SOURCE: "The Poets of Yesterday," in The Poets of Russia: 1890-1930, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1960, pp. 276-316.

Poggioli was an Italian-born American critic and translator. Much of his critical writing treats Russian literature, including The Poets of Russia: 1890-1930 (1960), which is considered one of the most important examinations of that era. In the following excerpt from that study, he identifies and explores central themes in Mandelstam 's poetry.

Osip Mandel'shtam was born in the Jewish quarter of Warsaw, in 1892, and spent his mature years in the two capitals. He died still relatively young, in faraway banishment; we do not know exactly when and where. It is rumored that in 1932 he was denounced for having imprudently recited a lampoon against Stalin in the house of a friend; that he was jailed and punished for this; that several years later he was released and then rearrested; and that in...