Unexpected monsters
Osip Mandelstam wrote a poem in 1933 that begins approximately like this: Do not tempt alien tongues – rather try to forget them:No matter what, you won’t be able to bite glass with your teeth. It’s not an invective against…
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Tag Mandelshtam
Roots and routes: Mandelshtam on Khlebnikov
To add to my recent note on Anselm Kiefer’s new Khlebnikov-inspired exhibition and to my earlier posts on the poet (Jakobson reading K.; Bobeobi 0, 1, and 2), two excerpts from Notes on Poetry by Osip Mandelshtam (1923): Modern Russian…
Evolution’s blind alley
Two years ago or earlier I made a point to translate into English what I consider one of the most meaningful Russian poems of the 20th century, Osip E. Mandelstam’s Lamarck. It’s still work in progress but it’s time to…