"The October Revolution could not but influence my work since it took away my "biography," my sense of individual significance. I am grateful to it, however, for once and for all putting an end to my spiritual security and to a cultural life supported by unearned cultural income... I feel indebted to the Revolution, but I offer it gifts for which it still has no need. The question about what a writer should be is completely incomprehensible to me: to answer it would be tantamount to inventing a writer, that is, to writing his works for him."
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A POET ABOUT HIMSELF translated into English in The complete critical prose (1997)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Osip_Mandelstam
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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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