1. "Dykhanie" (1909), SS 1:8. Reviewing Stone (1916), Vl. Piast wrote: "Let us see, then, what kind of poetry this eccentric poet finds appropriate to continue

      so weighty a title? [The text of "Dykhanie" follows.] Aha! We begin to guess already that the title of the book has been selected 'ad absurdum' [ ot protivnogo ]" ( Den' 20 [January 21, 1916]: 5). Piast [Pestovskii], a poet and a close friend of Blok's, knew Mandelstam very well, especially during the so-called dandyism period (1913), when the two frequented the Petersburg bohemian cabaret "Brodiachaia sobaka." See Piast's memoirs, Vstrechi (Moscow, 1929).

2. Vl. Piast (see n. 1) found in neuznavaemyi s nedavnikh por (line 10) a "certain infantile helplessness." See also C. Brown, Mandelstam (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 169-171.

3. Mandelstam's "K iubilieiu F. K. Sologuba" ( SS 2, pp. 355-357) shows his appreciation of the older poet whose Petersburg salon he frequented in the prewar and war years. One of Mandelstam's descriptions of Sologub, in fact, echoes the poem: "Sologub's poetry presupposes the existence and melting of eternal ice." Or further on: "He was born in nontime and slowly saturated himself with time, learned how to breathe, and taught how to live."

4. The rehearsed artlessness of the poem points, first of all, to Mikhail Kuzmin, an unsurpassed master of this style. The poem combines the simplistic "folk" rhyming pattern, "mismatched" with the iambic rather than the trochaic meter, and made still more unusual by slightly "off" colloquial syntax, with the most intricate internal rhyming and paronomastic play: TELO — DELAT ', S NIM —ed INYM (first stanza), R a DO st'—blago D a R it', ZHIT '—ska ZHIT e (second stanza). On Kuzmin's "handwriting." see Vl. Markov, "Poeziia Mikhaila Kuzmina," in Kuzmin, Sobranie stikhov, vol. 3 (Munich, 1977), pp. 336 ff., 343 ff., 354-358. On Kuzmin and the beginnings of Acmeism, see J. E. Malmstad, "Mikhail Kuzmin: A Chronicle of His Life and Times," in Kuzmin, Sobranie stikhov, vol. 3, pp. 132 ff. Kuzmin's elevation to stardom (Malmstad, ibid., p. 133), in fact, coincided with Mandelstam's earliest attempts at poetry while still a Tenishev student. The poem's date (1909) also may point to Kuzmin, who in the same year published his novel Nezhnyi Iosif in Zolotoe runo. A major influence on the Acmeists (see R. D. Timenchik, V. N. Toporov, and T. V. Tsiv'ian, "Akhmatova i Kuzmin," RL VI-3 [1978]), Kuzmin exemplified for Mandelstam the most precious principle of poetry—"recollection" ("K vykhodu Al'manakha muz ")—and, indeed, some of the more programmatic poems by Mandelstam echo Kuzmin distinctly. Compare Kuzmin's "Smiris', o serdtse, ne ropshchi" ( Apollon 5 [1911]) with Mandelstam's "Paden'e—neizmennyi sputnik strakha" (1912), "Zverinets" (1916), and "Grifel'naia oda" (1923). This 1911 poem by Kuzmin apparently served as a salon conversation piece in 1911—witness its repeated "appropriation" by Viacheslav Ivanov in his "Huitain" (1911?), where the first four lines serve as the epigraph as well as the first quatrain of Ivanov's poem.

5. The poem might easily have been read as a pastiche of K. Bal'mont's "Zhizn' prokhodit—vechen son": "Zhizn' prokhodit—vechen son. / Khorosho mne,—ia vliublen. / Zhizn' prokhodit—skazki net. / Khorosho mneia poet. / Dushen mir,—v dushe svezho. / Khorosho mne—khorosho." Mandelstam included this poem in the never-published Anthology of Modern Russian Poetry he was compiling in the 1920s (see the Princeton Archive). An attentive continue

      (and retentive) reader of Bal'mont, Mandelstam displayed his ambivalent attitude toward the older poet by praising his poetry as "translations which prompt one to suspect the existence of an interesting original." One comes across the traces of these "interesting originals" in Mandelstam's poetry of the Tristia period. Cf., e.g., "Ia naravne s drugimi / Khochu tebe sluzhit', / Ot revnosti sukhimi / Gubami vorozhit"' (Mandelstam) with Bal'mont's "Eshche neobkhodimo liubit' i ubivat', / Eshche neobkhodimo nakladyvat' pechat'." The similarity between the two poems goes well beyond metrics. Much of Mandelstam's "verbal magic," too, appears to be related to Bal'mont's "magic of words."

6. In a composite review, S. Gorodetskii faulted Mandelstam for his uncertain knowledge of the Russian language. See Gorodetskii, "Stikhi o voine v 'Apollone,'" Rech' 3 (November 1914).

7. Casting about for a surefire self-image of youthful poetic innocence, Mandelstam's friend Larisa Reisner (for a while an intimate friend of N. Gumilev) felt free to convert Mandelstam's "Dykhanie" into her autobiographical prose: "There is not in the entire Petersburg a single crystal window covered with virginal hoarfrost and a dense covering of snow that Hafiz [N. Gumilev] has not made opaque with his breath, forever leaving a gaping opening into emptiness in the clear frosty patterns." This autobiographical novel (1919-21), which remained unfinished, was published as Avtobiograficheskii roman in Iz istorii sovetskoi literatury 1920-1930-kh godov, LN 93 (Moscow, 1983), p. 205.

8. G. Ivanov, Peterburgskie zimy (New York, 1952), pp. 115 ff.

9. This last is all the more striking, since it appears not in the last poem (as a self-congratulation for work well done) but in the first poem of the book. By comparison, even the lapidary arrogance in the lines ending the first Stone ranks as a tentative understatement:

And the more carefully, o firmament Notre Dame,
I have been studying your monstrous ribs,
The more frequently I thought: out of the unkindly heaviness,
I, too, shall create the beautiful someday.

      ("Gde rimskii sudiia sudil chuzhoi narod" [Where the Roman judge judged an alien people, 1912], SS 1:39).

10. Reliance on the pattern of Andersen's tales was no more unusual than reliance on the patterns of Greek myths. Echoes of "The Snow Queen" can be heard in Aleksandr Blok's "Vtoroe kreshchenie" (1907), in Snezhnaia maska, and of course, in Andrei Belyi's Kubok metelei (Moscow, 1908). For the poets of Mandelstam's generation, too, "The Snow Queen" functions as an important motif. For example, in Marina Tsvetaeva's cycle "Podruga" (1914-15), ad- soft

      dressed to Sofiia Parnok: "Segodnia, chasu v vos'mom" and "Mogu li ne vspomnit' ia" (see S. Poliakova, Zakatnye ony dni: Tsvetaeva i Parnok [Ann Arbor, 1983], p. 119n. 7). Consider also Stravinsky's contemporary ballet, "Le baiser de la Fée," based on "The Snow Queen" (suggested by Robert P. Hughes).

11. NM 2, pp. 544 ff.

12. I. Annenskii, "O sovremennom lirizme," Knigi otrazhenii (Moscow, 1979), pp. 342 ff. Annenskii had in mind Briusov's poem "No pochemu temno? Goriat bessil'no svechi," from the collection Vse napevy.

13. J. Lacan, "La relation d'objet et les structures freudiennes," Bulletin de psychologie 10, no. 10 (April 1957): 602-605; and idem, "La signification du phallus: Die Bedeutung des Phallus," Ecrits (Paris, 1966), pp. 685-695. R. Barthes, S/Z. An Essay (New York, 1974), e.g., pp. 106ff. For Derrida, see his discussion of Rousseau's "Essay on the Origin of Languages" in J. Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore, 1976), esp. pp. 263-268.

14. "Viacheslav Ivanov, as a poet and a theoretician, came forth during a transitional epoch for literature. One such epoch found its distinct embodiment in the ancient 'Alexandrianism.' . . . We are close to their epoch" (A. Blok, "Tvorchestvo Viacheslava Ivanova" [1905], SS 5, pp. 7 and 8). M. Kuzmin's famous cycle Aleksandriiskie pesni (The Songs of Alexandria) came out in 1906 and was "extremely well received by critics and public alike" (see Malmstad, "Mikhail Kuzmin"). See also P. P. Muratov, "Stil' epokhi," RM 31, no. 1 (1910), pp. 94-99 (14th pagination), for parallels between the 1900s and the Alexandrian epoch. This subject and the general kinship between antiquity and the present are discussed at length by V. Buzeskul, Antichnost' i sovremennost': Sovremennye temy v antichnoi Gretsii, 2d ed. (St. Petersburg, 1914); for a review of this book, see Zavety 2 (1913): 196-198.

15. Cf. A. V. Lunacharskii: "The root of art is eros even among animals" ("Taneev i Skriabin," Novyi mir 6 [1925]: 116).

16. Annenskii's 1909 article, seminal for the subsequent development of Russian poetry, served in retrospect as a critical declaration of the new Apollon, where it was published in the first three issues ( Apollon [1909] 1:12-42, 2:3-29, and 3:5-29). In particular, Annenskii's emphasis on the effectiveness of subtle poetic allusions to other poets had far-reaching implications for the poetry of Akhmatova and Mandelstam (see his treatment of Sologub). Not only was Annenskii's view substantially different from much of the Symbolist criticism, but his impressionistic manner of presentation, his emphasis on craft rather than message, and his broad scope set the tone for some of the more important essays on poetry, such as Iu. Tynianov's "Promezhutok" (1924), which would appear in years to come. See the annotations to Knigi otrazhenii, pp. 630-632. Mandelstam thought highly of Annenskii's criticism. His "Literaturnaia Moskva" and "Literaturnaia Moskva. Rozhdenie fabuly" (1922), as well as "O sovremennoi poezii. K vykhodu 'Al'manakha muz'" (1916), demonstrate his affinity with Annenskii's famous essay (the latter even in its title).

17. "Kak oblakom serdtse odeto," SS 2:457. The poem was composed no later than August 1910, when Mandelstam sent it, together with nine other continue

      poems, to Viacheslav Ivanov. See A. A. Morozov, "Pis'ma O. E. Mandel'shtama V. I. Ivanovu," in Gosudarstvennaia publichnaia biblioteka SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina. Zapiski Otdela rukopisei, vol. 34 (Moscow, 1975), pp. 270-273.

18. N. Gumilev, "Pis'mo o russkoi poezii," Apollon 1-2 (1914): 126.

19. N. Gumilev, "Pis'mo o russkoi poezii" ( Apollon 1-2 [1914]), in SS 4 (Washington, D.C., 1968), p. 327.

20. V. Khodasevich, "Literaturnyi subbotnik—o novykh stikhakh," Utro Rossii 30 (January 30, 1916): 5. My gratitude to the late G. P. Struve for providing me with this reference to Khodasevich.

21. V. Briusov, "Poetu" ("Ty dolzhen byt' gordym kak znamia"), in Vse napevy (1909); first published in Vesy 1 (1908). The lines in question read: "Byt' mozhet, vse v zhizni lish' sredstvo / Dlia iarko-pevuchikh stikhov, / I ty s bespechal'nogo detstva / Ishchi sochetaniia slov."

22. O. Mandelstam, "Kak oblakom serdtse odeto," SS 2:457. The editors' provisional date for the poem's composition, 1909-10, is indirectly substantiated by the present discussion.

23. Mandelstam and his circle were aware of the etymological reverberations of akme: akmon—Adam-kadmon—kamen'—petrus—Petersburg. As G. G. Superfin (noted in "Russkaia semanticheskaia poetika") and O. Ronen have both pointed out, the words Kamen' and Akme (the publisher of Stone ), placed one over the other on the title page of Mandelstam's first collection of poetry, were meant to emphasize Mandelstam and the movement's etymological ken. See O. Ronen, "Leksicheskii povtor, podtekst i smysl v poetike Osipa Mandel'stam * a," in Slavic Poetics: Essays in Honor of Kiril Taranovsky, ed. Roman Jakobson, C. H. van Schoneveld, and Dean S. Worth (The Hague, 1973).

24. S. Gorodetskii, "Muzyka i arkhitektura v poezii," Rech' 17 (30) (June 1913).

25. The tradition of viewing 1912 as the year of Mandelstam's transition from Symbolism to Acmeism goes back to Nikolai Gumilev's review of Kamen' I ( Apollon 1-2 [1914]: 126). See also Gumilev, SS 4, pp. 326ff.

26. Such words as "the joy of life" and the "acceptance of the world" were used by S. Gorodetskii in "Nekotorye techeniia v sovremennoi russkoi poezii," Apollon 1 (1913): 48, and, somewhat more judiciously, by N. Gumilev in his concurrent manifesto "Nasledie simvolizma i akmeizm" (ibid., p. 45). See also R. D. Timenchik, "Zametki ob akmeizme," RL 7/8 (1974).

27. Stone: The First Book of Poems ( Kamen' III) came out in 1923, that is, a year or so after Tristia (1921) and The Second Book ( Vtoraia kniga, 1922). Consisting primarily of poems composed between 1908 and 1915, it opened with "The sound, cautious and hollow" (1908, SS 1:1), and closed with the 1923 "He Who Found a Horseshoe," a penultimate poem of The Second Book. Furthermore, it contained "Not believing in the miracle of the Resurrection" (1916, SS 1 :90), "That evening, the lancet forest of the organ did not rumble" (1917, SS 1:96), and "In Petersburg, we shall gather again" (1920, SS 1:18)—all already published as part of Tristia.

28. See E. Said, Beginnings: Intention and Method (New York, 1975), pp. 6 and 174 ff.; and Nietzsche's concepts of "origin versus purpose," central to continue

      Said's critical enterprise, in Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (New York, 1969), pp. 77-78. In contrast to the Acmeist "epic" of Mandelstam and (later) of Akhmatova ( Poema bez geroiia), which conform to the pattern of "origins," the Futurist verse narratives of Khlebnikov and Maiakovskii (epics of "beginnings," in Said's terms) may be seen as an inversion of the Symbolist conception of the genre, which was largely based on the mythological poetics of Viacheslav Ivanov and which found its ultimate expression in the "trilogy" of Aleksandr Blok.

29. See, for example, A. Blok's "Dusha pisatelia" (A Writer's Soul), SS 5, pp. 369-370. This notion provides the conceptual framework for a 1972 study of Blok by D. Maksimov, "Ideia puti v poeticheskom mire Al. Bloka," in Poeziia i proza Al. Bloka (Leningrad, 1981), pp. 6-152.

30. "Barsuch'ia nora" (1923), SS 2:270 ff.

31. As it was advertised in Giperborei 2 (November 1912), the upcoming edition of Mandelstam's poetry was to be named after his 1911 poem "Rakovina" ( SS 1:26).

32. Cf. D. M. Segal's term for a specifically Mandelstamian trope, ambivalentnaia antiteza (an ambivalent antithesis), in Segal, "O nekotorykh aspektakh smyslovoi struktury 'Grifel'noi ody' O. E. Mandel'shtama," RL 2 (1972).

33. Cf. Mandelstam's criticism of Viacheslav Ivanov's weltanschauung in Across the Stars as excessively smooth: "Even ecstasy is not dangerous—because you foresee the outcome. Only the breathing of the cosmos wafts about your book, imparting to it a charm it shares with Zarathustra —compensating for the astronomical roundness of your system, which you yourself shake in the best passages of your book, indeed, shake continuously. One more feature your book shares with Zarathustra —is that each word in it fulfills its purpose with fiery hatred and hates sincerely its own place and its own neighbors" (letter to Viach. Ivanov of August 13, 1909, SS 2, pp. 486 ff.).

34. A note on translation. According to Dal"s Dictionary (St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1905), the word korabel'shchik means "owner of a merchant ship," which conforms to Pushkin's usage in Skazka o Tsare Saltane: "Korabel'shchiki v otvet." The word may, however, mean simply a seafarer, a mariner—an acceptable usage supplied by D. N. Ushakov's Dictionary (Moscow, 1935), where it is illustrated by the same line from Pushkin. Zastrel'shchik, which I translate as "vanguard soldier," constitutes, according to Dal', a term for a specially designated front-line soldier who fires the first shot at the enemy, thereby signaling to others that the battle has begun and that it is time to commence firing. In civilian usage after World War I, it designated a social, political, or industrial "activist" (Ushakov, 1935).

35. "Vysokii dom postroil plotnik diuzhii" in "Na kamennykh otrogakh Pierii" (1919), SS 1:105. Cf. Sappho's Fragment 148 in J. M. Edmonds, ed., Lyra Graeca, vol. 1 (London, 1928). For a discussion of Mandelstam's reworking of Sappho, see R. Przybylski, "Arcadia Osipa Mandelsztama," Slavia Orientalis 13, no. 3 (1964): 243-262; K. Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), pp. 83-114; and G. Levinton, "'Na kamennykh otrogakh Pierii' Osipa Mandel'shtama: Materialy k analizu," RL V-2 and V-3 (1977). break

36. Cf. Mandelstam's "Sestry—tiazhest' i nezhnost'—odinakovy vashi primety" (1920, SS 1:108), one version of which reads: "It is easier to lift a stone than to utter the word— to love." See Tristia (1922).

37. Myth-making by nominations goes back to the "mythological" school of Russian folklore, A. N. Afanas'ev and F. I. Buslaev, and further back to the theories of Max Müller. See, for example, F. I. Buslaev, "Dogadki i mechtaniia o pervobytnom cheloveke," Sochineniia, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1908), p. 111. Closer to Mandelstam, see Viach. Ivanov, "Zavety simvolizma" (1910), SS 2, pp. 593-594; and A. Belyi, Simvolizm (Moscow, 1910), p. 70 ("Emblematika smysla") and p. 448 ("Magiia slov"). Cf. also N. Gumilev: "Bozhestvennye naimenovan'ia tebe daruiutsia, poet" (Divine names are given thee, poet).

38. "Na pesn', kak na podvig, gotov." It is enlightening to juxtapose Mandelstam's podvig (ordeal) with the definition of podvizhnichestvo (an act of engaging in ordeals) offered in the Russian theological dictionary: "a type of spiritual and external exercise based on self-abnegation with the purpose of Christian self-improvement. It characterized the ascetic monks, who were not subject to specific external rules. . . . It grew particularly among the Christians of both sexes in the first and second centuries when these men and women . . . remained chaste for their entire life" ( Polnyi pravoslavnyi bogoslovskii slovar', vol. 2 [St. Petersburg, 1913], cols. 1820-1821). Unlike a heroic feat, podvig or podvizhnichestvo, especially in a stylistically or thematically sacred context, owes little to the tradition of pagan, godlike heroism with its promotion of the self. Rather, it represents essentially an act of humility before, and in the service of, a higher communal ideal. As such, it is intimately connected to the notion of sobornost' (symphony), one of the central tenets of the Russian Orthodox culture. See S. N. Bulgakov, "Geroizm i podvizhnichestvo," in Vekhi: Sbornik statei o russkoi intelligentsii, ed. M. O. Gershenzon, 3d ed. (Moscow, 1909), pp. 23-96. For a recent discussion of the notion, see P. Henry, "Imagery of Podvig and Podvizhnichestvo in the Works of Garshin and the Early Gor'kii," Slavonic and East European Review 61, no. 1 (1983): 139-159.

39. Viach. Ivanov, "Poet i Chern"' (The Poet and the Rabble, 1904), SS 1; reprinted in Po zvezdam (1909), which Mandelstam read carefully a few months before he sent the poem under discussion to Viacheslav Ivanov. Mandelstam offered a critique of the collection in his letter to Ivanov written on August 13/26, 1909 ( SS 2, pp. 468-488). For a discussion of this letter, see chapter 1; and Morozov, "Pis'ma Mandel'shtama Ivanovu." The "wafting of the subtle cool" as a sign of approaching poetic afflatus eventually appeared in Mandelstam's poem "Na kamennykh otrogakh Pierii" (1919)—another example of his customary use of Ivanov. On the contemporary usage of "thoughtful action" [ umnoe delan'e ], see P. Florenskii, Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny: Opyt pravoslavnoi feoditsei v dvenadtsati pis'makh (Moscow, 1914), p. 108.

40. A. Blok, "Khudozhnik" (1912).

41. Cf. another passage from Viacheslav Ivanov: "Let us, finally, take a closer look at the process during which out of erotic ecstasy there emerges a mystical epiphany; out of this epiphany, a spiritual conception accompanied continue

      by a clear calm of an enriched, gladdened soul; out of this calm, a new musical stirring, drawing the spirit toward engendering a new form of transfiguration; out of this musical stirring, a poetic dream in which memories serve only as material for the contemplation of the Apollonian image that is to reflect itself in the word as a harmonious body of rhythmic creation; until finally, out of the desire, inflamed by the contemplation of this Apollonian image, there emerges the verbal flesh of a sonnet" (Viach. Ivanov, "O granitsakh iskusstva" [1912], SS 2, pp. 630 ff.).

42. I am using the word sacred in the Durkheimian sense (E. Durkheim, Elementary Forms of the Religious Life [New York, 1965], pp. 356 ff.).

43. Significantly, in discussing Viacheslav Ivanov's "Poet i Chern'" (The Poet and the Rabble, 1904), Blok emphasized the "ordeal" as central to the experience of a modern poet, who, being an "Alexandrian," represents, as it were, an anticipatory imitator of Christ: "During the period of the concealed rebellion, which made silence even deeper and in which the Word was destined to be born—could literature (itself the word) not burn itself to ashes with the inner flame?" ("Tvorchestvo Viacheslava Ivanova," SS 5, p. 7). See also Ivanov's programmatic poem "Sloki" in Prozrachnost'. Vtoraia kniga liriki (Moscow, 1904).

44. G. Levinton noted a possible connection between Blok's essay on spells and incantations and Mandelstam's poem. See Levinton's "Zametki o fol'klorizme Bloka," in Mif,fol'klor, literatura (Leningrad, 1978), p. 184n.

45. "Poeziia zagovorov i zaklinanii" and "Stikhiia i kul'tura" in A. Blok, SS 5.

46. "'Obolokus' ia obolokom, obtychus' chastymi zvezdami',—govorit zaklinatel'; i vot on uzhe mag, plyvushchii v oblake, opoiasannyi Mlechnym Putem" (A. Blok, "Poeziia zagovorov i zaklinanii," SS 5, p. 48). Cf. Levinton, "Zametki o fol'klorizme Bloka," pp. 175 and 183 ff. See also Blok: "[The poet] must possess that singular word of incantation [ zaklinanie ] which has not yet become a 'lie' " ("Tvorchestvo Viacheslava Ivanova," SS 5, pp. 9 ff.).

47. G. Ivanov ( Novyi zhurnal 43 [1955]: 276) noted Mandelstam's early interest in theosophy ( zaigryval s teosofiei ), which makes Mandelstam similar to Gumilev in this respect (see V. Nevedomskaia, "Vospominaniia o Gumileve," Novyi zhurnal 38 [1954]: 190); Gumilev's poetry often makes use of the metempsychosis formula and astral symbolism (e.g., "Zabludivshiisia tramvai" and "Zvezdnyi uzhas"). In the early 1920s Mandelstam became a harsh opponent of theosophy as a "vulgar materialism," echoing Vl. Solov'ev's critique, which in turn invoked Hegel's schlechte Unendlichkeit. See "O prirode slova," SS 2, p. 243. See also O. Ronen, "Osip Mandel'stam * : An Ode and an Elegy," (Ph.D. diss. Harvard University, 1976), p. 18n.

48. Noted by I. Annenskii, "O sovremennom lirizme" (1909), in Knigi otrazhenii (Moscow, 1979), p. 361.

49. Mandelstam, SS 2, pp. 302, 305. Written in 1910, perhaps as a term paper, the essay was published in the fourth issue of Apollon for 1913 and must be seen as a serious, declarative statement, since the preceding issue contained the Acmeist manifestos of the poet's two comrades-in-arms, Nikolai Gumilev continue

      and Sergei Gorodetskii. Very close to them in letter and spirit but composed much earlier, it may have served as the Acmeist answer to the Futurists' backdating of their "birthday." On this anxiety of priority among the younger generation, see V. Markov, Russian Futurism: A History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968), p. 135; and R. D. Timenchik, "Zametki ob akmeizme," RL 7/8 (1974): 25 n. 7. The essay concludes the 1928 collection of Mandelstam's critical prose ( O poezii ), which indicates that the poet assigned it a programmatic significance even at that late date.

50. Viach. Ivanov, "Kop'e Afiny" (1904, 1909), SS 1, p. 733.

51. A. Blok, "Na pole Kulikovom." Cf. the common "Mother-Russia."

52. S. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago: 1980).

53. V. Khodasevich, "Literaturnyi subbotnik," p. 6.

54. D. Vygodskii, "Poeziia i poetika: Iz itogov 1916 g.," Letopis' 1 (1917): 251-252. The one poet Vygodskii singled out for praise was V. Maiakovskii ("Prostoe kak mychanie"). See also a review of Stone II in Letopis' 5 (1916): 288-289, where Stone was described as "a lifeless jewel." Vestnik znaniia reviewed Stone together with Lyrika, by Grigorii Aronson, arriving at the conclusion that the two books "were equal before the Muse": "Those who like subtle poetry designed to impress with its style, abstract feelings, salon sophistication, humor du belle esprit will prefer the artistry of Mandelstam; those who are more captivated by the tender melancholy of autumnal landscapes and the elegiac voluptuousness of autumnal skies will prefer the sensitive Aronson" (anonymous reviewer, Vestnik znaniia 5-6 [1916]: 379).

55. V. Zhirmunskii, "Preodolevshie simvolizm" (1916), in Voprosy teorii literatury (Leningrad, 1928), p. 305.

56. "Ia vzdragivaiu ot kholoda" (1912), SS 1:28; "Ia nenavizhu svet" (1912), SS 1:29; and "Otravlen khleb i vozdukh vypit" (1913), SS 1:54.

57. V. Gal'skii (Vadim Shershenevich, the future leader of the Russian Imagists) wrote in 1916: "One supposes that O. Mandelstam has something to say; but for some reason he does not want to be convincing. In order to affect the reader, to force him to submit, one of two things is necessary: you have to be either sincere or powerful. Mr. Mandelstam lacks sincerity; as to power, he does not have it yet" ("O. Mandel'shtam. Kamen'. Stikhi" [review], Novaiia zhizn': Literaturno-obshchestvennyi al'manakh 4 [Moscow, 1916]: 188).

58. A. Blok, "Pis'ma o poezii" (1908), SS 5, pp. 277-302, esp. pp. 277 ff. Note that the poet whom Blok selected as a negative example of the value of "sincerity" in poetry was N. M. Minskii, a Symbolist of the older generation and, like Mandelstam, a Jew. One can only wonder how Blok, who was prone to anti-Semitism, would have reacted to Minskii's "confessions." Mandelstam's letter to V. V. Gippius (April 9/27, 1908) reveals that the young poet took special care not to be identified with Minskii for reasons that perhaps had less to do with Minskii's philosophy than he wished to suggest: "Oh, do not worry, this is not 'maeonism,' and, in general, I have nothing in common with Minskii" ( SS 2, p. 484).

59. W. M. Todd III, " Eugene Onegin: 'Life's Novel,"' in Literature and Society in Imperial Russia: 1800-1914, ed. W. M. Todd III (Stanford, 1978), continue

      pp. 203-236. See also his 'Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich," in The Handbook of Russian Literature, ed. Victor Terras (New Haven, 1985).

60. As viewed by the Symbolist theurgists, poetry was to bring a new religion into the world, a task hardly compatible either with deception or with a conventionalized attitude toward verbal art.

61. "Ia znaiu, chto obman v videnii ne myslim" (1911), SS 4:507.

62. Zinaida Gippius, after the initial cool reception, promoted Mandelstam in the early 1910s, to which the unfortunate nickname amply testifies (NM 2, p. 34). See also A. Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnika S. P. Kablukova," VRSKhD 129, no. 3 (1979): 137-139.

63. Blok's letter to Belyi (June 6, 1911), SS 8, p. 344.

64. First pointed out by O. Ronen in "Mandel'shtam, Osip Emilyevich," Encyclopaedia Judaica: Year Book 1973 (Jerusalem, 1973).

65. "Iz omuta zlogo i viazkogo" and "V ogromnom omute prozrachno i temno" (1910), SS 1:17 and 18. The last stanza of the first poem appeared in the 1911 Apollon (no. 5) selections from Mandelstam but was omitted in subsequent publications.

66. The central image may be traced to Viacheslav Ivanov's translation of Baudelaire's "Les phares," "Maiaki" (1905), which reads in part: "O Vinchi—zerkalo v ch'em omute bezdonnom / Mertsaiut angely, ulybchivonezhny, / Luchem bezglasnykh tain, v zatvore, ograzhdennom / Zubtsami gornykh l'dov i sumrachnoi sosny. . . . (Viach. Ivanov, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy [Leningrad, 1976], p. 14). Mallarmé's "Hèrodiade" may have served as an additional source, judging by Mandelstam's use of the famous poem in his "Solominka" I and II.

67. Golos zhizni 25 (June 17, 1915). The text of the poem was recorded in the 1910 entry in Kablukov's diary (Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisniakh dnevnika Kablukova"), which was published after the appearance of the articles by Omry Ronen ("Mandel'shtam, Osip Emilyevich") and Kiril Taranovsky ("The Black-Yellow Light: The Jewish Theme in Mandel'stam * 's Poetry," in Essays on Mandel'stam * ). As a result, the two scholars used the journal publication as the date of the poem's composition. What seems to have prompted Mandelstam to "resurrect" the poem in 1915 was the death of Skriabin in April of that year. Mandelstam associated the event with a whole complex of ideas concerning "Christian culture." Some of the poem's images, such as the ring of the Roman Guard around the Cross, resurfaced in drafts of Mandelstam's essay "Pushkin i Skriabin" (1915). See SS 4, p. 100.

68. "Neumolimye slova . . . Okamenela Iudeia," Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad, 1973). The American edition of Mandelstam has "Neutolimye," which carries a different meaning—"unquenchable," rather than "implacable." The version printed in Stikhotvoreniia coincides with the autograph copy of the poem in Kablukov's diary. See Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnika Kablukova."

69. F. Tiutchev, "Pevuchest' est' v morskikh volnakh." K. Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * , p. 53.

70. F. Tiutchev, "O veshchaia dusha moia." On the uses of Tiutchev in continue

      Mandelstam, see E. Toddes, "Tiutchev i Mandel'shtam," International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics 17 (1974).

71. In Russian Orthodox culture, the distinction between the Old and the New Testament as between "Law" and "Grace" (based on Paul's Epistle to the Galatians and later developed by Augustine) goes back to the famous twelfth-century sermon by the Metropolitan Hilarion, "Slovo o zakone i blagodati," and, further, to the so-called Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews. Mandelstam was no doubt familiar with Hilarion's "sermon" from his days at the Tenishev School.

72. V. Dal' lists yet another Russian saying under the omut entry: "In a pool—that's where the water demon [ vodianoi ] lives." In 1919 Mandelstam reversed the image, using it in a positive association with Christianity, this time as a religion not opposed to "the Law" but encompassing it (hence the sheep-dogs and the shepherd-kings of the Old Testament). This poem, "V khrustal'nom omute kakaia krutizna!" (How precipitous is this crystal pool! SS 1:106), is obviously related directly to the triptych and, even more specifically, to "V ogromnom omute prozrachno i temno" (The enormous pool is limpid and dark).

73. Cf. Mandelstam's "feminine" self-presentation as a "shell without pearls" in "Rakovina" (1911, SS 1:26), a poem under whose title Mandelstam's first book of poetry was originally advertised in Giperborei 2 (November 1912).

74. "In a white corolla of roses, ahead [of them] is Jesus Christ." Mandelstam uses venchik (corolla) in a similar context in a poem dedicated to S. P. Kablukov and written at the same time as the cycle under discussion. See "Ubity med'iu vechernei," SS 2:457kh. For an analysis of this image in Blok, see S. Hackel, The Poet and the Revolution: Alexander Blok's "The Twelve" (Oxford, 1975), pp. 118-143. As Hackel points out (p. 119n. 3), the "femininity" of Blok's Christ had been noted in earlier criticism by R. Poggioli, A. E. Gorelov, and R. Przybylski. See also L. Dolgopolov, Poema Aleksandra Bloka "Dvenadtsat "' (Leningrad, 1979), pp. 66-72. Pavel Florenskii's Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny contains a learned digression—including a bibliography of literature on the subject—on the nature of the nimbus (pp. 672-674).

75. Vl. Solov'ev, "Poeziia Ia. P. Polonskogo. Kriticheskii ocherk" (1896), SS 7, p. 330. The subject is discussed more fully in "Zhiznennaia drama Platona" and "O smysle liubvi," where Solov'ev, relying on Genesis 1:27 ("Male and female created he them"), attempts to demonstrate the androgynous nature of God ( SS 9). Solov'ev's theory of eros became a matter of public discussion precisely in 1910. See S. N. Syromiatnikov, "Liubov' u Vladimira Solov'eva," Novoe vremia (May 9, 1910).

76. "Kak oblakom serdtse odeto," SS 2:457 ts. Cf. also "Dykhanie" (1909, SS 1:8), the opening poem of the first Kamen' (1913).

77. Vl. Solov'ev, "Zhiznennaia drama Platona," SS 9, pp. 226-228. Much of Solov'ev's discussion is based on Diotima's speech in Plato's Symposium, and it is worth mentioning that Viach. Ivanov's wife, Zinovieva-Annibal, was known to the family's acquaintances by the name of Socrates' wise teacher. break

78. The Russian rodimyi carries both connotations and is frequently used as an adjective of endearment. Cf. Tiutchev's usage in "Vetr nochnoi," with which Mandelstam was thoroughly familiar and which he employed in "Khaos iudeiskii," a chapter in Shum vremeni.

79. Cf. Mandelstam's "Erfurtskaia programma," a chapter in Shum vremeni. One of many examples of Mandelstam's familiarity with Nietzsche is found in his letter to Viacheslav Ivanov, written on August 13/26, 1909 ( SS 2, pp. 486-488).

80. See "Le destin: Mandelstam poète et martyr de son temps," chapter 1 of N. Struve, Ossip Mandelstam (Paris, 1982). The two parts of this title do go very well together.

81. See, for example, G. Levinton and R. D. Timenchik, "Kniga K. F. Taranovskogo o poezii O. E. Mandel'shtama," RL VI-2 (1978). Very interesting in this regard are the recently published memoirs of Mandelstam's 1930s friend B. S. Kuzin. He wrote: "Had I continued my acquaintance with N. Ia. [Mandelstam], then I would have inevitably come in contact with those who are creating—I can't find a better word—the cult of Mandelstam. I like neither salons nor cults. I want to retain my memory of O. E. [Mandelstam] as my dearest friend. The object of a cult, ipso facto, is not a friend" (Kuzin, "Ob O. E. Mandel'shtame," VRSKhD 140, nos. 3-4 [1983]: 128).

82. Weber defined the sentiment experienced by followers of a charismatic personality as "devotion to the extraordinary and unheard-of, to what is strange to all rule and tradition and which therefore is viewed as divine" ( Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills [New York, 1958], p. 249).