Osip Mandelstam Quotations

Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam, also spelled Mandelshtam (Russian: О́сип Эми́льевич Мандельшта́м) (1891-01-15 – 1938-12-27), was a Russian poet and essayist, one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets.

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We live, but we do not feel the land beneath us,
Ten steps away and our words cannot be heard.
- "Stalin Epigram" (November 1933) (Russian: Мы живем, под собою не чуя страны...; English: "We live, not sensing our own country beneath us",) trans. A. S. Kline

Only in Russia poetry is respected – it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?
- Quoted in Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (1970), ch. 35