Mandelstam

Mandelstam by Clarence Brown. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780521293471.

Osip Mandelstam, who died in 1938 in one of Stalins labour camps, is one of the greatest poets of this century. Browns 1978 volume is a very full and important book which tells of Mandelstams earlier life and gives an introduction to the poetry. Professor Brown tells as much as will probably ever be known about Mandelstams early life, his studies, his literary relationships; and recreates in piquant detail the intellectual world of prerevolutionary St Petersburg. Indeed, the criticism of Mandelstams three collections of poetry, quoted both in Russian and in translation, manages the seemingly impossible: the reader with no Russian begins to grasp - as though at first hand - how this poetry makes its effects, and he senses its originality and importance and its place in European literature. Professor Brown here presents the first critical study of the life and works.