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448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
Gumilev is reading his poem:
All’s pure for my pure gaze
So kings and vagrants I’ll follow,
Penury and beggar’s disgrace –
I’ll take it without any sorrow.
And in the same tone he continues, “Crows don’t like it so they are cawing.”
“Crows know nothing about verses,” I answer.
Remember, in that Greek house, the much loved wife –
Not Helen – the other wife – how long she embroidered?
Mandelstam abruptly and dramatically waves his hands as if he’s directing an invisible orchestra. His voice grows stronger and surer. He already isn’t declaiming but chanting in the somnambulistic trance:
Golden fleece, oh where are you now, you golden fleece?
All the journey long the heavy sea waves were loud…
“I was a bad psychologist. However not quite. I guessed that he is madly in love when Georgy told me some lines from his new poem this winter:
I ask not for love. I dream not of spring.
Just stay near me and hark what I sing.
I understood at once whom did he mean.”
“Petersburg is the best of what I created. It’s a transcript of delirium. Before me there was nothing like this. Even Dostoyevsky didn’t write like this. While writing it I was dwelling in the nightmare. Horror! Horror! Nightmare in the day and nightmare in the night! It was delirium both in reality and dreams.”