Motiv želanija v "Razgovore o Dante" Osipa Mandel’štama: zametki na pol’jah novogo kommentarija L. G. Stepanovoj i G. A. Levintona [Il motivo del desiderio nella "Conversazione su Dante" di Osip Mandel’štam: appunti sui margini del nuovo commento di L. G. Stepanova e G. A. Levinton]

Most of the critical works on Mandelstam’s "Conversation about Dante" written in the last thirty years analyse its autobiographical dimension and the tenets of Mandelstam’s innovative poetics. G.A. Levinton’s and L.G. Stepanova’s commentary that accompanies the 2010 edition of the "Conversation" is an original contribution to Mandelstam scholarship inasmuch as it is the first scholarly work to consider some of Mandelstam’s key arguments in the light of certain strands of Dante criticism in Italy. In particular, in their commentary Levinton and Stepanova look at the theme of desire, one of the narrative structures mentioned in the "Conversation", which occupies an important place in Dante’s "Commedia". The present article complements Levinton’s and Stepanova’s commentary. Its aim is to show that by developing his own ideas about Dante, Mandelstam, for the first time in the history of the reception of Dante’s poem in Russia, began to intuitively develop an understanding of the actual structural elements of the "Commedia", thus foreshadowing the work of contemporary Dante scholars in the Western world.