about…
There are encounters like lightning-flashes. Osip Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetaeva — two of the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century, victims of the Stalinist regime, he dead of exhaustion in the GULAG in 1938, she hanged-and-suicided in 1941 — lived, in their youth, a passionate love during an astonishingly fleeting span from February to June 1916. This love story might have been no more than one element in the biography of either. But through the magic of their pens, each immortalized in his or her own way this event that became a poetic and literary event. Though differently for him and for her, this relationship had a definite bearing as much on their conception of the world and of life as on their poetic art; it marked their expression and the evolution of their writing with an indelible seal. It is when he meets Tsvetaeva that Mandelstam closes his cycle of poems “STONE” and embarks on a new, radically different cycle: “TRISTIA.” As if in echo, Tsvetaeva’s poetry too is metamorphosed, suddenly rid of its juvenile husk.
Beyond the discovery of love but also of a certain Russian world that until then he had ignored, this liaison with Tsvetaeva, of a rare intensity, was for Mandelstam a stage, an important stage, that undeniably enlarged him, transformed him. And yet, like the traveler, he took up his road again after this halt, toward other encounters, other horizons, other conquests. Tsvetaeva represents, in a sense, one stone of his construction.
At first glance, it would seem that Marina Tsvetaeva, for her part, lived this adventure as a flirtation, almost with offhandedness. Mischievous, she plays with the man-child while venerating the poet. And yet her writings bear witness: Mandelstam was for her a kind of thread she would never let go of throughout her life, he is an integral part of her weave, now invisible, now apparent but never forgotten.
When Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva first cross paths in the year 1915, they are two young people — two young poets — whom nothing, it seems, could either bring together or unite. He is as much a Petersburger as she is a Muscovite, the young man as awkward and encumbered by himself as the young woman is impetuous and ablaze. They are, so to speak, the same age, twenty-three, twenty-four — he is older than she by barely a few months — but he is already in a true poetic maturity whereas she is still an adolescent-poet.
It is the summer of 1915 and by the hazards of life, they find themselves under the same Crimean sun, guests of a common friend, Maximilian Voloshin, who generously opens his doors to a whole bohemian intellectual fauna. And yet, their true encounter will take place only a few months later: beneath the Crimean sky, Tsvetaeva is not alone, she is at the tail end of a tumultuous and painful relationship with her friend Sophia Parnok and has hardly any eyes for those around her.
In February 1916, their paths cross again. This time, Osip Mandelstam falls madly in love with Marina. Moscow, Tsvetaeva’s city, shelters their love. But the true miracle is the poems: from one, from the other, like a duet, a voice rises or murmurs, the other in echo takes it up, in the same tone or in a graver register, or again in a higher timbre. One can follow them, on the chamber side, on the walking side… One need only prick up one’s ears and one knows what they are saying to each other, their glances, their shadows, their steps in accord, then suddenly their jerky gait, their separate course…
Diptych 11: In both poems, the dominant note is tenderness. Playful for her, grave and intense for him. Mandelstam’s legendary eyelashes are echoed by Tsvetaeva’s eyebrows, here compared to the arches of the façade of the Cathedral of the Dormition at the Kremlin. Moscow — it is she. The marvels of the Kremlin — they are she. What is Russian — it is still she. The Beautiful — it can only be she.
Diptych 2: The walk continues. The images are doubled with sound. She tells him the History of her city, shows the sites, resurrects those tsareviches sacrificed in the public square. Another wave of tenderness toward the man-child. Premonitory visions of the poet’s death assail her. These hallucinations are so real and so terrifying that she chases them away at once. He listens to her tell, and identifies with the sacrificed tsarevich. These two poems have the accents of such fatal forebodings!
Diptych 3: in a prose text titled “STORY OF A NON-DEDICATION” Tsvetaeva explained at length the origin and the meaning of Mandelstam’s poem: a holiday place, the days passing, and Mandelstam’s endless waverings — Leave? Stay? Leave her? How to leave? How to stay? — and then, departure on an impulse. In response, Tsvetaeva reassures, reaffirms her tenderness, her attachment to the man, her admiration for the poet.
Diptych 4: With this poem “THE AGE” dated 1923, Mandelstam is in the splendid blaze of his maturity. Around this same period, he writes his autobiographical prose book “THE NOISE OF TIME.” At this time, Tsvetaeva, for her part, has already left Russia. And it is from Paris that she follows what is being written in her country. From her correspondence, we know that she reacted (very negatively) to her reading of this text. But in the spring of 1934, Mandelstam is arrested and then condemned to exile. Tsvetaeva learns of it. It is no longer a question of passing this or that judgment on the writings: the Poet and the man are in danger. At once, she seizes her pen to take up, fiercely, Mandelstam’s defense. The latter is not named explicitly but the words poet, Age and noise of time speak for themselves.
Diptychs 5/6: To Tsvetaeva’s hallucinated poem where, in an altered state, moved by a staggering premonitory gift, she sees the tragic end, the death of Mandelstam — exactly as it was in reality — to this hallucinated poem are echoed both Mandelstam’s poem “1ST JANUARY 1924” and his very last letter to his family. One may indeed set in parallel with Tsvetaeva’s visionary poem either Mandelstam’s poem-presentiment (And it is with lead that his lips will be sealed), or his final message arrived from deportation: at a distance of twenty-two years, the prophecy was fulfilled.
Diptych 1
Whence this flood of tenderness? I have plenty of others — curls — Caressed, and lips Known — darker than yours. I have watched the stars kindle and die, (Whence this flood of tenderness?) I have watched eyes kindle and die At the threshold of my own eyes.
And to many another song I have lent my ear in the very heart of night (Whence this flood of tenderness?) Against the very breast of the singer.
Whence this flood of tenderness? And what to do with it, mischievous Stripling, passing singer, With lashes so long — without their like?
18 February 1916
You throw your head back2 Because you are proud and a braggart. What a merry companion This February has brought me!
Pursued by barefoot vagrants And ceaselessly throwing off the smoke, Like splendid strangers We crossed the beloved city…
What thoughtful hands took care Of your eyelashes, O marvel, And — strewn with what wood of thorns — The road of laurels [carried] you…
I do not want to know. My passionate spirit Has already overtaken this phantasm. In you, it is the divine boy, — The ten-year-old child I honor.
Let us slow our pace by the river that bathes The colored pearls of the streetlamps. I will lead you, I, to the square That saw the adolescent-tsars…
Whistle the melody of your child’s grief, And hold your heart clenched in the hollow of your hand… My impassive one, my frenzied one, My liberated one — forgive me!
18 February 1916
Diptych 2
In the polyphony of the choir of young girls Each church so tender sings its own voice. And in the stone arches of the Dormition Eyebrows appear to me, arched and high-set.
Then from the ramparts backed against the archangels, From a sublime height I embraced the city. My heart clenched between the walls of the Acropolis I pined for a Russian name and a Russian beauty.
We see in a dream a garden — what a marvel! — Where doves hover in the burning azure. There a nun sings Orthodox motifs: Tender Dormition — it is Florence in Moscow.
The Moscow churches girdled with five cupolas, With their Russian soul as much as Italian, Remind me — it’s true — of the apparition of Aurora, But with a Russian name and in a fur-lined jacket.
In a wide sleigh furnished with fresh straw Barely covered by a deathly mat, Setting out from the Sparrow Hills for the little church, We crossed gigantic Moscow.
And while at Uglich3 the children play at dice And the bread forgotten in the oven gives off its scent, It is I that they lead through the streets, bareheaded, While in the church three tall candles flicker.
No, three encounters — and not three lighted candles — The first by God himself was blessed, There will be no fourth, and Rome is far — And in truth Rome he never loved.
The sleigh sank into the black ruts, The rabble was coming back from the promenade, Famished men and hate-filled women Stamped their feet before the gates. A flight of birds was darkening the distance And his bound hands were aching; It is the child-tsar they lead, his whole body so numb — To the reddish straw, now they set the fire.
1916
Diptych 3
Without believing in resurrection, We were walking through the cemetery. — You know, everywhere the whole earth Makes me think of those hills
There where Russia comes to an end Above the black and obscure sea.
The vast meadow takes flight Before the flanks of the monastery. I did not want to flee to the south The great expanses of Vladimir But in this village of idiots, In this dark village of wood, With this misty nun, To stay — that was misfortune assured.
I kiss the sunburn of the elbow And of the brow a recess of wax. I know it has stayed white Beneath the golden lock of sun.
And I kiss too the wrist Where the ring’s imprint whitens. The burning summer of Tauris Is capable of such miracles.
You had soon grown dark-skinned, And come close to the Savior, You never ceased kissing him — In Moscow you played the proud one.
There remains to us only a name — Its marvel, for a long while. So accept from my hands This sea-sand that trickles away.
1916
No one has taken anything from anyone! It is sweet to me, our parting. I kiss you — across the hundreds Of versts that separate us.
I know that our gift is not equal. My voice for the first time is muted. What care you, young Derzhavin,4 For my untamed rhyming!
On the threshold of the dread flight, I bless you: Fly then, young eaglet! You stared at the sun without a wince of the eye — Is it unbearable, my youthful gaze?
More tenderly and more irremediably No one ever followed you with their eyes… I kiss you — across the hundreds Of years that separate us…
12 February 1916
Diptych 4
THE AGE
My age, my beast, who will dare A glance into your eyes And who with his blood will seal The vertebrae of two ages? The blood-builder has gushed From the throat of earthly things, The parasite has barely shuddered At the dawn of the new days.
Every being to its last breath Must bear its spine, And the wave disports itself — Invisible dorsal ridge. It is like the frail cartilage, The age of earth in its tender years, Just as the lamb was offered in sacrifice, Once again the skull of life is immolated.
To tear the age from its irons, To begin a new world, One must bind with a sound of the flute The kneecaps of the knotty days. It is the age that moves the wave With a wholly human languor, In the grass the serpent exhales The age’s gold-cast measure.
The buds will swell again And the green shoots will spring forth But it is broken, your spine, My age, sublime and pitiable, And in a senseless smile, You contemplate, cruel and weak, Like a beast once supple The imprint of your own paws.
1923
Of the poet he has not thought, The age, and cares nothing for him. It is his affair, the age’s; it is his affair, the noise Of time — it is not mine!
If the age of the ancestors cares nothing, For the descendants I care nothing: a herd. My age — gall, my age — torment, My age — defiance, my age hell. Mine.
September 1934
Diptych 5
Death by a woman. It is written, there, In your palm — young man. Lower your eyes! Pray! Beware! The enemy Keeps watch at midnight.
Neither from your songs will it save you The heavenly gift, nor from your lips the arrogant cut. You are precious Because heavenly.
Ah, your head thrown back, Your eyes half-closed, hiding what? Ah, it will be thrown back, your head — Otherwise.
With bare hands they will take you, restive! Stubborn! — With your cry through the night the earth will resound! Your wings will be scattered to the four winds, Seraph! — Eaglet! —
17 March 1916
1ST JANUARY 1924
He who kissed the sorrowful skull of time — With filial love, later, Will remember how time went off to lie Outside, in the snowdrifts of wheat. He who lifted the heavy eyelids of the age — Two great drowsy apples — Will hear forever the tumult of the waves Of the artful and deaf times.
Two drowsy apples it has, the all-powerful age And a splendid mouth of clay. But it is against the stiffened arm of its aging son That, in its death-throes, it will come collapsing down. I know, from day to day the breath of life grows weak, A little more — and now they will silence The simple little song that tells the wounds of clay, And it is with lead that his lips will be sealed.
O life of clay! O agony of the age! Unable to understand you — I fear it — Will be only he who has the powerless smile Of the man estranged from himself. What grief — to seek the lost word, To lift the heavy eyelids, And the blood heavy with lime, for another tribe To gather the herbs of the night.
Age. In the veins of the sick son the lime Hardens. Moscow sleeps like a wooden kneading-trough And nowhere to flee the all-powerful age… The snow smells of apple as in days of old. I would like to flee my threshold But for where? In the street it is night. As if salt had been spread over the pavement, I see the white halo of my conscience.
Through the maze of alleys, of nesting-boxes, of gutters Having haltingly forced my way, I, mere passenger covered in a fish-fur, I strive to fix the blanket in place. One street looms up, then another And frozen the sleigh creaks like an apple. There’s no clasping this paw It escapes my hands again and yet again. With what clatter of iron and what din Through the streets of Moscow the winter night trembles!
Frozen fish that’s struck or else a jet of steam In the rosy taverns — like the silver of the roach. Moscow still Moscow. “Hello,” I say to it — “Don’t be angry with me, it scarcely matters now, Just as in the fable I am respectful of the accord Of the icy cold and the reason of the stronger.”
On the snow blazes the chemist’s raspberry, An Underwood in the distance has clicked away. And the coachman’s back and the layer of snow: What more do you need? They’ll do nothing to you. They won’t kill you.
Winter reigns princely, the goatish sky among the stars Crumbles and shimmers in pearls of milk, On the frozen runners, like the horse’s mane, The blanket creaks, the blanket rubs.
The streets are smoked over by the oil lamps, They have swallowed up snow, ice, raspberry. Everywhere the Soviet sonatina flakes off At the memory of the year twenty. Can it be that I deliver up to vile gossip — Again the icy air smells of apple — The marvelous oath sworn to the Fourth Estate And also the promises — grandiose to the point of tears?
Whom will you kill again? Whom will you glorify? What will be your new lie? See there the cartilage of the Underwood: tear off the keys then, A wolf’s fang is in it. And in the blood of the sick son the lime Will dissolve and a blissful laugh will spring forth… But the modest sonatina of the typewriters Is only the shadow of the splendid sonatas.
1924
Diptych 6
Death by a woman. It is written, there, In your palm — young man. Lower your eyes! Pray! Beware! the enemy Keeps watch at midnight.
Neither from your songs will it save you The heavenly gift, nor from your lips the arrogant cut. You are precious Because heavenly.
Ah, your head thrown back, Your eyes half-closed, hiding what? Ah, it will be thrown back, your head — Otherwise.
With bare hands they will take you, restive! Stubborn! — With your cry through the night the earth will resound! Your wings will be scattered to the four winds, Seraph! — Eaglet! —
17 March 1916
Dear Shura!5
I am at: Vladivostok, SVITL6, barrack 11. I was condemned to five years for counter-rev. activ. by decision of the OSO7. We left Moscow, the Butyrki prison8, under escort on September 9, we arrived October 12.
My health is very precarious, I am exhausted to the last degree, I have grown terribly thin, I am almost unrecognizable but nonetheless I don’t know whether it’s worth sending me clothes, food and money. Try all the same. I am freezing without clothing.
My darling Nadenka9, are you alive, my sweet? Shura, give me news of Nadia very quickly.
Here, it is a transit center. I was not taken to be shipped off to Kolyma. I will probably spend the winter here.
My dears, I kiss you.
Osia.
[End of October 1938, last letter]
Notes
For greater convenience, Tsvetaeva’s poems are here transcribed in italic, Mandelstam’s in “roman” or upright type.↩︎
All who knew Mandelstam were struck by the way he held his head thrown back.↩︎
Place of relegation of the young tsarevich Dmitri by Boris Godunov.↩︎
Russian poet (1743–1816), forerunner of Pushkin.↩︎
Diminutive of Alexander, Osip Mandelstam’s brother.↩︎
Abbreviation for “Corrective Labor Camp, Northeast Section.”↩︎
Abbreviation for “Special Board.”↩︎
Familiar name for the Butyrskaya prison.↩︎
Nadezhda Mandelstam, Osip Mandelstam’s wife.↩︎