The October Revolution could not but influence my work since it took away my biography, my sense of individual significance. I am grateful to it, however, for once and for all putting an end to my spiritual security and to a cultural life supported by unearned cultural income... I feel indebted to the Revolution, but I offer it gifts for which it still has no need. The question about what a writer should be is completely incomprehensible to me: to answer it would be tantamount to inventing a writer, that is, to writing his works for him.

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About Osip Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam was a 19th-century Russian and soviet poet. Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian and Soviet poet. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school. Read more on Wikipedia →

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