Mandelstam and Aloysius Bertrand: a question of interpretation

Abstract

O. Mandelstam's poem Like chiaroscuro Martyr Rembrandt combines ekphrasis, testament of the poet, and declaration of social position: this combination has posed difficulties for interpreters. A number of obscure images, such as imprisonment, wealth, or a tribe of associates, are convincingly interpreted as Mandelstams deduction of his own biography from the circumstances of Rembrandts life, but this explain neither the expressive poetics nor the place of the Calvary plot among other life-plots. I suggest that one of the poems by the French Romanticist Aloysius Bertrand, Gaspard de la nuit, which is a synopsis of the images of Gothic novels, should be considered a key to the poem. Bertrands poem in prose contains the main images of Mandelstams poem in a short, and it may well be considered, if not a pretext of Mandelstams text, then one of the keys that clarify its plot. Thus, Bertrand understands the dark light of the crucifixion as an impression of the window frame at night, the searing pain as the onset of midnight, the guards and warriors as the presence of the ancestors and the curse associated with them, and the treasure as a hint of hell and incest. Thus the plot of Mandelstams poem is not to be reduced to a willingness to give up earthly goods and accept martyrdom in imitation of Christ, nor to a willingness to share noble poverty with friends. This plot, from Bertrands key, is reconstructed as follows: midnight threatens with nightmares, and the chief of these nightmares is the sensation of burning pain, the pain of conscience or the pain of the unfulfilled, with the onset of midnight. After this reflection on time passes into a dreamlike experience of what is happening, into a series of fantasies pointing to former treasures of life and to former impressions of art. In this dream experience, human brotherhood can only be experienced as a communion with shadows and therefore an inevitable bodily martyrdom. In the poem, Mandelstam reassembled Gothic Romantic symbols and emotional modes to distinguish between the subjective relationship to martyrdom and the objective martyrdom defined by the autonomies of art, soul, and body.