Session
& Date

Readings and Discussion Topics 

I.
Sept. 22

Introduction: Mandelstam and the Modernist Paradigm
Chronology and Periodization

• Editions and Publication; Memoirs and Scholarship; Approaches to Mandelstam
• Mandelstam and the Modernist Paradigm, Western and Russian
• Камень. Первая книга стихов (1913). From Symbolism to Post-Symbolism

Reading: Poems «Звук осторожный...», «Дано мне тело», «Silentium» (1910), «Айя-София», «Notre Dame».

II.
Sept. 29

Mandelstam’s Early Poetry and Prose in the Context of Russian Modernism and the 1905 Revolution, Revolt Against Symbolism

• Вехи(The Signposts, ed. M.O. Gershenzon)
• Crisis of Symbolism (Briusov, Bely, Vyach. Ivanov, Blok, Kuzmin)
• Цех поэтов (Poets' Guild) and Emergence of Acmeism (Gumilev, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Zenkevich, Narbut)
• Futurist and Acmeist manifestoes

Reading: Mandelstam’s first books of poetry (Камень, 1913 and 1916);
Essays: «Франсуа Виллон» «Утро Акмеизма», «О собеседнике»
Background: Symolism and Its Manifestoes

III.
Oct. 6

Patterns of Identity and Cultural Archetypes. A Comparative Perspective: Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Gumilev, Mayakovsky

Reading: Камень (the second book of poetry, 1916)
Essay «Пушкин и Скрябин»
Selections of the new “city” poems from Akhmatova, Gumilev, Mayakovsky
Background: City in Briusov, Blok, Bely, and Annensky

IV.
Oct. 13

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny: Mandelstam Tristia (War, Revolution, and Uses of Antiquity)

Reading: Tristia (1921)

Reading: «Rome» poems, «Зверинец», «Когда октябрьский нам готовил временщик», The poems of Tristia(«Сумерки свободы», :Декабрист», «Исаакий под фатой молочной белизны»
Essays: «Петр Чаадаев», «Слово и культура», «О природе слова»
Optional: monographs by Broyde, Ronen, and Taranovsky; A Coat of Many Colors. Timenchik, «Заметкиобакмеизме» I, II, and III

Oct. 18

First paper (analysis of a poem) is due

V.
Oct. 20

1921-25: Discontinuities and Conjunctions. Contemporary Reception. Mandelstam and Futurism Revisited

Poetry: «Концерт на вокзале», «Век», «Грифельная ода», «1 января 1924»

Read/Review: O. Ronen, Ronen, O. An Approach to Mandel's^tam. Jerusalem, 1984.

VI.
Oct. 27

Mandelstam the Critic: On Poetry (1928), the Puzzle of Alexander Blok , and a Conversation About Dante (Dialogue with the Formalists and Bakhtin’s Circle)

Read/Review: Опоэзии, «Армия поэтов», «Конец Романа», РазговороДанте (On Poetry,  «An Army of Poets», «The End of the Novel», Conversation About Dante)

VII.
Nov. 3

Memories and Surrender: The Noise of Time and The Egyptian Stamp
(Mandelstam, Konstantin Vaginov, Zoshchenko, Ilf and Petrov and Self-Image of Russian Intelligentsia) 

Reading: Шум времени, Египетская марка, Четвертая Проза

Nov. 8

Second paper (analysis of a prose piece) is due

VIII.
Nov. 10

Moscow Notebooks: Mandelstam and the Culture of the First Five-Year Plan

Prose: Путешествие в Армению (Journey to Armenia), selections
Poetry: Московские тетради («Еще далеко мне до патриарха», «Квартира тиха, как бумага», «На смерть Андрея Белого», «Стихи о русской поэзии,» «Восьмистишия,» «Мы живем, под собою не чуя страны»)  

IX.
Nov. 15
Monday

 Mandelstam and Stalin: The Poet Remembered
 Reading: Воронежские тетради (the “Ode” and the Ode Cycle)
Memoirs of Nadezhda Mandelstam and Emma Gershtein

Nov. 22-26 - Thanksgiving Week – No Classes

Nov. 29

Book Review is due

X.
Dec. 1

Mandelstam, Sots-Art, Timur Kibirov, Sergey Gandlevsky and the Paradigms of Soviet/Russian Experience