“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 “Ariosto,” but the one discussed here is considered to be more authentic. According to Nadezhda Mandelstam, his widow, his poems were confiscated upon his arrest, and he wrote the second version during his house confinement in Voronezh in 1934; the original version was found later.

Mandelstam opens the poem with the name of Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533), thus establishing at the outset the focal point of the poem. Mandelstam considers Ariosto to be one of Italy’s most delightful and wisest poets, but lately Ariosto “has a frog in his throat” and “amuses himself with the names of fish,” spilling “nonsense into the seas.” This mixture of profound respect and lighthearted familiarity is typical of Mandelstam’s treatment of great poets he admired. In his poetry, Ariosto is playing like a musician “with ten cymbals,” lost somewhat in “the maze of chivalric scandals”—a reference to the problems he faced as a diplomat at the Italian courts of his time.

In the third stanza, Mandelstam likens Ariosto to the greatest Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, calling him “a Pushkin in the language of cicadas,” who combines “Mediterranean haughtiness” with the Russian’s melancholy. Ariosto plays wanton tricks with his hero Orlando in Orlando furioso (1516, 1521, 1532; English translation, 1591), undergoing his own metamorphosis in the process. His playfulness is further exemplified by his command to the sea, “roar but don’t think!” and to the maiden on the rock, “lie there without bedclothes!” which are taken directly from the tenth song of Orlando furioso and indirectly from Pushkin. Indeed, Mandelstam claims, humankind has not had enough of such powerful voices, who can tell wonderful stories again and again that make one’s blood run quicker and cause one’s ears to roar—an allusion to an artist’s power to inspire and make life more vibrant. Mandelstam calls Ariosto’s native city, Ferrara, a “lizard city with a crust for a heart, and no soul,” voicing his disdain for the intrigues, cloak-and-dagger atmosphere, and disregard for the well-being of the common person. He calls on Ferrara to produce more men like Ariosto and fewer men like the ruthless rulers and courtiers with whom Ariosto had to contend.

In the next stanza, Mandelstam turns to the present, saying that it is cold in Europe and dark in Italy. Both adjectives, cold and dark, are the opposites of what the south and Italy, indeed all Europe, should stand for. He bemoans the fact that raw power has taken over in the 1930’s. Despite all of this, Ariosto continues to improve on his act, looking blissfully on the “lamb on the hill” (peasant in the field), at a “monk on his donkey” (Ariosto himself had a desire at one time to become a monk), and at “Duke’s men-at-arms” carrying out the silly orders of their masters, drunk and bloated with drink and food, while the common people are living in blight (a baby “dozing under a net of flies”). Mandelstam continues to admire Ariosto in the eighth stanza. He loves “his desperate leisure,/ his babble, the salt and sugar of his words,/ the sounds happily conspiring...