Osip Mandelshtam - Selected Poems

Osip Mandelshtam , Twayne, Boston, 1988.

Koubourlis, Dimitri, A Concordance to the Poems of Osip Mandelshtam , Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 1974.

Mandelstam, Nadezhda Yakovlevna, Hope Against Hope , Atheneum, New York and Collins and Harvill, London, 1976.

Hope Abandoned , Atheneum, New York and Collins and Harvill, London 1973.

Mozart and Salieri. An Essay on Osip Mandelshtam and Poetic Creativity , Ardis, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1973.

Monas, Sidney (translation and introduction), Osip Mandelshtam: Selected Essays , University of Texas, Austin, 1977.

Nilsson, Nils Åke, Osip Mandelshtam: Five Poems , Uppsala, 1974.

Przybylski, Ryszard, An Essay on the Poetry of Osip Mandelshtam: God’s Grateful Guest . Ardis, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1987.

Rayfield, Donald (introduction and translations), Nadezhda Mandelshtam, Chapter 42 , and Osip Mandelshtam, ‘ The Goldfinch’ and Other Poems , The Menard Press, London, 1973.

Ronen, Omry, An Approach to Mandelshtam , The Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1983.

Struve, Nikita, Osip Mandelshtam , Institut d’Études Slaves, Paris, 1982.

Taranovsky, Kiril, Essays on Mandelshtam , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1976.

Tracy, Robert (translation and introduction), Osip Mandelshtam’s ‘Stone ’, Princeton University Press, N.J. and Guildford, Surrey, 1981.

West, Daphne M., Mandelshtam: The Egyptian Stamp , Birmingham Slavonic Monographs No. 10, University of Birmingham, 1980.

Zeeman, Peter, The Later Poetry of Osip Mandelshtam: Text and Context , Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1988.

Bodin, Per-Arne, ‘Understanding the Sign: an Analysis of ‘Sredi svyashchennikov…. ’, Scando-Slavica , Stockholm, 31, 1985, pp. 31–9.

Brown, Clarence, ‘Into the Heart of Darkness: Mandelshtam’s Ode to Stalin’, Slavic Review , Stanford, CA, December 1967, pp. 584–604.

‘Mandelshtam’s Notes towards a Supreme Fiction’, Delos , Austin, Texas, 1968, pp. 32–48.

Brown, Clarence and Hughes, Robert (translators), ‘Mandelshtam: Talking about Dante’, Delos , 6, 1971.

Freidin, Grigory, ‘The Whisper of History and the Noise of Time in the Writings of Osip Mandelshtam’, Russian Review , XXXVII/4 Columbus, OH, October 1978, pp. 421–37.

Harris, Jane Gary, ‘The “Latin Gerundive” as Autobiographical Imperative: a Reading of Mandelshtam’s Journey to Armenia’, Slavic Review , 45, 1986, pp. 1–19.

Monas, Sidney (translation and introduction), Osip Mandelshtam: Journey to Armenia , George F. Ritchie, San Francisco, 1979.

Nilsson, Nils Åke, ‘Osip Mandelshtam and His Poetry’, Scando-Slavica , 4, 1963, pp. 37–59.

‘To Kassandra: a Poem by Osip Mandelshtam’, Poetica Slavica , Ottawa, 1981, pp. 39–49.

Rayfield, Donald, ‘The Flight from Chaos’, European Judaism , Amsterdam, 1971–2, pp. 37–41.

‘A Winter in Moscow (Osip Mandelshtam’s poems of 1933–34)’, Stand , Newcastle upon Tyne, XIV/1, 1972, pp. 18–23.

‘Deaths and Resurrections’, Grosseteste Review , Lincoln, 7/1–3, 1974, pp. 156–77.

‘Mandelshtam: the Voronezh Notebooks’, Russian Literature Triquarterly , Ann Arbor, Michigan, 11, 1975, pp. 323–62.

‘Lamarck and Mandelshtam’, Scottish Slavonic Review , Glasgow, 9, autumn 1987, pp. 85–101.

Struve, Nikita, ‘Les Thèmes chrétiens dans I’oeuvre d’Osip Mandelshtam’, Essays in Honor of George Florovsky , II: The Religious World of Russian Culture. Russia and Orthodoxy , Mouton, Amsterdam, 1975, pp. 305–13.

Terras, Victor, ‘Classical Motifs in the Poetry of Osip Mandelshtam’, Slavic and East European Journal , Quebec, X/3, 1966, pp. 251–67.

‘The Time Philosophy of Mandelshtam’, Slavonic and East European Review , London, XLVII, 1969, pp. 344–54.

Vitins, leva, ‘Mandelshtam’s Farewell to Marina Tsvetaeva’, Slavic Review , XLVI/2, 1987, pp. 266–80.

Zeeman, Peter, ‘Reference and Interpretation (Mandelshtam)’, Russian Literature , Amsterdam, XVIII, 1985, pp. 256–98.

‘Irony in Mandelshtam’s Later Poetry’, Russian Literature , XIX, 1986, pp. 405–44.

‘Metaphorical Language in Mandelshtam’, Russian Literature , XXI, 1987, pp. 313–46.

Osip Mandelshtam was born in 1891 of Jewish parents and was brought up in St Petersburg. He studied at Heidelberg University and the University of St Petersburg. The first volume of his poetry, Kamen ( Stone ), appeared in 1913 and was followed by Tristia (1922) and Poems (1928). His persecution by the Soviet authorities for his evident lack of ideological conformism began in earnest in the 1930s, and in 1934 he was arrested and eventually exiled to Voronezh. He was finally re-arrested in 1938. He died in Eastern Siberia, on the way to a labour camp.

James Greene was born in Berlin in 1938. He took a degree in French and Russian at Oxford and studied psychology and English literature at London University. His second collection of poems, A Sad Paradise , was published in 1990. In 1985 he won first prize in the British Comparative Literature Association’s translation competition for his versions of Fernando Pessoa and in 1986 second prize in the TLS /Cheltenham Festival of Literature poetry competition. Earlier versions of some of the poems included in the present volume were published by Elek (1977), Granada (1980) and Angel Books (1988) and read at the National Theatre, the Mermaid, Riverside Studios, the Voice Box (Festival Hall), both the Oxford and Cambridge Poetry Festivals and on Radio 3. Three of his translations of Mandelshtam are included in The Oxford Book of Verse in English Translation .

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This selection first published in Great Britain, under the title The Eyesight of Wasps ,

by Angel Books, London 1989

Revised edition first published under the present title by Penguin Books 1991

Selection, translations, Preface and notes copyright © James Greene, 1989, 1991

Foreword by Nadezhda Mandelshtam copyright © Nadezhda Mandelshtam, 1976

Foreword by Donald Davie copyright © Donald Davie, 1977

Introduction copyright © Donald Rayfield, 1988

All rights reserved

The moral right of the translator has been asserted

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ISBN: 978-0-14-196539-0