Osip Mandel'shtam is considered one of the major poets of the twentieth century and, by some, the greatest Russian poet of his age. His verse has been translated into many languages, and the secondary literature on him, already voluminous, is growing rapidly. Yet, in his lifetime Mandel'shtam, a man of letters respected by his peers, was hardly well known. After his arrest in 1934 he became a nonperson in the Soviet Union and was largely forgotten even in émigré literary circles. When, in 1955, Boris Andreevich Filippov and Gleb Petrovich Struve published a collection of his works in New York, they did not know when and under what circumstances the poet had died and were unaware that his widow was still alive. Mandel'shtam's fate, recorded by his widow, may have had something to do with his renown, especially in the West. As critics generally agree, however, the excellence...