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the word wanders freely around the thing, like the soul around an abandoned, but not forgotten body.

— Osip Mandelstam

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More quotes by Osip Mandelstam

Only in Russia poetry is respected – it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?

Why can't we shake things up, why can't these good translators be utilized in collective undertakings?

ON TRANSLATIONS translated into English in The complete critical prose (1997)

We live, but we do not feel the land beneath us,
Ten steps away and our words cannot be heard.

One question conditions the dynamics and balance of color in the composition of a painting: whence the source of light?

The essence of nineteenth century cognitive activity is projection.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Osip Mandelstam (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.