Osip Mandelshtam, arguably the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century, died in a Stalinist prison camp at the age of forty-seven. It was not his first arrest - he had already been imprisoned multiple times, as well as tortured, exiled, and blacklisted for the criticism of the Soviet state implicit in his verse. And yet many of his poems survived attempted purges - often hidden in the unlikeliest places, and protected at great risk by his friends and admirers.
This volume collects the best of his work, including poems he was unable to publish in his lifetime. Dense and sonorous, his poetry magnificently merges the European past at its best with Russian experience at its worst. Full of light and beauty, bitterness and desolation, Mandelshtam's verse is a powerful expression of the struggle to bear injustice and the poignant dream of a better world.
Osip Mandelshtam was born into a Jewish family in Warsaw in 1891, but grew up chiefly in St Petersburg. His father was a leather merchant, and their existence was comfortable, in spite of the widespread persecution of Jews in turn-of-the-century Russia. Mandelshtam travelled in Europe and attended university, but abandoned his studies early to devote himself to writing. His first collection, Stone, published when he was only twenty-two, immediately established him as one of Russia's foremost poets. The revolution and the Soviet rule that followed created immense difficulties for Mandelshtam. Unwilling to bend his art to political ends, and increasingly critical of Stalin's leadership, he was imprisoned, tortured, exiled and generally persecuted. He continued to write, releasing another major collection, Tristia, and entrusting poems to his wife Nadezhda and his literary friends, who kept many of his works hidden from the authorities. Once more arrested, on his way to a prison camp, Mandelshtam died of heart failure, according to officials, in 1938.
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