The Hum of Metaphor and the Cast of Voice. Observations on Mandel'shtam's 'The Horseshoe Finder

The Hum of Metaphor and the Cast of Voice. Observations on Mandel'shtam's 'The HorseshoeFinder'Author(s): Diana MyersSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Jan., 1991), pp. 1-39Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4210516 .

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THE SLAVONIC

AND EAST EUROPEAN

REVIEW

Volume 69, Number i-January I99I

The Hum of Metaphor and the

Cast of Voice. Observations on

Mandel'shtam's 'The Horseshoe

Finder'

DIANA MYERS

Ho He CAbJHIIHbI A14pbI 3BYKH B nepBo6bITHoM poe My3.

Baratynskii My work is complete: a work which neither Jove's anger, nor fire nor sword shall destroy, nor the gnawing tooth of time.

Ovid

i. rAI,AHM Ha Aec H roBopHM: BOT AeC KOpa6eAbHbI4, MatITOBbI4,

P03oBbIe COCHbI

/o camol BepXYMK4 CBo60AHbIe OT MOXHaTOH HOE1114,

H4M 6bI OCKpHnbIBaTb B 6ypio O4HHOKHMMH HHHH5IMH

B pa37bqSpeHHOM 6e3AeCHOM Bo3,Ayxe; 1H0 4 COAeHoio rIqTOIJ BeTpa YCTO4T OTBec, HpHrHaHHbIH K

HAHmylye 4naAy6e. H MopenAaBaTeAb,

B Heo6y3AaHHOH )KacA4 nHpocTpaHcTBa,

BAa'ia iepe3 BAwHtHbIe pbITBJ4HbI XpyHKL4I4 npu6op reoMeTpa, CA14HiT c ripHT3IHeHbCM 3eMHOFO AOHa

IepOXOBaTyso HOBepXHOCTb MopeH.

Diana Mvers is Lecturer in Russian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London.



2 DIANA MYERS

A BAbIXa,q 3anax CMOAHCTbIX CAe3, HPOCTYHHB[IIHX CKBO3b o6IHMBKY KOpa6A5,

AIo6yJlCb Ha AOCKH,

3aKAenaHHbIe, CAa;CeHHbIe B Hepe6OpKH He BH41AeeMCKHM MHpHbIM nAOTHHKOM, a Apyr4M -

OTLIOM HyTeIHeCTBHH, APYFOM MopexOAa, -

rOBOpHM:

H OHH CTOAAH Ha 3CMAe,

HeyAo6Hoii, KaK xpe6eT OCAa,

3a6bIBa,I BePXYIIKaMH 0 KOPHXx, Ha 3HaMeHHTOM rOpHOM Kp5KCe,

H1 HyMyeAHI HOA HpeCHbIM AHBHeM,

1e3yCHCLeHO npeAAaraA He6y BbIMeHITb Ha Ige4HOTKy COAH

CBOfI 6AaropOAHblii rpy3.

2(I) C erO HaMiaTb?

BCe TpeCLHT H Ka'IaeTC5I.

BO3Ayx APKOIHT OT cpaBHeHHH-.

HH 04HO CAOBO He AyIIIHe Apyroro,

3eMA5I rYAHT MeTa4)OpOH,

H4 AeFKHe AByKOAKH,

B 6pocKoA ynpH5KH ryCTbIX OT HaTyrH nTH'bHX CTaH,

Pa3pbIBaIOTCH Ha MaCTH,

ConepHHmaH c xpaHInHMH Aio64mIAaMH pHCTaAHII.

3(2) TPHUCAbI 6AaAKeH, KTO BBeAeT B neCHb HMY;

YKpameHHa,I Ha3BaHbeM iHeCHb

4OAbme KHBeT cpeA4 ApyFHx -

OHa OTMe'IeHa CpeAH nOApyr HOB5I3KOH Ha A6y,

14clUeARiome A OT 6ecnaMJTcTBa, CAHIIIKOM CHAbHOrO oAypqIoliero

3anaxa

ByAb TO 6AH30CTb MY>K'HHbI,

IHIAM 3anax HIepCTM CHAbHOFO 3Bep5,

HAM nPOCTO ,Ayx 'o6pa, pacTepToro Me)CAY AaAoHeM.

4(3) Bo3Ayx 6bIBaeT TeMHbIM, KaK BO4a, H BCe >*(HBOe B HeM HAaBaeT KaK

pbi6a,

HAaBHHKaMH paCTaAK4BaH c4)epy,

H1AOTHYIO, yIHpyyYIO, MyTb HarpeTylo, -

XpycTaAb, B KOTOPOM ABMWKYTCH KOAeCa H mapaxaIOTCA AOIHaAM, BAaXHbIi 'lepHO3eM Heepbi, KaXAyIO HOMb paCnaXaHHbI4 3aHOBO BHAaMH, Tpe3y6LiaMM, MOTbIraMH, nAyraMiH.

BO3AYX 3aMeliaH TaK Ace rycTo, KaK 3eMA3I,

143 HerO HeAb35I BbIHITH, a B HerO TPYAHO BOHTH.

5(I) Ilopox ripo6eraeT HO AepeBbAM 3eAeHOH AanToIH;

AeTH FrpaIOT B 6a6KM nO3BOHKaMH iMepiHHX HBOTHbIX. XpynKoe AeTOMCMHCAeHMe Hame- 3pbI HOAXOA4MT K KOHI4Y. Cnacvi6o 3a TO, WITO 6bIAO:

A caM 0o11M6cq, , C6HACA, 3anyTaACH B ClieTe.



MANDEL SHTAM S 'HORSESHOE FINDER 3

3pa 3BeHeAa, KaK map 30AOTOHI,

H1OAa5I, AH4Ta3I, HH4KeM He HoAMepK(HBaeMa11,

Ha BC1K0Eoe rHlHKoCHoBeHHe OTBeLIaAa <<Aa>> H zHeT>>.

TaK pe6eHoK OTBeqaeT:

<1 AaM Te6e 56AoKo'>, HAH: <<? He AaM Te6eC 6AoKa>>. H4 AI4iO ero TOIHbI4 CAeHOK C FOAoCa, KOTOpbIH HpOH3HOCHT 3TH

CAOBa.

6(2) 3ByK eige 3BeHH4T, XOT5I HIpIPHMHHa 3BYKa HiCIe3Aa.

KOHb Ae)KHT B HIbIAH H XpaHHT B MbIAe,

Ho KpyTO4 rIOBOpOT ero HeiH Eie coxpaHqeT BOCHOMIHaHiHe o 6ere c pa36pocaHHbIMH HoraMi -

Kor,Aa HX 6bIAO He -ieTbIpe,

A HIO IHCAy KaMHeC AopoFH,

O6HoBAJIeMbIx B -ieTbIpe CMeHbI H10 lIHCAY OTTaAKHBaHH4 OT 3eMAH rHbIELyigerO AKapOM HHoxoALAa.

7(3) TaK, Haime4mHi HOAKOBY C,AyBaeT C Hee HbIAb

H paCTHpaeT ee mepCTbIo, HOKa OHa He 3a6AeCTHT,

Tor,4a OH BeiaeT ee Ha iiopore, XITo6bI oHa OT,AOXHyAa,

H 6oAbme ypK en He HpiHAeTCq BbICeKaTb HCKPbI H3 KpeMHI.

'leAOBe-ieCKHe ry6bI, KOTOPbIM 6oAbime Heiero CKa3aTb, CoxpaHqIKoT opmy rOCAeAHero CKa3aHHOrO CAOBa,

H B pyKe OCTaeTCsI oyiigeHi4e TJKCeCTH4,

XOTA KYBH1H

HalOAOBIHY pacHAeCKaAC5I,

HOKa ero HeCAH AOMOH.

8(i) To, 'ITO 51 ceiniac FOBOplO, FOBOpIO He I,

A BbIpbITO H3 3eMAH4, no406H0 3epHaM OKaMeHeAOI InmeHHIbI.

O4HH Ha MOHeTaX H3o6pawKaIoT AbBa,

4pyrHe - FOAOBy;

Pa3Hoo6pa3HbIe MeCHbIe, 30AOTbIe H 6pOH3oBbIe AeiemLKH

C OAI4HaKOBOH HloiIeCTbIO AeAKaT B 3eMAe.

BeK, npo6ys HX HeperpbI3Tb, OTTHCHYA Ha HHX CBOH 3y6b1.

BpeM' cpe3aeT MeH3I, KaK MOHeTy,

H MHe y7K He XBaTaeT MeH51 caMoro.

(No. 136)1

1 The numbers in the left hand margin indicate the stanzaic structure of the poem. Numbers in brackets indicate the triadic thematic structure of the poem, after the initial stanza. References to individual poems by Mandel'shtam will be given in the text in brackets by their number in volume one of Osip Mandel'shtam, Sobranie sochinenii, four volumes, New York-Paris, I967-8I. This edition is henceforth abbreviated in the notes as SS.



4 DIANA MYERS

Originally, 'Nashedshii podkovu' ('The Horseshoe Finder') was published in the magazine Krasnaia nov' (I923, 2), with a subtitle 'Pindar- icheskii otryvok' ('A Pindaric fragment'), most likely referring to the numerous odes of Pindar which survived only in fragments. In fact in the manuscript an additional unfinished line is attached to the end of the poem.2 It is indeed possible to find much in common with Pindar in the character and in the formal organization of the work.3 The surviv- ing odes of Pindar are epinician, or victory odes, dedicated to victors of games, consisting of various competitions, including races for horses and chariots. The latter play a prominent part in Mandel'shtam's 'fragment', but no obvious victors are praised or even mentioned in the poem: the ode is about those who lost the race, about defeat itself, while the victory - that of the new order, of the new age - is excluded from the text and serves as a background. Moreover, as in Pindar, the central event is not depicted as the outcome of some effort of will or successful stratagem, a conscious plan or even chance, but rather as something providential and teleologically inevitable. It is a link in a chain of events, making up a single series, uniting phenomena which are similar in essence. Myth is invoked to define the nature of phenomena that determine the character of events and their outcome. In other words, myth is called in to determine the genealogies of events and the potentialities latent in them. Also similar to Pindar is Mandel'shtam's way of introducing myth into the ode: the myth is not expounded in detail; instead isolated episodes are mentioned in greater or lesser detail, the actions of gods or heroes, names. Moreover this is not done to remind the listener of the myth; the mythological episodes serve as part of the extremely rich 'keyboard of associations' (upominatel'naia klavia- tura)4 which defines the culturo-psychological parameters of the ode. It is assumed that the myth is familiar to the listener or reader and that he is capable of connecting it with the event to which the ode is dedicated and of understanding the author's interpretation of present-day events in the light of the given myth.

Pindar's odes were intended for choral performance and Man- del'shtam introduces a chorus into his 'fragment' in rather original fashion, opening it with a plural verb 'govorim', which he repeats shortly afterwards. The special feature of Mandel'shtam's chorus is

2 Osip Mandel'shtam, Stikhotvoreniia, Biblioteka poeta. bol'shaia seriia. Leningrad, I973, p. 283. note I I 9. Hereafter BP.

3 References to the Odes of Pindar will be given in the text with the abbreviations I. (Isthmian). N. (Nemean), 0. (Olvmpic) and P. (Pvthian). On Pindar, see, C. M. Bowra, Pindar, Oxford, I964, especiallv pp. 287-92 (hereafter Bowra); D. M. Richardson, Pindar. A Poet of Eternal Ideas, Baltimore, I 936, pp. I-2 IM. L. Gasparov, 'Poeziia Pindara'. in Pindar, Vakkhilid, Odv. Fragmenty, ed. M. L. Gasparov, Moscow, i98o (hereafter Gasparov), pp. 36I-83; Richard Lattimore, 'A Note on Pindar and his Poetrv'. in The Odes of Pindar. Chicago, I 947. pp. v-xii.

4 Osip Mandel'shtam. 'Razgovor o Dante', SS, 2, pp. 363-413 (368).



MANDEL SHTAM S 'HORSESHOE FINDER' 5

that it speaks rather than sings. Even the personal intervention, the conversational-rhetorical 'S chego nachat'?', and the choice of the vers libre form testify to the exclusion of the singing element from the ode. Through this unmusicality, the space of the ode is brought closer to that of the new age, where disharmony reigns. The gradual disappearance of music from space was one of the chief themes of Mandel'shtam's poetry of I9I7-25. In 1920 he notes: '1l rpy6oMy BpeMeH4 BOCK

yctynIaeT nIeBytl' (No. 12i), and in I922 - 'B nocAeAe?m pa3 HaM

My3bIKa 3ByIILT' (No. I25). The theme of music, so prominent in the poems written before I92 I, virtually disappears. Apart from the dim- inutive 'pesenka' (No. I 3 1), 'sovetskaia sonatinka' and 'pishushchikh mashin prostaia sonatina' (No. I40), used only metaphorically, music as such is mentioned only once, in the poem 'Vek' (No. 135), as something desirable, possessing healing qualities, but obviously absent from space; and it is the Dionysian and barbaric flute which is named as the instrument of the new age, not Apollo's lyre.

In the article 'The Ode as an Oratorical Genre' (I922), which Mandel'shtam in all probability knew, Tynianov quotes and com- ments extensively on Derzhavin, attempting to formulate the difference between an ode, constructed on intonations, and a 'song', based on melodies. Among the qualities distinguishing the ode are listed inexact rhymes, uneven strophes, variety of theme, rhetoric, deliberate metaphor, 'a mixture of emotion' ('smeshenie strastei'), variety of intona- tion ('raznaia garmoniia'). All this makes an ode difficult to remember, by contrast with a song, which possesses exactly the opposite qualities, chief among them a single emotion and melody, thanks to which it is easily recalled.5 In Mandel'shtam's poem one can find all these features.

Among other similarities with Pindar, the characteristic intervention of the author in the middle of the ode and the introduction of personal themes into it may be noted. These are overwhelmingly prominent in Mandel'shtam, and his 'Pindaric fragment' is written in elegiac mood.

The Pindaric principle of constructing odes in triads of strophe, antistrophe and epode can in a sense be applied to 'The Horseshoe Finder', if the division based on metre is replaced by thematical triads. (In parentheses we have indicated a similar division into triads based on themes.) The final triad breaks off at the first strophe. This is justified by the logic of the poem and the title 'fragment'. For the convenience of analysis we shall follow the stanzas in order, treating the introductory part of the poem as a single stanza.

5 Iurii Tvnianov, Arkhaisty i novatory, Leningrad, 1929, pp. 78-79.



6 DIANA MYERS

STANZA ONE

The introductory first stanza sets out the prehistory of contemporary events, going back to mythological times, when man for the first time dared to leave his home and set off on a voyage across the sea to an unknown destination.6 This act is marked by the decision to cut down trees and build a ship. It also indicates the first rift in the unity of man and nature. Man views the forest with the utilitarian glance of a master craftsman, estimating its suitability for material that may serve his purpose, in this case the building of a ship. It is not, however, the eye of an indifferent builder; man's perception of the world is still anthropo- morphic and he regards the forest as a partner in the venture. The use of the subjunctive in 'Im by poskripyvat' v buriu' etc. - 'they really should', 'it would be more becoming of them' - conveys a degree of man's consideration for the trees and an invitation to share his destiny. The idea of nature's voluntary participation in man's ventures is reinforced at the end of the stanza, where trees express the same feelings and are driven by the same irresistible force as man in their desire to open new horizons and to taste the unknown. It should be noted that man had a choice and acted according to his own free will.

In the stanza the familiar space of 'home'- zemnoe lono, zemlia of the poem - is juxtaposed with that of the unknown and unpredictable space of the 'sea'. The first is denoted by verticals:7 les, les korabel'nyi machtovyi, rozovye sosny, pinii, khrebet osla, znamenityi gornyi kriazh, presnyi liven'; the second - by things formless and horizontal: raz'iarennyi bezlesnyi vozdukh, prostranstvo, vlazhnye rytviny, sherokhovataia poverkhnost' morei.

Venturing into the unknown and realizing that he will need a point of support, something firm to sustain him, man is more concerned with the strength of the mast than with that of the ship, which is bound to be affected by destructive forces at sea. For 'mast' Mandel'shtam employs the word otves, thus deliberately invoking two meanings of the word: a 'vertical rock-face' and a 'plumb-line'. The first connects it with the space of 'home', the second, being a tool employed in ship construction, with that of the 'sea'.

The mythopoetic sources of otves (rule, line) as a symbol of strength and steadiness derive from the Iliad:

6 Leaving the comforts of home and venturing upon a journey filled with danger is a necessary condition for myth to begin. See V. la. Propp, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi skazki, Leningrad, I986, pp. 36-37, 47-48.

7 For more detailed analysis of this svmbol, see D. M. Segal, 'O nekotorykh aspektakh smyslovoi struktury "Grifel'noi ody" Mandel'shtama', Russian Literature, 2, 1972, pp. 49- 102 (72-78); Omry Ronen, An Approach to Mandel'stam, Jerusalem, I983, pp. 120-27 (hereafter Ronen).



MANDELI SHTAM S 'HORSESHOE FINDER 7 CAOBHO HpaBHIAbHbIH cnyp Kopa6eAbHoe ApeBO pOBH5eT 3o04ero YMHOrO B 4AaHH, KOTOpbIH XyAO(CeCTBa MYAPOCTb Bcio XOpOmO pa3yMeeT, BOCHHTaHHHK My4pOH AuHbI,-

TaK Me)KAY HHMH 6opb6a H Cpw)KeHHe POBHbIe 6bIA4.8

More convincing for us as a source, however, is the fragment concerning the construction of the first ship in the myth of the Argonauts; it also assists us to establish the derivation of the image of the 'father of voyages':

Jaso'n fastened round his shoulders a purple cloak of double width, which Pallas Athene, the Lady of Trito, had made and given him, when she was laying down the props for Argo's keel and showing him how to measure timber for the cross-beams with a rule.9

More peculiar to Mandel'shtam is the use of 'mountain' imagery to symbolize traditional, and especially Christian, values. This imagery has obvious associations with the Sermon on the Mount and with the Mediterranean landscape where churches and monasteries were built on the top of hills and mountains, themselves reaching towards the heavens. In 'Grifel'naia oda' (No. 137) the word otves, though, is specifically identified with preaching: 'Im propoveduet otves, / Voda ikh uchit. ..'. Visually, the preacher towering above his flock indeed resembles a rock. This similarity is emphasized in poem No. 43, where, of all the qualities of Luther, kriazhistyi is singled out (following the words temnaia gora). Solid as a rock, the preacher rests secure in his convictions and beliefs - "'Zdes' ia stoiu - ia ne mogu inache"'. Above all, otves is a vertical, and as such falls into a group of symbols standing for the organizing principle in nature, as 'opposed to those denoting destructive forces and chaos.

While 'otves preaches' and preaching usually confirms traditional values, 'water teaches' the opening of new horizons, the invitation to discover and experience the unknown, which inevitably affects the traditional. In the process it can be enriched, but also partly or wholly destroyed, depending on the degree of change. It is this potentiality for bringing about change and destruction which water shares with time, eating everything away.

The seafarer is quite aware of the dual character of the driving force he is possessed by. He is a man drawn by thirst for knowledge, the

8 The Iliad, I 5, 409-12. (From the Russian translation by N. M. Gnedich, Gomer, Iliada, Moscow, I 960, p. 242). Reference to editions of the Russian translations of Greek and Latin authors used by Mandel'shtam is made in order to indicate use of the same words by Mandel'shtam in his poetry. The English translation of the passage by E. V. Rieu reads 'The fight was balanced to a nicety and the front swayed no more than the line that is stretched along a ship's timber to test its truth by a skilful carpenter who has mastered his trade in the school of Athene.' (Homer, The Iliad, Harmondsworth, i964, p. 282).

9 Apollonius of Rhodes, The Voyage of Argo, I, 72I-25 (Harmondsworth, I P , translation by E. V. Rieu).



8 DIANA MYERS

conquest of space, striving to pass beyond the limits of the known world. Nevertheless, he cannot at once reject his habitual surround- ings, the earth he has tilled and which is his home (zemnoe lono). A stern choice faces him and he therefore compares the power of his attraction to the earth with that to which his soul is dragging him - the stormy sea with its rough, rugged, coarse surface ('sherokhovataia' -the epithet elsewhere, in No. 260, attributed to time itself).

The organic nature of the duality in man is emphasized by the empathy of man with trees. Men inhale the smell of tears, the resin oozing from the felled trees which serve as the ship's planking; this does not prevent them from admiring that planking, the end product of their labours. As if trying to comprehend their own actions, men make the analogy between themselves and the trees. They recollect how the trees also once stood upon the earth, precariously. The trees sense the drabness and flavourlessness of their existence before they are made use of by man and set out with him on distant voyages. Their roots go down into the earth; they are nourished by its juices, but in their weariness they forget this. All they can see is that on this earth they are not at ease. They are bathed in an insipid, joyless downpour and beseech heaven for a sprinkling of salt, the salt which adds flavour to all things, the salt of the earth, of life (or the sea in the poem). 10 In their longing for a life of adventure, filled with life-enhancing experience, the tree-tops are ready to reject their 'noble burden' - the branches and the roots which nourish them and without which they will perish. (We note the transformation of 'mokhnataia nosha' of the beginning of the voyage into the nostalgic 'blagorodnyi gruz' and the bitter and oppressive 'solenaia piata' into 'shchepotka soli', when they become part of memories.)

The description of the uncomfortable earth we find in Pindar himself:

Ocmpbift Kpaui ymecos cor6eHHy1o cnuuy p6em ... (P., I. 27., M. Grabar'-Passek translation)"

Compare with Viacheslav Ivanov's translation: Te xce, Koro HeB3Aio6HA 3eBc, -

BHeMAH rAacy [Hl3pHA, H -a 3eMAe o6yRiubi cmpaxom, u cpe)b ueyKpomUMbzx nyttuu; 1 M5ITeTCA, 'b5M TeMHHi4a - TapTap TbMbI ...

10 Lidiia Ginzburg, 'Poetika Osipa Mandel'shtama', in her 0 starom i novom. Stat'i i ocherki, Leninigrad, 1982, pp. 245-99 (278-79).

11 Quoted from Antichnaia lirika. Perevody s drevnegrecheskogo i latinskogo, comp. S. Apt and Iu. Shul'ts. Moscow, i968. p. 97 (hereafter AL).




Ha xo.towiem aowce HpOCTepT OrmpaeT Y3HHK o6 OCTHHbI xpe6em Jq3BuMbI ... 12

The imagery of the stanza could also be traced back to V. Veresaev's translation of Archilochus's fragment 'On Thasos':

... KlaK ocna xpe6em, 3apocim4ii A14KH4M AecOM, OH B3AbIMaeTcA.

He63pa,4Ubmfi Kpau, uemuAbt u epaaoCmUb1t, He mo ttmo kpau, rje HACeHyT BOAHbI CHP4ca.13

Here a feeling of discontent, similar to 'Nashedshii podkovu', is felt: H4 OHH CTOAAH Ha 3eMAe,

HeyAo6HOiA, KaK xpe6eT ocAa,

3a6bIBaH BePXYIHKaMH 0 KOpHA1X ...

The vessel itself is built 'not by the peaceable Bethlehem carpenter, but by another, the father of voyages, the friend of seafarers'. In the person of the carpenter,Joseph, Mandel'shtam contrasts the Christian, conservative principle, with that principle which 'another' embodies for him -love of risk, the urge to explore new lands, movement, dynamism, activity, the aim ofwhich is not always attainable or even clearly seen but frequently bodes destruction to the creations of previous ages. The conservative spirit is contrasted with action by way of a negation, 'not by ... but another', and this 'another' is described as 'father of voyages'. The vocabulary of the passage -lonely Italian pines, the Bethlehem carpenter, the father of voyages - presupposes the Mediterranean setting in mythological, and early Christian times.

In mythology two heroes can claim this title: Jason and Odysseus.14 The fact that Mandel'shtam perceived them both as one archetypal

12 Gasparov (note 3), p. 3 I 3. 13 AL, p. ii6. 14 Clarence Brown considers the 'other' to be Poseidon, 'god ... of horses' which appear

first 'in the degenerate guise of an ass' and then 'become ennobled as steeds .. .'. (Clarence Brown, Mandelstam, Cambridge, I973, p. 292). This interpretation seems to me to be erroneous, as the 'ass' of the poem plays no active role whatsoever, and is mentioned only in the simile: the mountain ridge (gornyi kriazh) is as uncomfortable as the backbone of an ass (khrebet osla). But in Russian, khrebet means both spine and mountain ridge. Hence arises the association between kriazh-khrebet and spina-khrebet. In my view this is the only function of 'ass' in this poem and there is no need to look for Poseidon in this guise. In any case, Poseidon is a god and, though possibly a patron, is unlikely to be the 'father of voyages', which signifies 'founder', initiator', he who began voyaging, the first voyager. Besides, Poseidon never built a shi.p. On the contrary, when the first ship ever built by man, the Argo, sailed above him, he was so shaken that he went into a stupor. (See Dante, Paradiso, xxxiii, 95-96). S. J. Broyde interprets the 'other' as Peter the Great: see his Osip Mandel'stam and his Age, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, I975, pp. i8o-82. As the creator of the Russian fleet and the founder of the modern Russian state, he certainlv falls into the categories of both carpenter and shipbuilder. But whereas in the figure of Peter the Great they complement each other, in Mandel'shtam's poem they stand in opposition. Besides, in the all-embracing mythopoeic context he could only be a particular instanice of a wider phenomenon, and could hardly be Joseph's opposite. I'he reference must be to someone who has as universal a meaning as Joseph.



10 DIANA MYERS

image, that of a voyager in quest of an elusive aim, is clear from poem No.92:

30AoToe pyHo, rAe >Ke TbI, 30AOTOC pyHO?

Bcio Aopory ilMyeAH MOpCKHe T5LqKeAbIe BOAHbI,

141 OKHHyB KOpa6Ab, HaTpyAHBIHHI4 B MOpSIX IOAOTHO,

OAHccefi B03BpaTHAC5I, HIpOCTpaHCTBOM H BpeMeHeM nOAHbIH.

The voyage as metaphor for man's incessant striving for change and spiritual endeavour Mandel'shtam associates with Odysseus in 'Raz- govor o Dante':

3TO neCHb 0 COCTaBe eAOBeIeCKOHI KpOBH, coxepwCaieH B ce6e OIKeaHCKyIO COAb. HaIaAO HyTeueCTBHq 3aAOweHO B CHCTeMe KpOBe-

HOCHbIX COCyAOB ...

BceMH H3BHA1HaMH cBoero Mo3ra AaHToBcKIcH OAHcce-H inpe3HpaeT cKAepO3 ...

"Hey)KeAH MbI pO?KAeHbI AAH CKOTCKoro 6AaroHoAytIHA H OCTaiouiyiocq

HaM ropCTOtIKy Be'IepHHX 'LyBCTB He HIOCBHITHM Aep3aHHIO - BbIHTH4 Ha

3ana4, 3a repKcyAecobi BCexH - Ty4a, rAe MHIp HpO,40AoKaeTC5 6e3 AoAel?"

06MeH BeuqeCTB camo-H nAaHeTbI ocyWeCTBAIeTCI B KpOBH, - H

ATAaHTHKa BcacblBaeT OAHcceH, riporAaTbIBaeT ero AepeCBHHbIA Kopa6Ab.

HeMbICAHMO 'IHITaTb necm4 4aHTa, He o6opa'HBaq HX K COBpeMeH- HOCTHI ...15

Pindar ascribes the same inner drive to the Argonauts and identifies its source as a force over which humans have no control:

And Hera inflamed overpowering sweet desire in the demigods for the ship Argo; lest any, left at home, sit mulling beside his mother a life with no danger; rather against death

even they found the fairest defence that essence of valour in their own

fellowship. (P. iv., I83-86)

The mythological subtext underlying the stanza, and to some extent the poem itself, is that of the decline from the Golden Age to the Age of Iron.16 Hesiod, the first to describe this transition, indicates the end of the Golden Age inter alia with the appearance of ships in the open sea and the Trojan War.17 In Batiushkov's 'Elegiia iz Tibulla', the Golden Age is spoken of as follows:

15 'Razgovor o Dante', SS, 2, pp. 388-89. 16 Mandel'shtam regarded the New Age as one of Iron. Compare 'zheleznyi mir' in

No. 1 25 and the theme of iron in his later poetry. Compare, too, Baratynskii's 'Poslednii poet': 'BeK iueCTByeT n)'TeM CBOHM weAe3HbIM/B cepA4iax KOpb1CTb H o6uas Me'ITa . . ./l

(E. A. Baratynskii, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, Mloscow, 197 I, p. 246). 17 Hesiod, Works and Days, i 64-66, in Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Hoinerica, Cambridge,

Massachusetts and London, 1982, pp. 14-15. Compare, too, 'Ew4e B ApeBeCHHy ropRuHA Tormop He Bpe3aAcq' and the anticipation of the Trojan war in No. I I 9.



MANDEL SHTAM S 'HORSESHOE FINDER II

Tor4a 6ecneNHbie Hapo0B nIAeMeHa lyTeCA cpeAH Aeco u 2op He IpIOAaraAH

H paAoM HHKOrAa HOACel He pa3AHpaAH; TorAa He MxiaAaCb eAb Ha AeFrKHX niapycax, HecoMa eempaMU B Aa30peBbIX MopRX.18

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Golden Age is described as a time when people lived peacefully, content with whatever nature provided, since the land was rich and there was no need to plough it. In those happy days 'never yet had any pine tree been cut down from its home on the mountains, or been launched on ocean's waves, to visit foreign lands: men knew only their own shores'. But when the Iron Age came, people became warlike, they ploughed the land so deep that they impoverished it and could no longer rest content with what they had. 'Now sailors spread their canvas to the winds ... and trees which once clothed the high mountains were fashioned into ships and tossed upon the ocean waves far removed from their own element.'19

In his prophetic fourth eclogue Virgil anticipates the coming of the new Iron Age, ascribing to it similar qualities. But he names the 'Argo' specifically in this connection:

Hlo HipeXAHeMy CTaHyT IHYCKaTbCq e omKxp1moe mope, B CTeHax ropO4CKHIX 3aHHIpaTbcYI, pbITb noAe coxolo. BHOBb AIBHTC5I THHPi, BHOBb 'Apeo' OT60pHbIX repoeB

HOMY1HT HIO BOAHaM, H4 HaCTaHYT BHOBb npemicue 6um6b ... 20

Dante also regards 'Argo' as the first ship ever built.21 According to the Myth of the Argonauts the first ship was built out of pines which stood on Mount Pelion ('znamenityi gornyi kriazh' and 'pinii' of the poem).

In the same myth we can trace the theme of friendship as well as the metaphorical meaning of 'the friend of seafarers': Jason sets off on his famous voyage with his hero-friends. At a later period he used to scour the seas clean of pirates, a great service to other seafarers. Moreover, Jason's ship contains a direct invitation to use 'ship' as a metaphor of the poetic word itself, because one ofJason's companions was Orpheus, and into the ship was built a piece of oak from Dodona, where the prophetic oaks of Zeus' oracle grew, and the ship had the gift of speech.

18 K. N. Batiushkov, Opyty v stikhakh i proze, Moscow, I977, P. 207. 19 Ovid, Metamorphoses, i, 94-96 and 129-34. Compare, in S. V. Shervinskii's Russian

translation, H, noq ceKHpOH ynaB, AAR CTpaHCTBHiH B 'ly)KHe npejeAbI /C rop He cnyCKaAaCb CBOHX cocHa Ha TeKyui4e BOAHbI. / CMepTHbIe, KpOme POAHbIX, HHKaKHX no6epe>Ki4 He 3HaAH. /I ... CTbIA y6e>KaA, H npaBAa, H BepHocTb; / H Ha Hx MeCTO TOTMIaC HIOAB1HIAHCb o6MaHbI, KOBaPCTBO; / KO3HH, HacHAbe IpIfHHAH H npOKA5ATaA )KaxK4a HaWKHBbI. / HaqaAH napyc BBepqITb BeTpaM; HO eige MopexoAbI/XyAo HX 3HaAH TorAa, H Ha BbICSIX CTOIBLUIe ropHbIx / Ha HenpHHBbPHbIX BOAHaX Kopa6AH 3aKamaAHcb BnepBbIe.'// Quoted from Ovidii, Liubovnye elegii. Metamorfozy. Skorbnye elegii, Moscow, I983, PP. IOI, 102 (hereafter Ovidii).

20 Rimskie poety v biografiiakh i obraztsakh, ed. V. Alekseev, St Petersburg, I897, P. 304 (hereafter RP), translation by A. Plotnikov.

21 Dante, Paradiso, XXXIII, 94-97.



I2 DIANA MYERS

Pindar's use of the 'ship' metaphor for describing his art and Dante's 'singing ship' should be mentioned here, but the metaphor is too common in classical and European poetry to dwell on this particular point.

In the poem Mandel'shtam does not depict men in action directly, but makes them tell their story. Even then men do not describe what they do, but first what they intend to do and later their feelings about what they have done. That is, one moment there is an insight into the future and the next a nostalgic look back, into the past, which turns out to be the mythological time of the first ships and first voyagers. The connecting link between the intentions and the result, i.e. action, is missing.22 Or, putting the same in the temporal dimension, the link between the past and the future is missing from the sequence of events. But not altogether. The present is concentrated in the narrator's words 'Gliadim na les i govorim' referring to the past and 'Liubuias' na doski . . . govorim' referring to the future, and in both cases the present tense is used. Not only that, but Mandel'shtam puts these verbs in the first person plural, which suggests that whatever happened at Mount Pelion is directly related to us and to our time, that the past is an integral part of the present, and it was we who made the perilous choice which must alter the world and our lives.

Mandel'shtam makes another important point. He presents the stanza in the form of direct speech, twice using 'we say' (govorim) emphatically, as if to remind us that in the beginning was - and always is the Word; and the word for Mandel'shtam was 'a sounding and speaking flesh' ('zvuchashchaia i govoriashchaia plot", 'plot' deiatel'- naia, razreshaiushchaiasia v sobytie').23

STANZA TWO

In beginning the stanza with the question 'S chego nachat'?' Man- del'shtam is in his own fashion following Pindar, who similarly quite often anticipates the transition to the main theme of his ode. For example, in the fourth Pythian ode ('The Argonauts'), after the rhetorical 'What was the beginning of the voyage?', Pindar commences his tale; he begins the fourth Olympian with the question 'Of what Man shall our music be?'24 Mandel'shtam's question, however, is not a

22 Mandel'shtam considered it impossible to describe an event. See E. G. Gershtein, Novoe o Mandel'shtame, Paris, I 986, p. 204 (hereafter Gershtein).

23 'O prirode slova', SS, 2, pp. 24I-59 (245-46). 24 Compare also the beginning of Slovo o polku Igoreve: 'He npIHAH4IHO All 6v4eT HaM,

6paTsH, / HaqaTb ApeBHIM cKAaAoM / neqaAbHvIo nOBeCTb .. .11 (Zhukovskii's translation, quoted from V. A. Zhukovskii, Stikhotvoreniia. Poemy. Proza, Moscow, I983, p. i86); 'He HamaTb AH Hawv necHb, o 6paTbq,/Co cKa3aHHHl 0 CTapHHHbIx 6paHRx .. .I1 (Maikov's translation, quoted from A. N. Maikov, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, Moscow, I984, vol. I.

p. 491).



MANDEL SHTAM 'S 'HORSESHOE FINDER' 3

rhetorical one and conveys a genuine bewilderment: what is to follow has neither beginning nor end. There is no hero either, the person who is customarily apostrophized in an ode; even the lyrical 'I' is introduced into the text in an impersonal form. Following on from this, he begins his narration and moves into the present tense, retaining it throughout the succeeding stanzas. This contrasts with the dynamic first stanza, where only the narrator of the events remained in the present tense. But events were developing and a transition was taking place from one time-space to another, at the same time as we now have to do with the state of space - a space in which the time factor is reduced to a minimum or is missing completely. Everything attests to the absence of order and the chaotic state of the universe. The line 'vse treshchit i kachaetsia' indicates that the ship is still adrift on a stormy sea, and the succeeding lines show that it is at one and the same time ship/poetry and ship/earth.

The first quality which characterizes the new space is that in it things cease to be themselves: 'Vozdukh drozhit ot sravnenii./Ni odno slovo ne luchshe drugogo. . .'.

In a conversation Mandel'shtam had with S. B. Rudakov in I935 on 'Nashedshii podkovu' there is a valuable commentary on these lines:

OTo6paHbI, 3aOAwCeHbI )KI43Hb H CMePTb - BbIAaHbI AoM6aPAHbIe KBI4Ta- HI1HH< ... > H4,AeT pa3FOBOP C HOMOE4bLO KBHTaHLH4, a uacToAMee Bce CHPRTaHO, KOHI4bl B BO/y.25

That is, man does not live his own life and does not die his own death; they are replaced by signs; the direct connection between a man and his life is lost. In similar fashion, the link is lost between the word and its life in the language; people employ not words, but signs of words, behind which is concealed the 'real', that is, the essence of things. In other words, the bond between the word and the thing is lost, and the word as 'living, speaking flesh' is replaced by an empty sign, a 'receipt'. Mandel'shtam is here repeating an idea he had expressed as early as 1923, in connection with Russian Symbolism (or 'pseudo-Symbolism' as he termed it).

Bce npexojqMee eCTb TOAbKO HoAo6He. Bo3bMeM K pI4HMepy PO3Y H

COAHi4e, rOAy6KY H AeBYlIKY. 4ASS CHMBOAHICTa HZ OAHH 113 3THX o6pa30B cam no ce6e He HTepCeCH, a po3a - rioo6l4e co0AHia, coAHnie - no4o64e po3bI, FoAy6Ka - no4o6He qeBymKH, a 4eByMKa - noAo6He roAy6KH.

06pa3bI BbsInoTpoE[ieHbI, KaK i1yieAa, H Ha6UTbI 1iyKHM cojep;KaHHeM. BMecTo CH4MBoAH4cCKOFO Aeca iyieAbHaA MacTepcKa5l, <....> HwI4Iero Hac- To03nAero, H-lOAHHHOFO. CTpaEnHblH KOHTpeAaHC COOTBeTCTB4H,

K4BsaoEOX ApyF Ha Apyra.26

25 Gershtein, p. 204. 26 'O prirode slova', SS, 2, pp. 254-55.



14 DIANA MYERS

The Symbolists sought to return to the word its pristine symbolic meaning, and, considering that centuries of use had distorted its true sense, attempted to release the word from its everyday meaning. Bereft of universal significance, their symbolism was idiosyncratic and often utterly arbitrary, as well as, strictly speaking, metaphorical. (Compare 'vmesto simvolicheskogo lesa, chuchel'naia masterskaia' to 'beslesnyi vozdukh' in the first stanza.) Mandel'shtam, on the other hand, acknowledged as true and rightful only the historical meaning of the word, the meaning fixed in the language. Hence his metaphor 'the word is a utensil', that is, a thing used in everyday human life 'na potrebu cheloveka'. Only things like this can become symbols.

HO4'beMHa5I CHAa aKMeH3Ma B CMbICAe AeJITeAbHOHA IO6BH K AHTepaType,

ee T3KecT5M, ee vpy3y - Heo6bIqaHIHo BeAHKa, Hi pbIxarom 3TOH Ae51- TeAbHOH Aio6BH H 6bIA HMeHHO HOBbIiI BKyC, MywKeCTBeHHa5I BOAAI K HIO33HH14

H no03THKe, B LXeHTpe KOTOpOHI CTOHT ieAOBeK, He CHAIOiWeHHbIlI B AeCleLHKY A2KecCHMBOAH1eCKHMH ypacamH, a KaK X03)IHH y ce6H AoMa, HCTHHHbIH

CHMBOAH3M, OKpyAKeHHbIH CHMBOAaMH, TO eCTb yTBapbIO, O6AaaLOLWeH Hi

CAOBeCHbIMH HpeACTaBAeHHJIMH, KaK CBOHMH OpraHaMHY.

With regard to the themes of Symbolism and Acmeism, Man- del'shtam, as a rule, contrasted the space of 'home' (Acmeistic, filled with utensils/objects of use) and 'non-home' (Symbolistic, filled with 'rebellious' utensils, pseudo-symbols). Their non-acceptance of this world and yearning for others (poetically expressed in the symbolism of the cage, the prison, the traveller, the path, and so on) he formulates also in this terminology:

CHMBOAHCTbI 6bIAH rIAOXHMH 4oMoceAaMHi, OHH4 A06HIAH 4lyTemeCTBI4I

< ...> ,4AM TOrO, llTO6bI ycrieMHO CTPo0Tb, nepBoe YCAOBHe HCKpeHHH-I iHHeTeT K TpeM H3MmepeHHIM 7IpOCTpaHCTBa - CMOTpeTb Ha MHp He KaK Ha

o6y3y HI Ha Hec'laCTHyIO CAyIa HHOCTb, a KaK Ha B:OrOM AaHHbIl ABOpeI <4....

CTPOHTb MOM(HO TOAbKO BO HMYI Tpex HI3MepeHHH', TaK KaK OHH eCTb

YCAOBH5I BCAIKOrO 3o4qeCTBa. BOT HolmeMy apXHTeCTOp 4OAXKeH 6bITb

XOpOEHM AoMoceAoM, a CHMBOAHCTbI 6bIAH HAOXH4MH 3OA4IIIHMH.28

(Thus the Acmeists fall into the category of 'peaceable carpenters' while the Symbolists belong, if not to that of 'fathers of voyages', then to the company of seafarers.)

It was precisely at the beginning of the I920S, when Symbolism as a poetic movement had lost all reality, that Mandel'shtam was writing articles filled with the most trenchant attacks upon it. The point, however, lay not so much in Symbolism itself as in its legacy.

27 Ibid., p. 257. 28 'Utro akmeizma', ibid., pp. 320-25 (322-23).




All the literary schools of the twentieth century were concerned to loosen the semantic meaning of the word, as Mandel'shtam understood it. The beginning of the twenties saw the flourishing of the 'metaphorical' school of Imaginists. They identified the poetic image with 'the inner form of the word' of Potebnia, aiming to replace the polysemantic meaning of a word by a single-word metaphor or simile possessing a monosemantic meaning. A poem was seen by them not as an organism, but as a 'crowd of images' from which one might be taken and ten others inserted. This chaotic crowd of images cannot fit into regular metrical forms; vers libre becomes 'the inalienable essence of imaginist poetry'.29 Their fascination with machines (or in Man- del'shtam's words 'the mechanical toys of culture') and brutal treatment of language Mandel'shtam regarded as barbaric (dikarskii) and rapacious (khishchnicheskii). He foresaw the danger inherent in such attitudes for the future of poetry.

HbIHe MbI CTO0M nepeA H03AHHM 1IYMHbIM pelHAHBOM CHMBOAH3Ma, H093i3eHI MOCKOBCKHX IUKOA, rAaBHbIM o6pa3OM HMaB4HHHCTOB, - TOKe HaHBHOe JIBAeHHe, TOAbKO XHWHHneCKOe H AHKapCKoe, - Ha 3TOT pa3 He nepe, 4YXOBHbIMH LWeHHOCTHMH KyAbTypbl, a ee MeXaHHi4eCKHMH irpym- KaMH < ... > MoAoAbIe MOCKOBCKHe AHKaPH OTKpbIAH eCe OAHy aMepHKY- MeTa(popy, rIPOCTOAYLLIHO cmemaAH ee c o6pa3oM H o6oraTHAH Hamy

A14TepaTypy J4eAbIM BbIBO4KOM HeHYIHbIX paCTep3aHHb1X MeTa(pop-

HMeCK4X yHOAO6AeH14.

lBeCKOHeMHO MeHee HHTepeCHbI4 H H1OMTeHHbWX, 'leM CHMBOAH3M, HO

POACTBeHHbIW eMy, HMMaAHHH3M He nIOCAeAHee, AOAH(HO 6bITb, 5IBAeHHe B Hamefl AHTepaType. XHWHH1ieCKaq 93KCTeHCHBHaq 1IO93HI Ha HaIIeH-

no0IBe 6yAeT Bo3pOKmaTbc5L AO Tex nop, noKa ee cAeAaeT HeBO3MO>KHOH

pyccKaRK KyAbTypa. IlpaBO 3Ke, AyPHa3i 10933H14 H3HYP4TeAbHa AAA KyAb-

TypHOMI HO'IBbI, BpeAHa ... 30

Mandel'shtam was aghast at the versomania sweeping through the land. He wrote of the painful 'verse disease' which produced in the sufferer a total lack of orientation, not only in his art and literary undertakings, but in questions touching society in general, current events and cultural pursuits.31 The echo of noise permeating the stanza is reflected in his description of contemporary poets:

KopoTmiue cTpoKH4, ABa-TpH cAoBa, Apo6HT, rpbl3eT, 3axAe6bIBaeTc3I,

AyIHT, HeHCTOBCTByeT, 3aT4xaeT, OHHITb KyAa-To rpOM03AHTC3I, peBeT,

CAOBa 6e3pa.3AVIHbI, CAOBa HeHOCAYMHbI < ...)

29 B. Rozenfel'd, 'Imazhinizm', Literaturnaia entsiklopediia, Moscow, 93o-9, vol. 4, sv; Vladimir Markov, Russian.Imagism, 1919-I924, Giessen, 1980, p. 4.

30 OSip Mandel'shtam, 'Pis'mo o russkoi poezii', Den' poezii 18i, Moscow, 1981, p. i98. Compare 'vyvodkoni .. rasterzannykh metaforicheskikh upodobleriii' in this passage with 'zemlia gudit metaforoi' and 'dvukolki ... ptich'ikh stai ... razryvaiulsia nia chasti' of the second stanza.

31 'Armiia poetov', SS, 2, pp. 208&-1 6 (2 1I0).



I6 DIANA MYERS

< ... > BCe 3AO B TOM, 'ITO OHH4 ce651 orAymlaIoT, AMypmaHIT 3ByKOM

co6CTBeHHoro rOAOCa, KTO rIpOCTO OpeT, He CIHTa5iCb C CHHTaKCHCOM,

1IyBCTBOM H AorH4KOH, KTO noAneBaeT B HOC, KTO 6opMo'eT, paCKa'IHBaACb

Ha apa6CK4H-I AaA, KTO BbIAyMaA peiHTaTHBHyIO ce6e HoryAKY H 3aHBeaeT

noA MeAOAHieCKYIO CYPAHHKY '... .> CoxpaHHBmHeCI 3CTeTbI HaHHpaIOT Ha

OKOHxIaHHA Hlp1HAaraTeAbHbIX - aHHbIH, OHHbIHI, Aio6H4TeAHi rpy6bix CTH4XOB Ha HOBbIH AaA4 'HTaIOT, CAOBHO pyraIoTCH, HaCTyHna Ha CAy[HaTeAei C HpOKA5ITHeM H yrpo3aMHA2

He also warned about the danger of such loss of orientation in language:

Hauie HAOTHOe TH.KeAoe TeAO HCTAeeT < ... >, 1 Hauila AeITeAbHOCTb

IpeBpaTH4TCI ' . . .> B CHFHaAbHyO CBHCTOHIARCKy, eCAH MbI He OCTaBHM

HocAe ce6A BeI1eCTBeHHbIX AOKa3aTeAbCTB 6bITHAI.

CTpamIIHO ?KHTb B MHipe OAHH4X BOCKAiU4aHHL H Mez(4oMeTH4!33

In his own peculiar way Mandel'shtam follows the Imaginists and actually uses vers libre in 'Nashedshii podkovu', building it up on the principle of accumulated imagery and metaphors. He himself eluci- dates this point:

51 4OA>KeH nHcaTb 6eAbie CTHXH, HO He 06bI'Hbie 6e3 pHi)M HriTHCTOHHbIe

YLM6bI, a MOHI, BpOAe 'Hailnejero 11OAKOBy, rAe Bce Aep(HKTCI Ha

HlpO3aHIieCKOM AbIxaHHH, KyCKaMH, xIAeHeHHO, 3a HyMepaMHi [?]. 1To6bI 3IHHTeTbI CT05IAH KaK B oAe Ha CBOHX MeCTax: 6yM, 6yM IH BYM!'34

His vers libre is, indeed, highly organized; all the images are polysemantic and are linked internally, not only within the bounds of the poem, but in the context of the poetic tradition as a whole.

It is possible that Mandel'shtam is playing with the Greek meaning of the word metaphor - 'transfer', 'transport', i.e. 'vehicle', which prepares for the logical shift to the next line with its metaphor 'legkie dvukolki' (thus binding the whole chain of 'poetry' images into one: - 'les'- 'korabl" - 'puteshestvie' - 'metafora' - 'ptich'i stai' 'legkie dvukolki" -'liubimtsy ristalishch' (i.e. horses by implication). The 'les'/'kon" link is more explicit in 'Stikhi o russkoi poezii' (Nos 263-64): 'KaHAH 4npbIraIoT raAOnOM, / CKaqIyT rpaH4HbI rypb6o4 / C

pa6cKHM nOTOM, KOHCKHM TOHOM / H 1peBecHoKo MOABOH'I/; HlOAI06HA

31 Aec ripeKpaCHbIH. . .. / XparI KOH5I H Kpan KOAOAbI.. ...

The end of the second stanza echoes the third stanza of Man- del'shtam's 'hymn', 'Sumerki svobody' (No. I03), written five years earlier:

32 Ibid., p. 2I5.

33 'Puteshestvie v Armeniiu', ibid., pp. I 37-76 ( 58). 34 Gershtein, loc. cit. 'Numera' could imply the numbers on receipts, each number

signifying an object.



MANDEL 'SHTAM S 'HORSESHOE FINDER 17

MbI B AerHOHbI 6oeBbie

CB3I3aAH AaCTOIeK, - H BOT He BHAHO COAHI4a, BCR CTHX4I5I Ile6e-ieT, ABHEeTC51, KHBeT. CKBo3b ceTEi - cymepKc( FYCTbIe He BH4AHO COAHLAa H 3eMAL HAMbIBeT.

The picture as a whole, in spite of the absence of sun and the uncertainty of the future, conveys a sense of lightness and animation in the uncertainty there is always hope. In the ode the destination has already been reached. The movement of the element turns into a trembling, its twittering becomes the humming earth and the battling legions of swallows turn into a flock of birds torn apart. Everything comes to a stop. The event ends up as a non-event.35 Mandel'shtam's 'Hymn' in fact fills the temporal gap in the first stanza of his ode.

The use of 'chariot' as a metaphor for poetry is common in Pindar and in the whole of Classical poetry. So is the image of birds harnessed in chariots, and in Pindar we find references to Muses' chariots, as, for example, in 0. ix. 8o-8 i: 'May I find words to lead others/ And be fit to ride in the Muses' chariot ...'//; and in 0. VI. 23 it 'becomes not a symbol for his song, but the song, destined to travel'.36 Compare also with Slovo o polku Igoreve: 'KpwlIaT B HlOAHOlIb TeAerH, / CAOBHO

pacryymeHbI Ae6eq4'// (Zhukovskii's translation). In Mandel'shtam the 'bird' images occur in connection with both

battle and travel. In 'Zverinets' (No. 83) the bird images are suggested by the emblems of the warring nations, and in No. 78 - 'poezd zhuravlinnyi' and 'zhuravlinnyi klin' by the long-necked Greek ships, by the wedge formations and the Iliad itself. In The Iliad there is a whole series of bird-battle images, often involving cranes. There are even travelling birds involved in the battle: 'H4x nAeMeHa, KaK HTHL4 nepeAeTHbIx Hec'ieTHbIe cTaH,,/,411KHX ryceii, ncypaBAen HAb cTaAa Ae6e4e4 A0AroBbIi4HbIx'//37 That is, they are used as metonymies, metaphors and similes. But in a number of poems, birds, and particularly swallows, are used as symbols of the poetic word,38 as, in fact, is the case with the ode.

3 Compare 'BCYI CTHXH4SI [e6e1IeT, ,BHAKeTCRq, XKHBeT' in 'Sumerki svobody' with 'XKHi3Hb aTro Kc ABH?KeHHe, co6bTI4e' in Gershtein, loc. cit.

36 Compare Pindar, Odes P., X, 65; 0. ix. 8I; I. viii. 62; Bowra (note 3), p. 39. Compare also Sappho's 'Ode to Aphrodite' in Sumarokov's translation: 'Ha 3AaTOH KO MHe KOAeCHULAe e34,1I,/TbT BnpqKeHFHHbIX rHaAa K nOAeTy IITIyn IeK ...'; quoted from Mastera russkogo stikhotvornogo perevoda, comp. E. G. Etkind, Kniga pervaia, Leningrad, I 968, p. 82.

37 Homer, The Iliad (Gnedich's translation, op. cit., p. 44). 38 See Ginzhurg, op. cit. (note IO), p. 272; Kiril Taranovsky, 'The Clock-Grasshopper', in

his Essays on Mandel'stam, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, I 976, pp. 68-82 (77-78); and V. N. Toporov, 'Eshche raz ob akmeisticheskoi tsitate', in Miscellanea Slavica. To IHonour the Me?nory ofJan M. Meier, B.J. Amisenga et al., eds, Amsterdam, I 983, pp. 469-86 (477-78).



i8 DIANA MYERS

Mandel'shtam, who often warned in his articles of the disastrous consequences for poetry of pursuing external effects and popularity and, most crucially, of the exploitation of the word for utilitarian ends, here expresses this idea in four lines. The transformation of the metaphor, 'korabl" - 'legkie kolesnitsy' (omitted but inferrable) 'legkie dvukolki', indicates a qualitative change: the vehicle is reduced in dimensions and loses its creaking mast; the boundless sea is replaced by the limited track of the racecourse, having a direction but leading nowhere. The replacement of 'kolesnitsy' by 'carts' is not simply a stylistic trope, designed to heighten the 'cart' or to 'domesticate' the chariot and racecourse by placing them in a familiar context. 'Carts' (dvukolki) implies a pot-holed track and, unlike chariots, they cannot ascend into the heavens.39

STANZA THREE

An ode always apostrophizes someone: Pindar addresses his odes to the victors of the games, and they usually have a title. But in the races Mandel'shtam writes about there are no winners, and he does not know whom he is addressing. In fact in the beginning the ode had no proper title, and it was only later that he found his nameless addressee- whoever finds the horseshoe.40 Pindar was quite conscious that it is his song that brings real fame and immortality to both the event and the victor. Mandel'shtam reinterprets this: it is the name which confers immortality on the song, not vice versa.

YKpaLueHHaJq Ha3BaHbeM neCHb

AoAbHe >KHBeT cpe4H HoApyr ... ('Nashedshii podkovu') HaM OCTaeTCAI TOAbKO HM5IA

HyAeCHbIH 3BYK Ha 40AFHH CpOK. (No. go) He 3a6bIBaH MeHA, Ka3HM MeHA, Ho ,a4 MHe HM5I, AaH MHe HM5I:

MHe 6yAeT AerFe c HHM ... (No. I 39)

... qyzoe 4M5I He cnaceT. (No. 270) HaAnHCH Ha rOCyAapCTBeHHbIX 3AaHHXx, rpo6HHLAax, BOpOTax CTpax-

YIOT OT pa3pylIeHHH5I BpeMeHH.41

39Compare the transformation 'coHaTa'-'coHaTHHa'- 'coHaTHHKa' in No. I40. 40 Compare; 'MopenAaBaTeAb B KpHlTHTiIeCKICO MHHYTy 6pocaeT B BO4bI oKeaHa 3a-

neMaTaHHyio 6yTbIAKy C HMeHeM CBOHM H onHCanMem CBoef CyAb6bi. CnyCT5 AOArHe roAbI, CKHTTa.Cb no AIoHaM, A1 HaxowKy ee B necKe, IpOMIHTbIBaIO nHCbMO, y3HaIO 4aTy co6bITHi , nOCAeAHIOIO BOAio norH6mero. 1 HMeA npaBO CAeAaTb 9TO <... .>. IlHCbMO, 3aneqaTaHHoe B 6yTbIAKe, aApeCOBaHO TOMy, KTO HalAe'T ee. HameA q. 3HaqHT A1 H eCTb TaHHCTBeHHbIH aApecaT. <....>

lHHCbMO, paBHO H CTHXOTBOpeHHe, HH4 K KOMY B laCTHOCTH OnpeAeAeHHO He aApeCOBaHbI. TeM He MeHee o6a IMeCOT aApecaTa: n1HCbMO - TOMO, KTO CAyIaHHO 3aMeTHT 6yTbIAKy B necKe, CTHXOTBOpeHHC - "MHTaTeAS Bn oToMcTBe".' ('O sobesednike', SS, 2, pp. 233-40 [234-35]).

41 'Slovo i kul'tura', SS, 2, pp. 222-27 (224).



MANDEL SHTAM S 'HORSESHOE FINDER 1 9

In the self-contained poetic space, as perceived by the Acmeists, to utter a word meant giving it material as well as phonetic embodiment; the articulation of a name not only brings the word/flesh to life, it defines the object and renders it recognizable and hence memorable.42 If naming something means saying 'I know', thus summoning it to life, the inability to 'vvesti v pesn' imia' means recognizing neither the word nor the object it denotes. Poetic space fills up, not with word-objects, but with their signs, 'chuzhimi imenami', semblances of words rather than the words themselves, which is metaphor. Mandel'shtam not only makes wide use of metaphor, he avoids using proper names, which was usually one of his characteristics, marking out in this way the signs of chaos in the space of the ode: incorporeality, aimlessness and impersonality. A name cured of oblivion and facelessness is equated with 'poviazka na lbu'.

In the classical world, a headband was a mark of excellence. In Pindar it is constantly mentioned alongside the garlands awarded to those victorious in the contest. Sometimes they are mentioned along with yet another sort of prize - a song:

Ho nio6ea4TeAb B irpax Aio6HT HeCHio npeBbIie Bcero.

lecHo HaAeEHyIo criYTHHU4Y IIOAB4FOB H io6e4HbIx BeHKoB. (N. iii. 7-8).

Headbands were awarded as a mark of distinction for many different reasons: 'MeHI yAc FOTOBHAM B VKepTBy,/ BbIA4 FOTOBbI H COAb, H cB5qiLeHHbI4 HnHpOr H _osB53Ka/ MHe ync neAo yKpamaAa .. .';43 34ecb

3a OT'IH43Hy B 6oio HIp4HIHBM14X paHbI ApyAMHa,/ TaKKe H Te, 'ITO B

Acpeiqax BCIO ?KH3Hb 'H1UCTOTY coxpaHqA4;/ H rpopiAaTeAH TyT, 'ITO

Bemiia4 AocTo1Heiiuie (De6a,! Te, 'ITO YKpaCH4AH4 ?K3Hb

H3o6peTeHbeM xy4oAKeCTB, Te, xTo ApyrFIM o ce6e OCTasBHAH naM5Tb 3acAyro4./ BeAOcHe,KHaHq BceM HM 'eAO yKpaEiiaeT noB3Ka'//;44 'HpaBAy rAacuigwe necHn CBOHI 3aTeKAHi napKI4,/Ha FOAOBe

6eAoCHeAKHOII y HEIX KpaCHeCIA HOBS13KH ... .//;45 'Kor4a pO4AAC5 tDe6-AnOAAOH, eMy/ 3AaToIo MHTpOII 3eBc 1IOB3aJA xieAO,/ H4 AHpy 4aA, H 6eAocHecnHbIx/,4aA Ae6e,4eH c KOAecHHLAeH AerKo4.'//46

In classical poetry, the weaving of garlands and fabrics is often compared to the process of composing verse, 'the weaving of words'

42 Compare 'H4M ya'ce onpeAeAeHHe, yaKe "-ITO-TO 3HaeM"', 'O prirode slova', SS, 2, p. 251; S. Bulgakov, Filosofiia imeni, Paris, 1953, p. 242; Plato: '< ....> HMeHa y Beweii OT npHlpOAbI 1I < ....> He BC31KHHl - maCTep HMeH, a TOAbKO TOT, KTO 06pauqaeT BHHMaHHe Ha onpeAeAeHHoe KawK4oH BeCHH ipiHpO4OH HM3i H MO>KeT BOHAOTHTb 9TOT o6pa3 B 6yKBax H cAorax', Cratylus, 3goe, quoted from Platon, Sochineniia v trekh tomakh, Moscow, I 968, I, p. 425.

43 Virgil, The Aeneid, iII, i, quoted from RP, pp. 350-5 I (translated by I. Shershenevich). 44 Ibid., III, 6, p. 4I8 (translated by A. A. Fet and V. S. Solov'ev). 45 Catullus, 'The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis', ibid., p. 279 (translated by A. A. Fet). 46 Alcaeus, 'To Apollo', quoted from AL (note II), p. 37 (translated by Viacheslav

Ivanov).



20 DIANA MYERS

(pletenie sloves).4Y Metaphors of this kind can be found in Sappho: ...

CTaHOK CTaA MHe nOCTbIA, /14 TKaTb HeT CHAbI.'//;48 in Bacchylides: 'BbITKaHHblii 3TOT FHMH' (59.); 'BbITKH Ke HOBYIO TKaHb/,4A.f MHAbIX

6AaXCeHHbIx APH4H'// (i 9.8.)49; in Pindar: 'lecTpyIO XBaAy crIAeTa5

KOnbeHOCHbIM 6o0ikaM'H/ (0. VI. 87); 'AmN4aoi4nAaM/ LjBeTHCTy10 TKY X nCepeB53b ...'// (Fragment 179); 'He B TpyA CHAeTaTb BeHKH 113

I4BeToB, - / Ho Aai CpOK, / 1 My3a Mo0I COBbeT Te6e Boe4HHo/ 30AoTo,

/ CAOHOBbIO KOCTb/ 14 AHAeH4HbI4I UBeTOK, HCTOprHyTbIH 113 HeHbI

MOpCKOH.'// (N. VII. 77-79).5 Mandel'shtam's imagery is strikingly similar to that of the last

fragment by Pindar, which presents the craft of poetry as a weaving of the most disparate material into a single whole:

IHo3THmecKaH pellb ecTb KOBpOBaqI TKaHb, HMeLoma1 MHOAKeCTBO TeKCTHAbHbIX OCHOB <. .>

OHa - HpO'IHeCIHELiHi4 KOBep, COTKaHHbIHI 143 BAarFi, KOBep, B KOTOpOM CTpyHl FaHra, B35ITbIe KaK TeKCTHIAbHa5L TeMa, He CMelIHBa1OTC51 c Hpo6aMH

HH4Aa H4AH E4paTa, HO Hpe6bIBaIoT pa3HOUBeTHbI - B ?KryTax, PH4rypax,

OPHaMeHTax<.. .>51

The chaos of the new iron age is characterized by 'parovoznye svistki' and 'razorvannyi skripichnyi vozdukh' (No. I25): 'ne svoei cheshuei shurshim, /Protiv shersti mira poem./ Liru stroim, slovno speshim/ Obrasti kosmatym runom,'// and 'travy sukhorukii zvon' (No. I32); compare 'vozdukh drozhit ot sravnenii' and 'zemlia gudit metaforoi' of the previous stanza. In the third stanza a sense of smell is added to the aural impressions; stupefying odours permeate space: the approach of the male as opposed to the tender female principle, the preserver of memory52, 'the smell of the fur of a powerful beast' continues the theme of 'vsklokochennyi senoval' (No. I32) and of 'mokhnatyi' and 'kosmatyi' of Tristia,s3 and combines the properties of absorbing sound and killing delicate odours. The scent of roses, lungwort, mint, caraway, the scents, that is, of the 'mead of poesy' are overwhelmed by the smell of savory rubbed between the palms. Here also a delicate 'metaphorical' substitution takes place.

The staple food of bees in Greece was (and still is) gathered from thyme, hence the connection between this herb and 'the mead of poesy', which goes back to deepest antiquity. The word 'thyme' from Verlaine's Art poetique was usually translated into Russian as 'tmin'

47 Bowra (note 3) pp. 6-I 7. 48 AL, p. 68. 49 Gasparov (note 3) pp. 235, 271. 50 Ibid., pp. 30I 2I9, 42.

51 'Razgovor o Dante', SS, 2, p. 365. 52 Diana Mvers, 'Some Notes on Mandelstam's "Tristia"', in Ideology in Russian Literature,

eds Richard Freeborn and Jane Gravson, London, I 990, pp. 134-56 (I 53-54). 53 In Mandel'shtam shaggy, furrv objects are part of the primordial world of chaos.




('caraway'). Mandel'shtam, however, in the present instance, instead of the 'poetic' herb Thymus vulgaris ('tim'ian', 'chabrets', 'chebrets' in Russian), names Saturea hortensis (savory) 'chobr', 'chaber', 'cheber', which sounds similar but is not the same herb.

In Mandel'shtam, thyme is one of a number of dry or nocturnal grasses, which have lost the fulness of life, but still tinkle and hold their scent, which is to say memory in its latent state:

1 XOTeA 6b1 HHo 0 MeM

Eme pa3 rioroBopnTb, HJpoiuypimaTb cnIlllKoH, nIAetIoM PaCTOAKaTb HOMSb -pa36yA4HTb.

H pI4HHOqHSLTb, KaK AyIfHbIl CTOr,

Bo3,Ayx, 11T0 uiani'Koi TOMIIT.

H1epeTpnqXHyTb meIMOoK, B KOTOpOM TMIIH 3aluHT. (No. 13 I)

KaKa5 6OAb - HCKaTb noTepqHHoe CAoBo, l3OAbHbIe BeMH HO4HHMaTb

Hl C H43BeCTb1O B KpOBH, AAq HAeMeHH 1yA4OFO Hoimbie TpaBbI co64paTb. (No. I40)

The chaotic state of space, the gathering of herbs, the sounds of the night (the hissing sounds of s, z, zh, sh, ch, shch, kh predominate in the lines involving herbs) link these lines - and the third and fourth stanzas - with two other important poems: 'Voz'mi na radost" (No. i I6) and 'Sestry- tiazhest' i nezhnost" (No. io8). In the first of these

nocturnal bees correspond to the nocturnal herbs, the garland made of dead bees to the headband.

OH4 LLypIaT B IlpO3palHbIX Ae6psqX HO014,

Hx po0rn4a - 4peMyii4i Aec TaAreTa, IIx mnna - BpeMi, MeAyHuM4a, M5Ta.

HeBpa-Moe cyxoe oKepeAbe 1/13 MepTBbIX rnIeA, MeA HpeBpaThBM1X B COAHie. (No. i I 6)

The second contains in embryo most of the main themes of the third and fourth stanzas:

Aeruie KaMeHb nOAH5Tb, teM 1M51 TBOe nOBTOP4Tb! ...

CAOBHO TeMHYIO BO4Y 51 flbIO HOMYTHBIHHCIC BO3AYX. BpeM1 BcriaxaHO HIAyYFOM 14 po3a 3eMAei1 6bIAa. B Me4AeHHOM BOAOBOpOTe THKCAbIe HeAHbie pO3bI,

P03bI T5KIeCTb 14 HeCKHOCTb B ABOHHbIe BeHK14 3anAeAa. (No. io8)

STANZA FOUR

Here Mandel'shtam develops the theme of 'air' and 'earth', which was introduced in the second stanza. The entire cosmos is undergoing a transformation, comprising the following stages: air - water - crystal



22 DIANA MYERS

- chernozem (black earth) - earth. Other poems of Mandel'shtam can serve as a commentary on this stanza. Water is dark when it is stirred up, the air is saturated with events, objects, 'similes', i.e. it becomes turbid and goes dark as water does. The linking of air and water is not simply because they are both elemental forces; they are functionally close - both are essential to life. Mandel'shtam emphasizes this closeness when he uses the word 'drink' as pertaining to air, as a rule, moreover, when the subject is death:

OTpaBAeH XAe6 H B03AYX BbIHl4T... (No. 54)

CMepTHbIi BO3AyX HibM ... (No. 89)

51 nbKo HOMyTTHBIUHHHC Bo3AYX ... (No. I o8)

Using this verb does not simply convey a more vivid physical, visual sensation of inhaling air; the whole development from 'breathe' to 'inhale' and thence to the expression 'to gulp the air' (glotat' vozdukh) followed by drinking the air, conveys a cumulative impression of the air growing more dense and breathing becoming, in consequence, more difficult. Finally, drinking itself becomes impossible and 'drink' turns into 'eat': 'H, cnOTbIKaqICb, MepTBbIHI B03AYX eM ...' (No. 360). The similes and metaphors employed are also in accordance with this progression, from gaseous through liquid to solid. As the verse proceeds, air is transformed in stages: at first it is compared to water, then it becomes dense, resistant though transparent, crystal, then 'moist black earth'; this is, as yet, crumbling, yielding earth which is ploughed up again every night, albeit with difficulty. Finally it becomes densely clinging earth, impossible to escape.

Air, water and crystal are linked by the fact that they are all transparent. Crystal, however, is dense and hard and conveys a sense of enclosing the space it occupies, as well as of being sealed: 'impossible to get out of, difficult to enter'.

PHCYHOK, BbIrepmeHHbIH MeTKo, ...

KorAa ero Xy4O?KHHK MHAMbI

BbIBO4HT Ha CTeKA5HHOH TBepAH ... (No. 6)

Here, glass is used with the archaic tverd', as if Mandel'shtam still feels bound by the popular religious conception of heaven (and indeed the 'crystalline sphere' of ptolemaic astrology) and in terming it glass, i.e. hard, is 'forced' to use the customary tverd'.

The same thing happens in an earlier poem:

H4 He)CIHBOrO He6ocBoAa

BcerAa cmeiouigicHC xpycTaAb! (No. 2)




True, tverd' is not used here, but its synonym nebosvod is; the concept still does not include 'air'. The most important thing here has already been noted - the sky is felt as something hard and encircling, there is no escape from it. This is even more apparent in a poem of about the same period, where the sky is not even glass or crystal, but an astonishing 'stone':

A BW(y KaMeHHOC He6o

HaA TyCKAoH HayTHHOH BO4. B THCKaX HIOCTbIAOrO 3pe6a

A4ymia TOMHTeAbHO WHBeT. (No. 457u, SS, 2, p. 455).

Gradually, the metaphor of 'crystal' and 'glass' carries over to the air itself:

FAe BO3AYIMHbIM CTeKAOM o6AHBa1OTcJI COHHbIe rOpbI ... (No. 92)

B XpyCTaAbHOM OMyTe TaKaYI KpyTH3Ha! (No. I o6)

KaKaM AHHHI4 MOrAa 6bi nepeAaTb XPYCTaAb BbICOKHX HOT B 9E4Hpe yKpeHAeHHOM... (No. I o6)

In using the epithet 'transparent', as referring to the air, Man- del'shtam seems deliberately to transfer to it a quality belonging properly to crystal or glass, thus making it, paradoxically, more dense, more palpable:

fpipO4Aa TOT ze PUM H4 OTpa3HAaCb B HeM. MbI BH4HM o6pa3bi ero rpacAAaHcKo4 MOIUH

B HIPO3pa'HOM BO3Ayxe, KaK B UHIPKe rOAy6OM ... (No. 65)

The parallel of sky and water, glass or crystal has been encountered in Mandel'shtam before and, as a rule, this metaphor has been used to convey a sense of immobility, something frozen, unalterable by the passage of the ages; the air-crystal usually encloses things which time cannot reach, things belonging to eternity, as in No. io6, where a piece of the Christian world is sealed in this way. Even when the adjective 'transparent' applied to air does not evoke any direct association with crystal, it nevertheless deprives the air of its 'tenuousness' and renders it tangible:

OKppy>KeHa BbICOKHMHI XOAmaMH,

OBetIbHM CTaAOM TbI C rOpbI c6eraemb 14 po3OBbImH, 6eAbIMH4 KaMHJqM11

B CyxoM lpO3patIHOM BO3Ayxe cBepKaeMb. (No. I I I)

Or, from the same poem: Ilpo3pa'Ha AaAb ...

H He43meHHO AyeT BeTep cBez>imH.

HeAaAeKO OT CMHPHbI H BarAaAa, HO TpyAHO HAbITb ...



24 DIANA MYERS

It is the transparency which gives to the distance the quality which makes it difficult to overcome.

In 'Grifel'naia oda' written at approximately the same time as 'Nashedshii podkovu', 'transparent' is placed between 'air' and 'forest', thus serving its 'thickening' function with regard to air and its 'rarifying' effect on forest:

4IM nporiOBeAyeT OTBec, Bo4a HX y11H4T, TOqLIHT BpeM5I;

II BO3Ayxa npo3panHbIH Aec Y-ce aaBHO HPpecbiLeH BceMH. (No. I 37)54

The air's saturation should also be noted here, echoing that in 'Nashedshii podkovu'. In addition, 'transparent', applied to objects possessing density, emphasizes, as a rule, their mortality, evanescence, tenuousness:

B IHeTpOHOAe HpO3paL1HOM MbI yMpeM ... (No. 89)

HIpo3paMlHbI FpHBbl Ta6yHa HOMIHoro ... (No. II 3)

KorAa H1cHixeq->KH3Hb CInyCKaeTC31 K TeHH M

B HOAyHpO3paMHbIu AeC BOCAeA 3a HlepceonoHii ... (No. I I 2)

Apart from which, death itself is transparent; all that heralds death or is in any way connected with it:55

Bce He o TOM HPO3pa4HaA TBePAlT ... (No. I I 3)

Cyxoe 3OAOTO KAaccHmiecKoH BeCHbI YHOCHT BpeMeHH HPo3paMHaq CTpeMH1Hia. (No. 8o)

Thus 'transparent' applied to air takes an 'unnatural' function upon itself, serving to intensify perception and convey the idea of slowed and retarded activity in space filled with air. This last is emphasized by the saturation of the air as well as the comparison with water, in which 'everything floats like a fish, pushing through the sphere with its fins', till, at last, the air changes into its metaphor, 'crystal', in which movement is inhibited even more.

Air turns into crystal, then into earth, by way of another feature common to them both, density, shading into hardness, impenetrability. The conversion to earth completes the whole cycle of developing and transforming imagery, which indeed accords with the logic of things, since all living and therefore mortal creation becomes dust and returns to earth. For Mandel'shtam, however, the earth is far from a dead body; the history of mankind is written into it, spiritual and material

54 On 'prozrachnyi' / 'les' symbolism, see Ronen (note 7), pp. 129-37. 55 For more detailed coinmentary, see Segal (note 7), p. 8o.




values are preserved in its depths. In this sense, it is like a book, that can and should be read. Favourite among his images connected with the earth, are black earth, chernozem - rich and generous soil, and clay, glina -the potter's material, something creative:

1I yae HH4KorAa He pacKpoIo

B 6H6AHOTeKe aBTOPOB FOH'IapHbIX flpeKpaCHOH 3AMAH HIYCTOTeAYIO KHH1ry,

HlO KOTOPOH YMHAHCb nepBbie A10,4H. (No. 2I4, Armeniia, XII)

HaA KHHFOH 3BOHKHX rAHH, Ha,4 KHMMKHOIO 3eMAeIi, HaA FHOHHOA KHHrOIo, Ha4 VA4HOL aoporoH, KOTOPOli MY-IHMMCY, KaK My3bIKOA H CAOBOM.

(No. 2 I 5, Armeniia, XI II)

X4WHbI11 513bIK rOPOAOB rAJ4Ho6LITHbIX -

Pe'Ib rozoaaioa nx KHprnHeii! ... (No. 2I6)

These extracts are from the first poems Mandel'shtam wrote in I 930, after his long silence. In them his voice displays renewed power as from the earth he selects sounding clay, the speech of bricks and clamorous stones. This image is repeated in numerous poems; almost always clay is associated with something ringing, definite, possessing form like a clay vessel. Even the fish cease to be soundless where clay is understood:

IOHxlapaMH4 BeAHK OCTpOB CHHHI -

KPHT BeceAbIiI, 3aneiciC ux Aap B 3eMAIO 3BOHKYIO. CAbImHmb AeAbq)MHHH HAaBHHIKOB MX HOA3eMHbILI yAap? (No. 385)

Matters are somewhat different regarding black earth. Black earth is the composition of the earth, earth itself, soft, friable, lacking echo, muffled. Mandel'shtam writes concerning it in 'Nashedshii podkovu':

BAaXCHbIA 'IePHO3eM HeepbI, Ka(KAY1O HO-lb pacIaxaHHbxI 3aHOBO BHAaMH, Tpe3y6I4aMH, MOTbIraMi, HAyraaMH. Bo3Ayx 3aMemaH TaK xKe rycTo, KaK 3MA5,-

H3 Hero HeAb3Jq BbIHTH, a B HeFO Tpy,HO BOH'rH.

And we recall him writing in I92 I:

HO,93HH - nAyr, B3pbIBaK)JHH BpCMq TaK, xITO rAy6HHHbIe CAOH BpeMeHH, ero 'epH03eM oKa3bIBaIOTCYt cBepxy.56

56 'Slovo i kul'tura', SS, 2, p. 224.



26 DIANA MYERS

And: BpeMHq BcnaxaHo nAyrOM, H po3a 3eMAeio 6bIAa ... (No. io8)

In 'Nashedshii podkovu' everything stays in the earth, since it is over-burdened, being ploughed every night. The same condition is spoken of in the second stanza: 'no one word is better than another, the earth hums like its own metaphor' and so on.

Mandel'shtam draws the whole of history into the process of transformation taking place within the verse. It is a picture of the cosmos which has returned to its elemental state, primordial chaos; this is a kind of synthesis of mythological ideas concerning the origin of the universe and the historical cycles expressed in ancient Greek philo- sophy. The state of the cosmos resembles the ancient Ocean, 'world material', a liquid substance from which change is possible to the solid or the gaseous state, thanks to the interaction of heat and cold (here, the sphere is 'slightly warmed'). The primary source of movement is fire, which condenses into water; the latter turns to earth, earth back into water and air or fire. The animals were initially fish-like in form, but after the drying-out of the land some became land animals. Objects appear and disappear in the never-ending life processes of the world material.57 The cosmos itself is a sphere, while, according to Plato,

Nothing was taken from it or added to it .. .; for it was designed to supply its own nourishment from its own decay and to comprise and cause all processes ... 58

The following observation is also notable: The earth so compressed by air becomes insoluble stone, the finer variety being transparent.59

Viacheslav Ivanov wrote of the difficulty of descending into chaos as part of the creative process. Dissolving into chaos was seen as a purgative process and implied a tragic renunciation of all earthly things, something resembling oblivion, a complete loss of will and self. This dissolution into chaos permits a man to discover the god that lives within him and to become a genuine creator.60 That is, Ivanov regarded chaos as a kind of ante-room to a superior spiritual existence. In 'Nashedshii podkovu' chaos is envisaged as a closed system, with no exit. Any such exit would signify, above all else, an outlet into creativity, a return to the Apollonian world, to 'rodnoi zvukoriad', 'eoliiskii chudesnyi stroi' (No. I32). Mandel'shtam identifies loss of

57 V. Vindel'band (W. Windelband), Istoriia drevneifilosofii (a Russian translation of his Geschichte der alten Philosophie), St Petersburg, I 908, pp. 30-35.

58 Plato, Timaeus, Harmondsworth, I965, 33d. 59 Ibid. ,6oc. 60 Viacheslav Ivanov, 'Simvolika esteticheskikh nachal', in his Po zvezdam, St Petersburg,

1909, pp. 28--32.




memory, oblivion with non-existence and his chaos often recalls a realm of shadows or was perceived as such: "B HIeTponoAe npo3pa- tIHOM MbI yMpeM, / rAe BAaCTBYeT HaJ HaMH Hpo3epnHHa'// (No. 89); 'KorAa IH-C4XeJI-KH3Hb CInyCKaeTCa K TeH5IM/ B floAynpo3pa1lHbIH Aec, BOCAeA 3a Hlepce(PoHo14// (No. I I 2); '1 CAOBO H03a6bIA, MTO X1 XOTeA cKa3aTb. / 'CAenaIA AaCTO1IKa B xiepTOr TeHeH BepHeTc5i ... .'1/'I I MbICAb 6eCnAOTHaf B IepTOr TeHeH BepHeTC5I'.// (No. II 3); '31 B XOPOBOA TeHeiJ, TOrITaBIUX HenKHbIH Ayr, /C neBy'tIHM 1M4eHeM BMeII1aACH . . 11

(No. I 23). "-IYTb Mep1paeT npH3pa-iHai CLIeHa, / Xopbi CAa6bIe TeHel

. . .'// (No. I I4); 'FAe-TO XOPbI cAaAKUe Op4ei . . .'I/ (No. i i8, variant). The theme of Orpheus and Eurydice may help to interpret the line '143 HerO HeAb3JI BbI4TH, a B HerO Tpy4HO B014T'.61 The spherical shape of the universe emphasizes the enclosed nature of space and the only recognizable shapes sealed in it are dumb fish and a broken chariot.

Such sealing-in can mean dumbness but it means preservation too. Objects are fossilized and at the same time they become immortal, transfigured into art. The question is whether there will ever be a resurrection - transfiguration is difficult enough, but rebirth seems impossible; it is by no means certain who is going to dig up the hidden treasure and what, if anything, it will mean to the fortunate finder.

In Mandel'shtam, the word itself, a work of art, is visually associated with the most perfect form - the sphere. It is an arc, a dome, a ball, a round loaf. The verse thus acquires a second dimension. The transformations taking place in the cosmos concern the passage of things from the temporal state to the eternal, the sphere of the word and of art, to what is the most durable thing in the world. What is preserved from chaos enters into that which retains its form and is sealed up forever in the air - crystal.

Neaera is the only proper name Mandel'shtam introduces into his song, and she could be considered as a 'goddess of innovation' invented by him.62 Being the name of a nymph and thus associated with both water and earth, the name is quite appropriate for a goddess of 'vlazhnyi chernozem'; as the name of Medea's mother one might see in it a distant connection with the Argo and the 'first voyager', and as the name of Tibullus' mistress it could also be regarded as a name capable of immortalizing a song. Neaera is also the name of the wife of Helios and it signifies 'the new one', that is, the new moon, the moon in its darkest phase.63 The dark, lunar, nocturnal aspect plays a significant

61 Compare with Pushkin's version of Anacreon: 'TapTap TeHH ?KAeT Moei!./ ... BxoA TyAa AAA Bcex OTKPbIT -/ HeT 4cxo4a ye oTTyAa'. ('Poredeli, pobeleli . . .', quoted from A. S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh, Moscow, I962-65, vol. 3, I963, p. 327).

62 Ronen (note 7), p. 203. 63 C. Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks, London, I 974, p. I 93. In The Odyssey, the daughters of

Neaera and Helios guard the three hundred and fifty cattle of Helios, the number corresponding to the number of days in the lunar calendar (Homer, The Odyssey, XII, I33).



28 DIANA MYERS

role in the stanza, as it does in most of Mandel'shtam's poems written between I917 and I925. From all the multiplicity of lunar goddesses, many of them more significant, the choice fell on Neaera, probably because of Andre Chenier. The nymph Neaera features in a number of his poems and it is Chenier Mandel'shtam refers to in succeeding stanzas. The beginning of the next stanza in particular quotes the poem 'Neaere':

Mon ame vagabonde 'a travers le feuillage Fremira; sur les vents ou sur quelque nuage Tu la verras descendre ... 64

Another possible reason for introducing the name of Neaera is that it suggests an anagram of 'new era' both in German and in Greek.

STANZA FIVE

In the first three lines an echo of the theme of the preceding stanza can still be felt - the transformation from one physical state into another is completed and there is a sudden change in space. A sense of quietness and peace is created within the stanza, disturbed by the rustling of the foliage, that of the forest putting forth new shoots.65 Here, above all, one should note the evident self-quotation:

H eige Ha6yXHyT UO'IKH,

BpbI3HeT 3eAeHH no6er. Ho pa36HT TBOHI HlO3BOHO'1HI1K,

Moin npeKpacHnH ?KaAKHH BeK. (No. I 35)

The game of lapta, that is, the ball/word passing from hand to hand66 may signify the continuation of tradition. It is present only in a comparison, however, and the articulate noise of the trees at the beginning of the poem becomes an indeterminate muted rustling. This rustling is probably the very 'lepet', which is capable of giving birth to speech and life.67

64 Andre Chenier, cEuvres completes, Paris, 1952, p. I I. 65 On the symbolism of the forest, see Ronen (note 7), pp. I29-37. Compare in 'Stikhi o

russkoi poezii, No. 264, HI0Aio6w4A 5 Aec IpeCKpaCHbIi ....

66 Compare '5 6pocaio BaM MSUI4K4, a BbI He AOBHTe Cx' (Gershtein, p. I 5); 'HoAxBaTbIBaA

AerKHHi MIq!' (No. 28); and 'CaM co60o AeTaeT Mq . . .' (No. 5 I ). 67 (... .) HaqHeTcA AeneT, Ha-HeTC5 peib, Ha1HeTCH >KH3Hb' ('Armiia poetov, SS, 2, p. 2I5);

compare 'ByAbBapHoA nponHAenH imopox -/AeTH, 3eAeHa5 AanTa!/... Apo6SIMH AOWKAb 3aAeneTaA'.// (No. I34, variant, see BP, p. 232, note i I7); 'B03rAaCbI TeMHO3eAeHOII XBOH'

(No. 320); 'KanAH np iraIoT raAonoM, / CKamVT rpaAHbI rypb6oH / C pa6cKHM HOTOM,

KOHCKHM TOnOM /I H apeBecHoIo MOABOI4' (No. 263); 'KorAa B BeTBAX nH0pHbIX / 3aBoAVsT

MapoAei / rHeAbIx J4A4 KaypbIx / I UyHJYKaHbe MacTeH.... (No. 344). Compare also with Khlebnikov: . .. MbI HeKOrAa BbIIIIAH. / C BeTKOIO cBoer iCTHHbI, CAa6bIe KaK AeTI. / Ho Bce Xce HaCTaHeM; Ho Bce >Ke HaCTaHeM!' ('Chu! zashumeli ...'. Sobranie sochinenii, Munich, i968-72, vol. 2, Stikhotvoreniia, 19I7-I922, p. I74; '4epeBb3 uIenTaAH peIH CTOAeTHU.' ('Ia videl iunoshu proroka . . .', ibid., p. 305).



MANDEL SHTAM S HORSESHOE FINDER 29

In 1921 grass was growing in the streets of Petersburg and children were playing at knucklebones on the tramlines.68 The green grass was used as a symbol of the start of the new era in the article 'Slovo i kul'tura'. Mandel'shtam saw in it the first shoots of a virgin forest, rising up on the shards of the old civilization, a sign of 'spiritualized' nature, in the Symbolist sense, throwing off the weight of ages and returning to its elemental state:

Hama KpOBb, Hama My3bIKa, HamIa rOCyAapCTBeHHOCTb - BCe aTO

HaIIAeT CBoe Hp4OAOAKeHHe B Ue-JcHoM 6btmuu 8o6of npupoObt, npHpOAbI- Hcuxen. B STOM iqapcTBe Ayxa 6e3 HeAOBeKa KanAoe aepemo 6yaem Opuaaoit, H Kwanoe xwteuue 6yaem zooopumb 0 c6oeu MemaMoPt003e.

OCTaHOB4Hm? 3aneM? KTO OCTaHOBHT COAHJie, KorAa OHO MMUMCH na 6opo6buuou ynflpHcU B OTHIHH AOM, o6yYHHoe n(aA44o11 BO3BpaWeHHH? He AYiIMe AH noAaplHTb ero A4WppaM6oM, neM BbIMaAHBaTb y Hero noAan1KH?

He HOHHMaA OH HmFerO H cAa6 H poGoK 6bIA, KanK emu, Iyiwue 7Awdu 4AA5 Hero

3Bepel4 H4 pbI6 AOBHAH B CeTH . .69 Cnacn60 BaM, '6tyjcue AtWOU', 3a TporaTeAbHY1O 3a60Ty, 3a HecAHyIO

onieKy Haa cmaphtM MUpOM, KOTOpbImI yuKe 'He om Mupa ce?o', KOTOpbIH Bech ymeA B naHHHie H HOArOTOBKY K rpaAyweH MeTaMOpPO3e <..*.70

Directly after this Mandel'shtam quotes the third Elegy from Ovid's Tristia about bidding farewell to one's home, nearest and dearest, friends; thus linking the fragment not only with the theme of the 'metamorphosis' of space but also with the fate of the 'confused', 'weak', and 'timid' poet, who finds himself among 'alien people', and who lives on his memories of the past, the theme of personal dichotomy which preoccupied Mandel'shtam to the end of his days.7'

The 'sun' subtext and the reference to the 'father's house' allude to an episode from Ovid's Metamorphoses, where Phaeton, obsessed by his dream, returns to his father's house and persuades him to give him his chariot for a day. Unable to steer properly, Phaeton perishes, 'derznuv na velikoe'. After his death, the earth was plunged into darkness for a day.72 Metamorphoses and dryads is not a fortuitous juxtaposition. In Ovid the Bacchae were transformed into dryads as punishment for the

68 N. A. Pavlovich, 'Vospominaniia ob Aleksandre Bloke', Blokovskii sbornik, I, Tartu, I964, p 457.

69 Mandel'shtam here slightly misquotes the old gypsy's story about Ovid in Pushkin's 'Tsygany'.

70 'Slovo i kul'tura', SS, 2, p. 222. We have here indicated the imagery linking this extract with 'Nashedshii podkovu' and with Mandel'shtam's 'dithyramb' 'Sumerki svobody'.

71 Compare '51 B PMe pOAHAC3 . . .' (No. 8o). 72 Ovid, Metamorphoses, II, 328,. quoted from Ovidii (note I9), p. I 30. The story of Phaeton

is treated in Metamnorphoses, I, 748-79, II, 1-339.



30 DIANA MYERS

death of Orpheus.73 Compare also the talking wood of the suicides in Dante: 'We were people, but now we are plants'.74

In 'Slovo i kul'tura', as in many other articles, Mandel'shtam expresses the hope for a revival of culture, and, in particular, the poetic tradition of the past. Now he makes no attempt to 'glue together' the 'vertebrae of two centuries', since the vertebrae of the past century are already converted into knucklebones: in certifying the close of the Christian era, it is as if he closes a page, thanks the past 'for what has been' and confesses that he himself'lost his way, miscounted', trying to transfer to the future what belonged to the past. Only a fossil may pass into the future, not a living rose.

What follows is a kind of epitaph on the death of an age in which not only its beauty receives due praise, but so too do its other qualities, such as its 'moulded' (litaia) wholeness, its responsiveness, its capacity for resonance. It is hollow - at every touch it answered 'yea' or 'nay'; it is 'supported by no one', a sphere suspended in the air possesses great resonance.

The image of the golden sphere derives from classical Greek notions of the spherical structure of the universe, where luminous transparent and hollow spheres moved around the central sphere, and in particular the Pythagorean notion that the planets were in harmony, producing a musical noise, the so-called music of the spheres. In Mandel'shtam, a golden colour is often connected with antiquity and always carries a noble connotation.75

An extract from the article 'Zametki o Shen'e' can serve as a direct commentary on this stanza:

... aHTHIxHa5 MbICAb HOHiM4aA Ao6pO KaK 6Aaro HAi 6AaronoAy'Hi4e; 3AeCb eiie He 6bIAO BHyTpeHHeIH HYCTOTbI reAOHH3Ma. Ao6po, 6AaronoAyHbe,

3A0pOBbe 6bIAH CAHTbI B OAHO npeAcTaBAeHbe, KaK noittoeecumiu H o6uopodOimu 301lmo0u utap. BHYTPH 3TOro riOHHTbI Te 6bueb nycmombi<...>

XVI II BeK yTpaTH4A HpRMYIO CBI3b C HpaBCTBeHHbIM C03HaHbeM aHT4'IHOrO MHipa. 3oAomoi cnAoumnoit uap ypne ne 36yUa cam no ce6e. H3 nemo U36AeWKJaU 36BkU HCXHIWpeHHbIMH HpHeMaMH, coo6paweHbAMH 0 HOAb3e

HpHRTHOFO H IlHA5ITHOCTH LoAe3HoFo.76

'Supported by no one' conveys yet one more quality 'helplessness' and fragility. The word 'hollow' evidently bears a similar double semantic load. For Mandel'shtam, however, the most important thing was wholeness, unity of essence and the forms in which it is embodied or expressed.

73 Ibid., x, I-I05. 74 Dante, Inferno, XIII, 37. 75 D. Segal, 'Nabliudeniia nad semanticheskoi strukturoi poeticheskogo proizvedeniia',

InternationalJournal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, XI, 1968, p. I 6 1. 76 'Zametki o Shen'e', SS, 2, pp. 293-300 (293-94).



MANDEL SHTAM S 'HORSESHOE FINDER' 3 I

When speaking of the age, Mandel'shtam was at the same time speaking of art. True art must resemble a golden sphere, sounding of itself, not a sphere from which sounds are produced by 'forced contrivance' or considerations having no relationship to art.

The Christian nature of the age, indicated in the first stanza by the introduction of the 'Bethlehem peaceable carpenter', is now further emphasized by the 'yea' and nay' from the Sermon on the Mount.77 Similarly, the image of the child with an apple has visual associations with various Renaissance paintings. The theme of the Virgin and the child holding an apple - symbol of the world - is quite common. The same allusion to Christ holding an apple occurs in poem No. I I 7 (as well as the golden sphere image, here a golden sun).

BOT AapoHocHiAa, KaK coAnte 3o0omoe, H10BHCAa B BO3AyX e- BeA4KOAenHbIHA MHr, 34ecb A0A>KeH H-po3By'aTb AHLIb rpemecKHH A3bIK: B3HTb B pyKH %ie]bftu MUp, KCK aj6AoKo npocmoe. (No. I I 7)

In No. I23, the apple tree's loss of its fruit is linked with blasphemy: H CHOBa a6AOUR TepqeT AHKHI HIAO4,

H4 TaT?HblIA o6pa3 MHe MeAbKaeT, H 6ooxyAbcm6yem, H cam ce6H KtHHem ...

In No. I98, the reference to the apple is linked with lies: )KH3Hb ynaAa, KaK 3apfHHuLa,

KaK B CTaKaH BO,4bI peCH14ia,

H30nea6ucb Ha KOPHIO HHKOFO X He BHHIO ...

XoxeMb lL6JtoKa HOMHOrO ...

Where an apple is mentioned in closest connection with the meaning of the poem, however, it is linked with the making of a vow. One of these instances is poem No. 138, written at the same time as 'Nashedshii podkovu'. It has to do with the French Revolution and the Tennis Court oath - (jeu de paume, incidentally, is translated into Russian as 'igra v laptu'), 'never to separate and to meet wherever circumstances might make it necessary for it to meet, until the Constitution has been establislhed and set on a firm foundation'.78 Mandel'shtam suggests the fragility of the oath: 'E;Abm1eroAoBble- TaM PYKII O1,HHMaAH / 1 XcUm6O'u Ha IIeCKCe, KaK R6ILOom HirpaFAH (No. I38). (The 'bol'shegolo- vye' are the Assembly members, and 'ruki podnimali' means voting.)

77 Compare in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, 5, 34 and 37, 'A 5A roBOpo BaM: Ie iKAlI HCb Bonce ...'. 'Ho ,a 6yACT CAOBO Bame: "Aa, Aa", "iieT, MeT"; a 'ITO cBepx FTOFO, TO OT AyKaBoro'

78 Quoted from Louis Madelin, The French Revolution, London, I933, p. 62. Mandel'shtam is playing upon the phonetic closeness of the words paume and pomme.



32 DIANA MYERS

In the poem 'I ianvaria I924' (No. I 40), the theme is already one of betrayal of Russian revolutionary ideals by the Revolution and the deceitful nature of the new era:

YweAH H npe6am H030pHOMY 3AOCAOBbIO

BHOBb naXHeT 6JLoKom MOP03 HpUCfly MyAHy1O, eTBepTOMy COCAOBbIO 14 KJULl6BZ KpynHbie 6o cfe3?

Mandel'shtam goes on to question the age: Koro eue y6bemb? Koro eige npocAaBHmb?

KaKylo BbIAyMaeIIb AoH(b?(No. I 40)

Implied above all here is the vow of Herzen and Ogarev on Sparrow Hills.

CaAHAOCb COAHLUe, KyriOAa 6AeCTeAH ....> HOCTOHAH MbI, HOCT0O1AH ... H,

B,APYr o6HRBHIHCb npucx?-yJtu, B BH,AY BCeH MOCKBbI, HO)KePTBOBaTb HauIIeH A(H3HbIO Ha H36paHHyIO HaMH 60pb6y.

CweHa 3Ta MOwKeT HOKa3aTbCo oleHb HaTHHyTOH, o0'eHb TeaTpaAbHOH4, a

meWCAY TeM xepe3 ABaLaTb LeCTb AeT H TpOHYT 0 cJe3, BCHOMHHaq ee, oHa 6bIAa CBATO HCKpeHHa, 3TO AOKa3aAa BCH WKH3Hb Hama. Ho, BH4HO,

OA1HOKa,5 cyAb6a nopa>KaeT Bce o6emb, AaHHbIC Ha 3TOM MeCTe < ...>79

Quotations from the poets of Russia's 'Golden Age' should also be noted - particularly from Pushkin's 'Andrei Shen'e':

51 3peA TBOHX CbIHOB rpaKAaHCKyIo OTBary, 1 CAbIuiA 6paTCKH4i HX o6em,

BeAHKOAYMHyio npucxey, H4 CaMOBAaCTHIKO 6eCTpeneTHbWII OTBeT.80

There is also a description of the golden age in Batiushkov's free translation of Tibullus' XI Elegy from book I:

He 3HaHi CMepTHbIe HI 3A06bI, HH 4o6H4, HH KnJim6 napyuLenubix, HHI niOMIeCTeHI, HH4 3AaTa.81

The metaphorical association of the apple and the vow/breaking the vow goes back first and foremost, of course, to Adam and Eve; in Classical mythology it stems from the myth of Acontius and Cydippe. According to this, Acontius in the temple of Diana threw an apple in front of Cydippe, on which he had inscribed a vow to marry her. Cydippe read the vow aloud and threw the apple away. When she was preparing to marry another, however, the goddess visited an illness upon her, which eventually compelled her to marry Acontius.82 In

79 A. Herzen, 'Bvloe i dumy', Sochineniia (ten volumes), Moscow, I955-57, vol. 4, pp. 8o-8 i.

80 Pushkin, op. cit. (note 6i), vol. 2, p. 259. 81 Batiushkov, op. cit. (note i8), p. 224. 82 Ovid, Heroides, Moscow, I913, 20, 2I. The translation is bv F. F. Zelinskii.

Mandel'shtam's teacher of Classics at St Petersburg University.



MANDEL 'SHTAM S 'HORSESHOE FINDER 33

general, in Classical poetry the offer of an apple signified a declaration of love.

'Da' and 'net' were part of the poetic parlance: To 'x npaBAe - Aa, HeupaBAe - HeT ...

(Del'vig, 'Proshchal'naia pesn' vospitannikov Tsarskosel'skogo litseia')83

PaBHo0yLnHoe ',a' IAH 'HeT' VlOBTOp,qTb cyp,aeHo BaM ro,Aam ...

(Annenskii, 'Pod zelenym abazhurom') Ay',m OT HPHI3pa'iHbIX HAaHeT Ha <<ga>> H <<HeT>>, Ha ?ax!?>> <<6A>>, ....

(Annenskii, 'C helovek') 84 ... MeMAy a H HeT OH Aaace pa3MaXHYBIlHCb C KOAOKOAbHH KpIOK BbIMOPOIHT ...

(Tsvetaeva, 'Poet')85 F4e <<Aas H <<HeT>> HrpaAO B AypaqK(H FAe TyrIOCTb CHlpqTaAaCb B OTIKH <...> H4 rpawcaHe peuIH CTaAH rpawKAaHe KH3HH

He B 9TOM AH, o neCHb, 6er TBOH? (Khlebnikov, 'Sinie okovy')86

HecnpaBeAAHBOCTb HyHCAaCTC5I B o6lHqKax, a ripaBAa, ecTecTBeHHo, HeMHorocAoBHa. CaMbIe KOPOTKiHe CAOBa Ha cBeTe: '4a" H "HeT". 51 me7iTaio O Ilbece, PHTM KOTOPOH 6bIA 6bI TaK iKe eCTeCTBeH, KaK AIO0H,

roBopigiHe "Aa" H "HeT", a He "BH4HTe AH" HAll "3HaeTe AH" ...

(Pasternak)87

Doubtless Mandel'shtam felt the need to introduce 'da' and 'net' into the stanza, with its simple unambiguous attitude to truth in response to the rejection -or reinterpretation - of Christian tradition and values, best exemplified in poetry by Symbolism. Specifically, the formula 'da i net' was often used by Ivanov, and is employed throughout the article 'O nepriiatii mira'. The basic idea of the article is that in order to attain the higher truth ('Da') one must pass through a denial of the world ('Net'); thus the distinction between the two becomes blurred. Ivanov's article is full of such sentences as:

TaKoe HerpH4HTHe MHpa MbI Ha3bIBaeM UipaBbIM, H60 'HeHpHMHpHMoe HeT', H3 Koero ypKe cuHeT B CBOHX COKPOBeHHbIX BO3MOWKHOCT5X 'cAerIH- TeAbHOe 4a'.

83 A. Del'vig, Stikhotvoreniia, Moscow, 1983, p. 83. 84 Innokentii Annenskii, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, Leningrad, 1959, pp. 91, I46. 85 Marina Tsvetaeva, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy v piati tomakh, New York, i 980- , vol. 3, I 983,

p.67. 86 Khlebnikov, op. cit. (note 67). vol. I, Poemy, pp. 292-93. 87 Aleksandr Gladkov, Vstrechi s Pasternakom, Paris, I973, p. 90.

2



34 DIANA MYERS

HeInp 1HwTiHe MHipa AOA>KHO, 'TO6bI CTaTb eCHCTBeHHbIM, KOpeHHTbCH <...>

B He143peteHHOM 'a' HeT', cH5igeM B FAy6HHe Moero M4KpOKOCMa.88

So Mandel'shtam bids farewell to the Christian age which recedes into the past, and what remains of it is, as it were, the cast of a child's voice. But the cast - slepok - could mean both that of a death-mask and that of a sculpture.89

STANZAS SIX, SEVEN AND EIGHT

The sixth stanza depicts the world after the completion of the transformations; phenomena have taken on a new quality and have finally stiffened and turned into their signs, which few can decode. What was meaningful in the context of its moribund age becomes fossilized and Mandel'shtam seeks these remains of the past, like an archaeologist searching for the traces of some dead civilization, of which only memories remain. Memories of the past are conveyed sculpturally, like the echo of an event, frozen in eternity.

BMeCTO ?KHBbIX AHL; BCHOMHHaTb CAeHKH rOAOCOB. OCAenHyTb. OCH3aTb H y3HaBaTb CAyxOM. H1eMaAbHbIH yAeA! TaK BXO,I4HHb B HaCTOIuAee, B

COBpeMeHHOCTb, KaK B pyCAO BbICOXIne H peKH.

<. .. H Bce >(e, AHIHb MaCKaMH liy>KHx rOAOCOB YKpaIfleHbI nyCTbie CTeHbI MOerO ?I(HAHHa. BcriOMHHaTb - 4ATH OAHOMY O6paTHO HO PYCAY BbIcoxmaeH peKH!90

We recall that 'the era tinkled like a golden sphere' and the ringing continues although the reason for it has 'disappeared'- the year-count of our era is not merely drawing towards an end, it has ended. The analogy also obtains in the case of the dying stallion whose shapely curved neck 'still preserves the memory of galloping on flying feet'.91 No matter how beguiling his memories, to run, i.e. to carry out his primary function, is now beyond him. In the same way, the horseshoe, no matter how shiny its finder rubs it, will never 'strike sparks from the stone', that is, it loses its primary designation, turning into a knick- knack, a decoration, at best into a good-luck symbol.92

88 Viacheslav Ivanov, op. cit. (note 6o), pp. io8, I IO. 89 Compare 'BHYTpeHHHIr4 o6pa3 CTHxa Hepa3Ay'HM c 6ecqHcAeHHoi cMeHoHi BbIpaKeHHi4,

MeAbKa1oLuHX Ha AH4le roFopBuAero H BOAHyio0geroCA CKa3HTeAA. I4CKyCcTBO perH HmeHHO 4CKaAcaeT Hame AHTIO, B3pbIBaeT ero rnoKoI, HapyuIaeT MaCKy'. ('Razgovor o Dante', SS, 2, p.365). 90 "'V ne po chinu barstvennoi shube"', SS, 2, Pp. I 02-08 (103-o4).

91 Compare the horse/poet analogy: '110oTbI-6HTIorM, no3TbI-TA;qKeAoBo3bI eue pa3 cABHHYAH C MeCTa T>KeAyAIO KoAeCHHIAY AaTHHCKoro reHHI4 ('[Zhiul' Romen]', SS, 2, PP. 358-62 (360); '3peTb 6er xoHeil H 6o0i neBsuoB' (Zhukovskii, op. cit. (note 24), p. 85); 'A

MOH yAeA / - KOHHbM HaneBOM, 30AHHCKHM Aa4oM/ BeHMaTb repoA' (Pindar, 0., i, 105, quoted from Gasparov, pp. 12-13).

92 We find the most striking resemblance to the imagery of the sixth and seventh stanzas in Khlebnikov: 'Wi O 4CAaTb c 'eTBepTOR Horoli? C KonbITOM, pa36HTbIM o KaMHH! nvrH4? I [IOCTaB4Tb Ha CTOA, rje IBeTbI? MeKA4y IsBeTOB H CTeKAYHHbIX KVyUHHoB?' ('Chu! zashumeli ...' [see note 67], p. 176).




In the sixth and seventh stanzas both desperation and a glimmer of hope may be detected: objects and phenomena belonging to the past do not disappear altogether; somebody finds them and lovingly polishes them to brightness - albeit using fur. The horseshoe is not left to rust in the earth, but it will never tell its story.93 This theme is reinforced in the last lines of the seventh stanza, filled as they are with the realization of the inadequacy of such a substitution and the inevitability of irreplaceable loss. They assert, however, the preservation in one form or another of that which was formerly full of life and living processes.

Hence the onset of dumbness is not synonymous with total oblivion after all, Mandel'shtam writes that 'human lips, which have nothing

more to say, preserve the form of the last word spoken', just as ajug once filled with water retains the sense of weight.

However, there is ambivalence here: the silent lips are crying for help, and one cannot slake a thirst from a non-existent jug.

The phrase 'nothing to say' in stanza seven reflects not so much outside circumstances compelling silence as an inner crisis of the poet himself. 'Nothing to say' does not mean that he was prevented from speaking: there were no listeners and he literally had nothing to say. In this lay the whole horror, since a confession of this kind meant suicide for a poet. It was not a chance exclamation, however; it stemmed directly from Mandel'shtam's Weltanschauung as he became involved in real events which, it seemed, had no room either for his views or for his poetry.

From this moment, Mandel'shtam goes over to a personal theme and begins to speak for himself, for he has 'suddenly' remembered that what has nourished his poetry until now has receded into the past. He can no longer write of the past or in the old manner. It is not only the further development of his poetry which tells us this, purely biographical facts confirm it. After 'Nashedshii podkovu' Mandel'shtam wrote only a few poems, the most significant being 'Grifel'naia oda' (I923) and 'i

ianvaria 1924'; both develop themes begun in 'Nashedshii podkovu', the first of these being the relationship between time and creativity, the second, the dying era itself. He spoke again in a completely new tone in I930 after his journey to Armenia. For now, however, he merely acknowledges, with the abstracted gaze of someone looking at himself from the side, that creativity has perished because the soil which nourished it has been so over-ploughed as to become barren.

In I935 Mandel'shtam tried to explain why he could not write in his usual way and why he had to introduce the 'breath of prose' into his work:

93 In Mandel'shtam's poetry the sound of hoofs and horseshoes symbolizes the continuity in poetic tradition: 'O BpemeHax npOCTbIX 14 rpy6blX/ KonbITa KOHCKHe TBepAqT' (No. 6o); '14 CBeTAbIM pyeIeHKoM Te-ieT paccKa3 JIOAKOB ... (No. I 38).



36 DIANA MYERS

Bce OT o6MeAeHH5I CAOBap3I, a aTO OT BOpOHeXKCKOFO OCKYAeHHJ1 HHTCAAeCKTa ... > 4aAbuie OHIITb 0 TOM, 'YTO BCe o6MeAeAO, eCTb TOAbKO

KB4TaHUHH, a He CMbICAOBbIe cAoBa.94

This internal crisis was accompanied by, and was a consequence of, changes in external circumstances. Unlike in 192I, it was unnecessary to state that culture had been separated from the state and resembled the monasteries which had been retained by the state 'for advice'.95 The state was aiming to subordinate culture, although at first this looked like a desire on the part of the servants of culture to flatter the state and occupy the leading positions in art themselves. Various literary groupings, especially Novyi Lef, aspired to the leading role in serving the aims of party and people, stressing their own closeness to the people and their ability to give expression to communist ideology. The suicidal tendency within the Russian intelligentsia, which Man- del'shtam had observed in relation to the development of Russian culture in the nineteenth century, passed beyond the intellectual sphere into the physical and social world. Groups seeking to suppress others prepared the ground for their own physical destruction in the thirties. These changes were speedily reflected in Mandel'shtam's own position:

B 23 rOAy lpOH301HAO HeCTO, pe3KO H3MeHHBLiee HOAOACeHHe MaH-

AeAbmlITaMa, KaKOe-TO COBemlaHHe H4AH rIOCTaHOBAeHHie, KTO ero 3HaeT, HO OH B4pyF 6bIA CH5IT CO CmeTOB. LIMqI ero Hcme3AO co CH1H4CKOB COTpyAHHKOB Bcex AKypHaAOB, BC1OAy CTaAH HicaTb, 'ITO OH 6poCHA H033H10 H 3aHAAC5

HepeBoAaMH, 3a rpaHHLieW 3TO AOBepMHBO HOBTOp1AH rAy60KOMbIC-

AeHHbIe ra3eTbI BpoAe 'HaKaHyHe', CAOBOM, HaxiaAaCb O+H4H_aAbHaq

H30AA5I4H3, AARIaUJC5I n0 HbIHeLHHHH AeHb. '06UgeCTBO' cpa3y OTuaT-

HyAOCb, H y;Ke HHKTO He ipeAAaraA eMy BCTyHaTb B AHTepaTYPHbIe C003bI.

1A,AeOAFH5A Ha6HpaAa CHAbI.96

Of itself, this fact could not be the reason for the crisis. It did underline, however, the precarious nature of Mandel'shtam's position. But it is one thing not to be printed, quite another to be convinced that your readers have no need of you, that indeed you have no readers, or, still worse, that you have nothing to say to them. As early as I9I3,

Mandel'shtam had written: HITaK, eCAH OT4eAbHbIe CTHXOTBOpeHHI4 (B opme HOCAaHHH. HAH

HOCBAIICeHHI,I) Hi MOryT o6pamaTbCAI K KOHKpeTHbIM AHI4aM, - H033H14, KaK

ueAoe, BcerAa HaHpaBA3ieTCI K 6OAee HAM MeHee AaAeKOMy, He43-

BeCTHOMy aApecaTy, B Cyi4eCTBOBaHHH KOTOpOFO 1103T He MO>KeT COM-

HeBaTbCYI, He YCOMHHBLHHCb B ce6e.97

94 Gershtein, op. cit. (note 22), p. 204. 95 'Slovo i kul'tura', SS, 2, p. 223. 96 Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Vtoraia kniga, Paris, 1972, p. 14I . 97 'O sobesednike', SS, 2, p. 240.




And on the same topic, but now concretely applied to himself, he replied to a questionnaire in I928:

OKTsi6pbCKai peBOA1OTIqH He MOrFA He HOJBAHJTb Ha MOHo pa6oTY, TaK KaK OTHKAa y MeHK '6viorpaqn)o', owyweHne A'IIHOH 3Ha-IHMOCTH. 31 6AaroAapeH en 3a TO, ITO oHa pa3 HaBcerAa HOAOAK4Aa KOHeiL AYXOBHO4 o6ecne-ieHHOCT4 H CyIWeCTBOBaHHILO Ha KyAbTYPHY1O peHTy < ....> qyBCTByIO ce6H AOAA(HHKOM peBoAIOA4H, HO Hp1HHO1y el AapbI, B KOTOpbIX OHa rIoKa 'ITO He HyPKMaeTCY.98

The last stanza intensifies and rounds off the theme of having 'nothing to say'. The opening relates all that has been said to the distant past, thus permitting the seeming contradiction that the poet actually continues speaking:

To, MTO 1 cel4iac roBoplo, FOBOpKO He 3,

A BbIPbITO H3 3eMAH4, io0406HO 3epHaM OKaMeHeAOH HineHHL4bI.

The rift between the poet and the time and space in which he lives is total. A dichotomy is taking place between the human I living now, and the I of the poet living in the past and speaking a dead language. His language is like wheat, preserved but unable to germinate.99 It is the same horseshoe, no longer able to strike sparks from the stone, the same lips stiffened into the shape of the last word they spoke, the empty jug which still keeps its feeling of weight. The coins, no longer in circulation, are now lying in the earth 'with equal honour' - their nominal purchasing power has little interest for the archaeologist. Mandel'shtam has an interesting commentary on these lines about the coins in 'Gumanizm i sovremennost", written apparently some time earlier than 'Nashedshii podkovu'.

To, xITO LeHHOCTH ryMaHH3Mm HbIHC CTaAH peAKH, KaK 6bI H3-b3ITbI H3 yriOTpe6AeHHYL H nOdCHy4HbI, BOBCe He eCTb AYpHOA 3HaK.

FyMaHHCTH'ieCKHe ULeHHOCTH TOAbKO YELiAH, CHp3ITaAHCb, KaK 30AOTa1 BaAIOTa, HO, KaK 30AOTOH 3anac, OH1l o6ecne1n4BaIoT Bce 4AeHHoe o6pa- uleHie COBpeMeHHOIi EBPOnbl H noAcriy,AHO ypaBARHOT HM TeM 6oAee BAaCTHO.

Ilepexo4 Ha 30AOTyKO BsaAOTy eAo 6yAyiero, H B o6aCaTH KYAbTYPbI ripeAcTonT 3aMeHa BpeMeHHbIX H4Ae - 6yMa)I4HbIX BbIflyCKOB - 30AOTbIM 'IeKaHOM eBpone cKoro rymaH4CTHi-eCKOF0 HacAe/acTBa, H Hr no4 3aCTy- nOM apxeOAOra 3B5LKHYT ripeKpaCHbie PAOpHHbI ryMaHH3Ma, a YBH451T CBOJl AeHb I, KaK xoAq-iaL 3BOHKa5L MOHeTa, HoIo4ayT HO pyKaM, Kor,a HaCTaHeT CpOK.100

98 'Poet o sebe', SS, 2, p. 217. 99 On this, see E. A. Toddes, 'Stat'ia "Pshenitsa chelovecheskaia" v tvorchestve Man-

del'shtama 2o-kh godov', and Mandel'shtam's essay of that name, Tynianovskii sbornik. Tret'i tynianovskie chteniia, ed. M. 0. Chudakova et al., Riga, I 988, pp. I 84-2 I 7. 100 'Gumanizm i sovremennost", SS, 2, pp. 352-54 (354). Compare Andrei Belyi, 'IHpeB-

paiueHwIe KyAbTypHOll eJOpM4pylO1LUeA CHAbI B HpO4yKT nOTpe6AeHH4[ npeBparaeT XAe6 >KH3H11 B IepCTBeiOi4WH MepTBeHHbIii KaMeHb; OH KyeTCI B MOHeTy; H KOHI4TCq KaHnTaA.' (Andrei Belyi, Revoliutsiia i kul'tura [I9I 7], Letchworth, I97I, p. 6).



38 DIANA MYERS

Notwithstanding the short time interval between the two pieces, there is hardly a trace of this optimism in 'Nashedshii podkovu'. Gold coins will not pass from hand to hand and cannot regain their intrinsic value - they are already equated with silver and bronze coins; just as words have become undifferentiated ('no one word is better than another'), for time, 'the age', has tried to gnaw them. Even if it could not manage this it has left its teeth marks on them, transforming them into archaeological curiosities.

The poem ends: BpeMI cpe3aeT MeHAI, KaK MOHeTy, H MHe y? He XBaTaeT MeH5I caMoro.101

The last lines somewhat disrupt the imposed structure of the poem Mandel'shtam moves from the third person to the first. We

experience no relief, however; on the contrary, a tragic note breaks into the verse, which has, up till now, striven to maintain a neutral tone.102

In the middle of the twenties it seemed to many poets that the end of Russian lyric poetry was imminent. An atmosphere had built up in which either one's poetic voice had to be disciplined to write on topical themes, or one was consigned, still living, to the archives. Man- del'shtam indeed found himself in the position of an exiled Ovid among a 'youthful alien tribe' which could not understand his language, culture or values. And it is Ovid whose presence permeates the mood, imagery and subtext of the entire poem:

The soil which has never been accustomed to rest ... wearied with continually producing, grows old. If a horse shall be always engaging in the contest of the circus, without intermission of any of the races, he will die. Although a ship be strong, she will go to pieces at sea, if she is never dry. An endless series of troubles wears me away too and before my time forces me to be an old man.103

The sense of belonging to the past and of not being needed by the present, accompanied by a creative crisis, is a fact of Mandel'shtam's biography. However, the very fabric of the poem seems to negate this. The richness of the subtext, which is permeated with references to the Classics, affirms once more the principles of Mandel'shtam's poetics. And its fundamental message is that a poetic word, once pronounced,

101 Sologub once said to Mandel'shtam: 'Ha Bac yKe BH4eH 3y6 BpeMeHH' (quoted from Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, op. cit., p. 94. Compare 'H MeHH cpe3aeT BpeMJ / KaK CKOCI4AO TBOU Ka6AyK' (No. I 29); or 'BOloCb AHIJb TOT noHMeT Te65,q / B KOM 6ecnoMOUAHaH YAbI6Ka qeAOBeKa, / KOTOpblfi nOTepiA ce6'. (No. I 40). 102 E. Mindlin, to whom Mandel'shtam read this poem, recalls that he began to read in a

steady voice, 'like the beginning of some narrative poem in a calm, epic style'. He ended in a state of tension, panting, as if lacking air. See E. Mindlin, Neobyknovennye sobesedniki, Moscow, I968, P. 92. 103 Ovid, Ex Ponto, I, 4.



MANDELISHTAM S HORSESHOE FINDER) 39

becomes part of the texture of the poetic language and is retained in the memory; transformed by memory it can take on new life in a new time and in a new space, albeit metaphorical.



Documents

The Hum of Metaphor and the Cast of Voice. Observations on Mandel'shtam's 'The Horseshoe Finder