Freydin Gregory. The Whisper of History and the Noise of Time in the Writings of Osip Mandel'shtam

Article. — The Russian Review. — 1978. — Vol. 37. — No. 4 (Oct.) — pp. 421-437.The "historicity" of Mandel'shtam's poetic expression has been often presented as a distinguishing trait of his art, but neither its role in his writings, nor its relation to the contemporary literary and cultural scene has been properly established. The present essay attempts to outline the poet's cultural genealogy and cultural affinities using as a guide his own attitudes toward time (as a factor of change) and toward history (as a succession of "historical" events which possess some latent meaning). This outline will demonstrate that the way Mandуl'shtam perceived time and, more specifically, history constituted a major formative principle of his poetics. Thus, the goal of the essay is two-fold: to show how the age shaped Mandel'shtam and how Mandel'shtam, in his turn, shaped the image of that age.