Mandel'shtam, Blok i granitsy mifopoeticheskogo simvolizma - Goldberg, S,

How did the legacy of Russian symbolism be reflected in Mandelstam's poetics? How did he prescribe and rewrite his relationship with him? How has Mandelstam's attitude towards Alexander Blok evolved? American Slavist Stuart Goldberg analyzes Mandelstam's poems, their intonation and pragmatism, contexts and intertexts, and, based on Harold Bloom's famous conception of fear of influence, explores the poet's tense relationship with symbolism and one of his most powerful poetic voices, Alexander Block. The author pays special attention to the process of overcoming Mandelstam's symbolic poetics, which found expression in a peculiar game with ambivalent irony. It also traces the shift in understanding of poetic sincerity, which was the watershed of two poetic generations. Stuart Goldberg is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology.