Returns these two classic works by the Russian poet to print and together for the first time.

Osip Mandelstam visited Armenia in 1930, and during the eight months of his stay he rediscovered his poetic voice and was inspired to write an experimental meditation on the country and its ancient culture. 'Armenia brought him back to his true self, a self depending on the "inner ear" which could never play a poet false. There was everything congenial to him in this country of red and ochre landscape, ancient churches, and resonant pottery.' (Henry Gifford). Conversation about Dante, Mandelstam's incomparable apologia for poetic freedom and challenge to the Bolshevik establishment, was...

Osip Mandelstam (January 15, 1891 - December 27, 1938) was a Russian poet and essayist, and a founding member of Acmeist school of Russian poetry. He is considered by many to be one of the most significant Russian poets of the twentieth century, along with Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and Marina Tsvetaeva. Heavily censored and persecuted by the Soviet authorities for counter-revolutionary activities, he spent most of his later years in exile, until his death in Siberia. Presented in this dual-language selection are many of Osip Mandelstam's most beloved poems, carefully translated by...

.."..The fact of the matter is that everything that happens in culture ultimately comes down to this, to the four famous temperaments: melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic, and choleric. That's what I think. It seems to me that our Big Four can also be divided by according to these temperaments, inasmuch as all of them are actually very distinctly represented in the group. Tsvetaeva is unquestionably the choleric author. Pasternak is sanguine. Mandelstam is melancholic. And Akhmatova is phlegmatic. Together they cover the whole poetic universe." -Joseph Brodsky Included in this dual-language...