A Necklace of Bees: Selected Poems

by Osip Mandelstam

Poetry. Osip Mandelstam was born in 1891. Professor Donald Rayfield, in his notes to Chapter 42 and the Goldfinch by Nadezhda and Osip Mandelstam, wrote that Mandelstam's "poetry of the thirties, almost all unpublished in his own lifetime, marks him as arguably the greatest Russian poet this century." He died in a Siberian transit camp in 1938. Elaine Feinstein, in her foreword to A NECKLACE OF BEES, writes that "Maria Enzensberger has chosen not only early poems where Mandelstam is grateful for the quiet joy of being alive, but later poems which have the 'flavour of smoke and grief;' the abrupt, intimate, miraculous poems of Mandelstam's years in exile. And here these translations speak with heartbreaking clarity." Maria Enzensberger was born in Moscow in 1943. She died in London in 1991.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1992

About the author

Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam (also spelled Osip Mandelshtam, Ossip Mandelstamm) (Russian: Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам) was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets. He was arrested by Joseph Stalin's government during the repression of the 1930s and sent into internal exile with his wife Nadezhda. Given a reprieve of sorts, they moved to Voronezh in southwestern Russia. In 1938 Mandelstam was arrested again and sentenced to a camp in Siberia. He died that year at a transit camp.

Reviews

[Clare Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread June 2025.