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The Complete Poetry of Osip Emilevich Mandelstam (includes Kamen, Tristia, and Stikhotvoreniya), translated by Burton Raffel and Alla Burago, introduction by Sidney Monas, State University of New York Press (Albany), 1973.
- Twenty-Four Poems
- ‘Only to Read Childrens’ Books’
- ‘On The Pale-Blue Enamel’
- ‘What Shall I Do with This Body They Gave Me,’
- ‘A Speechless Sadness’
- ‘There Is No Need For Words’
- Silentium
- The Shell
- ‘Orioles Are in The Woods, and in Tonic Verse’
‘Osip Mandelstam 1891-1938’ Post of the USSR, designer Yu. Artsimenev / Почта СССР, художник Ю. Арцименев Wikimedia Commons 1. Home 2. Download Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright2000 All Rights Reserved This work may be freely reproduced, stored and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose. Conditions and Exceptio...
Only to read childrens’ books, only to love childish things, throwing away adult things, rising from saddest looks. I am wearied to death with life. There’s nothing it has that I want, but I celebrate my naked earth, there’s no other world to descant. A plain swing of wood; the dark, of the high fir-tree, in the far-off garden, swinging; remembered...
On the pale-blue enamel, that April can bring, birch branches’ imperceptible sway, slipped towards evening. A network of finely etched lines, is the pattern’s finished state, the carefully-made design, like that on a porcelain plate, the thoughtful artist set, on the glazed firmament, oblivious to sad death, knowing ephemeral strength.
What shall I do with this body they gave me, so much my own, so intimate with me? For being alive, for the joy of calm breath, tell me, who should I bless? I am the flower, and the gardener as well, and am not solitary, in earth’s cell. My living warmth, exhaled, you can see, on the clear glass of eternity. A pattern set down, until now, unknown. B...
A speechless sadness opened two huge eyes. A vase of flowers woke: splashing crystal surprise. The whole room filled, with languor - sweet potion! Such a tiny kingdom to swallow sleep’s ocean. Wine’s slight redness, May’s slight sunlight – fingers, slender, and white, breaking wafer-fragments.
There is no need for words: nothing must be heard. How sad, and fine, an animal’s dark mind. Nothing it must make heard: it has no use for words, a young dolphin, plunging, steep, along the world’s grey deep.
She has not yet been born: she is music and word, and therefore the un-torn, fabric of what is stirred. Silent the ocean breathes. Madly day’s glitter roams. Spray of pale lilac foams, in a bowl of grey-blue leaves. May my lips rehearse the primordial silence, like a note of crystal clearness, sounding, pure from birth! Stay as foam Aphrodite – Art...
Night, maybe you don’t need me. From the world’s reach, a shell without a pearl’s seed, I’m thrown on your beach. You move indifferent seas, and always sing, but you will still be pleased, with this superfluous thing. You lie nearby on the shore, wrapped in your chasuble, and the great bell of the waves’ roar, you will fasten to the shell. Your mur...
Orioles are in the woods, and in tonic verse the length of vowels is the only measure. Once in each year nature’s drawn to excess, and overflows, like Homer’s metre. Today yawns, like the caesura’s suspense: From dawn there’s quiet, and laborious timelessness: oxen at pasture, and golden indolence; from the reed, to draw a whole note’s richness. No...
Mandelstam's poetry is characterized by its dense imagery, intricate wordplay, and unflinching engagement with the political and social upheavals of his time. He wrote during a period of immense change in Russia, marked by revolution, war, and the rise of totalitarianism.
Mandelstam and his wife chose Voronezh, possibly, partly, because the name appealed to him. In April 1935, he wrote a four line poem that included the pun - Voronezh - blazh', Voronezh - voron, nozh meaning 'Voronezh is a whim, Voronezh - a raven, a knife.'.
Many of Osip Mandelstam’s (1891-1938) best known poems are moored to particular realities: his ekphrastic lyric about the Hagia Sophia, a poem dedicated “To Anna Akhmatova,” the satire savaging Stalin that led to the poet’s arrest, exile, madness, and death.
Osip Mandelstam ranks among the most significant Russian poets of the 20th century. He was born in Warsaw, Poland in or around 1891, but soon afterward his family moved to St. Petersburg, Russia. In St. Petersburg, the Jewish Mandelstams—on the strength, according to some critics,...
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By Osip Mandelstam. Translated by John High and Matvei Yankelevich. Alone I stare into the frost’s white face. It’s going nowhere, and I—from nowhere. Everything ironed flat, pleated without a wrinkle: Miraculous, the breathing plain. Meanwhile the sun squints at this starched poverty—.
