Dear colleagues,

Christmas and last urgent travel preparations do not leave me much time,
but I don't want to leave Berlin without reminding us that in three days
will be the 60th anniversary of the death of Osip Mandelstam, whose
_Conversation about Dante_ (Razgovor o Dante, 1933, first English
publication 1965, first Russian publication 1967) is probably the most
dense and thoughtful meditation devoted by a poet of our century to Dante. 

Mandelstam was born in Warsaw as son of a Jewish merchant, went to school
in St. Petersburgh, and studied Old French with Freitz Neumann in
Heidelberg (1909/10) and Romance languages and St. Petersburgh (1911-15,
leaving the university without a grade because of a failed exam in Latin).
He was a member of the poetic school of the 'Acmeists' (together with
Gumiljov and Achmatova), published his first poems in 1910 and his first
volume of poetry in 1913 (_The Stone_), followed by _Tristia_ (1922),
_Poems_ (1928), and _Armenia_ (published in Nowyj Mir, 1931). Apart from
his poetry he wrote the tale _The Egyptian Stamp_ (1928), literary essays
on other poets like Villon, Chenier, Blok and Pasternak (_On Poetry_,
1928), numerous essays, portraits and poetic memories in prose (some of
them collected in _The Noise of Time_, 1925), also notebooks of his time in
Moskow (written 1930-34) and of his exile in Voronezh (written 1934). Of
his prose writings, probably the best known apart from his Conversation on
Dante, is the wonderful _Journey to Armenia_ (written in 1933, first
published in the journal Swesda, 1933). He also translated the works of
other poets and writers such as Auguste Barbier, Andre Chenier, and Charles
de Coster. His aesthetic program and his humanist views brought him early
in conflict with the Soviet system. In 1928 he fell victim to a campaign
which was started under the pretext that his translation of de Coster was a
plagiarism. From 1928 on he could no longer publish any books, and could
publish only rarely and under greatest difficulties in journals. In 1934,
after having written an epigram against Stalin and in the course of an
affair where he slapped a judge who had decided against his complaint, he
was arrested and sentenced to three years of exile in Cherdyn. After an
attempted suicide the sentence was changed and Mandelstam chose to continue
his exile in Voronezh. At the end of his exile, Mandelstam and his wife
Nadezhda were denied the right to live in Moscow and moved to Kalinin,
isolated from and avoided by their friends in Moscow of which only Victor
Sklovskij still dared to receive their visits. Arrested again on 2 May
1938, Mandelstam was sentenced on 2 August to five years of labour camp in
Kolyma because of "antisovietic propaganda". On 8 September he left Moskow
together with 1800 fellow sufferers on a transport to the east, but because
of his bad state of health he was left on the way to Kolyma in a transit
camp near Vladivostok (12 October). From there he wrote in his last letter
to his brother Alexander: "I am in a very weak state, totally exhausted,
emaciated, barely recognisable, yet to send clothes, food and money -- I
doubt it still has sense. Try it nevertheless. I have very cold without
clothes" (20 October). Two months later he died, on 27 December 1938.

I have no English or Italian edition at hand, and so I quote one poem in
German translation by Paul Celan (from _The Stone_, 1913), and the only
text in translation which I could find on-line, a poem from 1934 translated
by Clarence Brown.

--------------------------------------------------------
[Source: Ossip Mandelstam, Gedichte. Aus dem Russischen 
uebertragen von Paul Celan, Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Verlag, 
1983, first published 1959]


    Das Horchende, das feingespannte Segel.
    Der Blick, geweitet, der sich leert.
    Der Chor der mitternaechtgen Voegel,
    durchs Schweigen schwimmend, ungehoert.

    An mir ist nichts, ich gleich dem Himmel,
    ich bin, wie die Natur ist: arm.
    So bin ich, frei: wie jene Stimmen
    der Mitternacht, des Vogelschwarms.

    Du Himmel, weissestes der Hemden,
    du Mond, entseelt, ich sehe dich.
    Und, Leere, deine Welt, die fremde,
    empfang ich, nehme ich!


-------------------------------------------------------------
[Source: http://redfrog.norconnect.no/~poems/poems/10168.html
Cf. Osip Mandelstam, Selected Poems, tr. Clarence Brown, London: 
Oxford UP, 1973]


    Your thin shoulders are for turning red under whips, 
    turning red under whips, and flaming in the raw cold. 

    Your child's fingers are for lifting flatirons, 
    for lifting flatirons, and for knotting cords. 

    Your tender soles are for walking on broken glass, 
    walking on broken glass, across bloody sand. 

    And I'm for burning like a black candle lit for you, 
    for burning like a black candle that dare not pray. 


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