Osip Mandelstam is one of the most prominent Russian poets of the XX century. The poet is mostly famous for his adult verses, but his works include remarkable children poems. The complete collection of them is published in the present book. Vera Pavlova’s series of illustrations was created in 1989–1999 but was published in this edition for the first time. The texts were verified by an expert in Mandelstam’s poetry Sergey Vasilenko. The appendix contains an article by an art critic Dmitry Severukhin about the history of illustrating Mandelstam’s books. The author sees Vera Pavlova’s graphics as a new way of visualizing poetry based on a romantic view of 1920-s and expressed by a dialogue between characters and inanimate objects. Sometimes ironically quoting her predecessors in illustrating Mandelstam’s works (Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Boris Ender, Nikoly Lapshin and Vladimir Isenberg), the artist at the same time mixes avant-guard manner with the aesthetics of a cheap popular print, children’s drawing or provincial sign-boards to form her own distinctive and unique style.
Сонные трамваи
