Pasternak Time: “The five minute phonecall took no time”

The five minute phonecall took no time

For such a famous phonecall. Yes, comrade.

They have talked about it ever since,

A lifetime of conjecture. What was the tone?

Lives hung in the balance on the weight

Of a single sentence. It’s not poetry.

A lesser writer would stumble with words

Or make false claims. Not Pasternak.

He learnt dialectic in the days of glory

When his parents wowed Moscow. The Pasternaks.

The Georgian psychopath knew all that

But he had a mission. Vendetta.

Lifetimes fill with connected incidents

To break the receiver. Friendships founder.

And time hangs heavy in her two books

Who lived to remember her call. Silent decades writing.

Where all roads lead to the five minute phonecall,

One name traded against another. Hang up! Now!

For what is Mandelstam, tell me again,

What kind of damn fool name is that? Mandelstam.

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Why did Dante write The Divine Comedy?

This is one of two short papers given by Philip Harvey at the first Spiritual Reading Group session for 2014 on Tuesday the 18 th of February in the Carmelite Library in Middle Park. He also gave a paper on that occasion, which can be found on the Library blog, entitled ‘A Rationale for Purgatory’ . Nadezhda Mandelstam recalls in one of her books how her husband, the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, would say that when reading poetry we can spend a great deal of time discussing what it means, but the first and main question about a poem is not what does it mean, but why was it written. That is the place to start. Here are eleven reasons that I offer quietly to help us think about this poem: Why did Dante write The Divine Comedy? You may have other reasons and these are invited. We will spend most of our time today looking at meanings, but also at why. I wrote these out as they occurred to me, so there is no priority order. 1. He wrote the poem because ...

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The Poetry of Rowan Williams

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READINGS OF THE WORK BY PHILIP HARVEY

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