A Translation and Commentary of The Voronezh Notebooks by Russian Poet Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938)

FAIN: FEL-267784-20

Matvei Yankelevich
Columbia University (New York, NY 10027-7922)

Preparation of an English-language translation and critical edition of the Voronezh Notebooks by the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938).

The project is a critical English-language edition of the Voronezh Notebooks of Osip Mandelstam, one of Russia’s most significant 20th century poets. These poems, written during his exile, in a period between destitution and hope, mark the moment of Mandelstam's crossing from modernist tradition to postmodern poetics, and his negotiation of individuality and collectivity in the precarious political context of Stalin's 1930s. Relying on recently available archival material and manuscript versions, and a wealth of scholarship written in the post-Soviet period, the proposed edition would offer new translations and contextualizing commentary on Mandelstam’s crowning poetic achievement, providing the general reader as well as scholars with pertinent bibliographic information, a timeline of the poet's life, relevant documents from his NKVD files, and comparisons between early publications and contemporary authoritative editions.