Subtexts of Osip Mandelstam’s "Ode" to Stalin: a linguist’s commentaries

Abstract

The aim of the article is to reconstruct the semantic structure of Mandelstam’s poem “Ode” using contextual, intertextual and consituative analysis. As the study showed, three types of complexity of nominations lead to significant difficulties in the adequate understanding of the “Ode”: (1) motivational complication, the sources of which are semantic transfers, primarily metaphor. One of the most striking images of the “Ode” is formed by an expanded metaphor based on the comparison of a poet with an artist, a pen with charcoal, which the artist takes for the highest praise to the addressee of the “Ode”. The “duality” of this image that Joseph Brodsky indicated can be explained if we take into account the fact that the line “If I took coal for the highest praise” contains an oxymoron (perhaps with an intertextual allusion to coal in Horace’s Satires), i.e. conceals a contrasting characteristic; (2) intertextual complication. An axiologically significant element of the subtext of the “Ode” is the allusion to the song “Rus” in Nekrasov’s poem Who Is Happy in Russia?; this allusion is expressed metrically and lexically. The song is built on contrasts, which gives reason to correlate this allusion with the above oxymoron as a figure of contrast; (3) consituative complication. The style of the “Ode”, which approaches oratorical and even newspaper, should be considered as consituatively marked, since such a convergence was characteristic of revolutionary and post-revolutionary poetry. Among the facts testifying to the dialectical nature of Mandelstam’s view of what was happening in the USSR, is not only the open statement “Debtor is stronger than the claim”, but also the subtexts confirming its sincerity: (a) a reference to the song “Rus”, one of the fragments of which says that power and untruth do not get along; (b) the likening of Stalin to Prometheus in chains; (c) the above oxymoron. This semantic correlation allows asserting that the text contains elements of two-sided argumentation in relation to the assessment of the activities of the USSR’s leader; for the Stalin era, especially after the XVII Congress of the CPSU(b), the Congress of Winners (1934), this position of the author was politically and ideologically unacceptable. The fact that Mandelstam decided on such an argument confirms the validity of his evaluation as a poet who was unable to compromise in his work. The “Ode” is considered a palinody in relation to the poem “We Live Without Feeling the Country Beneath Our Feet ...” (1933). In the light of the above facts, it would be more accurate to talk about incomplete palinody, since the unambiguously negative evaluation is replaced in the “Ode” by not unambiguously positive, but dialectical, possibly with the prophetic element – power and untruth do not get along.