I Am No One's Contemporary, a poem by Osip Mandelstam, translated and performed by Bill Minor, who also did most of the artwork and photographs.  Additional artwork by Kandinsky,  Malevich, Chagall, Altman, Filonov, Levitan and Vrubel.

 

Osip Mandelstam is one of the great poets of the modern era: a poet admired, highly respected in Russia before and after the Revolution, but a poet not willing to compromise his principles during Stalin’s reign. Mandelstam was arrested after reciting a poem unfavorable to Stalin before close friends, and he died in 1938, 

at age 47, in a transit labor camp near Vladivostak.

 

William Minor is a poet/musician/visual artist who taught Soviet Russian Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and Monterey Peninsula College. He has translated the work of both classical and Soviet Russian poets—with an emphasis on the work of Osip Mandelstam. The poem he recites—

“No, never, was I anyone’s contemporary”—best represents Mandelstam’s independence, integrity, and ultimate hope.

 

The poem is set to "Brandenburg 22 Rembrandt" by Bob Danziger and the Brandenburg 300 Project featuring Albert Wing, Mike Miller and Pat Woodland.  

Mixed by Chris Bolster at Abbey Road Studios, London.

 

Video by Bob Danziger.