A Jew, probably a Komsomol member,
Decided to
portray everyday life of the gentry in the old days:
Riding his
mortgage[carriage], to the sound of bells,
The landowner hurries to the order
for post-horses[inn].
This is Mandelshtam's epigram on Iosif
Utkin, a Jewish poet, author of The Tale about Red Motele (1925).
Interestingly, Utkin perished (in 1944) in an airplane accident. At the
moment of his death he had in his hands a book of Lermontov's poems. In
Zatish'ye ("Calm;" could VN have read it? did he knew of the
circumstances of Utkin's death? has he heard of Utkin at all?) Utkin wrote:
"Будто лермонтовский ангел / Душу выронит из
рук" ("As if Lermontov's angel will drop the soul from his arms). The allusion
is to Lermontov's poem Angel (1831) in which the
angel carries the young soul in his arms. In Ada (3.7)
Demon Veen perishes in an airplane disaster that is never
explained.
Incidentally, Utkin comes from utka, "duck." It
rhymes with shutka, "joke."
Alexey Sklyarenko