The Russian poet Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam (1891-1938) began as a member of the Acmeist movement and then evolved a style notable for its clarity, diction, concern for form, and classical allusions. His poetry is highly erudite and complex. Osip...

Osip Mandel'shtam is considered one of the major poets of the twentieth century and, by some, the greatest Russian poet of his age. His verse has been translated into many languages, and the secondary literature on him, already voluminous, is growing...

FOR most of his life Osip Mandelstam, perhaps the greatest poet of 20th-century Russia, was a literary vagabond. He owned nothing but a few books and clothes. He rarely had a room of his own, and he composed poems in his head while...

Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) rarely composed his works on paper. Under the Stalinist tyranny it was dangerous to leave any evidence of unorthodox thought, but also, his method of shaping a poem by repeatedly mouthing the words while walking suited his unique sense of...

Roman Kaplan, the majestic owner of the Russian Samovar, used to have a blog, but he stopped updating it in October because the people who were doing the typing and translating for him weren’t doing a good job. (The most recent entry is full of...

James Carroll claims to have left the priesthood in the early 1970’s. House of War suggests otherwise. This history of the Pentagon is Mr. Carroll’s Stations of the Cross, performed in penance for the sins of America’s military-industrial complex. House of War is not about...

In the following essay, which was first published in a Russian periodical in 1972, Ginzburg distinguishes three stages in the development of Mandelstam's poetry and determines the influence of Hellenistic and Symbolist imagery on his work.

Monas is an American educator and critic with a special interest in Russian literature. In the following essay, he explores the defining characteristics of Mandelstam's work.

Harris is an American educator and critic with a special interest in Russian literature. In the following excerpt from her critical study of Mandelstam, she analyzes thematic and stylistic aspects of the Voronezh Notebooks.