The code of the poet-soldier in Mandelstam's 1930-s poems

The article is devoted to the character's following the code behaviour as one of the most significant strategies of the late Mandelstam. In Mandelstam's life and poetic space this type of behaviour is realized in the image of the poet-soldier who by the price of his life tries to deserve the right for poetic immortality. The unity of the texts in which there is the soldier (knight, officer) theme ("To German speech", "Lamark", "Poems about the unknown soldier", etc.) forms a stable complex of the motives: the hero-soldier, his victim-like behaviour, soldier's overcoat motive, brotherhood in arms, and identity of military and poetic skills. In the long run the soldier theme visionary realizes the limited sense of being in Mandelstam's poetry: dying unknown as a soldier and he hopes to come back as a poet.