Articles and Essays

This collection presents journalistic and literary-critical works of one of the most significant poets of the 20th century — Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938). In his articles and essays, he explores the nature of poetic word, forms of culture, and the spiritual principle underlying them, the interrelation of tradition and modernity. In his view of the essence of art, Mandelstam did not align himself with any of the aesthetic currents of the era: he rejected the mystical-theosophical views of the Symbolists, avoided the cultural nihilism of Proletkult and the simplification of the Rappists, equally distancing himself from the theorists of the formal school and the apologists of vulgar sociologism. To each of these hermetic systems of thought, the poet counterposed the striving for a holistic and all-encompassing vision of the world, understanding creativity in its inseparable connection with historical existence. For this reason, Mandelstam's critical judgments, like his poems, are always open to the outside — to the present and the past, to the entire whimsical life of world culture. The book includes the author's collections "On Poetry" (1928) and "A Conversation about Dante" (1933), as well as individual articles and essays.