Walking with Mandelstam

(Researcher’s Notes #11)

Aaron, Rafi (1959)

Original Text

Surviving the Censor: The Unspoken Words of Osip Mandelstam, ed. Allan Briesmaster (Hamilton, Ontario: Seraphim Editions, 2006): 79-80.

1Once I thought that if I walked with you to the end

2of Russian literature, bumped into Yesenin and his

3soft words, mingled with the throng that formed

4around Pushkin or waited patiently at the Senate

5Square while you threw pieces of Blok, Akhmatova

6and poor old Mayakovsky to eager readers who

7pecked at your references, I would come to

8understand all that you represent.

9But it was in St. Petersburg by the Kryucov where

10the water flows down to the Neptune Arches that all

11of European literature streams by, joins in your

12verse, becomes a chorus for your song that is

13steeped in old melodies, slow rhythms of centuries

14gone by, the forgotten music of Ovid and Sappho

15fills the air and the light grows stronger, the chorus

16becomes an echo that carries the voices of Virgil

17and Villon over the void pushing us forward and at

18the same time calling us back to the magnificent

19structures, the perfect poems that pass before us.

20There was always the trap door, the false floor, and

21falling through the mountain, the mist and the

22morning after, and here on the open road a thimble

23of Ariosto slipped into the cocktail so the readers

24staggered past the sleeping guard as the camp fires

25blossomed into fragrant flames and words that once

26danced rose into the air tapping lightly on the ear so

27that when he spoke of Homer his lines were salt sea

28shells and foam and he never once had to say, “In

29my youth I travelled with him.”

30At any moment he could hurl the ancient sand from

31another time, The Divine Comedy and Dante sting

32your eyes, you stumble onto the marketplace where

33poets hang their verses in brightly marked stalls and

34speak their poems in the language of the bluebird

35and the robin. There are a hundred voices calling

36out “I am the tour guide follow me” and this tug on

37your sleeve leads you down another street and

38further away from the end of Mandelstam’s poem

39and deeper into the lush lands, the forgotten

40foothills of poetry and prose where the door to a

41locked century remains open.

42Breathless I tried to keep up with him. I could hear

43the hoofs on the cobblestone and feel the sharpest

44points of literature piercing me and I loved that

45feeling and later I would pass my fingers over the

46page the way someone would run a hand over an old

47scar so that I could relive the moment when I was

48jarred out of my sleeping day and into the force of

49life.

Notes

8] "The names mentioned in the first paragraph are the following famous Russian poets: Sergey Yesenin (1895-1925), Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837), Aleksandr Blok (1880-1921), Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966, see note for p. 40), and Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930)."
"Anna Akhmatova, one of the leading Russian poets of this period and a close friend of Mandelstam. She too was persecuted because of her poetry. Her poems were banned from publication, she was forced into poverty and her son was arrested twice and spent a total of fourteen years in prisons or camps. She visited the Mandelstams in Voronezh in February of 1936." (poet's notes, pp. 84-85). Back to Line

14] Ovid: classical Roman poet or erotic myths such as the Metamorphoses.
Sappho: lesbian poet of classical Greece. Back to Line

16] Virgil: classical Roman epic poet of the Aeneid. Back to Line

17] Villon: François Villon (1431-63), late medieval French poet-thief. Back to Line

23] Ariosto: Renaissance Italian epic poet. Back to Line

27] Homer: classical Greek epic poet of the Odyssey. Back to Line

31] The Divine Comedy: epic poem by Dante, grieving for his dead Beatrice, on his descent into hell and gradual ascent into Heaven. Back to Line

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2012

Form

prose poem