Osip Emilievich Mandelstam is a 20th century Russian poet, essayist, translator and literary critic. The influence of the poet on contemporary poetry and the work of subsequent generations is multifaceted, literary critics regularly organize round tables on this matter. Osip Emilievich himself spoke about his relationship with the literature around him, admitting that he "floods into modern Russian poetry"
Childhood and youth
Osip Mandelstam was born on January 3 (15), 1891, in Warsaw into a Jewish family. His father was a successful leather goods merchant, and his mother was a piano teacher. Mandelstam's parents were Jewish, but not very religious. At home, Mandelstam was taught by educators and governesses. The child attended the prestigious Tenishev school (1900-07) and then traveled to Paris (1907-08) and Germany (1908-10), where he studied French literature at the University of Heidelberg (1909-10). In 1911-17. he studied philosophy at St. Petersburg University, but did not graduate. Mandelstam was a member of the Guild of Poets since 1911 and personally maintained close ties with Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilev. His first poems appeared in 1910 in Apollon magazine.
As a poet, Mandelstam became famous thanks to the collection "Stone", which appeared in 1913. Themes ranged from music to cultural triumphs such as Roman classical architecture and the Byzantine Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. He was followed by "TRISTIE" (1922), which confirmed his position as a poet, and "poems" 1921-25, (1928). In Tristia, Mandelstam made connections with the classical world and modern Russia, as in Kamen, but among the new topics was the concept of exile. The mood is sad, the poet says goodbye: "I studied the science of speaking well - in" headless sorrows at night."
Mandelstam warmly welcomed the February Revolution of 1917, but at first he was hostile to the October Revolution of 1917. In 1918, he briefly worked in the Ministry of Education of Anatoly Lunacharsky in Moscow. After the revolution, he became very disillusioned with modern poetry. The poetry of youth was for him the incessant cry of a baby, Mayakovsky was childish, and Marina Tsvetaeva was tasteless. He enjoyed reading Pasternak and also admired Akhmatova.
In 1922, Mandelstam married Nadezhda Yakovlevna Khazina, who accompanied him for many years of exile and imprisonment. In the 1920s, Mandelstam made a living by writing children's books and translating the works of Anton Sinclair, Jules Romain, Charles de Coster and others. He did not write poems from 1925 to 1930. The importance of preserving the cultural tradition became an end in itself for the poet. The Soviet government very much doubted his sincere loyalty to the Bolshevik system. To avoid conflicts with influential enemies, Mandelstam traveled as a journalist to distant provinces. Mandelstam's trip to Armenia in 1933 was his last major work published during his lifetime.
Arrests and death
Mandelstam was arrested in 1934 for an epigram he wrote to Joseph Stalin. Iosif Vissarionich took this incident under personal control and had a telephone conversation with Boris Pasternak. Mandelstam was exiled to Cherdyn. After a suicide attempt, which was stopped by his wife, his sentence was changed to exile in Voronezh, which ended in 1937. In his notebooks from Voronezh (1935-37), Mandelstam wrote: “He thinks like a bone and feels the need and tries to remember his human form,” in the end the poet identifies himself with Stalin, with his tormentor, cut off from humanity.
During this period, Mandelstam wrote a poem in which he again gave women the role of mourning and preservation: "To accompany the resurrected and to be the first, to greet the dead is their vocation. And it is criminal to demand caress from them."
The second time, Mandelstam was arrested for "counter-revolutionary" activities in May 1938 and sentenced to five years in a labor camp. During interrogation, he admitted that he had written a counter-revolutionary poem.
In the transit camp, Mandelstam was already so weak that it became clear that he did not have much time left. On December 27, 1938, he died in a transit prison and was buried in a common grave.
Heritage
Mandelstam began to recognize international fame in the 1970s, when his works were published in the West and in the Soviet Union. His widow Nadezhda Mandelstam published her memoirs Hope versus Hope (1970) and Hope Abandoned (1974), which depict their lives and the Stalinist era. "Voronezh Poems" by Mandelstam, published in 1990, is the closest approximation that the poet planned to write if he survived.
Mandelstam has written a wide range of essays. Dante's Talk was considered a masterpiece of contemporary criticism, with its bizarre use of analogies. Mandelstam writes that Pushkin's luxurious white teeth are a man's pearl of Russian poetry. He sees Divine Comedy as a "journey of conversation" and draws attention to the use of Dante's colors. The text is constantly being compared to the music.
