If you would like to learn more about Osip Mandelstam (often you will see it written as Mandel’shtam or Mandelshtam as well) here are some recommendations. The Clarence Brown book is the most well known and the one I am currently reading. It combines a biography with in depth analysis of some of his poems. It was done in the 70s but has not lost its relevance today. It’s a good introduction, but the translations are not fabulous and Clarence seems more interested in name dropping of who he has interviewed than in providing any really meaningful analysis. Most of the analysis is pretty surface and shallow. I have heard the Robert Stone translation and analysis of Stone is much better. The others are more recent critical studies. The one by Elena Glazova-Corrigan also happens to be available for free to read online in its entirety at https://archive.org/details/mandelshtamspoet0000corr/mode/2up It is a philosophical look at Mandelstam’s prose essays. If you are interested in reading an extensive biography about his life I would also recommend the memoirs by his wife Nadezhda Mandelstam “Hope Against Hope” and “Hope Abandoned.”
