Silentium: Selected Poetry of Osip Mandelstam

by Osip Mandelstam, Andrey Kneller (Translation)

Osip Mandelstam (January 15, 1891 - December 27, 1938) was a Russian poet and essayist, and a founding member of Acmeist school of Russian poetry. He is considered by many to be one of the most significant Russian poets of the twentieth century, along with Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and Marina Tsvetaeva. Heavily censored and persecuted by the Soviet authorities for counter-revolutionary activities, he spent most of his later years in exile, until his death in Siberia. Presented in this dual-language selection are many of Osip Mandelstam's most beloved poems, carefully translated by Andrey Kneller.

Genres: Poetry, Russian Literature

81 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2014

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

[Atri · Rating 4 out of 5]

My grief - prophetic, pertinent,
My freedom - quieted and distant,
And ever-laughing, mocking crystal -
A numb and lifeless firmament.

***

Out of the half-lit great hall, fervent,
You slipped out in a wispy shawl -
We didn't stir a single soul,
We didn't wake the sleeping servants.

***

I'm whispering to say
To you that I, today,
In whisper, give away,
You, darling, to the ray.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

The translations seem quite good; at least they are quite clear.

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought these poems had some profundity to them, and I thought they were charming in many rights. I liked the way Mandelstam poeticized spaces and created a form of rubric for which one may judge his world.

From Tristia, one of my favorite quotes from the collection:
"Our life is poor and meager at its core,
The language of our joy is insufficient!
All's happened once, all will repeat once more,
The sole delight - a flash of recognition."

[Sabina Qeleposhi · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We, dissembling and posing,
Happily forget to gauge
How in youth we’re even closer
To our death than at old age.
 
While the child pulls his scorn
From the saucer, full of wrath,
I have none to blame in turn, -
I’m alone on every path.
 
But I’m no fish and I refuse
To faint away in waters’ flurry,
And I prize the right to choose
All my suffering and worry.”
 
1932

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poems are beautifully translated and it is interesting to read them with the Russian and the English side-by-side.

[Aditya Shukla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Osip Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam (January 15, 1891 – December 27, 1938) was a Russian poet and essayist, and a founding member of Acmeist school of Russian poetry. He is considered by many to be one of the most significant Russian poets of the twentieth century, along with Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and Marina Tsvetaeva. Heavily censored and persecuted by the Soviet authorities for counter-revolutionary activities, he spent most of his later years in exile, until his death in Siberia.

[Cellophane Renaissance · Rating 5 out of 5]

The careful muffled sound of fruit
That plummets, broken from a tree,
Amid the constant melody
Of the deep silence


***


The flower vase arose, awoken,
And spilled its crystal to the floor.



***


I was given a body – what to do with it now,
One so unique and my own somehow?

For this quiet joy, to breathe and to be,
Whom should I thank,



On the glass of eternity, I’ve already left
A mark of my warmth, a mark of my breath.


***

Remain as foam, O, Aphrodite,
And let no word from music part,
Let heart become ashamed of heart,


***

I’m content, insulted deeply,
Life is dream-like on the whole,
And I envy men discreetly,
And discreetly love them all.



***

Sorrow, like a bird of gray,
Is in my heart, I'm walking slow.

Wounded bird, what’s in my power?



***

O, star, in beautiful poverty,

Immortality’s wax - liquefying.
If you’re a star, - your city’s turned black,


***

Like other men, transfixed,
I want to serve you zealously,
Tell fortunes with the lips
Completely dry from jealousy.
A word does not suppress
This dryness spreading through,
Dense air is emptiness
For me without you.
 
I want you now so awfully,
No longer jealous-green,
I bring myself as offering
Up to the guillotine.
I will not call you ever
My love, my joy, it’s mad,
A blood so strange and feral
Replaced the one I had.
 
In just another moment,
I’ll speak my mind to you:
Not happiness, but torment
Is all I find in you.
As if by crime’s compulsion,
I’m drawn and can’t resist,
By, bitten in commotion,
Your cherry gentle lips.
 
I’m scared alone so rush here,
Return here, I implore,
I’ve never, with such passion,
Perceived you thus before.
All that I crave I see
Now coming into view,
I’ve lost my jealousy,
And I am calling you.
 
1920



***

I washed myself in the yard late.
Coarse stars made the sky glow.
Starlight – salt on an axe-blade.
The barrel, brimming full, cooled off.

The outside gates are all clasped,
The earth’s harshness is nonesuch.
No foundation is as pure as
A canvas still fresh, untouched.

A star, like a grain of salt, melts,
The water’s darker in the cold night.
Death is purer, trouble - more felt,
Earth - more frightening and forthright.

1921

***


We, dissembling and posing,
Happily forget to gauge
How in youth we’re even closer
To our death than at old age.

I have none to blame in turn, -
I’m alone on every path.
 
And I prize the right to choose
All my suffering and worry.
 
1932

***


If I could have my way,
Unnoticed, I would flee
To fly after a ray,
Where I could never be!
 
But you shine in an orb -
There is no other bliss,
And the from star absorb
What light precisely is.
 
This gives the ray its form,
This turns light into light,
 
I’m whispering to say
To you that I, today,
In whisper, give away,
You, darling, to the ray.
 
1937


***


The snow crunches in the eyes, sinless like pure bread.
 
1937

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Guess I liked the poems but overall nothing to write home about. The book does have some ringers that will stick with me. Here's a choice bit:

I'm content, insulted deeply
Life is dreamlike on the whole,
And I envy men discreetly,
And discreetly love them all.

Love the loopdy-loop of that quatrain, how Mandelstam's thinker can't decide what on how he feels about a thing. Content, but insulted. Life is but a dream. I envies everyone, he loves everyone.

Here's one that gets at something tactile, an association I would have never thought to make, between jealousy and dry lips.

Like other men, transfixed,
I want to serve you zealously,
Tell fortunes with the lips
Completely dry from jealousy

That rocks.

Oh here's a sendup to art:

The outside gates are all clasped,
The earth's harshness is nonesuch.
No foundation is as pure as
A canvas still fresh, untouched.

I'll leave if there. If you like that stuff, you'll like the poems.

[Nadeem]

Great translation.
Consider the poem "Silentium" where Mandelstam writes:

"She has not yet been born:
she is music and word,
and therefore the un-torn,
fabric of what is stirred."

His words weaving a delicate fabric that remains un-torn by the tumult of existence.

[քամի · Rating 2 out of 5]

մի կողմից պոէզիա չեմ սիրում, միւս կողմից էլ, վստահացած եմ, որ թարգմանութիւններն հիմնականում փչացնում են իրենց։

[Rabha Aishwarya · Rating 5 out of 5]

You'll recall
The berries which, alas,
You've never picked at all

[Julia ☂︎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

And like unoccupied heart's home,
You'll fill the fragile shell,
With wind, with whispers of the foam,
And fog, and rain as well...

[giso0 · Rating 4 out of 5]

مترجم سعی کرده بود وزن شعرها رو تا حدی حفظ کنه.
کم بود.

[Chhanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seems translation if weak to convey the feelings and messages of poems

[Suhrob]

Mandelstam's own prophecy was fulfilled: "Only in Russia is poetry respected, it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?"

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Și grădinar și floare-mi sunt