SOURCE: An introduction to Complete Poetry of Osip Emilevich Mandelstam, translated by Burton Raffel and Alia Burago, State University of New York Press, 1973, pp. 1-28.

Monas is an American educator and critic with a special interest in Russian literature. In the following essay, he explores the defining characteristics of Mandelstam's work.

"Just as a person does not choose his parents," Mandelstam wrote in 1921, "a people does not choose its poets." Russia would certainly have avoided him if it could. Even today, long after his posthumous rehabilitation, most of his poems are unpublished in the USSR. A collected volume announced in 1959 has still not appeared.

Abroad he has fared better. There is now the full, if not complete, three-volume Russian collection of his works, edited by Gleb Struve and Boris Filipoff [entitled Sobranie sochinenii]. There have been numerous translations, including a small volume in German by a poet close...