A quatrain from 'The Swallow'. 1920

Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam (1891-1938)
A quatrain from 'The Swallow'. 1920
Autograph manuscript signed ('O. Mandelstam'), one four-line stanza from the poem ‘Lastochka’ (‘The Swallow’), n.p., 23 November 1920.

In Russian. Four lines in green ink on one leaf, 187 x 121mm, extracted from a notebook.

... A smertmim vlast dana lubit i uznavat,
Dlia nih i zvuk v persti prolietsia!
No ya zabil chto hochu skazat –
I misl besplodnaya v chertog teney vernetsia ...

Mortal creatures can love and recognise: sound may
pour out, for them, through their fingers, and overflow:
I don’t remember the word I wished to say,
and a fleshless thought returns to the house of shadow.
(tr. by A.S. Kline)

A verse from one of Mandelstam’s most famous poems. One of Mandelstam’s most famous and at the same time hauntingly elusive poetic creations, ‘Lastochka’ (‘The Swallow’) is also sometimes known by its first line, ‘I don’t remember the word I wished to say’. This first line is repeated in the fifth of the poem’s six quatrains, quoted in the present manuscript in the year of the poem’s composition. The swallow itself is a recurring trope throughout his verse, perhaps representing regeneration and the restless movement of thought.

Mandelstam is considered one of the most important Russian poets of the 20th century, initially establishing himself in the pre-First World War ‘Acmeist’ school, which privileged direct expression of thoughts and feelings over the elusive and metaphysical style of the Symbolists. Although at first supportive of the Bolshevik regime, he proved unwilling or unable to bend his art to state propaganda purposes, and his increasing opposition to the Stalinist government led to his initial arrest and internal exile in 1933, and finally his second arrest and death in a transit camp in December 1938.

Poetic autographs by Mandelstam are perhaps rarer on the market than those of any 20th-century poet of his stature: only two are recorded at auction by ABPC and RBH in more than 30 years.

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