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Mandel'shtam's Farewell to Marina Tsvetaeva: “Ne veria voskresen'ia chudu”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Ieva Vitins
Ieva Vitins*
Affiliation:
Department of Russian at Dalhousie University
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Extract

… tak znai zhe: tvoi Dmitrii Davno pogib, zaryt — i ne voskresnet.

A. S. Pushkin, Boris Godunov

“Ne veria voskresen'ia chudu” is the last of the three poems that Osip Mandel'shtam addressed to Marina Tsvetaeva. The poets had met briefly in Koktebel' in the summer of 1915; they were reintroduced that December in Petrograd, and soon after Mandel'shtam made the first of several visits to Tsvetaeva in Moscow. He responded to her gift of the city, “Iz ruk moikh — nerukotvornyi grad/ Primi, moi strannyi, moi prekrasnyi brat” and to the affection of her “Otkuda takaia nezhnost'” with “V raznogolositse devicheskogo khora,” a celebration of his companion against the wondrously integrated Russo-Italian backdrop of the old capital. But in his next poem to her, “Na rozval'niakh ulozhennykh solomoi,” a sinister note is heard that relates their friendship to a darker side of Moscow's past, to Tsvetaeva's identification with Marina Mnishek and to his own confused identity at her side.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , Summer 1987 , pp. 266 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1987

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References

1. Karlinsky, Simon, Marina Tsvetaeva. The Woman, her World and her Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 58–61 Google Scholar, comments on the one-sided nature of Mandel'shtam's infatuation. He notes also that Tsvetaeva's “still-mysterious” romance with Nikodim Plutser-Sarmabegan in the early summer months of 1916.

2. See Levin, Iurii, “Zametki o Krymsko-Ellinskikh stikhakh Osipa Mandel'shtama,” Russian Literature 10/11 (1975): 5–31;Google Scholar M. Segal, Dmitrii, “Pamiat’ zreniia i pamiat’ smysla,” Russian Literature 7/8 (1974): 122–131 Google Scholar; M. Segal, Dmitrii, “Semanticheskaia poetika Mandel'shtama,” Russian Literature 10/11 (1975): 59–146 Google Scholar; Levinton, G. A., “Na kamennykh otrogakh Pierii Mandel'shtama: Materialy kanalizy,” Russian Literature 2 (1977): 123–170.Google Scholar

3. P. Kablukov, Sergei, “Mandel'shtam v zapiskakh dnevnika S.P. Kablukova,” Vestnik russkogo studencheskogo khristianskogo dvizheniia, no. 129 (1979), pp. 153–154.Google Scholar

4. M. Tsvetaeva, “Istoriia odnogo posviashcheniia,” Izbrannaia proza v dvukh tomakh (NewYork: Russica, 1979) 1: 341–366. This essay will be referred to as “Istoriia” in the notes.

5. Saakiants, Anna, “O pravde letopisi i pravde poeta,” Voprosy literatury 11 (1983): 208–214 Google Scholar. This article publishes a letter from Tsvetaeva to her sister-in-law immediately following Mandel'shtam's visit to Aleksandrov; the letter gives a detailed account of his stay that does not always correspondto her later memoirs. Particularly surprising is the information that Mandel'shtam stayed inAleksandrov less than twenty-four hours.

6. Jane Taubman devotes a chapter to the Tsvetaeva-Mandel'shtam “romance” in her forthcomingbook on Tsvetaeva. In it she makes very sensitive comparisons of the two poets’ work at the timeof their liaison and discusses the way in which they influenced each other's verse. She does not treat “Ne veria” at length.

7. Ginzburg, Lidiia, “Poetika assotsiatsii,” O lirike (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1974), pp.380–382Google Scholar. Karlinsky in his Marina Tsvetaeva, p. 60, notes Gregory Freidin's forthcoming book, “ACoat of Many Colors: Osip Mandel'shtam and His Mythologies of Self-Presentation,” and his discussionin great detail of “the poetic exchange between Tsvetaeva and Mandel'shtam which emerges asboth redolent of mythic associations and slightly sinister.” I have not had access to the manuscript ofthis book.

8. Mandel'shtam, N., Vtoraia kniga (Paris: YMCA, 1972, p. 279 Google Scholar.

9. Ibid., p. 522–523.

10. Ibid., p. 523.

11. Ronen, Omry, An Approach to Mandel'shtam (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1983, p. 207 Google Scholar.

12. Mandel'shtam, O., Sobranie sochinenii, ed. Struve, Gleb P. and Filippov, B. A., 4 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Inter-Language Associates, 1971) 2: 287 Google Scholar.

13. Ibid. 2: 247.

14. Ibid., 1: 62. This volume will be referred to a” Sobranie 1 in the notes. N. Mandel'shtam hasshown that the lines “la cherez ovidy stepnye/ Tianulsia v kamenistyi Krym” that appeared in the firstpublication of the poem (Apollon 9/10 [1916], p. 75) but were omitted later by the poet are probablythe work of M. L. Lozinskii; Vtoraia kniga, pp. 521–522.

15. Pertinent to this manner of resolution is Iu. Levin's observation of Mandel'shtam's preferencefor the ne- lexeme (often in the first stanza), “sviazannoi, vidimo, s ikh bol'shei smyslovoi svobodoi ineopredelennost'iu … s tem, chto oni iavliaiutsia kak by nositeliami dvoinoi semantiki: skvoz’ otritsanieprosvechivaet utverzhdenie” (“O sootnoshenii mezhdu semanticheskoi poetikoi teksta i vnetekstovoireal'nost'iu,” Russian Literature 10/11 (1975): 159.

16. Iu. Levin defines panchronism as “sovmeshchenie proshlogo i nastoiashchego, prostranstv ivremen. Sredstvom takogo sovmeshcheniia iavliaetsia pamiat' “; “Zametki o Krymsko-Ellinskikhsukhakh,” p. 19.

17. Ni'kita Struve notes that in Tristia “seuis quelques rares poèmes echappent à ce thème orphique, à cette descente aux mondes souterrains qui promet ou du moins n'exclut pas la remontée, la résurrection “; Osip Mandel'shtam (Paris: Institut d'fetudes Slaves, 1982), p. 172. See also Marina Glazov, “Mandel'shtam and Dante: The Divine Comedy in Mandel'shtam's Poetry of the 1930's,” Studies in Soviet Thought 28 (1984): 281–335.

18. Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1959), p. 22–24 Google Scholar, associates spatial nonhomogeneity with sacred space (cf. landscape in “Ne veria “) and homogeneitywith chaos, amorphousness (the Aleksandrov community).

19. Tsvetaeva, “Istoriia,” p. 363.

20. Boris Uspenskii, trans. David Budger, “Tsar and Pretender,” in Lotman, Iu., Uspenskii, B., Semiotics of Russian Culture (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Contributions, 1984, pp. 266–274 Google Scholar.

21. Pushkin, Aleksandr S., Boris Godunovn, in Sobranie sochinenii, 10 vols. (Moscow: GIKhL, 1960) 4: 219 Google Scholar.

22. Kablukov, “Mandel'shtam v zapiskakh dnevika S. P. Kablukova,” p. 153.

23. Cited in Struve, Osip Mandel'shtam, p. 243, n. 75.

24. Tsvetaeva, , Stikhotvoreniia ipoemy, 4 vols. (New York: Russica, 1980) 1: 213–214 Google Scholar. The volumewill be referred to in the notes as Stikhotvoreniia 1.

25. Rilke, Rainer Maria in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (New York: Capricorn, 1958, pp. 162–164 Google Scholar makes interesting comments on the effect of Marfa Nagaia on the Pretender's sense ofself.

26. Tsvetaeva, Stikhotvoreniia 1: 207

27. Mandel'shtam, Sobranie 1: 58. For detailed discussions of the poem see, among others, Brown, Clarence, Mandel'shtam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973, pp. 221–227 Google Scholar; Taranovskii, K., Essays on Mandel'shtam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976, pp. 115–120 CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Ginzburg, “Poetika assotsiatsii,” pp. 380–382; Struve, Osip Mandel'shtam, pp. 173–176.

28. Struve, Osip Mandel'shtam, pp. 108–115.

29. Tsvetaeva, Stikhotvoreniia 1: 215–216.

30. Ibid., p. 216.

31. Brown, Mandel'shtam, p. 244.

32. Struve, Osip Mandel'shtam, p. 174.

33. Tsvetaeva, Stikhotvoreniia 1: 218.

34. Mandel'shtam, Sobranie 2: 328.

35. Chaadaev, Petr, Filosofkheskiepis'ma (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1978), p. 15 Google Scholar.

35. Ibid., p. 12.

37. Ibid., p. 15.

38. Gershenzon, Mikhail, P. Ia. Chaadaev. Zhizri imyshlenie (1908; reprint, The Hague: Mouton, 1968), p. 94 Google Scholar.

39. Chaadaev, Filosofkheskie pis'ma, pp. 12–13.

40. Mandel'shtam, “Petr Chaadaev,” Sobranie 2: 287.

41. Ibid., “Shum vremeni,” 2: 55.

42. Mandel'shtam, Sobranie 1: 77.

43. Taranovskii, Essays on Mandel'shtam, p. 63.

44. Cited by Tsvetaeva in a letter to Aleksandr Bakhrakh, Mosty V (Munich, 1960), p. 313.

45. See Martinez, Louis, “Le Noir et le Blanc …,” Cahiers de linguistique, d'orientalisme el de slavistique 3/4 (1974): 118–137 Google Scholar, for a discussion of the poet's use of these colors.

46. Mandel'shtam, , “Kogda mozaik niknut travy,” Sobranie 1: 122.Google Scholar

47. My colleague John Barnstead has called my attention to the similarity of “Tavridy plamennoeleto” to Pushkin's “Hi ot Permi do Tavridy, /Ot finskikh khladnykh skal do plamennoi Kolkhidy” in “Klevetnikam Rossii,” Sobranie sochinenii 2: 339.

48. Keats, John, “Hymn to Apollo,” The Complete Poetical Works of John Keats (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1890, p. 7 Google Scholar.

49. I do not agree with Levin that the analogous later “prelestnye, zagorelye ruki” is devoid oferotic import; see Levin, “Zametki o Krymsko-EUinskikh stikhakh,” p. 16.

50. Noted by Nancy Pollak in an unpublished paper, “The Boyarina's Divine Boy,” read in 1984at the Yale Tsvetaeva Colloquium.

51. Chaadaev, Filosoficheskie pis'/no, pp. 16, 7.

52. Ibid., p. 56.

53. Mandel'shtam, Sobranie 2: 285.

54. Pushkin's Boris Godunov is replete with references to chudo v Chudovom monastyre, thechudo of an apparition before Tsar Fedor, chudesa referring to Marina and Dmitrii, the dead tsarevichDmitrii as a chudotvorets.

55. Taranovskii, Essays on Mandel'shtam, p. 111.

56. Nilsson, N., Osip Mandel'shtam: Five Poems (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1974, pp. 70–71 Google Scholar.

57. Mandel'shtam, “O prirode slova,” Sobranie 2: 251.Google Scholar