by Natasha Bershadsky This space of the CI Poetry Project is dedicated to links of poetic inspiration reaching back to ancient Greece and mediated by the figure of Osip Mandelshtam. Mandelshtam had his own, utterly personal, understanding of Hellenism. Hellenism is a spirit that Mandelshtam perceives as inherited by the… Read more
We’ll die in crystalline Petropolis Whose ruling deity is Proserpina. We swallow deadly air with every breath, And every hour becomes a year of death. Goddess of oceans, terrible Afina, Resign your helmet’s stone magnificence. We’ll die in crystalline Petropolis Which is not ruled by you, but Proserpina. From Carol… Read more
Translated by Philip Nikolayev Insomnia, Homer, taut sails: my lips have lisped Down to the middle the detailed list of ships, That long brood and angular train of cranes That rose above Hellas once on wings of waves. A wedge of cranes into far foreign lands… Read more
Ma voix aigre et fausse… P. Verlaine I’m telling you with utter Openness: All’s sheer fancy, sherry-frenzy, Dearest. Where earlier to a Hellene Beauty shone, There dark holes exposed to me A deep shame. Ancient Greeks… Read more
