Journey to Armenia

The potter’s art had brought the red clay of Armenia into the human circle.

lassicism in Mandelstam’s mind was associated with that ‘fullness of life’ natural to the Armenians, and also with ‘their noble inclination for hard work’. He had listed among the utensils by which man is consciously surrounded ‘a baking dish, a pair of tongs, an earthenware jug with milk’; and it is the pottery of Armenia that he calls in one poem

of the surrounding world; the environment heated with the most delicate teleological warmth. Hellenism is any stove near which a man sits, prizing its warmth as something related to his own inner warmth.