Game, Set, Stanza: Modern Sport in Russia and the Poetry of OsipMandel'shtam

Abstract

A drawing entitled Sportsmen (Sportsmeny), depicting two young men with tennis racquets and a book, appeared in the May 1914 issue of Novyi satri,-kol along with the following text: Today at my sister's I saw a certain book: the works of Tennyson, the first tennis player exclaims. Brother, take a look at it, replies his partner. Perhaps there's something there on tennis! To which the first responds: Yes, I think it's a tennis manual.' This droll mix of poetry and sports struck a new note in Russia. Earlier issues of Novyi satirikon contained nothing of the sort, yet only a month after Sportsmeny, the same periodical printed Osip Mandel'shtam's poem Tennis. Then, two months later, Mandel'shtam published his poems Sport and Futbol (August 1914). A fourth Mandel'shtam poem on athletics, Futbol (often called Vtoroi futbol), appeared in the January 1914 issue of Zlatotsvet, another literary-humoristic magazine of the time. Mandel'shtam, however, included only Tennis in Kamen'. his first book of verse. Why this sudden interest in sports? And why celebrate these purely recreational activities through poetry? Did Mandel'shtam's work reflect a new trend in Russian society? Before any discussion of athletics in prerevolutionary Russia and before any analysis of Mandel'shtam's sports poems, our innate or, at the very least, traditional appreciation for requires some elucidation. Play constitutes an essential aspect of athletics, while games are entertaining action that is both pleasurable and enriching. Johan Huizinga elaborates upon three concepts underlying our notion of play: first, play is voluntary and thus inherently a free act; second, play is not ordinary life, but rather an activity that is satisfying in itself; and third, play maintains a quintessential detachment, for when the