ABSTRACT
Osip Mandelstam's story suggests how the interest, though prurient, carries with it a superstitious regard. Mandelstam's prose, a prod or refreshment, led him back to poetry when his poetic well had gone dry. Mandelstam's life is an alphabet of woes but his art is happy. Like Mandelstam, Dante Alighieri is having his joke on the bearded men, and his practical business is "to remove those living in this life from a state of misery and to guide them to a state of happiness". Mandelstam illustrates by referring readers to Manet and Monet, a temple of air, light, and glory. Mandelstam's prose is very much a poet's, that is, intensely masculine in its feeling for thingness. Mandelstam's figures, though surprising, are decorous, and against the frenzy of the crowd is the "Alpine cold" of the performance. Mandelstam's figures, though surprising, are decorous, and against the frenzy of the crowd is the "Alpine cold" of the performance.
