Preeminent Russian poets
Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam have become emblems of suffering --
iconic victims of the Soviet regime. Not without cause: Mandelstam died
anonymously in the transit camp near Vladivostok, probably of typhus,
in 1938. Akhmatova's husband, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov, was killed by
the Cheka, her only son imprisoned in the Soviet gulag. Their dossiers
received "special attention" from Stalin, with the constant
surveillance that implies.
The events of their lives have become more famous than
their poetry -- but only in the West, where the merits of their verse
must be triangulated from various translations and "versions."
Inevitably, as translations proliferate , these poets will glitter as
keenly as first-magnitude stars.
Until then, memoirs will dominate art. Enter Lermontov scholar Emma Gerstein and her Moscow Memoirs : Memories of Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, and Literary Russia under Stalin (Overlook,
$35), which recalls her life among last century's literati. Gerstein
died in 2002, at age 98. She's waited a long time to tell her tale.
Originally published in Russia six years ago, the book
is a lumpy grab bag of pieces published elsewhere over the years. But
peppered throughout are remarkable vignettes: Akhmatova blesses her son
and faints as her son is taken away to the gulag. Years later, she
cries out, "Not one mother has done for her son what I did!" He replies
by rolling on the floor, screaming camp obscenities. Mandelstam gives
way to nervous exhaustion, ill health and the behavior that tagged him
a "schizoid psychopath." His temperament doomed him long before he
wrote his satire on Stalin, mocking the despot's "cockroach eyes" and
"fat fingers as oily as maggots."
Gerstein is hoping to modify or refute her rival Nadezhda Mandelstam's dynamite memoirs, Hope Against Hope and Hope Abandoned.
But there's no comparison, really. Mandelstam's vision is compelling,
full of invective and opinionated oomph. She gives us an epic motion
picture; Gerstein gives us a series of snaps, and possibly more than we
wanted to know about the seamy side of the Mandelstams. But perhaps the
details make a greater point. Gerstein's memoir shatters the cliché of
heroism. The poets' suffering defies platitude. If they emerged
diamonds, it's because they were under unimaginable pressure.
Cynthia Haven reviews poetry regularly for Book World.
