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Osip Mandelstam
Portrait of Osip Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938) was born into a Polish-Jewish family in what was then the Russian Empire. He became one of the great poets of Russia’s Silver Age, with a keen sense of the melodies of spoken language. He published his first book, Stone, before the Russian Revolution of 1917. His poetry was celebrated from early on, even in an era rich with great poets. However, as the aims of socialism crystallized in tyranny, Russia, and Russian writers in particular, came to live under relentless terror. By the 1920s, he was shunned by the Soviet establishment for refusing to write in praise of the state. Few poets escaped premature death, whether by privation, suicide, or judicial murder. He died in a prison camp in Siberia in 1938; his poetry and prose was preserved by his wife and friends and published in New York in a collected edition in 1955. Mandelstam dove deep beneath the bleak surface of his era to reveal both the luminosity of the living past and the all-consuming brutality yet to come.

AGNI has published the following work:

Poetry
126
by Osip Mandelstam
Translated from the Russian by Joan Aleshire
Poetry
“Slip back into your mother, Leah”
by Osip Mandelstam
Translated from the Russian by Maxim D. Shrayer and J. B. Sisson
AGNI 55 Print Only
Poetry
“One Alexander Herzevich”
by Osip Mandelstam
Translated from the Russian by Maxim D. Shrayer and J. B. Sisson
AGNI 55 Print Only
Poetry
“Say, desert geometer, shaper”
by Osip Mandelstam
Translated from the Russian by Maxim D. Shrayer and J. B. Sisson
AGNI 55 Print Only
Poetry
“No, never”
by Osip Mandelstam
Translated from the Russian by Deborah Marshall and Douglas Penick
AGNI 77 Print Only
Poetry
“Cold prickles my scalp”
by Osip Mandelstam
Translated from the Russian by Deborah Marshall and Douglas Penick
AGNI 77 Print Only
Poetry
Moscow Drizzle
by Osip Mandelstam
Translated from the Russian by Svetlana Lavochkina
Online 2016 Home Nature
Poetry
Untitled
by Osip Mandelstam
Translated from the Russian by Svetlana Lavochkina
Online 2016 Animals Nature Spirituality
Poetry
Impressionism
by Osip Mandelstam
Translated from the Russian by Svetlana Lavochkina
Online 2016 Arts Food Nature
Poetry
78
by Osip Mandelstam
Translated from the Russian by Joan Aleshire
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