SOURCE: "On Reading Mandelstam," in Major Soviet Writers: Essays in Criticism, edited by Edward J. Brown, Oxford University Press, 1973, pp. 146-63.

In the following essay, which was first published as an introduction to Mandelstam's collected works, Brown examines linguistic and thematic aspects of Mandelstam's poetry, and offers a close reading of "Soliminka, The Straw".

In his imaginative and interesting article "On Freedom in Poetry" [published in Vozdušnye Puti, 1961] Vladimir Markov wittily constructs the following scale of values for contemporary Russian poetry. At the bottom is Esenin "for wide, general consumption"; in the middle are Gumilyev and, since recent times, Pasternak; and at the top, where he is available only to those who aspire to membership in a poetic elite, is Osip Mandelstam. Whether this "unshakeable scale of values"… is likely to prove permanent in all its parts need not concern us now. But few would dispute that...