Under the Sign of Contradiction

The book revisits the final decade in the life of Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938), a central poet of Russian Modernism. Premised on the belief that no life can be understood without insight into its contradictions, the book attends to the two contentious cruxes of Mandelstam’s life and art: his testifying against his closest friends to the secret police and his composition, in exile, of an ode in praise of Stalin. Offering a close reading of the protocols of Mandelstam’s interrogations, a critical r