When Toronto poet Rafi Aaron first read the poetry of 20th century Russian Jewish poet Osip Mandelstam, he was transfixed – both by the content, which Aaron described as “intriguing, complicated, something you could go back to and keep seeing more,” and by Mandelstam’s life story.
Aaron’s fascination with Mandelstam, who spent several years in internal exile in the Soviet Union for writing a poem satirizing Stalin and was later re-arrested and died in a labour camp, led him to write the play Mandelshtam, (spelling intentional) which premiered at the Toronto Fringe Festival July 1.
Directed by Jennifer Capraru, Mandelshtam, Aaron’s first play, recounts Stalin’s persecution of Mandelstam and explores the latter’s relationship with his wife Nadezhda.
It will be performed at the Anshei Minsk Synagogue in Kensington Market.
The play is based on a book of prose poetry Aaron published in 2006 about the couple’s experiences called Surviving the Censor – The Unspoken Words of Osip Mandelstam.
The book was the 2007 winner of the Stan and Helen Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award for poetry.
“The book has four characters – Mandelstam, Nadezhda, an anonymous voice from the labour camp and a researcher who’s trying to piece it all together – relaying through monologue what happened. I started wondering what would happen if they could actually talk [to each other],” Aaron, who’s written three other books of poetry, said. “I’d never written dialogue, but at some point I took a stab at it and got very good feedback from people in the theatre world. And one thing led to another.”
He adapted the play so that the cast of four characters includes a friend of Mandelstam who may or may not be an informer and the famous Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, a close friend of Mendelstam who is also persecuted.
Aaron, who was raised in Ottawa, studied Judaic Studies at York University and spent a decade living in Israel, underwent a process of intensive research on the poet and his wife for Surviving the Censor, including traveling to Russia as a guest of the Canadian government to meet with Mandelstam scholars.
However, he said, “as soon as I learned all the dates and facts, I tried to forget them. What I tried to do was pass on the feelings of what it must have felt like for them. The dates were used as postmarks along the way, but my purpose was to translate history into art.”
Mandelshtam reflects this, Aaron said, as it attempts “to get away from the historical narrative and…emphasize how, as Stalin was tightening the noose around [the couple’s] necks, it was affecting their relationship.”
The play begins with Mandelstam’s initial arrest in 1934 and covers the roughly five-and-a-half year period that followed, in which he returned from exile and was re-arrested.
Both Mandelstam and Nadezhda, who became famous in her own right after publishing a memoir in the 1970s exposing treatment of the intelligentsia under Stalin, were unique figures, Aaron stressed.
Mandelstam broke the mould insofar as most artists under Stalin either kept silent or became “state-controlled puppets,” and Nadezhda for memorizing everything her husband wrote in an attempt to ensure its survival.
Aaron chose the historic Anshei Minsk, which was founded by Jewish immigrants from Belarus, after discovering it on a Heritage Toronto walking tour.
“I researched it and found out its architecture dates back to the same period as the play is set,” he recalled.
Further, he saw a link between the censorship of Mandelstam’s words and the shul, once a target of arson.
More broadly, the message the play conveys about speaking out in the face of adversity is topical, he said, given recent Canadian events of people staying silent at the CBC and cases of bullying in schools.
“[Mandelstam] is a man who spoke out because he couldn’t stand what was going on around him. He knew the consequences would be dire, but he had no choice.”
Mandelshtam will be performed at the Anshei Minsk Synagogue, 10 St. Andrew St. Toronto. www.fringetoronto.com. 416-966-1062
