Abstract

Mandelstam’s poem “A Tailor…” contains a riddle that is not explicitly stated. The poem’s protagonist – a tailor sentenced to death – takes off the measurements (presumably for a coffin) and remains alive. Why, then, does he succeed in escaping death? This article identifies an irresolvable logical contradiction in the poem: the subject of the measurements is a living person, whilst its object is, in the future, a corpse. Consequently, the tailor’s status (as both subject and object of the measurements) between life and death becomes indeterminate, and the execution (which transforms the living into the dead) loses its meaning. Also significant is the probable anagramming of the author’s name, which (like the taking of measurements) constitutes an action turned in on itself and prompted by the author’s presumed attempt to save himself in a world of total terror.