Thanks, Glenn!
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Originally Posted by Glenn Wright
Are all of Zenkevich’s poems untitled?
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No, some have titles, while others, like nearly all of Mandelstam’s, are untitled.
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Originally Posted by Glenn Wright
I had some difficulty deciding whether the characters in the poem are alive (the old women enjoying the баня and the kids splashing by the river) or dead (their bodies in the churchyard while the church bell tolls).
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Both start out alive, I think. The old women forget to go to their graves and instead climb into an oven, as if it were a
banya, and end up cooked in a stew. One of the kids is apparently drowned.
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Originally Posted by Glenn Wright
I also had trouble visualizing the line, Все полощатся в плеса. Are the kids in the water splashing water onto the shore? Where are the reeds? In the water or on the shore?
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They seem to be splashing around, having fun, in the reeds at the river’s edge.
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Originally Posted by Glenn Wright
I’m not familiar with the word плес, but I thought it might be related to пляж.
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The word—unfamiliar to me too—is defined as a section of a river or lake that’s wider and deeper than neighboring sections. There’s apparently no relation to пляж, which of course is a borrowing from French.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Glenn Wright
I also don’t know what to make of the “red breath.” How did Mandelstam use it? Was one poet deliberately giving homage to the other?
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It’s been suggested that Mandelstam was quoting Zenkevich, but that begs the question of what it meant to either poet. Mandelstam’s human narrator devolves, descending the evolutionary ladder down to reptiles, worms, insects and below. In the last stanza, Nature forgets to raise “the drawbridge … for those who have green graves, red breath and supple laughter.” This may mean that the N couldn’t return to the world of “higher” organisms who laugh, are buried and have circulatory systems. But the passage is murky.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Glenn Wright
Was Zenkevich Christian? He seems to have been one of the few poets who remained on good terms with the Soviet authorities.
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Zenkevich outlived all his Acmeist colleagues, apparently by keeping a low profile and giving up poetry for translation. I’ve seen no indication that he was Christian, and he wrote some poems about prehistoric animals and humans that would probably have been perceived as atheistic. Even today, as far as I know, the Russian Orthodox Church dates the creation of the world to c. 5,500 B.C.