The Story of The "Ode"

If manuscripts do not burn, as Mikhail Bulgakov once suggested, they at least get hot sitting in the fire, which is more or less what happened to the "Ode to Stalin." The first indication that Mandelstam might have written something like the "Ode" came from Anna Akhmatova's recollections of Mandelstam and had the effect of a minor literary bombshell.^[64] Two years later, in 1967, the issue was taken up by Clarence Brown, who had been working on Mandelstam for nearly a decade.^[65] To determine whether Mandelstam had actually written the "Ode," Brown analyzed some twenty-four poems composed during the Voronezh exile (1935–37), relating them to what he had been able to find out about the poet's life at that time. The conclusion of this first thorough, and still timely, study of the later Mandelstam was largely negative. Hard as he tried, Mandelstam—it would seem—was unable to twist the arm of his muse, even though he knew very well that a panegyric to Stalin might assure him continued existence.

There was, however, evidence to the contrary, including Akhmatova's authoritative statement and a number of powerful poems composed in Voronezh exile. Among the most remarkable is a poem that does as much justice to Mandelstam's poetics of anamnesis (it ranges from the Lay of Igor's Campaign to Rembrandt's Night Watch, to Pushkin's "Monument," to Pasternak's cycle "Artist") as it does to the nightmares of anticipated imprisonment and the paranoid enthusiasm gripping the nation in 1937 in a double Stalinist embrace.

Had our enemies captured me
And had people stopped speaking to me;
Had I been deprived of everything in the world—
The right to breathe, and to open doors,
And to assert that "being" means "shall be,"
And that the people, like the judge, judges;
Were I to be kept like a beast,
My food thrown on the floor,—
I wouldn't be silent, I wouldn't suppress the pain,
But I shall draw pictures I wish to draw,
And rocking the bell of the naked walls,
And having awakened the corner of the enemy darkness,
I shall harness my voice to ten bullocks,
And cleave the dark with my hand like a plough,
And in the depth of the watchful night,
The eyes of the common laborer earth shall flash
And, into the united legion of fraternal eyes,
I shall fall with the weight of the whole harvest,
With all the denseness of an oath tearing into distance,
And the flock of the flaming years will come, flying,
Like a ripe thunderstorm, will rustle past—Lenin,
And on the earth that will avoid decay,
Reason and life will be kept awake by Stalin.^[66]

Pieces like this kept the puzzle unresolved. And since they did not fit the otherwise satisfying picture of a poet incapable of violating the integrity of his talent, Brown decided to defer his final judgment, hoping that more conclusive evidence might eventually turn up.

The problem was resolved by Nadezhda Mandelstam. In the first

book of her memoirs, published in 1970, she acknowledged Mandelstam's composition of the "Ode," adding that she had preserved the complete text of it for fear it would otherwise have survived in the "wild versions circulating in 1937."^[67] It was not until 1975 that the poem itself, albeit seven lines short of complete, made its first appearance in print, published in the Slavic Review by an anonymous contributor.^[68] A few months later a fuller version was included in a brief essay by Bengt Jangfeldt. In one important respect, Jangfeldt's account complemented, if not contradicted, that of the poet's widow. He cites an unnamed friend of the Mandelstams who, contrary to Nadezhda Mandelstam's assertion, maintained that the poet "was not at all ashamed of the 'Stalin verses' . . . and read them on several occasions after his return from the Voronezh exile." A complete version of the "Ode," presumably supplied by Nadezhda Mandelstam herself, had to await the publication of the fourth volume of Mandelstam's Collected Works, issued in Paris in 1980.^[69]

What we know about the events surrounding the composition of the "Ode to Stalin" comes from the poet's correspondence and the memoirs of Nadezhda Mandelstam, who, alone among her husband's companions in Voronezh, has chosen to make her recollections public.^[70] Following is a brief account, based essentially on her story.

The poem was composed sometime in January 1937, which places it in the middle of the Second Voronezh Notebook,^[71] when Mandelstam's exile in Voronezh was coming to an end. Increasingly apprehensiveindeed, desperate—about his future, Mandelstam decided to buy his way out by paying Stalin in poetic kind, that is, by composing a paean in his honor. This was a realistic response to a situation growing grimmer by the day. Mandelstam's fellow exiles whom he befriended in Voronezh were being rearrested one by one.^[72] The Voronezh Theater that had previously offered Mandelstam an opportunity to earn a meager income no longer wanted anything to do with him. Graver still, the Voronezh section of the Writers' Union, supposed to supervise the poet's ideological reeducation, had ceased to respond to his requests for work or assistance.^[73] But perhaps worst of all for Mandelstam, the fear of dealing with a poet in disgrace was now threatening to sever the last links connecting him with the literary community on the "mainland."^[74] Reading Mandelstam's correspondence of those months, it is especially painful to realize that many of his pleas, not just for financial assistance or intercession but merely for an acknowledgment of his existence, went unanswered. This social isolation, intense to begin with, was made doubly unbearable by Mandelstam's health, which was

deteriorating rapidly under the stress of continuous harassment. The suddenness with which Mandelstam was reduced to these most minimal circumstances, too, must have caused considerable pain.

A letter to K. I. Chukovskii, written early in 1937 after the "Ode" had been finished and while his wife was either in or on her way to Moscow, testifies to Mandelstam's desperate state at the end of his term of exile:

Dear Kornei Ivanovich!

What is happening to me—cannot continue any longer. Neither my wife nor I is capable of enduring this horror any longer. Moreover, we have come to a decision to terminate all of this by whatever means. This is not a "temporary residence in Voronezh," an "administrative exile," etc. Here is what it is: a man who has gone through a most acute psychosis (more precisely, exhausting and grim madness)—right after this illness, after an attempt at suicide, physically crippled—this man took up work. I said—my judges are in the right. I have found all of this historically meaningful. All right. I worked at breakneck speed. In return I got beatings. I was ostracized. I was morally tortured. Still, I went on working. I thought it a miracle to have access to work. I gave up pride. I thought our entire life a miracle. A year and a half later, I became an invalid. By that time, without any guilt on my part, everything had been taken away from me: the right to live, to work, to medical care. I have been reduced to the status of a dog, a cur . . . I am a shadow. I do not exist. All I have is the right to die. My wife and I are being prompted to commit suicide. Turning to the Writers' Union is no use. They will wash their hands of it. There is only one man in the world who can and must be appealed to with this matter. People write to him only when they consider it their duty to do so. I cannot give guarantees for myself, I cannot put a value on myself. I am not speaking about my own letter. If you want to save me from an unavoidable end—to save two people—help, plead with others to write [on my behalf]. It is ridiculous to think that this may "hit back" those who would agree [to write]. There is no other way out. This is the only historical way out. But do understand: we refuse to delay our agony. Each time I let my wife go away, I become psychologically ill. It is dreadful to look at her—she is so sick. Just think: WHY is she going [to Moscow]? What does our life hang on? I will not serve another term of exile. I can't.

O. Mandelstam

My illness. I cannot remain "alone" for a moment. Now my wife's mother, an elderly woman, has come to stay with me. If I am left alone—I'll be placed in a madhouse.^[75]

Even after his arrest in May 1934, Mandelstam still had the stature of a major literary figure whose misfortune could encourage a number of prominent writers to express their "concern." It was ostensibly on their behalf that N. Bukharin, though unaware of the exact nature of the accusation against Mandelstam, petitioned Stalin. Stalin, in turn, grew sufficiently alarmed about the negative publicity in the writers' community to take it upon himself personally to counteract it by telephoning Boris Pasternak, who, it was rumored, was being groomed for the position of "first Soviet poet."^[76] The story of their conversation has been told more than once,^[77] but it is so characteristic of the special relationship between the state authority and literary authorship in modern Russia that it deserves more than a passing mention here.

Sometime in 1934 the great leader, whose cult was already in full bloom, telephoned one of the top members of what Solzhenitsyn called Russia's "second government," who happened to be living in a communal apartment. After assuring Pasternak that he did not need to worry about Mandelstam—that Mandelstam's case was under review and would be favorably settled—Stalin, it appears, decided to stage a little provocation, to force Pasternak to admit his friendship with Mandelstam and, by implication, his knowledge of the offending poem. "Why did you not appeal to me directly?" he is reported to have said. "I would have been climbing walls if I'd known that my friend had been arrested. He is your friend, isn't he?" Pasternak parried the question by suggesting that "poets, like women, feel jealous of each other." Without pausing for a transition, Stalin went on to his next question: "But he is a master, a master?" It would seem he was worried that the offending epigram might stick if Mandelstam was indeed a great poet.^[78] "This is beside the point," Pasternak replied. "And why are we talking about Mandelstam and only Mandelstam? I've wanted to meet with you for a long time and have a serious discussion." "What about?" "About life and death." Stalin hung up. His attempt at diffusing the concern of the literary community marked the beginning of Mandelstam's transformation from a poet of the first magnitude into a nonperson—a forgotten author denied even the offensive effectiveness of his gift. By 1937, this process was very nearly complete.

Loss of face, disease, fear, financial ruin—any one of these might serve as a good excuse for bowing to the authorities, and in combination they no doubt justify an outward display of contrition and awe before an almighty tyrant. Yet the circumstances under which the "Ode" was composed appear to be more complex, and Nadezhda Mandelstam went further to suggest that her husband for a while (but

how long?) assumed the mentality of the contemporary crowd. "In order to write such an 'Ode' it is necessary to tune oneself like a musical instrument, to consciously yield to the common hypnosis, to cast a spell over oneself with the words of the liturgy, which, in our day, muffled all human voices."^[79] The tone of profound sincerity in the "Ode" and the consummate skill of its composition demonstrate that the poet's perfect pitch worked, even in this instance, without fail.

But perhaps the word "even" is inappropriate here, for there is hardly anything unusual in a poet's (or anybody's, for that matter) fascination with an omnipotent leader who has enjoyed a litany of praise for almost a decade. Poetry of the Napoleonic era abounds in such examples. Nor is it unusual for a victim to identify with his tormentor, especially if the tormentor happens to be exalted and the victim either physically or psychologically isolated. Bruno Bettelheim's analysis of the "Heil Hitler" salute and the effect of its adoption by anti-Nazi Germans is instructive in this regard,^[80] as are the pleas of Ovid, the archetypal exile for poets and especially for Mandelstam. It is also worth recalling that Dostoevsky's political conversion occurred under similar circumstances (or so it seems). The composition of the "Ode," then, as that of any significant work of art, appears overdetermined. Fear, misery, practical considerations, and, most important, the tradition of projecting the attributes of an autocrat onto the "archetypal" poet (Pushkin and Alexander I and Nicholas I; Lermontov and Nicholas I) must all have been at work as Mandelstam was "tuning himself" for the composition of this magnificent paean. But even more than that was involved.

For the "Ode" to come into being, the emotional state of the poet had to be objectified, had to locate itself in that ideological space where contemporary consciousness overlapped with the "mythologies" the poet superimposed onto the world: his poetics, his myths, his beliefs—in sum, the ideology with which he made sense of the world.^[81] Without such objectification, Mandelstam's expressive resources would have remained untapped, and the "Ode," had it come into existence at all, would not have risen above the Stalin doggerels of the kind that Akhmatova produced after the Second World War, when the noose around her neck was once again beginning to tighten.^[82] Was there anything in Mandelstam's frame of reference capable of accommodating such an enterprise?