Epigraphs are taken from Anna Akhmatova, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh(Moscow, 1990), 2:137, and Bal'mont, K. D., Stikhotvoreniia, ed. Orlov, V.(Leningrad, 1969), 177 Google Scholar.

1. In addition to the poem analyzed here, Mandel'shtam's poems “Peterburgskie strofy” (1913) and “V Peterburge my soidemsia snova” (1920), his semiautobiographical essay “V ne po chinu barstvennoi shube” (1923), and his critical essay, “Barsuch'ia nora (A. Blok: 7 avgusta 1921 g.-7 avgusta 1922 g.)” contain allusions or references to “Shagi komandora. “

2. Osip, Mandel'shtam, Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh, ed. Struve, G. P.and Filippov, B. A.[1967-1981] (Moscow, 1991), 2:273Google Scholar(hereafter, Mandel'shtam, SS). Similarly Andre Chenier, one of Mandel'shtam's most beloved poetic precursors, “faced the task of realizing absolute fullness of poetic freedom within the boundaries of the narrowest canon, and he accomplished this task.” Ibid., 2:296.

3. Ibid., 2:273. Mandel'shtam thus repeats his own “trademark” definition of poetry from “Slovo i kul'tura“: “Poetry is a plow, churning up time so that the deep layers of time, its black earth, end up on top.” Ibid., 2:224.

4. See Blok's 1919 introduction to the unfinished third chapter of Vozmezdie, Sobranie sochinenii v vos'mi tomakh(Moscow, 1960-1963), 3:295-97 (hereafter, Blok, SS).

5. Akhmatova, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 2:172. Nadezhda Mandel'shtam emphasizes both the poet's openness (“I learn from everyone—even from Benedikt Livshits“) and his independence (not without some apparent polemical exaggeration): “He never once in his life remembered what Viacheslav Ivanov, [Fedor] Sologub, [Maksimil'ian] Voloshin, and others of the older generation said about poetry.” Mandel'shtam, Vtoraia kniga(Paris, 1972), 93. Cf. also Clare Cavanagh: “culture and poetic tradition become a kind of licensed thievery. They leave the poet free to ransack history for its treasures, to pick and choose among pasts.” Cavanagh, , Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition(Princeton, 1995), 96 Google Scholar. On the early Mandel'shtam and Tiutchev, see Toddes, E., “Mandel'shtam i Tiutchev,” International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics 17(1974): 59-85 Google Scholar; on the poet's letters to Ivanov, see A. Morozov's publication in Zapiski otdela rukopisei: Cosudarstvennaia biblioteka SSSR im. V. I. Lenina34 (1973): 258-74.

6. Innokentii Annenskii, “O sovremennom lirizme,” Apollon2 (1909): 7, noted in Gregory, Freidin, A Coat of Many Colors: Osip Mandelstam and His Mythologies of Self- Presentation(Berkeley, 1987), 44 Google Scholar. In this section of his review of contemporary poetry, Annenskii writes, “the champion of our young [poets] is without a doubt Aleksandr Blok. This is, in the fullest sense of the word and without the least irony, die beauty [krasa]of the upcoming poetry, why beauty!—it's enchantment [ocharovanie]. Not only an authentic [symbolist], a Symbolist by nature, Blok is himself a symbol.” Ibid.

7. Cf., for instance, Viktor Zhirmunskii's well-known comparison of the symbolists' poetry with “the musical lyric poetry of the romantics” and that of the “poets of Giperborei“with “the precise and conscious art of French classicism and the French eighteenth century. “ Zhirmunskii, “Preodolevshie simvolizm,” Voprosy teorii literatury(Leningrad, 1928; reprint, The Hague, 1962), 285; see also “O poezii klassicheskoi i romanticheskoi” and “Dva napravleniia sovremennoi liriki,” ibid., 175-89. Boris Bukhshtab, who challenges Zhirmunskii's definition of Mandel'shtam's poetry as classicist, nonetheless contrasts the two poets on the basis of the tendency of Blok's vocabulary to accrue symbolic meaning (according to Bukhshtab, Mandel'shtam's favorite words do not acquire a symbolic meaning because their context is always changing). Bukhshtab also writes of Mandel'shtam's poetry: “Mandel'shtarn's verse is completely impersonal [vnelichno], behind it there is no ‘image of the poet’ … a portrait accompanying Mandel'shtam's poetry would be artistic tacdessness.” Bukhshtab, “Poeziia Mandel'shtama,” Voprosy literatury, 1989, no. 1: 137-38, 146, 147. This is, of course, a stark contrast with the visual image that naturally accompanies Blok's poetry (cf. postcards above, as well as film embodiments of the Blokian hero, and so on).

8. Grishunin's article, A. L., “Blok i Mandel'shtam,”in Papernyi, Z. S., ed., Slovo i sud'ba: Osip Mandel'shtam. hsledovaniia i materialy(Moscow, 1991), 152-60Google Scholar, catalogues most of Blok's derogatory and often anti-Semitically tinged diary entries. He omits one particularly telling entry: “In the evening, the ‘Academy'—Piast's talk, his old article about the 'canon,’ Viacheslav Ivanov's verbosity [mnogoglagolanie]put me to sleep entirely. In the evening, we drink tea at ‘Kvisisana'—Piast, I and Mandel'shtam (the eternal [vechnyi]). “See entry for 29 October 1911, Blok, SS, 7:78. “Eternal” nicely situates Mandel'shtam among the other tiresome presences that oppress Blok, while simultaneously hinting at the younger poet's ethnic identity (zhid)and one widely noted element of his character (eternal wanderer). Cf. Akhmatova's description of the poet as “a vagabond in the sublime sense of the word,” cited in Omry Ronen, “Osip Mandelshtam (1891-1938),” in George Stade, ed., European Writers: The Twentieth Century(New York, 1990), 10:1629.

9. Mandel'shtam, SS, 2:348.

10. On akmeunderstood as ostrie(edge, tip, point) in the writings of acmeists and contemporaries, see R. D. Timenchik, “Zametki ob akmeizme,” Russian Literature7/8 (1974): 39-46; specifically in Mandel'shtam, see Omry Ronen, “Leksicheskii povtor, podtekst i smysl v poetike Osipa Mandel'shtama,” in Roman, Jakobson, van Schooneveld, C. H., and Worth, Dean S., eds., Slavic Poetics: Essays in Honor ofKiril Taranovsky(The Hague, 1973), 368-69Google Scholar.

11. On the role of charisma in Russian poetry, see Grigorii Freidin, “Sidia na saniakh: Osip Mandel'shtam i kharizmaticheskaia traditsiia russkogo modernizma,” Voprosy literalury, 1991, no. 1: 9-31; and Freidin, A Coat of Many Colors, 1-19 and elsewhere. On the symbolist lyric hero, Freidin writes the following: “In fact, these aspects of the lyric … constituted a specific ‘confessional’ mode, a matter of tradition and choice, which put a high premium on the poet's ‘sincerity’ of expression—a mode that Blok practiced with consummate skill.” Ibid., 47.

12. The word toskalacks a compelling equivalent in English. It combines connotations of world-weariness, longing, sorrow, and mental anguish and might be described as a feeling of palpable absence or emptiness.

13. Osip, Mandel'shtam, Kamen’(Leningrad, 1990), 148 Google Scholar.

14. See Clarence, Brown, Mandelstam(Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 179-80Google Scholar.

15. On Mandel'shtam's dramatization of his personal struggle with symbolism through the composition of the poems marked with the year 1912 in the 1916 edition of Kamen', see Goldberg, Stuart H., “Tripodnimaiu plenku voshchenoi bumagi …': Osip Mandelstam and the Boundaries of Mythopoetic Symbolism”(Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2001), 141-45Google Scholar.

16. Because of the nature of Mandel'shtam's poetics, a sense of the key intertextual links and undercurrents influencing the dynamics of any given poem is a prerequisite for well-rounded understanding. This is not to say that his poems cannot be read, appreciated, and loved without such an understanding, nor certainly that a particular, finite group of subtexts provides the “answers” to a poem's meaning (though certain key subtexts are so vivid and deeply woven into Mandel'shtam's own semantics that their presence can hardly be challenged). But Mandel'shtam's poems can certainly be read and experienced more deeply when we take into account the family banter of philology, this “sploshnaia tsitata i kavychki” (wall-to-wall citation and quotation marks). Mandel'shtam, SS, 2:253. In order to fully appreciate Mandel'shtam, we must understand how his semantics are exponentially enriched by his intertextuality and then begin to explore the manifold functions and tonal modulations of these allusions in his poetry.

In the following analysis, I have tried to build on the best in the existing tradition of subtextual scholarship, an approach pioneered in the 1970s in the groundbreaking works of scholars such as Kiril Taranovsky and Omry Ronen. At the same time, I have adapted my methodology to the specificities of this individual poem (and of Blok's unusually unified poetic output). Once the link to Blok's poetry has been established through subtext and the primary “identity” of the convalescent strongly confirmed, all of the details of the poem play out in implicit comparison to the functioning of analogous topoi in Blok's poetic system, even in die absence of specific textual antecedents. The appropriateness of such a meuSod is, I believe, affirmed by the strength of the results obtained.

17. On the applicability of Bloom's anxiety of influence theory to Russian literature, see R. D. Timenchik, who draws a useful distinction between intertext and influence, “Tekst v tekste uakmeistov,” Tekst v tekste. Trudy poznakovymsistemam 14 [Uchenyezapiski Tartuskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta567] (1981): 71, 68; Reynolds, A. W. M., “The Burden of Memories: Toward a Bloomian Analysis of Influence in Osip Mandelstam's Voronezh Notebooks” (D.Phil, diss., Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar; Anna Lisa Crone, “Fraternity or Parricide? The Uses and Abuses of Harold Bloom in the Study of Russian Poetry” (paper, Slavic Forum: Graduate Student Conference on Central/East European Literature and Culture, Chicago, 17-18 April 1998); Bethea, David M., “Bloom: The Critic as Romantic Poet,“ Realizing Metaphors: Alexander Pushkin and the Life of the Poet(Madison, 1998), 67-88 Google Scholar; and Stuart Goldberg, “Tripodnimaiu plenku,'” 38-57.

18. “Gigantskii [gigantskie shagi],”in K. S. Gorbachevich, ed., Sbvar’ sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo iazyka v 20-i tomakh, 2d ed. (Moscow, 1992- ), 3:92. I would like to thank Prof. R. D. Timenchik for first bringing this definition to my attention.

19. “Gigantskii [gigantskie shagi],” in Ushakov, D. N., ed., Tolkovyi sbvar’ russkogo iazyka, 4vols. (Moscow, 1935-1940), 1:555Google Scholar.

20. An additional impetus for the equation of clock and steps may have come from Emile Verhaeren's “Les horloges“: “Les horloges / … / Pareilles aux vieilles servantes / Tapant de leurs sabots ou glissant sur leurs bas.” Verhaeren, Poemes. Les flamandes. Les moines.—Les bords de la route(Paris, 1927), 203. Cf. also Briusov's translation, in which an open connection is made to illness: “Chasy! / … / Vy stuchite nogami sluzhanok v bol'shikh bashmakakh, / Vy skol'zhite shagami bolnichnykh sidelok.”E. Verkharn, Stikhi o sovremennosti(1906), reprinted in Emil’ Verkharn, Stikhotvoreniia. Zori. [and] Moris Meterlink, P'esy(Moscow, 1972), 67 (emphasis mine).

21. Aleksandr Pushkin, “Vospominaniia,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh(Moscow, 1956-1958), 3:60. Cf. also “v ume, podavlennom toskoi” (in a mind crushed with grief) and “toskoi raspiatyi” (crucified with grief), which grafts one of Blok's favorite images onto the Pushkinian subtext.

22. Zhukovskii, V. A., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v 12-ti tomakh(St. Petersburg, 1902), 10:59Google Scholar.

23. Ibid., 10:60-61.

24. Ibid., 10:58.

25. Ibid., 10:61.

26. “The description of the last days and death of Pushkin, given by Zhukovskii with such heartrending poignancy and simplicity in [his] letter to the poet's father, is too well known to the reader for us to repeat or retell it here.” N. Lerner, “Smert’ i pokhorony Pushkina,” Niva7 (1912): 133. That Mandel'shtam apparently began to wear sideburns in 1912 hints at his personal reaction to this date. Cf. M. Karpovich, “Moe znakomstvo s Mandel'shtamom,“ Novyi Zhurnal49(1957): 260-61.

27. Aleksandr, Blok, Stikhotvoreniia, 3vols. (St. Petersburg, 1994), 3:93-94Google Scholar.

28. “Shagi komandora” was not published, however, until the fall of that year in Russkaiamysl'W(1912).

29. Mandel'shtam, Kameri, 367.

30. Blok, SS, 7:141.

31. “Like Ovid in Pushkin's Tsygane, Aleksandr Blok had the gift, not only of poetic invention, but of the embodiment of his creations in the material of audible speech [real'no zvuchashchaia rech’]. In articles dedicated to Blok's memory… we invariably encounter references to the ‘surprising mastery’ with which he pronounced his poems, to the individuality of his manner of declamation, to his ‘voice, indelible in memory.'” S. I. Bernshtein, “Golos Bloka” [1921-1925], Blokovskii sbornik II. Trudy Vtoroi nauchnoi kanferentsii, posviashchennoi izucheniiu zhizni i tvorchestva A. A. Bloka(Tartu, 1972), 458-59. See also Vl[adimir], Piast, “Dva slova o chtenii Blokom stikhov,” Ob Aleksandre Bloke(St. Petersburg[Petrograd], 1921), 329-36Google Scholar.

32. Mandel'shtam may also be overlaying “Shagi komandora” onto Blok's translation of Émile Verhaeren's “Les pas” (published in the New Year's issue oiNivaior1907). Blok's translation, “Shagi,” appears to have influenced “Shagi komandora” and contains several images that overlap with “Pust’ v dushnoi komnate“: “I prizraki skvoz’ noch’ migaiut mertvym glazom / Vzmetennye v pylaiushchem ustalost'iu mozgu,— / Shagi, uslyshannye v detstve [ … ] Oni kak vesti groznoi mesti,— / S raskatnym shorokhom vdali,— / V nochnoi teni, versta k verste, oni / Protianut tusklye remni, / I ot odnoi strany, i ot odnoi petli / Zamknetsia obruch ikh vdol'vsei zemli” (And phantoms blink through thenight, a dead eye, / Cast up into a brain burning with exhaustion,— / Steps heard in childhood [ … ] They are like news of a terrible vengeance,— / With a booming rustle, in the distance, / In the shade of night, from mile to mile, they / Will stretch [their] dull straps, / And from a single country, and from a single loop / Their hoop will lock around the entire earth). Blok, SS, 2:344-45.

33. Innokentii, Annenskii, Stikhotvoreniia i tragedii(Leningrad, 1990), 55 Google Scholar(emphasis mine).

34. Blok, “Bezvremen'e” (1906), SS, 5:82.

35. Cf., in an unpublished prose fragment by Mandel'shtam from the early teens: “One might consider the movement of a clock hand across the face to be the archetype of the absence of an event.” Also, from “Petr Chaadaev” (1914), “'progress,’ and not history, the mechanical movement of a clock hand, and not the sacred connection and succession of events.” Mandel'shtam, Kameri, 195 and 191.

36. Blok, Stikhotvoreniia, 2:87 (emphasis mine).

37. On the image of the rooster in Akhmatova, Blok, Mandel'shtam, and others, see Toporov, V N., Akhmatova i Blok (k probleme postroeniia poeticheskogo dialoga: “Blokovskii” teksl Akhmatovoi)(Berkeley, 1981), 26, 107-108n64Google Scholar.

38. Blok, Stikhotvoreniia, 2:226.

39. “The ‘antithesis’ begins, the ‘changing of aspect,’ which was anticipated already in the very beginning of the ‘thesis.'” Blok, SS, 5:428. “No strashno mne: izmenish’ oblik Ty” (But I am scared: You will change your appearance). Blok, Stikhotvoreniia, 1:99.

40. Coincidentally, September also marks the “hatching” of symbolism (or at least the naming of the movement), through the publication of Jean Moreas's manifesto, “Le Symbolisme,“ LeFigaro, 18 September 1886.

41. Andrei, Belyi, “Bal'montu,” Sobranie sochinenii: Stikhotvoreniia i poemy(Moscow, 1994), 22.Google Scholar

42. Merezhkovskii, D. S., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 24 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1912- 1914), 15:7Google Scholar. Toporov, relying on Belyi's testimony, relates the development of Blok's rooster thematics to a discussion with Merezhkovskii and Zinaida Gippius on the theme of this poem's central image, “petukha nochnoe pen'e.” Toporov, Akhmatova i Blok, 108n64.

43. Cf., for instance, Blok, “Na smert’ Kommissarzhevskoi,” Stikhotvoreniia, 3:221-22.

44. Ibid., 2:310.

45. “[Swings] are tied to spring: swinging goes on from Easter to Ascension Day or until 23 April, and also on [St.] Peter's day, 29 June,” D. K. Zelenin, Vostochnoslavianskaia etnografiia(1927; reprint, Moscow, 1991), 378. Moreover, “in swinging on swings … E. Anichkov [a regular of Ivanov's “tower” and an important figure in Petersburg symbolist circles] sees a rite of purification through spring a i r …. At the same time one ought to see in this an attempt to force the air to serve a human's goals—a magical symbol of human mastery over the kingdom of air.” Ibid. 380. Cf. “We do not fly, we ascend only those towers that we can build ourselves.” Mandel'shtam, “Utro akmeizma,” SS, 2:325.

46. “I telo nezhnoe—to plavno podymalos', / To gruzno padalo … “ (And the tender body now smoothly rose / Now cumbrously fell …) may also hide a reference to the rising and falling chest of the ever-sleeping Donna Anna/ Tsarevna, perennially in the background of symbolist verse, who will awaken at the hero's “mortal hour.” (Note the suspicious change to singular here from the plural “children's” game in line 11.) Cf. also Zhukovskii's remarks on Natal'ia Nikolaevna [Goncharova] Pushkina's miraculous and temporary catatonic sleep (letargicheskii son!). Zhukovskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 10: 57-58.

47. Cf. Afanasii Fet, “Sharmanshchik“: “I—staraia pesnia!—s toskoi / My proshloe nezhno leleem …” (And—old song!—with melancholy / We tenderly cherish the past…). Fet, Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii(Leningrad, 1959), 464. Mandel'shtam's gener ally symbolist barrel organ is also tinted with specifically Blokian references. The most characteristic comes in the first stanza: “tiaguchikh arii” (viscous arias). “Sharmanka” is dated 16 June 1912, three days after Mandel'shtam saw Blok at Vladimir Piast's apartment. Blok, 55, 7:150. At the time, Blok was working on Roza i krest, and June 1912 falls in the interlude during which Blok considered this work an opera libretto. Ibid. 4:583-85. Blok's diary entry has more direct points of contact with “Sharmanka,” as well: “Dnem shliaius'— znoi, von’ toska. Gorod provonial” (During the day, I wander aimlessly—heat, stench, melancholy. The city reeks). Ibid., 7:150. Cf. “brozhu kak ten'” (I wander like a shade); “vod stoiachikh ten'”(the lazinessof stagnantwaters, emphasis mine); “Sharmanka” (barrelorgan), with which toskais a recurrent association (“Sharmanka, sharmanka, toska i toska!“ [Barrel-organ, barrel-organ, melancholy and melancholy!]. Sergei Gorodetskii, “Sharmanka,“ in M[odest] Gofman, ed., Poety simvolizma[1908; Munich, 1970], 355). In addition, a barrel-organ plays a crucial role in the “poet's” genesis in one of Blok's poems, “Zachatyi v noch', ia v noch’ rozhden. “

It seems that, in “Sharmanka,” Mandel'shtam plays at the genre of lyric diary, likely injecting elements of Blok's day into his own artistically mediated experience. The dating of the manuscript to the day, something fairly unusual for Mandel'shtam in this period, may also be construed as an artistically relevant marker of the poem's “genre.” On the significance of the dating of poems in Blok, see Z. G. Mints, “'Poetika daty’ i ranniaia lirika Al. Bloka,“Poetika AtehsandraBloka(St. Petersburg, 1999), 389-400.

48. On a biographical plane, Vladimir Piast notes that Blok, in the winter and early spring of 1912, was obsessed with rollercoasters and sledding down ice hills. Vladimir, Piast, “Vospominaniia o Bloke,”in Aleksandr Blok v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov v dvukh tomakh(Moscow, 1980), 1:384-85Google Scholar.

49. Mandel'shtam, SS, 2:275. Cf. “The highest accusation against contemporary bourgeois civilization is the accusation of its nonmusicality [bezmuzykal'nost’].” Z. G. Mints, “Blok i russkii simvolizm,” Literaturnoe nasledstvo. Tom devianoslo vtoroi v chetyrekh knigakh. Aleksandr Blok. Novye materialy i issledovaniia. Knigapervaia(Moscow, 1980), 140.

50. Blok, Stikhotvoreniia, 2:251.

51. Ibid., 3:93.

52. In Church Slavonic, this word appears as both pětel’and pětel”, with the anticipated plural pětli.

53. Cf. the threefold mention of the cock in Mandel'shtam's “Tristia” (1918), noted by Daniel Laferrière, who also notes the threefold repetition of precisely three roots in the poem, petukh, zhyv, and nov, as in “Zachem petukh, glashatai novoi zhizni …” (Why does the rooster, herald of a new life …). This “prophetic” orientation is subtly undermined in the tautological rhyme, novoi zhizni—novoi zhizni. Daniel Laferriere, “Mandel'shtam's 'Tristia': A Study of the Purpose of Subtexts,” Five Russian Poems: Exercises in a Theory of Poetry(Englewood, N.J., 1977), 122-23. We will hazard a guess that the triple crowing of the cock embedded in these texts is a transposition of the evangelical motif of Peter's three denials of Christ before the cock's second crowing (Mark 15:68-72). The three hidden roosters of “Pust’ v dushnoi komnate” may additionally allude to the importance of the number three in the composition of “Shagi komandora.” Note the following triplets: “khriplyi boi nochnykh chasov” (the hoarse striking of a night clock), “Boi chasov” (The strike of a clock), “B'iut chasy v poslednii raz” (The clock strikes for the last time); “noch' glukha” (the night is deep), “noch’ bledna” (the night is pale), “noch’ mutna” (the night is murky); “v chas rassveta” (at the hour of daybreak), which is repeated three times. The three roosters might even be hidden in “Shagi komandora” in the three strikings of the clock: “pervye petukhi” (first cocks)—midnight, “vtorye petukhi” (second cocks)—before daybreak, “tret'i petukhi” (third cocks)—dawn (zaria). See “Petukh,” Tolkovyi slovar' zhivogo velikorusskogq iazyka Vladimira Dalia, 3d ed., ed. I. A. Boduen-de-Kurtene (1903- 1909; reprint, Moscow, 1994).

54. See Roman Jakobson, “The Statue in Puskin's Poetic Mythology,” Jakobson, , Language in Literature, ed. Krystyna, Pomorskaand Stephen, Rudy(Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 318-67Google Scholar.

55. Annenskii, Stikhotvoreniia i tragedii, 186.

56. Ibid.

57. Pushkin, Polnoesobranie sochinenii, 4:491. Gigantskie shagi, the fair attraction, is visually similar to the spitsa(needle), which additionally, on the “tide page” of Pushkin's manuscript, appears to be resting on the ground. Ibid., 4:485.

58. Annenskii, Stikhotvoreniia i tragedii, 56.

59. Lidiia Ginzburg, Cf.on Annenskii: “What a precise gaze, and with what a firm hand this is written!” Ginzburg, O lirike (Leningrad, 1974), 325 Google Scholar.

60. Innokentii, Annenskii, Knigi otrazheniia I, II(Munich, 1969), 65 Google Scholar.

61. Ibid., 63, 65, 67-69. The editors of Kamerirelate the image of the clock hand in Mandel'shtam's prose fragment to this latter image from “Smert’ Turgeneva,” Mandel'shtam, Kamen', 195, 339.

62. Akhmatova, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 2:151.

63. Blok, “Ironiia,” SS, 5:345-49.

64. A pun: presnyi khlebis unleavened bread.

65. Mandel'shtam, SS, 2:103. Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, clearly influenced by the poet's description of Francois Villon (SS, 2:303), writes of his “humorous relation [to poets of older generations]—external respectfulness and hidden mischief. Not accidentally, the impudent schoolboy [shkoliar]annoyed these people, who lived in the atmosphere of a true cult.” Mandel'shtam, Vtoraia kniga, 93. We can accept this formulation wholeheartedly, given a single stipulation: that “hidden mischief” (hidden, of course, in order to be found) does not necessarily exclude inner recognition and respect—“esli nastoiashchia— to da” (if it's real—then yes).

66. Akhmatova has called Blok “the epoch's tragic tenor.” Cf. Blok's own statement recorded by Akhmatova in her short memoir about Blok: “Anna Andreevna, we are not tenors.” Akhmatova, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 1:365, 2:136.

67. Pushkin's death came to play a central role in Mandel'shtam's art and thought. Cf. Mandel'shtam's unpublished essay “Pushkin i Skriabin“: “Pushkin and Skriabin are two transmutations [prevrashcheniia]of one sun, two transmutations of one heart. Twice the death of an artist has gathered the Russian people and lit above them a sun. They showed an example of communal, Russian death, died a full death, as people live a full life. Their person, in dying, expanded to become a symbol of the whole people, and the sun-heart of he who was dying was halted forever in the zenith of suffering and glory…. It seems to me that the death of an artist should not be removed from the chain of his creative accomplishments but should be looked at as the last, concluding link…. They buried Pushkin at night… at night they laid the sun in a coffin.” Mandel'shtam, SS, 2:313. Cf. also, among others, Pavel Nerler, “Osip Mandel'shtam—chitatel’ Pushkina,” Literaturnaia ucheba, 1987, no. 3:141-50; Freidin, “Sidia na saniakh,” 9-31; Boris Gasparov, “The ‘Golden Age’ and Its Role in the Cultural Mythology of Russian Modernism” and “Tridtsatye gody— zheleznyi vek (k analizu motivov stoletnego vozvrashcheniia u Mandel'shtama),” in Boris, Gasparov, Hughes, Robert P., and Irina, Paperno, eds., Cultural Mythologies of Russian Modernism: From the Golden Age to the Silver Age(Berkeley, 1992), 10-15, 150-79Google Scholar; Endriu Reinolds [Andrew Reynolds], “Smert’ avtora ili smert’ poeta? Intertekstual'nost’ v stikhotvorenii 'Kuda mne det'sia v etom ianvare?'” in “Otdai menia Voronezh …“: Tret'i mezhdunarodnye mandel'shtamovskie chteniia(Voronezh, 1995), 200-14; and Reynolds, “The Burden of Memories,” esp. chap. 3.

68. It may be particularly appropriate to speak of die poem as a talisman, given Mandel'shtam's use of that word in line 7 and the subtle sound play employed. On the place of incantation, shamanism, and talismans in Mandel'shtam's poetry, see Omry Ronen, “An Introduction to Mandel'štam's Slate Odeand 1 January 1924:Similarity and Complementarity,“ Slavica Hierosolymitana4 (1979): 146-58; and Freidin, A Coat of Many Colors, 5-8, 180-81, 284-85n65. Ronen mentions “Pust'v dushnoi komnate” among Mandel'shtam's poems that openly use the word talisman. In addition, Pushkinis anagrammatically encoded in “Pust’ v dUSHnoi KomNate.” In general, the poem brims with understated sound play. Cf. STKliANKI—GIgANTSKIe; pETLI—verTELIs'; GRUZno—KaRUSel'; and the exquisite mirroring in “V toMAnnoi pAMiati VIden'ia ozhlVut. “

69. On various aspects of Blok's subsequent influence on the development of Mandel'shtam's poetics, see especially Zhirmunskii, “Poeziia Bloka,” Voprosy teorii literatury, 234; and S. N. Broitman, “Venetseiskie strofy Mandel'shtama, Bloka i Pushkina (k voprosu o klassicheskom i neklassicheskom tipe khudozhestvennoi tselostnosti v poezii),” in Tiupa, V. I., ed., Tvorchestvo Mandel'shtama i voprosy istoricheskoi poetiki: Mezhvuzovskii sbornik nauchnykh trudov(Kemerovo, 1990), 81-96 Google Scholar. See also Broitman, “Simvolizm i postsimvolizm (k probleme vnutrennei mery russkoi neklassicheskoi poezii),” in Esaulov, I. A., ed., Postsimvolizm kak iavlenie kul'tury(Moscow, 1995), 25-26 Google Scholar; Gasparov, M. L., “Antinomichnost' poetiki russkogo modernizma,” Sviaz’ vremen(Moscow, 1994), 259-60Google Scholar, Anna Lisa Crone, “Blok's ‘Venecija’ and Molnii iskusstvaas Inspiration to Mandel'stam: Parallels in the Italian Materials,” in Vickery, Walter N., ed., Akksandr Blok Centennial Conference(Columbus, 1984), 74-88 Google Scholar; and Pavel, Gromov, A. Blok, ego predshestvenniki i sovremenniki: Monografiia, 2d ed. (Leningrad, 1986), 357-71Google Scholar. Gromov, in places, overstates what should be a strong case. On Mandel'shtam's turn back toward symbolist poetics in Tristia, see Stuart Goldberg, “The Poetics of Return in Osip Mandel'stam's ‘Solominka,'” Russian, Croatian and Serbian, Czech and Slovak, Polish Literature45, no. 2 (15 February 1999): 131-47. On syncretism among the different movements comprising Russian modernism, see Gasparov, “The ‘Golden Age,'” 1-4.

70. Mandel'shtam did not, however, mask this progression in Giperborei, where “Paden'e—neizmennyi sputnik strakha,” “Pust’ v dushnoi komnate,” and “V taverne vorovskaia shaika” (three poems engaging symbolist thematics) stand side by side in a progression from greater dependency to greater distance.

71. Mandel'shtam, SS, 2:348.

72. A. G. Mets, ‘“Kamen” (k tvorcheskoi istorii knigi),” in Mandel'shtam, Kamen', 283-84. This edition, planned at the beginning of the 1920s, would have excluded “Paden'e—neizmennyi sputnik strakha. “