“Ode to Beethoven”: Osip Mandelstam’s newly discovered manuscript and abstract on the history of the Western Church

Abstract

The article introduces the newly discovered manuscript of Osip Mandelstam's poem “Ode to Beethoven”, which was preserved in the family archive of Semen Lipkin. The autograph was taken into account in Nikolay Khardzhiev’s notes to the “Poems” in the Big Series of “Poet’s Library” (1973), but later it had been inaccessible to researchers for many years. The authors describe and comment in detail on the draft manuscript of the poem — the poet’s first appeal to the ode genre with the development of a stanza inherent in the genre. The text on the back of the sheet is identified by the authors as a fragment of an abstract on the history of the Western Church, which directly correlates with the manuscript “Justification of the Conciliarity” from the poet’s archive in Princeton. Saying that it is impossible to establish exactly whether the fragment is an abstract of a book or a lecture, the authors attempt to date it on the basis of biographical information and a number of textual features. The publication is concluded with a brief commentary on the abstract, as well as photocopies of the manuscript (on both sides of the sheet), which should greatly facilitate researchers' access to this important source.

Keywords

• osip mandelstam
• manuscript
• “ode to beethoven”
• “justification of the conciliarity”