MANDELSTAMS--SEARCHING FOR SIGNALS:

...by Clarence Brown and anity...

...Every including their life together, the Revo- published, seems to confess as much in vice of two hundred years of Russian lution, starvation, and all the other the Introduction: "I can imagine, if literature is to be found in the pages of things that happen between noon and only just," he writes, "an English poem Hope Abandoned...

...But then illogically she con- strands that are brought together, it soil, including Faith and Morality in tinues: "If M. had been rich, or at least opened up many possibilities for further the Secular Age...

...until only very recently and a step above whatever is "ordinary petty disgruntlement, Nadezhda Manalmost simultaneously, in fact, with good poetry" at the time...

...ger of being "dated...

...JAMES M. GUSTAFSON On the whole the impact has been Thus when Mandelstam died it was beneficial, if only in bringing to awarethe memory and work of the poet that It has become somewhat fashionable ness the need for moral theology to Nadezhda devoted herself to preserving...

...that is, to get us off our knees for a moment and remind us that the Mandelstams were not just Theology heroes, but also blessed and burdened with human natures...

...and even then the print is to read the translated poems as syllabic bell, its abrupt syntactic seems to spill over the flat extremity into English poems...

...married to...

...I was a fool who did not really ly the obstructions to ecumenical Chris- evaluation of secularization in modern know how to be jealous or make a tian ethics were eroded by many culture...

...The provocative result provides a new understanding of Why then does she keep hinting at the Old Testament heritage...

...But the possibili- brief summaries of Biblical material JAMES M. GUSTAFSON is the well-known ties for serious theological conversation and of church historical materials on Protestant theologian and member of the with Catholic moral theology were the issues...

...that might reproduce what one critic merely sprawling, like Texas or Nor- Reading these englished poems of has called the 'cello sound' of this or man Mailer, but suggestive of some Mandelstam it is difficult to see why that poem of Mandelstam or some of the fabulous non-places of the earth: his reputation is so towering...

...One concludes that al- somersaults, and all the rest...

...She deceives herself be a pivotal figure in this history of Haring's contributions have been when she says, "Our life together was moral theology in the twentieth century those of a synthesizer rather than those too short for us to have had many both in the Catholic tradition, and in of a rigorous critical analyst, and like reasons for finding fault with each an ecumenical perspective...

...their lives...

...I wish to speak the truth and book thoroughly investigates every aspect of theology to be found in the timeless record of the Old Testament...

...There is no self-pity in Madame Mandelstam, only the determination of mcKenzie a head-strong old woman finally to set the record straight, if only after a fash- A The culmination of a lifetime of scholarship, John L. McKenzie's new ion...

...It is my judg- theology as well as its ecclesiastical one and oppose the other were the ment, however, that he will be seen to cousin, canon law...

...though much is to be admired in has to imagine this English imitation As for the poetry in translation of Brown's and Merwin's intentions, there it is because obviously the only thing Osip Mandelstam, one's sense of unease is considerably better poetry to be found he and Merwin have come up with is is almost Copernican...

...I should have left him-how law were met by Protestant Biblicism its datedness...

...The themes trying to append this bizarre footnote library of Lund University, Sweden, in that are addressed are important ones, to the legend...

...For all of its intellectual combank...

...the spring of 1960 with great excite- such as the relation of the Kingdom ment...

...Certain- The first chapter is an analysis and me...

...7.95 the "whole truth...

...And again: "But as regards Protestants and Roman Catholics...

...Peters- fied in Chapman, Dryden, Waley, and a Nadezhda Mandelstam could write burg of his childhood...

...For the deepest pain Nadezhda seems ever to have suffered was perhaps not at the hands of "the THE HUMAN SIN IN THE Boss" but of her husband Osip, whose ADVENTURE SECULAR AGE affair with Olga Vaksel is extraordinby William McNamara, O.C.D...

...nobody else but me needs it...

...Mortal Vanessa while his Stella languished...

...Louis...

...Nadezhda" in Russian means "hope," and the English title is the author's own...

...Thus it is possible to read John this as the story of "Nadezhda abandoned...

...And the conviction grows in the reader that Nadezhda with inimitable Old Russian circumlocution is trying to make one single, stark admission: "I did not love Mandelstam...

...On page 166 he 12 April 1974: 140...

...or in Ford and Kelly, Contemporary rectly or by allusion...

...currents that flowed through both par- is followed by chapters building on the But she did make a scene-not only ties, but Haring's book, at least for basis of extensive quotations from Vatwith Mandelstam, but with Stalin and some of us, had extraordinary signifi- ican 11 documents (particularly "The his minions for more than twenty years...

...What joys I denied myself...

...who died in the Merwin himself who has here proved heroism-both moral and physical-of Stalinist purges of 1935-1938...

...devotes his final section to the future of Israel and its mission to the outside world...

...But after Olga it was more to the an impact that no other book in moral poet than to the man that she was Doubleday, $6.95 theology can match in recent decades...

...Hope Aban- A doned if anything is an attempt to tarnish the legend...

...not to mention hundreds just about anything and still our esteem Anna Akhmatova, of a small group of of part-time translators who thoroughly for her and her poet-husband Osip poets who called themselves Acmeists, familiarize themselves with a foreign would not diminish...

...It scene...

...Those of us who began our stud- '60s) when theological fads changed at well have walked out on me, leaving ies of moral theology before Vatican least with the calendar years if not a note on the table to say it had all II will always recall with gratitude the with the seasons, Haring faces the danbeen a mistake...

...together in the text...

...and on some occasions inspira- BERNARD HARING, C.Ss.R...

...could he have dared to love anyone but and neo-Reformation theology...

...wife Nadezhda might agree that every- Professor Brown, whose own biogAlas, what Madame Mandelstam has thing else was not quite as important, raphy of Mandelstam has recently been written is just about anything...

...poetry, which is the same thing as visible despite the blood-dark cumuli of Let us pursue this question further...

...poems were not published in the its declension into English ought to be But if the poems are the occasion for U.S.S.R...

...Dealing first with the concept nothing but the truth," she says at one of cult, he examines Israel's changing religious expression as a people, point, "-but the whole truth I shall not and then moves on to a detailed consideration of each of the works of tell...

...towards a collaboration involving a Atheneum, $13.95 The decisive facts of Mandelstam's poet and someone who can supply him life seem to be easily summarized: a or her with a "raw translation" of the Selected Poems Jew, albeit one deeply attracted by the poems requiring englishing...

...A prominent communicating with God:" Maintain- theologian seeks the answers to these woman" moved in and, with Osip's ac- ing that honesty and openness-more and other questions troubling today's quiescence, proceeded to make Nadezh- than any system -are the keys, Fr...

...Christians as he examines the conMcNamara provides a sound, practi- cept of sin and calls us all to converda feel humiliated and an outsider...

...The memoir ends when it runs Russian language...

...5.95 only because Mandelstam depended almost to the point of mania on his wife in his method of writing poetry...

...and the only redress ously resonating change-ringing of some out of world...

...there is not some hidden message in 12 April 1974: 138 these hundreds of thousands of words, because outwardly there is little here of A DEFINITIVE STUDY OF THE consequence except to the specialist...

...He draws heavily myself...

...Here is a book not midnight on the day of apocalypse...

...same struggle...

...From the publishers of The Jerusalem Bible SIDOUBLEDAY Nadezhda was sounding board, ama- Faith and Morality in The Moral Theology which appeared at that nuensis, editor, typist, even memory- Secular Age time...

...clearly con- of being eclectic...

...The book kept us from the act of mutual de- moral theology there was little com- evolved from a summer course in 1967 struction that a parting would have mon ground for conversations between at Union Theological Seminary in New brought...

...for we have formed though this anti-Symbolist movement tongue before attempting a translation our opinion not on the basis of some collapsed before Mandelstam's major -including in some previous instances extraneous works of art, but on the poetry was written...

...No more than others was I satis- of God to the world, the sacred and fied with the ways in which the themes the profane, religion and culture, justiof Biblical theology, of Christocen- fication by faith alone, and prayer and REVIEWERS trism, of personalistic views of respon- holiness...

...of the Yukon, or coldest is our fault for being ignorant of the plastic sculpture of rhythm, its tenuSiberia...

...they were not in the numbers of an afterthought...

...Partly it other of its effects-its rhymes, its the far reaches...

...In Hope Against Hope Madame TOTAL THEOLOGICAL STATEMENT Mandelstam has told the essential OF THE OLD TESTAMENT story of her husband's persecution, arrest, attempt at suicide, second arrest, and tragic death, and there is no need to repeat any of it here...

...Church in the Modern World") and and now again with us, remonstrating, I read Das Gesetz Christi in the various Biblical materials...

...a leader, with host of others...

...in theological circles to respond to the begin to converse with Biblical theology, For she loved Osip's poetry and hated work of Bernard Haring in a some- ascetical theology, and fundamental tyranny and somehow to preserve the what condescending way...

...arily similar to Swift's infatuation with The founder of the Spiritual Life Is there such a thing as sin...

...like two other great Russian spouse, Chinese lover, or more likely writers, Gogol and Nabokov, finding a academic colleague...

...cance...

...This is all the poetry in the original is thought to downplay the role of the non-poet more remarkable in that Mandelstam's have some qualities of greatness, then collaborator...

...and that only in the last admire in it than the works of South- inevitably wanes...

...That is, he wonders if ten years has he been an important well or a dozen other contemporaries...

...In some chapters there are and critic living in St...

...While The many synthesizers he faces the danger other...

...Usually OSIP MANDELSTAM sacramentalism and culture of Christi- this silent partner is the poet's Spanish Trans...

...But if he the void...

...BOOKS MANDELSTAMS - SEARCHING FOR SIGNALS JOHN HEIDENRY Hope Abandoned author in samizdat, or the circulation of What is regrettable in poetry transNADEZHDA MANDELSTAM manuscripts by hand among an under- lations of recent years is the trend ground intelligentsia...

...His many books since another of Osip's "spells of light-head- tains serious strains between the various Vatican II have not broken new fertile edness...

...by Bernard Haring, C.Ss.R...

...The ultimate truth I shall keep to the Prophets and its function as a source of revelation...

...on relevant historical documents to survey Israel's changing role, and (Her italics...

...In the mystical in such English second waters as a Mandelstam crib in professorial and comet-ridden Russian heavens, still Laurie Lee or Fredegond Shove...

...Eternal damnation...

...The footnotes to literature faculty of the Divinity School of the Uni- available in Haring's book in a way in each chapter seem to be added as versity of Chicago...

...Chinese-lover or Spanish-spouse poetry, Soviet horrors, only Pushkin's star It seems a fair proposal to make: if the only the publisher does not have to shines more brightly...

...Or are these There were earlier amours, but none take part in the greatest human adven- notions simply the myths of another, which got to the point where the "other ture-contemplation, "the art of less enlightened age...

...contribution of that work...

...Thus Chap- delstam's second memoir leads the the bureaucratic decision not to allow man's Homer is certainly not equal to reader to fiddle with his powers of publication of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Marlowe or Donne, but it has more to insight as his attention to the text Archipelago...

...There is little penetrating inM., I doubt whether I did the right critical defenses of traditional natural sight or scholarship to compensate for thing...

...the themes are very familiar...

...Even his himself to be, after all, no Merwin...

...But they are addressed in such sibility, of objective value theory, and a way that little new insight into them JOHN HEIDENRY is a free-lance writer of the natural law were loosely woven is gained...

...promises, The Law of Christ has had tion...

...This book evokes At another time she says "it was In the late '40s and '50s when I be- a particularly strong sense of already surely chance that held us together and gan to study Catholic social ethics and being somewhat out of date...

...Un- York...

...Like any religious comfortably off, there might have been developments by theologians, by clergy author who seeks to be highly conmany more temptations, and, wanting to and religious, and perhaps also by the temporary in a time (particularly the enjoy himself in his old age, he could laity...

...For she has been talking about Law of Christ (3 vols...

...the materials cited are ELLIOTT WRIGHT is on the staff of Re- Theological Studies then coming out, seldom evident in the text either diligious News Service...

...Institute challenges today's man to sin...

...sion and a commitment to renewal cal, and thoroughly modern guide for Olga finally departed but perhaps contemplation in our modem age...

...5.95 and reform...

...Ostensibly it is "about myself," and indeed it is, off e though it contains not an iota of autobiography not related in some way to Osip...

...Or perhaps this Test amein is better posed as a question: "Did I love Mandelstam...

...but the fact reW. S. Merwin muse not so much in the Holy Soil of mains it does seem to cheapen the Atheneum, $6.25 the Fatherland as in one continuous genius of translation, as best exemplitranscendental vision of the St...