What do you think?
Rate this book
Osip Mandelstam: 50 Poems
All of the poems of this great Russian poet in acclaimed translations,
accompanied by notes, a biographical chronology, a translator's
introduction, and a major essay by Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Brodsky
written specifically for this volume.
accompanied by notes, a biographical chronology, a translator's
introduction, and a major essay by Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Brodsky
written specifically for this volume.
130 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 1977
1 person is currently reading
110 people want to read
About the author
Osip Mandelstam
302 books246 followersOsip Emilyevich Mandelstam (also spelled Osip Mandelshtam, Ossip Mandelstamm) (Russian: Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам) was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets. He was arrested by Joseph Stalin's government during the repression of the 1930s and sent into internal exile with his wife Nadezhda. Given a reprieve of sorts, they moved to Voronezh in southwestern Russia. In 1938 Mandelstam was arrested again and sentenced to a camp in Siberia. He died that year at a transit camp.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
February 22, 2009
The earlier poems are heavy in the Peterburg Classical--many Greek referents... but then, by 1918, the pressure of the events of his day began to edit the classical allusions from the poems, they became stronger and more direct. It wasn't an easy place to be, but it let his poetry find is true soil, its unmitigated subject. A wonderful translation, stunning, shattering work.
September 23, 2018
أرقّ من الرقة
وجهك،
أشد بياضاً من الأبيض
يداك ..
ومن العالم كله..
بعيدة أنت
وكل شئ فيشٍ .. لا مفر منه.
ولا مفر منه .. ألمكِ
وأصابع كفك الدافئة
وصوتك الهادئ
وحديثك الذي لا يطوي كآبة
وعمق عينيك .
( 2 )
مُنحتُ جسداً ، ماذا سأفعل به؟
هذا المتوحد، هذا الذي هو ملكي؟
من أجل المسرات الهادئة أتنفس و أعيش
فلمن يا ترى ، أقدم امتناني؟
أنا الحدائقي ، و أنا الوردة
وفي عتمة العالم لست وحيداً .
على زجاج الأبدية رقدتْ
شهقاتي ودفئي
فانطبعت نقوشاً وزخارف
لم يتعرف عليها أحد
فمهما سألت الأدران عن اللحظات
فان نقوشي الحبيبة لن تمحي
وجهك،
أشد بياضاً من الأبيض
يداك ..
ومن العالم كله..
بعيدة أنت
وكل شئ فيشٍ .. لا مفر منه.
ولا مفر منه .. ألمكِ
وأصابع كفك الدافئة
وصوتك الهادئ
وحديثك الذي لا يطوي كآبة
وعمق عينيك .
( 2 )
مُنحتُ جسداً ، ماذا سأفعل به؟
هذا المتوحد، هذا الذي هو ملكي؟
من أجل المسرات الهادئة أتنفس و أعيش
فلمن يا ترى ، أقدم امتناني؟
أنا الحدائقي ، و أنا الوردة
وفي عتمة العالم لست وحيداً .
على زجاج الأبدية رقدتْ
شهقاتي ودفئي
فانطبعت نقوشاً وزخارف
لم يتعرف عليها أحد
فمهما سألت الأدران عن اللحظات
فان نقوشي الحبيبة لن تمحي
Read
January 16, 2016Brilliant but difficult poet - so much allusion, hinted at through the imagery. Mandelstam sought to be a voice for a global civilisation - and he contributes a poetry deeply embedded in the Classical - Biblical - Christian culture of the west, in Russian sensibility and imagery. But to be global it must incorporate more than the western culture, and Mandelstam probably thought that Russian sensibility being "Asiatic" covered that. But it was not enough for that goal. A worthy goal and one a poet could still strive for but we must expand the cultural basis.
On a purely poetic analysis, Mandelstam evinces a sort of acceleration. His earlier work is lyrical, but through the 20s and 30s it speeds up; the images are compressed together, grammar and syntax vanish as image after image crashes into each other. And over it all there is the sense of the coming collision, Mandelstam sympathetic to the Revolution, but gifted with the poet's intuition to see it failing, at odds with the Stalin counter-revolution, eventually destroyed by the state. Reading his poems, I felt him running towards death, unwillingly but no prepared to compromise.
On a purely poetic analysis, Mandelstam evinces a sort of acceleration. His earlier work is lyrical, but through the 20s and 30s it speeds up; the images are compressed together, grammar and syntax vanish as image after image crashes into each other. And over it all there is the sense of the coming collision, Mandelstam sympathetic to the Revolution, but gifted with the poet's intuition to see it failing, at odds with the Stalin counter-revolution, eventually destroyed by the state. Reading his poems, I felt him running towards death, unwillingly but no prepared to compromise.
November 9, 2007
This is not a good translation of Mandelstam's works. The rhymes are embarassingly forced and the translator uses a lot of annoying archaisms.
January 18, 2022
The idle life has sent us insane,
Wine in the morning, hung over by night,
How can pointless gaiety be restrained,
Your flushing face, plague-drunk again?
In handshakes at parting lies a torturing rite,
And in kisses in the street at night
When heavily the rivers flow
And streetlamps like ancient torches glow.
We lie in wait for death like a wold of myth,
But I fear the one who'll first be dead
Is he whose lips are a care-racked red
And over whose eyes a long curl twists.
* * *
When Moscow's feverish forum dies
And theatre's jaws gape open,
Returning the crowds to the squares
And the night,
There courses through its sumptuous streets
The liveliness of a midnight wake
And crowds of mourning revelers throng
Out of the maw of some divine abyss.
It is the common citizenry, incited by the Games,
Who are coming to bury the nocturnal sun,
Returning from the funeral feast
To the muffled hammering of hooves.
It's as if Herculaneum's resurrected anew:
A city sleeping in the moonlight glare
With its wretched market hovels
And mighty Doric columns.
* * *
I washed in the courtyard at night -
The firmament shone with coarse stars.
Like salt on an axhead the starlight,
The rain-butt is chilled to its brim.
The yard gates are locked up tight
And the earth, in all conscience, is grim.
Fresh canvas is a purer base for truth
Than you're likely to find elsewhere.
In the rain-butt a star melts like salt:
The freezing water is blacker,
Death cleaner, misfortune more bitter,
And the earth, though grimmer, is more just.
* * *
On police station watermarked paper -
Night had choked on its sticklebacked fish -
Stars sing in chorus and red-tape worms
Ceaselessly write their Prolexkult reports.
No matter how you stars want to shine
First apply on the proper dotted line;
We're sure to renew your permission
For shining or writing or extinction.
* * *
I returned to my city, familiar as tears,
As veins, as mumps from childhood years.
You've returned here, so swallow as quick as your can
The cod-liver oil of Leningrad's riverside lamps.
Recognize when you can December's brief day:
Egg yolk folded into its ominous tar.
Petersburg, I don't yet want to die:
You have the numbers of my telephones.
Petersburg, I have addresses still
Where I can raise the voice of the dead.
I live on the backstairs and the doorbell buzz
Strikes me in the temple and tears at my flesh.
And all night long I await those dear guests of yours,
Rattling, like manacles, the chains on the doors.
* * *
With them and not with you or me
The power of family endings lies:
The reed is porous and singing with their air,
And gratefully the snails of human lips
Pull on their breathing gravity.
They have no name. Enter their sinews
And you will be their principalities' heir,
And for people, for their living hearts,
Stumbling through their every fork and turn,
You'll portray their great content
And what they're tortured by in ebbs and flows.
* * *
I'll say it in draft in a whisper
Since we cannot speak openly yet:
The game of irrational heaven
Is attained via experience and sweat.
Beneath the temporary sky of purgatory
We frequently fail to recall
That this happy heaven-roofed depository
Is a flexible lifetime home.
Wine in the morning, hung over by night,
How can pointless gaiety be restrained,
Your flushing face, plague-drunk again?
In handshakes at parting lies a torturing rite,
And in kisses in the street at night
When heavily the rivers flow
And streetlamps like ancient torches glow.
We lie in wait for death like a wold of myth,
But I fear the one who'll first be dead
Is he whose lips are a care-racked red
And over whose eyes a long curl twists.
- pg. 34
* * *
When Moscow's feverish forum dies
And theatre's jaws gape open,
Returning the crowds to the squares
And the night,
There courses through its sumptuous streets
The liveliness of a midnight wake
And crowds of mourning revelers throng
Out of the maw of some divine abyss.
It is the common citizenry, incited by the Games,
Who are coming to bury the nocturnal sun,
Returning from the funeral feast
To the muffled hammering of hooves.
It's as if Herculaneum's resurrected anew:
A city sleeping in the moonlight glare
With its wretched market hovels
And mighty Doric columns.
- pg. 45
* * *
I washed in the courtyard at night -
The firmament shone with coarse stars.
Like salt on an axhead the starlight,
The rain-butt is chilled to its brim.
The yard gates are locked up tight
And the earth, in all conscience, is grim.
Fresh canvas is a purer base for truth
Than you're likely to find elsewhere.
In the rain-butt a star melts like salt:
The freezing water is blacker,
Death cleaner, misfortune more bitter,
And the earth, though grimmer, is more just.
- pg. 54
* * *
On police station watermarked paper -
Night had choked on its sticklebacked fish -
Stars sing in chorus and red-tape worms
Ceaselessly write their Prolexkult reports.
No matter how you stars want to shine
First apply on the proper dotted line;
We're sure to renew your permission
For shining or writing or extinction.
- pg. 68
* * *
I returned to my city, familiar as tears,
As veins, as mumps from childhood years.
You've returned here, so swallow as quick as your can
The cod-liver oil of Leningrad's riverside lamps.
Recognize when you can December's brief day:
Egg yolk folded into its ominous tar.
Petersburg, I don't yet want to die:
You have the numbers of my telephones.
Petersburg, I have addresses still
Where I can raise the voice of the dead.
I live on the backstairs and the doorbell buzz
Strikes me in the temple and tears at my flesh.
And all night long I await those dear guests of yours,
Rattling, like manacles, the chains on the doors.
- Leningrad, pg. 69
* * *
With them and not with you or me
The power of family endings lies:
The reed is porous and singing with their air,
And gratefully the snails of human lips
Pull on their breathing gravity.
They have no name. Enter their sinews
And you will be their principalities' heir,
And for people, for their living hearts,
Stumbling through their every fork and turn,
You'll portray their great content
And what they're tortured by in ebbs and flows.
- pg. 89
* * *
I'll say it in draft in a whisper
Since we cannot speak openly yet:
The game of irrational heaven
Is attained via experience and sweat.
Beneath the temporary sky of purgatory
We frequently fail to recall
That this happy heaven-roofed depository
Is a flexible lifetime home.
- pg. 97
February 17, 2015
In his brilliant introduction to this volume, Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky describes Mandelstam as an unrepentant Acmeist who described his poetic intentions as a “nostalgic longing for world culture.” His productivity come forth in bursts. While not exuberant in his imagery, at times his lines demonstrate that he could source information from everywhere, such as “The earth is buzzing with metaphor” – a wonderful line from “The Finder of a Horseshoe” (59)
My favorite poem in this collection is the 27th.
Like summer lightning a life fell away,
As an eyelash into a tumbler falls,
Life lied to the bitter end:
I don’t accuse, I don’t defend.
Do you want an apple in the night?
Do you want hot honey, fresh and light?
Do you want me to take your boots off,
To lift you like a fleck of fluff?
Angle clad in a golden fleeze
Standing in a web of light,
The lamplight plays upon your face
And lights the shoulders I’ve embraced.
Will a cat leaping up before us,
Bounding off like a wild hare,
Really seal the way ahead of us
When it falls from sight somewhere?
Your flushed lips puckered and trembled
As you poured your son his tea;
You rambled on to him and me;
You gabbled ad dissembled.
As you stuttered foolishness,
Lied and smiled with tenderness:
A blush flooded your face
With clumsy beauty and awkward grace.
Behind a tower on a palace,
Behind the garden cuckoospit;
In that beyond-the-eyelid life
You will surely be my wife.
So putting on dry felt boots
And donning golden sheepskin coats,
Let us set off hand in hand
Down the same road to the distant land,
Without a backward glance, no hindrance and no fear,
Toward that shimmering frontier:
Where from dusk to the pre-dawn glow
Streetlamps with light overflow… (67)
Mandelstam is difficult to read at times, and while I don’t speak Russian, I can only assume that much of his brilliance is lost in translation. That said, his poems are representative of an entire school, and carry with them a serious weight representative of the country and time in which he lived. This is a wonderful little volume of poetry by one of the most important poets ever to live.
See my other reviews here!
My favorite poem in this collection is the 27th.
Like summer lightning a life fell away,
As an eyelash into a tumbler falls,
Life lied to the bitter end:
I don’t accuse, I don’t defend.
Do you want an apple in the night?
Do you want hot honey, fresh and light?
Do you want me to take your boots off,
To lift you like a fleck of fluff?
Angle clad in a golden fleeze
Standing in a web of light,
The lamplight plays upon your face
And lights the shoulders I’ve embraced.
Will a cat leaping up before us,
Bounding off like a wild hare,
Really seal the way ahead of us
When it falls from sight somewhere?
Your flushed lips puckered and trembled
As you poured your son his tea;
You rambled on to him and me;
You gabbled ad dissembled.
As you stuttered foolishness,
Lied and smiled with tenderness:
A blush flooded your face
With clumsy beauty and awkward grace.
Behind a tower on a palace,
Behind the garden cuckoospit;
In that beyond-the-eyelid life
You will surely be my wife.
So putting on dry felt boots
And donning golden sheepskin coats,
Let us set off hand in hand
Down the same road to the distant land,
Without a backward glance, no hindrance and no fear,
Toward that shimmering frontier:
Where from dusk to the pre-dawn glow
Streetlamps with light overflow… (67)
Mandelstam is difficult to read at times, and while I don’t speak Russian, I can only assume that much of his brilliance is lost in translation. That said, his poems are representative of an entire school, and carry with them a serious weight representative of the country and time in which he lived. This is a wonderful little volume of poetry by one of the most important poets ever to live.
See my other reviews here!
April 11, 2024
Egentligen borde jag inte sätta betyg på den här boken. Översättning till engelska är inte ryska dikter. Det blir en omöjlighet. Lyrik ska läsas i original. I synnerhet så olika språk och kulturer.
Mandelstams liv, från välutbildad jude, uppmärksamt observerande revolutionen, tills han kritiserade Stalin och fick lida för det, fängslades, och avled i Sibirien 1938. Femtio spridda dikter kan inte förmedla detta till mig. Jag hade hoppats på Joseph Brodskys introduktion, men jag vet för lite för att det skulle hjälpa mig.
Mandelstams liv, från välutbildad jude, uppmärksamt observerande revolutionen, tills han kritiserade Stalin och fick lida för det, fängslades, och avled i Sibirien 1938. Femtio spridda dikter kan inte förmedla detta till mig. Jag hade hoppats på Joseph Brodskys introduktion, men jag vet för lite för att det skulle hjälpa mig.
July 12, 2008
My favorite book of Russian poetry.
February 23, 2009
New York: Persea Books, 1977
Bernard Meares, trans
Joseph Brodsky, intro
Bernard Meares, trans
Joseph Brodsky, intro
May 15, 2012
3/10. I'll stick to Pushkin.
August 6, 2013
Maybe I was a little tone deaf because this was not what I was looking for at this moment. Some brilliant lines here and there. Sad sad story.
January 29, 2023
A fine over view of a selection. Editorial and introductory matter very helpful.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews