MANDELSHTAM, Osip Emil'evich (1891-1938). Autograph manuscript from 'Razgavor o Dante' [Conversation on Dante], c.1933, and 'Barmy zakona' [The Royal Mantle of the Law], c.1925, 4 pages, 8vo (some wear near edges, light soiling), in a custom-made cloth-covered case. Provenance: Nadezhda Mandelshtam -- Evgenii Levitin (acquired from his estate by the consignor).

EXCEPTIONALLY RARE MANUSCRIPT IN THE HAND OF RUSSIA'S GREATEST 20TH-CENTURY POET. The two-leaf fragment from 'Conversation on Dante' is an important discovery: Mandelshtam's manuscript for this text is otherwise presumed lost and surviving only in later transcriptions by his wife Nadezhda. One leaf of his corrected autograph is on the verso of a sheet of paper salvaged from a typed translation that Mandelshtam undertook at the time to make ends meet; the translation also shows some manuscript notes, probably in Nadezhda's hand. The two leaves of autograph manuscript from 'The Royal Mantle of Law' comprise the first four paragraphs, or roughly half of the text; these show a number of corrections and emendations suggestive of an early draft. 'The Mantle of Law' was published in Shum vremeni (1925), towards the beginning of his ostracism. The political persecution that Mandelshtam endured for much of his life, and the cataclysm that followed Mandelshtam's recitation of his notorious epigram on Stalin in 1933, have meant the near total destruction and exceptional rarity of his work in autograph manuscript.

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