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Stone
“Invaluable. . . . [What] comes across in these translations is the verve and immediacy of the poems’ occasions.”—Seamus Heaney
A groundbreaking translation of the brilliant first book by one of the twentieth century’s most important poets
Stone—Osip Mandelstam’s 1913 debut—marked the arrival of perhaps the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century, one whose refusal to bow to Soviet political and artistic dictates led to his persecution and eventual death in one of Stalin’s prison camps. Mandelstam spent his early years in St. Petersburg, and many of the poems in Stone depict the city’s vast squares, classical buildings, and Dutch canals. Other poems reflect his hunger for Western European culture, his commitment to humanistic values, and his ambition to become a master of the Russian language. This bilingual edition is based on the final version of Stone, published in 1928, and features a biographical and critical introduction and detailed annotations.
A groundbreaking translation of the brilliant first book by one of the twentieth century’s most important poets
Stone—Osip Mandelstam’s 1913 debut—marked the arrival of perhaps the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century, one whose refusal to bow to Soviet political and artistic dictates led to his persecution and eventual death in one of Stalin’s prison camps. Mandelstam spent his early years in St. Petersburg, and many of the poems in Stone depict the city’s vast squares, classical buildings, and Dutch canals. Other poems reflect his hunger for Western European culture, his commitment to humanistic values, and his ambition to become a master of the Russian language. This bilingual edition is based on the final version of Stone, published in 1928, and features a biographical and critical introduction and detailed annotations.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1913
About the author
Osip Mandelstam
279 books255 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.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 31, 2017
Pretty astonishing verse. Mandelstram took me by the shoulders and said with a shake, you must wake up and look around. I obeyed.
It is easy from a historical perspective for the reader to color the lyricism with an impending doom. I think that this approach enhances the project, with a measured risk.
Stone offers a treatment of history layered in allegory. His images remain pellucid, his emotions sincere.
It is easy from a historical perspective for the reader to color the lyricism with an impending doom. I think that this approach enhances the project, with a measured risk.
Stone offers a treatment of history layered in allegory. His images remain pellucid, his emotions sincere.
Want to Read
May 30, 2016You can get a free pdf of Mandelstam's poems translated by Ilya Bernstein* here:
http://jacket2.org/commentary/poems-o...
Insomnia. Homer. The rows of stretched sails.
I’ve read the catalogue of ships just to the middle:
That endless caravan, that lengthy stream of cranes,
Which long ago rose up above the land oh Hellas.
It’s like a wedge of cranes towards the distant shores –
The foreheads of the kings crowned with the foam of Gods.
Where are you sailing to? If Helen were not there,
What would Troy be to you, oh warriors of Achaea
The sea and Homer – everything is moved by love.
Whom shall I listen to? There is no sound from Homer,
And full of eloquence the black sea roars and roars,
And draws with thunderous crashing nearer to my pillow.
*I don't know Russian so I can't speak to accuracy, but I certainly found Bernstein's translations more interesting and pleasing than Yevgeny Bonver's later ones.
[Edited to add: There is also a more recent translation of Mandelstam's prose by Clarence Brown, which I have not looked at but which my friend all rate highly.]
http://jacket2.org/commentary/poems-o...
Insomnia. Homer. The rows of stretched sails.
I’ve read the catalogue of ships just to the middle:
That endless caravan, that lengthy stream of cranes,
Which long ago rose up above the land oh Hellas.
It’s like a wedge of cranes towards the distant shores –
The foreheads of the kings crowned with the foam of Gods.
Where are you sailing to? If Helen were not there,
What would Troy be to you, oh warriors of Achaea
The sea and Homer – everything is moved by love.
Whom shall I listen to? There is no sound from Homer,
And full of eloquence the black sea roars and roars,
And draws with thunderous crashing nearer to my pillow.
*I don't know Russian so I can't speak to accuracy, but I certainly found Bernstein's translations more interesting and pleasing than Yevgeny Bonver's later ones.
[Edited to add: There is also a more recent translation of Mandelstam's prose by Clarence Brown, which I have not looked at but which my friend all rate highly.]
January 14, 2012
I think I started this shortly before Christmas. As to be expected, this is a really good collection. One reason I didn't rate this 5 stars is that some of the poems that the editor points to as showing what a regular everyday guy Mandelstam was (movie going, tennis, etc.), were among the weaker poems. But, as Heaney points out in his book blurb, this collection does provide context, something the scattered collections -- that I've read -- do not. (It's usually Selected Poems stuff.) I also felt the best stuff was early on, when Mandelstam was ridiculously young, and ridiculously talented. Knowing what's coming historically, one can't help but feel uneasy as you read some of these poems. If you're looking for an examples of poet-as-prophet, you will find several such poems in this collection. One of my favorites (written in 1908) showed up early on, which coincided with the season:
2
In the wood there are Christmas trees
With golden tinsel blazing;
In the thickets toy wolves are gazing
With terrifying eyes.
O my prophetic sadness,
O my silent freedom
And heavens' lifeless dome
Of eternally laughing glass!
The collection has a first rate introduction by Robert Tracy. Tracy goes into Mandelstam's history, and its relationship with Acmeism (which has always sounded to me to be a lot like Imagism). I thought it interesting that Mandelstam saw himself not as a creator, but a builder (of poems). That may sound a bit dry, but it isn't. At their best, these poems possess a chilly beauty, kind of like that Ice Palace in Doctor Zhivago (the movie).
2
In the wood there are Christmas trees
With golden tinsel blazing;
In the thickets toy wolves are gazing
With terrifying eyes.
O my prophetic sadness,
O my silent freedom
And heavens' lifeless dome
Of eternally laughing glass!
The collection has a first rate introduction by Robert Tracy. Tracy goes into Mandelstam's history, and its relationship with Acmeism (which has always sounded to me to be a lot like Imagism). I thought it interesting that Mandelstam saw himself not as a creator, but a builder (of poems). That may sound a bit dry, but it isn't. At their best, these poems possess a chilly beauty, kind of like that Ice Palace in Doctor Zhivago (the movie).
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October 3, 2025Рильський краще
January 17, 2026
★ পাথরের দিন ভেঙে ★(Stone, 1908)
আমি শিশুতোষ বই পড়তে চাই—
আমার সব বালকসুলভ ভাবনা বুকে ধরি,
আমি প্রাপ্তবয়স্ক জটিলতা ছুড়ে ফেলি দূরে,
আর গভীর বিষাদের তল থেকে উঠে আসি ধীরে।
.
জীবন আমাকে মৃত্যুসম ক্লান্ত করেছে,
সে যা দেয়—আমি আর কিছুই গ্রহণ করি না,
তবু এই ক্ষতবিক্ষত পৃথিবীকে আমি ভালোবাসি,
কারণ এই একমাত্র জমিন যার নীল আকাশ আমি দেখেছি,
যার ধুসর ধুলোয় আমার স্মৃতি মিশে আছে।
.
দূর কোনো বিস্মৃত উদ্যানের প্রান্তে
একদিন আমি দুলেছিলাম—
সাধারণ কাঠের দোলনায় বসে,
বাতাসের তালে দোল খেতে খেতে।
আজও মনে পড়ে সেই অন্ধকার, ঊর্ধ্বমুখী ফারগাছ,
আর এক ঝাপসা জ্বরাক্রান্ত স্মৃতির ভেতর
দীর্ঘ ছায়ার মতো দাঁড়িয়ে থাকা আমার শৈশব।
(নোট: ইংরেজি থেকে অনূদিত। ছন্দের মিল রাখতে শেষের দু-লাইন বাড়তি সংযোজন করলাম।)
আমি শিশুতোষ বই পড়তে চাই—
আমার সব বালকসুলভ ভাবনা বুকে ধরি,
আমি প্রাপ্তবয়স্ক জটিলতা ছুড়ে ফেলি দূরে,
আর গভীর বিষাদের তল থেকে উঠে আসি ধীরে।
.
জীবন আমাকে মৃত্যুসম ক্লান্ত করেছে,
সে যা দেয়—আমি আর কিছুই গ্রহণ করি না,
তবু এই ক্ষতবিক্ষত পৃথিবীকে আমি ভালোবাসি,
কারণ এই একমাত্র জমিন যার নীল আকাশ আমি দেখেছি,
যার ধুসর ধুলোয় আমার স্মৃতি মিশে আছে।
.
দূর কোনো বিস্মৃত উদ্যানের প্রান্তে
একদিন আমি দুলেছিলাম—
সাধারণ কাঠের দোলনায় বসে,
বাতাসের তালে দোল খেতে খেতে।
আজও মনে পড়ে সেই অন্ধকার, ঊর্ধ্বমুখী ফারগাছ,
আর এক ঝাপসা জ্বরাক্রান্ত স্মৃতির ভেতর
দীর্ঘ ছায়ার মতো দাঁড়িয়ে থাকা আমার শৈশব।
(নোট: ইংরেজি থেকে অনূদিত। ছন্দের মিল রাখতে শেষের দু-লাইন বাড়তি সংযোজন করলাম।)
July 20, 2026
Josef Stalin’s skin was notoriously thin. Even the softest, subtlest forms of derision threatened to invoke his wrath, but to mock him outright was to court death itself. One could never figure when the hammer would drop – Stalin’s unpredictability was legendary – but in Russian poet Osip Mandelstam’s case, just over five years passed between the composition of his infamous “Stalin Epigram” and his death in 1938.
Bad enough was the way the poem painted such an unflattering picture of the dictator. Much worse was its undeniable honesty: Stalin was brutish and coarse, kept the exclusive company of goose-necked sycophants, and delighted, ghoulishly, in killing off his enemies. It was merely Mandelstam’s gift to arrange those facts in a brief yet brilliant series of rhyming quatrains. Did he suffer greatly for them? Certainly. And though martyrdom is sometimes touted for making saints of its subjects, there’s simply no salvaging this poet’s premature death. The worst part? His name remains a byword for political repression rather than poetic excellence or democratic humanism.
Yet if recent developments are any indication – Peter France’s book of translations, Black Earth: Selected Poems and Prose, comes to mind – then a much-merited paradigm shift may already be well under way. The latest effort is a throwback: Robert Tracy’s 1981 translation of Stone (1913), now being reissued in paperback for the Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation series from Princeton University Press. …
Read the rest here: https://ocreviewofbooks.org/2026/07/2...
Bad enough was the way the poem painted such an unflattering picture of the dictator. Much worse was its undeniable honesty: Stalin was brutish and coarse, kept the exclusive company of goose-necked sycophants, and delighted, ghoulishly, in killing off his enemies. It was merely Mandelstam’s gift to arrange those facts in a brief yet brilliant series of rhyming quatrains. Did he suffer greatly for them? Certainly. And though martyrdom is sometimes touted for making saints of its subjects, there’s simply no salvaging this poet’s premature death. The worst part? His name remains a byword for political repression rather than poetic excellence or democratic humanism.
Yet if recent developments are any indication – Peter France’s book of translations, Black Earth: Selected Poems and Prose, comes to mind – then a much-merited paradigm shift may already be well under way. The latest effort is a throwback: Robert Tracy’s 1981 translation of Stone (1913), now being reissued in paperback for the Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation series from Princeton University Press. …
Read the rest here: https://ocreviewofbooks.org/2026/07/2...
December 8, 2022
"
And on Mount Athos even now
A tree miraculously springs
Upon the mountain's steep green brow
Where God's name sings.
Muzhiks rejoice in every cell,
The venerators of God's name:
The Word is total joy to them
And heals their pain.
Now all across the land we see
Monks facing public condemnation.
But from this lovely heresy
We need not seek salvation.
Every time we love anew
We lapse into heresy again.
We destroy nameless love
Together with love's name.
И поныне на Афоне
Древо чудное растет,
На крутом зеленом склоне
Имя Божие поет.
В каждой радуются келье
Имябожцы-мужики:
Слово — чистое веселье,
Исцеленье от тоски!
Всенародно, громогласно
Чернецы осуждены;
Но от ереси прекрасной
Мы спасаться не должны.
Каждый раз, когда мы любим,
Мы в нее впадаем вновь.
Безымянную мы губим
Вместе с именем любовь.
The sea, and Homer - it's love that moves all things.
To whom should I listen? Homer falls silent now
And the black sea surges toward my pillow
Like a loud declaimer, heavily thundering.
И море, и Гомер — все движется любовью.
Кого же слушать мне? И вот, Гомер молчит,
И море черное, витийствуя, шумит
И с тяжким грохотом подходит к изголовью.
"
And on Mount Athos even now
A tree miraculously springs
Upon the mountain's steep green brow
Where God's name sings.
Muzhiks rejoice in every cell,
The venerators of God's name:
The Word is total joy to them
And heals their pain.
Now all across the land we see
Monks facing public condemnation.
But from this lovely heresy
We need not seek salvation.
Every time we love anew
We lapse into heresy again.
We destroy nameless love
Together with love's name.
И поныне на Афоне
Древо чудное растет,
На крутом зеленом склоне
Имя Божие поет.
В каждой радуются келье
Имябожцы-мужики:
Слово — чистое веселье,
Исцеленье от тоски!
Всенародно, громогласно
Чернецы осуждены;
Но от ереси прекрасной
Мы спасаться не должны.
Каждый раз, когда мы любим,
Мы в нее впадаем вновь.
Безымянную мы губим
Вместе с именем любовь.
The sea, and Homer - it's love that moves all things.
To whom should I listen? Homer falls silent now
And the black sea surges toward my pillow
Like a loud declaimer, heavily thundering.
И море, и Гомер — все движется любовью.
Кого же слушать мне? И вот, Гомер молчит,
И море черное, витийствуя, шумит
И с тяжким грохотом подходит к изголовью.
"
August 24, 2025
The person I have a crush on said that I would like Mandelstam's poetry, and I, ever the hopeless romantic, was dutifully obliged to read some of his poems.
Mandelstam's poetry took some warming up to get used to--after the first couple of poems in this collection, I was a bit frustrated that the images he painted in the beginning of a poem seemed to have little to do with the conceptual reflections at the end.
While I think this frustration went away in part because the poems are arranged chronologically and the later poems had a more mature style, I also let myself really sit in the lyricism of his words. Mandelstam's poems are short, small exhales of thought. I have not read other translations, but I like Robert Tracy's translation well enough. He managed the formality of Mandelstam's symbolist verse without overdoing it with archaic vocabulary.
Mandelstam's poetry took some warming up to get used to--after the first couple of poems in this collection, I was a bit frustrated that the images he painted in the beginning of a poem seemed to have little to do with the conceptual reflections at the end.
While I think this frustration went away in part because the poems are arranged chronologically and the later poems had a more mature style, I also let myself really sit in the lyricism of his words. Mandelstam's poems are short, small exhales of thought. I have not read other translations, but I like Robert Tracy's translation well enough. He managed the formality of Mandelstam's symbolist verse without overdoing it with archaic vocabulary.
October 19, 2025
Перечитал спустя долгое время из-за подкаста о Марине Цветаевой.
Потрясающий сборник -- одновременно гранитный, тяжелый, влажный и играючий, где можно увидеть и Цветаеву и даже Леху Никонова.
Потрясающий сборник -- одновременно гранитный, тяжелый, влажный и играючий, где можно увидеть и Цветаеву и даже Леху Никонова.
September 13, 2020
This is incredibly important book by an incredibly important Russian poet. I am obsessed with Mandelstam because so many Russian writers and ordinary Russians admire him. Yet this book left me cold. It’s classical allusions seemed artificial to me. Maybe I’ll try again with a different translation.
August 18, 2010
An incredible Russian poet.
April 5, 2026
the translation dulls mandelstam's verse.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews