Home Garden on the windowsill Pavel Nerler. Pavel Nerler - “Let's see who will overdo it .... Literary activity, works about Mandelstam

Garden on the windowsill

Pavel Nerler. Pavel Nerler - “Let's see who will overdo it .... Literary activity, works about Mandelstam

October 31, 2014 marks the 115th anniversary of the birth of Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam. By this date, the Yekaterinburg publishing house Gonzo published a new two-volume collection of works, which includes almost all of her memoirs and literary works (editors and compilers: S. V. Vasilenko, P. M. Nerler and Yu. L. Freidin).

This collection, called by us ““Let's see who will overdo someone ...”: Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam in letters, memoirs, testimonies”, to a certain extent continues the line of the collection “Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam in the stories of contemporaries”, compiled by O. S. and M. V. Figurnov and released in 2002 by the Natalis publishing house. The core of that book was the transcripts of Duvakin's wonderful audio interviews about O. E. and N. Ya. Mandelstam (calling them memoirs, as the compilers do, is still inaccurate); their corpus is preceded by an introductory note, followed by a small selection of letters from N. Ya. and documents to her biography (selected poems by O. Mandelstam and other poets are scattered throughout the book).

The main differences of our volume are the focus on Nadezhda Yakovlevna (which is also indicated by the subtitle), the greater variety of genres and the complex architectonics of the book.

The drafting concept changed several times in the course of work. At first it seemed that it would be possible to set and maintain exactly the genre structure: memoirs - publications (epistolary and documentary) - correspondence. Soon, however, a “revolt on the ship” began: genres began to cling to each other and stick together with each other, especially memoirs with letters from the same person. The author's texts by N. Ya. Mandelstam also “demanded” adequate accompaniment or environment. Some materials literally asked for a kind of “cycles”, with their own internal structuring, and in several cases such cycles really took shape.

As a result, the book settled down as follows.

In addition to the introductory article, illustrations and standard apparatus, it has four non-equilibrium, but architectonically balanced sections. It opens with poems by Osip Mandelstam, dedicated to or addressed to Nadezhda. The counter impulse - it is also the second section - is the letters of Nadezhda Mandelstam, addressed to Osip.

The third - the most extensive - section includes the very materials or cycles that were mentioned above. This is a mixture of texts by Nadezhda Mandelstam herself (her letters and audio interviews) and texts about herself (memoirs, letters, documents). The year 1980, the last year of N. Ya.'s life, was included in a special subsection, which included her death, and with the capture on January 2, 1981, her funeral.

The fourth section of the book - "Nadezhda Mandelstam: Attempts at Understanding" - includes short essays by D. Bykov, M. Chudakova and A. Bitov and an article by D. Nechiporuk: all these are texts that give a synthetic description and an integral assessment of the personality and creativity of N. Ya. The uniqueness of most of the published materials should be emphasized - the share of publications in the collection is small, and they cover hard-to-reach or thoroughly revised sources.

In various correspondence, memoirs and other materials of the collection, the names of the same people close to N. Ya. are often found, very often she calls them in a diminutive form. In order to avoid duplication when commenting on this kind of names (including diminutives) are placed in the name index.

Spelling and punctuation of texts of letters are given according to modern standards.

All texts by O. Mandelstam, except where otherwise indicated, are published according to the publication: O. E. Mandelstam. Collected Works: in 4 vols. M., 1993–1997, vol. I–IV. Memoirs and other works of N. Mandelstam are given according to the publication: Mandelstam N. Ya. Collected works: in 2 volumes. Ekaterinburg, 2014.

A list of abbreviations of the most frequently cited authors and works is given at the end of the book.

The compiler cordially thanks G. Superfin and M. Klassen, S. Vasilenko, R. Timenchik, Yu. materials. Great is the contribution of L. Brusilovskaya and A. Mironova, who until February 2014 were active employees of the Mandelstam Society, through whom part of the technical work on preparing the collection passed.

Many thanks also to all those who provided the book as a whole with other assistance at various stages of its preparation. These are K. Azadovsky, V. Belkin, K. and J. Browns, E. Dmitrieva, A. Dunaevsky, A. Karelskaya, R. Liberov, V. Litvinov, T. Melnikova, Yu. Morozova, D. Nechiporuk, T. Neshumova, V. Perelmuter.

The book uses letters, documents and materials from the Mandelstam Society (Moscow); GLM, Anna Akhmatova Museum (St. Petersburg), RGALI, Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the Firestone Library of Princeton University and the Central Archive of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, private collections N. Ahrens, J. Brown, K. Verheil, E. Dmitrieva, E. Zakharova, S. Bogatyreva, M. Kalnitsky, A. Karelskaya, A. Laskin, Yu. Morozova, G. Pinkhasov, N. Rozhanskaya, F. Rozhansky, S. Solovyov, V. Shklovskaya-Kordi, D. Fainberg and Yu. Freidin. Selection of illustrative material - P. Nerler and A. Naumov, compilation and composition of inserts - A. Bondarenko.

And, finally, words of gratitude to E. Shubina, in a lively dialogue with whom this book acquired its format and form.

Pavel Nerler

Pavel Nerler

N. Ya. Mandelstam in the mirrors of this book

My personal acquaintance with Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam was short-lived, but bright. My friend, pianist Alexei Lyubimov, introduced us in the winter of 1977 at his concert at the Gnessin School. Nadezhda Yakovlevna, a connoisseur of the Aleshins' repertoire breadth and performance skills, also came to the concert (and they, in turn, were introduced by Valentin Silvestrov).

It was winter, and N. Ya. with difficulty pulled on high winter boots, not allowing the person who accompanied her (I think it was the photographer Garik Pinkhasov) to help her. I just finished an article about the composition of “Journey to Armenia”, where I compared this prose with a fugue. Nadezhda Yakovlevna, in Lyubimov's presence, listened royally and graciously to me and fixed the day and hour when I could bring my work to her.

Exactly at the appointed hour, anxiously, I rang her doorbell. She opened it herself, and almost without delay, as if she had been waiting for my arrival. In the depths of a tiny apartment, or rather, in the kitchenette, some people were sitting and talking to each other, without even looking in our direction. Without inviting me to pass, N. Ya. took a brown craft envelope with an article from my hands and, smiling, uttered unforgettable words: “Pavel, we are all our own here, so goodbye! Call in a week."

I called and was invited (I liked the article), and since then my ever-frequent visits to Bolshaya Cheryomushkinskaya Street began, since we lived from each other just one metro stop. Several times she called herself and said something like this: “Pavel, I am very old. I don't have bread."

It didn't mean sheer utility at all, and her "so goodbye" wasn't offensive at all. It rather meant the following: “Let me read what you wrote about O. E. there, and then we’ll see whether I should invite you to the house or not.”

And the call and the words about bread meant something like this: “I'm free tonight. Come in, but take some bread and something for tea with you.”

And I immediately rushed to her, since the bakeries then worked, if memory serves, until ten.

So, the first section consists of poems by Osip Mandelstam dedicated to or addressed to Nadia Khazina or Nadezhda Mandelstam. This selection covers almost the entire period of their acquaintance and life together - from 1919 to 1937 - and is a kind of poetic cycle, which, purely conditionally, we will call "Nadina's poems." Here, too, has its own stages and its own evolution - and its own plot!

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam- one of the central figures of Russian poetry of the outgoing XX century. Taken as a whole, Mandelstam's work resonated with his personal fate and Russian Soviet history. But today its literary and historical significance, as well as reader recognition (in Russia and around the world) is truly global and is not disputed by anyone.

His works have been published in millions of copies in all major European and Asian languages (including several multi-volume collected works), thousands of articles have been written about him, hundreds of books have been published, and dozens of dissertations have been defended. It is no coincidence that it was on Mandelstam's "material" that many methodological paradigms of modern philology were formed and formed (for example, intertextual analysis, etc.). Mandelstam studies is undoubtedly one of the most dynamic branches of Russian philology.

Historically, in the process of world exploration and study of Mandelstam's work, the United States plays an absolutely exceptional role. It was here that the first posthumous one-volume poet was published (1955, New York, Chekhov Publishing House) and the first three volumes of the multi-volume Collected Works (1964-1972, Washington, "International Literary Commonwealth").

These publications played an exceptional scientific and political role, becoming a kind of "guarantor" that the great poetry of the brilliant poet, preserved at the risk of life by his widow, friends and readers, did not die, did not sink into oblivion, but was carefully conveyed to the reader. On the basis of the Collected Works in 1974 in the USA, at Cornell University (Ithaca), the first concordance to the works of O. Mandelstam was published.

It was in the USA, around such Slavic philologists as G.P. , mainly poetics. Many researchers of his work from the USSR in the 70-80s. emigrated to the USA and continue to work on the study of Mandelstam.

Great is the contribution of the American Slavists to the development of the biography and bibliography of the poet. It was in the United States that the first biography of the poet ("Mandelstam" by Clarence Brown) was published in 1973, American scientists were the first to introduce a number of important documents into scientific circulation (for example, materials published by T. Beyer about Mandelstam's student days in Heidelberg in 1909- 1910 and others). The bibliography of O.E. Mandelstam, published in the 3rd volume of collected works edited by G.P. Struve and B.A. Filippov, became a solid and reliable basis for all subsequent bibliographic descriptions.

Therefore, it is not surprising that, according to the bibliographic monitoring carried out by the MLA (Modern Language Association Bibliography), out of more than 300 dissertations, books and articles in specialized journals published in 1981-1997, at least a third are in American scientists. And, although the source base of this bibliography clearly does not take into account Russian editions, nevertheless, the contribution of American researchers is undeniable.

And, finally, the most important thing: fate would have decreed that it was in the United States that the main array of documents about the life and work of Mandelstam, his family archive, donated to Princeton University in 1976 by his widow, got for eternal storage.

2.

The fate of Osip Mandelstam left its imperious seal on the fate of his archive. To begin with, the poet did not collect the archive and did not value it. If it were not for the practical need (publishing or reprinting poetry, prose and essays), he might not have kept anything at all. Yes, and there was nowhere to store: homelessness and homelessness were the eternal companions of the poet. Mandelstam's first and last own housing appeared at the end of 1933, and in May 1934 he was arrested.

Nevertheless, some manuscripts were not thrown away, and the archive formed by itself; in particular, in Kyiv in 1919, when O.E. Mandelstam met his future wife Nadezhda Khazina, he had with him a small basket of autographs and drafts. It was these papers that Alexander Mandelstam, the middle brother of the poet, smoked in the Crimea in the same year. This was the first "blow" to the preservation of the archive.

But far from the last and not even the most devastating. A significant part of creative and personal papers were confiscated by the Chekists during two arrests of Mandelstam (in May 1934 and in May 1938). Shortly before the first arrest, there was a "caricature of a posthumous assessment" - a phantasmagoric story and surreal correspondence with the author of "Lenin in Sokolniki" V.D. Bonch-Bruevich regarding the acquisition of the Mandelstam archive by the State Literary Museum.

A very significant part of the archive was given to SB Rudakov for safekeeping in Voronezh; after his death at the front, she was not returned by his widow and, under circumstances that were not completely clarified, sank into oblivion. Among these losses, according to N.Ya. Mandelstam, are most of the autographs of early poems. Finally, in 1941, when the Germans approached Kalinin, where N.Ya. Mandelstam lived at that time, she hastily evacuated and could only take with her the creative part of the archive; all biographical and business documents (contracts, etc.) were left in a chest in Kalinin and disappeared. Losses haunted the archive in the future.

At the same time, the archive also had its own “good geniuses”, who not only kept and preserved the poet’s papers, but also unquestioningly returned them to his widow at the first meeting (as, for example, Voronezh friends Mandelstamov N. Shtempel and M. Yartseva, L. Nazarevskaya, E.Ya.Khazin, A.Ivich-Bernshtein and others). With these additions taken into account, the collection of Mandelstam's documents took shape in the 1940s and 1950s, which is now in Princeton.

own life Nadezhda Yakovlevna, the same homeless and homeless as before, the life of a lonely wanderer (during the years of war and evacuation - in Tashkent, and then in many provincial cities, where she, for several years in each, worked in universities), was still of little use to store archives. Therefore, he was kept first in Tashkent, and then in Moscow with reliable friends. And only after N.Ya. Mandelstam was allowed to register in Moscow, the archive again moved to her (and even then not immediately).

With the release in 1970 in the West of the first volume of her "Memoirs" N.Ya. Mandelstam again began to fear arrest and confiscation of the archive. Therefore, she decided to send the archive to the West and leave it there for temporary storage until the liberalization of the Soviet regime.

In 1973, the archive was successfully taken to France, where it was carefully kept by N.A. Struve. In June 1976, at the insistence of N.Ya. Princeton University, and not for temporary storage, but, according to a legally issued donation, full and unconditional ownership, including literary rights.

3.

On June 25, 1976, Richard M. Ludwig, Assistant University Librarian for Rare Books and Special Collections, acknowledged receipt of the archive by Princeton University. Here is what, at the time of transmission, the archive consisted of:

- seven large numbered folders, NN 1 to 7; - two published books: "Stone" (1916) with the inscription S.P.Kablukov and "Poems" (1928) with the inscription N.E.Shtempel; - 23 separate containers (daddies or envelopes) with a simplified description of their contents; - four separate sheets containing a preliminary inventory of the archive in Russian.

Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of current researchers do not have any complete and coherent idea of the composition and organization of "AM", with the exception of those very few who were lucky enough to work with the originals or with photocopies taken from them and remaining in Moscow, or, at worst, in Princeton, in the cozy reading room of the Rare Books and Special Collections Department of the Firestone Library. Only now, having worked with the archive for several months, I see with some bitterness how much such direct access was lacking during the work on the volumes of the collected works of Mandelstam, published by the Mandelstam Society in 1993-1997: much could be done and more precisely, and thinner, and at the same time more confident.

I am convinced that it would not be out of place to give even the briefest description of this priceless collection. Its core is the materials that characterize the poet's work: manuscripts, authorized and unauthorized typescripts and lists (mainly by N.Ya. Mandelstam). Most of the materials are drafts and intermediate editions, reflecting all the main stages of the poet's work and documenting almost all of his main works (with the possible exception of "The Noise of Time"). The collection also includes the two mentioned books by Mandelstam, containing important textological notes (both author's and owner's), as well as N.Ya. Mandelstam's comments on Mandelstam's works and numerous biographical materials about him. In addition, the collection contains many materials about N.Ya. Mandelstam herself and her family, including letters to her.

Purely physically, the collection today consists of five "beige" boxes with originals, five "light gray" boxes with their photocopies (photocopies), one box with original bound materials, four reels of microfilms and nine boxes with photographs printed from these microfilms. It is clear that photocopies, photographs and microfilms play a backup and safety role. The total number of paper pages in the archive is about 3,200 (including all official accompanying materials - various envelopes, folders, covers with explanations of those who worked on the archive or with the archive - mainly Irina Miykhalovna Semenko and Nikolai Ivanovich Khardzhiev). The originals are stored in the same order and form as they were deposited, and in some cases this order does not seem logical. Despite the optimal microclimatic storage conditions, their physical condition is of great concern. In order to ensure the safety of the originals and according to the will of N.Ya., as a rule, readers are given not originals, but photocopies (rare exceptions are made only when absolutely necessary and with the permission of the curator). One of the approaches to solving the problem of preserving the originals and, along the way, giving the collection a more structured form can be their digitalization.

4.

The approximate distribution of materials between the boxes is presented rather unevenly in volume, and most importantly, chaotically in content and does not line up in any strict or even non-strict system.

Among the 48 folders of the first box are the two mentioned books, autographs, publications or lists of many articles (including "Pyotr Chaadaev" and "Scriabin and Christianity"), lecture notes and prose translations (both of which we would, purely preliminary, refer to by the time of studying abroad), as well as about a dozen units of correspondence between O.E. Mandelstam and his wife, a letter from V. Merkulov to I. Ehrenburg with the text of the poem "Two or three random phrases haunt me ...". Various draft notes by O.M.

The second box contains autographs and lists of some poems (mainly from the Voronezh period) and such prose works as "Journey to Armenia", "Conversation about Dante", "Letter on Russian Poetry" and other articles, essays and internal reviews.

The largest of the boxes is the third one (it contains 104 folders). Most of the material is the correspondence of O.E. and N.Ya. Mandelstamov, but there are also letters from O.E. to V.Ya. and E.Ya.Khashchin (mother and brother of his wife), A.E and E.E. Mandelstam, V. Stavsky, Yu. Tynyanov, as well as a letter to him from A. Akhmatova. Here are letters to N.Ya. Mandelstam. Her correspondents were A. Akhmatova, E. Babaev, D. Blagoy, B. Buchshtab, K. Verhoyl (translator from Holland), comrade. Voronkov (from SP USSR), E. Gershtein, Mark G., V. Zhirmunsky, B. Kuzin, A. Makedonov, A. and I. Miller, Z. Paperny, Ya. Roginsky, A. T. Tvardovsky, M. I.Tvardovskaya, E.Ya.Khazin, Y.A.Khazin (father), N.Khardzhiev, V.B.Shklovsky, V.V.Shklovskaya, L.Shklovskaya, N.Shtempel. V. Yartsev, as well as the General Prosecutor's Office of the USSR, the Moscow City Council and the editors of the Prostor magazine (Alma-Ata); there is N.Ya. Mandelstam's work book and an employment contract for V.Ya. Khazina, the poet's mother-in-law, in the former Mandelstam apartment in Nashchokinsky Lane. One of the folders contains a German romantic poem written down by E.V. Mandelstam, the poet's father.

The fourth box contains 27 folders: these are various biographical documents (business correspondence, draft letters concerning the Ulenspiegel case), photographs, materials for an unwritten book about Voronezh, autographs and lists of most of the poems, including "The Vatican List", " Natasha's book" and seven so-called "albums" (including "Ehrenburg's Album"), from prose - part of the materials for "Journey to Armenia", a little bit from "The Noise of Time" ("Jewish Chaos"), an internal review of the book Zh .-R. Bloch, and in addition, two letters from O.M. to N.Ya.

The fifth - the smallest - box is, to a certain extent, a continuation of the fourth: nine out of ten of its folders are somehow connected with Journey to Armenia. including notes about naturalists and a draft letter from O.M. M.Shahinyan; folder N 10 - these are proof sheets prepared by O.M. anthology of Russian poetry.

As you can see, only one of the boxes - the third one - has a relative thematic integrity. It contains most of the poet's correspondence (nevertheless, many of the poet's letters - or addressed to him - are also found in other boxes). In general, the correspondence of O.E., stored in the archive, no less than a quarter by three, consists of his letters to his wife. In the same box - and the correspondence of N.Ya. Mandelstam herself, as well as her brother and mother. But judging by the number of documents rather than folders, the "contribution" of correspondence from N.Ya.

Perhaps the most surprising is the scatter of the main sources of poetic texts in different boxes: valuable textual printed publications - in the first box, "New Poems" and "Voronezh Notebooks" - in the third, and the so-called "Vatican List", "Natasha's Book" and albums - in the fourth.

No less strange distinctions - and with prose, on the whole, well represented in the archive (of the big things, almost nothing has been preserved only from The Noise of Time). But how to explain, for example, the fact that the materials for "Journey to Armenia" are also scattered in three boxes - the fifth, fourth and second? And this despite the fact that this work (and the prose about naturalists adjoining it) is almost entirely focused on the fifth - smallest - box (in which, in turn, the typescript of one poem and a draft of M. Shahinyan's letter, as well as , which is quite strange, proof sheets of an anthology of Russian poetry prepared by O.M.).

All this, however, is not terrible for a specialist who has his own structuring vision in his mind. Different specialists may have different visions, and from this point of view, the digitalization of the archive and posting it on the Internet is extremely convenient and democratic, allowing everyone to build their own organizational space.

In the Princeton archive, there are, as it were, two poles, more precisely, a concentric - Osip Emilievich and Nadezhda Yakovlevna. However, on this basis, it is not worth suggesting renaming the archive: most of the materials of the poet's widow are directly or indirectly related to Mandelstam himself, or at least to his posthumous fate (publications, editions, saving the same archive). Even her work book, issued by the Strunino spinning mill "5th October", where Nadezhda Yakovlevna worked as a student of a Tazovshite for less than 1.5 months (from September 30 to November 11, 1938), accurately dates her departure from Strunino (cf. in her " Memories" in the chapter "Textile Workers").

5.

Somewhat conditionally, three lines of scientific interest in the Mandelstam archive can be distinguished:

the first is the identification of new, hitherto unknown or unidentified texts, the second is the critical textual criticism of Mandelstam's existing publications, and the third is the identification of biographical materials about the poet.

The textological significance of the archive continues to be outstanding, especially in connection with the work on the academic collected works of Mandelstam and on the Mandelstam Encyclopedia. And its development from a biographical point of view, in fact, has just begun (almost the first "swallow" was the publication of two letters from B.S. Kuzin to N.Ya. .

At first glance, the boundary between "textological" and "biographical" materials should be seen quite clearly. In fact, this is not entirely true. Here are some examples from the first box.

It is opened by two most important textological sources of O.M. - a copy of K-16 donated by O.M. S.P. Kablukov with numerous inserts and inserts made by the latter, and copy C = 28, donated by O.M. and included in the book, apparently, shortly before giving the book. However, some of these corrections are signed and dated, which makes them both a biographical source. Later, when N.E. Shtempel donated the book to N.Ya., she made her own “working” copy of it, noting in it, in accordance with the author’s will, as it seemed to her, numerous corrections, dating and making bibliographic notes (where this or that poem was published).

Another example. Folder 5 contains a reprint of the article "Pyotr Chaadaev" from "Apollo" and several pages with drafts of this article. And right there, on the back of one of the leaves, is a letter to Emil Veniaminovich Mandelstam, the poet's father. The letter concerns one of his younger brothers (obviously Yevgeny): "November 3, 1914 Dear Emil Venyaminovich. In view of the upcoming urgent payments to the school, I kindly ask you to pay the rest of the fee for the teaching of your son. Please accept the assurance of the highest respect and devotion V. Gippius" (on the letterhead "Director of the Tenishevsky School in Petrograd. Mokhovaya St., N 33. Tel. 24-14 (office) and 130-24 (home)"). For a biography, this is an indisputable dating of the time of work on the article (though only additional, since O.M. himself in a letter to S. Makovsky called the same date: November 1914).

Turnovers of drafts are generally a fertile area for crazy searches. There often find themselves other manuscripts, letters, letterheads. And on the back of the draft of the article "Scriabin and Christianity" (B.1, f.11) - the beginning of a petition from a student of the Polytechnic Institute of Emperor Peter the Great E.E. Mandelstam to the Main Directorate of the General Staff: "Working in the city infirmary No. 11 as a head, due to a lot of cases, I missed the deadline for receiving a student deferral for graduation. As a student of the first year and draft year 1919, I should be called up soon. December to the Main Directorate for Military...<далее обрыв, или обрез текста - П.Н.>". From memories E.E. Mandelstam it is known that he was called up and became a cadet of the Mikhailovsky Artillery School. This allows us to more confidently date the work on the article in the fall of 1916 or in the spring of 1917.

Of the "purely" biographical materials, the correspondence of N.Ya. Mandelstam is extremely interesting, especially her own letters to Mandelstam from Kyiv to the Crimea (however, then, in 1919, she was still Nadia Khazina). Here, as an example, I will cite one curious document concerning Mandelstam's stay in Armenia in 1930 and his search for any earnings. This is an undated letter printed in Armenian on the letterhead of the Council of Trade Unions of Armenia. It is signed by cult department Mkrtchyan and head. executive committee Asatryan and addressed to the factory committees of enterprises for the dressing of furs and leather. Here is his text: "The Russian writer comrade Mandelstam plans to organize circles for the study of the Russian language. The organization of such circles is extremely important. Therefore, it is necessary, together with comrade<арищем>organize similar circles with red corners" (Box 3, folder 1; I thank A. Genis for help with translating this letter into Russian).

6.

As for the search in the archive of unknown texts by Mandelstam himself, this line is descending. No matter how significant unknown or unidentified original texts of the poet are left in the archive.

But what else is left?

Firstly, several letters and telegrams, and secondly, several translations. Of these, only one is poetic: from Jules Roman's drama "The Army in the City" (dated early 1919). Mandelstam translated another poetic drama by J. Romain "Kromdair-Old" and wrote a preface to its Russian edition, as well as to the publication of another work by J. Romain - the story "Obormoty" (both came out in 1925). Evidence - and even more so the results - of the poet's work on "The Army in the City" still seems to have not been known. But, before offering this text for publication, it is necessary to check both the original and the available Russian translation of this book.

And there’s no need to rush here, as “excellent” evidence of which was one of my recent oversights: when giving an interview to a correspondent of Radio Liberty in New York, I hastened to personally attribute to Mandelstam a small prose passage, which in fact is the beginning of the translation of Hoffmann’s The Golden Pot, True, the translation is obviously Mandelstam's. Even the inscription by I.M. Semenko "Old translations" on the inner folder with manuscripts did not scare me away (I sort of "swept aside" it with the testimony of Nadezhda Yakovlevna about the fact that prose translations were not left in the archive - they were thrown away).

But the main thing is that the aura of the manuscript itself, more precisely, two different fragmentary manuscripts that were together (in folder 31, box 1) was magically "pressing" on me.

Intuitively, I dated both by the Parisian months of 1907-1908, so much so that they coincided with the melancholy mood of the poet himself, who in April 1908 informed V. Gippius, among other things, that he was writing "a little poetry and prose." The second manuscript was especially "talking", and I would have read it on the air if it had been completely deciphered by that time.

It tells about an exciting event for the author - a thick notebook he received as a gift, seducing him with its whiteness to writing. And immediately after - as if a diary entry, dated no less than the day of Mandelstam's birth (in Paris, by the way, he celebrated his 17th birthday).

"January 3, 19 .. - For three days now I have been devoting most of my time to the necessary adventures. Finally, I am no longer indebted to my neighbor. Thanks to an accident, which I do not complain about, I did not find anyone at home. Nevertheless, I am pleased I would have shaken the hand of Jacques de Berge. The absurd melancholy, which I have been indulging in for two whole months, made me neglect this friend - and he is a charming friend ... "

After that, alas, I no longer had any doubts about the “origin” of the fragments: in front of me, as I thought, was something unheard of and unexpected - an early fragment of Mandelstam’s diary, the embryonic period of prose!

And even the remark of my radio interlocutor - is this not Hoffmann? - did not alert me enough to test this "hypothesis" at all costs (there were no Russian translations in Princeton, and I did not delve into the primary sources). And it soon became clear that indeed Hoffman, the beginning of the "Golden Pot", translated into Russian at one time by Vl. Solovyov!

Here is her text:

THE BEGINNING OF E.T.A. HOFFMANN'S TALE "THE GOLDEN POT"
(translated by O. Mandelstam)

First vigil

On Ascension Day at three o'clock in the afternoon in Dresden, a young man rushed through the Black Gate and so deftly crashed into a basket of apples and pies, the goods of an ugly old woman, that the entire contents of the basket, without having had time to turn into porridge, found themselves on the pavement, and street boys cheerfully pounced on the prey brought to them by an overly hasty master. At the old woman's anxious screeching, the gossips threw down their trays of pies and orange water and, surrounding the young man, began to scold him with such unbridled plebeian fury that he, dumbfounded with shame and annoyance, could only pull out and hand out to the old woman his small, not too tight purse. , which she greedily picked up and immediately put away. As soon as the ring of curious people opened and closed, the old woman threw after the fleeing young man: "Hey, run, run, you devil's child - you'll get lost in crystal for a penny!"

The barking, hoarse voice of the old woman sounded so terrible that the passers-by stopped in silence and the laughter that was heard here and there fell silent. The student Anselm (it was none other than him) shuddered inwardly. Although he didn't understand the woman's wild words, he quickened his pace to avoid prying eyes. As he fought his way through the rarefied turmoil, he heard mutterings from all sides: "Poor young man, damn it!" In a strange way, the mysterious words of the old woman gave a tragic turn to the comic adventure, so that many, who had not noticed it at all before, now followed it with participation.

The beautiful face of the girl, even more expressive from fiery annoyance, and the slender figure were ready to forgive him both awkwardness and a costume that went far beyond the boundaries of any fashion. His pike-grey tailcoat was so tailored as if the tailor who worked on it knew the cut of modern clothes from the capes, and carefully kept black satin trousers gave the whole a kind of master's style, which neither bearing nor gait fit in any way. When the young man reached the end of the alley leading to the Link's baths, he could barely catch his breath. He was compelled to slow down his pace, but he did not yet dare to raise his eyes, for everywhere he saw dancing apples and cakes, and in the polite smile of some girl...

(Translated by O. Mandelstam)

Offering readers this unknown Mandelstam's text, I not only correct my unfortunate mistake and apologize to radio listeners. Mandelstam's translation is very interesting already because it was done differently than Solovyov's.

Solovyov, perhaps, is closer to the original lexically (Hoffmann does not have any "unbridled plebeian fury"), but Mandelstam is much more artistic: without falling into distortions, he demonstrates the amazing freedom and flexibility of the Russian language in the transfer of both the style and the meaning of Hoffmann's phrase. "Ins Kristall bald dein Fall" - how Solovyov's "you will fall under glass!" insipid in comparison with Mandelstam's "you will disappear in crystal for a penny!".

And it still seems to me that, undertaking this narration, Mandelstam (also a student) involuntarily tried on the costume of poor Anselm, his “pike-colored gray tailcoat” ...

But just this acmeistic epithet, this incomparable "pike color", - it would seem, the most "Mandelstam" word in his translation - in fact ("ein hechtgraune Frack") turned out to be wholly owned by the author!

Do not wear!

Princeton - Moscow

The name of the poet, prose writer and literary critic A.S. Tsybulevsky (1928-1975) says a lot to connoisseurs of Russian and Georgian poetry. He was a poet in everything - both when he wrote poetry, and when he wrote prose (essentially lyrical), and when he photographed....

January 4, 2016, 00:00

Genre: ,

Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam (1899-1980) - the widow of the poet Osip Mandelstam, writer, author of world-famous memoirs, without which it is now impossible to talk about Russia in the 20th century, about Stalin's time. Fate sent her one ordeal after another: the arrest of her husband, exile, his death in the camp, homelessness, war, the fate of the Friday night, endless nomadic years ... And through all the troubles - desperate attempts to save the poet's archive, save the POEMS, bring them to the reader. And she succeeded.

The book is composed of N. Ya.'s correspondence, memoirs about her, testimonies, archival finds. And all together - an attempt to portray an amazing personality, a woman who managed to "overstubborn ...

May 27, 2015, 01:53

Genre: ,

The book is composed of works about Osip Mandelstam, created over a period of more than 35 years. Five main sections were identified as the core of the book, each with its own leitmotif. The first is "Con amore" - a personal meeting of the author with the work of Mandelstam. The second - "Solar Fugue" - sketches about what Mandelstam wrote, the third - "Mandelstam's Places" - about where fate brought him, the fourth - "Contemporaries and Contemporaries" - about those with whom life brought him. The fifth section - "Word and lack of culture" - reflections on the place of Mandelstam in the era of triumphant postmodernism. The appendices contain excerpts from the diaries and the literary bibliography of the author. This is not a monograph about Mandelstam, stitched from the very beginning with the unity of conception and execution. Here is another type of connection - concentric, like a bouquet. But this is not a mechanical collection of reprints either: each text has been revised anew, many old publications have been merged into one ...

April 4, 2014, 21:55

Genre: ,

Osip Mandelstam has always been in rather tense relations with the authorities. Even before the revolution, the police looked after him, suspecting him of possible revolutionary rebellion. He was arrested four times: twice in 1920 (in Feodosia by the Wrangelites and in Batum by the Georgian Mensheviks), the third time by the OGPU in Moscow in 1934 and the fourth time by the NKVD in the Samatikha rest house in Meshchera in 1938. Everyone This book is devoted to repressions against the poet, including those that did not materialize. It is built chronologically - in the order of deployment of repressions or efforts to overcome them (for example, rehabilitation). Each chapter has an organizational link - to a specific punitive or other body that carried out repression or rehabilitation. Each contains text and documentary parts, and most of the documents are published in full for the first time. The chapter on pre-revolutionary supervision of Mandelstam (hereinafter O.M.) in Finland was written by D. Zubarev and P. Nerler, about the "Mandelstam echelon" - by P. Nerler and N. Pobol, all other texts were written by P. Nerler. The book is illustrated with photographs and documents from the published "cases" and is intended for a wide readership.

The first edition of the book (M.: Petrovsky Park (with the participation of Novaya Gazeta), 2010) was shortlisted for the NOS (New Literature) award for 2011 and took second place in it. The second is thoroughly reworked and tangible...

Geographer and historian

In the 1970s-80s, the main topic of Polyan's scientific work was urban settlement, transport links and the demography of cities, since the mid-1980s he has been studying the history and geography of forced migrations. In 1991-93, Pavel Polyan trained in Germany, where he collected materials about the fate of the Ostarbeiters.

Literary activity, works about Mandelstam

In the 1970s, Pavel Polyan (who took the pseudonym Nerler) was close to the Moscow Time poetic group and the Luch literary studio of Moscow State University. Polyan is the chairman of the Mandelstam Society at the Russian State Humanitarian University, one of the compilers of the encyclopedia on the work of Osip Mandelstam, the author of biographical works about Mandelstam and the editor of two of his collected works. He is the author of two unpublished collections of poems (one of them, written in 1998 "Botanical Garden", posted on the Internet).

Publicist

Author of numerous journalistic articles, compiler of a collection of memoirs of Soviet Jewish prisoners of war who passed through the system of German concentration camps. He published a number of articles about the life of Jewish immigrants from the former USSR in Germany, Israel and the USA.

Books

Methods for isolating and analyzing the supporting frame of settlement. - M.: 1988.
Victims of two dictatorships. Soviet prisoners of war and Ostarbeiters in the Third Reich and their repatriation, 1996.
"Westarbeiters": interned Germans in the USSR (prehistory, history, geography). Textbook for the special course. - Stavropol: 1999.
City and Village in European Russia: One Hundred Years of Changes, - M .: 2001 (together with T. G. Nefedova and A. I. Treyvish)
Not by choice: the history and geography of forced migrations. - M.: 2001.
Doomed to die, - M .: 2006 (together with A. Schneer).

"Let's see who will overdo it...". Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam in letters, memoirs, testimonies

* * *

From the compiler

The main differences of our volume are the focus on Nadezhda Yakovlevna (which is also indicated by the subtitle), the greater variety of genres and the complex architectonics of the book.

As a result, the book settled down as follows.

Spelling and punctuation of texts of letters are given according to modern standards.

A list of abbreviations of the most frequently cited authors and works is given at the end of the book.

And, finally, words of gratitude to E. Shubina, in a lively dialogue with whom this book acquired its format and form.

Pavel Nerler

Pavel Nerler

N. Ya. Mandelstam in the mirrors of this book

And the call and the words about bread meant something like this: “I'm free tonight. Come in, but take some bread and something for tea with you.”

And I immediately rushed to her, since the bakeries then worked, if memory serves, until ten.

May Day 1919 “Turtle” is a real grouse current, carefree love lust and bare-haired marriage celebration, whose delightful honey essence cannot be overshadowed by any lyre player and not cooled by any “high chill”. Everything that is not this, away!

But “everything that is not this” can be driven away, but it cannot be driven away. A year later, Epirus and those islands “where they do not eat broken bread” are already far behind. In the midst of a protracted separation from his betrothed, at the very peak of longing for her, thirty-year-old Osip suddenly felt their relationship - a mixture of lovers and brother-sisters - as a kind of "incest", fraught with a whole heap of explicit and implicit threats. Among the semantic layers of “Turtle” there is also a literal one: the poet, who was forced to be baptized at the age of twenty under the administrative yoke of Russian anti-Semitism, warns his bride, a Jewish woman from a cantonist family, baptized from birth, that she still has to fall in love with a Jew, disappear and dissolve in it and, while it is alive, forget about everything else.