Octets

Octets written by Osip Mandelstam, translated by Dmitri Smirnov

I love the uprise of a texture (1) →

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)