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Loading... The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam (New York Review Books Classics)by Osip Mandelstam
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. In his preface, Clarence Brown, the "scholar" (as opposed to the "poet") of this translating team, has basically written my little review for me: "Merwin has translated Mandelstam into Merwin." Much as I like Merwin, and this is considerably much, Merwin is no Mandelstam. This is not a qualitative judgment, a la Kennedy/Quayle; it's just a relatively obective observation. One issue that perplexes me: since no attempt is made to replicate Mandelstam's metrics or rhyme schemes, why do Brown & Merwin consistently rearrange the sequencing of lines, when more faithful renderings would at least preserve a little of Mandelstam's poetic logic? (  ) jburlinson | Nov 16, 2008 |  Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova are the foremost poetic witnesses to the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath on the Russian intelligentsia. Mandelstam's terrible fate - imprisonment and extinguishment at Stalin's whim - should not obscure the brilliance of his poetry, which shone brighter the darker his personal circumstances. Mandelstam's work is lyrical, tender, and occasionally cutting; his landscape poetry is without equal. I'm slightly less impressed with the translations in this volume, which seem rather flat in comparison to other translations of Mandelstam I have seen; but that's a minor criticism of a fine book. (  ) timjones | Mar 29, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0689105835, Hardcover)Osip Mandelstam is a central figure not only in modern Russian but in world poetry, the author of some of the most haunting and memorable poems of the twentieth century. A contemporary of Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetayeva, and Boris Pasternak, a touchstone for later masters such as Paul Celan and Robert Lowell, Mandelstam was a crucial instigator of the "revolution of the word" that took place in St. Petersburg, only to be crushed by the Bolshevik Revolution. Mandelstam's last poems, written in the interval between his exile to the provinces by Stalin and his death in the Gulag, are an extraordinary testament to the endurance of art in the presence of terror.This book represents a collaboration between the scholar Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin, one of contemporary America's finest poets and translators. It also includes Mandelstam's "Conversation on Dante," an uncategorizable work of genius containing the poet's deepest reflections on the nature of the poetic process. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:12 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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