Human imagination is not simply our means of reaching out to God but God's means of manifesting himself to us.
Christian WimanMandelstam was an artistic genius, the sort that any century produces only a handful of.
Christian WimanI donโt believe in โlaying to restโ the past. There are wounds we wonโt get over. There are things that happen to us that, no matter how hard we try to forget, no matter with what fortitude we face them, what mix of religion and therapy we swallow, what finished and durable forms of art we turn them into, are going to go on happening inside of us for as long as our brains are alive.
Christian WimanI am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when Jesus, drinking the very dregs of human bitterness, cries out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (I know, I know: he was quoting the Psalms, and who quotes a poem when being tortured? The words arenโt the point. The point is he felt human destitution to its absolute degree; the point is that God is with us, not beyond us, in suffering.)
Christian WimanThere are dangers for an artist in any academic environment. Academia rewards people who know their own minds and have developed an ironclad confidence in speaking them. That kind of assurance is death for an artist.
Christian WimanMandelstam is the sort of poet who comes along very, very rarely. Even the two Russian poets whose work is often linked with his - Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva - though their work is more "urgent" than most American poetry, seem to me to operate at a lesser charge than Mandelstam.
Christian Wiman