"The life of the word has entered a heroic era. The word is flesh and bread. It shares the fate of bread and flesh: suffering. People are hungry. The State is even hungrier. But there is something still hungrier: Time. Time wants to devour the State...There is nothing hungrier than the contemporary State, and a hungry State is more terrifying than a hungry man. To show compassion for the State which denies the word shall be the contemporary poet's social obligation and heroic feat."
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Osip Mandelstam
Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam (also spelled Mandelshtam; Russian: О́сип Эми́льевич Мандельшта́м; January 15, 1891 – December 27, 1938) was a Russian poet and essayist, one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets.
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