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# Your image, tormenting and unsteady, I could not touch in the fog
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/obraz-tvoi-muchitelnyi-i-zybkii-ia-ne-mog-v-tumane-osiazat/
- Published: 2025-12-24T05:33:37.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T09:13:19.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Faith, Art, Books, Saint Petersburg

Your image, tormenting and unsteady,  
I could not touch in the fog.  
"Lord!" I said by mistake,  
Not thinking at all of saying it.

God's name, like a great bird,  
Flew out of my breast.  
Ahead of me thick fog swirls,  
And behind me an empty cage.

*Literal translation*

**Osip Mandelstam**

*The Descent of Christ into Hell. Sketch for the icon of the iconostasis of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Saint Petersburg (Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood). Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov. Drawing, 1895*