Russian 11th grader reads rap lyrics instead of poem by Osip Mandelstam, gets ‘A’ from clueless teacher

A schoolgirl in Khabarovsk passed off lyrics by the Russian rapper Oxxxymiron for a poem by Osip Mandelstam, who was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets and died in the Soviet Gulag in 1938 at age 47. According to the local news site HLEB, the teacher didn't realize her student wasn't reciting what had been assigned, and she awarded the 11th grader an “A.”

The student read the first eight lines of a verse in a song titled “Intertwined.” Translated into English, the lyrics read:

Everything's intertwined, a sea of threads, and yet
Pull a thread and the whole ball comes loose.
This world is a spindle. Coincidences—there are zero.
The thread can be either a music string or a bowstring.
Everything's intertwined into a single length of yarn.
It's a threaded lump, not a soft shawl.
A tumbleweed on heaven's winds,
Everything's intertwined, but nothing is set in stone.

As the student read the lyrics, a classmate recorded her on her mobile phone, giggling as she spoke.

Oxxxymiron (whose real name is Miron Fyodorov) later found out about the incident and joked on Twitter, “Here's a little lesson in liberal arts education.”