Osip Mandelshtam

by Mandelshtam, Osip (Author); Greene, James (Translator); Mandelstam, Nadezhda (Foreword by)

• ISBN13: 9780140184747
• ISBN10: 0140184740
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-06-01
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

James Greene's acclaimed translations of the poetry of Osip Mandelshtam, now in an extensively revised and augmented edition.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xiii
Nadezhda Mandelshtam
Foreword	xv
Donald Davie
Translator's Preface	xix
Introduction	xxv
Donald Rayfield
From STONE (1913, 1916, 1923 And 1928)
The careful muffled sound	3	(1)
Suddenly, from the dimly lit hall	3	(1)
To read only children's books	3	(1)
On pale-blue enamel	4	(1)
What shall I do with the body I've been given	4	(1)
A sadness beyond words	5	(1)
Words are unnecessary	5	(1)
Silentium	6	(1)
Ear-drums stretch their sensitive sail	7	(1)
Like the shadow of sudden clouds	7	(1)
I grew, rustling like a reed	8	(1)
Sultry dusk covers the couch	8	(1)
How slowly the horses move	9	(1)
Light sows a meagre beam	10	(1)
The sea-shell	11	(1)
I hate the light	12	(1)
In the haze your image	12	(1)
No, not the moon, but a bright clock-face	13	(1)
The traveller	13	(1)
The casino	14	(1)
The Lutheran	15	(1)
Hagia sophia	16	(1)
Notre Dame	17	(1)
Poisoned bread, satiated air	18	(1)
Horses' hooves... The clatter	19	(1)
There are orioles in the woods	19	(1)
Nature is Roman, and mirrored in Rome	20	(1)
Sleeplessness. Homer. Taut sails	20	(1)
Herds of horses gaily neigh or graze	21	(1)
Unpublished in the Struve/Filippov editions
Newly reaped ears	22	(1)
Two poems first published by Struve/Filippov, 1964
The hunters have trapped you	22	(1)
The old men of Euripides, an abject throng	22	(3)
From TRISTIA (1922)
How the splendour of these veils and of this dress	25	(1)
We shall die in transparent Petropolis	26	(1)
This night is irredeemable	26	(1)
Disbelieving the miracle of resurrection	27	(1)
Out of the bottle the stream of golden honey poured so slowly	28	(1)
Spring's transparent-grey asphodels	29	(1)
Tristia	30	(1)
Sisters: heaviness and tenderness bear the same insignia	31	(1)
Return to the incestuous lap	32	(1)
When Psyche - life - descends among shades	33	(1)
I have forgotten the word I wanted to say	34	(1)
For the sake of delight	35	(1)
Here is the pyx, like a golden sun	36	(1)
Because I had to let go of your arms	37	(1)
When the city moon looks out on the streets	38	(1)
When, on my lips a singing name, I stepped	39	(1)
I like the grey silences under the arches	40	(3)
From POEMS (1928)
I was washing at night in the courtyard	43	(1)
To some, winter is arrack and a blue-eyed punch	43	(1)
Rosy foam of fatigue on his sensual lips	44	(1)
As the leaven swells	45	(1)
I Climbed into the tousled hayloft	45	(1)
My time	46	(1)
Whoever finds a borseshoe	47	(3)
1 January 1924	50	(5)
TWO POEMS PUBLISHED IN NOVY MIR (1931 AND 1932)
Armenia	55	(1)
Batyushkov	56	(3)
POEMS PUBLISHED POSTHUMOUSLY
Self-portrait	59	(1)
I was only in a childish way connected with the estabilished order	60	(1)
Help me, O Lord, to get through this night	61	(1)
For the resounding glory of ears to come	61	(1)
I drink to the blossoming epaulette	62	(1)
Impressionism	63	(1)
Ariosto	64	(1)
We exist, without sensing our country beneath us	65	(1)
The body of King Arshak is unwashed	66	(1)
Your narrow shoulders are to redden under scourges	67	(1)
Black earth	67	(1)
Yes, I'm lying in the earth, moving my lips	68	(1)
You took away my seas and running jumps and sky	68	(1)
My country conversed with me	68	(1)
For those hundred-carat ingots, Roman nights	69	(1)
A wave advances - one wave breaking another's backbone	69	(1)
I shall perform a smoky rite	69	(1)
I shall not return my borrowed dust	70	(1)
I can't make sense of today	70	(1)
Like a belated present	71	(1)
I would sing of him who shifted the axis of the world	71	(1)
You still haven't died, you're still not alone	72	(1)
I look the frost in the face, alone	72	(1)
Oh, these suffocating, asthmatic spaces of the steppes	73	(1)
Plagued by their miraculous and all-engulfing hunger	73	(1)
Don't compare: anyone alive is matchless	74	(1)
What has contended with oxide and alloys	74	(1)
The mounds of human heads disappear into the distance	74	(1)
Listening, listening to the early ice	75	(1)
A little boy, his red face shining like a lamp	75	(1)
Where can I put myself this January?	76	(1)
Like Rembrandt, martyr of light and dark	77	(1)
Breaks of the rounded bays, shingle, blue	77	(1)
I sing when my throat is damp, my soul dry	78	(1)
Eyes once keener than a sharpened scythe	78	(1)
Armed with the eyesight of narrow wasps	79	(1)
I am plunged into a lion's den, a fort	79	(1)
If our enemies take me	80	(1)
Life's reticulations loosen, madness looms	81	(1)
This is what I want most of all	82	(1)
This azure island was exalted by its potters	83	(1)
As if words were not enough	84	(1)
I raise this greenness to my lips	85	(1)
With her delightful uneven way of walking	86	(1)
Notes and Acknowledgements	87	(11)
Further Reading	98