Mandelstam

By: Oleg Lekmanov, Tatiana Retivov (Translator)

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Hardcover | 1 January 2010

At a Glance

Hardcover
204 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.4 x 15.5 x 1.27

Hardcover

RRP $68.52

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Now available for the first time in English, Oleg Lekmanov's critically acclaimed Mandelstam presents the maverick Russian poet's life and work to a wider audience and includes the most reliable details of the poet's life, which were recently found and released from the KGB archives. Through his engaging narrative, Lekmanov carries the reader through Mandelstam's early life and education in pre-revolutionary Petersburg, at the Sorbonne in Paris, and in Heidelberg and his return to revolutionary Russia. Bold and fearless, he was quoted as saying: "Only in Russia do they respect poetry. They even kill you for it." Osip Mandelstam compared a writer to a parrot, saying that once his owner tires of him, he will cover his cage with black cloth, which becomes for literature a surrogate of night. In 1938, Mandelstam was arrested and six months later became a statistic: over 500,000 political prisoners were sent to the Gulags in 1938; between 1931 and 1940, over 300,000 prisoners died in the Gulags. One of them was the poet Osip Mandelstam. This is the tragic story of his life, pre-empted by the black cloth of Stalinism.

Industry Reviews

"Oleg Lekmanov's life of the Russian poet, Osip Mandelstam, is a stark reminder of what happens in a society that descends mindlessly into authoritarianism wherein all things human in time are rendered meaningless. Lekmanov's concise, fact-driven biography charts the heartbreaking story of Mandelstam's hounded life in sharp detail." -Thomas Sanfilip, Literary Yard, October 2024

"Lekmanov's book contains insightful observations of the poems and convincing attempts at psychological reconstruction. The author does not attempt to conceal the hero's "idiosyncrasies" and manages to forego engaging in "objective Schadenfreude". Mandelstam was at times funny, hysterical, na¯ve, but even in the most curious guise he managed to maintain high stature, without which his poetry would not have been possible. Such stature was the stuff of legends. It is also wonderfully illuminated here by amusing (though occasionally common and mean) anecdotes. This is the image of Mandelstam that Lekmanov presents, reminding us of the inherent kinship between poetry and nobleness."

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