MRCD037

FP: 24 September 1992, Purcell Room, London, 
Lucy Shelton, soprano, 
The Nash Ensemble, Lionel Friend, conductor.
Publ: MP, BH, HS

The poet Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) died in one of Stalin's concentration camps, a fate shared with many others who were amongst the greatest representatives of Russian culture from that period. His poetry was forbidden in our country as our generation began to read it in 'underground' typewritten copies. It was totally individual, very strong and intense, very exquisite and sometimes so complex that it was difficult to understand.

The cycle Eight Line Poems, written between 1933 and 1935, at first seemed to me something like miniature puzzles. But some magnetic power forced me to read again and again, to try and grasp their meaning, until I recognized them as amongst the most beautiful, concentrated, significant and profound poetry I had ever known, a poetic counterpart to the music of a favorite composer Anton von Webern. Something in these verses also reminded me of the poetry of William Blake: like him, Mandelstam here "holds Infinity in the palm of his hand and Eternity in an hour", and also makes Experience the principal subject of the text.

The main stimulus for me to compose the music to the poetry was to understand it more deeply, to reach inside it, to make it my own, to accomplish an act of co-authorship. I cannot attempt to explain the poetry, it is impossible. What I can do – to suggest my own musical reading of it.
 

В цикле использованы 5 из 11 Восмистиший Мандельштама (1933-34)

Осип Мандельштам: Восмистишия

1.

Люблю появление ткани,
Когда после двух или трех,
А то четырех задыханий
Прийдет выпрямительный вздох.
И дугами парусных гонок
Открытые формы чертя,
Играет пространство спросонок –
Не знавшее люльки дитя.

2.

О бабочка, о мусульманка,
В разрезанном саване вся,–
Жизняночка и умиранка,
Такая большая – сия!
С большими усами кусава
Ушла с головою в бурнус.
О флагом развернутый саван,
Сложи свои крылья – боюсь!

3.

И Шуберт на воде, и Моцарт в птичьем гаме,
И Гете, свищущий на вьющейся тропе,
И Гамлет, мысливший пугливыми шагами,
Считали пульс толпы и верили толпе.
Быть может, прежде губ уже родился шопот
И в бездревесности кружилися листы,
И те, кому мы посвящаем опыт,
До опыта приобрели [свои] черты.

4.

Скажи мне, чертежник пустыни,
Сыпучих песков геометр,
Ужели безудержность линий
Сильнее, чем дующий ветр?
– Меня не касается трепет
Его иудейских забот –
Он опыт из лепета лепит
И лепет из опыта пьет...

5.

В игольчатых чумных бокалах
Мы пьем наважденье причин,
Касаемся крючьями малых,
Как легкая смерть, величин.
И там, где сцепились бирюльки,
Ребенок молчанье хранит,
Большая вселенная в люльке
У маленькой вечности спит.

<1933-34>
 

Here the 5 of 11 Eight-line poems by Osip Mandelstam (1933-34)were set to music. I  provide with an approximate English version of these poems, perhaps the most complex and philosophical verses in the Russian language.

1.

I love the appearance of the tissue, 
When after two or three
Or perhaps four gasps
It comes, the straight deep breath. 
And by the sailing arcs of a regatta, 
Drawing the open forms,
The space being only half-awake plays 
Like a child, never used to knowing the cradle.

2.

O butterfly, O Moslem-woman,
All wrapped in a cut shroud, 
Living and dying
So big a one!
With long moustaches, a biter, 
All plunged in an Arabian mantle. 
O shroud unfolded like a flag, 
Fold up your wings, I am afraid!

3.

And Schubert on the water, and Mozart in the bird's hubbub,
And Goethe whistling on his twisting path,
And Hamlet thinking by the frightened steps,
They took the pulse of the crowd and trusted in the crowd. 
Perhaps a whisper was born before the lips,
And leaves whirled in the woodless world,
And those to whom we dedicated our experience
Gained their traits before any experience.

4.

Tell me, Desert Draftsman,
Geometer of the quicksands,
Is it true, that unrestrained lines
Are more powerful than the blowing wind? 
– I don't care about the trembling
Of his Judaic troubles. –
He shapes experience from babble,
And drinks babble from the experience.

5.

From needle-shaped pestilential glasses 
We drink the obsession of reasons,
We touch by the hooks the small –
As-simple-death Quantities.
And there where the spillikins are chained 
The baby keeps silence,
The Great Universe is sleeping
In the cradle of a small eternity.

Translation by © Dmitri Smirnov

© Copyright 1989 by  Dmitri Smirnov.
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