In response to:

A Great Russian Writer from the December 23, 1965 issue

A number of errors and omissions occurred in Isaiah Berlin’s review of The Prose of Osip Mandelstam in the December 23rd issue of the NYR.

On page 3, in column 2, line 23 a line is dropped. The text should read: “Mandelstamm is the precise opposite. Poetry was his whole life, his entire world. He scarcely had any personal existence outside it.” Column 3, 19 lines from the bottom: “made attempts upon it.” Column 3, 9 lines from the bottom: “in 1913, and again in 1916.” Column 4, 17 lines from the top: “Corroborates a remarkable story.”

On page 4, in column 1, 12 lines from the bottom: “with this memory.” Column 2, 13 lines from the top: “the once ignored Yessenin.” Column 3, 33 lines from the bottom: “not by symbolic but literal.” Column 4, lines 32 and 33 from the top: “the play upon Herz and Serdtze—the Russian for heart—and Scherzo can scarcely be conveyed.”

The Princeton University Press spells the poet’s name “Osip Mandelstam.” Isaiah Berlin transliterates it as “Ossip Mandelstamm.” “Akhmatova” is his transliteration of the name of the author of the brief memoir published on page 8. Because its translator, Olga Carlisle, prefers “Ahmatova,” there are certain inconsistencies throughout.