1. The "epic" element in the lyric has been discussed by Briusov and Blok (e.g., Blok's review of Briusov's Urbi et orbi). For more recent views, see L. Ginzburg, O lirike (Leningrad, 1974); D. Maksimov, "Ideia puti v poeticheskom mire Al. Bloka," in Poeziia i proza Aleksandra Bloka (Leningrad, 1981), pp. 6-151; N. Mandelstam (e.g., the chapters "Kniga i tetrad"' and "Tsikl" in NM 1); and L. Dolgopolov, Na rubezhe vekov: O russkoi literature kontsa XIX-nachala XX (Leningrad, 1977).

2. R. P. Hughes, "Nothung, the Cassia Flower, and a 'Spirit of Music' in the Poetry of Aleksandr Blok," California Slavic Studies 6 (1971): 49-60.

3. B. Pasternak, Doktor Zhivago: "Gefsimanskii sad": "No kniga zhizni podoshla k stranitse, / Kotoraia dorozhe vsekh sviatyn'. / Seichas dolzhno napisannoe sbyt'sia, / Puskai zhe sbudetsia ono. Amin'." As Omry Ronen ("Osip Mandel'stam * : An Ode and an Elegy" [Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1976]; An Approach to Mandel'stam * [Jerusalem, 1983]) has shown, Mandelstam paid particular attention to the poems that other poets composed at the end of their lives (e.g., Derzhavin's "Reka vremen") and that were therefore most intensely "illuminated by the sun" of their death ("Pushkin and Skriabin").

4. NM 1; C. Brown, Mandelstam (Cambridge, 1973); N. I. Khardzhiev in Stikhotvoreniia (1973).

5. According to NM 2 (pp. 501 ff.), some of Mandelstam's old friends, specifically Shileiko, believed as late as the spring of 1924 that the poet had been abjectly seeking favor with the regime. What prompted these "rumors" is not clear, but it was not hard to consider Mandelstam a sympathetic fellow traveler in view of his substantial contributions to Red Virgin Soil, the almanac Nashi dni, and Prozhektor (all edited by A. K. Voronskii) in 1922-24. Especially "Vek" and "Nashedshii podkovu," both published in the January 1923 issue of Krasnaia nov', may lend themselves to such an interpretation.

6. R. A. Maguire, Red Virgin Soil: Soviet Literature in the 1920s (Princeton, 1968), p. 32. See also E. Dinershtein, "A. K. Voronskii: Iz perepiski s sovetskimi pisateliami (Vstupitel'naia stat'ia)," in Iz istorii sovetskoi literatury 1920-1930-kh godov: Novye materialy i issledovaniia, LN 93 (1983), pp. 535 ff. Cf. L. Fleishman, Pasternak v dvadtsatye gody (Munich, 1981), p. 24n.

7. "Ia budu metat'sia po taboru ulitsy temnoi" (1925, SS 1:144). The addressee of the poem is Ol'ga Vaksel'. About her affair with Mandelstam, see NM 1 and 2 and the recently published notes of Ol'ga Vaksel', "O Mandel'shtame. Iz dnevnika," Chast' rechi (New York) 1 (1980): 251-254, as well as S. Polianina, "Ol'ga Vaksel"' (ibid., pp. 254-263).

8. NM 1, p. 200. Contradicting Nadezhda Mandelstam's assertion, N. Khardzhiev describes the galleys of the 1928 edition as containing substantial editorial changes in Mandelstam's own hand and the hand of his friend, the poet Benedikt Livshits (see Stikhotvoreniia [1973], p. 312 [annotations to no. 276]). In fact, Nadezhda Mandelstam's statements are at times contradictory, and in the chapter devoted to the dating of the poetry of 1920-21 she continue

      maintains that the order of poems in Stikhotvoreniia (1928) restores the sequence garbled in Tristia (NM 2, p. 68).

9. In 1937, exiled Mandelstam inscribed a copy of the 1928 Poems for his Voronezh friend Natasha Shtempel': "For dear Natasha,—I do not know how to inscribe [this]: what joy that I could find [a copy of this] book to give as a gift, however bad it is. I promise not to write such books and obey [her] in everything—under one condition, that [she] obey me too." Signed: O.M., V[oronezh], March 3, [19]27 [ sic ] (Princeton Archive).

10. In the political spectrum of the period, Mandelstam's position came close to that of the "Change of Landmarks" ( Smena vekh, named after an eponymous collection of essays, 1921), an émigré movement whose goal was to reconcile the Russian intelligentsia with the Bolshevik Revolution (see, for example, M. Aucouturier, "Smena vekh i russkaia literatura 20-kh godov," in Odna ili dve russkikh literatury? [Lausanne, 1981]). In early 1922, Mandelstam was actually identified as a "smenovekhovets" ( SS 4, p. 181). As to his "Hellenistic" program (a kind of a sacralization of everyday life), he spelled it out in both the poetry and the prose of the period, beginning with a poem "Dekabrist" (1918): "But empty heavens do not want a sacrifice—everywhere there is work and constancy." Of particular interest are such essays as "Gumanizm i sovremennost'," "O vnutrennem ellinizme v russkoi literature" (virtually identical with "O prirode slova"), and, most transparent, the recently reprinted "Pshenitsa chelovecheskaia" (The Wheat of Humanity)—all published in the Change of Landmarks newspaper Nakanune in 1922-23. On the last of these essays, published in the June 22 issue of the paper, see L. Fleishman, "Neizvestnaia stat'ia Osipa Mandel'shtama," Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 10 (1982): 451-459. In "The Wheat of Humanity," Mandelstam recalled Herzen, pointing directly to the origins of his understanding of the future of Russia and Europe. Such uses of Herzen were commonplace in the contemporary press. See, for example, I. Lezhnev, "Velikii sintez," Novaia Rossiia 1 (1922): 14-28, where a leader of the Change of Landmarks likewise uses Herzen's "prophecies" to legitimize the Bolshevik Revolution from the "Slavophile" position. On Herzen as an "intense Slavophile nationalist," see K. Levin's A. I. Gertsen: Lichnost' i ideologiia, 2d ed. (Petrograd, 1922) (reviewed favorably in PiR 6 [1922]: 278-279). See also P. F. Preobrazhenskii, "Al. Gertsen i K. Leont'ev: Sravnitel'naia morfologiia tvorchestva," PiR 2/5 (1922): 79-87. Cf. S. Broyde, Osip Mandel'stam * and His Age (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), pp. 5-6, 9-28, 35-36, 200. On Herzen and Mandelstam, cf. Sydney Monas's introduction to Osip Mandelstam: Selected Essays (Austin, 1977), pp. i-xxvi. Herzen's "Buddhism in Science" (noted by Monas) was not the chief source of Mandelstam's appellation "Buddhist." See Vl. Solov'ev, "Buddiiskoe nastroenie v poezii" (1894), SS 7, pp. 81-99.

11. V. Briusov, "Sredi stikhov" (review of The Second Book ), PiR 6 (1923): 63-66. The bitterness and unfairness of Briusov's review becomes more comprehensible if we consider his own, compared to Mandelstam's, unsuccessful attempts at introducing high, classical diction into contemporary poetry. break

      See A. Men'shutin and A. Siniavskii, Poeziia pervykh let revoliutsii: 1917-1920 (Moscow, 1964), pp. 372-375. Further, Briusov's criticism should be viewed in the context of the savage attack mounted on Briusov himself by the Lef critic B. I. Arvatov, who described Briusov's use of classical vocabulary as "counterrevolutionary" ("Kontrrevoliutsiia formy," Lef 1 [1923]). "Why did Comrade Arvatov, for polemical reasons, use the argument that he himself does not believe? Is it decent?" (Briusov, "Sredi stikhov," p. 88). Mandelstam could have addressed these words to Briusov. Was Briusov offering Lefa substitute victim in the form of Mandelstam? D. S. Mirskii reflected on the incident in a Briusov obituary ( Sovremennye zapiski 25 [1924]: 414-426). In general, however, Briusov had a high opinion of Mandelstam, "whose poems are always beautiful and well thought out" ("Vchera, segodnia i zavtra russkoi poezii," PiR 7 [1922]: 52). Cf. C. Brown, Mandelstam, pp. 111ff.; and Ronen, "Osip Mandel'stam * ," p. 117.

12. "Liubliu pod svodami sedyia tishiny" (1921), SS 1:124. Cf. Mandelstam's quotation of M. Lomonosov's ode of 1747 in "Pshenitsa chelovecheskaia": "Tsarei i tsarstv zemnykh otrada / Vozliublennaia tishina." See note 10 (Fleishman, "Neizvestnaia stat'ia Mandel'shtama").

13. "Ia v khorovod tenei, toptavshikh nezhnyi lug" (1921), SS 1:123.

14. Nadezhda Mandelstam (NM 1, p. 257) testifies to Mandelstam's owning a volume of Vico's writings in the 1920s. Vico's ideas were frequently discussed in Russia both before the revolution (in connection with Nietzsche) and afterward (often in connection with Spengler). See, for example, V. Pertsev, "V. Buzeskul, 'Antichnost' i sovremnennost"" (review), Golos minuvshego 5 (1913); B. Vipper, Krugovorot istorii (Moscow, 1923); V. Fridliand, "Krugovorot professora istorii" (review of Vipper's Krugovorot istorii ), PiR 6 (1923); and A. Lunacharskii, "Taneev i Skriabin," Novyi mir 6 (1925). On "eternal recurrence" as a specifically Acmeist myth, see Iu. I. Levin et al., "Russkaia semanticheskaia poetika kak potentsial'naia kul'turnaia paradigma," RL 7/8 (1974).

15. See the discussion of N. Gumilev's and Vl. Khodasevich's responses to Mandelstam in chapter 3.

16. The first one, "Ia ne uvizhu znamenitoi Fedry" ( SS 1:81), had been composed by November 18, 1915, when Kablukov sent a copy of it to his friend D. V. Znamenskii. See A. Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnika S. P. Kablukova," VRSKhD 129, no. 3 (1979): 149. Cf. Stikhotvoreniia (1973), p. 268. An extant copy of a version of the second poem ( SS 1:82), recorded in Mandelstam's own hand, bears the date "13 October 1915." This autograph is available at the Mandelstam Archive at Princeton University. According to Khardzhiev, the final draft of the published version (M. L. Lozinskii's archive) was dated 1916. See Stikhotvoreniia (1973), pp. 268-269.

17. C. Brown, Mandelstam, pp. 208-209, 212-213.

18. "Blessed is he who visited this world in its fateful moments" ("Tsitseron" ["Orator rimskii govoril"]). Cf. further such "apocalyptically" relevant expressions as: "the night of Rome," the 'setting of [Rome's] bloody star in all its grandeur," "he [Cicero] was drinking immortality." Cf. "drinking continue

      mortal air" in "V Petropole prozrachnom my umrem" (1916), SS 1:89. See also note 51.

19. "Maiakovskii read ["A Cloud in Trousers"] once again, but toward the end slid back into [the manner of] a shaman-conjurer [ shaman-zaklinatel' ]," a June 1915 entry from the diary of B. Lazarevskii (cited in V. Katanian, Maiakovskii: Literaturnaia khronika [Moscow, 1961], p. 72).

20. Mandelstam's usage of the "screen" or curtain [ zanaves ] echoes clearly N. Gumilev's words from his Acmeist manifesto "Nasledie simvolizma i akmeizm" ( Apollon 1 [1913]): "Death is a screen [ zanaves ] separating us, the actors, from the spectators."

21. On "igry" (games) in relation to the "Skriabin Weeks," a series of performances and lectures dedicated to the deceased composer, see A. Morozov's commentary to Kablukov's diary (Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnika Kablukova"). See also Ronen, An Approach to Mandel'stam * .

22. Cf. Mandelstam's usage of the word game ( igra ) in a 1920 essay "The State and Rhythm": "A conscious creation of history [made possible by the revolution], its birth out of a celebration as a manifestation of the people's creative will, shall be from now on an inalienable right of mankind. In the future, the social game will take the place of social contradictions and will become that fermenting agent which assures an organic blossoming of culture" ( SS 3, p. 126).

23. For a detailed discussion of the uses of Racine and Euripides in these two poems see C. Brown, Mandelstam, pp. 213 ff. See also L. Martinez, "Le noir et le blanc. A propos de trois poèmes de Mandelstam," Cahiers de linguistique d'Orientalisme et de Slavistique 3-4 (1974): 118-137; and K. Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), pp. 150 ff.

24. One 1915 draft differs from the final version as follows. Lines 7-10: "Here she is: what words and how terrible she looks[!] Hippolytus, sensing truth, is avoiding her presence." Lines 13-21: "Like a black torch amid bright daylight, Phaedra ignited with her love for Hippolytus and herself has perished, blaming the son, learning from the old nurse. Forgetting her kin and the royal title, [she] cast a shadow of untruth on the youth, lured the hunter into a trap. You shall be bewailed by the woods, o stag!" Lines 26-29: "But we, following the dead home with a funeral song, are singing the sun of the wild and sleepless passion." The sheet also contains a quatrain that belongs to the "chorus" somewhere at the beginning of the poem: "Let us gather the fruit of the misfortune[,] and for the fatigued Phaedra, the black sun of the wild and sleepless passion shall set." Cf. another draft, one from M. Lozinskii's archive, in Stikhotvoreniia (1973), pp. 269 ff.

25. C. Brown, "The Classical in Tristia, " in Mandelstam; V. Terras, "Classical Motives in the Poetry of Osip Mandelstam," Slavic and East European Journal 3 (1966); G. Levinton, "'Na kamennykh otrogakh Pierii' Osipa Mandel'shtama: Materialy k analizu," RL V-2, V-3 (March 1977, July 1977); N. A. Nilsson, "Mandel'stam's Poem 'Voz'mi na radost',"' RL 7/8 (1974); and K. Taranovsky, "Bees and Wasps: Mandel'stam and Vjaceslav Ivanov," in Essays on Mandel'stam * . break

26. "Significantly, Mandelstam, when he attempts to legitimize the [notion] of the word independent of meaning, comes close to the Futurists" (I. Gruzdev, "Sovremennaia russkaia poeziia," Kniga i revoliutsiia 3 [1923]: 34). See also M. Karpovich, "Moe znakomstvo s Mandel'stamom"; Novyi zhurnal 49 (1957); NM 1, p. 377; O. Mandelstam, "Literaturnaia Moskva" ( SS 2, particular focus on Maiakovskii); R. Timenchik, "Zametki ob akmeizme III," RL IX-II (1981); Taranovsky, "A Concert at the Railroad Station," in Essays on Mandel'stam * ; Ronen, "Leksicheskii povtor," "Osip Mandel'stam * ," and An Approach to Mandel'stam * ; and Vl. Khodasevich, "O Mandel'shtame," Dni 65 (1922). See also Khardzhiev's commentary on 'Grifel'naia oda" and "Nashedshii podkovu" in Stikhotvoreniia (1973); and Vl. Markov, "Mysli o russkom futurizme," Novyi zhyrnal 38 (1954). According to Nadezhda Mandelstam (NM 2, p. 514), the original friendship between Maiakovskii and Mandelstam was spoiled by the zealots of the respective movements.

27. Viach. Ivanov, "O niskhozhdenii," Vesy 5 (1905), included in his essay collection Po zvezdam (St. Petersburg, 1909) under the title "Simvolika esteticheskikh nachal." Cf: Bakhtin's (1920) characterization of Ivanov's theory in Bakhtin, Estetika slovesnogo tvorchestva (Moscow, 1979), pp. 375 ff. See also note 40.

28. Stikhotvoreniia (1973), p. 251n.3.

29. "Unichtozhaet plamen'," SS 1 :73. For a fuller version of this poem (1915), which includes the cross as one of the referents for the "tree," see Stikhotvoreniia (1973), pp. 266 ff. The poem was polemically pointed in the direction of Viacheslav Ivanov's 1904 poem "Krest zla" (The Cross of Evil): "Kak izrekut, o brat'ia, usta soblazna vest'? / I Grekh—altar' raspiat'ia, / I zla Golgofa est'!"

30. "The lesson of January 9—regicide—is a true lesson of tragedies: life is impossible unless the tsar is killed. January 9 is a tragedy with chorus alone, without the hero, without the shepherd. . . . January 9 is a Petersburg tragedy; it could unfold only in Petersburg: its plan, the network of its streets, left an indelible trace on the nature of the historical event" ( SS 3, pp. 130, 131). I hardly need point out that the word shepherd, as a Russian saying goes, comes from a different opera.

31. Cf. Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * , p. 150: "The origin of Mandelstam's image is clear enough: it is the 'black sun of wild and sleepless passion. ' "

32. See discussion of V. V. Gippius in chapter 3.

33. "Eta noch' nepopravima" (1916), SS 1:91. Cf. Aleksandr Blok's development of Tristan's "autobiography" in Wagner's music drama: "Zachatyi v noch', ia v noch' rozhden / . . . Tak tiazhek materi byl ston / Tak cheren nochi zev [Conceived in the night, I was born in the night . . . So heavy was mother's moan, So black the maw of the night]." Cf. Tristan und Isolde, act 2, scene 3: "es ist das dunkel / nächt'ge Land, / daraus die Mutter / mich entstand. . . . Ihr Liebesberger war / das Wunderreich der Nacht / aus ich erst erwacht."

34. T. S. Eliot, The Three Voices of Poetry (New York, 1954).

35. Viach. Ivanov, "Predchuvstviia i predvestiia" (1906), SS 2, pp. 93- hard

      94; "O suchshestve tragedii" (1912), ibid., pp. 192 ff.; and "Drevnii uzhas," in Po zvezdam.

36. A. N. Veselovskii, "Epicheskie povtoreniia kak khronologicheskii moment," in Istoricheskaia poetika (Moscow, 1940), pp. 93-124.

37. Cf. another 1916 poem, "The daughter of Andronicus Comnenus": "Oh daughter of Byzantium's glory! / Help me this night / To rescue the sun from captivity. / Help me to defeat with a harmonious song / The luxury of mortal flesh. . . ." ("Doch' Andronika Komnena," SS 4:512). The implied "Orphic" plot may be formulated as follows: held captive by the dark eros, the sun can be liberated only with a special song, which the poet can produce only if "the Emperor's daughter," in her own turn, helps the poet to defeat the spell of her "luxuriant mortal flesh." Cf. Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam, p. 150.

38. For a possible background for Mandelstam's imagery in mystical literature, see a discussion of St. John of the Cross in E. G. Gardner, Dante and the Mystics (New York, 1968), esp. p. 302. Dante's Pilgrim, too, is blinded as he contemplates Christ as the Sun in Paradiso, 8th Sphere. Consonant imagery may also be found in contemporary writings such as I. Annenskii's essay "Belyi ekstaz," where the image is associated with the ultimate aesthetization of suffering, a pure artistry of life. Mandelstam's "Pushkin and Skriabin" echoes Annenskii's essay, as does his "Ode to Beethoven" ( beloi slavy torzhestvo). Consider also Annenskii's emphasis on high noon as the time of the fateful action in his preface to the translation of Hippolytus. On this subject, cf. W. Schlott, Zur Funktion antiker Göttermythen in der Lyrik Osip Mandel'stam * s (Frankfurt am Main, 1981), pp. 103 ff. In the terminology of Viacheslav Ivanov, "white ecstasy" corresponded to the "ascent," "the individuated white break with the verdure." It is a "symbol of that tragic [action] that commences when one of the participants in the round dance of Dionysus comes out of the dithyrambic circle. Out of the impersonal elements of the orgiastic dithyrambic, there arises the lofty image of the tragic hero, prominent in his individual particularity, etc." (Viach. Ivanov, "Simvolika esteticheskikh nachal" [1905], SS 1, p. 825). Mandelstam was most impressed by this element of Ivanov's theory. See his letter to Viacheslav Ivanov (August 13/26, 1909, SS 2, p. 487), where he cites this passage; his poems "Dano mne telo" and "Silentium" ( SS 1:8 and 1:14); and the "pool" poems discussed in chapter 2. See also note 27.

39. A. N. Veselovskii, "Tri glavy iz istoricheskoi poetiki" (1899), in Istoricheskaia poetika, p. 211.

40. A. Bakhrakh, "Pis'ma Mariny Tsvetaevoi," Mosty (Munich) 5 (1960): 299-304.

41. M. Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (Essai sur le don, forme archaïque de l'échange, 1925) (New York, 1967), pp. 1, 52, 67.

42. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951), chapter 2: "From Shame-Culture to Guilt-Culture," esp. pp. 38 ff. See also D. Panofsky and E. Panofsky, Pandora's Box: The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol (New York, 1965).

43. "If proof of his charismatic qualification fails him for long, the leader continue

      endowed with charisma tends to think his god or his magical or heroic powers have deserted him" [italics are minel. Or: "Whenever it [charisma] appears it constitutes a 'call' in the most emphatic sense of the word, a 'mission,' or a 'spiritual duty"' (M. Weber, Charisma and Institution Building [Chicago, 1968], pp. 49 and 52).

44. A pledge places one in a dangerous position, both the one who offers it and the one who receives it. "The fact is that the pledge as a thing given spells danger for the two parties concerned. . . . The danger expressed by the thing given or transmitted is nowhere better expressed than in very ancient Germanic languages. This explains the meaning of the word Gift as gift and poison" (Mauss, The Gift, pp. 61 ff.). Mauss's etymological excursion is most illuminating. Cf. Russian: iad-eda (poison-food) with the Latinate pair poisonpotion. "We compare the uncertainty of the meaning of gift with that of the Latin venenum and the Greek filtron and fármakon. . . . Cf. also venia, venus, venenum—vanati (Sanskrit, to give pleasure) and gewinnen and win" (ibid., p. 127n.). Cf. Mandelstam's poem "Venitseiskaia zhizn"' (1920), which thematizes this etymological ambiguity: Venetsianka, "a Venetian woman," is rhymed with sklianka, "a vial with poison." The name of the "pearl of the Adriatic" is itself derived from veneti (those beloved or venal ) and venenum. One encounters similar thematization in A. Blok's cycle "Pliaski smerti."

45. "Dmitrii! Marina! V mire" (March 29/30, 1916), in Tsvetaeva, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, vol. 1, pp. 213 ff.

46. "Truly, poetry is the consciousness of one's inner rightness" (from "O sobesednike" [1914], SS 2, p. 236). The statement is an important one for Mandelstam's reception, and not only in the memoirs of his widow but in those of others as well. See Emil' Mindlin, Neobyknovennye sobesedniki (Moscow, 1968), pp. 82-83. On this subject see also chapter 2.

47. "Takova u nas marinok spes', u poliachek -to" (That's how fickle we, Marinas, are, we the Polish girls) and "Novoprestavlennoi boliaryne Marine" (the just-deceased boayryna Marina).

48. In traditional Russian usage, the term nerukotvornyi (not wrought by hand) refers specifically to the miracle central to the Orthodox veneration of icons: the appearance of an imprint of Christ's face on a towel belonging to a painter who was trying unsuccessfully to catch God's likeness on an icon. The imprinted icon, Spas nerukotvornyi (Savior not wrought by hand), possessed miraculous healing powers. The Russian Orthodox church celebrates the translation of the icon from Edessa to Constantinople (994) on August 16 together with the celebration ( poprazdnik ) of the Dormition of the Virgin. The echo of this coincidence is evident in Tsvetaeva's poem. On the legend, see N. V. Pokrovskii, Siiskii ikonopisnyi podlinnik, vyp. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1895), pp. 49-52. On the liturgical significance, see K. T. Nikol'skii, Posobie k izucheniiu ustava bogosluzheniia Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi (St. Petersburg, 1900), pp. 22 ff. (n. 3), 507-508. At least on the lexical level, the legend might represent a thematization of the representation of Christ as the "tabernacle, not made with hands," contrasted to the Old Testament tabernacle ( skiniia nerukotvornaia, to est', ne takovogo ustroeniia, Heb. 9:11 and elsewhere). The same expression, it continue

      might be recalled, was used by Pushkin in his "Pamiatnik" ("Ia pamiatnik sebe vozdvig nerukotvornyi ".)

49. "Iz ruk moikh-nerukotvornyi grad" (March 31, 1916), in Tsvetaeva, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, vol. 1, pp. 215 ff. The "shroud" ( pokrov, also meaning "protection") that Tsvetaeva had in mind referred to the vision of St. Andrew the Fool and his disciple Epiphaneus (c. 936) to whom the Mother of God appeared hovering in the air in the company of prophets, apostles, and angels praying for peace and extending a blessing and protection over the Christians with her shroud. The Russian Orthodox church celebrates this holiday, Pokrov Presviatyia Bogoroditsy, on October 1. See Nikol'skii, Posobie k izucheniiu, pp. 537 ff. See also N. P. Kondakov, Ikonografiia Bogomateri, vol. 2 (Petrograd, 1915), pp. 56-62, 93-102.

50. "Mimo nochnykh bashen" (March 31, 1916), in Tsvetaeva, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, vol. 1, p. 216.

51. Cf. "Pushkin and Skriabin," SS 2.

52. "O etot vozdukh, smutoi p'ianyi" (April 1916). In Tristia, the word mir is spelled with the Russian letter "i" (not the "iota"), which is why it is translated as "peace." For another version, see Stikhotvoreniia (1973), p. 271. Cf. a later, disdainful view of "Muscovite" Russia in "Vsë chuzhdo nam v stolitse nepotrebnoi" (1917?), SS 2, p. 457ch, pp. 457 ff. An approximate prose translation is as follows: "All's alien for us in the ungainly capital: her dry, stale earth, the riotous trading at the bread Sukharevka, and the terrifying sight of the highwayman Kremlin. // Wild and homely, she rules the whole people [ mir ]. With her million oriental carts—a pull, and on she goes: a peasant woman's girth of her market places oppresses [one] like half a universe. // Her churches' honeycombs are fragrant, like wild honey in the thick of the woods, and flocks of birds in dense migrations alarm her gloomy heavens. // In commerce she's a clever fox, and before the prince a pathetic slave woman. The troubled water of the udel'naia river flows, as of old, into dry troughs." The modifier udel'nyi refers to the "appendage" Russia of internecine wars before the emergence of the centralized Muscovite state in the fifteenth century (hence the "troubled water" [ mutnyi-smutnyi ] of Old Russia's "river"). The poem undoubtedly influenced the prose of a great admirer of Mandelstam's poetry, Boris Pilniak. See Pilniak's letter to Voronskii (1922) in LN 93 (1983), p. 570. Cf. also SS 1:102 ("Kogda v temnoi nochi zamiraet," 1918): Moscow—Herculaneum.

53. Suggested by V. Borisov. See Levinton, "'Na kamennykh otragakh Pierii' Mandel'shtama," p. 223. On this poem, see also Schlott, Antike Göttermythen in der Lyrik Mandel'stam * s.

54. The theme will receive a somewhat different rendering in the "Solominka" cycle (1916).

55. "Na rozval'niakh, ulozhennykh solomoi," SS 1:85. According to Khardzhiev ( Stikhotvoreniia, 1973), a final draft of the poem is dated March 1916. On this poem and the exchange, see also S. Karlinsky, Marina Cvetaeva: Her Life and Art (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966), pp. 38-40, 126; C. Brown, Mandelstam, pp. 225-227; Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * , pp. 11-120; L. continue

      Ginzburg, "Poetika Osipa Mandel'shtama," in O lirike (Leningrad, 1974); Levinton (1977); and Schlott, Antike Göttermythen in der Lyrik Mandel'stam * s, pp. 118-133 (particularly on the poem "V raznogolositse devicheskogo khora," SS 1:84).

56. Viach. lvanov, "Zavety simvolizma." See Mandelstam's polemic in "Utro akmeizma" ( SS 2). To sum up the differences most succinctly, Viacheslav Ivanov was a true realist, whereas Mandelstam was a nominalist, in the medieval sense of the word—hence the other title of the Acmeist movement, Adamism, suggesting that poets, like Adam, must give things new names. See the Acmeist "manifestos" (Gumilev's "Nasledie simvolizma i akmeizm," Gorodetskii's "Nekotorye techeniia v sovremennoi poezii," and Mandelstam's "Utro akmeizma"). For more specific history, see S. Driver, "Acmeism," Slavic and East European Journal 2 (1968); and R. Timenchik, "Zametki ob akmeizme" I, RL 7/8 (1974), and III, RL IX-II (1981).

57. "Russian history moves along the edge, along the bank, over a precipice, and is ready at any moment to fall off into nihilism, that is, into the [state of being] excommunicated from the word" (Mandelstam, "O prirode slova," SS 2, p. 248).

58. Mandelstam's "Notre Dame" (1912) is a good example of this Acmeist formula of dramatic balance: "Next to a reed, an oak, and everywhere the plumb is king." See P. Steiner, "Poem as Manifesto: Mandel'stam * 's 'Notre Dame,"' RL V-3 (July 1977): 239-256.

59. Mandelstam, "O sovremennoi poezii (K vykhodu' Al' manakha muz')" (1916), SS 3, pp. 27-30, deals with the predictability of the Symbolist poetic vocabulary. See also V. Gofman, "Iazyk simvolistov," in LN 27-29 (1937), pp. 54-105. See especially his discussion of the Symbolists' tendency "to project a verbal utterance onto a ready-made, stable, religious-mystical background which colors the consciousness of people of certain epochs" (pp. 66 ff.). Note that in his essay Gofman generously quotes from Mandelstam's critique of the Symbolists.

60. Manifestos of Mandelstam and Gumilev, respectively.

61. Vl. Piast's speech at the Tenishev School on December 7, 1913 ("Poeziia vne grupp," Rech' [December 9, 1913]).

62. Mandelstam, "O prirode slova," SS 2, p. 255.

63. NM 2, p. 128. Cf. also the opening paragraph of Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoirs (NM 1, p. 1), a prelude to the poet's arrest and representing a context in which the painting plays a similar, if not identical, role (this time with respect to both Akhmatova and Mandelstam).

64. The expression seems to have been determined by the possibility of paronomasia: RA gózhii, "sackcloth," as a synecdoche of kenotic humiliation, and RA kavoi, "fateful," alluding to a martyr's tragic fate.

65. A. Herzen (Gertsen), Byloe i Dumy: chasti 1-3, in Sochineniia, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1956), p. 80.

66. "Zametki o poezii," SS 2, p. 265.

67. A. Herzen, O razvitii revoliutsionnykh idei v Rossii (On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia), in Sochineniia, vol. 3, p. 454. break

68. On the reception of Avvakum in the nineteenth century, see E. I. Mamimin in Trudy Otdela drevne-russkoi literatury Instituta russkoi literatury Akademii nauk SSSR (Pushkinskogo doma) 13 (1957). See also V. I. Malyshev, "Bibliografiia sochinenii protopopa Avvakuma i literatury o nem 1917-1953 gg.," in Trudy Otdela drevne-russkoi literatury 10 (1954): 435-446.

69. N. Struve ( Neizdannyi Gumilev [Paris, 1982]) believes that Mandelstam had in mind the Iverskaia Church. It would certainly be an important item on any traveler's list of famous sights. The pivotal mention of the Virgin in two poems of the Tsvetaeva cycle, one of them specifically of the Iverskaia Virgin, points to the Iverskaia Church, the shrine of the fabulous icon. Taranovsky ( Essays on Mandel'stam * ) identifies the "church" as one in which Maryna Mniszek and the Pretender were married. See also N. A. Skvortsov, Arkheologiia i topografiia Moskvy. Kurs lektsii (Moscow, 1913).

70. Discussed in M. Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, 1812-1855 (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), pp. 497 ff. For a history of the Russian intelligentsia based on this premise, see R. V. Ivanov-Razumnik, Istoriia russkoi obshchestvennoi mysli (St. Petersburg, 1907).

71. Cf. W. Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore and London, 1978), pp. 118-129.

72. D. S. Merezhkovskii, Petr i Aleksei, vol. 3 in Khristos i Antikhrist (St. Petersburg, 1907). Cf. Iu. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspenskii, "Rol' dual'nykh modelei v dinamike russkoi kul'tury (do kontsa XVIII veka)," Trudy po russkoi i slavianskoi filologii 28 (Tartu, 1977).

73. Godunov's investigators determined that Tsarevich Dmitrii fell on a knife during an epileptic seizure while playing the game of "svaika." Similar to darts, this game is played with a knife (or a large nail) which is thrown at the target on the ground (Dal"s Dictionary, s.v. "Svaika" and "Tychka"). See S. F. Platonov, Ocherki po istorii smuty v Moskovskom gosudarstve (St. Petersburg, 1910), and, a no less likely source, his Sokrashchennyi kurs russkoi istorii dlia srednei shkoly (St. Petersburg, 1914), pp. 156 ff. A student at the University of St. Petersburg, Mandelstam could have attended Platonov's lectures on the Muscovite state. He might have also been familiar with more specialized literature, such as N. Ustrialov, Skazaniia sovremennikov o Dmitrii Samozvantse (St. Petersburg, 1859).

74. According to Dal"s Dictionary (s.v. "Baba"), "babki" was played with vertebrae, or with objects of a similar design that had one protruding side called khrebetik (i.e., a little spine, or the "spinous process of the vertebra"). Therefore, the translation of babki as "knucklebones" (C. Brown, Mandelstam, p. 222; Broyde, Osip Mandel'stam * , pp. 177, 189; and Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * , p. 119) might be misleading. Iu. M. Lotman suggested that the substitution may be attributed to the two poems by Pushkin with almost identical titles: "Na statuiu igraiushchego v babki" and "Na statuiu igraiushchego v svaiku" (Lotman, "O sootnoshenii zvukovykh i smyslovykh zhestov v poeticheskom tekste," in Semiotika teksta. Trudy po znakovym sistemam 11 [Tartu, 1979], p. 119). For another view, see L. Ginzburg, O lirike, p. 281. Mandelstam resorted to the former in "Boris Sinani," where his S-R populist friend continue

      who died young is compared to the statue for which Pushkin composed his inscription (in fact one of the last poems composed by him). This constellation of referents is discussed in Ronen, An Approach to Mandel'stam * , pp. 154-156.

75. The aphorisms of Heracleitos, translated into Russian by Vladimir Nilender (a one-time fiancé of Tsvetaeva and a friend of Mandelstam), were published in Moscow by the Symbolist publishing house of Musaget: Geraklit efesskii, fragmenty (Moscow, 1910). This particular fragment reads as follows: "Vechnost' est' ditia, igraiushchee kostiami—tsarstvo ditiati." Mandelstam's "babki" is merely an archaic and uniquely Russian word for casting dice.

76. The "precursor" theme becomes more pronounced when this poem is juxtaposed with Mandelstam's description of his friend Boris Sinani, who died shortly after graduating from the Tenishev: "His movements, when necessary, were large and possessed a swagger, like those of the boy playing babki in the sculpture of Fedor Tolstoi; . . . his stride, astonishingly light, was the stride of a barefooted man. He would have looked right with a sheepdog at his feet and a tall staff: he had golden animal fuzz on his cheeks and chin. [He looked] either like a Russian boy playing svaika or like the Italian John the Baptist with a barely noticeable bump on his nose" ( The Noise of Time, SS 2, p. 89). In her "Poetika Osipa Mandel'shtama," Lidiia Ginzburg noted a connection between Pushkin's "Na statuiu mal'chika, igraiushchego v babki" and Mandelstam's "In the Sledge."

77. On this image ( igra v babki and/or kosti ), cf. D. Segal, "O nekotorykh aspektakh smyslovoi struktury 'Grifel'noi ody' O. E. Mandel'shtama," RL 2 (1972), p. 65; Broyde, Osip Mandel'stam * , pp. 189-190; Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * , p. 119; Levinton, "'Na kamennykh otragakh Pierii' Mandel'shtama," p. 234n. 210; and Ronen, An Approach to Mandel'stam * , pp. 154-156.

78. Cf. Pushkin, Istoriia Pugacheva, SS 4, p. 497: "Suddenly everything began to stir and grew noisy; there were shouts: they are carting him, they are carting him! Following a detachment of the Cuirassiers, there passed a sledge with an elevated platform. On it sat Pugachev, bare-headed."

79. One of the poems Tsvetaeva recited at the "otherworldly evening" at the Kannegissers, where she made friends with Mandelstam (they had met before in Koktebel'), was the stridently pro-German "Ty miru otdana na travliu" (1914). The poem had such lines as "O Germany, my madness! O Germany, my love!" ("Nezdeshnii vecher," in Tsvetaeva, Proza [New York, 1953], pp. 277 ff.). The poem must have impressed Mandelstam deeply, for its echoes are heard not only in his 1916 "Bestiary" but also in the 1932 "K nemetskoi rechi. "

80. A. N. Veselovskii, "Psikhologicheskii parallelizm i ego formy v otrazhenii poeticheskogo stilia" in Istoricheskaia poetika, pp. 164 ff., 173-175, and 185-194. On the use of Veselovskii in the poetry of Russian modernism (particularly Mandelstam), see also Levinton, "'Na kamennykh otragakh Pierii' Mandel'shtama," p. 207. Not only was Mandelstam familiar with this term, but he used it in his own criticism, identifying one of the characteristic features of Anna Akhmatova's poetry as "asimmetrichnyi parallelizm narodnoi pesni" ( SS 3, p. 34). break

81. Cited in V. O. Kliuchevskii, Kurs russkoi istorii, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1937), p. 315.

82. Cf. Pushkin (the last stanza of Eugene Onegin ): "Some are gone already, and those [i.e., the Decembrists in exile] are far away, as Saadi has once said" ( Inykh uzh net, a te daleche, kak Sadi nekogda skazal ). Note the quoting of another poet's quotation—the transparency of the Acmeist palimpsest. Cf. C. Brown, Mandelstam, p. 224, which identifies the allusion to Pushkin.

83. C. Brown, Mandelstam, p. 223; and Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * , p. 119.

84. The pronoun was capitalized neither in the Berlin Tristia, printed in the old orthography, nor in the poem's first publication in Al'manakh muz (St. Petersburg, 1916), p. 113. By contrast, it was capitalized in "Neumolimye slova" ( SS 1:182).

85. SS 2, p. 286.

86. "S veselym rzhaniem pasutsia tabuny," SS 1: 80.

87. "Tsarevich alone was brought from Moscow under guard" ( Tsarevicha odnogo privezli iz Moskvy pod karaulom ) (Merezhkovskii, Petr i Aleksei, p. 515). For the "carting of the tsarevich through Moscow," see ibid., p. 413. One can find a more conventional interpretation of the story in "O tsareviche Aleksee," a ballad by K. K. Sluchevskii, who followed the interpretation of S. M. Solov'ev ( Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen, vol. 17, chap. 2).

88. D. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature (New York, 1973), p. 417.

89. G. Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Paris, 1981), p. 457.

90. These two patterns were well within the Schellengian tradition and, in Russia, well within the millenarian scenario of Vladimir Solov'ev. See his "Smysl liubvi" ( SS, vol. 9) and the philosophical magnum opus Opravdanie dobra.

91. Merezhkovskii, Petr i Aleksei, p. 316. The reference is to the eighteenth-century Russian tale, "A Story About a Russian Sailor, Vasilii Kariotskii, and About the Beautiful Princess [ korolevna] Irakliia of the Florentine Land" (see Russkaia proza XVIII veka, ed. G. P. Makogonenko and A. V. Zapadov, vol. 1 [Moscow and Leningrad, 1950], pp. 22-41).

92. Ibid., pp. 306, 315.

91. Merezhkovskii, Petr i Aleksei, p. 316. The reference is to the eighteenth-century Russian tale, "A Story About a Russian Sailor, Vasilii Kariotskii, and About the Beautiful Princess [ korolevna] Irakliia of the Florentine Land" (see Russkaia proza XVIII veka, ed. G. P. Makogonenko and A. V. Zapadov, vol. 1 [Moscow and Leningrad, 1950], pp. 22-41).

92. Ibid., pp. 306, 315.

93. This probable genealogy of Merezhkovskii's John was kindly suggested to me by Simon Karlinsky.

94. Merezhkovskii, Petr i Aleksei, p. 545. Those interested in literary parody will appreciate juxtaposing this passage as well as other instances of contemporary fascination with the image of the black or night sun with Kornei Chukovskii's narrative poem for children, "Crocodile," in which the beast swallows the sun.

95. "The obligation of worthy return is imperative. Face is lost forever if it is not made or if equivalent value is not destroyed" (Mauss, The Gift, p. 41).

96. "Ne veria voskresen'ia chudu," SS 1:90. See also Stikhotvoreniia (1973). Interesting observations concerning this poem may be found in Levinton, "'Na kamennykh otragakh Pierii' Mandel'shtama," p. 237n. 236. break

97. Cf. Derzhavin's Horatian "Pamiatnik": "I have erected a monument to myself, miraculous [ chudesnyi ], eternal."

98. Mauss, The Gift, pp. 6 ff.

99. Cf. H. Bloom, "Kenosis or Repetition and Discontinuity," in The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York, 1973).

100. Cf. Viach. Ivanov, recalling the mysteries of ancient speech: "na iazyke feurgov 'umeret" znachilo 'rodit'sia,' 'rodit'sia' znachilo 'umeret' " ("to die" meant "to be born," "to be born" meant "to die"), in "Zavety simvolizma" (1910).

101. Cf. O. Ronen, "The Dry River and the Black Ice: Anamnesis and Amnesia in Mandel'stam * 's poem 'Ia slovo pozabyl, cto * ia xotel skazat',' " SH 1 (1977): 184.

102. N. Zernov, Eastern Christiandom: A Study of Origins and Development of the Eastern Orthodox Church (New York, 1961), p. 444. Another part of the liturgy of the Eucharist bears the name "anaphora" (a familiar rhetorical term), which literally signifies "a return gift" and is used here to mean an offering (ibid.). The Russian word for "Host" is Sviatye dary (Holy Gifts). See also D. G. Dix, "The Meaning of the Eucharist" (particularly "The Eucharist as Anamnesis," pp. 243-247), in The Shape of the Liturgy (London, 1945).

103. "Vechnye sny, kak obrazchiki krovi, perelivai iz stakana v stakan" ("Batiushkov" [1932], SS 1:261). It was published in Novyi mir 6 (1932).

104. Cf. Levinton, "'Na kamennykh otragakh Pierii' Mandel'shtama," p. 223.

105. "Vot daronositsa kak solntse zolotoe" (1915), SS 1:117.

106. O. Ronen, "An Introduction to Mandel'stam * 's Slate Ode and 1 January 1924: Similarity and Complementarity," SH 4 (1979), p. 148n. In visual terms, Mandelstam's fascination with the "daronositsa" may be related, and not without reason, to the tomb, the sepulcher, and to him who rose from it. The image bears a further comparison with Merezhkovskii's novel, in which the actual daronositsa is juxtaposed with the black crate that carried a statue of Aphrodite into Russia from Rome on the order of Peter the Great. Mandelstam's "black sun" and the related images, although highly condensed, echo this juxtaposition. I shall examine them at greater length later on. The "apple" metaphor may be traced both to the "orb," the Byzantine symbol of autocratic power, and to the monstrance, since both objects are crowned with the cross.

107. "Petr Chaadaev," SS 2, p. 286.

108. Mauss, The Gift, p. 6.

109. Cf. one of Mandelstam's earliest poems: "In the informality of a creating exchange, tell me, who would be able to combine artfully the severity of Tiutchev with Verlaine's infantile jest?" (1908, SS 4:498). A central principle of Acmeist poetics of allusion, "creating exchange" was first discussed by Taranovsky and Ronen. See also C. Brown, "On Reading Mandelstam," in O. Mandelstam, SS 1, p. xiv ff.

110. Mauss, The Gift, p. 66.

111. See N. Berkovskii, "O proze Mandel'shtama," in Tekushchaia literatura (Moscow, 1930). Cf. M. Aucouturier, "The Legend of the Poet and the continue

      Image of the Actor in the Short Stories of Pasternak," Studies in Short Fiction 3 (1966): 225-235; and idem, "The Metonymous Hero, or the Beginnings of Pasternak the Novelist," Books Abroad 44 (Spring 1977): 222-227. Cf. also Roman Jakobson's pioneering "Randbemerkungen zur Prosa des Dichters Pasternak," Slavische Rundschau 7 (1935); N. A. Nilsson, "Life as Ecstasy and Sacrifice: Two Poems by Pasternak," Scando-Slavica 5 (1959).

112. The topic has been explored in N. Gorodetzky, The Humiliated Christ in Modern Russian Thought (London and New York, 1938). See also G. P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind (Cambridge, Mass., 1946). On the use of the notion in Blok, see S. Hackel, The Poet and the Revolution (Oxford, 1975), pp. 98-103. For a discussion of its relevance in Pasternak's Doktor Zhivago, see M. F. Rowland and P. Rowland, Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago (Carbondale, Ill., 1967), pp. 173-194.

113. The last words are a citation from Mandelstam's auto-descriptive Fourth Prose.