Osip Mandelstam appeals to „Caesars' Europe“: (To the issue of Grigol Robakidze’s personal and creative attitude to Mandelstam and his poetry)

Abstract

In general, the paper discusses that well-known neurosis in the history of literature, when great authors sometimes do not understand each other, criticize each other's work and, accordingly, do not stand each other personally. In particular, such an attitude is observed in the case of Robakidze. Moreover: we deal with Robakidze's unilateral antipathy. Mandelstam never estimated Robakidze and perhaps did not even remember him. In the case of Robakidze, we observe another exception too: sometimes great authors compete with each other at the so-called chronotope distance, not knowing each other personally, but after meeting even become friends. What is more, they themselves recognize the role and significance of each other and even explain to others (like T.S. Eliot and James Joyce).

As the research (Titsian Tabidze’s and Grigol Robakidze’s not much-talked-of texts) has shown, Grigol Robakidze, to put it mildly, did not like Mandelstam's poetry since 1914, and in 1920-1921, during the visits of the Russian poet to Georgia, when he personally made the acquaintance of Mandelstam and clearly learned his unbearable character, Robakidze stopped communicating with him altogether.