Osip Mandelstam as “the рoet of the Thaw”

Abstract

The article is devoted to the image of Osip Mandelstam in the poetry of the Thaw on the example of the most prominent poets of that period (B. Akhmadulina, Evg. Yevtushenko, A. Voznesensky, I. Brodsky). In the works of poets of the sixties Mandelstam appears as a “poet of the Thaw”, which is a moral antithesis of the Stalin era, the denial of its ideological and aesthetic principles and a symbol of freedom. Each author had “his” Mandelstam:for Akhmadulina he is in equal measure the fragile and strong man who feels both as his selectness and the inability to confront his tragic fate, Yevtushenko admires his work as a model of the highest art and its “inscribtion” in the world cultural context. For Voznesensky, Mandelstam is a symbol of creative immortality, at the same time a victim of the tragic time and its winner. Brodsky calls Mandelstam “the greatest Russian poet of our time” and argues that his gift, like any genuine gift, is not tied to any particular historical era. But for all these authors, the name of Mandelstam is not only the pinnacle of literary creativity that one needs to strive for, but also the declarative desire to put his name in one poetic a series of precisely with this poet.