Osip Mandelstam: Music as Philosophy

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article addresses the issue of music in the works of Osip Mandelstam. Based on works of both Russian and international scholars, the author examines the markers for music as philosophy in Mandelstam’s poetry and prose. The author identifies the common foundations of music and law, including freedom, measure, and harmony, to build the following system of argumentation. Mandelstam’s panmusical approach is rooted in a special sense of the poet’s language, of its nonverbal basis, while also serving as a starting point for thought to come into being, as the origin of personal transformation. Music in Mandelstam’s life and work thus acts as a general law of the universe, as immutable for the natural world as it is for the world of man and the world of culture.