Octets

Octets written by Osip Mandelstam

I love the uprise of a texture (1) →

PD (?) Included in Moscow Notebooks. See also Poems. This cycle of eleven poems was written in 1932-35 (Moscow — Voronezh). In Russian: Восьмистишия.

OCTETS Contents: I. I love the uprise of a texture… (1) || II. I love the uprise of a texture… (2) || III. O butterfly, O Moslem-woman… || IV. The tiny appendage of the sixth sense… || V. Overcoming the firmness of nature… || VI. When, after destroying the sketches… || VII. And Schubert on the water, and Mozart in the bird's hubbub… || VIII. And the toothed paw of the maple… || IX. Tell me, Desert Draftsman... || X. From needle-shaped pestilential glasses... || XI. And I go out from space… ||

English Translations

There are known a few translations of the whole cycle to English published in:

• Osip Mandelstam: "Octets" 66-76, translated by Donald Davie, "Agenda", vol. 14, no. 2, 1976.
• John RILEY: "The Collected Works". Grossteste (Derbyshire), 1980.
• Osip Mandelstam: The Moscow Notebooks translated by Richard and Elizabeth McKane, Bloodaxe Books, 1991, Newcastle upon Tyne ISBN 1852241268.

Four of the "Octets" were included into:

• Osip Mandelstam: "Selected Poems", translated by David McDuff. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux (New York) and, with minor corrections, Rivers Press (Cambridge), 1973.

Octets. Osip Mandelstam Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam (1891 – 1938)