Osip Mandel&soft;&shachek;tam's (1891–1938) encounter with Konstantin Batju&shachek;kov (1787–1855) occurred in print as early as 1912, continued throughout the poet's lifetime, through borrowed rhymes, meters, a strong mutual interest in Italian imagery, and reached its apex in Batju&shachek;kov, a poem written in 1932, published as part of the Moscow Notebooks. How does this encounter take shape? More than a few generation gaps separate the two poets, but Lidija Ginzburg's definition of early-nineteenth-century elegiac poetics as the poetics of recognition forges a bond between them. This paper intends to trace how the evocation of Batju&shachek;kov creates an intricate progression of sounds which unfolds into a patchwork of images and time frames in Mandel&soft;&shachek;tam's poetry.

I would like to present Mandel&soft;&shachek;tam's encounter with Batju&shachek;kov through the careful analysis of two poems: I haven't heard the tales of Ossian (1914) and Batju&shachek;kov (1932). The Ossian poem will provide a poetic context for a later, more direct encounter with the elegiac poet: the image of the skald pronouncing another's verse as his own prefigures what for Mandel&soft;&shachek;tam will subsequently dare to do in his later Batju&shachek;kov poem. When Mandel&soft;&shachek;tam invokes Batju&shachek;kov directly in his 1932 poem, he supplements his direct quotations with metrical imitation. Furthermore, the passages Mandel&soft;&shachek;tam chooses to quote from Batju&shachek;kov are taken from poems which are, in themselves, translations. This demonstrates another means of connecting the Batju&shachek;kov to the Ossian poem, and reinforces the act of bringing another's poem into one's own poetic sphere.

Mandel&soft;&shachek;tam's evocation of Batju&shachek;kov is a moment of recognition: a meeting place of images, sounds, meters, and finally a way of envisioning and expounding the paradoxical relationship between poetic imitation and spontaneity, which forms an integral part of his poetics.