Reviews
Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam by Ilya Kaminsky, Osip Mandelstam, Christian Wiman
wshier's review against another edition
I am completely unqualified to rate, but felt like I had to read it given current events. I knew that Mandelstam lived in Kiev during the Russian Civil War and for a time in Crimea as well. The last poem in this collection:
Through Kiev, through the streets of the monster,
some wife's trying to find her husband.
One time we knew that wife,
the wax cheeks, the dry eyes.
Gypsies won't tell fortunes for beauties.
Here the concert hall has forgotten the instruments.
Dead horses along the main street.
The morgue smells in the nice part of town.
The Red army trundled its wounded
out of town on the last streetcar,
one blood-stained overcoat calling,
"Don't worry. We'll be back!"
Through Kiev, through the streets of the monster,
some wife's trying to find her husband.
One time we knew that wife,
the wax cheeks, the dry eyes.
Gypsies won't tell fortunes for beauties.
Here the concert hall has forgotten the instruments.
Dead horses along the main street.
The morgue smells in the nice part of town.
The Red army trundled its wounded
out of town on the last streetcar,
one blood-stained overcoat calling,
"Don't worry. We'll be back!"
lauren_endnotes's review against another edition
5.0
STOLEN AIR: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam, translated from the Russian by Christian Wiman with contributions and Introduction by Ilya Kaminsky, 2012 by Ecco.
You're one person when you pick up a book, and when you finish, you're quite another. That's definitely how this one struck me.
Initial thoughts when I picked up this slim volume of modernist Russian poetry: past-time, a toe-in-the-water, a let's see why I keep seeing his name mentioned.
Post-reading thoughts: is this what perfection looks like? Did I just read my favorite poetry collection ever?
I've read this collection THREE times since Friday. Twice aloud to myself because the poems *sing* in a way I haven't quite encountered. Wiman's translation is sublime.
The Introduction essay by (NBA-shortlisted) poet Ilya Kaminsky propelled me right into more research on Mandelstam, and his unique poetic style. #Kaminsky notes Mandelstam's birthplace in Poland and his family's migration to Russia, learning Russian as his second language. He muses if this is why Mandelstam's use of language is different, more playful with onomatopoeia and lilting phrases and meter.
In 1934, Mandelstam wrote a short poem and recited it to some friends at a gathering. One of these friends informed on him and his subversive words about Joseph Stalin. Mandelstam was arrested and imprisoned for this act. And it wasn't the last time either. Mandelstam and his wife, Nadezhda, were both arrested again, and sent to the gulag, where Mandelstam later died in 1938. Nadezhda survived and went on to write several books / memoirs about her and Osip's lives. Right after reading this, I ordered a copy of her book, Hope Agaist Hope, and some of Osip's translated essays.
You're one person when you pick up a book, and when you finish, you're quite another. That's definitely how this one struck me.
Initial thoughts when I picked up this slim volume of modernist Russian poetry: past-time, a toe-in-the-water, a let's see why I keep seeing his name mentioned.
Post-reading thoughts: is this what perfection looks like? Did I just read my favorite poetry collection ever?
I've read this collection THREE times since Friday. Twice aloud to myself because the poems *sing* in a way I haven't quite encountered. Wiman's translation is sublime.
The Introduction essay by (NBA-shortlisted) poet Ilya Kaminsky propelled me right into more research on Mandelstam, and his unique poetic style. #Kaminsky notes Mandelstam's birthplace in Poland and his family's migration to Russia, learning Russian as his second language. He muses if this is why Mandelstam's use of language is different, more playful with onomatopoeia and lilting phrases and meter.
In 1934, Mandelstam wrote a short poem and recited it to some friends at a gathering. One of these friends informed on him and his subversive words about Joseph Stalin. Mandelstam was arrested and imprisoned for this act. And it wasn't the last time either. Mandelstam and his wife, Nadezhda, were both arrested again, and sent to the gulag, where Mandelstam later died in 1938. Nadezhda survived and went on to write several books / memoirs about her and Osip's lives. Right after reading this, I ordered a copy of her book, Hope Agaist Hope, and some of Osip's translated essays.
serenaac's review against another edition
5.0
Stolen Air by Osip Mandelstam, translated by Christian Wiman is a selection of poems from Mandelstam’s entire career translated from his non-native Russian into English. The introduction is rather long, but with good reason as it strives to capture a poet that was always evolving and striving to breath new life into the Russian language and to provide a voice to those seen as outsiders of the government. Living through WWI and a Russian revolution, Mandelstam — a Poland born Jew who moved to Russia with his parents — became an exile and later died in a Siberian transit camp in 1938 after being arrested.
Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2012/05/stolen-air-by-osip-mandelstam-translated-by-christian-wiman.html
Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2012/05/stolen-air-by-osip-mandelstam-translated-by-christian-wiman.html
msgtdameron's review against another edition
4.0
I didn't enjoy Mandelstams' poetry as much as I thought I would. His style is different from Arkhamov and maybe that's on me since I enjoyed Anna's poetry much more. Several of his poems about Stalin flip easily into comments about President Trump. But egocentric megalomaniacs are all the same so the comments should be similar. Enjoyable poetry for those who want to think.
lokster71's review
4.0
I was aware of who Mandelstam was and I have read a handful of his poetry before but this is a fine collection. Perhaps I am projecting a little, based on what I know of Mandelstam's life and fate, but there is a melancholy air to much of this poetry. However, also joy at creativity and poetry. It seems from this work that if ever a man lived to write poetry and was driven to do so, even at his lowest personal ebb then that man was Mandelstam.
One of the poems in this collection, 'The Stalin Epigram', probably sealed his fate. In the first instance, after he was grassed up by someone, it led to his exile, which was a surprisingly lenient fate but I expect he was not to be forgiven or forgotten and he died, on his way to yet another exile, cold and broken. We know a lot about this because his wife, Nadezhda Mandelstam, told their story in two books, 'Hope Against Hope' and 'Hope Abandoned'. There is a quote from that book, which Clive James hammered away at in his 'Cultural Amnesia':
"We all belonged to the same category marked down for absolute destruction. The astonishing thing is not that so many of us went to concentration camps or died there, but that some of us survived. Caution did not help. Only chance could save you."
—Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Abandoned
Which I think explains Osip Mandelstam's doom better than I ever could.
There is beautiful work in here. It makes me once more wish I could read and write Russian. I fear there is something one misses when reading poetry in translation, although as - even if I did read Russian fluently - I'd be doing my own translation and without the poetic touch perhaps someone else's expert translation is the best I can hope for.
I'll leave you with a few lines from Poem 378 (p127 of this old, old edition) as a sample and recommend you read them yourself:
"Better to cleave my heart
into blue shards, ringing,
then when I die, keeping faith
to the last with the lovers,
every sky in my breast will echo,
ringing out, and up."
One of the poems in this collection, 'The Stalin Epigram', probably sealed his fate. In the first instance, after he was grassed up by someone, it led to his exile, which was a surprisingly lenient fate but I expect he was not to be forgiven or forgotten and he died, on his way to yet another exile, cold and broken. We know a lot about this because his wife, Nadezhda Mandelstam, told their story in two books, 'Hope Against Hope' and 'Hope Abandoned'. There is a quote from that book, which Clive James hammered away at in his 'Cultural Amnesia':
"We all belonged to the same category marked down for absolute destruction. The astonishing thing is not that so many of us went to concentration camps or died there, but that some of us survived. Caution did not help. Only chance could save you."
—Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Abandoned
Which I think explains Osip Mandelstam's doom better than I ever could.
There is beautiful work in here. It makes me once more wish I could read and write Russian. I fear there is something one misses when reading poetry in translation, although as - even if I did read Russian fluently - I'd be doing my own translation and without the poetic touch perhaps someone else's expert translation is the best I can hope for.
I'll leave you with a few lines from Poem 378 (p127 of this old, old edition) as a sample and recommend you read them yourself:
"Better to cleave my heart
into blue shards, ringing,
then when I die, keeping faith
to the last with the lovers,
every sky in my breast will echo,
ringing out, and up."
More...