Letters from Vienna #91
The Time’s Wolfhound
When Anna Akhmatova stated: “Art is a dangerous business” she was undoubtedly thinking of Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938), who’d become prematurely old, lacked teeth and suffered from a malady of the heart at the age of forty;[1] he wasn’t to see his fiftieth birthday. In March 1931 he dictated the following words to his wife Nadezhda: “The Time’s wolfhound leaps on my shoulders, but I’m no wolf by blood”.[2] Two years later he conceived a poem even more critical of the times and of Stalin himself; it was a direct attack on the Georgian mass murderer:
We live, not feeling the ground under our feet,
No one hears us more than a dozen steps away,
And when there’s enough for half a small chat–
ah, we remember the Kremlin mountaineer;
Thick fingers, fat like worms, greasy,
words solid as iron weights,
Huge cockroach whiskers laughing,
boot-tops beaming.
And all around him a rabble of thin-necked captains:
he toys with the sweat of the half-men.
Some whistle, some meow, some snivel,
he’s the only one looking, jabbing.
He forges decrees like horseshoes – decrees and decrees:
This one gets it in the balls, that one in the forehead, him right between the eyes.
Whenever he’s got a victim, he glows like a broad-chested
Georgian munching a raspberry.[3]
“Mandelstam was discreet enough not to commit his poem to paper,” Ronald Hingley reports, “but contrived to recite it to friends and acquaintances who eventually came to number about a score. That was inconsiderate of him: to be reported as having heard the poem, and without having gone on to denounce the author reciter, was to become liable to arrest and imprisonment. Pasternak was well aware of this on the evening in April 1934 when Mandelstam accosted him on the Tver Boulevard in Moscow and whispered the Stalin poem to him. His response was the height of prudence and good sense. “I didn’t hear this; you didn’t tell me it.”[4] Asked what had prompted him Mandelstam said that he hated nothing more than Fascism.[5]
The fact that Mandelstam had compromised so many, such as Pasternak and Akhmatova, put the authorities in a dilemma: how could they prosecute Mandelstam without eliminating the others too? And how to avoid too many people knowing about the poem in the first place?
The Sargidschau Affair
Mandelstam’s troubles didn’t just begin with that particular poem. In the summer of 1932 “The young Soviet writer Sergei Borodin (pseudonym: Amir Sargidschau), Mandelstam’s “neighbour”, who was presumably tasked with spying on him in the writer’s house, broke into Mandelstam’s room and beat his wife. The dispute was over a debt owed by Sargidschau, who was either unable or unwilling to repay the 40 or 75 rubles loaned from Mandelstam, who himself was in financial difficulties.”
“On September 13, 1932, an arbitration tribunal formed by the Writers’ Union met under the chairmanship of the “Red Count” and officious Soviet writer Alexei Tolstoy. This court of honour condemned both parties: the debtor Sargidschau, as well as the haughty Mandelstam, who didn’t hold back with his contempt for the other...”[6]
In May 1934, Mandelstam “approached Tolstoy after a meeting in Leningrad, slapped him publicly and shouted, “I am punishing the executioner who gave the order to beat my wife.” Tolstoy grabbed Mandelstam’s hand and hissed, “Don’t you understand that I can destroy you?!” After that Tolstoy travelled to Moscow, to Gorky, who putatively said: “We’ll teach him what happens when one hits Russian writers!”[7]
“After slapping Alexei Tolstoy, O.M. (Osip Mandelstam) hastily returned to Moscow” Nadezhda Mandelstam recounted. „From there he called Anna Andreyevna (Akhmatova) every day, imploring her to come to Moscow. She hesitated, which annoyed him.” [8]
Arrest
Of the 13th of May 1934: “The day dragged on painfully. In the evening the translator Brodskij came, sat down and didn’t move from the spot. There was a yawning emptiness in the pantry, there was absolutely nothing to eat. O.M. scoured the neighbourhood to find something for Anna Andreyevna’s dinner...and soon returned with a single egg.”[9]
“Around one o’clock at night we suddenly heard a clearly audible, unbearably vehement knocking. “They’re coming to pick up Ossja,” I said and went to open the door.”
“Some men stood there – it seemed that there were many of them – all in civilian clothes. For the infinitesimally small fraction of a second, hope flared up. My eyes hadn’t noticed the uniforms hidden under the coats. In fact, the coats were part of the uniform and served as camouflage...”
“Hope vanished the moment the uninvited guests crossed the threshold.”
“Out of habit, I’d expected a “Good evening!” or “Is this Mandelstam’s apartment?” or “Is he home?”…However, like all agents of all secret services the world over, the nocturnal visitors didn’t observe this ceremony. Without asking or waiting, without even waiting a moment outside the door, they pushed me aside and, with incredible lightness of foot and speed, entered the apartment, which was suddenly full of people. Immediately they began to check identity papers...”[10]
The secret service men began searching the apartment and contemptuously told Brodskij that he could go home; his function had been to ensure that no manuscripts would be destroyed after their initial knock at the door.[11]
“The Chekist in charge of the arrest turned to the suitcase in which our archive was located... How brainlessly they did their job was obvious.”
“They acted according to official instructions, that is, they searched where it was generally assumed that shrewd crooks would hide secret documents and manuscripts. They shook out each book in turn, examined the spines, ruined the covers by cutting them, were interested in secret compartments in the desk – who doesn’t know about secret compartments? –, rummaged in bags and beds. If a manuscript had been hidden in a cooking pot, it would have lain there undiscovered until the end of time. An even better hiding place would have been on top of the dining table.”[12]
“When we heard that someone had been arrested, we didn’t ask: “Why has he or she been taken away?”, but there were few who were like us. People went mad with fear and simply said – “If someone has been arrested, it’s for a reason. I haven’t been arrested because there has been no reason for it!” People tried to find meaningful reasons and justifications for every arrest – “She did business on the black market!”, “He took liberties!”, “I heard him say it myself...”, and also: “That was to be expected, he has a mean character”, “I always suspected that something was wrong with him”, “He is a person who is very different from us”. All this seemed reason enough to be arrested and destroyed: he or she was different, garrulous, unsympathetic...These were variations on a single theme that had already been heard in 1917. “He’s not one of us.” Public opinion and law enforcement came up with variations on this theme, throwing fuel on the fire, without which there would have been no smoke. That’s why the question: “Why has he or she been picked up?” was taboo for us. “Why?” Anna Andreyevna shouted angrily when someone from our circle, infected by the general thinking, asked this question. “What do you mean, why? Don’t you realise that people are being arrested for no reason?”
„But when O.M. was taken away, Anna Andreyevna and I also asked ourselves this question, which was absolutely taboo: why? There were more than enough reasons for the arrest of Mandelstam – according to the legal norms of our country, of course. Because of his poems in general, or his views on literature, or more specifically because of the poem about Stalin. The slap he’d given Tolstoy could also have served as a reason to pick him up…”[13]
Whatever the reason for the Kafkaesque state’s actions (and is not every state to a lesser or greater degree Kafkaesque?), the intervention of Pasternak undoubtedly played a role in saving Mandelstam, temporarily at least, from death.
Pasternak to the Rescue
“Immediately after the arrest (Pasternak) interceded on Mandelstam’s behalf with Nikolay Bukharin, a leading political figure of the era. Bukharin was already in decline, as it happens, but it seems likely that it was he who brought Pasternak’s concern to Stalin’s attention. In any case Pasternak received a telephone call from Stalin, who rang up to discuss the Mandelstam affair.”[14]
“Stalin told Pasternak that Mandelstam’s trial was under review and that he needn’t worry. This was unexpectedly followed by a reproachful question as to why Pasternak hadn’t turned to the writers’ unions or “to me” to intercede on behalf of Mandelstam. “If I were a poet and my poet friend had had some misfortune, I’d have overcome all obstacles to come to his aid.”
“Pasternak’s reply was: “The writers’ unions haven’t been concerned with such matters since 1927, and if I hadn’t interceded on his behalf, you mightn’t have been aware of the matter.” …Stalin interrupted him with the question: “But he’s a master, isn’t he?” Pasternak replied: “It’s not about that.” “Then what’s the point?” Stalin asked. Pasternak said that he’d like to meet Stalin for a talk sometime. “A conversation? About what?” – “About life and death”, answered Pasternak. Stalin hung up.”[15]
Instead of being killed Mandelstam was banished for three years to Cherdyn in the Northern Ural.
In 1938 he was arrested for a second time and perished in a Soviet concentration camp.
[1] p.368 Meine Zeit, mein Tier, Ossip Mandelstam, Eine Biographie, Ralph Dutli
[2] p.190 Complete Poetry of Osip Emilevich Mandelstam, Translated by Burton Raffel and Alla Burago
[3] p.228 Ibid
[4] p.116 Pasternak, Ronald Hingley
[5] p. 415 Meine Zeit, mein Tier, Ossip Mandelstam, Eine Biographie, Ralph Dutli
[6] p.384 Ibid
[7] p.417 Ibid
[8] p.7 Nadeschda Mandelstam, Erinnerungen an das Jahrhundert der Wölfe
[9] p.8 Ibid
[10] p. 9 Ibid
[11] p.11 Ibid
[12] p.13 Ibid
[13] pp. 18-19 Ibid
[14] pp.116-117 Pasternak, Ronald Hingley
[15] pp.217-218 Nadeschda Mandelstam, Erinnerungen an das Jahrhundert der Wölfe