Mandelstam: The Later Poetry

Osip Mandelstam is, with Boris Pasternak, a major Russian poet of the twentieth century, yet most of the attention paid him by modern scholars has been confined to the years 1908-1925, when he was working on his first three collections of poetry: his subsequent collections, comprising over two-thirds of his poetic output, are very little known. In this 1977 study, the first devoted to Mandelstam’s life and work between 1930 and 1937, Dr Baines’ concern is to dispel the view that Mandelstam’s later poetry is weak or obscure and to clarify the many misconceptions which have surrounded it. To this end, she provides a continuous narrative of the events which form the background to composition, although she concentrates on the poems themselves, their nature and interpretation, quoting liberally in Russian.