Summary
Osip Mandeljštam: Save my voice
It cannot be said that Mandeljštam was a poet of "culture"; he was rather a poet of civilization and for civilization. Once, when asked to define Acmeism—the literary movement to which he belonged—he said, "The yearning for world culture." This understanding of world culture is completely Russian. Due to its location (neither east nor west) and its fragmented history, Russia has always suffered from a cultural inferiority complex, at least in relation to the West. From this inferiority, the ideal of a certain cultural unity of that "over there" became established and, accordingly, - the intellectual appetite for everything that arrives from there.
Josif Brodski
Biblos Newsletter
New titles, special copies and quiet recommendations from the antiquarian bookshop.