Osip Mandelstam 393
Poems of the Thirties:
393
Pear Blossom and cherry blossom aim at me,
Their strength is crumbling but they never miss.
Stars in clusters of blossoms, leaves with stars --
what twin power is there? On what branch does truth blossom?
It fires into the air with flower or strength.
Its air-white full blossom-bludgeons put it to death.
And the twin scent's sweetness is unwelcoming,
It contents, it reaches out, it is mingled, it is sudden.
-- translated by Clarence Brown, Princeton.
With the ongoing Sochi Winter games reminding me of Russia, and with the plum blossoms in full flower, along with calla lilies, and my orchids in sunny(though rainy, now) California, I opened the book to this poem, and it resonates. I stayed near Mandelstram's house museum in St. Petersburg, which is not far from the Marinsky Ballet, which I also wanted to attend.
His life is celebrated in his widow's autobiography, HOPE AGAINST HOPE He died in a transit camp in 1938 He was forbidden to publish and then exiled and finally imprisoned and sentence to five year of hard labor for "counter revolutionary activities. "
From STONE:
In my loving/ dying heart/ a twilight is coming,/a last ray, gently reproaching. / And over the evening forest/the bronze moon climbs to its place./Why has the music stopped?/Why is there such silence?"
1911. Transl Clarence Brown, Princeton
From TRISTIA: 113
I have forgotten the word I wanted to say.
A blind swallow returns to the palace of shadows
on clipped wings to flicker among the Transparent Ones.
In oblivion they are singing the night song.
No sound from the birds. No flowers on the immortals.
The horses of night have transparent manes.
A little boat drifts on the dry river.
And it rises slowly like a pavilion or a temple,
performs the madness of Antigone,
or falls at one's feet, a dead swallow,
with Stygian tenderness and a green branch.
Oh, to bring back also the shyness of clairvoyant
fingers, the swelling joy of recognition.
I shrink from the wild grieving of the Muses,
from the mists, the ringing, the opening void.
It is given to mortals to love, to recognize,
to make sounds move to their fingers,
but I have forgotten what I wanted to say
and a bodiless thought returns to the palace of shadows.
The Transparent One still speaks, but of nothing.
Still a swallow, a friend known as a girl, Antigone.
The reverberations of Sygian remembrance
burn like black ice on one's lips.
-- November 1920
--Translated by W.S. Merwin with Olga Carlisle (published 1974
393
Pear Blossom and cherry blossom aim at me,
Their strength is crumbling but they never miss.
Stars in clusters of blossoms, leaves with stars --
what twin power is there? On what branch does truth blossom?
It fires into the air with flower or strength.
Its air-white full blossom-bludgeons put it to death.
And the twin scent's sweetness is unwelcoming,
It contents, it reaches out, it is mingled, it is sudden.
-- translated by Clarence Brown, Princeton.
With the ongoing Sochi Winter games reminding me of Russia, and with the plum blossoms in full flower, along with calla lilies, and my orchids in sunny(though rainy, now) California, I opened the book to this poem, and it resonates. I stayed near Mandelstram's house museum in St. Petersburg, which is not far from the Marinsky Ballet, which I also wanted to attend.
His life is celebrated in his widow's autobiography, HOPE AGAINST HOPE He died in a transit camp in 1938 He was forbidden to publish and then exiled and finally imprisoned and sentence to five year of hard labor for "counter revolutionary activities. "
From STONE:
In my loving/ dying heart/ a twilight is coming,/a last ray, gently reproaching. / And over the evening forest/the bronze moon climbs to its place./Why has the music stopped?/Why is there such silence?"
1911. Transl Clarence Brown, Princeton
From TRISTIA: 113
I have forgotten the word I wanted to say.
A blind swallow returns to the palace of shadows
on clipped wings to flicker among the Transparent Ones.
In oblivion they are singing the night song.
No sound from the birds. No flowers on the immortals.
The horses of night have transparent manes.
A little boat drifts on the dry river.
And it rises slowly like a pavilion or a temple,
performs the madness of Antigone,
or falls at one's feet, a dead swallow,
with Stygian tenderness and a green branch.
Oh, to bring back also the shyness of clairvoyant
fingers, the swelling joy of recognition.
I shrink from the wild grieving of the Muses,
from the mists, the ringing, the opening void.
It is given to mortals to love, to recognize,
to make sounds move to their fingers,
but I have forgotten what I wanted to say
and a bodiless thought returns to the palace of shadows.
The Transparent One still speaks, but of nothing.
Still a swallow, a friend known as a girl, Antigone.
The reverberations of Sygian remembrance
burn like black ice on one's lips.
-- November 1920
--Translated by W.S. Merwin with Olga Carlisle (published 1974
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