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ABSTRACT
This article explores a section of the transcript of Joseph Brodsky’s presentation at the 1991 conference on the centenary of Osip Mandelstam in London. It analyzes Brodsky’s position opposing the established view that Mandelstam’s ‘Ode’ to Stalin was an ‘illness.’ It analyzes and comments on Brodsky’s oral statements on the subject, made during the opponents’ presentations at the conference that specifically addressed this work.
Notes
1. The poets Joseph Brodsky, Dmitrii Bobyshev, Anatolii Naiman, and Evgenii Rein, after Anna Akhmatova’s death, became known as ‘Akhmatova’s orphans’ – a phrase taken from Bobyshev’s poem ‘All Four.’ – Trans.
2. We are providing this generalized citation for the text under discussion since it includes numerous participants in the London debate whom we name while quoting from the document, but the collective text does not belong to either P. Nerler or M. Pavlov, who are not mentioned in the transcript.
3. A common Jewish saying from the city of Odessa, said of people perceived as short-sighted and unable to take a forward-looking view of the present situation. – Trans.
4. The first line of a 1933 poem informally known as ‘The Stalin Epigram,’ which led to Mandelstam’s arrest six months later. – Trans.
5. When our article was already being prepared for publication, issue No. 139 of Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie came out. It carried an entirely anti-Gasparov article with the unceremonious title ‘Mikhail Gasparov and “the Mandelstam Encyclopedia”,’ in which Nerler made a passing reference to that book without describing the gist of it and then, within the article, published several voluminous entries by Gasparov for the Mandelstam Encyclopedia. Now every scholar who needs these texts will be compelled to cite the main article’s author. This is not the first time this has happened. Specialists know of posthumous Gasparov/Nerler publications that drew a corresponding reaction. Now we see a new variation of this chronic appropriation.
6. As the following lines of the transcript indicate, two versions of this Mandelstam poem exist: One opens with the line ‘Eshche ne umer ty, eshche ty ne odin’ (‘You are not yet dead, you are not yet alone’); the other with ‘Eshche ne umer ia, eshche ia ne odin’ (‘I am not yet dead, I am not yet alone’). The word eshche has been rendered as ‘not yet’ in translation for the sake of clarity. – Trans.
7. Eshche can also mean the adverb ‘still’ in other contexts, as in the next example. – Trans.
8. E. Soshkin [Soshkin], a young scholar in a Jerusalem doctoral program under R. Timenchik, apparently forgetting in 2015 about our 1995 article and 2012 book, also began talking recently, without any supporting arguments, about this dichotomy and about the poem ‘To Kirov,’ which Mandelstam did not cite, unlike the poem ‘Power.’
9. It is not worth digressing here into a detailed examination of this topic, but it is worth recalling G. Ryzhmanov’s poem ‘Litsom k litsu’ [Face to Face], which was published right after Mandelstam’s departure from Voronezh at the end of his exile and looked like an insult to Mandelstam, regardless of exactly when the poem was written.
10. This phrase is actually from a different, untitled poem, ‘It seems to me we must speak/About the future of Soviet antiquity … ,’ written two years before the ‘Ode,’ in 1935. – Trans.
11. Brodsky here slightly misquotes Mandelstam by using the Russian word nechist’ (‘scum’); the original Mandelstam phrase used a virtually synonymous epithet: gustopsovaia svoloch’ (‘out-and-out swine’). – Trans.
12. The quotes allude to Pasternak’s poem ‘To Anna Akhmatova.’ – Trans.
13. The first Blok quotation is from the poem ‘O, I want to live madly …’ (1914); the second reference is to the poem ‘The Poets’ (1908). – Trans.
14. From Blok’s poem ‘To Friends’ (1908). – Trans.
15. From Blok’s poem ‘Ravenna’ (1909). – Trans.
16. The quotation is from Mandelstam’s poem ‘What street is this? …’ (1935). – Trans.
17. This is an imprecise quotation from the poem. The actual lines are ‘He leaned from the rostrum as if from a mountain/Over the mounds of heads. The debtor is stronger than the claim.’ – Trans.
18. Nathan Altman (1889–1970) was a Russian-Soviet avant-garde artist, Cubist painter, and book illustrator; Yuri Annenkov (1889–1974) was a Russian book illustrator and portraitist. – Trans.
19. This section is not completely clear. On the one hand, the ‘flier’-epigram refers to Baratynsky’s ‘Epigramma’:
The taloned flier,
Laughing epigram,
Fidgety epigram,
Hovers and flutters over the people
And the moment it spots a freak,
It instantly clawing at the eyes.
On the other hand, Brodsky comes up with the word ‘sharp-eyed,’ which ‘sums up’ the last two lines and the first one (‘Sharp talon’ and ‘clawing at the eyes’). But this also seems to lead to ‘spindle-legged creepy-crawly bug’ (Chukovsky), with the legendary linkage of ‘The Big Cockroach’ to Stalin – and fully correlates with ‘thin-necked leaders’ and ‘half-people.’ [From the ‘Epigram.’ – Trans.]
What makes this even more probable is that in Mandelstam’s ‘Epigram,’ as is well known, ‘the big cockroach mustache laughs’ (or, as the NKVD version and Gershtein have it, the ‘big eyes’). We cite this example, as well as the previous one with the subtextual references to Blok and Pasternak, to demonstrate the fluid and seemingly unestablished oral type of text that we are working with, unlike Brodsky’s recorded thoughts that everyone knows. It is possible that such comparative work with the ‘speech’ and ‘prose of the poet’ may prove to be very useful even on a general theoretical level.
20. Soviet slang for the secret police. – Trans.
21. We cannot refrain from voicing extreme amazement at the fact that the chapter in this book that deals with Pasternak’s conversation with Stalin about Mandelstam has no commentary at all. Everything related to the history of ‘We live without feeling the country beneath us … ’ and the ‘Ode’ is annotated in such a way that the mass reader would have no idea that it is a very problematic text … After all, it become clearer and clearer that the version of events given by the poet’s widow is very far from reality [Katsis Citation2014].
22. We expressed this just recently in a specialized text, where incidentally we also referred to the text of Brodsky’s London remarks, which is avoided in semiofficial Mandelstam studies [Katsis Citation2012: 27–32]. Immediately afterward, certain participants in the London gathering began, quite systematically, to express dissatisfaction with the transcript and to report on some unverifiable conversations with Brodsky in the corridors and at parties, and so forth. Here is the most striking example of this kind: [Levinton: 449–451], where the memoirist felt that Brodsky’s tone toward him was ‘the sort people use when talking with idiots.’ Levinton feels that M. Pavlov deliberately omitted this episode in the printed transcript because Levinton’s presentation contained criticism of the transcriber of the proceedings. But anything missing from the published text is not there!
23. We should note that Brodsky used highly avant-garde devices in his comments. After all, the word he used had already turned up in Russian poetry in regard to a specific person – in this case Mayakovsky, in A. Vvedenskii’s ‘God is Possible All Around’: ‘All subjects merely live a short age/Merely spring and summer/Tuesday plus Thursday.’ In this instance the allusion was to the dead Mayakovsky, who was lying on ‘red lead-plated boards’ after committing suicide on Holy Monday. The body was displayed for final respects from Tuesday to Thursday and cremated. Therefore, while Mandelstam’s ‘Ode’ is not about Stalin but about his portrait, i.e. about a clearly secondary image in a poetic text, ‘Stalin’s portrait,’ whether it is drawn square by square or with a master’s brush, is a subject indeed! Or else simply a work of art.
24. From an untitled 1936 poem by Mandelstam. – Trans.
25. Compare N. Mandelstam, whose words could have elicited just such a reaction: ‘The person to whom the ‘Ode’ was written so preoccupied our imagination that disguised remarks about him may be detected in the most unexpected places. Associative moves always give O.M. away – his associations are strong and constant. Where, for example, does the ‘idol’ living ‘inside the mountain’ come from – there may be an external similarity here: Kremlin–flint–stone [Kreml’–kremen’–kamen’]. This idol was once a human being; the actor Yakhontov came to visit with his wife Lilia, a Stalinist of the ingratiating type, and she would recount to O.M. what a marvelous young man – revolutionary, bold spirit, a lively fellow – Stalin had been … ’ [N. Mandelstam: 288]. While we cannot reconstruct and verify the conversation of Yakhontov’s wife, this is just the kind of image of the youthful Stalin that Sel’vinskii created in the unpublished Chapter IV of his ‘Cheliuskiniana’ – ‘Stalin’ – which was read at the Minsk plenum [of the Soviet Writers’ Union. – Trans.] in 1936, to which Mandelstam also made an appeal. This was the image of the Leader that was prohibited from distribution at the time, but Pasternak and the Voronezh writers heard Sel’vinskii’s poem. For more detail, see: [Katsis Citation2012: 145–185].
26. Nerler states in many of his works (without of course citing Gershtein, who is unacceptable to him) that Stalin liked the ‘Epigram,’ without citing any particular evidence. Gershtein, meanwhile, contends that the leader was repeating these lines to himself in the dark Kremlin corridors even before he became an outright werewolf after Kirov’s assassination. The words seemingly foretold the possibility of further murders of his comrades-in-arms.
27. Today both O. Lekmanov and I. Veniavkin have tacitly ‘agreed’ with us. The latter simply carefully rewrote our old (2008) work in 2014 in the well-known series Stanford Slavic Studies. Compare our article on this sad topic in the journal Lekhaim (2015, No. 7) in the section on Sel’vinskii.
28. From Mandelstam’s 1933 poem ‘Ariosto.’ – Trans.
29. The quotation is imprecise. It is actually ‘Watching is … ’ – Trans.
30. The reference here is evidently to a slip of the tongue by Brodsky, who says in Russian ‘ubre … ,’ combining the Russian words for ‘beard-shaver’ – bradobrei (actually an old Russian word for barber) – and ‘by the brows’ – u brovei. – Trans.
31. The original poem actually says ‘the plain squinted’ (prishchurilas’ ravnina), not ‘the plain stared’ (ustavilas’ ravnina), and the furrows reach ‘to the sun,’ not ‘to the sky.’ – Trans.
32. Actually from Pasternak’s ‘Verses From the Caucasus.’ In a different variant, ‘the glaciers opened up their faces.’ – Trans.
33. In the poem, ‘The eagle’s flight will write above the bluff … ’ – Trans.
34. As this tremendous symbolic image is developed, it takes up cantos 23 through 100, so we are not quoting it here.
35. This is where the word ‘move’ [khod], which puzzled me in the corridor conversation, came up for the first time, but not the last.
36. A reference to Mandelstam’s poem ‘Where is the bound and nailed-down moan? … ’ – Trans.
37. Innokenty Annensky’s drama about Thamyris, son of the Thracian king Philammon and the nymph Argiope. – Trans.
38. This is, naturally, a note by the editors. – L.K.
39. From Mandelstam’s 1935 poem ‘Yes, I am lying in the ground …’ – Trans.
40. A cycle of six poems that Pushkin wrote in 1836 about his religious feelings after a visit to the Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist on Kamenny Island in St. Petersburg. – Trans.
41. An allusion to the main character of Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 satirical comedy The Government Inspector [Revizor], Khlestakov. – Trans.
42. Refers to Stalin and his birthplace of Gori, Georgia. – Trans.
43. In the original poem, ‘structure.’ – Trans.
44. A misquotation: As cited in the extended excerpt below it, the verb should be ‘was starting.’ – Trans.
45. The Russian word for ‘great’ – velik – rhymes with Bolshevik. – Trans.
46. From ‘About These Verses,’ a 1917 poem by Pasternak. – Trans.
47. Brodsky’s 1977 book of poems, The End of a Wonderful Epoch, includes a poem of the same name. – Trans.
48. A Russian-language émigré newspaper published in Paris. – Trans.