Dude, you want me to explain the difference between an orgasm and an attack of asthma. It’s impossible but I’ll try.
Read the following lines. Breathe them in, inhabit them, say them slowly out loud:
Словно тёмную воду, я пью помутившийся воздух.
Время вспахано плугом, и роза землёю была.
В медленном водовороте тяжёлые нежные розы,
Розы тяжесть и нежность в двойные венки заплела!
I mean, talking about orgasm. This is what “в медленном водовороте” is transmitting without remotely naming it. Just say it aloud: “В медленном водовороте тяжёлые нежные розы”. Right? People who don’t know a word of Russian break out in sweat when I recite it. Not a single time did anybody fail to figure out from recitation alone that it’s an erotic poem that has zero words of eroticism. It’s in the meter, in the way words are arranged. You’ll have to draw in breath to be able to say “в медленном водовороте”. So the poem has you gasping whether you want to or not. The poet is stepping out of the verse and making you do things in reality by the power of his craft. He’s been dead for going on a century and he still is present in our very breath.
Or this:
И море, и Гомер — всё движется любовью.
Кого же слушать мне? И вот Гомер молчит,
И море черное, витийствуя, шумит
И с тяжким грохотом подходит к изголовью.
If you can’t hear the sea waves crashing against the bedpost in the last verse, then I give up.
And now let’s look at the poem that cost Mandelshtam his life:
Его толстые пальцы, как черви, жирны,
А слова, как пудовые гири, верны,
Тараканьи смеются усища,
И сияют его голенища.
Primitive rhymes, shallow imagery, childish vocabulary. “Жирны-верны” is out there with “розы-морозы”. It’s an insult to poetry. “Усища” is child speak.
To remove the aftertaste from this bleh poem, one more quote from Mandelshtam’s real poetry:
Кто время целовал в измученное темя, —
С сыновьей нежностью потом
Он будет вспоминать, как спать ложилось время
В сугроб пшеничный за окном.
You can spend the rest of your life feeding on the beauty of these lines and still gasp for air, crushed by the weight of their meaning. I think about these lines often. They have changed the very fabric of who I am.
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