Literary and historical commentary

This edition of autobiographical prose, letters, notebooks and records of different years is the first experience of systematic coverage of a special biography - self-creation - of the greatest Russian poet of the 20th century, Osip Emilievich Mandelstam (1891–1938). The drama of this process of creating a poetic personality - more precisely, the improvisation of fate - was due to many circumstances. “A semi-provincial, a Jew, a commoner, he did not receive the property of Russian and European culture by natural inheritance,” M. L. Gasparov wrote about Mandelstam. “The choice of culture was for him an act of personal will, the memory of this forever remained in him the basis of a sense of his own personality with its inner freedom.”

The main inspirers of this process, the poet's asceticism, as N. S. Gumilyov noted, "were only the Russian language ... and eternally sleepless thought."

The autobiographical and epistolary prose of Osip Mandelstam, his "portraits" of cities - St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Feodosia - Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam will call these essays the poet's "city love", "urban passion"! - are distinguished by a remarkable feature: he captures himself in extremely critical, conflict, critical states, in the movement of thought and feeling, emphasizes the drama of any fact and impression. The poetic "I" of Mandelstam is everywhere included in the movement of history, often in a dispute with the "age-wolfhound". Hence - a rare wealth of life experiences, moral and aesthetic self-observations and assessments.

This publication became possible thanks to the selfless efforts of many people who cherished the fate of the poet's legacy. To them, first of all, to the scientists who prepared the first foreign edition of the works of O. E. Mandelstam in 4 volumes (1967), G. P. Struve, B. A. Filippov, from which the works included in this edition, letters, fragments of unfinished works, as well as to the collectors of the heritage of the poet and memoirs E. G. Gershtein, E. P. Zenkevich, P. M. Nerler, the late I. M. Semenko, N. E. Shtempel, and, of course, N. Ya. Mandelstam - Sincere gratitude from the compiler of this book and, I hope, from the readers.

"Noise of Time"

Published according to: Mandelstam O. Noise of time. Publishing house "Time" L., 1925. Circulation 3000 copies.

The main work on this book - the story of a St. Petersburg boy from a Jewish family, without plot or plot - proceeded in the autumn of 1923 in Gaspra in the Crimea and, probably, in 1924 in Leningrad. Advertising the forthcoming publication, the owners of Vremya emphasized: “This is fiction, but at the same time it is more than reality itself ... It exhausts the era.”

Among the first assessments of this autobiography of Mandelstam, the opinion of A. Lezhnev is curious: “His phrase (of Mandelstam the narrator - V. Ch.) buckles under the weight of literary culture and tradition. At the same time, his images are peculiar and contrasting, and the comparisons are unexpectedly true. He knocks off epithets with his foreheads, as Anatole France advises to do ... How correctly and aptly he captured a lot in this era of social decline, degenerate populism, doom, whining, impotence of the “sympathetically smoldering” intelligentsia ”(“ Print and Revolution ”, 1929, No. 4 , pp. 151–153). For G. Fish, "The Noise of Time" is a document of "attitude literary direction"Acmeism"" ("Krasnaya Gazeta", evening edition, Leningrad, 1925, June 30).

True, very few noticed in The Noise of Time the main psychological drama of the narrator - his departure from the "Jewish chaos", that is, the established life, value system and orientation, into the realm of Russian culture, Christianity and the state that arose in connection with this, as N Lerner, “double non-existence”, “a temporary state of “neither in those nor in them”, “sweeping longing” both for what has already been left and for what has not yet been found” (“The Past”, 1929, No. 6). The emigrant critic V. Veidle most accurately assessed the drama of Mandelstam’s losses and still incomplete gains: he saw that both St. Petersburg Russia and “Jewish chaos” are “akin to Mandelstam, but they are akin to him in different ways: “He unmistakably conveys the very smell and taste of Jewry, and the air of St. Petersburg, and the sound of St. Petersburg pavements. The second homeland is more important and dearer to him than the first.

Mandelstam's memoirs, as an example of cultural-historical, diary prose, full of "energy of thought" of depth and fidelity to historical intuition, became the topic of correspondence with B. Pasternak. He will write to the author of The Noise of Time: “The full sound of this book, which found a happy expression for many elusiveness ... so riveted to itself, carried it so confidently and well that it was a pleasure to read and reread it” (“Literary Review”, 1990, No. 2 ). For A. Akhmatova, “The Noise of Time” is a lesson in writing about history, a model for her “Running Time” (1915), an object of admiration for the load on the word, on the detail. “Osip is rich, rich,” E. Gerstein recalled her assessment of the world cultural property Mandelstam, the focus of refined culture.

Music in Pavlovsk. The concert hall in the building of the Pavlovsky railway station in the 1890s, when the Mandelstam family lived in Pavlovsk, is described. "Talk about. Dreyfus"; "The names of Colonels Esterhazy and Picard"- the subject of newspaper articles about the trial of the French officer Gentschab A. Dreyfus: (1859–1935), accused of spying for Germany in 1894; "Kreutzer Sonata"(1891) - story by L. N. Tolstoy; Figner lost his voice- we are talking about the singer N. N. Figner, soloist of the Mariinsky Theater; "Catherine's Church" - a Catholic church on Nevsky Prospekt.

"Childish Imperialism".Equestrian monument to Nicholas I - built in 1856–1895. on St. Isaac's Square; "Kryukov Canal, Dutch Petersburg"- the so-called "New Holland" - a small island formed by the Moika River and canals; "descent of the battleship" Oslyabya "» - the squadron battleship "Oslyabya" was launched in 1898; "Likes and drinkers"- types of leather

"Riots and Frenchwomen".Funeral Alexander III - took place on November 8, 1894; "Genevan"- a follower of John Calvin (1509-1564), one of the reformers of Catholicism; wakes- Finnish drivers.

Bookcase. It is said about the relationship of the father and mother with the Vengerovs, Kopelyanskys, Slonimskys, Kasirers, about the grandfather and grandmother of the poet - leather sorter Veniamin Zundelovich Mandelstam and Mera Abramovna, who lived in Riga; Nadson Semyon Yakovlevich (1862–1887) Russian poet; lion Anton- A. G. Rubinshtein (1829–1894) - pianist and composer; Sofia Perovskaya and Zhelyabov- regicides of the people.

Jewish chaos. Shavli - a place near Shauliai, the family homeland of Mandelstam in Courland; baron Gunzburg- Gintsburg Horace Osipovich (Naftali Heru) - banker, builder of a synagogue in St. Petersburg; Dorpat - now the city of Tartu; black and yellow silk scarf - tales, a special cape that Jews put on during prayer; " Death and Enlightenment by Strauss- symphonic poem by Richard Strauss.

Concerts of Hoffmann and Kubelik. The Polish pianist and composer Joseph Hoffmann and the Czech violinist Jan Kubelik frequently toured Russia in the late 19th century.

Tenishevsky school. O. E. Mandelstam entered the Tenishevsky Commercial School on September 1, 1900. A remarkable building was built for the school on Mokhovaya Street - at the expense of Prince. V. M. Tenisheva. Among the teachers were the largest scientists and teachers. Later, the writers V. V. Nabokov and O. V. Volkov studied at the Tenishevsky School.

Erfurt program.Erfurt program- the program of the German Social Democratic Party, adopted at the party congress in October. 1891 in Erfurt; Kautsky Karl (1854-1938) - one of the leaders of the Second International, broke with Marxism after the outbreak of the First World War; Pavlenkov edition- mass series "Life wonderful people”, published by F. F. Pavlenkov in 1880–1890.

The Sinaki family. We are talking about the family of Mandelstam's gymnasium friend Boris Sinaki (1889–1910).

Komissarzhevskaya. Komissarzhevskaya Vera Fedorovna (1864–1910) - prominent Russian actress; Marriage And Hedda- characters in G. Ibsen's play "Hedda Gabler" (1890); Komissarzhevskaya, playing "Puppet Show" ... - the premiere of "Puppet Show" by A. Blok took place at the theater of V. F. Komissarzhevskaya on December 30, 1906.

"In a lordly fur coat out of order."Leontiev K. N. (1831–1891) - writer, philosopher, shortly before his death took the veil as a monk; Gippius Vladimir Vasilyevich (1876–1941) - poet and literary critic, taught Russian language and literature at the Tenishevsky School.

They are based on the impressions of the poet's stay (together with his brother Alexander) in September 1919 in the Crimea (Feodosia and Koktebel), departure for Batumi (in September 1920).

The originality of Mandelstam's view - through the prism of culture, ancient mythology, through the eye of a needle of his "Hellenism" - was expressed in the essays in the fact that he ... somehow did not "notice" either Wrangel or Denikin. “We should be grateful to Wrangel for letting us breathe in the purest air of the robber Mediterranean republic of the sixteenth century,” writes Mandelstam, completely arbitrarily assessing the “evacuation”, that is, the sad exodus of tens of thousands of Russian people from the Crimea in 1920, as "joyful Atlantic flight". Of course, in reality, the entire short existence of the Crimea under Wrangel was continuously overshadowed by the fact noted by V. V. Shulgin that “there, behind the neck of Perekop, lies a sea of ​​poverty”, that “this captivating peninsula cannot be pampered” (V. V. Shulgin. "Dni. 1920", M., 1989, p.469).

The well-known "softness" of Mandelstam - or, more simply, a purely poetic, playful perception of the harshest situations, people, the "street" itself, the picturesque suburbs of Feodosia! - part of his mental structure, the position "above the fight." The modern reader owes this “softness” and the beautiful landscapes of Kerch and Feodosia: “from Mithridates (mountains in the center of Kerch and on the outskirts of Feodosia - V. Ch.), that is, the ancient Persian Kremlin on the mountain of theatrical-cardboard stone”, and no less vivid historiosophical “landscapes”, somnambulistic landscapes. Now one can only marvel at the apparent fearlessness of the poet, who created such a mental landscape of history:

“The most important thing in this landscape was the failure that formed in the place of Russia. The Black Sea moved all the way to the Neva; thick as tar, its waves licked the plates of Isaac, with mourning foam crashed on the steps of the Senate.

In essence, such a worldview - the whole of Russia is like Kitezh-grad, like Atlantis plunged to the bottom of the flood! - is no different from the hallucinations of I. S. Shmelev in The Sun of the Dead (1923), or from the sad lyrics of M. Tsvetaeva (After Russia, etc.). The demonstrative "carelessness" of Mandelstam, his choice of heroes for review, description - such is Mases (Moses) da Vinci, an artist and craftsman who built relationships with people "on uncertainty and sweet reticence" - poorly hide his anxieties, forebodings of the end of the entire artistic era.

Travel to Armenia

The explicit autobiographical nature of this travel prose (“half-story”), created by the poet in 1931-1932, published in the journal Zvezda (1933, No. years of their accusatory denunciations, "rapportiches". "ABOUT. Mandelstam is not interested in knowing the country and its people, but in whimsical verbal communication, which allows one to plunge into oneself, to measure one’s inner literary baggage with random associations ... The writer is armored by literary ancestors, ”wrote N. Oruzeinikov (“Literaturnaya gazeta”, 1933, No. 28 ). The accusation is “the old Petersburg acmeist poet O. Mandelstam (he was 42 years old in 1933! - V. Ch.) passed by the flourishing and joyfully building socialism of Armenia" - had fatal consequences: the printing of "Journey" was suspended.

In the prehistory of the "half-story", but rather a journey to the biblical, Mediterranean origins of culture - this is precisely Armenia, the "country of Nairi" for Mandelstam is not only a translation of the poem, "Dance on the Mountains" by the Armenian futurist poet Kara-Darvish in the early 20s years and the request of N. I. Bukharin dated June 12, 1929 to S. M. Ter-Gabrielyan, chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Armenian SSR, to accept a poet “ready to learn the Armenian language”, to write a work about Armenia. In this case, it is not possible to list people from the nomenklatura ranks, people's commissars, directors of institutes, sanatoriums, pedagogical schools, historians, local historians who helped the poet make a trip, see Sevan, Etchmiadzin, many ancient historical monuments. Let us only note the figure of the biologist B. S. Kuzin (1903–1973), whom Mandelstam met in a teahouse in the courtyard of a mosque in Yerevan, who became a close friend of the poet, an interlocutor on many problems of natural science. Acquaintance with B. S. Kuzin helped Mandelstam in many ways to create one of his best poems, Lamarck (1932), about a kind of “descent” of consciousness down the ladder of evolution to the last step.

This “he”, a companion in the descent to the “rings” and “barnacles”, in parting with Mozart, is, of course, B. S. Kuzin.

Probably the most important thing in the “Journey” and in the diary cycle of poems “Armenia”, in which the image Armenian language(“screaming stones state”, “wild cat Armenian speech”, etc.) - hidden, perhaps unconscious, but quite understandable to Armenian friends, support for their efforts to preserve the shrines of their culture. We must not forget that throughout the 1920s and 1930s, under the slogan of building an international culture, in Armenia, as well as in Russia, a clear denationalization was often carried out. The best poets and prose writers of Armenia (Aksel Bakunts, Yeghishe Charents, etc.) were obliged to castigate even the images of the “country of Nairi” as “chimeras of national narrow-mindedness” ( ancient name Armenia), straighten the language itself, clearing it of archaisms. Anna Akhmatova will translate the poem “Our Language” by E. Charents, characteristic of such a “perestroika”:

We then mangle and choke

the language that is purer than springs,

so that for today's souls

the rust of centuries has not settled.

Spiritual boundaries are expanding.

And they will not express what the century breathes,

nor Teryan's sonorous tarsal,

Nor parchment Narek.

For Mandelstam, the names of Vahan Teryan, the Armenian Blok, or Gregor Narekatsi, a classic of the Armenian Middle Ages, ancient villages like Ashtarak, a folklore granary that “hung on the murmur of water, like on a wire”, “churches in a hexagonal kamilavka”, finally, the Armenian language - “ unwearable like stone boots,” is the most essential, eternal thing in this country. It never occurred to him that this language was covered in the rust of centuries, that it needed to be cleaned. After all, in it:

... letters - blacksmith tongs

And every word is a bracket...

Memories. Essays.

Kyiv. The essay was published in the Kyiv Vecherniy Gazeta in 1926, presumably in May. The essay expressed - it could still be expressed - the playful beginning of Mandelstam's soul, the mischief of his thoughts when looking at the picturesque NEP life, the realm of signboards, shops, communal apartments. “The Ukrainian-Jewish-Russian city breathes with a deep triple breath,” he writes, noting the love of life of small people, and the incidents of Ukrainization, and the greatness of building managers, in the future the eternal heroes of Bulgakov’s prose and dramaturgy.

Cold summer."Spark". 1925, No. 16. This essay, like the essay "Batum" (1922) - evidence of Mandelstam's wanderings, wanderings in the hungry years of returning to Moscow, probably became one of the topics of M. A. Bulgakov's notes "Notes on Cuffs" about throwing writers in Russia in search of peace, earning bread:

“The draft picked up. How the leaves fly. One - from Kerch to Vologda, the other - from Vologda to Kerch. A disheveled Osip climbs with a suitcase and gets angry: - We won't get there, and that's all! - Naturally, we won't get there if you don't know where you're going!.. Osip Mandelstam. Walked in on a cloudy day and held his head high like a prince. Killed with conciseness: - From the Crimea. Bad. Do they buy manuscripts from you? - ... but no money for ... - I began, and before I had time to finish, he left. It is not known where."

Sukharevka. Ogonyok, 1923, No. 18. The essay in a peculiar way continues the theme of the poet's “entry” to Moscow (“On the sledges laid with straw”), the development of its “Buddhist” picturesqueness. His “bazaar” is both the essence of historical Moscow, the embodiment of the other side of “golden drowsy Asia” (Yesenin), which has died here, and not on some domes, and a threat to culture: “If you give the bazaar free rein, it will spread to the city and the city will overgrow wool." Involuntarily now you will think about the super-domestic invasion of all kinds of beggarly "shocks", "clothing markets", hordes of "shuttle traders", people of the market, who are now spreading to all spheres of cities, somehow you understand the difficult meaning of the poet's anxieties: like a place of plague…” The flood of “bazaars” that replace the museum, the library, the theater, and the lecture hall is, after all, the spill of the counterculture, the triumph of the pictorial primitive, in a certain sense, the dictatorship of the “shuttle traders”, the bagmen, who are also victims of this element.

Letters from different years.

Fedor Kuzmich Sologub(1863-1927) - poet, prose writer, playwright, one of the senior symbolists, author of the novels "Heavy Dreams" (1883-1894), " petty imp"(1907), trilogy" New Years "(1907-1914).

Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam(1899–1980), née Khazina, became the wife of O. E. Mandelstam in 1919. She was born in Saratov, but for many years - before meeting the poet - she lived in Kyiv. Her father was a lawyer. She knew Kyiv very well artistic environment- poets, artists, scientists. N. Ya. Mandelstam accompanied the poet on many of his travels in Russia, was with him in Armenia, and in 1934, after his arrest and sentencing, she went with him to Cherdyn, and then to Voronezh. She left Voronezh, leaving her husband in the care of her mother and new acquaintance N. E. Shtempel, to Moscow, trying to attach certain manuscripts, to earn something in the editorial offices, “to cling to life”. She, who lived for many decades “only to preserve Mandelstam - his poems, the story of his life and death” (the exact definition of M.K. Polivanov) - characterized her “Memoirs” as follows: “This is the story of my struggle with the elements, with the one that tried to lick both me and the poor scraps that I took care of. In his last letter To Osip Emilievich in 1938, naturally, who had not reached him, having lain for thirty years in a suitcase, she wrote about happy poverty, that “we were like blind puppies poking each other, and it was good for us”, that “it is difficult to die alone - one."

She, a person apparently very mentally strong, strong-willed, categorical in her assessments, called her connection with Mandelstam not love, but fate: “I did not prevent him from building himself and being himself. He built himself, and at the same time me” (“Memoirs”). But it is real, apparently, and she built his character, modified many situations with her own, expressed or unspoken, assessments, a general view of them. In her assessments of Mandelstam's "traitorous" poems - and, apparently, the short-lived, even stormy novels of the poet themselves - with the actress Arbenina (Hilderbrandt) O. N. (1901–1980), O. A. Vaksel (1903–1932), N. E. Shtempel (1910–1988) - a rationally restrained, even condescending beginning, a spirit of superiority and confidence prevails. Olga Vaksel for her is “a girl lost in a terrible, wild city, helpless, defenseless ... Before her death, Olga dictated wild, erotic memoirs to her husband, who knew the Russian language,” writes N. Ya. Mandelstam in “Memoirs”. In poems to N. E. Shtempel, she will find "a lofty and enlightened sense of the future life." And only with the memory of M.E. Petrovs, Nadezhda Yakovlevna will change her calmness: she will call her a “hunter”, trying her hand, and will not say anything about the really beautiful poem “The Master of Guilty Looks” (1934). But among the variants of this poem, in a completely exceptional, noblest context, the name of Maria Petrov flashed:

You, Mary, are a perishing help,

It is necessary to warn death - to sleep.

I am standing on a solid threshold.

Go away, go away, stay...

Emily Veniaminovich Mandelstam(1856–1939) - see publication notes of the letters.

Yuri Nikolaevich Tynyanov(1884–1943) - prose writer, literary critic, critic, one of the founders of the Society for the Study poetic language(OPOYAZ), author of the article "The Interval" (1924), apparently remembered by Mandelstam for a combination of prophetic intuition and factual, scientific and theoretical accuracy (it dealt with the poetry of A. Akhmatova, B. Pasternak, O. Mandelstam, V. Mayakovsky) .

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky(1882-1969) - poet, translator, literary historian, the most prominent literary critic of the early 20th century.

Stavsky(Kirpichnikov) Vladimir Petrovich (1900–1943) - prose writer, essayist, since 1936 secretary of the Writers' Union of the USSR. His activity in this post is characterized by a constant desire to present himself as a "signalman" of one or another class, political danger. He actually provoked repressions against writers. Having gone to M. A. Sholokhov during the completion of The Quiet Don, V. P. Stavsky immediately wrote a letter to I. V. Stalin that the Quiet Don was still “flowing in the wrong direction”, which the author did not he is thinking about turning Grigory Melekhov into a Bolshevik and, explaining all this by the influence of his family, his wife’s relatives, he proposed ... to relocate Sholokhov from Veshenskaya to a large industrial center. He applied the same method of "signaling" on March 16, 1938, turning to N.I. Yezhov, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, with a "request" - "to help resolve this issue about O. Mandelstam." This “help” was expressed in the arrest of the poet in the boarding house “Samatikha” and the sentence - 5 years in the camp.

Mandelstam Alexander Emilievich(1892–1942) - the middle of the Mandelstam brothers (Shura). In addition to him, in the correspondence of the poet flashes younger brother Evgeny Emilievich Mandelstam (1898–1979), daughter of E. E. Mandelstam Tatyana (Tatka).

From poems 1913–1937 Published according to the ed.: Mandelstam O. Soch. in 2 vols. M., 1990.

Notebooks. Notes.

"Records of 1931", "Notebooks of 1931-1932" were published for the first time in 1969 based on copies from the author's typescripts in volume 3 of the poet's Collected Works in 4 volumes. Despite the fragmentation, thematic overlap with essays, autobiographical prose these notes, notes have independent value. “I turned 40 in January. I have entered the age of a rib and a demon,” such self-characteristics are clearly intended to break the system of “solid”, linear narration, reporting on trips, experiences. In the light of their and similar self-observations - “I live without improving myself”, “I accepted the ocean news of Mayakovsky’s death”, etc. - the whole path of the poet’s life, his quivering and wary attitude towards the world becomes clearer. Hardly anyone before Mandelstam perceived climbing the Alatau as difficult and “strange”: “You go and you feel in your pocket an invitation card to Tamerlane ...”

Outside of these notes, records, however, a lot remained, later disclosed in N. Ya. Mandelstam's "Memoirs". It turns out that the poet also visited the workshop of the great painter Martiros Saryan, Yeghishe Cherents, a wonderful Armenian poet, came to him in Tiflis and, after listening to Mandelstam’s stories and poems, said: “A book seems to be coming out of you.”

Names found in notes, notebooks - the poet A. Bezymensky, statesmen like Lakoba Nestor Ivanovich(1893–1936), chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Abkhazia, Ch. Darwin, traveler Pallas, natural scientists Linnaeus, Lamarck and others - are important, rather, as a reason for self-observation, for "tasting" a particular thought.

"Treasonable" lyrics, or poems about love

Madrigal. Straw I–II. These poems of 1916 are addressed to the Petersburg beauty book. Salome Andronikova. Osip Mandelstam visited the estate of Salomeya Andronikova in the Crimea, where he participated in the performance of the collectively composed comedy "The Coffee House of Broken Hearts, or Savanarolla in Taurida." There, at this performance, he met another famous St. Petersburg Venus, Vera Arkadyevna Sudeikina. The poem “A jet of golden honey flowed from a bottle ...” (Alushta, 1917) is dedicated to her - the beginning of the next cycle that has not been continued. This fatal woman - in those years the artist's wife, an actress of an indefinite genre - will later become one of the heroines of A. A. Akhmatova's "Poem without a Hero". The changes in her personal life are also brilliant in their own way: in exile she is the wife of the composer Igor Stravinsky, and after his death - the wife famous philanthropist Marquis de Bosse.

“I am in a round dance of shadows trampling on a gentle meadow ..” (1920), “I am on a par with others ...” (1920), “A ghostly scene flickers a little ...” (1920), “Take joy from my palms ...” (1920) ; “For the fact that I could not hold your hands ...” (1920); “In St. Petersburg we will meet again ...” (1920) - all these poems, forming a kind of cycle, are addressed to Olga Nikolaevna Arbenina, an actress of the Alexandria Theater. A. A. Blok was right - in relation to these poems - when he said: “His (Mandelstam - V.Ch.) poems arise from dreams - very peculiar, lying in the fields of art and nothing more. True, the witnesses of this speculative novel remembered that Mandelstam and Arbenina "were together in the ballet", that he read to her - just during Mayakovsky's performance at the House of Arts - his poems in private. And he didn’t read, but “sang poetry ... and his voice flew up like a dove and beat against the crystal pendants of the ceiling and rushed out the window to the Neva.” Having remembered these details, Ida Nappelbaum, the daughter of the famous St. Petersburg photographer M. Nappelbaum, for whom Arbenina was just Olechka, added from herself such an observation of the fate of the unfortunate Mandelstam: “The poet did not have an open visor, he consisted of two profiles - sunny and shadow. And he turned around first one side, then the other ... He fought in the cage of life. (Quoted from the book: O. Mandelstam. My age, my beast. - M., 2002. - S. 140, 141). The conjectures of another memoirist E. Gershtein about a kind of rivalry - “in the hungry winter of 1920, both of them (Mandelstam and Gumilyov - V.Ch.) solicited the love of Olga Nikolaevna Arbenina in Petrograd” - should, apparently, be left aside as unsubstantiated and somewhat crushing the entire sublime, mythological structure of Mandelstam’s messages, the very image of Petersburg, sharp-sighted metaphorism, the wealth of semantic associations of this love lyrics.

« Flooded with silk Melpomene», Melpomene- the muse of tragedy, one of the nine beautiful companions of Apollo; " Nothing, dove Eurydice» Eurydice - the wife of the great singer Orpheus, was stung by a snake in the leg and carried away to Hades. Orpheus was allowed - after his songs, from which all nature cried - by the lord of Hades and his wife Persephone to bring Eurydice out with one condition: “But during the journey through the underworld, you should not look back. Remember! If you look back, Eurydice will immediately leave you and return forever to my kingdom. Not hearing the steps of a disembodied shadow behind him, fearing that Eurydice had lagged behind, Orpheus nevertheless looked back ...

"And a huge heap of immortal roses / In Cyprida's arms ...". Cyprida(or Aphrodite) - forever young, the most beautiful of the goddesses in a wreath of fragrant flowers was born from snow-white foam sea ​​waves who brought it to the island of Cyprus. According to legend, wherever Aphrodite steps, flowers grow luxuriantly. This detail, like the mention of a pass (" I don't need a night pass”), refute the statements of N. Ya. Mandelstam, according to which the poems “In St. Petersburg we will meet again” are dedicated to her, and not O. N. Arbenina. However, and blessed meaningless word"- this is also from the sphere of life of O. N. Arbenina - an actress created "for a comedic squabble." She sincerely did not understand, having read the whole cycle of poems about herself: “It is not clear why such a tragedy turned out in verse - now I understand his life with sadness, and cheerfully - our short acquaintance” (from a 1974 letter from O. N. Arbenina to the artist A. Malishevsky).

“Life has fallen like lightning…”, “There is a palace doll…”, “From the camp of the dark street…” (all - 1925), “Isakiy froze on dead eyelashes” (1935), “Is it possible for a dead woman to praise… "(1935, 1936) - a microcycle of messages, a dialogue with Olga Alexandrovna Waxel(1903-1932), "a young madcap", "Buttercup", from whom O. Mandelstam, in accordance with all the rules of pre-revolutionary good form, asked "hands and hearts" in 1924, even deciding to leave N. Ya. Mandelstam. The memoirs of the son of O. A. Vaksel A. Smolevsky testify that this "crazy girl", according to the legend and estimates of N. Ya. Mandelstam, not only bore the stamp of something tragic. “The courtship of one poet from the group of acmeists, who married“ a prose artist ”and almost stopped writing poetry” (that is, Mandelstam), she accepted, as it turned out from her memoirs, not at all carefree, not superficial, not at all without trembling. After a break with O. Mandelstam, courtship of his brother Yevgeny Mandelstam in 1927, O. A. Vaksel married (in 1932) the Norwegian diplomat H. Irgen-Vistendal, but, leaving with him for Oslo, just three weeks after arrival in his warm and hospitable house, in a sharp attack of nostalgia, she shot herself. On the eve of the fatal shot - not without the impact of the death of V. Mayakovsky! - she wrote a poem addressed to both Mandelstam and Russia:

I paid generously, to the end

For the joy of our meetings, for the tenderness of your eyes,

For the charm of your lips and for the damned city,

For the roses of an aged face.

Now you drink all the bitterness of my tears,

In sleepless nights slowly shed,

You will read my long, long scroll,

You will change your mind every, every verse.

But the paradise I live in is too small

But the poison I feed on is too sweet.

So every day I outgrow myself.

I see miracles in my dreams and in reality

But what I love is not available now,

And only one temptation: to fall asleep and not wake up ...

"Master of Guilty Eyes"(1934), or "Turkish Woman" as A. A. Akhmatova, who considered it the best love poem of the 20th century, was addressed to the poetess and translator Maria Sergeevna Petrova (1908–1979). For her, who grew up on the Yaroslavl land and in the atmosphere of "reckless love of childhood", who deeply assimilated the school of classical Russian verse, was characterized by a desire for significance. spiritual world the creator, to confession, to the ability to "keep silent until the verses." Her poems and translations - especially from the Armenian language - were highly appreciated by B. Pasternak, A. Tarkovsky, A. Akhmatova, G. Shengeli. The real appearance of this wonderful woman, unfortunately, was distorted in the memoirs of N. Ya. Mandelstam, who called her a "hunter" (for other people's husbands) after unrequited love to her Mandelstam, and E. Gershtein, one of the best friends of the poet, who created a trivial, alas, image of M. S. Petrovs, a salon seductress who played dangerous games with two at once - the young L. N. Gumilyov "Gumilyovushka", and O. Mandelstam. It is surprising that no objections from the family of M. S. Petrovs, from S. I. Lipkin, did not stop the compilers of the generally very useful, informative biographical book about Mandelstam “My Age, My Beast” from another concentration of objectively degrading details: then she, M. S. Petrov, a married woman, fights off the passionate embrace of "Levushka", and contemporaries, according to E. Gershtein, see him scratched by Marusya, a "wild cat", then Maria Sergeevna herself left the poet's room, "to the displeasure wife”, with large spots on the face and “in an excited state” (“My Age, My Beast”, p. 479). The poetic correctness of the poet in relation to " turkish dear', his prayers ' You, Mary, help the perishing", the most beautiful metaphor " flying red, that miserable crescent of lips- all this, of course, corrects the trivial situation. It is unlikely that Mandelstam would say about the vulgar temptress, the “huntress” in another poem, which can be attributed entirely only to N. Ya. Mandelstam:

Well, I'll burn a black candle for you,

Burn with a black candle and don't dare to pray.

“I bring this greenery to my lips…”; “Kidneys stick with a sticky oath ...”; “Involuntarily crouching to the empty ground…”; “There are women who are dear to the damp earth ...” - these poems (all of 1937), as well as a number of comic poems, are dedicated to Natalya Shtempel, with whom the disgraced poet was friends in Voronezh. According to her, he, serious and concentrated, after reading them to her, asked the question himself:

"- What is this?

I did not understand the question and continued to be silent. "This love lyrics he answered for me. "This is the best thing I've written." And he handed me a piece of paper.

Application. Memories. Essay

Marina Tsvetaeva. Protection of the former."The Defense of the Former" is part of a longer essay, "The Story of an Initiation," first published in the Oxford Slavonic Papers 1914 XI. On the screen of the memory of the tragic Russian poetess of the 20th century, the "Tsvetaevsky" image of the poet appears - against the backdrop of the Voloshin Koktebel. The essay contains motifs of controversy and a fictional chronicle of life in that “shelter of muses” founded by M. A. Voloshin: there is no need to go into it ... Thanks to the acute nostalgic longing of M. I. Tsvetaeva in 1931, the modern reader is transferred to the atmosphere of countries of ignorance, games, hypocrisy, in the artistic Silver Age, which has not yet ended "above the black and deaf sea."

Anastasia Tsvetaeva, From the memoirs of Marina Tsvetaeva and Osip Mandelstam. In book. Tsvetaeva Anastasia. Memories. M., 1974.

Of course, the younger sister of M. I. Tsvetaeva could not understand the inherently complex process of Mandelstam's entry into Moscow. He saw a lot through his lens:

Tender Assumption - Florence in Moscow.

In the walls of the Acropolis, sadness consumed me

According to the Russian name and Russian beauty.

She hardly guessed that through the church architecture, and even “delicate”, next to the word “Florence” (that is, “blooming”), the name “Tsvetaeva” also came to life for him. Even less intelligible to a young Muscovite is such an overlap of Mandelstam's feelings: "Mandelstam somehow - through the icon color or otherwise - caught the black and yellow contrast of Jerusalem" (L. M. Vidgof. Mandelstam's Moscow. M., 1998. P. 24) .

At the same time, the naive consciousness of a girl in the 1910s perfectly captured the “interior of the era”, and many states of mind O. E. Mandelstam.

Makovsky S.K. Osip Mandelstam "Portraits of contemporaries"

From the book by S.K. Makovsky "On the Parnassus of the Silver Age" (Munich, 1962).

Sergei Konstantinovich Makovsky (1877–1962) - poet, critic, art critic, publisher - was the son of a famous portrait painter, historical painter K. E. Makovsky, a native Petersburger who grew up among artists, actors, poets of the early 20th century. Many years after his youth in St. Petersburg - with its World of Art salons, theatrical premieres, poetry collections, books about painting and artists - S.K. I feel a different reality, / Touching on the mystery of the all-one" ("Calm").

The main creation of S.K. Makovsky in the pre-revolutionary era - the Apollo magazine (1909–1917), where he received the young Mandelstam, is also a “foggy-lace” creation, full of the spirit of contemplation, the cult of beauty and “self-valuable” creativity. From these positions, S.K. Makovsky reproduces the debut and first steps in the poetry of the author of "Stone" O.E. Mandelstam. All the acmeism of the young poet, with its clarity of intonation and sharpness of lines, the weight and concreteness of the word, is, as it were, the realization of his own, S.K. Makovsky, longing for the "Apollonian" beginning, classical clarity. In general, the memories of O. E. Mandelstam, like the entire book “On the Parnassus of the Silver Age”, are marked by thickened emigre nostalgia for a bygone, fleeting era, notes of farewell to the tender, artistic age: “... But forget you, / Raised on Heights of Parnassus - you can't! / In the days of worries, struggles, needs, you were looking for / Forward paths untrodden ... ". S.K. Makovsky foresaw the fate of his young Parnassian friend, a completely harmonious "Apollonian" poet, able to express with classical clarity the terrible instability of time, the horror of the collapse of the former environment and culture, the eternal traveler on untrodden paths.

Fleeting guesses, rather slips of the tongue by S.K. Makovsky about Mandelstam's alleged attempts after 1917 to "adapt" to the Bolsheviks, to "soften" his image of a "plebeian writer" by origin and a freethinker without political prejudice, are highly controversial, vague and unproven. These "facts" are collected second-hand. True, S.K. Makovsky always remembers what a helpless “bird of God” Mandelstam was, how pardonable his conciliation with the age-wolfhound.

Ehrenburg I. G. Mandelstam

From the book Russian Poets (Berlin, 1922).

Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg (1891–1967) - prose writer, poet, publicist - published the first book of poetry in 1910 In 1918-1923, during the completion of a series of essays on Russian poets, which included a portrait of O. E. Mandelstam, he published 10 books of poetry, among which Prayer for Russia (1918) stood out, which was then recognized as counter-revolutionary. I. Ehrenburg's perception of poetry and the entire tragic fate of Mandelstam was undoubtedly influenced by the author's own position of the essay: flight from Moscow to Kiev after a period of arrests, departure in 1921 from Russia to Berlin and Paris (in this he was helped by a gymnasium friend N. I. Bukharin, personal friend of both Ehrenburg and, to some extent, Mandelstam) and the experience of comprehending human destinies in the novel about the adventures of the Gomel tailor Lasik, the “Jewish Schweik” (“The Stormy Life of Lasik Roytshvanets”). Osip Mandelstam for Ehrenburg is a nomad obsessed with inspiration, a receptacle for the memory of culture, forever exposed to dangers, following only “flashes of consciousness”, looking for happy states when “the soul hangs over a winged abyss, / And music will not save from the abyss ... ".

Subsequently, I. G. Erenburg will create a more multifaceted image of the wanderer O. E. Mandelstam of the 20s in the book “People, Years, Life” (In the 3rd vol. M., 1990). Gleb Struve, a researcher of Mandelstam's work, will note the merit of I. G. Ehrenburg as the creator of this image of the Silver Age poet. “He, Mandelstam, who fought with such enthusiasm on the eve of the revolution against both the Symbolists and the Futurists, will appear, perhaps, as the most complete synthesized... symbolism, acmeism and futurism ”(G. Struve. About four poets. Blok. Sologub. Gumilyov. Mandelstam. London, 1981. P. 186).

Mandelstam N. Ya. big form. Tragedy. The unity of the flow. Orchestras and fimelas. Prodigal son. Beginning and the end

Published according to the text of "Memoirs" by N. Ya. Mandelstam. Book. 2. M., 1990.

The widow of Osip Mandelstam, Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam, lived a long life (1899–1980). Osip Mandelstam married her, the sister of the poet Yevgeny Khazin (her maiden name) in 1919. From all the details of their spiritual and everyday life, wanderings in the 1920s and 1930s, one can draw a general conclusion that their marriage can be called happy, that Mandelstam could not imagine his poetic fate at all without a “gentlewoman,” as he called N. Ya. Mandelstam. She accompanied him twice - to Cherdyn, Voronezh - to exile, she took off the torment of his utter domestic disorder, found patrons, maintained contact with relatives, warned against dangerous decisions and false friends. Many poems (“Your tender shoulders blush under whips”) and the poet’s readiness to endure separation for the sake of his wife’s health and stand up for her honor speak about the degree of the poet’s gratitude to N. Ya. Mandelstam - in particular, after a domestic quarrel in one of the writers’ communal apartments with A.N. Tolstoy, with S.P. Borodin (Sarkis Amirjan). The quick-tempered, giving the impression of a person with an unbalanced psyche, the poet who once attempted suicide (in Cherdyn), besides, surrounded by an atmosphere of surveillance, distrust, alienation, demanded exceptional attention from the “nezhnyanochka”. In addition, it was necessary, as A. Vertinsky sang, “to forgive my unnecessary loves” - in O. Vaksel, M. Petrovs ... Moreover - in the complete absence permanent earnings, homelessness, the presence of "evil housing", where a "jet of domestic fear" made its way through the hacky walls.

After the death of the poet N. Ya. Mandelstam with enviable persistence, self-sacrifice, risk saved poetic legacy poet and restored what replaced the diary, notebooks- everyday conversations, versions of poems recorded from the voice, preserved in the memory of contemporaries (in particular, A. A. Akhmatova, close to her). The well-known researcher of the Silver Age poetry M. K. Polivanov was right, noting that “often Nadezhda Yakovlevna and Anna Andreevna Akhmatova, ‘together recalled and clarified everything that both knew about Mandelstam…’, therefore the books of ‘Memoirs’ by N. Ya Mandelstam became an invaluable commentary on everything written by Osip Mandelstam and the material for his biography "(K. M. Polivanov. Preface to book 2 of N. Ya. Mandelstam's Memoirs. M., 1990. P. 6.).