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The Science of Poetry: Poetic Process as Evolution in Mandel'shtam's “Conversation about Dante”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Abstract
This article investigates the relationship between the humanities and science by focusing on Osip Mandel'shtam's “Conversation about Dante.” Noting the importance of natural science for Mandel'shtam's treatise, I argue that Mandel'shtam makes use of the methods of the natural sciences in developing a complex theory of the poetic process. He encounters the scientific method of analysis in his reading of the natural scientists, written about in his travelogue “Journey to Armenia,” as well as various shorter pieces accompanying it. Mandel'shtam begins with a proposition of isomorphism between poetry and nature. Ultimately, I argue that the scientific method allows Mandel'shtam to theorize the poetic process as a dialogue between author and reader in which cultural kinship between its participants is established as a break within their individuality and a recognition of the authority of the “poetic impulse” or “instinct.” In turn, envisioning the poetic process as a dialogue that paradoxically suspends and transcends the individuality of its participants allows Mandel'shtam simultaneously to insist on the necessity of submission to the authority of the poetic message and to endow poetry with political autonomy.
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- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2014
References
1 The epigraphs are from Osip Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” in The Complete Critical Prose and Letters, ed. Jane Gary Harris, trans. Jane Gary Harris and Constance Link (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1979; hereafter CCPL), 411, and Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (New York, 1960), 17, respectively. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own; I indicate where I have amended others' translations. “Science, n.” entry 5b., OED Online,at http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/1726727redirectedFrom=science&(last accessed 5 February 2014).
2 “Humanity, n.” entry 2b., OED Online,at http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/892807redirectedFrom=humanities(last accessed 5 February 2014).
3 Snow, C. P., The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution(Cambridge, Eng., 1993)Google Scholar, 4. It is hard to overestimate the significance of Snow's lecture for the continuing relationship between science and literature, at least within the English-speaking academy, but its analysis is outside the scope of this paper.
4 Stefan Collini, introduction to Snow, The Two Cultures,liv.
5 For other studies on this subject which begin with reference to Snow, see, for example, Sleigh, Charlotte, Literature and Science(Hampshire, Eng., 2011);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Coleman, Philip, ed., On Literature and Science: Essays, Reflections, Provocations(Dublin, 2007);Google Scholar Ruston, Sharon, ed., Literature and Science(Suffolk, 2008);CrossRefGoogle Scholarand Crawford, Robert, ed., Contemporary Poetry and Contemporary Science(Oxford, 2006).Google Scholar
6 Snow, The Two Cultures,6.
7 Kramnick, Jonathan, “Against Literary Darwinism,” Critical Inquiry 37, no. 2(Winter 2011): 315–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarThe quotation within the text is from Boyd, Brian, On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction(Cambridge, Mass., 2009), 81.Google Scholar
8 See Bono, James J. “Science, Discourse, and Literature: The Role/Rule of Metaphor in Science,”in Peterfreund, Stuart, ed., Literature and Science: Theory & Practice(Boston, 1990), 59–89.Google Scholar
9 Bono, “Science, Discourse, and Literature,” 60.
10 Beer, Gillian, Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction(Boston, 1983), 2.Google Scholar
11 See Albright, Daniel, Quantum Poetics: Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and the Science of Modernism(Cambridge, Eng., 1997).Google Scholar
12 Albright, Quantum Poetics, 2.
13 Ibid., 9.
14 Beer, Gillian, “Translation or Transformation? The Relations of Science and Literature,“ Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 44, no. 1(January 1990): 81.Google Scholar
15 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 397. Here we can see the re-imagining of Kazimir Malevich's suprematist impulse that similarly announces the liberation of art from nature, which Mandel'shtam initially rejects in “The Word and Culture” (1921) as a destruction of form.
16 See Levin, Iu. I., “Zametki k ‘Razgovoru o Dante,'”in his Izbrannye trudy: Poetika, Semiotika(Moscow, 1998), 142–53.Google Scholar
17 Mandelstam, “The Slump,” in CCPL,204. Constance Link inaccurately translates the title of the article as “The Slump.” As shown below, the comparison of the critic's eye to that of a fish is not only about distortion; it carries an additional sting by suggesting that critic's low evolutionary stance. The eye as an organ plays a crucial role in Henri Bergson's discussion of evolutionary theories.
18 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 434.
19 Similarly, the poem is written “no longer by a poetic but by a geological intelligence.“ Ibid., 425.
20 Elena Glazov-Corrigan, Mandel'shtam's Poetics: A Challenge to Postmodernism(Toronto, 2000), 63.
21 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 408.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid., 422.
24 Ibid., 433.
25 Nancy Pollak, Mandelstam the Reader(Baltimore, 1995), 17.
26 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 411.
27 See Fink, Hilary L., Bergson and Russian Modernism, 1900-1930(Evanston, 1999), 64–77;Google Scholar Gasparov, Boris, “Lamark, Shelling, Marr: Stikhotvorenie ‘Lamark’ v kontekste 'perelomnoi epokhi,'”in his Literaturnye leitmotivy: Ocherki russkoi literatury XX veka(Moscow,1994);Google Scholarand II’ ia Serman, “Osip Mandel ‘shtam v nachale 1930-kh godov (Biologiia i poeziia),” in Robin Aizlewood and Diana Myers, eds., Stoletie Mandel'shtama: Materialy simpoziuma(Tenafly, N.J., 1994).
28 See Glazov-Corrigan, Mandel'shtam's Poetics,92-99.
29 Ibid., 97.
30 Mandel'shtam, Nadezhda, Vtoraia kniga,ed. Polivanova, M. K.(Moscow, 1990), 202.Google Scholar
31 Mandelstam, “On the Nature of the Word,” in CCPL,118-19.
32 Beer, Gillian, introduction to Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction,3rd ed. (Cambridge, Eng., 2009), 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33 For Russian cultural life at the beginning of the twentieth century, Bergson's treatise on evolution, L'Evolution creatrice(1907), was the single most popular metaphysical text that elaborated on the significance of various theories of natural selection, at the time providing its readers with a broad philosophical frame. As the historian Alexander Vucinich writes, the book “combined a sensitivity for philosophical nuance with a broad understanding—and a firsthand study—of the theoretical intricacies of modern biology.” Vucinich, Alexander, Darwin in Russian Thought(Berkeley, 1988), 253.CrossRefGoogle ScholarBergson's ideas had a tremendous conceptual and thematic influence on Russian modernism in general and on Mandel'shtam in particular. Hilary L. Fink, in her study of Bergson's influence on Russian modernism, proposes that Mandel'shtam was exposed to Bergsonian philosophy while he studied in Paris in 1907-08, when Bergson's book on evolution appeared. Fink, Bergson and Russian Modernism,64.
34 Bergson, Henri, Creative Evolution,trans. Mitchell, Arthur(New York, 1911), 85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
35 Ibid., 87. Emphasis in the original.
36 Mandelstam, “On the Naturalists,” in CCPL,330.
37 Ibid., 332-35.
38 Ibid., 335.
39 Mandelstam, “Darwin's Literary Style,” in CCPL,342.
40 Mandelstam, “Journey to Armenia,” in CCPL,367.
41 Mandelstam, “On the Naturalists,” 335. Translation amended.
42 Osip Mandel'shtam, “Zapisnaia knizhka (Zametki o naturalistakh),” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v trekh tomakh(Moscow, 2011; hereafter PSS),3:322. Emphasis added.
43 It's no coincidence that the essay “On the Naturalists” contains a fantasy of looking at nature through the eyes of a butterfly: “And suddenly I caught myself madly wishing to have a look at nature through the painted eyes of that monster.” Mandelstam, “On the Naturalists,” 367. The hidden context of comparing the inept critic's eye to that of a fish also becomes apparent here.
44 Mandelstam, “Journey to Armenia,” 366.
45 Ibid., 323. Emphasis added.
46 Osip Mandel'shtam, “K probleme nauchnogo stilia Darwina (Iz zapisnoi knizhki pisatelia),” PSS,3:270.
47 Ibid., 3:272. If, next to the discussion of Lamarck's eye, Mandel'shtam “exposes the device,” pointing to the source of his borrowing the desire to see the world through the eyes of a butterfly, next to his discussion of Darwin's scientific method he places an excerpt from Darwin's writings in which the latter explains the mutation of instincts through the process of evolutionary selection: ‘“I will select only three … : the instinct which leads the cuckoo to lay her eggs in other birds’ nests; the slave-making instinct of certain ants; and the comb-making power of the hive-bee.'” PSS,3:272.
48 Mandelstam, “Darwin's Literary Style,” 341.
49 While I agree with Levin that for Mandel'shtam's vision of (poetic) nature's processes, struggle and dynamism are necessary components, it is clear from these passages that Darwin—as a practitioner of a certain interpretative method—can be seen as a stand-in for an artist and not simply an unambiguous representative of, in Mandel'shtam's words, “boring, bearded development.” Mandelstam, “Journey to Armenia,” 358. See Levin, “Zametki k ‘Razgovoru o Dante,'” 144.
50 Mandelstam, “On the Naturalists,” 333.
51 Mandelstam, “Addenda to ‘Journey to Armenia,'” in CCPL,393.
52 Osip Mandel'shtam, “Puteshestvie v Armeniiu: Drugie redaktsii, chernoviki, zapisnye knizhki,” PSS,2:411.
53 See West, Daphne, “Mandelstam and the Evolutionists,” Journal of Russian Studies,no. 42(1981): 30–38.Google Scholar
54 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 410.
55 Mandel'shtam, PSS,1:171. On synesthetic motifs in “Conversation,” see Jacob Emery, “Keeping Time: Reading and Writing in ‘Conversation about Dante,'” in this issue.
56 Mandelstam, “Journey to Armenia,” 367; “On the Naturalists,” 367.
57 Mandelstam, “On the Naturalists,” 332.
58 Mandelstam, “Journey to Armenia,” 369; “On the Naturalists,” 337.
59 Mandelstam, “On the Naturalists,” 334.
60 Ibid., 333.
61 Mandelstam, “Darwin's Literary Style,” 337-38, 340-41. Emphases added. The formula for Darwin's ability to speak to “the broad reading public” echoes Velimir Khlebnikov's proclamation that the use of zaurriallows poets to reach over the heads of governments to the hearts of people. Similarly, Mandel'shtam's theorization on the nature of the poetic word as a bundle of meanings is a definite echo of Khlebnikov's concept of the self-made word.
62 Mandelstam, “On the Nature of the Word,” 123.
63 Ibid. See Spektor, Alexander, “Family Romances in The Noise of Time:Mandelstam's Autobiography as an Allegory for Literary Activity,” Russian Review 71, no. 1(January 2012): 79–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
64 Mandelstam, “Journey to Armenia,” 367. Significantly, this passage in the “Journey“ is followed by the image of an orchestra's conductor, who becomes a key metaphor for the figure of Dante in “Conversation,” wherein he is described as playing the role of mediator between the orchestra and the public: “When the conductor draws a theme out of the orchestra with his baton, he is hardly the physical cause of that sound. The sound is already present in the symphonic score, in the spontaneous collusion of the performers, in the throngs filling the auditorium, and in the structure of the musical instruments.“ Mandelstam, “Journey to Armenia,” 368.
65 Mandel'shtam, PSS,3:168.
66 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 409. Translation amended.
67 Ibid., 414. The image of “a monument of granite or marble whose symbolic function is intended … to reveal the inner structure of the marble or granite itself” performs a similar function, combining both a “natural,” geological formation and a cultural artifact. Ibid., 407. Mandel'shtam explains the cultural evolution of the symphonic orchestra similarly, infusing it with organic metaphors borrowed from the naturalists.
68 Mandel'shtam makes this argument even more effective by closely connecting textual examples from the Divine Comedywith the process that he describes—or, to be more precise, performs. Thus, “Conversation” begins with Dante's image of intertwined wrestlers which becomes Mandel'shtam's first metaphor for the crossing of poetic instruments with discursive material. The description of the Divine Comedy'scompositional principle, in which the movement of poetic matter is generated by oblique cases, is backed up by the intrusion of such historical realia from Dante's life as a wind-driven seafarer. The anatomy of Dante's eye, “so perfectly adjusted alone for the revelation of the structure of future time,” immediately finds its resonance in Farinata's proclamations, in Inferno,about the dead's ability to see into the future. Ibid., 420.
69 The concept of poetry's indivisible reality as equivalent to that of nature finds its first elaboration in the drafts of “Journey to Armenia,” in which Mandel'shtam argues for the insufficiency of mimesis exactly on the grounds that representational literature cannot overcome its discreetness. Literature's (in this case, prose's) task is to be “incorporated into the continuum“: Reality has the character of a continuum. Prose which corresponds to reality, no matter how expressly and minutely, no matter how efficiently and faithfully, is always a broken series. Only that prose is truly beautiful which is incorporated into the continuum as an entire system, although there is no power of method to prove it. Mandelstam, “Addenda to ‘Journey to Armenia,'” 394. Mandel'shtam characteristically leaves these theoretical elaborations out of the “Journey to Armenians final version. If this is “how” prose should be written—its decree—then “Journey to Armenia” is the result.
70 The development of Dante's metaphoric descriptions in which parts (i.e., separate metaphors) are indivisible from the whole (the complex description of Dante's arrival at the eighth circle) can be compared to a similar movement of divine matter in Gavriil Derzhavin's poem “God” (1785), in which God is everywhere yet moves in a downward trajectory. In representing God's descent while at the same time insisting on God's omnipresence, Derzhavin achieves an effect similar to the one Mandel'shtam ascribes to Dante. The movement from the top down on the semantic level constantly collides with the impossibility of further dissemination of divine matter—omnipresent by definition. God contains the universe in himself and at the same time gives birth to it: 
(0 Thou, in universe so boundless, … / Who fills, incarnate, all that's living, / Embracing, keeping and fulfilling, / To Whom we give the name of GOD!… / And then didst found Eternal essence, / Before the Ages born in Thee: / Within Thyself didst Thou engender / Thy selfsame radiance's splendour, / Thou art that Light whence flows light's beam. / Thine ageless Word from the beginning / Unfolded all, for aye conceiving, / Thou wast, Thou art, and Thou shalt be!)
Derzhavin, G. R., Poetic Works: A Bilingual Album,ed. Levitsky, Alexander, trans. Levitsky, Alexanderand Kitchen, Martha T.(Providence, 2001), 130.Google ScholarSee
Spektor, Alex, “Domestication of the Sublime: A Spatial Reading of Derzhavin's ‘On the Death of Prince Meshchersky,' 'God,’ ‘The Swallow,’ and ‘To Evgeny. Life at Zvanka,'”in O'Neil, Catherine, Boudreau, Nicole, and Krive, Sarah, eds., Poetics, Self, Place: Essays in Honor of Anna Lisa Crone (Bloomington, Ind., 2007), 108–37.Google Scholar
71 See, for example, Mandel'shtam's assertion that “the art of speech distorts our face in precisely this way, it disrupts its calm, destroys its mask.” Mandelstam, “Addenda to ‘Conversation about Dante,'” in CCPL,443.
72 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 420.
73 Mandelstam, “Addenda to ‘Conversation about Dante,'” 447.
74 Ibid., 398.
75 Ibid., 442.
76 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 437. This is an obvious reference to the Annunciation. On the teleology of “Conversation,” see Glazov-Corrigan's analysis, in which she constructs a teleological, incremental movement of Mandel'shtam's vision of the poetic process, analogous to Dante's own movement from hell to paradise. Glazov- Corrigan, Mandel'shtam's Poetics,especially chapter 5, “Periodization in the Transmutation of the Poetic Landscape: Metamorphosis of the Addressee in the 1930s,” 68-110.
77 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 402.
78 Ibid., 400.
79 On “Conversation” as an attempt to create a theory of poetics, see again Glazov- Corrigan, Mandel'shtam's Poetics,especially 68-110. See also Levin, “Zametki k ‘Razgovoru o Dante,'” in which the critic suggests seeing Mandel'shtam's reading of Dante as a key for understanding Mandel'shtam's own poetics.
80 It is in this sense that “Conversation,” but also Mandel'shtam's prose in general, should be considered a poetic text par excellence and not simply a prosaic filler (albeit one of the highest quality) written during the poetic standstill of the late 1920s.
81 Mandelstam, “On the Addressee,” in CCPL,69; “Conversation about Dante,” 436
82 Mandelstam, “On the Addressee,” 69.
83 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 397.
84 Glazov-Corrigan, Mandel shtam's Poetics,62.
85 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 414. On Bergsonian influences in “Conversation,“ especially the connection between Mandel'shtam's notion of poeticheskii poryv(which Harris translates as “poetic impulse“) and Bergson's concept of elan vital,see Nethercott, Francis, “Elements of Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution in the Critical Prose of Osip Mandel'stam,” Russian Literature 30, no. 4(November 1991): 455–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
86 See Spektor, “Family Romances in The Noise of Time.“
87 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 397.
88 Ibid., 407.
89 On the possible connections between Mandel'shtam's concept of the word and the linguistic theories of Nikolai Marr, see Boris Gasparov, “Lamark, Shelling, Man,” 187-212. See also Pollak, Mandelstam the Reader,25.
90 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 408.
91 Ibid., 397-98.
92 Ibid., 398.
93 Levin, “Zametki k ‘Razgovoru o Dante,” 149.
94 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 402,434.
95 Ibid., 397. Translation amended.
96 Levin, “Zametki k ‘Razgovoru o Dante,” 147.
97 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 396, 411. Here it is appropriate to compare these supposedly lifeless French engravings with French impressionist painting, which, according to Mandel'shtam, fills the painted image with life: “This is the painting which elongates the bodies of horses as they approach the finish line of the hippodrome.“ Ibid., 433.
98 Mandelstam, “Addenda to ‘lourney to Armenia,'” 393-94. Brackets and emphasis in the original.
99 The fact that Mandel'shtam's insistence on the poetic impulse being handed down by the authorities to the submissive poet was a potential problem for a poet living in a totalitarian state is evident from the heated argument regarding this issue he had with Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, who initially refused to write down her husband's “most severe dictation.” See Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Vtoraia kniga,164.
100 This insight comes from Emery, “Keeping Time.“
101 In Mandel'shtam's descriptions, Dante acquires and combines characteristics of almost all of the naturalists. Hence, Mandel'shtam compares Lamarck's “descending movement down the ladder of living creatures” to Dante's descent into hell. Mandelstam, “Journey to Armenia,” 367. He depicts Lamarck talking about the feeling of wrath that brings forth the emergence of horns on the foreheads of the combating animals—“But inner feelings, born of anger, direct ‘fluids’ to the forehead, aiding the formation of the substance of horn and bone“—and Dante describing mutation that is caused by suffering. Mandel'shtam's respect for Lamarck's youthful mastery can be compared to his admiration of Dante's agility as a teacher: “I tip my hat and let the teacher walk ahead of me. May the youthful thunder of his eloquence never be silent!” Ibid., 368. “The way Dante natuunderstands it, the teacher is younger than the pupil, for he ‘runs faster.'” Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 400. Dante also inherits Pallas's attention to detail as well as his painterly mastery: “Pallas knows and likes only the proximate.He ties proximity to proximity with his ornate ligatured script. He extends his horizon with tiny hooks and hinges.” Mandelstam, “Addenda to ‘Journey to Armenia,'” 392. Emphasis in the original. “He does not use only subtle or superficial vegetable colors. He paints and tans and distills nature out of red sandalwood. He makes extractions out of steep slopes and pine forests… he distills dyes out of a mixture of birch leaves and alum for the Nankeen cloth used by Nizhegorod peasant women and for the blueprints of the heavens.” Mandelstam, “Addenda to ‘Conversation about Dante,'” 392. Translation amended. “Here the subject is the color of Geryon's skin. His back, chest and sides are variously colored, ornamented with small knots and shields. Dante explains that neither the Turkish nor Tatar weavers ever used brighter colors for their carpets.” Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 412. Dante also takes over Darwin's newsman's and interviewer's skills: “Darwin's attitude toward nature resembles that of a war correspondent, an interviewer, or a daring reporter furtively pursuing a news story at the scene of the event.” Mandelstam, “On the Naturalists,” 333. “The entire Biblical cosmogony with its Christian appendages could have been accepted by the educated people of that time so literally, as if it were a special edition of the daily newspaper In Canto XXVI of the Paradiso,Dante goes so far as to have a private conversation with Adam, to conduct a real interview.” Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 422.
102 Norris, Margot, Beasts of the Modern Imagination: Darwin, Nietzsche, Kafka, Ernst, and Lawrence(Baltimore, 1985), 36.Google Scholar
103 Ibid.
104 Mandelstam, “Conversation about Dante,” 401-2.
105 Norris, Beasts of the Modern Imagination,12.
106 Ibid., 45.
107 Mandelstam, “On the Naturalists,” 332.