Mandel'shtam's Farewell to Marina Tsvetaeva: “Ne veria voskresen'ia chudu”
… tak znai zhe: tvoi Dmitrii Davno pogib, zaryt — i ne voskresnet.A. S. Pushkin, Boris Godunov“Ne veria voskresen'ia chudu” is the last of the three poems that Osip Mandel'shtam addressed to Marina Tsvetaeva. The poets had met briefly in Koktebel' in the summer of 1915; they were reintroduced that December in Petrograd, and soon after Mandel'shtam made the first of several visits to Tsvetaeva in Moscow. He responded to her gift of the city, “Iz ruk moikh — nerukotvornyi grad/ Primi, moi strannyi, moi prekrasnyi brat” and to the affection of her “Otkuda takaia nezhnost'” with “V raznogolositse devicheskogo khora,” a celebration of his companion against the wondrously integrated Russo-Italian backdrop of the old capital. But in his next poem to her, “Na rozval'niakh ulozhennykh solomoi,” a sinister note is heard that relates their friendship to a darker side of Moscow's past, to Tsvetaeva's identification with Marina Mnishek and to his own confused identity at her side.