’s artistic perception of life. He retells other people's dreams, with a creative synthesis reproduces someone else's, artistically already established perception of life. Before that objective world, artistically recreated by his imagination, the poet stands invariably as an outside observer, looking from behind the glass at an entertaining spectacle. For him, the origin and relative value of the artistic and poetic cultures he reproduces are completely indifferent.”
Mandelstam occupied a special position in Acmeism. It was not for nothing that Blok singled out Akhmatova and Mandelstam from this environment as masters of truly dramatic lyricism. Defending 1910–1916 aesthetic “decrees” of his “Workshop”, the poet even then differed in many respects from Gumilyov and Gorodetsky. Mandelstam was alien to the Nietzschean aristocracy of Gumilyov, his programmatic rationalism romantic works, subordinated to a given pathos pathos. Compared to Gumilyov, Mandelstam’s path of creative development was also different. Gumilev, having failed to “overcome” symbolism in his work, came at the end of his creative path to a pessimistic and almost mystical worldview. The dramatic tension of Mandelstam's lyrics expressed the poet's desire to overcome pessimistic moods, the state internal struggle with myself.
During the First World War, Mandelstam’s poetry contained anti-war and anti-tsarist motifs (“Palace Square”, “Menagerie”). The poet is concerned with such questions as the place of his lyrics in revolutionary modernity, the ways of renewal and restructuring of the language of poetry. The fundamental differences between Mandelstam and the “Workshop” and the world of the literary elite, which continued to fence itself off from social reality, are outlined.
Mandelstam feels the October Revolution as a grandiose turning point, as a historically new era. But character new life didn't accept. His later poems contain the tragic theme of loneliness, love of life, and the desire to become an accomplice in the “noise of time” (“No, I have never been anyone’s contemporary...”). In the field of poetics, he moved from the imaginary “materiality” of the “Stone” to the poetics of complex and abstract allegories.
Early creativity Mandelstam was clearly influenced by decadent poets. Barely entered into life young author declared his complete disappointment in it (“Only read children’s books…”, 1908):
The connection with the poetry of decadence is especially emphasized here by the echo of the title line of Sologub’s poem “I love my dark land...”. Following Sologub, Mandelstam wrote about man’s isolation in himself, in his fictions (“Why is the soul so melodious...”, 1911), about his inescapable alienation.
At the same time, the young author was no stranger to the hobby poetry XIX V. Not only a number of people speak about love for Tyutchev related topics, but also roll calls of individual poetic lines. This is, for example, “Silentium” (1910) by Mandelstam, reminiscent of Tyutchev’s poem of the same name. Soon, however, the poet acquires his own problematic and his own poetic voice. This coincided with his arrival at the “Workshop of Poets”. Mandelstam's inclination towards clarity and visible objectivity of poetic images, as well as the increasingly stronger desire to overcome decadent influence, found a certain support in the declarative speeches of the new literary group.
Mandelstam’s first book “Stone” (1913; a new edition of the collection was published in 1916) showed that in modern poetry a unique author has arrived. Mandelstam's main attention is focused on the cultural values of humanity, perceived as an expression of the spiritual energy of certain historical eras. The title of the first collection is allegorical. The poet is attracted primarily by architecture, it is in it that he sees the embodiment of the spirit of history, a visible exponent of its potential. Stone is evidence of the long life of a materialized idea and at the same time an obedient material in the hands of the artist-creator. The word was such a stone for the poet. Mandelstam is attracted to the Gothic, and he devotes a number of poems to it.
In 1912–1913 “Notre Dame” and “Admiralty” appear, in which the fate of humanity is ancient Byzantium, medieval France and imperial Russia appear captured in beautiful stone buildings.
Mandelstam emphasizes the complexity of art, which subordinates seemingly incompatible objects and phenomena to its harmony. Heaviness and stone, and on the other hand - a reed, a straw, a bird, a swallow belong to key images poet. Architecture leads him to reflect on the nature of creativity and the victory of the spiritual artistic design over soulless material.
As a poet inclined to a philosophical understanding of history, Mandelstam is distinguished by the ability to convey in a few words or, as it were, condense the most important features of the culture of a particular historical period or individual artistic creatures. The Protestant rationality of Bach's chorales, the mournful and powerful pathos of Racine's tragedy or the intense psychological drama of Poe's poems and short stories are perceived by Mandelstam not as a property of the past, but as close, re-experienced values art world(“Bach”, 1913; “We cannot stand tense silence...”, 1912).
Antiquity, the source of numerous poetic reminiscences, analogies and variations, occupies a special place in Mandelstam’s poetic world. For him, ancient myths are not symbols of a higher being or some irrational emotional experiences, but the embodiment of high humanity - and in this he is closer to Annensky, whose poetry had a significant impact on the Acmeists. Greece and Rome are included in Mandelstam’s poetry as an integral part of his consciousness, his personal experience (“Insomnia. Homer. Tight Sails...”, 1915).
At the same time, the creative horizons of the Acmeist poet were clearly limited. His creativity was lacking deep breathing of his time, connections with social thought, with philosophical thoughts about the fate of modern Russia. In the 1910s his poetry includes striking poems about St. Petersburg (“Petersburg stanzas”, “Admiralty”, etc.). In “Petersburg stanzas” an attempt is made to “throw” a bridge from the past to today. As in Pushkin’s times, “the lawyer again sits down in the sleigh, wrapping his overcoat around him with a broad gesture.” On Senate Square“The smoke of a fire and the chill of a bayonet” evoke the events of December 1825. In St. Petersburg of the new century there is also its own Eugene, who “is ashamed of poverty, inhales gasoline and curses fate!” But this is still the same favorite associativity, the poet is still completely immersed in the world of literature and art. If we talk about the personal tone of Mandelstam’s poetry, then it was devoid of the tragic tension so characteristic of the literature of those years, which was especially striking when compared with Blok’s poetry. Adherence to Acmeism, with its rejection of the social-democratic traditions of Russian poetry, narrowed the poet’s field of vision, affecting the depth of his essentially self-contained historical and historical-philosophical parallels.
Mandelstam acted as a master of polished verse. Much attention they were devoted to the “construction” and composition of the work. The title of the first collection “Stone” was supposed to testify to the harmonious integrity and completeness of the works included in it, the creation of which required not only “inspiration”, but also persistent polishing of the intractable “stone”, the mind of the builder.
In the visibility, the “materiality” of the image, which the Acmeists so strived for, Mandelstam achieved high skill. The poet's thoughts and experiences are organically merged in his poems with a concrete reproduction of the objective world.
Researchers have more than once drawn attention to the fact that in Mandelstam’s poetry there is no image of a person as such. This is true. Alien to his turbulent era, Mandelstam did not create the image of a contemporary; in a retrospective look at the world of cultural values, it was not the man himself that was brought to the fore, but his actions, evidence of his creative work. Nevertheless, we must not forget that inner world What was dear to the artist was precisely this image of the creator, artist, sculptor, not recreated in visible form. At the same time, the poet paid tribute to both the inspired creator and the ordinary implementer of his plan.
The book "Tristia" (1922), which included works from 1916–1920 years, designated new stage V creative development Mandelstam. The fascination with the Middle Ages and Gothic was replaced by a more active appeal to the culture of Greece and Rome, and a more abundant use of concepts associated with antiquity. At the same time, in poems on other topics, the poetic manner becomes more complex: distant associativity, a craving for reminiscences intensify, and a “secret”, encrypted meaning often appears in poems. Later, Mandelstam will again return to the search for transparency and clarity.
A poet of the chamber type, Mandelstam still could not help but respond to the great events of his time. In January 1916, he wrote the anti-war poem “The Menagerie” (initially it was called “Ode to Peace in Time of War”), and in December 1917 he created in an excited atmosphere revolutionary Russia the poem “Decembrist” is a historical portrait of a man of heroic character, emerging through the light haze of oblivion.
Only cherish children's thoughts,
Scatter everything big far away,
Rise from deep sorrow.
I'm dead tired of life,
I don't accept anything from her
But I love my poor land,
Because I haven’t seen anyone else
"Notre-Dame" 1912
Where the Roman judge judged a foreign people,
There is a basilica - and, joyful and first,
Like Adam once, spreading his nerves,
The light cross vault plays with its muscles.
But a secret plan reveals itself from the outside:
Here the strength of the girth arches was taken care of,
So that the heavy weight of the wall does not crush,
And the ram is inactive on the daring arch.
A spontaneous labyrinth, an incomprehensible forest,
Gothic souls are a rational abyss,
Egyptian power and Christianity timidity,
Next to the reed is an oak tree, and everywhere the king is a plumb line.
But the closer you look, the stronghold of Notre Dame,
I studied your monstrous ribs
The more often I thought: out of unkind heaviness
And someday I will create something beautiful.
"I Hate the Light" 1912
I hate the light
Monotonous stars.
Hello, my old delirium, -
Lancet towers!
Lace, stone, be
And become a web
Heaven's empty chest
Use a thin needle to wound!
It will be my turn -
I can feel the wingspan.
Yes - but where will it go?
Thoughts are a living arrow?
Or your way and time
Having exhausted myself, I will return:
There - I could not love,
Here - I'm afraid to love...
“No, not the moon, but a light dial”
No, not the moon, but a light dial
Shines on me, and what is my fault,
What faint stars do I feel the milkiness?
And Batyushkova’s arrogance disgusts me:
"what time is it now?" - He was asked here
And he answered the curious: “eternity.”
"Tsarskoye Selo"
Let's go to Tsarskoe Selo!
The bourgeois women are smiling there,
When the lancers are after drinking
Sit in a strong saddle...
Let's go to Tsarskoe Selo!
Barracks, parks and palaces,
And on the trees there are pieces of cotton wool,
And the peals of “health” will ring out
To the cry - “great, well done!”
Barracks, parks and palaces...
One-story houses,
Where are the like-minded generals?
They while away their weary lives,
Reading Niva and Dumas...
Mansions - not houses!
The whistle of a steam locomotive... The prince is riding.
There is a retinue in the glass pavilion!..
And, dragging the saber angrily,
The officer comes out, arrogant, -
I have no doubt - this is the prince...
And returns home -
Of course, to the realm of etiquette -
Inspiring secret fear, the carriage
With the relics of a gray-haired maid of honor,
What comes home...
“Petersburg stanzas” 1913 to N. Gumilyov
Above the yellow government buildings
A muddy snowstorm swirled for a long time,
And the lawyer gets into the sleigh again,
With a broad gesture, he wrapped his overcoat around him.
Steamships winter. In the heat of the moment
The thick glass of the cabin lit up.
Monstrous, like an armadillo at the dock, -
Russia is having a hard time resting.
And above the Neva - the embassies of half the world,
Admiralty, sun, silence!
And the state is a hard porphyry,
Like a hair shirt, rough and poor.
The burden of a northern snob -
Onegin's old melancholy;
On Senate Square there is a bank of snowdrifts,
The smoke of a fire and the chill of a bayonet...
Skiffs and seagulls scooped up water
The marines visited the hemp warehouse,
Where, selling sbiten or saiki,
Only opera men wander around.
A line of engines flies into the fog;
Proud, modest pedestrian -
Eccentric Evgeniy is ashamed of poverty,
He inhales gasoline and curses fate!
"Admiralty"
In the northern capital a dusty poplar languishes,
The transparent dial got entangled in the foliage,
And in the dark greenery a frigate or an acropolis
Brother shines from afar, to the water and sky.
The boat is airy and the mast is untouchable,
Serving as a ruler to the successors of Peter,
He teaches: beauty is not the whim of a demigod,
And the predatory eye of a simple carpenter.
We enjoy the dominance of the four elements,
But the fifth was created by a free man.
Doesn't space deny superiority?
This chastely built ark?
Capricious jellyfish are angrily molded,
Like plows abandoned, anchors rust;
And now the three-dimensional bonds are broken,
And the world's seas open.
"Akhmatova" 1914
Half a turn, oh sadness,
I looked at the indifferent ones.
Falling off my shoulders, I became petrified
False classic shawl.
Souls are unchained by the depths:
So - indignant Phaedra -
Rachel once stood.
"Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails"
Insomnia, Homer, tight sails...
I read the list of ships halfway through...
This long brood, this crane train,
That once rose above Hellas.
Like a crane's wedge into foreign borders
There is divine foam on the heads of the kings...
Where are you sailing? Whenever Elena
What is Troy alone for you, Achaean men??
Both the sea and Homer are all driven by love...
Where should I go? And so, Homer is silent...
And the Black Sea makes a swirling noise
And with a terrible roar he approaches the headboard...
"Decembrist"
“The pagan senate bears witness to this,”
These things never die"
He lit a cigarette and pulled his robe around him,
And they play chess nearby.
He traded an ambitious dream for a log house
In a remote area of Siberia,
And an elaborate chibouk at poisonous lips,
Those who spoke the truth in a sorrowful world.
The German oaks rustled for the first time,
Europe cried in the shadows,
The black quadrigas reared up
On triumphant turns.
It used to be that the blue punch in the glasses was burning,
With the wide noise of a samovar
The Rhine friend says quietly,
Freedom-loving guitar.
About the sweet liberty of citizenship,
But the blind skies don't want victims,
Or rather, work and consistency.
Everything's mixed up and there's no one to tell
That, gradually getting colder,
Everything is mixed up, and it’s sweet to repeat:
Russia, Leta, Lorelei.
"Cinema"
Cinema. Three benches.
Sentimental fever.
Aristocrat and rich woman
In the networks of rival villains.
Can't keep love from flying:
She is not to blame for anything!
Selflessly, like a brother,
Loved a naval lieutenant.
And he wanders in the desert -
The gray-haired count's side son.
This is how popular print begins
A novel by a beautiful countess.
And in a frenzy, like a giant,
She wrings her hands.
Parting. Crazy sounds
A haunted piano.
In the chest of the trusting and weak
There's still enough courage
Steal important papers
For the enemy headquarters.
And along the chestnut alley
The monstrous motor rushes,
The tape is chirping, the heart is beating
More anxious and more fun.
In a traveling dress, with a traveling bag,
In the car and in the carriage,
She's only afraid of being chased
Dry is exhausted by a mirage.
What a bitter absurdity:
The end does not justify the means!
He has his father's inheritance,
And for her - a lifelong fortress!
“That evening the lancet wood of the organ did not hum” 1917
That evening the lancet wood of the organ did not hum,
They sang to us Schubert - our native cradle.
The mill was noisy, and in the songs of the hurricane
The blue-eyed hop laughed at the music.
According to the old song, the world is brown, green,
But only forever young,
Where the nightingale linden trees roar
The king of the forest shakes with mad fury.
And the terrible power of the night return -
That song is wild like black wine:
This is a double, an empty ghost,
Looking senselessly out the cold window!
"Tristia" 1918
I learned the science of breaking up
In the simple-haired complaints of the night.
The oxen chew, and the wait lasts -
Last hour urban vigils,
And I honor the ritual of that cock night,
When, having lifted the burden of road sorrow,
Tear-stained eyes looked into the distance
And the women's crying mixed with the singing of the muses.
Who knows when you hear the word “parting”
What kind of separation awaits us?
What does the cock's crow promise us?
When the fire in the acropolis burns,
And at the dawn of some new life,
When the ox lazily chews in the hallway,
Why the rooster, the herald of new life,
Does it beat its wings on the city wall?
And I love the usual yarn:
The shuttle scurries, the spindle hums.
Look, towards you, like swan fluff,
Already barefoot Delia is flying!
Oh, our life has a meager basis,
How poor is the language of joy!
Everything happened before, everything will happen again,
And only the moment of recognition is sweet for us.
So be it: transparent figurine
It lies on a clean clay dish,
Like a squirrel skin spread out,
Bending over the wax, the girl looks.
It’s not for us to guess about the Greek Erebus,
Wax is to women what copper is to men.
Only in battles does the lot fall to us,
And they were given the opportunity to die wondering.
“Sisters – heaviness and tenderness, your signs are the same”
Sisters - heaviness and tenderness - yours are the same
Lungworts and wasps suck the heavy rose.
The man dies. The warmed sand cools down,
And yesterday's sun is carried on a black stretcher.
Ah, heavy honeycombs and delicate networks,
It's easier to lift a stone than your name repeat!
I have only one concern left in the world:
Golden care, how to relieve the burden of time.
Like dark water, I drink the clouded air.
Time was plowed by the plow, and the rose was earth.
In a slow whirlpool there are heavy tender roses,
Weaved roses with heaviness and tenderness into double wreaths!
And in the stone arches of the Assumption Cathedral
It seems to me that the eyebrows are high and arched.
And from the shaft fortified by the archangels
I looked around the city at a wonderful height.
Within the walls of the Acropolis, sadness consumed me,
By Russian name and Russian beauty.
Isn’t it wonderful that we dream of Vertograd,
Where doves soar in the hot blue,
What Orthodox hooks the blueberry sings:
Tender Assumption - Florence in Moscow.
And the five-domed Moscow cathedrals
With their Italian and Russian soul
Reminds me of the Aurora phenomenon,
But with a Russian name and a fur coat.
“I forgot what I wanted to say”
I forgot what I wanted to say.
The blind swallow will return to the palace of shadows,
Play with cut wings and transparent ones.
In unconsciousness the night song is sung.
I can't hear the birds. Immortelle does not bloom.
The manes of the night herd are transparent.
An empty boat floats in a dry river.
Among the grasshoppers the word is unconscious.
And slowly grows, like a tent or a temple,
Then suddenly she will pretend to be a mad Antigone,
Then he rushes to his feet like a dead swallow,
With Stygian tenderness and a green branch.
Oh, if only I could return the sighting fingers of shame,
And the bulging joy of recognition.
I'm so afraid of the sobs of the aonid,
Fog, ringing and gaping!
And to mortals the power is given to love and recognize,
For them, the sound will spill into their fingers,
But I forgot what I want to say -
And the disembodied thought will return to the palace of shadows.
That’s not what the transparent one is talking about,
All swallow, girlfriend, Antigone...
And on your lips it burns like black ice
Stygian memory of ringing.
“We will meet again in St. Petersburg”
In St. Petersburg we will meet again,
It's like we buried the sun in it,
And the blessed, meaningless word
Let's say it for the first time.
In the black velvet of the Soviet night,
In the velvet of universal emptiness,
All the dear eyes of the blessed women sing,
Immortal flowers are all blooming.
The capital is hunched over like a wild cat,
There is a patrol on the bridge,
Only an evil motor will rush through the darkness
And he will cry like a cuckoo.
I don't need a night pass
I'm not afraid of the sentries:
For the blessed, meaningless word
I will pray in the Soviet night.
I hear a slight theatrical rustle
And the girlish “ah” -
And a huge heap of immortal roses
In Cyprida's arms.
We warm ourselves by the fire from boredom,
Maybe centuries will pass,
And blessed women's dear hands
Light ashes will be collected.
Somewhere there are red parterre beds,
The chiffonieres of the boxes are luxuriantly fluffed,
Wind-up doll of an officer -
Not for black souls and base saints...
Well, perhaps put out our candles
In the black velvet of universal emptiness.
Everyone sings of the blessed women with steep shoulders,
And you won’t notice the night sun.
Save my speech forever for the taste of misfortune and smoke,
For the resin of circular patience, for the conscientious tar of labor...
Just as the water in Novgorod wells should be black and sweet,
So that for Christmas a star will be reflected in it with seven fins.
And for this, my father, my friend and my rude helper,
I am an unrecognized brother, a renegade in people's family -
I promise to build such dense log houses,
So that the Tatarva lowers the princes into the tub in them.
If only these frozen blocks would love me,
How, aiming for death, the towns are killed in the garden, -
I'll spend my whole life wearing an iron shirt for this.
And for Peter’s execution I will find an ax in the forests.
Abstract on the subject literature
Zelenograd District Education Department of the Moscow Department of Education
Moscow 2008
Introduction.
Before talking about Mandelstam's work, it is necessary to say about the time in which the poet lived and worked. This time is the turn of the century, a significant, difficult, bright, eventful time: literally in 25 years, events took place that radically changed the way of life of a person and his consciousness. It was not easy to live at this time, and even more so to create. But, as often happens, in the most difficult times something beautiful and unique is born.
This is exactly what Osip Mandelstam was: unique, original, educated - wonderful person and a talented poet. This is how Anna Akhmatova wrote about him in her diaries: “Mandelshtam was one of the most brilliant interlocutors: he did not listen to himself and did not answer to himself, as almost everyone does now. In conversation he was polite, resourceful and infinitely varied. I never heard him repeat himself or play records. Osip Emilievich learned languages with extraordinary ease. " Divine Comedy"Recited pages by heart in Italian. Shortly before his death, he asked Nadya to teach him English, which he did not know at all. He spoke dazzlingly, biasedly about poetry and was sometimes monstrously unfair (for example, to Blok). About Pasternak he said: “I’ve done so much I thought about him that I was even tired” and “I’m sure that he didn’t read a single line of mine.” About Marina: “I’m an anti-Tsvetaevite.”
Osip Mandelstam is one of my favorite poets. The first poem I read was:
I look into the face of frost alone, He is nowhere, I am from nowhere,
And everything is ironed and flattened without wrinkles
The plains are a breathing miracle.
And the sun squints in starchy poverty,
His squint is calm and comforted,
Ten-digit forests are almost those...
And the snow crunches in your eyes, like pure, sinless bread.
This poem did not leave me without emotions, it “infected” me with Mandelstam’s lyrics and they did not disappoint me.
The timid heart beats anxiously,
Thirsts for happiness both to give and to keep!
It is possible to hide from people
But nothing can be hidden from the stars.
Afanasy Fet
Biography.
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam was born on January 3 (15), 1891 in Warsaw. His father, Emilius Veniaminovich, a descendant of Spanish Jews, who grew up in a patriarchal family and ran away from home as a teenager, was self-taught in Berlin European culture- Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, spoke equally poorly in Russian and German. A man with a difficult character, he was a not very successful businessman* and a home-grown philosopher at the same time. Mother, Flora Osipovna, nee Verblovskaya, came from an intelligentsia Vilna family, played the piano excellently, loved Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and was a relative of the famous historian of Russian literature and bibliographer* S.A. Vengerova. Osip was the eldest of three brothers. Soon after Osip's birth, his family moved to Pavlovsk near St. Petersburg, and then in 1897 to St. Petersburg. In 1900, Osip entered the Tenishev School. The teacher of Russian literature Vl. had a great influence on the formation of the young man during his studies. Gippius. At the school, Mandelstam began to write poetry, at the same time becoming fascinated by the ideas of the Socialist Revolutionaries. Immediately after graduating from college in 1907, Osip’s parents, concerned about their son’s political activity, sent Osip to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. In France, Mandelstam discovers the Old French epic, the poetry of Villon, Baudelaire, and Verlaine. Meets K. Mochulsky and N. Gumilev. He writes poetry and tries his hand at prose. In 1909-1910, Mandelstam studied philosophy and philology at the University of Heidelberg. In St. Petersburg, he attends meetings of the Religious and Philosophical Society, whose members were the most prominent thinkers and writers N. Berdyaev, D. Merezhkovsky, D. Filosofov, Vyach. Ivanov. During these years, Mandelstam became closer to the St. Petersburg literary environment. In 1909, he first appears on the Vyach “tower”. Ivanova. There he meets Anna Akhmatova. In August 1910, Mandelstam made his literary debut - a selection of five of his poems was published in the ninth issue of Apollo. In 1911, the “Workshop of Poets” was created, of which Mandelstam became a member. In the same year, Mandelstam converted to Christianity, which allowed him to enter the Romance-Germanic department of the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University. He attends lectures and seminars of prominent philologists; under the influence of the young scientist V. Shileiko, he becomes interested in the culture of Assyria, Egypt, and Ancient Babylon.
(*) – see the glossary of terms on page 21.
The poet also becomes a regular visitor to the Stray Dog, where he sometimes performs on stage, reading his poems.
In 1913, Mandelstam’s first book, “Stone,” was published by the Akme publishing house. By this time, the poet had already moved away from the influence of symbolism*, having adopted a “new faith” - Acmeism*. Mandelstam's poems are often published in the Apollo magazine. The young poet gains fame. In 1914, after Gumilyov left for the front, Mandelstam was elected syndicate of the “Workshop of Poets.”
In December 1915, Mandelstam published the second edition of “The Stone” (Hyperborea Publishing House), almost three times the volume of the first.
At the beginning of 1916, Marina Tsvetaeva came to Petrograd. At a literary evening she met with Petrograd poets. From this “unearthly” evening her friendship with Mandelstam began. Poets often dedicated poems to each other; one of these poems is dedicated to Anna Akhmatova:
Do you want to be a toy?
But your plant is ruined,
No one can come to you for a cannon shot
It won't work without poetry.
After the revolution, Mandelstam served as a minor official in various Petrograd departments, and in the early summer of 1918 he left for Moscow.
In February 1919, the poet left hungry Moscow. Mandelstam's wanderings around Russia begin: Moscow, Kyiv, Feodosia...
On May 1, 1919, in the Kiev cafe "HLAM" Mandelstam met twenty-year-old Nadezhda Khazina, who became his wife in 1922.
After a number of adventures, having been in Wrangel’s prison, Mandelstam returned to Petrograd in the fall of 1920. He gets a room in the “House of Arts,” which has been turned into a dormitory for writers and artists.
The Mandelstams spent the summer and autumn of 1921 in Georgia, where they were caught by the news of the death of A. Blok, and then of the execution of Gumilyov. In 1922-23, Mandelstam published three collections of poetry: “Tristia” (1922), “Second Book” (1923), “Stone” (3rd edition, 1923). His poems and articles are published in Petrograd, Moscow, and Berlin. At this time, Mandelstam wrote a number of articles on the most important problems of history, culture and humanism: “Word and Culture”, “On the Nature of Word”, “Human Wheat” and others.
In the summer of 1924, Mandelstam moved from Moscow to Leningrad. In 1925, Mandelstam published his autobiographical book “The Noise of Time.” In 1928, Mandelstam’s last lifetime book of poems, “Poems,” was published, and a little later, a collection of articles “On Poetry” (Academia publishing house) and the story “Egyptian Brand.” Most The Mandelstams spent 1930 in Armenia. The result of this trip was the prose “Journey to Armenia” and the poetic cycle “Armenia”. From Armenia at the end of 1930, the Mandelstams arrived in Leningrad. In January 1931, due to problems with living space, the Mandelstams left for Moscow. In March 1932, for “services to Russian literature,” Mandelstam was awarded a lifelong pension of 200 rubles per month.
Mandelstam writes a lot in Moscow. In addition to poetry, he is working on a long essay, “A Conversation about Dante.” But it becomes almost impossible to print. Editor Ts. Volpe was fired for publishing the last part of “Travels to Armenia” in the Leningrad Zvezda.
In 1933, Mandelstam visited Leningrad, where two of his evenings were organized. Another evening was organized in Moscow at the Polytechnic Museum.
On the night of May 13-14, 1934, O. Mandelstam was arrested. Mandelstam himself said that from the moment of his arrest he had been preparing for execution: “After all, this happens with us for lesser reasons.” But a miracle happened. Mandelstam was not only not shot, but not even sent to the “channel”. He escaped with a relatively light exile to Cherdyn, where his wife was allowed to go with him. And soon the Mandelstams were allowed to settle anywhere except twelve largest cities countries (then it was called “minus twelve”). Not having the opportunity to choose for a long time (they had no acquaintances anywhere except in the 12 forbidden cities), they randomly chose Voronezh. There he served exile until May 1937, living almost beggarly, first on small earnings, then on the meager help of friends. What was the reason for the commutation of the sentence? Personally, I prefer the following hypothesis. Stalin understood that killing a poet could not stop the effect of poetry. The poems already existed, were distributed in lists, and were transmitted orally. Killing a poet is nothing. Stalin wanted more. He wanted to force Mandelstam to write other poems - poems glorifying Stalin. Poems in exchange for life. Of course, this is all just a hypothesis, but a very plausible one.
Mandelstam understood Stalin's intentions. (Or maybe they helped him understand). One way or another, driven to despair, he decided to try to save a life at the cost of a few tortured lines. As a result, “Ode to Stalin” was born, which caused numerous controversies.
If I took coal for the highest praise -
For the immutable joy of drawing, I would draw the air into tricky angles
Both cautious and anxious.
It can be assumed that the poet wanted to say: “Now, if I wanted to praise someone, then I would...” And further... I would raise my eyebrows in a small corner
And he raised it again and resolved it differently:
You know, Prometheus fanned his coal, Look, Aeschylus, how I cry while drawing!
In “Ode” * there are no glorifying traditional cliches, it seems to say: this is what would happen if the artist undertook to write about something that he does not have a soul for, but he must say about it in order to save himself and his loved ones. The “Ode” didn’t work out; it turned out to be a poem about the artist’s inner state, the contradictions tearing him apart between what he would like to say and what his soul does not allow him.