1. P. D. Zhukov, "Levyi front isskusstv," Kniga i revoliutsiia 3/27 (1923): 41.

2. V. Zhirmunskii, "Preodolevshie simvolizm" (1916, 1921), in Voprosy teorii literatury (Leningrad, 1928), pp. 278-333, esp. p. 330, where Mandelstam is compared with Gogol and Maiakovskii.

3. B. Eikhenbaum, Anna Akhmatova: Opyt analiza (Petersburg, 1923), p. 26.

4. "There is an unforgivable callousness in our attitude toward the dead—we cross them out, associate them with the past. . . . Infinitely rich is the consciousness that says: 'all is in the present.' . . . The vitality of symbolism, its incessant charm. . . . The reflected light of symbolism [can be seen in the recent work of] Mikhail Kuzmin, O. Mandelstam, Nikolai Gumilev" (E. Gollerbakh, [no title], Novaia russkaia kniga [Berlin] 7 [1922], p. 2).

5. Eikhenbaum, Anna Akhmatova: "The poetry of symbolism is already behind us. It is no longer possible to speak about Bal'mont, and about Blok—it is already difficult. Before us, there are Akhmatova and Mandelstam on one side and the Futurists and the Imagists on the other" (pp. 7ff.). On the Ac- soft

      meists as elaborators of the Symbolist tradition: "Acmeists expand this area of the [Symbolist] tradition. Mandelstam strengthens the classical line and declares: 'Classical poetry is the poetry of revolution"' (p. 19). Against Zhirmunskii: "Acmeists are not a militant group: they consider their chief mission to be the achievement of equilibrium, smoothing out contradictions, introduction of corrections" (p. 24). Eikhenbaum's position was consonant with Iurii Tynianov's view of Akhmatova in "Promezhutok" (1924) as a poet virtually limited to the theme of Lot's wife.

6. Eikhenbaum, Anna Akhmatova, p. 7.

7. N. Punin, Zhizn' iskusstva 41 (October 17, 1922): 3.

8. "Kontsert na vokzale" ( SS 1: 125). For an interpretation of the poem as one developing the "Lermontovian" theme of the poet's way, see K. Taranovsky, "Concert at the Railroad Station: The Problem of Context and Subtext," in Essays on Mandel'stam * (Cambridge, Mass., 1976). Apart from situating Mandelstam in a particular tradition and showing how Mandelstam managed to encode the tradition in the four stanzas, the essay focuses on the approach to reading Mandelstam that was pioneered by the author and received a further elaboration in the work of his students, Omry Ronen and Steven Broyde. For a discussion of this poem that takes as its point of departure Iurii Tynianov's views, see L. Ginzburg, "Poetika Osipa Mandel'shtama," in O starom i novom (Leningrad, 1982). If I am not mistaken, Lidiia Ginzburg was the first to hint at the presence of a Blokian subtext in the poem. For the rich Tiutchevian subtext, see E. Toddes, "Mandel'shtam i Tiutchev," International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics 17 (1974). For a more precise dating as well as a wealth of additional "subtexts," see O. Ronen, An Approach to Mandel'stam * (Jerusalem, 1983), pp. xvii-xx.

9. G. Lelevich, "Gippokratovo litso" (Hippocrates' mask), Krasnaia nov' 1 (1925): 296. The article's title refers to a medical term for the "death mask"—a pall that comes over a dying man's face. Among other poets wearing this "mask," according to Lelevich, were Pasternak and Khodasevich. The mention of Hamlet's famous line refers to Mandelstam's "Vek" (1922, SS 1: 135): "In order to tear the age out of captivity, in order to erect the new world, the joints of gnarled days need to be bound together with the flute. . . . But your spine is broken, my cruel, dear age/century." The Russian Contemporary was a short-lived journal (only four issues appeared, all in 1924).

10. SS 2, p. 258.

11. Shum vremeni, "Muzyka v Pavlovske," SS 2. According to NM 2, Mandelstam had most of The Noise of Time finished in 1923. See the correspondence between Mandelstam and Pasternak in "Zamechaniia o peresechenii biografii Osipa Mandel'shtama i Borisa Pasternaka," in Pamiat': Istoricheskii sbornik 4 (Moscow, 1979; Paris, 1981), p. 293. See also letters of Mandelstam and Pilniak to Voronskii in Iz istorii sovetskoi literatury 1920-1930-kh godov, LN 93 (Moscow, 1983), pp. 570 and 601.

12. Apart from this Blokian subtext, see also David Burliuk's 1913 poem "Luna kak vsha polzet nebes podkladkoi" (noted by Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * ): "The sky is a corpse!!! Not more! / Stars are worms drunk with fog continue

 . . . Stars—worms—(pussy, live) rash!" etc. This rather artless imitation of Baudelaire's "Charogne" (or, in general, of the poètes maudits ) was cited by V. Khlebnikov and A. Kruchenykh in Dokhlaia luna (Moscow, 1913). See Vl. Markov, Manifesty i programmy russkikh futuristov, vol. 27 of Slavische Propyläen (Munich, 1967), p. 54. It is also possible that the "works" had something to do with a now-lost mediating text the echo of which can be heard in the following passage: "Let heaven portend trouble. Let old women pronounce oracles [ prorekaiut ] about the worm in heaven crawling in refuse, let them predict wholesale death from hunger" (N. Nikitin, "Kamni," Zavtra: Literaturno-kriticheskii sbornik, vol. 1, ed. E. Zamiatin, M. Kuzmin, and M. Lozinskii (Berlin, 1923), p. 36.

13. Blok's imagery here owes much to the "echo" of the railroad at the end of Madame Bovary, when Emma's daydreaming in a hotel room is disturbed by the deafening noise of a cart hauling strips of iron. Mandelstam noted this "railroad link" between Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Flaubert's novel about, as he called her, "Anna's younger cousin." See Mandelstam's digression on prose at the conclusion of The Egyptian Stamp.

14. The last sentence provides a valuable subtext to Mandelstam's "Vek" (1922): "Only a parasite living off the backs of beasts [ zakhrebetnik ] trembles at the threshold of the new days." Clearly, the poet who wished to be identified with the dead century and offer himself as a sacrificial victim to establish continuity between the new and the old age did not wish to be confused with the "parasitic" remnants of that age. That same caution, exemplified also by the "oath of allegiance to the fourth estate" ("1 January 1924"), resurfaces in the 1930s, particularly in "The age-wolfhound leaps on my shoulders" and "Eshche daleko mne do patriarkha."

15. For a different, more precise, dating of the poem as well as a detailed discussion, see Ronen, An Approach to Mandel'stam * , pp. xvii-xx.

16. The story of Mandelstam's "setting things straight" with one of his friends, Shileiko, who accused the poet of toadying before the new regime, suggests that his position around 1924 (before the publication of "1 January 1924") lent itself to ambiguous interpretations on both sides of the political aisle (NM 2, pp. 500-501).

17. In a polemic with Lidiia Ginzburg, who saw in the image a simile of "a horse in a lather," Taranovsky pointed to the froth ( pena ) as an allusion to Mandelstam's earlier programmatic "Silentium," a poem about the birth of Aphrodite out of the foam of the sea ("Remain foam, Aphrodite, and word, return to music"). I do not consider the two points mutually exclusive, especially in view of Mandelstam's identification of the "age," the nineteenth century, with the "beast" (see his "My beast, my age") and with the steed (see Broyde, Osip Mandel'stam * and His Age [Cambridge, Mass., 1975], on "He Who Found a Horseshoe").

18. Mandelstam, "On the Nature of the Word," SS 2, p. 242. Cf. N. Struve, Ossip Mandelstam (Paris, 1982); and G. Freidin, "The Whisper of History and the Noise of Time in the Writings of Osip Mandelstam," The Russian Review 37, no. 4 (1978): 436. break

19. N. Gumilev, "Zabludivshiisia tramvai" (1920).

20. Fedor Tiutchev, "Ia liuteran liubliu bogosluzhen'e."

21. Mandelstam, "Stikhi o russkoi poezii" (1933), SS 1: 262-264. Echoes of Lermontov's "1 January" ("Kak chasto pestroiu tolpoiu okruzhen") are discernible in Mandelstam's "1 January 1924." The last stanza of "A Concert" alludes to Lermontov's "Dream" ("With lead in my chest, in the valley of Dagestan," 1841): "And I dreamed of a luminescent night feast in my native land" ( I snilsia mne siiaiushchii ogniami Vechernii pir v rodimoi storone ). Note the dedication to Lermontov in Pasternak's My Sister-Life (1921). A poignant characterization of Lermontov may be found in Pasternak's article on the Georgian poet Nikolai Baratashvili: "Artists-outcasts [ khudozhniki-otshchepentsy ] like to cross every t and dot every i. They are unusually specific because they do not believe others to be capable [of discernment]. Lermontov's specificity is insistent and haughty. His details captivate us supernaturally. In their small features we recognize what we ourselves ought to have [imaginatively] completed. This is a magical reading of our thoughts across great distance" (cited in E. B. Pasternak and E. V. Pasternak, "Boris Pasternak: Iz perepiski s pisateliami," LN 93, p. 728n.4). Lermontov played a similar role in Maiakovskii's self-image of a kenotic poet-outcast. The "ethical" aspect of Mandelstam's allusive poetics, too, may be traced to a Lermontov poem: "It will encounter no response among the worldly din—the word born out of flame and light. But whether in a temple or amid battle, wherever I am, as soon as I hear it, I shall recognize it. With my prayer unfinished, I shall respond to that sound, and I will dash out of a battle in order to greet it" ("Est' rechi—znachen'e" [1840]).

22. M. Lermontov, "Vykhozhu odin ia na dorogu."

23. Mandelstam, "Sestry—tiazhest' i nezhnost' . . ." (1920), SS 1: 108.

24. Cf. the discussion of Mandelstam's poetics of "anamnesis" in Iu. Levin et al., "Russkaia semanticheskaia poetika kak potentsial'naia kul'turnaia paradigma" RL 7/8 (1974): 47-82.

25. V. Shklovskii, Razvertyvanie siuzheta (Petrograd, 1921), p. 10. Cf. Iu. Tynianov's conception of the "density of poetic/rhythmic series" ( tesnota stikhovogo/ritmicheskogo riada ) developed in Problema stikhotvornogo iazyka (Moscow, 1965), p. 76. A periphrasis of this terminology is in Mandelstam's "Ia po lesenke pristavnoi": "I shall tear myself out of the burning series and shall return to my native phonoseries" ( Iz goriashchikh vyrvus' riadov i vernus' v rodnoi zvukoriad ). This wordplay was possible since the Russian riad, "series," denotes also "harmony," "rank," "row," and, etymologically, "order" ( poriadok. )

26. See note 1. Zhukov called Mandelstam the second Andreevskii (a nineteenth-century Russian poet who opposed the civic-minded tendentiousness of contemporary art) and quoted with approval the lines of Akhmatova ("Now nobody will listen to songs") and Maiakovskii ("Perhaps I am the last poet") announcing the end of the poetry.

27. Cf. O. Ronen, "The Dry River and the Black Ice: Anamnesis and Amnesia in Mandel'stam * 's poem 'Ja slovo pozabyl, cto * ja xotel skazat,'" SH 1 (1977): 177-184. break

28. A. N. Veselovskii, "Psikhologicheskii parallelizm i ego formy v otrazhenii poeticheskogo stilia," in Istoricheskaia poetika (Moscow, 1940), p. 190.

29. "Oh, Europe, a new Hellas, guard the Acropolis and Piraeus! We do not need gifts from the island " (Mandelstam, "Sobiralis' elliny voinoiu" [1914], SS 1: 70). In early 1917, Mandelstam's friend Kablukov recorded with strong disapproval Mandelstam's vituperations against the "parliamentary, haughty England" (A. Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnika S. P. Kablukova," VRSKhD 129, no. 3 [1979], p. 154). See also Broyde, Osip Mandel'stam * and His Age, pp. 23ff.

30. Mandelstam, "Gumanism i sovremennost"' (Humanism and the Present, 1922). See also L. Fleishman's publication of another contemporary essay by Mandelstam, "Pshenitsa chelovecheskaia" (The Wheat of Humanity), which further clarifies Mandelstam's political thinking during the first years of the NEP ("Neizvestnaia stat'ia Osipa Mandel'shtama," Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 10 [1982]). As Fleishman noted, there exists a certain symmetry between the pro-Soviet politics of Mandelstam's publicistic writings of the period and Nadezhda Mandelstam's tendency to dismiss them as insignificant trifles produced in one sitting for the sake of meager royalties. The "mountain" casting its shadow in this essay bears fruitful comparison with its counterpart in the "Sermon on the Mount" part of "Slate Ode": "I am night's friend, I am the front soldier of the day. Blessed is he who has called flint a pupil of running water. Blessed is he who tied the sandal on the foot of the mountains on firm ground" ( SS 1: 137). Tying the sandal to the mountain of the approaching social architecture can hardly be construed as an expression of disloyalty to the Soviet regime.

31. Mandelstam, "Na kamennykh otrogakh Pierii" (1919).

32. P. Florenskii, Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny: Opyt pravoslavnoi feoditsei v dvenadtsati pis'makh (Moscow, 1914), p. 161. The quotation from Belyi comes from Simvolizm (Moscow, 1910), p. 30.

33. Mandelstam, "O prirode slova" (On the Nature of the Word, 1921). For the association of zemlia with the Slavophile and populist concept of conciliarity ( sobornost '), consider: zemskii sobor, zemstvo. This is yet another reason not to confuse Mandelstam's "classicism" with the related program by A. Efros announced in 'Vestnik y poroga: Dukh klassiki" (in Liricheskii krug: Stranitsy poezii i kritiki, vol. 1 [Moscow, 1922]). Significantly, Mandelstam's contribution to this issue consisted of two poems printed in reverse chronological order. The first, "Umyvalsia noch'iu na dvore" (1921), a poem signifying resolve in the face of a possible death, was permeated with Russian folklore in terms of both its strongly flavored rural lexicon ("na dvore," "na zamok," "vorota," "topor," "kholst") and its composition, which strongly echoed the two-part structure of incantations: the "epic" (first two stanzas) and the spell proper (N. Poznanskii, Zagovory [Petrograd, 1917]). The other, "Kogda Psikheia-zhizn' spuskaetsia k teniam" (1920), ending on a hesitant note, represented the epitome of Mandelstam's "Hellenism" of the Tristia period. Cf. O. Ronen, "Anamnesis and Amnesia," and "A Beam upon the Axe: Some Antecedents to Osip Mandel'stam * 's 'Umyvalsja nociu * na dvore,'" SH 1 (1977). break

34. The texts in which these images appear are: SS 1, nos. 116, 127, 112-114, 108, 126. Cf. O. Ronen's "Osip Mandel'stam * : An Ode and an Elegy" [Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1976]) productive characterization of such iterative usage as "talismanic" (and/or "magic helpers").

35. G. Dal'nii [G. G. Superfin], "Po povodu trekhtomnogo sobraniia O. Mandel'shtama," VRSKhD ) 97 (1970).

36. "Voz'mi na radost' iz moikh ladonei," SS 1: 116. I translate the word medunitsa (lungwort) as "honeysuckle" for the sake of retaining Mandelstam's etymological wordplay. Cf. Konstantin Bal'mont's Sonety solntsa, meda i luny (Moscow, 1917), which may have served as a source of elementary vocabulary and grammar for this poem, particularly in view of the cycle's Nietzschean and Lermontovian referents. Mandelstam described his poetry as "translations that suggest the existence of a brilliant original," possibly Mandelstam's own verse. On a deeper level, Mandelstam may have been relying on Viacheslav Ivanov, especially Cor ardens (e.g., "Kogda vzmyvaet dukh v nadmirnye vysoty" or the cycle "Zolotye zavesy"), and, of course, Nietzsche's "The Honey Sacrifice" in Thus Spake Zarathustra. See also Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * , pp. 99-110; and N. A. Nilsson, "Mandel'shtam's Poem 'Voz'mi na radost,"' RL 7/8 (1974).

37. Skriabin understood this paronymic play (including trans-sense) a*s a form of orchestration: "In language, there exist laws of [thematic?] development similar to those in music. . . . The word grows more complex, as do the harmonies, by means of inclusion of certain overtones" (L. Sabaneev, Vospominaniia o Skriabine [Moscow, 1925], p. 252, cited in N. Khardzhiev, "Maiakovskii i Khlebnikov," in N. Kkardzhiev and Vl. Trenin, Poeticheskaia kul'tura Maiakovskogo [Moscow, 1969], p. 98).

38. In his "Notes on Chénier" (1915?), Mandelstam described the poetry of the Romantics as inimical to the sense of continuity of tradition and likened it to a "necklace of dead nightingales," which "will not convey, will not reveal its enigmas," and which "does not know [the concept of] heritage" ( SS 2, p. 296). The "cyclical" bees of Persephone were, of course, another matter. The dating of this essay is unclear. It may have been begun in 1914-15 but seems to have been finished much later.

39. Cf. Pasternak's Doktor Zhivago, where an icon worn as an amulet by a young cadet deflects Zhivago's bullet. Praising the 1940 edition of Akhmatova's poetry, Pasternak mentioned in his letter to Akhmatova "the magical effect of your representational power" (cited in E. B. Pasternak and E. V. Pasternak, "Boris Pasternak: Iz perepiski s pisateliami," p. 661).

40. Viach. Ivanov, "Religiia Dionisa: Ee proiskhozhdenie i vliianie," Voprosy zhizni 6 (1905): 193. Cf. further "Here—'at grave's door young life is effervescent,' as Pushkin put it, and 'plenitude overcomes death' ( so überwältiget Fülle den Tod ), as Goethe says in his Venetian Epigrams, as he is describing these Orphic sarcophagi" (ibid., p. 196).

41. See discussion of Jakobson's "Metaphoric and Metonymic Pole" in chapter 4.

42. Cf. R. Timenchik: "Acmeist poetics itself created the object of its continue

      striving which only later underwent explication" ("Tekst v tekste u akmeistov," in Tekst v tekste: Trudy po znakovym sistemam, vol. 14 [Tartu, 1981]). Similar observations, if related more to Futurism, may be found in V. Erlich's Russian Formalism: History—Doctrine (New Haven and London, 1981), and in the essays on the legacy of Roman Jakobson by E. J. Brown ("Roman Osipovich Jakobson 1896-1982: The Unity of His Thought on Verbal Art," The Russian Review 42, no. 1 [1983]) and Hugh McLean ("A Linguist Among Poets," International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics 3 [1983]).

43. M. Detienne, The Garden of Adonis (Sussex, Eng., 1977), esp. chapter 4, "The Misfortunes of Mint." Among Mandelstam's probable sources are the story of the Nymph Mintha in Ovid ( Metamorphoses 10: 728n and A. N. Veselovskii's discussion of the myth of Adonis in "Tri glavy iz istoricheskoi poetiki," Istoricheskaia poetika, pp. 221ff.

44. Noted by G. Levinton and R. D. Timenchik ("Kniga K. F. Taranovskogo o poezii O. E. Mandel'shtama," RL VI-2 [1978]). That Verlaine's "bonne aventure" (a good luck charm, an amulet) was interpreted as verbal magic may be seen from Boris Pasternak's 1938 translation of the poem. The last stanza reads: "Puskai on vyboltaet sduru / Vse, chto, v pot'makh chudotvoria, / Navorozhit emu zaria . . . / Vse prochee—literatura" (E. Etkind, ed. Frantsuzskie stikhi v perevode russkikh poetov XIX-XX vv. [Moscow, 1969], p. 481).

45. Dremuchii les is, needless to say, a topos from Russian fairy tales—another instance of Mandelstam's "naiveté" as a modern poet. Dante's vita and selva oscura underwent a catachresis to become Mandelstam's "dremuchaia zhizn'," just as his Taygetos asks to be "folk-etymologized" as a derivative of the Russian taiga. For the unusual elliptical syntax, cf. Vadim Shershenevich's ideas (via Marinetti) on the use of elliptical infinitive construction in "Lomat' grammatiku" ( 2 × 2 = 5 [Moscow, 1920]) and his own practice of the rule, for example, in "Agrammaticheskaia statika" ( Loshad' kak loshad' ), which is echoed in Mandelstam's 1922 "Komu—arak. . . ." The opening sonnet of Bal'mont's Sonety also is built around infinitive constructions ("Tvorit', . . . uznat', . . . proiti, . . . sledit"').

46. " . . . My, kak pchely u chresl Afrodity, / V'emsia, solnechnoi pyl'iu povity, / Nad ognem zolotogo tsvetka." (M. Voloshin, "Deti solnecho-ryzhego meda" [1910], in Stikhotvoreniia, ed. L. A. Evstigneeva [Leningrad, 1977], p. 184).

47. W. Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore and London, 1978), pp. 68-85.

48. Mandelstam, "Komissarzhevskaia," in The Noise of Time, SS 2, p. 99.

49. Mandelstam: "Muchit sil'nee, chem liubaia futuristicheskaia zagadka" (on Annenskii). Writing about the power of the word in Slavic mythology, Afanas'ev maintained that the less people understood the incantation, the greater was the incantation's effectiveness (see A. N. Afanas'ev, Poeticheskie vozzreniia slavian na prirodu, pt. 1 [Moscow, 1865], p. 355). This was a common point made by the Futurists ("Deklaratsiia slova kak takovogo") and later continue

      on by the Formalists (e.g., V. Shklovskii, "O poezii i zaumnom iazyke" [1916], in Poetika: Sborniki po teorii poeticheskogo iazyka [Petrograd, 1919]).

50. Mandelstam, "Ia slovo pozabyl, chto ia khotel skazat"' (1920), SS 1: 113. As first published in 1921, it bore the date November 1920. For draft versions, see N. Khardzhiev's annotations in Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad, 1973), p. 278.

51. See Potebnia on the witch who has forgotten the right word.

52. Cf. Taranovsky's assertion concerning the poem's plot ( Essays on Mandel'stam * , p. 77). Cf. also Ronen, "Anamnesis and Amnesia."

53. Viach. Ivanov, "Religiia Dionisa," pp. 199ff. Cf. Mandelstam's "I ponyne na Afone" (1915): "Slovo—chistoe vesel'e, Istselen'e ot toski" ( SS 1: 75). Or the 1923 "Kak tel'tse malen'koe krylyshkom": "Ne zabyvai menia, kazni menia, No dai mne imia! Dai mne imia! Mne budet legche s nim, poimi menia, V beremennoi glubokoi sini" ( SS 1: 139). Both poems, thematically as well as stylistically (they imitate incantations), belong to the genre of verbal magic focused on memory or, more specifically, on the antiamnesiac power of the word.

54. V. Terras, "Classical Motives in the Poetry of Osip Mandelstam," Slavic and East European Journal 3 (1966): 251-267; Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * , pp. 77ff.; and Ronen, "Anamnesis and Amnesia." The poem may be further elucidated if juxtaposed with Pavel Florenskii's "genealogical" (Nietzsche) meditations on the nature of truth: "Truth, as a Hellene understood it, was alethea, that is, something capable of abiding in the stream of forgetfulness [ potok zabveniia ], in the Lethean streams of the sensual world—something that overcomes time . . . , something eternally remembering [cf. Mandelstam's "Eucharist" ]. Truth is an eternal memory of a consciousness" (Florenskii, Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny, p. 18). Likewise, Florenskii's etymology of styd (shame) from sty-<d>nu, sty-t' (to grow cold) might have been related to Mandelstam wordplay here ("ice," "burning," "shame"), which conflated the erotic, "mnemonic," and chthonic thematics. "Shame," Florenskii concluded, "is the feeling of spiritual cold that arises from baring that which must be covered" (ibid., pp. 703-704). Cf. the conclusion of Ronen, "Anamnesis and Amnesia."

55. "Aid—bez-vid, govorit Platon (Gorgii, 495b)" (Florenskii, Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny, p. 178).

56. Cf. A. Men'shutin and A. Siniavskii, Poeziia pervykh let revoliutsii: 1917-1920 (Moscow, 1964), p. 400.

57. Among the more recent works dealing with this issue see R. Timenchik, "Tekst v tekste u akmeistov." The article contains an extensive bibliography.

58. The history of this cult and its association with the ideological climate of the 1920s and, particularly, the 1930s still remains to be written, but see M. Friedberg, Russian Classics in Soviet Jackets (New York and London, 1962), esp. chapter 5: "Official Attitudes Toward the Russian Classics," pp. 81-147; and chapter 6: "The Russian Classics and the Soviet Readers," pp. 148-166.

59. Vl. Maiakovskii, "Radovat'sia rano" (December 1918).

60. On the formation of attitudes toward the classical heritage in the years continue

      following the revolution, see B. Jangfeldt, Majakovskii and Futurism: 1917-1921 , in Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature, no. 5 (Stockholm, 1976), esp. pp. 51-71.

61. Mandelstam, "Vek" (The Age, 1922), SS 1: 132. In a general sense, the lines are self-explanatory; still, they require some glosses. The "age of the infant earth" is a metonymic pun based on the metaphors associated with the contemporary discourse on Russian history, the nineteenth century, or post-Petrine Russia (Herzen) as a period of infancy for the country. Cf.: "This qualitatively overripe nineteenth century, the century of steel and neurasthenia was, in the life of Russia, the first century, the century of brilliant infancy " (N. Shapir, "Filosofsko-kul'turnye ocherki," Severnye zapiski 9 [September 1913]: 58-80). As this innocuous passage indicates, the discourse on Russian history was drenched in associations of redemptive sacrifice with the commencement of a new age. At the risk of being literalist, the "crown of life" (literally, the fontanel, soft cartilage at the top of an infant's skull) has to be interpreted as pointing to the high and recent artistic achievement ("Acme") that the revolution had rendered outdated before it could enjoy a period of natural growth. In effect, Mandelstam is talking about himself, attempting to interpret his perceived "premature retirement" in terms of the redemptive sacrifice. Contemporaries could see through the poem easily, and N. Stepanov even found it crude (see his review of Mandelstam's Stikhotvoreniia [1928] in Zvezda 6 [1928]: 123). Cf. Broyde, Osip Mandel'stam * and His Age.

62. SS 1:132. On this and its companion poem ("Ia ne znaiu s kakikh por"), see Taranovsky, "The Hayloft," in Essays on Mandel'stam * ; and G. Levinton and R. Timenchik, "Kniga Taranovskogo o poezii Mandel'shtama."

63. Viach. Ivanov, "Dostoevskii i roman-tragediia" (pt. 2) RM 32, no. 6 (1911), p. 10 (2d pagination).

64. See, for example, Blok's essay "Katilina" (1918) or his preface to Vozmezdie. This theme of "retribution," of the artist's responsibility for everything that is happening in the world (echoes of Dostoevsky), runs through Boris Eikhenbaum's "Sud'ba Bloka" (1921). Cf.: "Blok felt the impending tragedy of his generation and his own tragedy as a master of that generation. . . . Blok knew that this life will demand a retribution and will force one to listen to it" ( Ob Aleksandre Bloke [Petersburg, 1921], pp. 49 and 51).

65. "Guard sleeping at the doorway" is a quotation from Aleksandr Pushkin's "Nedvizhnyi strazh dremal u tsarskogo poroga" (A. Belyi, "Dnevnik pisatelia. Pochemu ia ne mogu kul'turno rabotat'," Zapiski mechtatelei 2-3 [1921]: 115).

66. Mandelstam, "Ode to Beethoven" (1914), SS 1: 72: "Oh the flame of the grandiose sacrifice! Half the sky is covered in fire—and it is rent over us, the tent of the royal tabernacle." The imagery is based on the Ivanovian identification of Dionysus and Prometheus as prefigurations of Christ, which in its turn leads to the identification of Christ with the High Priest, the Tabernacle, and the Sacrifice in St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews (9:11ff.). The same symbolism is used profanely in "Football II" (1913), SS 1: 167: "And with the lev- soft

      ity of a heavyweight, the boxer parried the blows . . . Oh, the defenseless veil, the unguarded tent! . . ." The 1914 poem, "There is an unshakable scale of values" ( SS 1: 64) belongs to the same thematic development: "Like the royal staff in the prophets' tabernacle, solemn pain blossomed among us." Cf. the consequently transparent pun based on the expression "the fear of God" in The Egyptian Stamp, where the narrator suggests that "mathematicians should build a tent" in which to house "fear": "I like fear. I've almost said: 'With fear I am not afraid.'"

67. On Mandelstam's uses of lastochka, see Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * , pp. 158ff.; and G. Freidin, "Time, Identity, and Myth in Osip Mandelstam" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1979), chapters 4 and 6. For a few additional and valuable observations, see Levinton and Timenchik, "Kniga Taranovskogo o poezii Mandel'shtama."

68. Cf. Ronen, "Anamnesis and Amnesia."

69. S. Poliakova, Zakatnye ony dni: Tsvetaeva i Parnok (Ann Arbor, 1983), p. 24. See also the memoirs of Ol'ga Vaksel', who in the mid 1920s was being courted simultaneously by Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam (O. Vaksel', "O Mandel'shtame. Iz dnevnika," Chast' rechi [New York] 1 [1980]: 251-254). See also S. Polianina, "Ol'ga Vaksel'," Chast' rechi 1 (1980): 254-262.

70. "Posokh" (The Staff), SS 1: 69.

71. The usage of domashnost' (domesticity, familiarity) in this context is oxymoronic. Blok is "domashnii," Pasternak is "domashnii," "universitetskii seminarii," too, is "domashnii."

72. A later, "authorized" version of the first five lines (see Stikhotvoreniia, 1973):

Liubliu pod svodami sedyia tishiny,
Molebnov, panikhid bluzhdan'e
I trogatel'nyi chin, emu zhe vse dolzhny,—
U Isaaka otpevan'e.
Liubliu sviashchennika netoroplivyi shag, . . .

Cf. Viacheslav Ivanov's poem "Molchaniia" ( Cor ardens ): "Soidem pod svody tishiny . . . gde reiut liki proritsanii." The juxtaposition illustrates well what Mandelstam meant by the "secularization" of poetic speech (Ivanov's "proritsaniia" vs. Mandelstam's "vozglas siryi"). Compare this poem with Mandelstam's "Pshenitsa chelovechestva" (1922), published in Fleishman, "Neizvestnaia stat'ia Mandel'shtama."

73. Iu. Tynianov, "Promezhutok," in Poetika. Istoriia literatury. Kino (Moscow, 1977), pp. 189ff.

74. Heine was, of course, the most important of the non-Russian authors for Tynianov, who extensively translated him and devoted to him some of his major historical and comparative work (i.e., "Tiutchev i Geine" in Arkhaisty i novatory [Leningrad, 1927]; and "Blok i Geine" in Ob Aleksandre Bloke. See, for example, L. Ginzburg, "Tynianov-uchenyi," in Vospominaniia o Iurii Tynianove, ed. V. A. Kaverin (Moscow, 1983), p. 171. The passage from "Pro- soft

      mezhutok" must also be interpreted in generational terms—another instance of a younger critic making the poet aware that he was, like a classic, "dead." On the uses of Mandelstam in Tynianov's fiction, see Men'shutin and Siniavskii, Poeziia pervykh let revoliutsii, pp. 398ff.; and Ronen, An Approach to Mandel'stam * , pp. 343-345.

75. Cf. Boris Pasternak's letter to Mandelstam (January 31, 1925) concerning the planned Spektorskii (cited in note 14, chap. 6). Mandelstam's treatment of these themes in Shum vremeni was, indeed, perceived as disdainful. See N. Lerner, "Osip Mandel'shtam. 'Shum vremeni"' (review), Byloe 6 (1925): 244.

76. According to the poet's widow, The Noise of Time (written for the most part in Gaspra in 1923) developed the problematic of the poem "The Age" (1922), the problematic that found its resolution in "1 January 1924" (a "curative" poem, in the words of Ronen, "Osip Mandel'stam * "). See NM 2, p. 482.

77. M. Weber, Essays in Sociology (New York, 1958), p. 248.

78. See note 75.

79. "Ia v khorovod tenei, toptavshikh nezhnyi lug," SS 1: 123. The poem belongs to the Arbenina cycle. Cf. Pushkin, "The Prophet": "And the six-winged Seraph appeared to me at the crossroads. . . . And he cleaved my chest with a sword and removed the trembling heart and placed a flaming coal into the rent chest." Pushkin's poem is an elaboration on the call of Isaiah to prophecy. Compare the last two lines with the second stanza of Pushkin's Gavriliada (Gabriliad): "Shestnadtsat' let, nevinnoe smiren'e / Brov' chernaia, dvukh devstvennykh kholmov / Pod polotnom uprugoe dvizhen'e."

80. On the pledge pattern, see Ronen, "A Beam Upon the Axe"; see also idem, "Osip Mandel'stam * ."

81. "We are inviting you to a country where trees speak, where scientific unions resembling waves are, where armies of love are, where time blossoms like bird-cherry and goes like a piston, where the trans-man [ zachelovek ] wearing a carpenter's apron is sawing times into boards and, like a turner, treats his tomorrow" [italics are mine] (V. Khlebnikov, "Pust' Mlechnyi put' . . . ," in Truba marsian [1916], Sobranie Proizvedenii, vol. 5, p. 152).

82. "Chto poiut chasy-kuznechik" (1917), SS 1: 98. This poem, part of the "Akhmatova" cycle, echoes meaningfully Blok's "Karmen" verses, together with his essay "Poeziia zagovorov i zaklinanii" (passages on the Herodiade) and the Bizet opera itself. For other subtexts and for a detailed analysis of the poem, see Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * , pp. 68-82; and Freidin, "Time, Identity, and Myth."

83. Mandelstam, "Ia budu metat'sia po taboru ulitsy temnoi" (1925), SS 1: 144. The meter of the poem, coinciding with Pushkin's pastiche of Dante's Inferno, may be echoing some of the more unpleasant episodes in Mandelstam's (or rather, the Mandelstams' ) courtship of Ol'ga Vaksel'. See Vaksel', "O Mandel'shtame"; and Polianina, "Ol'ga Vaksel'."

84. Weber, Essays, p. 248.

85. SS 2, p. 20. break

86. SS 2, pp. 24ff.

87. SS 2, p. 38.

88. On Parnakh, see C. Brown, introduction to The Prose of Osip Mandelstam (Princeton, 1965); N. Berberova, Kursiv moi: Avtobiografiia (Munich, 1972), pp. 251, 656, 674; and R. Timenchik, "Zametki ob akmeizme," RL 7/8 (1974): 37ff. One of Parnakh's poems, "Restorany," bears a dedication to Mandelstam (V. Parnakh, Samum [Paris, 1919], pp. 4ff.).

89. C. Izenberg, "Associative Chains in Egipetskaia marka," RL V-3 (1977): 257-276. Most personages in The Egyptian Stamp bear the names of Mandelstam's actual friends. See also D. M. West, Mandelstam: The Egyptian Stamp, Birmingham Slavonic Monographs, no. 10 (1980), pp. 29-58 ("Characters and Setting").

90. O. Ronen, "Leksicheskii povtor, podtekst i smysl v poetike Osipa Mandel'stam * a," in Slavic Poetics: Essays in Honor of Kiril Taranovsky, ed. R. Jakobson, C. H. van Schoneveld, and D. S. Worth (The Hague, 1973).

91. SS 2, p. 13.

92. For a characterization of Mandelstam as a "right fellow traveler," see, for example, B. Ol'khovyi, "O poputnichestve i poputchikakh," pt. 1, PiR 5 (1929): 11. See also Nadezhda Mandelstam's petition to V. Molotov for an academic appointment for her husband (December 1930), in A. Grigor'ev and I. Petrova, "Mandel'shtam na poroge tridtsatykh godov," RL V-2 (1977): 182-184. The petition was first published in Pamiat' 1 (1976).

93. SS 2, p. 30.

94. NM 2, p. 212.

95. A possible link between Egipetskaia marka and Vaginov's Kozlinaia pesn' is worth investigating. Mandelstam followed Vaginov's career after at least 1926 ( SS 3, 232), the time when, according to N. Mandelstam's letter to Molotov, he began work on Egipetskaia marka. See Grigor'ev and Petrova, "Mandel'shtam na poroge tridtsatykh godov.'

96. "Nashedshii podkovu," SS 1: 136. This passage follows—virtually word for word—Pavel Florenskii's meditation on skepticism: "I enter the last circle of the skeptical inferno—into that part where the very meaning of words becomes lost. Words cease to be fixed and abandon their nests [ sryvaiutsia so svoikh gnezd ]. Everything metamorphoses into everything else, every expression [ slovosochetanie ] is equivalent to any other, and every word can exchange places with another. Here intellect loses itself . . . the cold . . . madness." (Florenskii, Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny, p. 38).

97. Cf. Broyde, Osip Mandel'stam * and His Age, pp. 169-199, which offers a far more detailed treatment of the poem.

98. A. G. Gornfel'd, Letter to the Editor, Krasnaia gazeta (Leningrad), November 28, 1928. Mandelstam used these words as an epigraph to his public reply in the Moscow Vecherniaia gazeta (December 10, 1928).

99. C. Brown, Mandelstam (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), pp. 124-125; "Zamechaniia o peresechenii biografii Mandel'shtama i Pasternaka," pp. 307-309; E. B. Pasternak and E. V. Pasternak, "Boris Pasternak: Iz perepiski s pisateliami," in LN 93, pp. 679-680. For a description of Gornfel'd's situation in continue

      the late 1920s, see Abram Palei, "Vospominaniia ob A. G. Gornfel'de," in Al'manakh bibliofila, vol. 5 (Moscow, 1978), pp. 242-248. See Appendix 1 for the chronology of events associated with the affair.

100. According to Nadezhda Mandelstam (NM 2, p. 149), Mandelstam was writing it in the winter of 1929-30 and must have completed it some time before May 1930, when the Mandelstams left for Armenia. See Grigor'ev and Petrova, "Mandel'shtam na poroge tridtsatykh godov," pp. 181-182.

101. The motif of incest is developed in the same section, in the stanzas preceding the "sartorial" one, and is interpreted as an all-embracing communality of a society in which every member bears responsibility for another's sin: "Suddenly some girl cries out in the pantry. . . . And the yard is in the smoke of suppressed desires, in the bare feet of dashing flags. . . . Along the way, it turns out that in the world there is not a speck of dust without a small stain of kinship [ piatnyshko rodstva ]" (B. Pasternak, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy [Moscow and Leningrad, 1965], p. 335). One of Parnok's nicknames in The Egyptian Stamp is "stain remover" ( piatnovyvodchik ). Cf. L. Fleishman, Pasternak v dvadtsatye gody (Munich, [1981]), p. 153.

102. Pasternak, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, p. 336.

103. "Polnoch' v Moskve" (May-June 1931), SS 1: 260. For the correct date, see J. Baines, Mandelstam: The Later Poetry (Cambridge, 1976). Many of Mandelstam's poems following his return to Moscow in the spring of 1931 were polemically directed at Pasternak. See Appendix II and chapter 8. The polemical intent of "Polnoch' v Moskve" was noted by Fleishman, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, p. 150n.46.

104. Together with Gor'kii, N. A. Tolstoi, Valentin Kataev, Vera Inber, and Kornelii Zelinskii, Zoshchenko participated in a volume celebrating the Stalin Canal (linking the White and the Baltic seas), contributing to it his story "Rasskaz pro odnogo spekulianta" (later included in his Golubaia kniga ). See M. Zoshchenko, Izbrannoe, vol. 2 (Leningrad, 1978), pp. 43-46.

105. Cf. I. Erenburg's story about Mandelstam in Theodosia: "He once gathered together rich 'liberals' and said to them strictly: 'On the Judgment Day you will be asked whether you understood the poet Mandelstam; you will answer no. You will be asked whether you have fed him, and if you answer yes, much shall be forgiven you" (Erenburg, Liudi, gody, zhizn': Kniga pervaia i vtoraia [Moscow, 1961], p. 497.

106. M. Zoshchenko, Mishel' Siniagin (1930), in Izbrannoe, vol. 1, p. 498. Note the "monkey-fur collar" as a possible further hint at the "literary" nature of the coat (literature as imitation, "aping," of life). Siniagin must have come out after The Fourth Prose had been finished (April 1930). Otherwise, Mandelstam, who had the warmest words for Zoshchenko in The Fourth Prose, calling his writings "the Bible of labor," would no doubt have withdrawn them.

107. Chetvertaia proza, SS 2, p. 189.

108. See Mandelstam's "Kharkov" essay "Shuba" (1922), SS 4.

109. NM 2, pp. 592-597, and Grigor'ev and Petrova, "Mandel'shtam na poroge tridtsatykh godov," p. 181.

110. Mandelstam, Chetvertaia proza, SS 2, pp. 177, 184. According to continue

      Nadezhda Mandelstam, the Prose was composed in the spring of 1930, shortly before the Mandelstams left for Armenia (in April 1930).

111. Ibid., p. 182.

112. Ibid., pp. 188ff. Some of the pathos of The Fourth Prose may be traced to another masterpiece by Gogol, Notes of a Madman (kindly suggested by Boris Gasparov). Even though rumors about Mandelstam's "madness" were circulating in literary circles (see B. S. Kuzin's memoirs), I refrain from introducing this other text, as it might overshadow the purposiveness and the Dostoevskian self-affirmation of The Fourth Prose.

113. Ibid., p. 191. In Maiakovskii, the lines are "Chego kipiatites'? / Obeshchali i delim porovnu: / odnomu—bublik, drugomu—dyrka ot bublika. / Eto i est' demokraticheskaia respublika." See the annotations in SS 2, p. 617. Before leaving for Armenia, the Mandelstams may have attended the first performance of Maiakovskii's Bath. See L. Fleishman, "Epizod s Bezymenskim v Puteshestvii v Armeniiu, " SH 3 (1978), p. 195.

110. Mandelstam, Chetvertaia proza, SS 2, pp. 177, 184. According to continue

      Nadezhda Mandelstam, the Prose was composed in the spring of 1930, shortly before the Mandelstams left for Armenia (in April 1930).

111. Ibid., p. 182.

112. Ibid., pp. 188ff. Some of the pathos of The Fourth Prose may be traced to another masterpiece by Gogol, Notes of a Madman (kindly suggested by Boris Gasparov). Even though rumors about Mandelstam's "madness" were circulating in literary circles (see B. S. Kuzin's memoirs), I refrain from introducing this other text, as it might overshadow the purposiveness and the Dostoevskian self-affirmation of The Fourth Prose.

113. Ibid., p. 191. In Maiakovskii, the lines are "Chego kipiatites'? / Obeshchali i delim porovnu: / odnomu—bublik, drugomu—dyrka ot bublika. / Eto i est' demokraticheskaia respublika." See the annotations in SS 2, p. 617. Before leaving for Armenia, the Mandelstams may have attended the first performance of Maiakovskii's Bath. See L. Fleishman, "Epizod s Bezymenskim v Puteshestvii v Armeniiu, " SH 3 (1978), p. 195.

110. Mandelstam, Chetvertaia proza, SS 2, pp. 177, 184. According to continue

      Nadezhda Mandelstam, the Prose was composed in the spring of 1930, shortly before the Mandelstams left for Armenia (in April 1930).

111. Ibid., p. 182.

112. Ibid., pp. 188ff. Some of the pathos of The Fourth Prose may be traced to another masterpiece by Gogol, Notes of a Madman (kindly suggested by Boris Gasparov). Even though rumors about Mandelstam's "madness" were circulating in literary circles (see B. S. Kuzin's memoirs), I refrain from introducing this other text, as it might overshadow the purposiveness and the Dostoevskian self-affirmation of The Fourth Prose.

113. Ibid., p. 191. In Maiakovskii, the lines are "Chego kipiatites'? / Obeshchali i delim porovnu: / odnomu—bublik, drugomu—dyrka ot bublika. / Eto i est' demokraticheskaia respublika." See the annotations in SS 2, p. 617. Before leaving for Armenia, the Mandelstams may have attended the first performance of Maiakovskii's Bath. See L. Fleishman, "Epizod s Bezymenskim v Puteshestvii v Armeniiu, " SH 3 (1978), p. 195.

110. Mandelstam, Chetvertaia proza, SS 2, pp. 177, 184. According to continue

      Nadezhda Mandelstam, the Prose was composed in the spring of 1930, shortly before the Mandelstams left for Armenia (in April 1930).

111. Ibid., p. 182.

112. Ibid., pp. 188ff. Some of the pathos of The Fourth Prose may be traced to another masterpiece by Gogol, Notes of a Madman (kindly suggested by Boris Gasparov). Even though rumors about Mandelstam's "madness" were circulating in literary circles (see B. S. Kuzin's memoirs), I refrain from introducing this other text, as it might overshadow the purposiveness and the Dostoevskian self-affirmation of The Fourth Prose.

113. Ibid., p. 191. In Maiakovskii, the lines are "Chego kipiatites'? / Obeshchali i delim porovnu: / odnomu—bublik, drugomu—dyrka ot bublika. / Eto i est' demokraticheskaia respublika." See the annotations in SS 2, p. 617. Before leaving for Armenia, the Mandelstams may have attended the first performance of Maiakovskii's Bath. See L. Fleishman, "Epizod s Bezymenskim v Puteshestvii v Armeniiu, " SH 3 (1978), p. 195.

114. Mandelstam, "Iazyk bulyzhnika mne golubia poniatnei" (1923), SS 1: 138. Apart from Barbier (see Khardzhiev's commentary in Stikhotvoreniia [1973]), the poem is based, in part, on the following literary reminiscences: André Chéneir, "Jeu de pomme"; Aleksandr Pushkin, "Andrei Shen'e" (lines 160ff.); Innokentii Annenskii "Buddiiskaia messa v Parizhe"; and Nikolai Gumilev, "U tsygan." It further plays out Mallarmé's definition of poetry as the jeu suprême, punning it against "jeu de pomme" and, no doubt, pomme de discorde. Cf.: "Again, the frost smells of the apple"("1 ianvaria 1924"); "Oh, to take the world into one's hand like an apple" ("Vot daronositsa"); and "So a child answers: I shall give you an apple, or I shall not give you an apple" ("Nashedshii podkovu"). The allusion to Annenskii is most interesting. Compare Annenskii's "A v vozdukhe zhila neponiataia fraza" with Mandelstam's "I v vozdukhe plyvet zabytaia karinka, I v pamiati zhivet pletenaia korzinka." In The Noise of Time, most of which was done in 1923, Mandelstam recalls the delirium of his dying friend Boris Sinani: "Dying, Boris was deliriously speaking about Finland, moving to Raivola, and some ropes for packing the belongings" ( SS 2, p. 97). This was a memory associated with their attempt to join the Military Organization of the Socialist Revolutionary party. Cf. also the line from a lost poem by Mandelstam composed in Paris (in M. Karpovich, "Moe znakomstvo s Mandel'shtamom," Novyi zhurnal 49 [1957]): "podniat' skripuchii verkh solomennykh korzin." On "Iazyk bulyzhnika," see also D. Segal, "Pamiat' zreniia: pamiat' smysla," RL 7/8 (1974).

115. SS 2, p. 192. Cf. in Mandelstam's "Armenia" cycle: "k oruzhiu zovushchaia, Armeniia, Armeniia." The pun begins even earlier, but it cannot be easily conveyed in English: "Khodit nemets-sh ARM anshchik s shubertovskim leerkastenom, takoi neudachnik, takoi sh AROM yzhnik. Ich bin arm. Ia beden."

116. See N. Chuzhak, ed., Literatura fakta. Pervyi sbornik materialov rabotnikov LEF'a (Moscow, 1929). Mandelstam in fact translated one of the French authors, Pierre Hamp, whom one of the contributors to the volume, S. M. Tretiakov, considered exemplary of the trend (see G. P. Struve, Russian Literature Under Lenin and Stalin: 1917-1953 [Norman, Okla., 1971], pp. 215-217). continue

      Some of the elements of the program had already been spelled out by Mandelstam in 1923 (see especially his essay on Auguste Barbier, published in Prozhektor ), when he pointed out that Dante's Commedia had the topicality of a newspaper in its day and age. Further, the fact that Mandelstam avoided using invented names for the characters in his prose, including the fictional Egyptian Stamp, indicates that he was taking the trend seriously—whatever use he wished to put it to. See also N. Berkovskii, "O proze Mandel'shtama," in Tekushchaia literatura (Moscow, 1930), pp. 155-181.