Love, death and speech. About two poems by O. Mandelstam and I. Brodsky

Abstract

The article provides a comparative analysis of O. Mandelstam’s poem “Skillful mistress of guilty glances” and “It is not that the Muse is gathering water in the mouth…” by J. Brodsky. It proves the fact of Brodsky’s borrowing the imagery of O. Mandelstam’s poem with its over re-denotation and deliberate stylistic degradation. The analysis focuses on such concepts as “love”, “death” and “speech”, each of which, while retaining the original connotations of Mandelstam’s poem, acquires a new, reduced meaning through the use of certain lexical means (for example, colloquial and jargon words) Thus, the concept of “love” in Brodsky’s poem turns out to be an ironically reduced memory, in which the lyrical subject focuses attention not on the object of his love, but on himself, unlike in Mandelstam’s poem of address. The concept of “death” is also deflected sarcastically by Brodsky, since his subject of speech speaks already from oblivion, representing “nothing inside”. The notion of “speech”, although it has a rather negative semantics in both poems, turns out to be mute in Brodsky, characteristic of just such a lyrical subject who has already crossed the threshold of death, at which the lyrical subject of Mandelstam’s poem stops.