Hi there. I am Osip. Today I noticed your name in the pit. Imagine my suprise to see you there.
Many here who were around for the “Multiple Osips” troll attack knew I chose my screen name Osip due to my love of Russian poetry and Osip Mandelstam in particular.
I noticed you only had 38 posts. I was relieved you did not sneak in to long ago.
I ran a search on your screen name. 38 posts in 4 Pit Threads. Oh no this might not be good I said to myself.
I read your posts. I was relieved to see them well written and no more offensive than any other pit post.
So, I just want to say.
Welcome to the SDMB. Is about time someone with some taste came around this way!
So, tell us a bit more about yourself Mandelstam.
Nice to see you come in and say hello to the gang.
Everyone else say hello to Mandelstam.
Osip
Is really Nice Duck Duck.
I saw a Honda Hybrid car today while working. 70MPG in the city and 80 mpg on the highway!
talk about low gass bills… I want one now.
I apologize for not having noticed your thread. I am honored; also honored that you didn’t find my aggressive Pit threads too overbearing.
It’s hard for me to explain why I prefer to be in the Pit–but part of it is to do with being so busy that I shouldn’t really be posting anywhere. I can’t even say how much longer I’ll be there but in the meantime I will visit this thread for as long as it lasts.
I love Mandelstam but, alas, I don’t actually know much about other Russian literature (except for the great nineteenth-century novelists whom I know a little). I was an English major in college and read Mandelstam in a course on modernism. But if you want to recommend some favorite modern Russian novelists, my SO will want to read them. (At the moment I am working on a big project for work and have almost no time to read literature
Thanks again for introducing yourself. I was really surprised to see an “Osip” show up on the “My First Rant” thread–and thought it might be Feelgud’s sockpuppet!
Hurm… To recomend a Soviet era poet… All depends on what you like.
Akhmatova is dark, hauntingly sad, yet has a great inner strengh.
Mayakovsky is arrogent, vain yet, has emotional pain that bleeds thru for his unrequitted love for Lily Brik.
Yevtushenko is great as well.
Drop me an e-mail sometime and I can always recomend more soviet poetry and some literature as well. (Bulgakov “heart of a dog” is great.
Hurm… best russian to english translator would be IMHO Albert C Todd. or Judith Hemschemeyer.
Also check out Bulgakovs “Master and Margarita”
That should slow you SO down a bit reading just a bit.
and Gorky’s “life of a Useless Man”
An interesting tale of a man during the russian civil war.
Gogol’s “dead souls” is a nice read at times.
So what is your favorite work by our Osya?
“A body was given to me” or maybe “the finder of horseshoes”
I personally have a fondness for “I’ll chase thru the Gypsy camp…” and “I’ll tell you bluntly…” Although “we live not feeling…” and “what is the name…” are pretty good.
Of course, one little poem of Osyas still touches me greatly, my former almost wife wrote out his poem “Take for joy’s sake, from these hands of mine…” out in a card for me on Valintines day a few years ago.
Oh yeah my e-mail address is (suprise suprise) Osipmand@aol.com.
Thanks very much for your advice on translations and Russian novels. Here, from #122, one of the Tristia poems (written to Olga Arbenina), is a favorite stanza:
One moment longer
and I shall say to you:
not joy but torment
I find in you.
And, as to a crime,
I’m drawn to you
by your bitten, tender,
confused cherry mouth.
Who translated that? MY copy (In english) translated byernard Meares reads.*
If you wait another instant,
It’s this I’ll say to you:
It isn’t joy but torment
That I find in you.
And, as if it were a crime,
What drags me back is this:
Your bitten and bewildered
Tender cherry lips.*
I am glad to see you know you Mandelstam.
So, what exactly do you do that keeps you from books and poetry?
Greetings, Osip. The translation I used was by Clarence Brown. If you haven’t seen his Cambridge University Press edition of Mandelstam (including biography and criticism) you would probably like it. I’m curious which of the two translations you think is closer. I think I prefer the sound of mine. You?
*“So, what exactly do you do that keeps you from books and poetry?” *
I’m a lawyer, but the less said of that, the better. Instead, another fine stanza courtesy of Brown’s edition.
“To liberate the captive age,
to make a start at the new world
the passages of knotted days
must be connected by a flute.
That’s the age that rocks the wave
with human melancholy
and in the grass the adder breathes
to the age’s golden measure”
Browns translation is more literal and closer to Osya’s actual words, Which when possible I prefer. Although I do like “your bitten, bewildered, tender cherry lips.” by Meares over Browns “Your bitten tender, confused cherry mouth.”
It just flows better in english, of course Mandelstam has always been one of the most Russian of poets and tough to translate.Tougher than Mayakovsky anyway.
Your a lawyer? that shatters my preconceived notion that you were the most perfect woman, combat boots and all
Even the presence of a SO was nothing compared to the fact you are a lawyer Yet, for your love of Osya I shall forgive you just this once try not to break my heart any more ok?
I shall leave you with a bit of Akhmatova until next time.
Only a few of the allotted days remain,
Nothing is frightening anymore,
But how can I forget that I heard
The beating of your heart?
Calmly I realize- therein lies the secret
Of unquenchable fire.
Let’s just meet accidentally.
And don’t you look at me.
“It just flows better in english, of course Mandelstam has always been one of the most Russian of poets and tough to translate.Tougher than Mayakovsky anyway.”
Interesting. In Brown’s edition, in which the poems are interleaved with commentary of various kinds, the Russian appears on top of the English. This might be useful to you though to me it’s, alas, entirely decorative.
*Your a lawyer? that shatters my preconceived notion that you were the most perfect woman, combat boots and all
Even the presence of a SO was nothing compared to the fact you are a lawyer *
Just as well. So far from the perfect woman I seem to be having trouble making myself even marginally understood over at the Pit. No matter. I don’t wear combat boots for nothing!
I can only hope (and believe) that a poetry lover such as yourself will be as fortunate in finding a sympathetic soul-mate as I have been; and more fortunate, perhaps, than my SO was when he chose a lawyer for his beloved. Did Mandelstam ever write a poem about lawyers in love? This would have to be during his Stalinist period
Thanks for Akhmatova.
Here, is another favorite of mine, Dylan Thomas:
“In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
Of the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.”
*Originally posted by Mandelstam *
**
I can only hope (and believe) that a poetry lover such as yourself will be as fortunate in finding a sympathetic soul-mate as I have been; and more fortunate, perhaps, than my SO was when he chose a lawyer for his beloved. **
I know I shall, And just teasing about the lawyer bit, my next door Neighbour is a good friend a lawyer.
** Did Mandelstam ever write a poem about lawyers in love? This would have to be during his Stalinist period
**
No that was Jackson Browne if I remember correctly.
**
So what do you do “for the common wages,” Osip? **
I am curently employed for a Locksmith company.
Here is a bit more Akhmatova
I no longer smile,
A freezing wind chills my lips,
One less hope becomes
One more song.
And this song, against my will,
I devote to desecration and mockery,
Because it is unbearably painful
For the soul to love silently.
Greetings Osip (or anyone else reading, for that matter)
Very beautiful. But it made me cold.
I hope the locksmith company treats you well.
I am wondering if you saw the movie Happiness and, if so, if you found the treatment of the immigrant Russians offensive or amusing.
Here is the second and last stanza of the same Dylan Thomas poem:
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.
I love the use of the word “spindrift” which, so far as I know, is something Thomas made up.
