I— The Charisma of Poetry and the Poetry of Charisma
1. V. L'vov-Rogachevskii, Russko-evreiskaia literatura (Moscow, 1922), pp. 103-129.
2. P. Brown, "The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity," Representations 1, no. 2 (1983): 19 ff.
3. See the chapter entitled "Knizhnyi shkaf" (The Bookcase) in Mandelstam's Shum vremeni (The Noise of Time), SS 2, pp. 56 ff. See also C. Brown's discussion of the poet's father, Emilii Veniaminovich Mandelstam, in Mandelstam (Cambridge, 1973). See further the discussion of the poet's family in NM 2, pp. 568-578.
4. Cf. Gogol's "The Overcoat," specifically the scene of Akakii's birth and christening.
5. Cf. also Marina Tsvetaeva's frequent fashioning of herself as Maryna Mniszek. For name symbolism in Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and a polemic concerning its significance, see E. Wilson, "Legend and Symbol in Doctor Zhivago," in his The Bit Between My Teeth: A Literary Chronicle of 1950-1965 continue
(New York, 1965), pp. 447 ff.; M. F. Rowland and P. Rowland, Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago (Carbondale, Ill., 1967), pp. 10 ff.; and H. Gifford, Pasternak: A Critical Study (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 191 ff. See also N. Iu. Griakalova, "Fol'klornye traditsii v poezii Anny Akhmatovoi," Russkaia literatura 25, no. 1 (1982).
6. In this way, Joseph distinguished himself from the "wise men magicians" (Gen. 41:8) for whom Egypt remained famous into the Renaissance (viz. Hermes Tristmegistus ). See F. A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London, 1964), pp. 1-20. By implication, professional diviners did not attribute their skill to the "spirit of God" (Gen. 41:16 and 38) but to themselves or some minor demons. Nevertheless, the whole hermetic thematism of the Joseph legend seems related to the Egyptian culture of the occult, since the divinatory motifs are in general underplayed in the Old Testament. Apparently God addressed his chosen people directly, thus obviating the need for divination. See "Divination" in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings (New York, 1961).
7. In Weber's classification system, charismatic authority represents a power related to and distinguished from the other two "ideal types," namely, traditional authority, based on the "eternal yesterday" ("Politics as a Vocation") and the rational-legal type characterized by systematic regularity and professionalism. I have relied on the following editions of Max Weber: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York, 1958); and Max Weber on Charisma and Institution Building, ed. S. N. Eisenstadt (Chicago, 1968); hereafter referred to as Essays and Charisma, respectively. I have also found helpful the exposition of Weber's thought by R. Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (New York, 1960).
8. Weber, Charisma, p. 49. For a discussion of a symbiosis of the traditional and charismatic types of domination, see R. Bendix, "Max Weber's Sociology Today," International Social Science Journal 17 (1965): 19-20. See also note 11.
9. Weber, Charisma, p. 48.
10. I have in mind Durkheim's distinction between the "sacred" and the "profane" as fundamental to any form of religion and, therefore, to all cultures. See E. Durkheim, Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (New York, 1915), pp. 52-63. "Sacredness," in whatever form, is attributed to the "central." See E. Shils, Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago, 1975), p. 263. For a discussion of this confluence of the Weberian and the Durkheimian frameworks, see S. N. Eisenstadt's introduction to Charisma, pp. xli-xlv.
11. In developing Weber's thinking, Edward Shils writes: "The need for order and a fascination of disorder persist, and the charismatic propensity is a function of the need for order. The generator or author of order arouses the charismatic responsiveness. Whether it be God's law or natural law or scientific law or positive law or the society as a whole, or even a particular corporate body of institutions like the army, whatever embodies, expresses or symbolizes the essence of an ordered cosmos or any significant sector thereof awakens the disposition of awe and reverence, the charismatic disposition. Men need an continue
order within which they can locate themselves, an order providing coherence, continuity, justice" (Shils, "Charisma, Order, and Status," in Center and Periphery, p. 261). For case studies making use of Shils's theory, see C. Geertz, "Centers, Kings, and Charisma," in Culture and Its Creators, ed. J. Ben David and T. N. Clarke (Chicago, 1977), pp. 150-171: and P. Brown, "The Saint as Exemplar." For a discussion of the contribution made by Shils and Geertz to the concept of charisma, see S. N. Eisenstadt's introduction to Charisma, pp. xxii-xli.
12. Shils, Center and Periphery, pp. 3-16 and 257 ff.
13. Weber, Charisma, pp. 49 ff.
14. Cor. 12:8-11; Rom. 12. Related and sometimes virtually identical terms in the Bible include "favor," "grace," and "the spirit of God." All are divine gifts. For a more detailed discussion, see "Grace" in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2d ed. (London, 1977). Max Weber's own notion of charisma, as he repeatedly acknowledged ( Essays, p. 246), originated in a discussion of charismatic leadership and organization in the early Christian Church by Rudolph Sohm, Kirchenrecht. See Bendix, Max Weber, p. 325n.
15. Shils, Center and Periphery, pp. 258 ff.
16. Weber, Essays, p. 49.
17. Ibid., pp. 248-250.
18. Ibid.
16. Weber, Essays, p. 49.
17. Ibid., pp. 248-250.
18. Ibid.
16. Weber, Essays, p. 49.
17. Ibid., pp. 248-250.
18. Ibid.
19. On estrangement as a condition of holiness in the late Antique society of the Mediterranean, see P. Brown, "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity," in Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982), pp. 115-129. The experience was not irrelevant to the Russian Orthodox institution of "starchestvo" (ibid., p. 152), as any reader of Dostoevsky would readily recognize. In fact, one of the first Russian Symbolists, Aleksandr Dobroliubov (1876-1944?), a legendary and important figure, became one such "holy man." In the late 1890s he became a novice at the Solovetskii Monastery and later founded a sect of "Free Christians" among the Volga peasants that was known as "Dobroliubovtsy." See A. Belyi, Nachalo veka (Moscow and Leningrad, 1933), pp. 363-364; and P. Pertsov, Literaturnye vospominaniia (Moscow and Leningrad, 1933), pp. 237-240. Dobroliubov was a major influence in the early career of Briusov and an old friend and spiritual guide of Mandelstam's teacher of Russian literature, V. V. Gippius. See E. V. Ivanova, "Valerii Briusov i Aleksandr Dobroliubov," Izvestiia Akademii nauk SSSR. Seriia literatury i iazyka 40, no. 3 (1981): 255-273; and V. V. Gippius's autobiographical narrative poem Lik chelovecheskii (St. Petersburg and Berlin, 1922), canto 3:28 ff. and 40 ff.
20. This recollection refers to Mandelstam's recital of his poetry in Petrograd in the winter of 1920. See N. Pavlovich, "Vospominaniia ob Aleksandre Bloke," in Blokovskii sbornik. Trudy nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashchennoi izucheniiu zhizni i tvorchestva A. A. Bloka (Tartu, 1964), p. 472. Cf. the impressions of Vladimir Veidle (Weidlé), who found Mandelstam's manner of recitation "ridiculous" ("O poslednikh stikhakh Mandel'shtama," Vozdushnye puti 2 [1961]: 70). break
21. Blok, SS 7, p. 371. Significantly, "Venetian Life," the poem that particularly struck Blok, has discernible echoes of the Joseph legend. See chapter 5.
22. "O sovremennom sostoianii" was reprinted in 1918. Blok's usage of the word artist, which in Russian has the ambivalent connotation of a performing artist, was a mark of high praise and appreciation of a poet's talent for conveying the "serious" ineffable (hence my use of the French artiste ). Cf. also: "Thoughtful and careful, he [Blok] called the poem read by Mandelstam 'artistic"' (V. A. Zorgenfrei, "A. A. Blok," Zapiski mechtatelei 6 [1922]: 148). In "Iskusstvo i revoliutsiia" (Art and Revolution, 1918), Blok wrote that history would "destroy the age-old lie of civilization [the profane versus the sacred "culture"] and elevate people to the height of artistic mankind" ( SS 6, p. 22). See P. P. Gromov, Blok. Ego predshestvenniki i sovremenniki (Moscow and Leningrad, 1966), p. 380. For a different reading of this characterization, see NM 2, p. 378; and note 85, chapter 5.
23. S. Adrianov, professor of Russian literature at the University of St. Petersburg, cited Blok's drama, Roza i krest, as convincing evidence of Russia's spiritual recovery. See his "'Roza i krest' A. Bloka," Vestnik Evropy 11 (1913): 385. A similar view was expressed by Viacheslav Ivanov (see LN 92 [1983], bk. 3, p. 397). See also S. Bernshtein, "Golos Bloka" (1920), in Blokovskii sbornik, vol. 2 (Tartu, 1977).
24. S. T. Aksakov, Istoriia moego znakomstva s Gogolem, in Gogol' v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, ed. S. Mashinskii (Moscow, 1952), pp. 119 ff.
25. "Maiakovskii recited [his poem] once again but toward the end, he again slid into the shamanistic incantations [ shamanskie zaklinaniia ]." From the diary of A. Lazarevskii (June 21, 1915), cited in V. Katanian, Maiakovskii: Literaturnaia khronika (Moscow, 1961), p. 72.
26. Regarding the response of Mandelstam's contemporaries, see note 65.
27. O. Mandelstam, "Utro akmeizma" (The Morning of Acmeism, 1913), SS 2, p. 321. See also Mandelstam's invocation of glossolalia in "Slovo i kul'tura" (1921), SS 2, p. 227.
28. A juxtaposition of poetry recitals in Russia with the tradition of magical healing, soothsaying, and transcendent communication relying on trance states will make an instructive study. See F. D. Goodman, Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia (Chicago, 1972); and her Trance, Healing, and Hallucination (New York, 1974). See also note 65.
29. Quoted in C. Brown, Mandelstam, p. 129. For an interpretation of Pasternak's remark, see L. Fleishman, Pasternak v dvadtsatye gody (Munich, [1981]), pp. 327 ff. See also H. Gifford, "Mandelstam and Pasternak: The Antipodes," in Russian and Slavic Literature, ed. R. Freeborn, R. R. Milner-Gulland, and C. A. Ward (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), pp. 376-386.
30. L. Ginsburg, "Iz starykh zapisei," in O starom i novom (Leningrad, 1982), p. 354 ("Poety").
31. Cf. a similar characterization of another poet, this time during the "bourgeois" NEP period (1926): "She [Akhmatova] has the demeanor of an ex-queen at a bourgeois resort" (L. Ginzburg, O starom i novom, p. 373). And further, after having been greeted by a slight nod from Akhmatova: "Her ges- soft
ture came out well, it corresponded to that historico-literary need for adulation [blagogovenie ] that I experience in relation to her" (ibid.).
32. Nadezhda Mandelstam, despite her sober attitude to Khlebnikov, makes a point of relating how Mandelstam, hardly a pragmatist himself, had once taken care of the other wordly, helpless Khlebnikov by demanding that Nicholas Berdiaev (then the chairman of the Writers' Union) provide a room of "at least six square meters" for "the world's greatest poet before whom all world poetry pales" (NM 2, pp. 107 ff.). This anecdote suggests that Pasternak's characterization of Mandelstam in 1932 as the "second Khlebnikov" did not emerge altogether spontaneously but had been cultivated for a long time and had wide currency.
33. On the institution of the "fools in Christ," iurodivye, which commenced in seventh-century Byzantium with St. Symeon the Holy Fool, see, among the more recent works, N. Challis and H. W. Dewey, "The Blessed Fools of Old Russia," Jahrbuch für Geschichte Osteuropas 22 (1974): 1-11.
34. R. Jakobson, "On a Generation That Squandered Its Poets" (1931), in Major Soviet Writers: Essays in Criticism, ed. E. J. Brown (Oxford, 1973), p. 9. Jakobson's essay made a deep impression on Mandelstam, eliciting from him the exclamation "It is written with a biblical might [ Ona napisana s bibleiskoi moshch'iu ]!" (see H. McLean, "Smert' Vladimira Maiakovskogo" [review], Slavic Review 36, no. 1 [1977]: 155). Biblical might, indeed, and not in the figurative sense alone. See also Iu. Tynianov, "O Khlebnikove" (1928): "Khlebnikov's biography—a biography of a poet outside the literature of books and magazines, who is happy in his own way, in his own way unhappy, complex, a 'recluse' and an extrovert—ended terribly. It [the biography] is associated with his poetic persona." See Iu. Tynianov, Problema stikhotvornogo iazyka (Moscow, 1965), p. 298.
35. Based on unpublished memoirs of Pavel Miturich. Among other things, Miturich believed that Khlebnikov was victimized by the Maiakovskii-Brik ménage.
36. "Avtoportret." See also the memoir portraits of Mandelstam in Il'ia Erenburg (1961), Nikolai Chukovskii (1964), Vsevolod Rozhdestvenskii (1958), Sergei Makovskii (1962). For a discussion of the memoir record of Mandelstam's appearance, see C. Brown, Mandelstam, pp. 49-52.
37. O. Mandelstam, The Egyptian Stamp (1928).
38. M. Tsvetaeva, Poema kontsa (1924, 1926), end of pt. 12. See S. Karlinsky, Marina Cvetaeva (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966), pp. 212-214.
39. NM 2, p. 34.
40. SS 1:141 ("Net, nikogda nichei ia ne byl sovremennik"). Line four is a periphrasis of Lermontov's: "No I am not Byron, I am another one, / A chosen who is yet unknown, / Like him, a wanderer being chased by the world / But one with a Russian soul" (cf. Byron's "I was born for opposition"). The second stanza is based on a complex allusion to Gogol's story "Vii" about an iron demon of retribution with giant eyelids whose gaze brought death to those in his view. The poem is discussed in chapter 7.
41. Few people note when citing these ghoulishly pleasing words that continue
Gumilev's tragic execution—whether or not he participated in the so-called Tagantsev conspiracy—had nothing to do with his poetry. On the contrary, his best chance for surviving the summary justice of the Cheka rested on his fame as one of Russia's foremost poets.
42. This attitude, which goes back to Nikolai Gogol's short essay on Pushkin ("Neskol'ko slov o Pushkine," Arabeski ), was "codified" in Dostoevsky's "Pushkin Speech." In Mandelstam's time, its proponents included Viacheslav Ivanov ("Poet i chern"') and, the poet who both cultivated it and benefited from it most, Aleksandr Blok (see his "Sud'ba pisatelia," "O naznachenii poeta," "Katilina"). The Formalist critics began discussing the problem of a "poet's biography" as a "literary fact" following the death of Aleksandr Blok. See Iu. Tynianov, "Litso" (1921), in Poetika. Istoriia literatury. Kino (Moscow, 1977); B. Eikhenbaum, "Sud'ba Bloka" (1921), in Ob Alekasandre Bloke (Petrograd, 1921); and B. Tomashevskii, "Literatura i biografiia," Kniga i revoliutsiia 4 (1923): 6-9. Jakobson's essay on Maiakovskii, "O pokolenii, rastrativshem svoikh poetov," may be seen as a culmination of this discussion insofar as it combines both the "religious" and the "scholarly" aspects of the traditional cult of the poet. More recently, the problem was addressed by L. Ginzburg in her study O lirike (Leningrad, 1974), specifically in chapter 3, "Problema lichnosti."
43. My thinking on this issue has been influenced considerably by R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore and London, 1977); see especially chapter 10, "The Gods, the Dead, the Sacred, and Sacrificial Substitution."
44. Vl. Maiakovskii, "Sergeiu Eseninu" (1926).
45. L. Fleishman, "O gibeli Maiakovskogo kak 'literaturnom fakte." ' SH 4 (1979): 126-130.
46. "On a Generation That Squandered Its Poets" (1931), p. 9.
47. Iu. Tynianov, "O literaturnom fakte." Nadezhda Mandelstam recalled that Tynianov had once suggested to her that she "organize" Mandelstam's biography according to the principle he had outlined in "O literaturnom fakte" (NM 2, p. 368). If such a conversation did indeed take place, it must have been on that rare occasion when her sense of humor happened to abandon her.
48. "Vek" (1923), SS 1:145. The poem is discussed in detail in chapter 6.
49. Nadezhda Mandelstam was alluding to O. Mandelstam, "Chetvertaia proza."
50. Durkheim, Religious Life, pp. 236 ff., 465.
51. Geertz, "Ideology as a Symbolic System," in Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973).
52. Durkheim, Religious Life, p. 237.
53. Ibid., p. 238.
52. Durkheim, Religious Life, p. 237.
53. Ibid., p. 238.
54. SS 2, p. 320. See the epigraph at the beginning of this section.
55. "In the first place, it is easy to see that the elements by which the wish-fulfillment is expressed are represented with special intensity " (S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams [New York, 1965], p. 365). In terms of Freud's en- soft
ergetics, the locus of the greatest repression is the locus of the greatest intensity ("damming up" in need of "discharging"). The ultimate, paradigmatic intensity is associated with the Odeipus complex: "the beginnings of religion, morals, society and art converge in the Oedipus complex" ( Totem and Taboo [1913], Standard Edition, vol. 13, p. 156). I have added the emphasis to point to the Oedipus complex as a symbolic nexus, not a cause—a caveat in keeping with Freud's own stated intention (see his opening to chapter 4 of Totem and Taboo). Note that Freud used Durkheim's Elementary Forms of the Religious Life when composing the last chapter of Totem and Taboo ( Standard Edition, vol. 13, p. 147).
56. Cf. Khlebnikov's numerology cum astrology in Doski sud'by; and N. Gumilev's "Slovo" (1920; italics are mine): "A dlia nizkoi zhizni byli chisla, Kak domashnii pod"iaremnyi skot, Potomu chto vse ottenki smysla umnoe chislo peredaet."
57. Cf. Max Weber's fear of rationalization of social life in his "Politics as a Vocation," in Essays.
58. This metaphor comes from Thomas Carlyle's characterization of Voltaire, which was used as an epigraph to one of the first modernist declarations in Russia, N. M. Minskii's treatise In the Light of Conscience (Pri svete sovesti, 2d ed. [St. Petersburg, 1897], p. 130). Comparing a hero to a star, Carlyle maintained that if egoism were the only driving force of human action and interaction, people "would, by and by, diffuse themselves over space, and constitute a remarkable Chaos, but no habitable solar or stellar system."
59. C. Geertz, "Ideology as a Symbolic System," pp. 193-233, esp. pp. 207, 220, 231.
60. I do not mean to suggest that literature "reflects" or even "refracts" anything in society, or that it relates to society as the icing on the cake relates to its base, or that it is an autonomous, self-generated, and self-consuming endeavor. Rather, at least as far as the Mandelstam phenomenon is concerned, I approach literature as one of many significant forms of communal symbolic activity (institutional religion and political ideology are examples of others). Together and more or less mutually defined, they make up a society's symbolic culture—its view and sanction of itself. See Geertz, "Art as a Cultural System," in Local Knowledge (New York, 1983), pp. 94-120, esp. p. 99; and his "Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power," ibid., pp. 121-146. A stimulating discussion of this issue may also be found in Kenneth Burke's The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action, 3d ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1973), pp. 1-137. For a review of approaches to the problem of literature and society, particularly as it relates to Russia, see W. M. Todd's introduction to his Literature and Society in Imperial Russia: 1800-1914 (Stanford, 1978), pp. 1-5.
61. S. N. Bernshtein is reputed to have been the first to deliver a paper on Saussure's Cours. See A. A. Kholodovich, "O 'Kurse obshchei lingvistiki' F. de Sossiura," in F. de Saussure, Trudy po iazykoznaniiu, trans. and ed. A. A. Kholodovich (Moscow, 1977), p. 28n. break
62. S. N. Bernshtein, "Golos Bloka," prepared for publication by A. Ivich and G. Superfin, Blokovskii sbornik II. Trudy Vtoroi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashchennoi izucheniiu zhizni i tvorchestva A. A. Bloka (Tartu, 1977), pp. 454-527 (quotation is from p. 458). The article was to be included in a posthumous collection of essays on Blok, Ob Aleksandre Bloke (Petrograd, 1921), but the collection appeared without it because the accompanying charts and diagrams required better printing facilities than were available at the time. Since then, fragments of the study, as Ivich and Superfin note, have been appearing in publications of the author and his students.
63. E. J. Brown, The Proletarian Episode in Russian Literature: 1928-1932 (New York, 1953).
64. "Mandelstam's 'holy foolishness' [ iurodstvo ] is a sacrifice of the everyday appearance of a human being. This means that not a single granule of the effort of his will is spent outside his poetic work. . . . Everything has gone into it, and for the realm of everyday life, there has remained an eccentric man with unregulated desires, a 'madman"' (L. Ginzburg, "Iz starykh zapisei," in O starom i novom, p. 413).
65. Contemporaries were attuned to Mandelstam's reliance on attributes of verbal magic, describing his poetry as "shamanistic," "exorcist," "prayerlike," or "spellbinding" (in the etymological sense). "Osip Mandelstam used to come here [the Petersburg bohemian cabaret "The Wandering Dog"], with his narrow head of an aged youth thrown back; he used to pronounce the lines of his verse as though he were an apprentice who had learned a mighty spell" (V. Shklovskii, Zhili-byli, in SS, vol. 1: Rasskazy i povesti [Moscow, 1973], p. 84). "He sang like a shaman possessed by visions"—this about Mandelstam's reading at the "Prival komediantov" in 1917 (E. Tager, "O Mandel'shtame," Novyi zhurnal 85 [1965]: 184). "Mandelstam's nostalgic spells: 'Remain foam, Aphrodite"' (B. Livshits, Polutoroglazyi strelets [New York, 1978]). Similar statements may be found in Vl. Piast, Vstrechi (Moscow, 1929), p. 157; and G. Ivanov, Peterburgskie zimy (New York, 1952), p. 120. Blok's well-known impression of Mandelstam's performance in 1918 belongs to the same genre and resembles closely a description of a shamanistic performance. Cf. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951), pp. 140 ff. See also A. Welsh, Roots of Lyric: Primitive Poetry and Modern Poetics (Princeton, 1978), chapters 6 and 7; and R. C. Elliott, The Power of Satire: Magic, Ritual, Art (Princeton, 1960), esp. chapter 5. For a discussion of verbal magic as an element of Mandelstam's poetics, see O. Ronen, "Osip Mandel'stam * : An Ode and an Elegy" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1976), pp. 8 ff. and elsewhere. See also his "An Introduction to Mandel'stam * 's Slate Ode and 1 January 1924: Similarity and Complementarity," SH 4 (1979): 214-222. There was nothing idiosyncratic in this aspect of Mandelstam's poetry. Among his contemporaries, Sologub, Bal'mont, Belyi, and Blok, not to speak of Gumilev and Khlebnikov, took a special interest in the "magic of words." Scholarly interest in the problem, too, was quite intense. For a review of contemporary scholarship on the folk uses of verbal magic, see V. P. Petrov, continue
"Zagovory," in Iz istorii russkoi sovetskoi fol'kloristiki, ed. A. A. Gorelov (Leningrad, 1981), pp. 77-142.
66. Discussed in W. A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, 1983), pp. 172-174.
67. E. J. Brown, Mayakovsky: A Poet in the Revolution (Princeton, 1973), pp. 12 ff.; and V. Katanian, Maiakovskii: Literaturnaia khronika (Moscow, 1961), pp. 417 ff. For a report of the meeting, see N. V. Reformatskaia, ed., Maiakovskii v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov (Moscow, 1963).
68. See Elliott, The Power of Satire; Welsh, Roots of Lyric.
69. "I Shubert na vode, i Motsart v ptich'em game," SS 1: 281.
70. "10 January 1934" (1934), SS 1:289.
71. "Barsuch'ia nora" (The Badger's Hole), SS 2, p. 275.
72. D. Fanger, The Creation of Nikolai Gogol' (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pp. 69 ff.
73. N. V. Gogol', "Neskol'ko slov o Pushkine" (A Few Words about Pushkin), SS 8, p. 50.
74. E. A. Shtakenshneider, Dnevnik i zapiski (Moscow and Leningrad, 1934), pp. 423 ff.; and A. I. Faresov, "Literator-muchenik," in his Protiv techenii: N. S. Leskov. Ego zhizn', sochineniia, polemika i vospominaniia o nem (St. Petersburg, 1904), p. 405. On "starchestvo," in particular, see N. Arseniev, Holy Moscow (London, 1940), esp. chapter 9; I. Smolitsch, Russisches Mönchtum: Entstehung, Entwicklung und Wesen, 988-1917 (Würzburg, 1953); and V. Lossky, "Les startsy d'Optino," Contacts 33 (1961): 163-176.
75. P. Brown, "Eastern and Western Christiandom in Late Antiquity: A Parting of the Ways," in Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity, pp. 166-195.
76. J. B. Dunlop, Starets Amvrosy: Model for Dostoevsky's Starets Zossima (Belmont, Mass., 1972).
77. H. McLean, Nikolay Leskov: Man and His Art (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), "The Prolog," pp. 596-610.
78. Cited in P. Florenskii, Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny: Opyt pravoslavnoi feoditsei v dvenadtsati pis'makh (Moscow, 1914), p. 684n. See also E. Vytorpskii, Istoricheskoe opisanie Kozel'skoi Optinoi pustyni, vnov' sostavlennoe (Troitse-Sergievskaia Lavra, 1902), p. 128; and P. Matveev, "L. N. Tolstoi i N. N. Strakhov v Optinoi pustyni," Istoricheskii vestnik 4 (1907): 151-157.
79. Iu. M. Steklov, N. G. Chernyshevskii (Moscow and Leningrad, 1928), vol. 2, p. 216 (kindly suggested by I. Paperno).
80. N. Valentinov [N. V. Vol'skii], Encounters with Lenin (London, 1968), pp. 66-68; and L. H. Haimson, The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), pp. 97-103.
81. N. Riasanovsky, A Parting of Ways: Government and the Educated Public in Russia, 1801-1855 (Oxford, 1976); and M. Raeff, The Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia (New York, 1966) (traces alienation to the end of the eighteenth century). See also M. Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, 1812-1855 (Cambridge, Mass., 1961).
82. Cf. W. M. Todd III, "Institutions of Literature," in Fiction and Society continue
in the Age of Pushkin: Ideology, Institutions, and Narrative (Cambridge, Mass., 1986).
83. Note that Pushkin referred to the authors of the eighteenth century Summa as "the skeptical priesthood of the Encyclopédie" (Entsiklopédii skepticheskii prichet). See also Todd, " Eugene Onegin: 'Life's Novel,"' in Literature and Society in Imperial Russia.
84. See V. R. Leikina-Svirskaia, Russkaia intelligentsiia v 1900-1917 gg. (Moscow, 1981), particularly her discussion of the Union of Unions in chapter 7 ("Intelligetsiia v revoliutsionnoi bor'be"), where she deals with the issue of exfoliation. See also J. C. McClelland, Autocrats and Academics: Education, Culture, and Society in Tsarist Russia (Chicago, 1979).
85. "While Tolstoy is alive, walking behind his plough, behind his white little horse along the furrow, the morning is dewy, fresh, unfrightening, the vampires are asleep—and thank God. Tolstoy is coming—this is the sun coming. And if the sun sets, Tolstoy dies, the last genius passes away —what then? May God grant Lev Nikolaevich a long life among us. May he know that all contemporary Russian citizens, without distinction . . . have absorbed with their mother's milk at least a small measure of his great vital force" (quoted in A. Blok, "The Sun over Russia: The Eightieth Birthday of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy" [Solntse nad Rossiei, 1908], SS 5, p. 302); italics are mine.
86. For a contemporary review of opinions concerning the effect of the "differentiation" on Russian literature, see N. Shapir, "Uchitel'stvo literatury," RM 34, no. 4 (1913), pp. 1-37 (4th pagination).
87. A. Blok, "O sovremennom sostoianii russkogo simvolizma" (On the Present State of Russian Symbolism, 1910), SS 5, p. 433.
88. Ibid.
87. A. Blok, "O sovremennom sostoianii russkogo simvolizma" (On the Present State of Russian Symbolism, 1910), SS 5, p. 433.
88. Ibid.
89. A. Blok, "Otvet Merezhkovskomu" (1910), SS 5, p. 444.
90. On the pathos of the Acmeist school as a justification of poetry, see R. Timenchik, "Tekst v tekste u akmeistov," in Tekst v tekste. Trudy po znakovym sistemam XIV (Tartu, 1981).
91. O. Mandelstam, "Gumanizm i sovremennost'" (1922), SS 2, p. 352.
92. The Prose of Osip Mandelstam (Princeton, 1967); and C. Brown, Mandelstam. On Mandelstam's early years, see also A. Morozov's publication of the diary of S. P. Kablukov, Mandelstam's older friend: A. Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnika S. P. Kablukova," VRSKhD 129, no. 3 (1979): 131-155.
93. Note that the main protagonists in Pasternak's prose are never Jewish. Pasternak's attitude may be glimpsed in the name of one of Iurii Zhivago's satellites, Gordon, whose name conveniently breaks into two parts, gord and on, meaning "he is proud"—an attribute at the very bottom of the scale of values in Pasternak's famous novel. One is tempted to suspect that Mandelstam, not known for his humility, was a prototype of Gordon. Cf. Pasternak's attitude to Mandelstam's handling of the Gornfel'd affair in "Zamechaniia o peresechenii biografii." On Pasternak's attitude to Jews, see also the record of his conversations with Sir Isaiah Berlin after World War II in Berlin's Personal Impressions (New York, 1981). break
94. O. Mandelstam, The Noise of Time and "The Bloody Mysterium of January 9." See also "The Age" (1922) and "He Who Found a Horseshoe" (1923).
95. Exceptions included skilled craftsmen, professionals with higher education, and merchants whose businesses had a turnover exceeding one hundred thousand rubles. Mandelstam's father most likely belonged to either the first or the third category. See E. V. Vainshtein, Deistvuiushchee zakonodatelstvo o evreiakh: Po svodu zakonov s raziasneniiami (Kiev, 1911). See also G. N. Vetlugin, Polnaia spravochnaia kniga o pravakh evreev: S raziasneniiami, opredeleniiami i resheniiami Pravitelstvuiushchago Senata (St. Petersburg, 1913); L. Greenberg, The Jews in Russia: The Struggle for Emancipation (New York, 1976); and S. W. Baron, The Russian ews Under Tsars and Soviets (New York and London, 1975).
96. Ves' Peterburg na 1909 g. Adresnaia i spravochnaia kniga g. S.-Peterburga (St. Petersburg, 1909). See also Mandelstam's descriptions of the recitals in the Tenishev Hall in The Noise of Time.
97. The Noise of Time.
98. For an S-R, not an incompatible combination (consider the leader of the party, V. M. Chernov).
99. Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnika Kablukova."
100. D. S. Mirskii, A History of Russian Literature (New York, 1973), p. 435. The Scales ( Vesy ) ceased publication in 1909, yielding its role to the new Apollon.
101. 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.
102. B. Savinkov, Vospominaniia terrorista, 2d ed. (Kharkov, 1926), pp. 34, 36, 97, 103. In a private letter of May 1905, E. K. Metner, who at the time served as a government censor for Nizhnii Novgorod, declared that "Kaliaev and his kind were right" and that Kaliaev struck him as a man of "very subtle character, Blok-like." See N. V. Kotrelev and R. D. Timenchik, "Blok v neizdannoi perepiske i dnevnikakh sovremennikov (1898-1921)," LN 92 (1983), bk. 3, p. 224.
103. See Viacheslav Ivanov's "O nepriiatii mira" (1906), an introduction to Georgii Chulkov's brochure O misticheskom anarkhizme (St. Petersburg, 1906).
104. The Prose of Osip Mandelstam, pp. 83-85.
105. O. Mandelstam, "Pushkin i Skriabin" (1915), SS 2. Cf. Viacheslav Ivanov's major two-volume collection of poetry, Cor ardens (1910-12).
106. The Noise of Time and NM 1. See also B. Kozmin, ed., Pisateli sovremennoi epokhi. Bio-bibliograficheskii slovar' russkikh pisatelei xx veka, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1928).
107. Mandelstam's letter to his mother (April 20, 1908), SS 4, pp. 115 ff. See also M. Karpovich, "Moe znakomstvo s Mandel'shtamom," Novyi zhurnal 49 (1957). In Paris, Mandelstam met Nikolai Gumilev, a fact, as R. Timenchik continue
has noted, that happened to be recorded in Mandelstam's humorous lines "I v Peterburge akmeist mne blizhe, chem romanticheckii Pierro v Parizhe."
108. M. Karpovich, "Moe znakomstvo," pp. 258-261. Cited here from C. Brown, Mandelstam, p. 34.
109. Cf. the description of Mandelstam's recital in Khardzhiev's letter to B. Eikhenbaum, quoted earlier in this chapter.
110. Mandelstam was brought to Ivanov's salon, the Tower, on May 16, 1909, by a poet, Viktor Gofman. Here the two attended the eighth and last meeting of the "Academy of Poetry" (Poeticheskaia akademiia), a series of lectures on the history of poetry and versification that Ivanov had been delivering to the young poets who gathered at his salon. From that time on Mandelstam was a frequent visitor, especially during 1911, the last year before the younger poets broke away from Ivanov's tutelage. For a history of Mandelstam's relations with 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. 258-274. For a recent controversy surrounding Ivanov's influence over Mandelstam, see K. Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), pp. 83 ff.; and NM 2, pp. 30 ff.
111. Viach. Ivanov, "Avtobiograficheskoe pis'mo," SS 3, pp. 16 ff. Ivanov studied with Mommsen (beginning in 1886), it appears, at the same time as Max Weber.
112. Sociological implications of Ivanov's "mission" would make an interesting dissertation topic. The present study addresses this question only as it touches on Mandelstam. For a critical appraisal of Ivanov's work, see J. West, Russian Symbolism: A Study of Vyacheslav Ivanov and the Russian Symbolist Aesthetic (London, 1970). For a brief overview, see also S. Averintsev's introduction to Viach. Ivanov, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy (Leningrad, 1976).
113. Viach. Ivanov, "Religiia Dionisa: Eia proiskhozhdenie i vliianie" (The Religion of Dionysus: Its Origins and Influence), Voprosy zhizni 6, 7 (July 1905): 185-220, 122-148. For the examples of the uses of Erwin Rohde's Psyche, see ibid., p. 196; and Frazer's New Golden Bough (New York, 1959), p. 216.
114. Viach. Ivanov, "Poet i chern"' (The Poet and the Rabble, 1904), SS 1, p. 713.
115. "O russkoi idee" (On the Russian Idea, 1909), SS 3, esp. pp. 331-333. Cf. also A. Belyi in Vesy, nos. 2 and 3 (1909). For contemporary debates concerning Vekhi and the role of religion and "obshchestvennost'," the god-builders and the god-seekers, see Vl. Kranikhfel'dt, "Literaturnye otkliki," Sovremennyi mir 8 (1909); V. A. Bazarov, "Bogoiskateli i bogostroiteli," Vershiny (1909); D. Filosofov, "Druz'ia ili vragi," RM 8 (1909); P. B. Struve, "Religiia i sotsializm," RM 8 (1909); and N. M. Minskii (Vilenkin), "Narod i intelligentsiia," RM 9 (1909). See also J. Scherrer, Die Petersburger Religiös-Philosophischen Vereinigungen: Die Entwicklung des religiösen Selbstverständnisses ihrer Intelligencija-Mitglieder (1901-1917), vol. 19 in Forschungen zur Osteuropäi - soft
schen Geschichte (Berlin, 1973); and C. Read, Religion, Revolution, and the Russian Intelligentsia, 1900-1912 (London, 1979).
116. For a critique of the "philosophy of [ethical] norm" from a Nietzschean position, see Lev Shestov's introduction to Apofeoz bespochvennosti (Moscow, 1905), reprinted in 1911. For a contemporary reading of the book, see A. Remizov, "Po povodu knigi L. Shestova 'Apofeoz bezpochvennosti," ' RM 7 (July 1905), p. 204 (3d pagination). Mandelstam was referring to Knut Hamsun's Pan (1894). Anna Akhmatova recalled the enormous impact Hamsun had on her in 1907-8; together with Ibsen, he was the vlastitel' dum. See E. L. Mandrykina, "Iz rukopisnogo naslediia Akhmatovoi," Neva 6 (1979): 198. See also M. N. Raudar, "Obrazy severa i severnoi kul'tury v tvorchestve Anny Akhmatovoi," in Skandinavskii sbornik 24 (1981): 208-224. In his programmatic "O poezii i zaumnom iazyke" (1919), V. Shklovskii chose to draw on Hamsun's authority to legitimize the use of trans-sense language. On Minskii: Mandelstam was referring to N. M. Minskii (Vilenkin), Pri svete sovesti (1897), one of the tamer versions of Russian Nietzscheism. The central postulates of Minskii's philosophy, which he called Maeonism (from Plato's me on [nothing]), defined "maeons," or those thoughts that are supposed to liberate humanity from the burden of contradictions, as "concepts that are absolutely opposite to experience and therefore completely negative conceptions" (pp. 188 ff.). Minskii was a prominent figure in the intellectual life of St. Petersburg (in 1905 he even edited the Bolshevik paper Novaia zhizn' ). See also his Religiia budushchego: Filosofskie razgovory (St. Petersburg, 1905); and a review by Vasilii Rozanov, "Odna iz russkikh poetiko-filosofskikh kontseptsii," Zolotoe runo 7-9 (1906). For a response by Minskii, see his "Zabvennaia dusha (otvet V. Rozanovu)" in Na obshchestvennye temy (St. Petersburg, 1909).
117. Both letters are published in SS 2. See also A. Morozov, "Pis'ma Mandel'shtama Ivanovu."
118. See Mandelstam's letter to Ivanov of August 13, 1909 ( SS 3), in which the young poet attempted a mild critique of the mentor from a Nietzschean, existentialist position, at that time identified with Innokentii Annenskii and Lev Shestov, and opposed to the well-balanced books of Ivanov's metaphysics. See K. Erberg, "O vozdushnykh mostakh kritiki," Apollon 2 (1909): 54-59. See also Morozov, "Pis'ma Mandel'shtama Ivanovu," p. 259.
119. Morozov, "Pis'ma Mandel'shtama Ivanovu"; and idem, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnikah Kablukova."
120. "As to the ideas," wrote Mandelstam in 1922 about the origins of Acmeism, "they came from the very same Viacheslav Ivanov" (Mandelstam, "O prirode slova," SS 2.)
121. Viach. Ivanov, "Kop'e Afiny" (1904), SS 1, pp. 729 ff.
122. Ibid., p. 730.
121. Viach. Ivanov, "Kop'e Afiny" (1904), SS 1, pp. 729 ff.
122. Ibid., p. 730.
123. Viach. Ivanov, "Religiia Dionisa," pp. 142-148.
124. Viach. Ivanov, "Poet i chern'," SS 1, p. 713.
125. Ibid.
124. Viach. Ivanov, "Poet i chern'," SS 1, p. 713.
125. Ibid.
126. Ivanov's cycle Roza was based on Veselovskii's Poetika rozy, his programmatic poem "Ozero Nemi" on Frazer's The Golden Bough. break
127. On the legendary Tower, see O. Deshart, "Vvedenie," in Viach. Ivanov, SS 1. See also Ivanov's diaries in SS 2, pp. 771-807; and V. Piast, Vstrechi (Moscow, 1928). For a testimony to Ivanov's great influence on the younger generation, see G. Adamovich, "Viacheslav Ivanov i Lev Shestov," in his Odinochestvo i svoboda (New York, 1955), p. 254. For an opposing view, see the not entirely reliable but often verifiable memoirs of Georgii Ivanov, Peterburgskie zimy (New York, 1952), pp. 66-67.
128. For the record of the debates, see Apollon 8 and 9 (1910). Ivanov read his paper at the Obshchesvto Revnitelei Khudozhestvennogo Slova on March 26, 1910. Blok delivered his response on April 8. See Briusov's "O rechi rabskoi" in Apollon 9 (1910); and Belyi's "Venok ili venets" in the following issue.
129. See the annotations to the essay in SS 5. See also Bel'kind, "A. Blok i Viacheslav Ivanov," Blokovskii sbornik II. Trudy Vtoroi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashchennoi izucheniiu zhizni i tvorchestva A. A. Bloka (Tartu, 1972), pp. 365-384.
130. G. G. Superfin and R. D. Timenchik, "Pis'ma A. A. Akhmatovoi k V. Ia. Briusovu," Gosudarstvennaia publichnaia biblioteka SSSR imeni V. I. Lenina. Zapiski Otdela rukopisei 32 (Moscow, 1972), pp. 272-280; Aleksandr Blok: Novye materialy i issledovaniia, LN 92 (1983), bk. 3; and G. P. Struve, Neizdannyi Gumilev (Paris, 1982).
131. LN 92 (1983), bk. 3, pp. 279-280 and 372.
132. See N. Gumilev on I. Annenskii's "Antichnyi mif v sovremennoi frantsuzskoi poezii," in N. Gumilev, SS, vol. 4: Rasskazy, ocherki, literaturnokriticheskie i drugie stat'i, "Zapiski kavalerista" (Washington, D.C., 1968), p. 330 (first published in Apollon 1-2 [1914] as "Pis'mo o russkoi poezii").
133. "We consider the word to be the creator of myth; the word, as it dies, gives birth to myth, and vice versa" (from Sadok sudei [1913], in Vl. Markov, ed., Manifesty i programmy russkikh futuristov, Slavische Propyläen, vol. 27 [Munich, 1967], p. 52).
134. O. Mandelstam, "O prirode slova" (discussed in chapter 6).
135. In her correspondence, Anastasiia Nikolaevna Chebotarevskaia (the wife of Fedor Sologub) reported that Osip Mandelstam, belonging as he did to a "disturbed" generation, publicly predicted the imminent demise of the Symbolists' supremacy at the editorial offices of Apollon. See LN 92 (1983), bk. 3, pp. 409-410.
136. Kablukov's diary, in Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnika Kablukova."
137. Ibid.
138. Ibid.
139. Ibid.
136. Kablukov's diary, in Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnika Kablukova."
137. Ibid.
138. Ibid.
139. Ibid.
136. Kablukov's diary, in Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnika Kablukova."
137. Ibid.
138. Ibid.
139. Ibid.
136. Kablukov's diary, in Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnika Kablukova."
137. Ibid.
138. Ibid.
139. Ibid.
140. Certificate of baptism in E. Vagin, "Mandel'shtam—khristianin XX veka," Novoe russkoe slovo (New York) 10 (December 1978).
141. R. A. Knox, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion with a Special Reference to the XVII and XVIII Centuries (Oxford, 1950), pp. 513-549 and 578-592. break
142. Kablukov's diary, in Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnika Kablukova."
143. "Chuvstvo sobstvennoi pravoty" (the sense of one's own rightness) functions as a crucial ingredient of the poet's biographical myth in Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoirs. Understandably, she was highly critical of The Egyptian Stamp (1928), in which the authorlike protagonist indulged in self-mockery, a sentiment quite common among the intellectuals on the eve of the Stalin revolution. By 1927 Mandelstam had earned himself a reputation as one who was "preoccupied with translations and prose" (V. Saianov, "K voprosu os sud'bakh akmeizma," Na literaturnom postu 17-18 [1927]), two genres that did not require a pose of haughty self-righteousness.
144. Cited in M. O. Chudakova, Poetika Mlikhaila Zoshchenko (Moscow, 1979), p. 25.
145. A. Lezhnev: "They [the poets] moved from the foreground of literature into the background and then disappeared in the wings entirely. In 1921 they were published on a large scale, in 1924 on a small scale, in 1926 they ceased being published at all" ("Uzel," Krasnaia nov' 8 [1926]: 230). I. Rozanov: "The center of gravity and the dominant interests have shifted from poetry to prose" ( Literaturnye otkliki [Moscow, 1923], p. 71). B. Eikhenbaum: "The problems of prose are now in the center of literature. The interest in intimate form, and in poetic speech in general, has completely disappeared" ("O Shatobriane, o chervontsakh i russkoi literature," Zhizn' iskusstva 1 [1924]: 3). Iu. Tynianov: "Three years ago, prose decisively ordered poetry to clear the premises" ("Promezhutok" [1924], in Poetika. Istoriia literatury. Kino, p. 168). Mikhail Kuzmin voiced a contrary opinion: "Poetry, as history, can have a wheel" ("Parnasskie zarosli," Zavtra: Literaturno-kriticheskii sbornik [Berlin, 1923], p. 122).
146. NM 1, pp. 177-188 ("Pereotsenska tsennostei"). See a typical warning in B. Ol'khovyi, "O poputnichestve i poputchikakh," PiR 6 (1929): 9: "Such a poet [Mandelstam] is no 'fellow traveler,' not even with the 'right deviation,' but a poet who represents an antipode of fellow-travelism."
147. Cf. Olesha's Zavist' (Moscow, 1927).
148. NM 1 and 2 on the "plagiarism" affair. See also "Zamechaniia o peresechenii biografii Osipa Mandel'shtama i Borisa Pasternaka," Pamiat'. Istoricheskii sbornik 4 (Moscow, 1979; Paris, 1981); and E. B. Pasternak and E. V. Pasternak, "Boris Pasternak: Iz perepiski s pisateliami," in Iz istorii sovetskoi literatury 1920-1930-kh godov, LN 93 (Moscow, 1983), pp. 678-680. For a brief chronology of the events surrounding the "affair," see Appendix I.
149. See NM 1 on Bukharin's decision to make Mandelstam a personal'nyi pensioner, i.e., a recipient of a special pension including certain nonmonetary but highly valuable privileges such as access to the special food store for high officials and free passage on city transport. See also NM 2, pp. 603 ff.; and A. Grigor'ev and I. Petrova, "Mandel'shtam na poroge tridtsatykh godov," RL V-2 (April 1977): 181-192. Thanks to Bukharin, in 1932 (or 1933) Mandelstam was able to sign a contract and receive an advance for a two-volume edition of his works (see NM 2, p. 466). break
150. The Mandelstams moved into the apartment after their return from the Crimea (NM 2, p. 466). For a supplementary record of the Mandelstams' peregrinations between the return from Armenia and the arrest and exile in 1934, see the extremely valuable recollections of B. S. Kuzin, "Ob O. E. Mandel'shtame," in VRSKhD 140, nos. 3-4 (1983): 116.
151. What makes it especially ironic is that Mandelstam's vituperations in The Fourth Prose against A. G. Gornfel'd, who accused Mandelstam of literary theft, had an anti-Semitic flavor. Consider: "This paralytic d'Anthés, this uncle Monia from the Basseinaia Street . . . Uncle Gornfel'd, why did you decide to complain in the Birzhevka, that is, The Red Evening Gazette, in the Soviet year of 1929? You would have done better to weep in the clean Jewish literary waistcoat of Mr. Propper. You would have done better to relate your misfortune to the banker with sciatic nerve, kugel, and the tallith . . ." ( SS 2, p. 185). Since it was Mandelstam, not Gornfel'd, who was in the wrong (though not to the extent claimed by Gornfel'd), the passage begins to appear doubly ironic.
152. S. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography 1888-1938 (New York, 1973), p. 276 (and broadly, chapter 9). See also R. C. Tucker, "Stalinism as Revolution from Above," and Moshe Lewin, "The Social Background of Stalinism," both in Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York, 1977).
153. "Zasnula chern' . . ." SS 1:163. According to the diary of S. P. Kablukov (Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnika Kablukova"), this poem, which Mandelstam included in his Stone (1916), was removed by the censor. The "Harlequin" was the nickname given by the courtiers to Emperor Paul I (1796-1801), the eccentric son of Catherine II. Paul was murdered, if not on the orders then with direct knowledge of his son, the poem's other tsar, Emperor Alexander I (1801-1825). In presenting Alexander, Mandelstam was relying on the Pushkinian allegory of the Bronze Horseman seen through the prism of Innokentii Annenskii's "Petersburg" (1910): "He [the Horseman] was both terrible and daring, / But the steed let him down, / The tsar failed to crush the serpent, / And, stepped upon, it became our idol." The "beast," to rely on Mandelstam's usage (e.g., SS 3, p. 130, and "The Age"), refers most likely to the steed—Russia—who turned out to be too wild for Alexander's feeble hand. However, the word also echoes the apocalyptic euphemism for Napoleon, current during Alexander's reign. "You, Russia, who rest on stone and blood" is reminiscent of Alexander Herzen's "Petersburg was built on stone and blood" ( On the Development of the Revolutionary Ideas in Russia, in Herzen, Sochineniia, vol. 3 [1956], p. 255).
154. I am using the term in the sense it was used in R. Barthes, Mythologies (New York, 1972), esp. pp. 117-121.