Voronezh Notebooks

by Osip Mandelstam, Andrew Davis (Translator)

Osip Mandelstam is one of the greatest of twentieth-century poets and Voronezh Notebooks , a sequence of poems composed between 1935 and 1937 when he was living in internal exile in the Soviet city of Voronezh, is his last and most exploratory work. Meditating on death and survival, on power and poetry, on marriage, madness, friendship, and memory, challenging Stalin between lines that are full of the sights and sounds of the steppes, blue sky and black earth, the roads, winter breath, spring with its birds and flowers and bees, the notebooks are a continual improvisation and an unapologetic affirmation of poetry as life.

Genres: Poetry, Russia, Russian Literature, Literature

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Osip 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.

Reviews

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 1 out of 5]

One star is generous for any translation of Mandelstam's poetry that employs the phrase "hot babes."

84: "Gypsies tell no fortunes for hot babes."

WTF. That scans like a bad early Springsteen lyric. It's also largely emblematic of the rest of the book. I expect more from New York Review of Books who released the wonderful Mandelstam translation by Brown and Merwin.

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 4 out of 5]

U Voronježu, u izgnanstvu, koraku ka još većem, krajnjem izgnanstvu, Mandeljštam je napisao tri sveske stihova „zadihanog prostora slika”.

U „svetlosnoj paučini sav” slušao je „šara šaputanje” „neuverljivu širinu zime” i štiglića za čije je zenice zimski dan tvrd – „pleva bodljikava” – odvijale su se radosti prepoznavanja, kakvih je mnogo u vrhunskoj poeziji:

Volim ledena disanja
i dva zimska priznanja:
Ja sam – ja, java je – java.” (71)

(Živo me je zanmalo šta znači pridev „račlav” – šestotomnik kaže da glagol „račlati” (a može I „račlovati”) označava „izgovarati glas R na francuski način”. Ovo mi je žuljalo um jer sam tapkao na ovom mestu domišljajući kakve su to račlave makaze. I dalje ne znam, ali mi se sviđaju što jesu.)

Svetislav Travica je uspeo da dâ neobičan ritam Mandeljštamu, samo ponegde džombast, a uglavnom okretan. A kada imate takvo prezime, hteli-ne-hteli bliski ste poeziji. Kao što je Raša Livada svojim prezimenom redovno zaokruživao svoje pesme: „A Livada kaže”, tako može i Travica.
Iz ove zbirke je i antologijski „Neznani vojnik”. Izvanredna, izmičuća pesma, u kojoj je upareno nešto apstraktno elementarno („Okean bez prozora – materija”) sa čulnim, naučnim i istorijski konkretnim (završni stihovi).

Moraću da pročitam Kirila Taranovskog.
Ovo moje čitanje bilo je samo kucanje na vrata, ali Taranovski ima ključeve.

Za kraj, jedna pesma:

***
O, imam želju jaku
Da nečujan ko sena
Letim u susret zraku
Gde me nikako nema.

A, ti u krugu blistaj,
Ne možeš drugu sreću naći,
Noću od zvezda saznaj
Šta prava svetlost znači.

Samo je tada zrak,
Tek tada svetli sjajem,
Kad šapatom je jak
I ogrejan tepanjem.

Hoću u tome znaku
Da kažem ti, došaptavam,
Ja Tebe, dete, zraku
Šapatom poveravam.

23. mart – početak maja 1937.

[Tijana]

Zblanuta sam time koliko je dobar i tečan ovaj prepev Svetislava Travice i (pogotovu kad iz prikaza na engleskom vidim kakav je bar jedan njihov aktuelan prevod) duboko zahvalna.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

From “Verses on the Unknown Soldier”:

Aortas strain with blood,
And running through the ranks a little whisper:
"I was born in ninety-four..."
"I was born in ninety-two…”
And clutching in my fist the worn year
Of my birth, with the crowd, all together,
I murmur with a mouth drained of all blood,
"I was born in the night of the second and third
Of January, ninety-something-or-other,
An unreliable year, and the centuries
Surround me with fire.

[Mari · Rating 2 out of 5]

My brain tried to understand, but I felt like I was missing something. The imagery was nice, but it didn't make me love the poetry.

[Don Hackett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read all the poems in this book, but don't feel finished. I found another translation of Mandelstam and I am versions of the same poems.

Just thinking the situation the poems were written in, internal exile for offending Stalin, soon to become death on the way to the Gulag in Siberia, could be compared to 1984--facing Room 101 and still refusing to say "1+1=3."

[Francisco Barrios · Rating 5 out of 5]

Voronezh Notebooks, a sequence of poems written when Mandelstam was a political prisoner in the Soviet city of Voronezh, is the author's last and most introspective work.

In this book a very complex, yet natural, chain of images, metaphors, and allusions parade as one of the most exuberant celebrations of life, death, hope for survival, friendship, marriage, and memory ever witnessed by Humanity. An amazing testament for one of the greatest Russian poets of all time. Definitely a must!

[Tony Mize · Rating 5 out of 5]

These disappointing transcriptions of Mandelstam’s final manuscripts lack inspiration or urgency.

[Fernando · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quarantine book #4

Every few months I read a book that reminds me that being able to read English, Portuguese, Spanish and French is not enough. Mandelstam demands you learn Russian. You only discover this by reading about him and his renown as being an architect of words. Careful and deliberate word choice for rhyme's and form's sake. Still, Andrew Davis, this edition's translator, does a good job to give us a feel of Mandelstam's genius.

We should also be extremely grateful to his wife, Nadezhda Mandelstam, who committed all of her husband's work to memory. Nadezhda feared the Soviet regime would try to wipe Osip's legacy and kept it all in the one place it could not be removed from. What a fantastic woman!

This edition is by @nyrbooks

For more #RussianLiterature go to #onebookRussia
#onebookEurope

#QuarantineReading

[Nejra · Rating 3 out of 5]

there is an intrinsic beauty to mandelstam's poetry that feels dulled in this translation. i don't know any russian so can't say which is the *better* or *truer* interpretation but i find the clarence brown + w.s. merwin translations of mandelstam (including poems from Voronezh) far most resonating

[Wyatt]

who knows about translated poetry... does it get the original idea across? maybe! maybe not! but yet all we can do is read this or some other translation and get what we can out of it. osip rules. immensely enjoyed my time with this small book. it helped that it was the perfect size to keep in the inside pocket of my jacket

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of Mandelstam's exile and censorship under the Soviet regime was interesting to hear about and informs the poetry that follows. I found some of the poems which seemed to portray winter or wintry landscapes the most powerful to me (specifically 33, 34, 47).

I liked them, they made me think, and I would be interested to read more poetry by Mandelstam.

[Nicolás Maurokefalidis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The foolish thing would be not to dedicate one's life to poetry...
How splendid his outcast song, the rent lines, the blip or glimpse of half-truths, beautifully sketched, so that intuition triumphs over sense?

"And you head off after it,
A disgrace to yourself, unknown—
And blind, and a guide to the blind. . ."

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The translator choose to omit some of the poems. He explains why in his opening remarks. I am glad that Davis confessed that he is not very good translator of Russian, that he relied often on a translation of these poems done into Spanish. A worthwhile read through understanding this.

[Zev · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would probably understand these a lot better after going down a wikipedia rabbit hole on the history of Russia 1900-1940.

[avril lavigne]

dont like this translator of mandelstam very much

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

The end of Life (as witnessed in the Terror) clarifies Vision. Mandelstham is but one Poet of which this is true.

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very evocative, inspiring

[j.e.rodriguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

"What to do?--I'm lost in the sky."

[stella · Rating 2 out of 5]

didn't like the translation at all

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

These three notebooks contain the bulk of Osip Mandelstam's final poems, composed during the years 1934-1937 while he and his wife Nadezhda were living in exile in Voronezh, a few hundred miles southeast of Moscow. A year after Osip wrote his last poem in Voronezh, following the couple's return to Moscow, he was arrested, interrogated (and likely tortured) for a second time, and sentenced to five years in one of Stalin's labor camps. He died on December 27, 1938 of heart failure in a transit camp on the way to begin his sentence. He was 47 years old.

Osip's wife Nadezhda managed to avoid arrest and lived for another 40 years, during which she wrote and published two memoirs about the life she lived with Osip, one of which, Hope Against Hope, is considered to be the companion piece to this volume. She also preserved much of Osip's poetry through memorization, for committing words to paper was unwise during Stalin's regime. This volume includes at its close the last letter Nadezhda wrote to Osip in October of 1938, not knowing if it would even reach him. It is possibly the most heartbreaking letter I have ever read. Below is a poem Osip wrote soon before leaving exile in Voronezh...

11. 'Perhaps this is the point of madness'

Perhaps this is the point of madness,
perhaps this is your conscience:
the knot of life in which we are recognised
and untied, so that we may exist.

The ray-spider in good conscience
lets out the cathedrals of crystals from another world
onto the ribs, gathering them again
into one integral beam.

The grateful beams of clear lines
directed by the silent ray,
will gather together sometime,
like honest guests,

and this will be here on earth, not in heaven,
as in a house filled with music.
Just take care not to frighten nor wound them.
It will be good if we live to see it.

Forgive me for what I say.
Quietly, quietly read it to me.

[Marshall A. Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review is specifically for the Andrew Davis translation.

I fell in love with Christian Wiman's 'versions' of Mandelstam's poems and figured I would read some more Mandelstam. I found this nice little collection of the Voronezh Notebooks by Davis and began to read it, expecting to have a fairly similar experience. Unfortunately, I think there is some significant loss of impact in the translation (that or I really just enjoy Wiman and his influence on the poems rather than Mandelstam). It was especially apparent in some of the poems that I did like, where there were clearly elements which were ripe with intent, but didn't seem to come to fruition. I don't know any Russian and I have not read any other translations of Mandelstam besides Davis and Wiman, but a quick look through the reviews seemed to confirm my hypothesis. I did still enjoy quite a few poems, but they never were entirely delightful; always feeling as though they were slightly missing something.

My favourites were

"What street is this"
"Having stripped me of my seas"
"We're still completely, totally alive"
"Though she's died, can I still sing her praise?"
"Not as a butterfly, white as flour"
The birth of a smile
"Not mine, or yours--but theirs"
“Deep in the mountain the idol rests”
"I'm in the heart of the century"
"It is the law of the pine forest"
“I sing when my throat’s wet, my soul—dry”
"Armed with the eyesight of skinny wasps"
"I'll sketch this out"
"I'll take this green to my lips"

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to come.

[Bastián Olea Herrera · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pesar de la dificultad de traducir a Mandelstam, se nota que Davis hizo un gran trabajo en seleccionar los conceptos adecuados. Aún siendo altamente abstracto, las imágenes que hace aparecer delicadamente, junto a las sutiles alusiones al contexto en que compuso estos cuadernos, dan lugar a una reflexión creativa.