1. See a draft of Mandelstam's letter to I. I. Ionov, SS 4, pp. 121-126. The letter was written sometime in January 1929.

2. "Potoki khaltury" (Streams of Slap-Dash), Izvestiia 80 (April 7, 1929), in SS 2, p. 428. The same issue contained a lengthy unsigned article with the following impressive title: "To Purge the State Apparatus by Means of the Masses and Together with the Masses." Appearing three months later in Na literaturnom postu, no. 13 (July 1929), Mandelstam's "O perevodakh" (On Translations) was a much calmer and more reasoned article.

3. D. I. Zaslavskii, "Skromnyi plagiat ili razviaznaia khaltura," Literaturnaia gazeta 3 (1929).

4. NM 1, p. 120.

5. NM 1, p. 186.

6. In a surviving draft of The Egyptian Stamp, with the action set in the 1920s rather than during the "Kerenskii summer," the Oedipal theme was much more explicit, as was Parnok's identification with authorship: "Parnok wrote not for himself, not for the critics, but for his dear mustachioed mother who deified him" (Princeton Archive). In the final version, professional authorship is attributed only to the narrator, and the "mustachio" to the "young Greek woman lying in a coffin." Cf. also the "mustachioed silence of the [narrator's childhood] apartment."

7. SS 1:254. Bearing the date May 7-9, 1932, the poem was first published in Novyi mir 6 (1932). Lamarck is presented here in terms of Mandelstam's "patriarchal" image. Cf. Khardzhiev's letter to Eikhenbaum (discussed in chapter 1) and the 1931 poem "Eshche daleko mne do patriarkha " ( SS 1: 251).

8. One might say that this metamorphosis had been "programmed" in the genetic code of the "mosquito," since it originated in the disguise used by Pushkin's Tsar Saltan (a character whose fate was similar to Joseph's) when he wished to visit the country of his birth incognito. On the "mosquito prince" from Mandelstam's poem "Ia ne znaiu s kakikh por," see K. Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * (Cambridge, Mass, 1976), pp. 30ff.; and G. Levinton and R. Timenchik, "Kniga K. F. Taranovskogo o poezii O. E. Mandel'shtama," RL VI-2 (1978): 200ff.

9. The poem was composed during Mandelstam's friendship with a biologist, Boris Kuzin (like Mandelstam, an admirer of Bergson and a neo- hard

      Lamarckian), who was involved in the contemporary debates concerning the viability of Lamarckism for Soviet science. See B. S. Kuzin's memoirs of his friendship with Mandelstam ("Ob O. E. Mandel'shtame," VRSKhD 140, nos. 3-4 [1983]: 99-129). On the debates, see P. Bondarenko, Protiv mekhanicheskogo materializma i men'shevistvuiushchego idealizma v biologii (Moscow and Leningrad, 1931); D. Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science (New York, 1961); idem, The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), pp. 207ff.; and Zh. Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko (New York, 1969), pp. 9-17.

10. "Gde noch' brosaet iakoria," SS 2: 458. Although he did it without invoking the Dantean subtext ( Inferno 3: 111ff.), O. Ronen ("Osip Mandel'stam * : An Ode and an Elegy" [Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1976]) convincingly demonstrates that the subject of the poem, the "dry leaves of October falling off the Tree of Life," was not the Bolsheviks but the Whites fleeing the Crimea in the fall of 1920. Ronen thus disputed the assertion contained in the commentary accompanying the poem in Novoe russkoe slovo (New York, April 16, 1971). See also S. Broyde, Osip Mandel'stam * and His Age (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), pp. 70-73 and 214n.37.

11. "Proslavim, brat'ia, sumerki svobody," SS 1: 103. This is another Dantesque poem by Mandelstam—at least insofar as the last stanza recapitulates the story told by Dante's Ulysses about his last journey "beyond the pillars of Hercules" (hence "Take courage, men"). Cf. an analysis of this poem by Broyde, Osip Mandel'stam * and His Age, pp. 47ff. See also A. Morozov, "Mandel'shtam v zapisiakh dnevnika S. P. Kablukova," VRSKhD 129, no. 3 (1979): 134; and N. A. Nilsson, "Ship Metaphors in Mandel'stam * 's Poetry," in To Honor Roman Jakobson, vol. 2 (The Hague, 1967), pp. 1436-1444.

12. Nadezhda Mandelstam described the years 1924-27 as a period when her husband tried to reconcile himself to the regime, The Egyptian Stamp being one product of this attempt at reconciliation (NM 2, p. 255). See also her description of their visit to Shileiko in 1924, which suggests that contemporaries were not unaware of these attempts (NM 2, pp. 500ff.). "Mandelstam was one of those who began to see early, but he was not among the first of them, by far" (NM 1, p. 186).

13. "Light Cavalry" was the name of the special Komsomol groups charged with assisting the party in its struggle against bureaucratization and poor economic performance in Soviet enterprises. These groups became especially active following the adoption of the Five-Year Plan in 1928. According to Nadezhda Mandelstam (NM 1, p. 186), "after severing his connections with the writers' organizations, Mandelstam served on the staff of Moskovskii komsomolets for almost a year," that is, from the summer of 1929 to the spring of 1930. Cf. the interpretation of the passage below in J. Baines, Mandelstam: The Later Poetry (1976).

14. SS 2, p. 179. "Chinese games" ( kitaishchina ) most likely is an allusion to Dostoevsky's famous comparison of Russian bureaucracy with the Chinese Imperial state: "I would say that we are just like China only without her orderliness. We are only beginning what the Chinese have already accomplished. Doubtless we will achieve the same accomplishment, but when? In order to continue

      accept a thousand volumes of ceremonies, in order to win the right never to think about anything once and for all, we will have to live for at least another thousand years of pensiveness" (F. M. Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 21 [Leningrad, 1980], p. 7). Given this subtext, Mandelstam's invective can hardly represent a wish for the return of the good old days before 1917. Rather, it has much in common with the mentality of War Communism, when one did not have to "encode" into the formulas of "Chinese" servility the "great and powerful concept of class." Compare this with a 1922 essay, "The Fur Coat": "This was a severe and beautiful winter of 1920-21, the last harvest-time winter of Soviet Russia; and I miss it, remember it with tenderness . . . I feel oppressed by my heavy fur coat, just as the whole of Russia feels oppressed by the fortuitous satiety, fortuitous warmth, the ill-gotten second-hand wealth" ( SS 4, p. 95). This is about the first glimmer of economic recovery under NEP.

15. Mandelstam, Chetvertaia proza, SS 2, p. 178.

16. Sometime in the early spring of 1930, when he was finishing The Fourth Prose and about to depart for Armenia, Mandelstam visited a psychiatrist (NM 2, p. 298). See also Nadezhda Mandelstam's petition to V. Molotov (December 1930) requesting a university teaching position for Mandelstam. The request was motivated, in the words of the petition, by the "grievous state of poet Mandelstam," his "serious nervous disorder caused by a trauma (which resulted from the persecution of Mandelstam)" ("Dva pis'ma N. Ia. Mandel'shtam," in Pamiat': Istoricheskii sbornik 1 [Moscow, 1976; New York, 1978], pp. 302-307). For additional biographical materials pertaining to the late 1920s and the early 1930s, see A. Grigor'ev and I. Petrova, "Mandel'shtam na poroge tridtsatykh godov," RL V-2 (1977): 181-192.

17. NM 2, p. 405. All that Nadezhda Mandelstam remembered from the destroyed section of The Fourth Prose were two sentences. One was followed by expletives (" Komy on teper' nuzhen etot sotsializm zalapannyi . . . "). The other read: "If citizens suddenly decided to construct a Renaissance, what would have come out of it? A cafe 'Renaissance,' at best."

18. S. F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938 (New York, 1973), pp. 313-315.

19. Mandelstam, "Polnoch' v Moskve," SS 1: 260. According to Baines, The Later Poetry, the poem was written in May 1931. "1 ianvaria 1924" ( SS 1: 140) is perhaps the most elaborate of the early representations of this dilemma. On this poem and specifically on the use of the "fourth estate" in Mandelstam, see O. Ronen, "An Introduction to Mandel'stam * 's Slate Ode and 1 January 1924: Similarity and Complementarity," SH 4 (1979): 146-158. See also Ronen, "Osip Mandel'stam * ," and his "Cetvertoe * soslovie: Vierte Stand or Fourth Estate? (A Rejoinder)," SH 5-6 (1981): 319-324. Ronen's insistence on interpreting the term chetvertoe soslovie as "the proletariat" is supported, if indeed it needs additional support, by the following instance of contemporary usage: "Kuskova writes: 'the growing "fourth estate" cannot give up its hope for a distant paradise for labor, for the great promised land where there will be continue

      neither the rifles that shoot nor any inequality"' (A. S. Izgoev, "Na perevale. Zhizni' i publitsistika," RM 33, no. 27 [1912], p. 142 [2d pagination]).

20. Responding to Pasternak (see chapter 7 on Spektorskii ), Mandelstam defended in this poem his right to pass judgment on the epoch. History is not a fragile, cheap ( pen'kovaia dusha ), or fastidious affair that constantly requires a ritual bath like a sacred monkey in a Tibetan temple. L. Fleishman ( Pasternak v dvadtsatye gody [Munich, (1981)], p. 150n.46) offers a valuable subtext for these lines—Pasternak's 1928 poem "Bal'zak." The "Buddhist" motif, however, points strongly to Mandelstam's intellectual hero, Alexander Herzen, specifically to his characterization of Peter I: "Petr I ne mog udovol'stvovat'sia zhalkoi rol'iu khristianskogo Dalai-Lamy. . . . Petr I predstaet pered svoim narodom slovno prostoi smertnyi. Vse vidiat kak etot neutomimyi truzhennik, odetyi v skromnyi siurtuk voennogo pokroia, s utra do vechera otdaet prikazaniia i uchit, kak nado ikh vypolniat'; on kuz-nets, stoliar, inzhener, arkhitektor i shturman" (Gertzen, O razvitii revoliutsionnaykh idei v Rossii, in Sochineniia, vol. 3 [Moscow, 1956], p. 413). The Petrine metaphor for Stalin (recall his "Mao jacket") and the First Five-Year Plan were, of course, commonplace at the time. On one level, therefore, the poem's message concerns the awakening of Moscow-Russia from its ahistorical "Buddhist"' (Herzen's epithet) torpor under the guidance of the "indefatigable laborer in a modest coat of a military cut" who "from morning till night issues orders and teaches how they ought to be carried out." This was not the first time that Mandelstam invoked Herzen's Peter the Great (echoing Pushkin's view) as a measure of modern Russian history. See especially "Nashedshii podkovy." Cf. Broyde, Osip Mandel'stam * and His Age, pp. 180-182. 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.

21. B. Pasternak, Stikhotvoreniia: poemy (Moscow and Leningrad, 1965), p. 377.

22. "Vek," SS 1: 135.

23. "S mirom derzhavnym ia byl lish' rebiacheski sviazan," SS 1: 222. First published in Zvezda 4 (1931): 113.

24. "Ia s dymiashchei luchinoi vkhozhu (April 4, 1931), SS 1: 231. Cf. Baines, The Later Poetry, pp. 27-28, 66.

25. Kuzin, "Ob O. E. Mandel'shtame," p. 114.

26. "Za gremuchuiu doblest' griadushchikh vekov," SS 1: 227. A number of drafts of this poem may be found in the Mandelstam Archive at Princeton University. They indicate that during the initial stages of composition, Mandelstam was working on a text that would later yield three separate poems: "Za gremuchuiu doblest'"; "Ia s dymiashchei luchinoi vkhozhu," SS 1: 227; and "Net, ne spriatat'sia mne ot velikoi mury," SS 1: 232. Other lines and whole stanzas belonging to these drafts have been published in SS 1: 242-246. The "wolf" poem is dated by Nikolai Khardzhiev as "March 17-28, 1932" (in O. Mandelstam, Stikhotvoreniia [Leningrad, 1973], p. 153). The dates for the other two in SS 1 are April 4, 1932, and April 1932, respectively. Khardzhiev continue

      also cites four different versions of the concluding stanza of the "wolf" poem (ibid., p. 288). For a discussion of the composition of the poem, see NM 1, pp. 158, 197, 201-202, 204; and Baines, The Later Poems, pp. 20-24.

27. M. Lermontov, "Vykhozhu odin ia na dorogu," "Zvezda"; "Na severe dikom stoit odinoko Na goloi vershine sosna."

28. Cf. "Zamechaniia o peresechenii biografii Osipa Mandel'shtama: Borisa Pasternaka," in Pamiat': Istoricheskii sbornik (Moscow, 1979; Paris, 1981); the anonymous author of this article was puzzled by Mandelstam's "overreaction" to Pasternak's "perfectly innocent words."

29. B. Pasternak, "Krasavitsa moia, vsia stat"' (1931), part of Vtoroe rozhdenie (1932). Cf. a discussion of Mandelstam's polemic in NM 1, pp. 158; and "Zamechaniia o peresechenii biografii Mandel'shtama," pp. 313ff.

30. The story begins: "I have always been in sympathy with the central institutions. Even when they were introducing NEP during the epoch of War Communism, I did not protest. If it's NEP, it's NEP. You know better. But, by the way, during the introduction of NEP, my heart would desperately sink. I somehow envisioned certain radical changes. And indeed, during the War Communism it was really free with respect to culture and civilization. Say, in the theater you were free to sit without taking your clothes off-just sit there in what you had on when you came. That was an achievement. This question of culture is a hard one. Take, for example, that [rule about] taking your clothes off in the theater. Of course, no argument, without their overcoats on the public is better distinguished" (M. Zoshchenko, Izbrannoe, vol. 1: Rasskasy i fel'etony. Povesti [Leningrad, 1978], p. 168).

31. Mandelstam, SS 1: 230. The motif of the coat appears in another poem composed in March 1931, "Zhil Aleksandr Gertsevich," an ironic selfportrait made up of Pushkin's first name, Herzen for a patronymic, and pieces of Schubert's Lieder for the family name. The poem recalls Gornfel'd's words perhaps, Zoshchenko's Mishel' Siniagin, and definitely Schubert's "Der Krähe" from Die Winterreise: "With music-dove, death isn't frightening, and afterward—a crow fur coat—to hang on a hook."

32. "As to the wolf cycle, it did not bode any special hardship—a labor camp at worst" (NM 1, p. 16). See also NM 2, pp. 603ff., which refers to the composition of the "wolf" cycle in the period when the Mandelstams "thought that the screws had been tightened to the limit and it was time to expect an improvement." This ambivalence is, of course, detectable in much of Mandelstam's poetry written after his return from Armenia in the fall of 1930.

33. The last stanza of the third version, cited by Nikolai Khardzhiev (see note 30), contains another allusion to Dante in the second line ( Inferno 32: 46-48). Mandelstam: "Take me away into the night where the Enisei flows and a tear on the eyelashes is like ice, because I am not a wolf by blood and a human being will not die in me." Cf. Dante: "Their eyes, which before were moist only within, gushed over at the lids, and the frost bound the tears between and locked them up again" ( The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno, trans. John D. Sinclair [New York, 1939], p. 397). Dante's description refers to the traitors frozen in the ice of the Caina. break

34. NM 2, pp. 460ff.

35. Mandelstam, Puteshestvie v Armeniiu, SS 2, pp. 175ff. On it, see Henry Gifford's introduction to O. Mandelstam, Journey to Armenia (San Francisco, 1979).

36. NM 2, pp. 466-473.

37. "Avtoportret," SS 1: 164.

38. "Kholodnaia vesna. Golodnyi Staryi Krym," SS 1: 271.

39. See M. Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (New York, 1967), pp. 41-43.

40. NM 1, p. 157; and "Zamechaniia," pp. 314ff.

41. For a discussion of the several other important subtexts of this poem (B. Pasternak, "V kvartire prokhlada usad'by"; A. Blok, "Druz'iam"; N. Nekrasov, "V. G. Belinskii," "Deshevaia pokupka"), see Ronen, "Leksicheskii povtor," pp. 385ff.; and idem, An Approach to Mandel'stam * (Jerusalem, 1983). See also V. V. Musatov, "Nekrasov v poeticheskom soznanii Mandel'shtama," in N. A. Nekrasov i russkaia literatura vtoroi poloviny XIX-nachala XX vekov, Mezhvuzovskii sbornik nauchnykh trudov, no. 64 (Yaroslavl, 1982), pp. 94-101.

42. "Kvartira tikha, kak bumaga," SS 1: 272. A future student of this poem may wish to juxtapose the "still telephone" with the suicide theme in Mandelstam ("samoubiitsa-telefon" in SS 1: 194; "k Perse F o N e tele FON eshche ne proveden" in Egipetskaia Marka ); line 10 with the similar line in "1 January 1924"; and line 18 with line 48 in "Polnoch' v Moskve" and with Pasternak's 1928 poem "Bal'zak": "On v'et, kak nitku iz pen'ki, istoriiu sego pritona." See Fleishman, Pasternak v dvadtsatye gody.

43. Sometime in the early 1930s, before Mandelstam's arrest, wrote Nadezhda Mandelstam, "The three of us [herself, her husband, and Akhmatova] were standing together when suddenly Mandelstam melted with joy: several little girls ran past us in a single file, imagining themselves to be horses. The first one stopped and impatiently asked: 'Where is the previous horsy?' The 'previous horsy' got bored with stomping its hooves and had fled. . . . I grabbed Mandelstam by his hand to prevent him from joining the kids as the lead horse. Akhmatova, too, was sensing danger. She said to Mandelstam: 'Do not run away from us—you are our previous horsy.' And we went to the Punins to have tea" (NM 2, p. 415).

44. For the events surrounding the composition of this poem, see NM 1, pp. 165-167ff. See also Baines, The Later Poems, pp. 84-86.

45. Mandelstam, "My zhivem, pod soboiu ne chuia strany," SS 1: 286. For another version in which Stalin, in reference to the brutality of the collectivization, is called a "murderer and a muzhikoclast" ( dushegubets i muzhikoborets ), see Baines, The Later Poems, p. 84.

46. Vl. Maiakovskii, "Levyi marsh" (Left March): "We shall ride the nag of history to death with our left, left, left." The relation between this poem and Mandelstam's "He Who Found a Horseshoe" is discussed in Broyde, Osip Mandel'stam * and His Age.

47. "Dovol'no kuksit'sia! Bumagi v stol zasunem," SS 1: 247.

48. "Vy pomnite, kak beguny," SS 1: 257. break

49. "Polnoch' v Moskve . . .," SS 1: 260.

50. "Segodnia mozhno sniat' dekal'komani," SS 1: 265.

51. NM 1, p. 101. The other exiles in Cherdyn' turned away from Mandelstam after the news of the commutation had arrived.

52. "Ty dolzhen mnoi povelevat'," SS 4: 515.

53. "Stansy," SS 1: 312.

54. "Ot syroi prostyni govoriashchaia," SS 1: 311.

55. "Den' stoial o pitai golovakh . ," SS 1: 313.

56. "Oboroniaet son moiu donskuiu son'," SS 1: 371.

57. "Sred' narodnogo shuma i spekha," SS 1: 361.

58. "Esli b menia nashi vragi vziali," SS 1: 372. The correct version of the poem's coda, cited here, appears in a draft copied by Nadezhda Mandelstam (deposited at the Mandelstam Archive at Princeton University). Baines ( The Later Poems, p. 202), however, follows the poet's widow in insisting that the poem ends instead in "Budet gubit' razum i zhizn' Stalin" (Stalin will keep destroying reason and life). But, as previously noted by C. Brown ("Into the Heart of Darkness," Slavic Review 26, no. 4 [1967]: 601-603) and B. Jangfeldt ("Osip Mandel'stam * 's 'Ode to Stalin,'" Scando-Slavica, 22 [1976]: 39-41), this reading, or version, contradicts the logic of the rest of the poem. The edition of Mandelstam's Voronezhskie tetradi prepared by V. Shveitser (Ann Arbor, 1980) follows Brown and Jangfeldt, attributing the other version to "the memory of Nadezhda Mandelstam" (p. 85).

59. SS 4: 147-148.

60. Baines, The Later Poems, pp. 175ff.

61. This and the two poems to follow are in SS 1, nos. 346, 347, and 348. Cf. Baines, The Later Poems, pp. 174-178. The word verstkii is a play on at least two terms: prodrazverstka (grain requisitioning during the War Communism and the collectivization) and verstka (galleys).

62. Cf. a passage from Egipetskaia Marka: "In the evening, at a dacha in Pavlovsk, these same gentlemen littérateurs taught a lesson to a poor youth—Hippolytus. He did not even get a chance to read to them out of his calico notebook. Some Rousseau!" ( SS 2, p. 27).

63. "Net, nikogda nichei ia ne byl sovremennik," SS 1: 141.

64. A. Akhmatova, Sochineniia, vol. 2 (Paris, 1968), p. 181. These reminiscences originally appeared in Vozdushnye puti 4 (1965).

65. Brown, "Into the Heart of Darkness."

66. Mandelstam, "Esli b menia nashi vragi vziali" ( SS 1: 372) represents a corrupt version of the poem. I am citing it here in the form it appears in V. Shveitser's edition of Mandelstam's Voronezhskie tetradi. See also a discussion of the text in Baines, The Later Poetry, pp. 201-203, 205. The most apparent allusions are to the Lay of Igor's Campaign (the ten hawks and the ten swans of Baian's fingers strumming the strings, as opposed to Mandelstam's far less aristocratic and far more biblical bullocks); to a Rembrandt "Pieta" (via the metonym of Rembrandt, his Night Watch; see also SS 1: 364 and discussion in the text below); and to Pushkin's "Ne dai mne Bog soiti s uma" (lines 2-3 and 7-8 are an obvious polemic with Pushkin's "anticivic" poem) and his "Pamiatnik" continue

      (line 22). The most important polemical and therefore meaningful allusion is to Pasternak's "On vstaet. Veka. Gelaty," from his "Georgian" cycle "Khudozhnik" (1936). The cycle appeared in Znamia 4 (1936) and elicited more than one response from Mandelstam. In this poem, Pasternak presented the poet as a folkloric warrior on a high horse riding into the "epoch," and pointedly not as a Baian ( gusliar ) or a narrator of magic tales ( balakir' ). The ostensible allusion is to the seventh stanza: "Like a thunderstorm, uniting on the road life and chance, death and passion, you shall pass through minds and lands, to fall into eternity as a legend." Mandelstam's poem is, obviously, a kenotic response to Pasternak's high-minded attempt to inscribe himself into Soviet modernity.

67. NM 1, pp. 216-220 ("Oda").

68. "Mandelstam's 'Ode to Stalin,"' Slavic Review 34, no. 4 (1975): 683-691.

69. Jangfeldt, "Mandel'stam * 's 'Ode to Stalin.'" K. Taranovsky discussed both the Slavic Review and Jangfeldt's texts in light of two authentic versions made available to him in "Dve publikatsii 'Stalinskoi ody' O. E. Mandel'shtama," Scando-Slavica 23 (1977): 87-88. The publication of the "Ode" in SS 4 follows the text established by Taranovsky.

70. NM 1, pp. 216-220. See also Baines, The Later Poetry, pp. 174-198, which closely follows the account of Nadezhda Mandelstam, although in more detail.

71. For the list of poems constituting The Second Voronezh Notebook, see Baines, The Later Poetry, pp. 242-243. The same list with only minor variations may be found in O. Mandelstam, Voronezhskie tetradi, pp. 35-80.

72. NM 1, pp. 212ff.

73. SS 4, pp. 143-145.

74. Most of Mandelstam's letters of this period end with an urgent plea for an answer by telegraph—a good indication of the sense of isolation Mandelstam was experiencing.

75. Mandelstam, SS 2, pp. 280ff.

76. Pasternak's growing visibility and importance during the congress, culminating in Nikolai Bukharin's high praise, prompted Lilia Brik's letter on behalf of the dead Maiakovskii, which in its turn culminated in Stalin's formulation (suggested by Lilia Brik): "Maiakovskii was and remains the best and most talented poet of our Soviet epoch" (E. J. Brown, Mayakovsky: A Poet in the Revolution [Princeton, 1973], p. 370). See also G. de Mallac, Boris Pasternak, His Life and Art (Norman, Okla., 1981), pp. 142ff.

77. For the accounts of the incident, see NM 1, pp. 25-27, 145-149, 152-157, 214. See also Iu. Krotkov, "Pasternak," Grani 64 (1967): 62; and O. Ivinskaia, Vplenu vremeni (Paris, 1978), pp. 75-82. Two more recent summaries can be found in "Zamechaniia" and in L. Fleishman, Pasternak v tridtsatye gody (Jerusalem, 1983), pp. 163-178 ("Arest Mandel'shtama").

78. For Mandelstam, the term master had a negative connotation, as it designated older poets no longer needed by the new Soviet state except for their expertise as versifiers. This was what Mandelstam had in mind when in continue

      the "apartment" poem he refused to "master" (see Vl. Vasilenko's review of Mandelstam's Stikhotvoreniia [1928] in Izvestiia, July 6, 1928). See also the debates on Acmeism in Literaturnyi Leningrad in 1933-34. In this respect, Mikhail Bulgakov's designation of his novel's protagonist as "master" represents an attempt to restore the term's traditional honorable connotation.

79. NM 1, p. 220.

80. B. Bettelheim, "Remarks on the Psychological Appeal of Totalitarianism," in Surviving, and Other Essays (New York, 1979), pp. 319ff.

81. Cf. Mikhail Bakhtin's understanding of language, or words, as a locus of clashing attitudes of speakers (elaborated in Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo [Moscow, 1963], esp. "Slovo u Dostoevskogo"; "Slovo v romane," in Estetika slovesnogo tvorchestva [Moscow, 1979]; and in the final chapter of Voloshinov's Marksizm i filosofiia iazyka [Leningrad, 1929], on "nesobstvenno-priamaia rech"'). In a sense, the poetics of Acmeism, particularly in Mandelstam, model this particular aspect of language insofar as they conjoin conflicting usages of poetic expressions. Even where the focus of the work falls on a "mythic" elaboration of a rhetorical item, the same operation of "clash" obtains. Cf. Akhmatova's recollection that Mandelstam's advice was "to clash words with diametrically opposing meanings" ("Mandel'shtam," in Akhmatova, Sochineniia, vol. 2). However, this orientation toward "the word of the other," foregrounded in Acmeist poetics (Ronen, "Leksicheskii povtor"), is common to any ideological text and, as such, represents a certain ideological position. It is itself a myth (as R. Barthes defines the term) linked to other myths comprising the contemporary ideological universe. Cf. R. Timenchik, "Tetkst v tekste u akmeistov," in Tekst v tekste, Trudy po znakovym sistemam, vol. 14 (Tartu, 1981), p. 73.

82. Akhmatova, Sochineniia, vol. 2, pp. 147-154.

83. "Nashedshii podkovu" ( SS 1: 140) bore the subtitle "Pindaricheskii otryvok" (Pindaric fragment), which places this most "irregular" of Mandelstam's poems in the Pindaric tradition, not via Russian classical poetry but by bypassing it. On this poem, see Broyde, Osip Mandel'stam * and His Age, pp. 169-199.

84. Letter of January 21, 1937 ( SS 2, pp. 280ff.).

85. Compare Mandelstam's words from Journey to Armenia, "the oceanic news of Maiakovskii's death," with the "oceanic" metaphor here and in the "Conversation about Dante," where he likens the composition of blood to that of the ocean, salt, and the sun: "krov' soliarna, solonna."

86. G. Kozintsev, "Tynianov i kino," and S. Eizenshtein, "Neposlannoe pis'mo Tynianovu," in Vospominaniia o Iurii Tynianove, ed. V. A. Kaverin (Moscow, 1983), pp. 262-271 and 272-277, respectively.

87. "Novoe chuvstvo prirody i istorii, chuvstvo tainstvennoi blizosti mira i prisutstviia beskonechnogo v konechnom sostavliaet sushchnost' vsiakoi podlinnoi romantiki" (A. Blok, "O romantizme" [1919]). In Blok, this state signified the "proximity to the World Soul." See A. Blok, SS 5, p. 363.

88. Frank J. Miller, "The Image of Stalin in Soviet Russian Folklore," The Russian Review 39, no. 1 (1980): 60ff. break

89. I. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1949), pp. 46-61. The speech containing these famous six vows was made the day before Lenin's entombment, on January 26, 1924: "We vow to thee, Comrade Lenin, that we will with honor fulfill this thy testament [ My klianemsia, tovarishch Lenin, chto my s chest'iu vypolnim etot tvoi zavet ]." And so forth, six times. The words klianemsia and zavet, needless to say, belong to the scriptural vocabulary, the first to the Old Testament, the second to both the New and the Old Testaments ( Novyi i Vetkhii Zavet ). They emphasize the sacred nature of the leadership transition, sanctify its legitimacy, and correspond to the self-image that Stalin would later so assiduously cultivate. As the "Ode" demonstrates, Mandelstam knew well how to "read" Stalin's speeches. Compare Stalin's vows to Genesis 26:3: "For unto thee and thy seed I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath [ kliatvu ] which I swear [ klialsia ] unto Abraham thy father." See also Stalin's June 1931 speech on the six conditions for industrialization.

90. Viach. Ivanov, "Pindar, Pif. 1," Zhurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, nos. 7-8 (1899), Otdel klassicheskoi filologii, pp. 50-51.

91. Izvestiia, October 2, 1936.

92. Apollodorus 1, 2: 2. There may be another, metonymic or contiguous, association of Stalin with the myth of Prometheus, which is focused on the Caucasus, the place of Stalin's birth and of Prometheus's punishment.

93. On the Stalin cycle, see C. Brown, "Into the Heart of Darkness"; and Baines, The Later Poetry, pp. 174-198. On the function of cycles in Mandelstam's poetics, see NM 1, pp. 198-212; and the work of Taranovsky and Ronen.

94. SS 1: 330-331.

95. Cf. O. Ronen, "Mandel'stam * 's Kascej", * in Studies Presented to Professor Roman Jakobson by His Students (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), pp. 252-264; and Baines, The Later Poetry, pp. 170-173. The poem is "Ottogo vse neudachi," SS 1: 337.

96. C. Brown, "Into the Heart of Darkness," pp. 598-600. "Vooruzhennyi zren'em uzkikh os," SS 1: 367.

97. NM 1, pp. 216-220; and Baines, The Later Poetry, pp. 174-198. Nadezhda Mandelstam, for example, insists that the words of the "wasps" poem "I neither draw, nor sing" are in direct opposition to the persona of the poet in the "Ode," where he indeed draws. This observation, although backed by the authority of, perhaps, the sharpest reader of Mandelstam's poetry, has the flaws of any literal interpretation. In the "wasps," Mandelstam neither "draws nor sings," but in the poem written the same day, February 8, 1937, he "sings while the soul is moist and the throat dry" ( SS 1: 365). The same may be said about another poem (one among many) where a similar reversal takes place: "Do not compare, a living man cannot be compared" ( SS 1: 352). But in February, seventeen days later, the poet breaks his own vow: "Like the martyr of chiaroscuro Rembrandt, / I have gone deep into the mute time, / But the sharpness of my burning rib / Is guarded neither by those guards / Nor by this warrior who is asleep under the thunderstorm" ( SS 1: 364). Here the poet compares himself not only to his brother artist but also to the subject of the artist's painting: either the Crucifixion or Christ's Resurrection from the tomb continue

      (viz., the "burning rib," the "sleeping warrior," the "guards"). Cf. C. Brown, "Into the Heart of Darkness," p. 385. On this subject, cf. also K. Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel'stam * , pp. 113ff.

98. For the text of Pasternak's "Stalin" poem and its versions, see his Stikhi 1936-1956, in Works, vol. 3: Stikhi dlia detei. Stikhi 1912-1957, ne sobrannye v knigi avtora. Stat'i i vystupleniia (Ann Arbor, 1961), pp. 138-139, 256. See also "Zamechaniia."

99. See especially Pasternak's 1913 poem "Bliznetsy" (Twins). It begins, appropriately for Mandelstam, with the motif of solitary confinement: "Hearts and companions, we freeze, we—[freeze] like twins in cells of solitary confinement" (B. Pasternak, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, p. 495). The collection is permeated with astral thematism—another aspect that Mandelstam, who would soon be composing his "stellar" cycle (including "Verse on the Unknown Soldier"), must have found appealing.

100. Mandelstam, SS 4, p. 140. If I am reading this letter correctly, the "Ode" represented another instance in the dialogue between the two poets in the 1930s. After all, the "wolf" cycle was prompted by, among other things, Pasternak's "Krasavitsa moia, vsia stat'," and certain lines in Pasternak's "Vse naklonen'ia i zalogi" read like an admonition to Mandelstam put together from bits and pieces of Mandelstam's own poetry (the "Ariosto" cycle, SS 1: 267-270). The admonition may actually have affected Mandelstam, since its echoes are audible in "Esli b menia nashi vragi vziali" ( SS 1: 372).

101. "Klialsia Gospod' i ne raskaetsia . . ."(Ps. 109: 4); "Ne narushu zaveta Moego . . . Odnazhdy Ia poklialsia sviatostiiu Moeiu: solgu li Davidu?" (Ps. 88: 35-36).

102. SS 1: 367.

103. H. Bergson, Creative Evolution (New York, 1944), pp. 153, 188-194.

104. NM 1, p. 218; Baines, The Later Poetry, p. 175.

105. SS 1: 86-87. For an analysis of this poem, see C. Brown, Mandelstam (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 237-245; and G. Freidin, "Time, Identity, and Myth in Osip Mandelstam" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1979), pp. 164-168.

106. Cf. Derzhavin's ode "Bog."

107. St. Augustin's Confessions and those of Rousseau.

108. K. Clark, "Utopian Anthropology as a Context for Stalinist Literature," in Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York, 1977). Cf. I. Nusinov, Vekovye Obrazy (Moscow, 1937).

109. The appropriation of Prometheus to Christianity is by no means an uncommon theme in modern European literature. "If the identification of Prometheus with Christ," wrote one scholar, "was the result of a mistake which was as much historical as ideological, then, it has to be recognized, rarely has a mistake been more productive" (R. Trousson, Le thème de Prométhée dans la littérature européenne, vol. 2 [Geneva, 1964], p. 479).

110. Apart from the "prayer of the cup" at Gethsemane, compare line 10 of stanza 5 with Matt. 27: 34: "Dali Emu pit' uksusa, smeshannogo s zhelch'iu i, otvedav, ne khotel pit'." break

111. Reported by N. Khardzhiev (see NM 1, p. 268).

112. "Gde sviazannyi i prigvozhdennyi ston," SS 1: 356.

113. See Sir James Frazer, The New Golden Bough (New York, 1959), p. 35 ("The Roots of Magic").

114. "Khrani menia, moi talisman." See Ronen, "Osip Mandel'stam * ."

115. Frazer, The New Golden Bough, p. 35.

116. To cite A. A. Potebnia ( Malorusskaia narodnaia pesnia (Voronezh, 1877], p. 21), the "fundamental formula of a spell [ zagovor ] . . . constitutes a verbal representation in which a given or contrived phenomenon is compared to one that is desired, with the purpose of fulfilling the latter."

117. R. Barthes, Mythologies (New York, 1972), esp. pp. 117-121. Significantly for the history of myth in contemporary culture, Mandelstam praises myth in "Pushkin i Skriabin" in virtually the same words Barthes uses (p. 118) to damn it: "It is this constant game of hide-and-seek between the meaning and the form which defines myth." Compare this with Mandelstam's idea of a poet "playing hide-and-seek with God." On the problem of this sort of concealment, see J. Derrida, "La pharmacie de Platon," in La dissémination (Paris, 1972), where we find the following definition of a text: "Un texte n'est un texte que s'il cache au premier regard, au premier venu, la loi de sa composition et la regle de sonjeu" (p. 71).

118. "Prodigal Son" is the title of a chapter in NM 2.

119. Contrary to the sense conveyed in NM 1, Mandelstam's friend B. S. Kuzin recalled that Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi was a magnanimous actor in the arbitration between Mandelstam and Sargidzhan, who allegedly used force against the poet's wife (Kuzin, "Ob. O. E. Mandel'shtame," p. 122): "A. Tolstoi, it was plain to see, did not try to add to the yapping of the dogs from the Writers' Union that had been loosed on Mandelstam. He did not even respond to the symbolic slap he received from O.E. in any way that might have worsened the clouds gathered over him."

120. "The Procurator's cheek twitched, and he said: 'Bring me the accused"' (M. Bulgakov, Belaia gvardiia. Teatral'nyi roman. Master i Margarita [Moscow, 1973], p. 438). Dostoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 11, p. 28.

121. NM 1, p. 220.

122. NM 2, p. 103. break