Jan 9, 2009
“Ariosto” is one of many poems by Osip Mandelstam published posthumously. Written on May 4-6, 1933, during a difficult time for the poet (he was arrested only one year later by the Soviet authorities for writing a poem criticizing Joseph Stalin’s cruelty), the poem expresses Mandelstam’s long-standing interest in, and infatuation with, the Italian culture. The poem was written while Mandelstam was in the Crimea, in the south of Russia, where he also wrote an essay about another Italian poet, “Conversation with Dante.” There are two variants of...
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