Zeeman Peter. The Later Poetry of Osip Mandelstam: Text and Context

Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988. — 179 p.The gradual permeation to the West – in the mid-to-late fifties and early sixties – of copies of Mandelstam’s unpublished later poems has caused the author’s star to rise to considerable heights. Difficult though they may be sometimes, it is commonly accepted that these ’illegal’ poems can readily compete with the best of the early work. They have no doubt helped to rank Osip Mandelstam as one of Russia’s, if not the world’s, great poets. I have to admit that I feel a little uneasy about using poems which at times reflect their creator’s sufferings and despair with such painful directness to support theoretical arguments. The only excuse for this show of disrespect is that any attention payed to Mandelstam’s poetry is worthwile, so long as it yields new insights or additional information. The reader may judge whether I have succeeded in this.A Note on the Transliteration
A Note on the TranslationsThe Status of Critical Interpretation Introduction
Common interests
Objectivity and agreement
Independent evidence and agreement
Human sciences vs. natural sciences A sane relativism
Conclusions
Reference and Interpretation Introduction
Some preliminary remarks and definitions
The surface level
The deeper level The double vision Conclusions
Textual Constraints"O porfimye cokaja granity"
Signals
Intertexts
Conclusions
MetaphorThree-term metaphor
Metaphor or not? The text-in-its-situation
Conclusions
IronyIrony in Mandelstam’s later poetry
Standard ironies
Non-standard ironies
A sub-class: self-oriented irony
Conclusions
Aesopian LanguageAesopian language in Mandelstam’s later poetry
The Aesopian impulse
Defining the Aesopian text
Catharsis, articulation and seeing through other eyes
Conclusions
An Afterthought on Contextual InterpretationThe selectivity of interpretation
Contexts
The law of diminishing returns
Conclusions