SOURCE: "On the Addressee," in Modern Russian Poets on Poetry, edited by Carl R. Proffer, translated by Jane Gary Harris, Ardis, 1976, pp. 52-9.

In the following essay, which was first published in a Russian periodical in 1913, Mandelstam describes the relationship between poet and reader.

I would like to know what it is about a madman which creates that most terrifying impression of madness. It must be his dilated pupils, because they are blank and stare at you so absently, focusing on nothing in particular. It must be his mad speech, because in speaking to you the madman never takes you into account, nor even recognizes your existence as if wishing to ignore your presence, to show absolutely no interest in you. What we fear most in a madman is that absolute and terrifying indifference which he displays toward us. Nothing strikes terror in a man more than another...