Mandelstam, block and boundaries of mythopoietic symbolism

How was the legacy of Russian symbolism reflected in the poetics of Mandelstam? How did he prescribe and rewrote his relationship with him? How did Mandelstam"s attitude towards Alexander Blok evolve? The American Slavist Stuart Goldberg analyzes Mandelstam"s poems, their intonation and pragmatist, contexts and intertexts, and also, starting from the famous concept of Harold Bloom about the fear of influence, explores the poet’s tense relations with symbolism and one of his most powerful poetic voices - Alexander Blok. The author pays special attention to the process of overcoming Mandelstam of symbolist poetics, which found expression in a kind of game with ambivalent irony. He also traces a shift in understanding poetic sincerity, which was a watershed of two poetic generations.
Stewart Goldberg - Professor of the Institute of Georgia