A recent piece in pravda gives the library books checked out by Stalin between April and December, 1926. Much has been made of their oddity . . .
                                              Robert Conquest

I

THE ESSENCE OF HYPNOSIS
(Paris: LeGrande, 1902)

The woman has agreed to swallow pins,
and here, white-robed,
                              stands great Dr. Charcot,

pointing to the needles in her palm. The photo
makes them gleam. The stovepipe-hatted amphitheatre strains,

heads abob for better looks. She's about
to lap them like sugar, but the Doctor's minion

stays her hand; down her dress they glitter and rain.
And now from the murmuring crowd he procures a hat,

placing it upon her lap.
                              Your child is crying.
Can you soothe him? Tenderly the hat's caressed.

To and fro she rocks it as she sings—a case
of "simple congestivehysteria." He is dying,

woman, your child is dying! The tears cascade,
her shoulders twitch and tremble. Diagnosis confirmed.

II
SYPHILLIS: ITS DETECTION, HISTORY, AND TREATMENT—ILLUSTRATED
(Munich: Insel Verlag, 1922)

"The shoulders twitch and tremble atthe tertiary stage,
signalling generally the advent ofparesis."

Comrade Stalin tamps his pipe and struts
the carpet to the phone, having markedanother passage

with red pen. Do not put him through, I said.
I am trying to relax. The receiver's slammed down:

collectivization can wait.
                                 He re-cracks the spine,
relights the merscham to Nietzsche gone mad,

to Schumann demented, to sepias of six noseless
Neopolitans, an aged whore whose arms are candlewax,

spirochettes that marinate the blood, x-es
and arrows to mark their swim. His pulse

crescendos and his forehead glistens,
x and asterisks—
                       all night the margins redden.