Poets and Poems: Osip Mandelstam and “Tristia”

Imagine waking up one morning to discover a collection of your poetry has been published in another country, without your permission and in a mixed-up order you never would have approved. That’s what happened to Russian poet Osip Mandelstam; his second poetry collection, Tristia, appeared in Germany in 1922, via a friend who had the poems published. 

It was beginning to be a dangerous time for Russian poets and writers. The Russian Civil War would continue for another year, although the Bolsheviks were in control of large swaths of the country, including Moscow and St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd and soon to be renamed Leningrad). Mandelstam was in something of a double bind; not only was he a poet, he was also from a suspect social class. He was born in 1891 in Warsaw. His wealthy parents owned a prosperous leather manufacturing business, and his father won the privilege of being allowed to live in St. Petersburg. That’s where Mandelstam grew up and was educated.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Sir Raleigh, Storytelling, and the Sea – Alan Howell at Story Warren.

 

Arthur in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: The Search for Regeneration – Seth Myers at An Unexpected Journal.

 

Footsteps – poem and artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

Explore the World of Willa Cather in Her Nebraska Hometown – Jeff MacGregor at Smithsonian Magazine. 

Poets and Poems: Osip Mandelstam and “Poems”

Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) is considered one of the most significant Russian poets of the 20^th century. We have his much of his poetry today only because his wife Nadezhda Khazina protected them the only way she could at the time – she memorized them. 

Mandelstam was born to a wealthy Polish-Jewish in Warsaw. He studied for short periods at the Sorbonne, the University of Heidelberg, and the University of St. Petersburg, which excluded Jew, forcing him to convert to Methodism. 

 

The pre-World War I period was a time of intense social, cultural, and political ferment in Russia and a time when poets were aligning themselves into “schools” and groups. Mandelstam was associated with the Poet’s Guild, a group that included Anna Ahkmatova. It was also known as the Acemists, and the group’s poets emphasized form and expression. This group was part of the Silver Age of Russian poetry, a period of intense creative activity from the 1890s to the 1920s.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.