Osip Mandelstam and the modernist creation of tradition
By: Clare Cavanagh.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Princeton, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 365
Subjects: Mandelʹshtam, Osip, 1891-1938 -- Criticism and interpretation.; Modernism (Literature) -- Russia.
Description: Cavanagh traces Mandelstam's creation of tradition from his earliest lyrics to his last verses, written shortly before his arrest and subsequent death in a Stalinist camp. Her work shows how the poet, generalizing from his own dilemmas and disruptions, addressed his epoch's paradoxical legacy of disinheritance - and how he responded to this unwelcome legacy with one of modernism's most complex, ambitious, and challenging visions of tradition.

Drawing on not only Russian and Western modernist writing and theory, but also modern European Jewish culture, Russian religious thought, postrevolutionary politics, and even silent film, Cavanagh traces Mandelstam's recovery of a "world culture" vital, vast, and varied enough to satisfy the desires of the quintessential outcast modernist.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [313]-357) and index.