Interesting facts about Mandelstam - this is a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the work of the Soviet poet. He is considered one of the greatest Russian poets of the last century. Mandelstam's life was overshadowed by many serious trials. He was persecuted by the authorities and betrayed by his colleagues, but he always remained true to his principles and beliefs.
We bring to your attention the most interesting facts about Mandelstam.
- Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) - poet, translator, prose writer, essayist and literary critic.
- At birth, Mandelstam was named Joseph and only later he decided to change his name to - Osip.
- The poet grew up and was brought up in a Jewish family, the head of which was Emily Mandelstam, a glove master and a merchant of the first guild.
- In his youth, Mandelstam entered one of the St. Petersburg universities as an auditor, but soon decided to give up everything, leaving to study in France, and then to Germany.
- An interesting fact is that in his youth, Mandelstam met such famous poets as Nikolai Gumilyov, Alexander Blok and Anna Akhmatova.
- The first collection of poetry, published in 600 copies, was published with the money of Mandelstam's father and mother.
- Wanting to get acquainted with Dante's work in the original, Osip Mandelstam learned Italian for this.
- For the verse denouncing Stalin, the court ruled to send Mandelstam into exile, which he was serving in Voronezh.
- There is a known case when a prose writer slapped Alexei Tolstoy. According to Mandelstam, he did his job in bad faith as chairman of the writers' court.
- An interesting fact is that while in exile, Mandelstam wanted to commit suicide by jumping from a window.
- Osip Mandelstam was sentenced to 5 years in a camp settlement following a denunciation by the secretary of the Writers' Union, who called his poems "slanderous" and "obscene".
- During his exile in the Far East, the poet, being in unbearable conditions, died of exhaustion. However, the official reason for his death was cardiac arrest.
- Nabokov spoke highly of Mandelstam's work, calling him "the only poet of Stalin's Russia."
- In the circle of Anna Akhmatova, the future Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky was called “the younger Axis”.