Stone

“Invaluable. . . . [What] comes across in these translations is the verve and immediacy of the poems’ occasions.”—Seamus Heaney

A groundbreaking translation of the brilliant first book by one of the twentieth century’s most important poets

Stone—Osip Mandelstam’s 1913 debut—marked the arrival of perhaps the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century, one whose refusal to bow to Soviet political and artistic dictates led to his persecution and eventual death in one of Stalin’s prison camps. Mandelstam spent his early years in St. Petersburg, and many of the poems in Stone depict the city’s vast squares, classical buildings, and Dutch canals. Other poems reflect his hunger for Western European culture, his commitment to humanistic values, and his ambition to become a master of the Russian language. This bilingual edition is based on the final version of Stone, published in 1928, and features a biographical and critical introduction and detailed annotations.