A Monument to this Spinoza of Poets. and reader of the long immanence of skies earth, train stations, and doors breat hing. rooms opening out ~
"If one is thus to regard the sense as the content, then one must consider everything else in the word as a simple mechanical appendage that only impedes the swift transmission of the thought. "The word as such" was slow aborning. Gradually, one after the other, all the elements of the word were drawn into the concept of form; up to now only the conscious sense, the Logos, has been erroneously and arbitrarily regarded as the content.
Mandelshtam Utro Akmeizma p1
We do not wish to divert ourselves with a stroll in the "forest of symbols," because we have a more virgin, a denser forest--divine physiology, the boundless complexity of our dark organism."
Utro Akmeizma p4
the monument ~ which I've not seen. So I've no idea of its proportions ~ but it looks like he's pretty tough and cocky in the right kind of way, ~
the Kremlin mountaineer 1933 _ is the poem which began the chain of events leading to his exile and eventual execution ~ long chain of word leading to dying ~We live, deaf to the land beneath us,
Ten steps away no one hears our speeches,
All we hear is the Kremlin mountaineer,
The murderer and peasant-slayer.
His fingers are fat as grubs
And the words, final as lead weights, fall from his lips,
His cockroach whiskers leer
And his boot tops gleam.
Around him a rabble of thin-necked leaders -
fawning half-men for him to play with.
The whinny, purr or whine
As he prates and points a finger,
One by one forging his laws, to be flung
Like horseshoes at the head, to the eye or the groin.
And every killing is a treat
For the broad-chested Ossete.
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the problem with all translations, esp. from Russian is the sound.
sound values don't transfer ~
the Ear's sung distinctly
in each vocable
divergently
tongue to tongue
sound values don't transfer ~
the Ear's sung distinctly
in each vocable
divergently
tongue to tongue
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Monument to the great Russian “Silver Age” poet Osip Mandelstam was unveiled on 2 September in Voronezh.
The poet was exiled to Voronezh in 1934 for his poem that sounded like a slap in the face of the Stalinist regime: “We live not feeling the country under us…”
In spring 1937 Mandelstam left Voronezh, it turned out, that forever. Soon he was arrested again and perished under Vladivostok.
The monument that evoked some disputes, according to its author’s message has embodied the poet’s sophisticated personality, his quests and tragic turns of fate.
The sculpture has been set up in the city park “Orlyonok”, at the crossroads of Friedrich Engels Street and Tchaikovsky Street. Next to it, in House 13, Engels Street, Osip Mandelstam lived for some time during his Voronezh exile.
via : communa.ru
and
http://www.russia-ic.com/
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This fragment is his final letter
"My darling Nadia - are you alive, my dear?Wikisource
I was given five years for counter-revolutionary activity by the Special Tribunal. The transport left Butyrki on September 9, and we got here October 12. My health is very bad, I'm extremely exhausted and thin, almost unrecognizable, but I don't know whether there's any sense in sending clothes, food and money. You can try, all the same, I'm very cold without proper clothes.
I am in Vladivostok. This is a transit point. I've not been picked for Kolyma and may have to spend the winter here."The final arrest in 1938 was the end.... the end... sent to a . He was sent to a labor camp in Siberia.... The Soviet government reported
that Osip Mandelstam died at Vtoraya Rechka, on 27th December, 1938. .... body ... placed in an unmarked mass gravesomewhere in the snow ... in the snow... snow.... snow unmarked.. this grave... grave like so many others thousands unmarked... graves..... The letter quoted above was smuggled out of the camp shortly before he died
and yet his words live ~
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The Stalin EpigramTranslated by W. S. Merwin
Our lives no longer feel ground under them.
At ten paces you can’t hear our words.
But whenever there’s a snatch of talk
it turns to the Kremlin mountaineer,
the ten thick worms his fingers,
his words like measures of weight,
the huge laughing cockroaches on his top lip,
the glitter of his boot-rims.
Ringed with a scum of chicken-necked bosses
he toys with the tributes of half-men.
One whistles, another meows, a third snivels.
He pokes out his finger and he alone goes boom.
He forges decrees in a line like horseshoes,
One for the groin, one the forehead, temple, eye.
He rolls the executions on his tongue like berries.
He wishes he could hug them like big friends from home.
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As always the best way to 'see"a poem in another language
than one's own is to compare
the different versions, no?
yes, yes
jes/ jes да
--------------------because Russian strikes me as an inside language more than ours
more than others inside the rule of life
and its domains ~
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via :and other spot ~---------------------------------------------
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