Osip Mandelstam Research Paper

Osip Mandelstam spent most of his childhood restricted by the presence of anti-semitism. A biographical article on Mandelstam explains his early upbringing and states, “Born on January 15, 1891, in Warsaw, Poland, Osip Emilievich Mandelstam was raised in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg, Russia” (poets.org). Considering Russia’s political situation in the late 1800’s and the passing of the May Laws, nine years prior to his birth, Mandelstam was brought up in the midst of rising anti-semitic hostilities. As a result, Mandelstam, carrying Jewish blood, would have fallen victim to the May Laws’ policies, which restricted the civil rights of Jews. experiences that later influenced his writings about Jewish suffering. (revise) In the Noise

In the Stalin Epigram, Mandelstam describes Stalin, “His cockroach whiskers leer and his boot tops gleam... the murderer and peasant slayer” (The Stalin Epigram, Mandelstam). In 1933, Mandelstam recited the unflattering epigram and outright antagonized Stalin, an act of subversiveness certain to bring deadly consequences. Mandelstam recognized the implications of his opposition to Stalin’s rule, yet he prefered torture and death over yielding to the Soviet Union’s pressure. Ultimately, The Stalin Epigram serves as a testimony of the lengths Mandelstam was willing to go to maintain his autonomy as an artist. As a result of the epigram, Mandelstam was tortured psychologically and physically before being sent to a prison camp. Yolanda Delgado, the author of The final days of Russian writers: Osip Mandelstam, describes his last moments in prison, “By this point the great poet was extremely exhausted and paranoid: he refused to eat his camp rations, fearing that he might be poisoned” (The final days of Russian writers: Osip Mandelstam, Delgado). Because of his delusionary state, Mandelstam was under constant paranoia, and at the prison, he later died of heart failure, most likely due to malnutrition. In the end, he sacrificed his life to poetry both figuratively and literally. (incomplete) In the introduction of Poems from Mandelstam, a translated collection of Mandelstam’s poem, Ervin Brody describes his legacy,“He was chiefly concerned with the preservation of Russia’s cultural and moral heritage, and his best poetry attests to the survival of art and consciousness . . .” Mandelstam’s fate demonstrates his resolve to preserve cultural history under a repressive government. In spite of the Soviet Union’s attempts to silence him, Mandelstam’s literary survival conveys how martyred writers live on through their