Essay Questions

How does Mandelstam personify frost? What is the repercussion of the personification? (Alone I stare into the frost’s white face”)

The frost takes a face, and it has the capability to resolve about “going nowhere.” The personification prompts an imagery of permeating frost. The frost is so profuse that Mandelstam cannot circumvent its chilling ramifications.

What can you conclude about ageing based on “Poems: 140 1 January 1924”?

Mandelstam expounds, “The age is a despot with two sleepy apples/to see with, and a splendid mouth of earth.” Age is totalitarian; hence, all mortals must acquiesce to it. Age’s mouth has the infinite capacity to swallow mortals. The ‘sleepy eyes’ indicate that aging emerges sluggishly.

How does Mandelstam depict the correlation between poverty and loneliness in “Yet to die. Unalone still”?

Mandelstam illuminates, “Yet to die. Unalone still./For now your pauper-friend is with you./Together you delight in the grandeur of the plains,/And the dark, the cold, the storms of snow.” The pauper-friend condenses the speaker’s lonesomeness by accompanying him when he is at the verge of death. Both the speaker and the friend are destitute; hence, their companionship is correlated with social class. Ordinarily, a wealthy man would not forfeit the ease of his mansion to attend to a destitute individual who is about to expire. If the pauper-friend were absent, the speaker would have expired unaccompanied.