[virtual]

A Reading of Osip Mandelstam in English, with Ilya Bernstein
September 24, 2020,
at Globus Books

Globus Books presents a reading of Osip Mandelstam’s poetry in English. Mandelstam is one of the dozen luminous names in Russian poetry. Mandelstam (1891–1938) began as one of the more original poets of the Russian avant-garde before the First World War, but his extraordinary growth as a poet over the next quarter-century set him a great distance apart from almost all of his contemporaries. By the 1930s he was writing the most memorable poems in the language. In English, Mandelstam has long been better appreciated for his biography than for his poetry. This is unfortunate: to his Russian admirers, the value of Mandelstam’s poetry owes nothing to whatever might be the value of his biography. These translations and the accompanying commentary will attempt to remedy that misevaluation.

The event will stream live here.