Baines Jennifer. Mandelstam: The Later Poetry

London, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1976. — 253 p. — ISBN 9780521157483.Osip Mandelstam is, with Boris Pasternak, a major Russian poet of the twentieth century, yet most of the attention paid him by modern scholars has been confined to the years 1908-25, when he was working on his first three collections of poetry: his subsequent collections, comprising over two-thirds of his poetic output, are very little known.In this study, the first devoted to Mandelstam’s life and work between 1930 and 1937, Dr Baines’ concern is to dispel the view that Mandelstam’s later poetry is weak or obscure and to clarify the many misconceptions which have surrounded it. To this end, she provides a continuous narrative of the events which form the background to composition, although she concentrates on the ' poems themselves, their nature and interpretation, quoting liberally in Russian. Dr Baines has been greatly helped in her work by her conversations and correspondence with the poet’s widow, Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam (whose memoirs Hope Against Hope and Hope Abandoned have enjoyed great success in the West), and by being given access to Nadezhda Yakovlevna’s own annotated typescript of her husband’s poetry.AcknowledgementsText sources and Abbreviations
Note
Новые стихи: первая московская тетрадь
The opening poem
The Armenian group
The Leningrad poems
The 'Волк' cycle
'Канцона'
The Moscow poems
Новые стихи: вторая московская тетрадь
The opening poems
'Ламарк', 'Импрессионизм', 'Новеллино'
The Russian poetry cycle
The poetry of Germany
Stary Krym and the Italian poetry
Разговор о Данте
The Furmanov pereulok poems; the epigram on Stalin
'Восьмистишия'
The four Petrarchan sonnets
The requiem to Bely
Новые стихи: первая воронежская тетрадь
The opening poem
The 'Чернозем' cycle
The 'Стрижка детей' and 'Урал' group
Past loves
Stones, soldiers and pilots
Новые стихи: вторая воронежская тетрадь
The opening poem
The 'Рождение улыбки' and 'Щегол' cycle
A return to the present
The 'Темноводье' triad
Kashchei's cat; the angry lamb
The Koltsov twin poems
The ode to Stalin
Новые стихи: третья воронежская тетрадь
The opening poems
'Стихи о неизвестном солдате'
The sky cycle
The antique cycle
Poems of death and resurrection
Appendix