Osip Mandelstam in Democratic Georgia and Vice Versa (According to essay “Homecoming”)

Abstract

Osip Mandelstam’s essay “Homecoming” has never been the object of the Georgian Literary criticism. It is all the more appropriate to say that the both essays – “Homecoming” as well as “Mensheviks in Georgia” – additionally reveal several proverbial layers of his artistic and personal portrait.

Mandelstam, as a contemplator, is always ironic.  One may think that such way he utilizes the Modernistic standard when the irony is the resource of abstracting from his own conscience, estrangement from the social reality and self-profoundness. In terms of political preferences or belonging, the poet supports the Soviet government and criticizes everything that contradicts it. In this case, the object of his vilification is Georgia. His behavior is determined by the political conjuncture, the service of which the poet does not disdain, but uses it rather profitably.

Seemingly, we deal with the stage of Mandelstam’s biography when he is not an archetype of the Poet but just a human being.