462
"Tell me a lie, please, " the visitor said.
"We live in a country of unbelievable freedom."
" Is tha t a lie?"
" No," sa id Mme Mandelstam .
MADE LINE G . LEVINE
As I write, a t leas t ten of the di ssidents I put in touch with people inside
and o utside the USSR have been g ranted visas. Nadezhda Ma ndelstam remains
behind. No thing anybody has tried seems able to help her.
Hope Against
Hope
and
Hope Abandoned
may expl a in why.
Jack Ludwig
MANDELSTAM . By Clarence Brown. Cambridge University P,,,,,,,.
$13.95.
OSIP MANDELSTAM : SELECTED POEMS . Translated by Clarence
BrownandW. S . Merwin. Atheneum . $6.25 .
Since hi s widow, Nadezhda Mandelstam, published her brilliant
memo irs,
Hope Against H ope,
in 1970, the fame o f Osip Mandelstam has been
steadil y increas ing outside the Soviet Union. The harrowing story o f the last
decade of Mandelstam 's life, whi ch came to an end in a Siberian transit camp
in 1938, has inev ita bly overshadowed his reputa tion as one o f the grea test
poets of our century, certa inly the equa l o f Elio t and Yea ts. It is a somber truth
that the poet's experiences as an o utcast victim of a vi cio us tota litarian state
are more familiar and comprehensible to us today than is the sometimes
difficult , elusive poe try fo r which he li ved .
Mandelstam 's poetry, unlike tha t o f his cl ose fri end and contemporary
Anna Akhmatova, is particularl y difficult to translate. The works o f the ea rl y
years especially (but no t exclusively) demand a·good dea l o f commenta ry. Such
well-known poems as "The AdmiraiLy," " A wandering fire a t a terrible height,"
and "On a sled covered with straw" may well present difficulties to readers who
lack a basic acqua intance with Ru ss ia's cities and hi story; consequently, what
will seem obvious to the Ru ss ian reader may appea r exo tic in translation .
Other poems assume an easy familiarity with European and classica l Mediter–
ranean arts. (Brown tells us tha t Mandelstam once irrita bl y defin ed Acmeism,
the school with which he has been identified, as "a long ing for world cul–
ture. " ) In ma ny o f hi s poems the mos t essentia l element is Mandelstam 's
famous mellow tona lity. Mandelstam o ften re inforces meaning with sound,
offering acoustic clues to his sometimes elusive imagery. This mu sica l element
