The Moscow Notebooks by Osip Mandelstam
Mandelstam was one of the great Russian poets of the twentieth century, with a prophetic understanding of its suffering. This contains the poems of his years of persecution, from his journey to Armenia in 1930 until 1934, when he was arrested and exiled to the Urals for writing an unflattering poem about Stalin. Written and preserved by a miracle, his poems have become in Peter Levi's description all gems and ingots in the McKanes' translations. This edition is now out of print but the whole book is reprinted as part of The Moscow and Voronezh Notebooks.
Osip Mandelstam was one of the great Russian poets of the 20th century, with a prophetic understanding of its suffering, which he transformed into luminous poetry. Born in 1891, he grew up in St Petersburg. With Akhmatova and Gumilyov he formed the Acmeist movement. Childish and wise, joyous and angry, at once complex and simple, he was sustained for 20 years by his wife and memoirist Nadezhda Mandelstam, who became, with Anna Akhmatova, the saviour of his poetry. His last poems, preserved in his notebooks, were translated by Richard and Elizabeth McKane as The Moscow & Voronezh Notebooks (Bloodaxe Books, 2003). In 1934, Mandlestam was arrested for writing an unflattering poem about Stalin, and subjected to gruelling interrogations and torture before being exiled to Voronezh. Nadezhda's Mandlestam's memoir Hope Against Hope includes a moving account of their time in Voronezh, and Anna Akhmatova's poem 'Voronezh' describes her visit there. In 1938 he was re-arrested and sentenced to five years' hard labour for 'counter-revolutionary activities', and died that winter, of 'heart failure', in a freezing transit camp in Siberia.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781852241261 |
| ISBN 10 | 1852241268 |
| Title | The Moscow Notebooks |
| Author | Osip Mandelstam |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloodaxe Books Ltd |
| Year published | 1991-02-21 |
| Number of pages | 96 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |