On a Board of Raspberry and Pure Gold (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Osip Mandelstam
- First Published: 1964
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Children, Nature, 1930’s, Pictures, Russia or Russian people, Animals, Cities or towns, Winter
The Poem
“On a Board of Raspberry and Pure Gold,” written by Osip Mandelstam in 1937, is a poem of sixteen lines. The Russian original, written in rhymed trochaic lines of five to seven feet and organized in a single stanza, has been translated by Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin as a lyric of four stanzas in free blank verse, which, however, preserves a trochaic tendency. The poem offers the reader a winter landscape and the poet’s reflections upon it. In fact, there is abundant testimony, from the poet’s widow, Nadezhda Mandelstam, and others, that the poem presents a...
[The entire page is 1465 words long]
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