Description
Book SynopsisThe essays in this volume, presented in an exceptionally scrupulous and true translation, were selected because they represent Mandelstam's major poetic themes and his thought on literature, language and culture, and the work and place of the poet.
Trade Review"Starting from the premise that Mandelstam was a 'word-lover' par excellence, Monas has everywhere tried to apply the same sort of reverent care and precision in rendering him. In the process, I think, he achieves something very much like the Mandelstam line: hard, lapidary, severely wrought and yet full of emotive power and intellectual fire. What's more, he has done this without sacrificing either the densely metaphorical richness or the prodigious conciseness that, taken together, are the essence of Mandelstam's style." - Louis Iribarne
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: Friends and Enemies of the Word
- Conversation about Dante, translated by Clarence Brown and Robert Hughes
- 1. About Poetry
- From the Author
- The Word and Culture
- Attack
- About an Interlocutor
- About the Nature of the Word
- Notes about Poetry
- The End of the Novel
- Badger’s Burrow
- The Nineteenth Century
- Peter Chaadaev
- Notes about Chénier
- François Villon
- 2. Uncollected Essays and Fragments
- Pushkin and Scriabin (Fragments)
- The Morning of Acmeism
- Literary Moscow
- Literary Moscow: Birth of the Fabula
- Storm and Stress
- Humanism and Modern Life
- Fourth Prose
- 3. Journey to Armenia
- Sevan
- Ashot Ovanesian
- Zamoskvorech’e
- Sukhum
- The French
- Around the Naturalists
- Ashtarak
- Alagez
- Notes
- Index of Names
