ABSTRACT
O sip Emilevich Mandelshtam was one of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century, as well as a prose writer, essayist, and translator. His classically controlled early poetry and his later works, unconventional and imbedded within a complex system of references, made him a cultural outsider, unacceptable in terms of official Soviet aesthetics. His critical attitude towards the regime and his close personal friendship with the poets Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova turned him into a political outcast. Arrested and exiled several times, he died of starvation in a Gulag transit camp. Mandelshtam’s formal education included the study of Old French literature at the University of Heidelberg and of philosophy at St. Petersburg University. His Acmeist ‘longing for world culture’ is evident in his critical works and essays, such as ‘Remarks on Chénier’, ‘Conversations on Dante’, and many others. His broad knowledge of world literature combined with a fluent command of several European languages prompted his activities as a translator. Starting in the 1920s, he translated works by Upton Sinclair, Jules Romains, and Charles de Coster. His other translations ranged from the works of Petrarch to Racine, from Dettev von Liliencron to Ludwig Barthel. They also included translations of Georgian poetry by Vazha Pshavela, Titzian Tabidze, Giorgi Leonidze, and some others. While recognizing the tremendous cultural significance of translated literature, Mandelshtam, like Pasternak and Akhmatova, nevertheless considered translating to be a drain on his creative energy. The aesthetic impulse that underlines all of Mandelshtam’s work is echoed in his highly critical response to the state of translated literature in the Soviet Union. Published in 1929 by a leading Soviet newspaper Izvestiia under the title Potoki khaltury [Torrents of Hackwork], the article was intended to open a broad public discussion of the practices then current in the translation and circulation of foreign literature.
