Mandelstam Hope: biography and memories

Mandelstam Hope ... This amazing woman with her life, death and memories caused such a huge response among Russian and Western intellectuals that discussions about her role in the difficult thirties and forties of the twentieth century, her memoirs and literary heritage still last. She managed to quarrel and divide the barricades of former friends on both sides. She also remained faithful to the poetic legacy of her tragically deceased husband Osip Mandelstam. Thanks to her, much of his work has been preserved. But this was not the only thing that Nadezhda Mandelshtam went down in history. The memories of this woman became a real historical source about the terrible time of Stalin's repression.

Childhood

This curious and talented girl was born in 1899 in a large family of Hazin Jews who converted to Christianity. My father was an attorney, and my mother worked as a doctor. Nadya was the youngest. At first her family lived in Saratov, and then moved to Kiev. The future Mandelstam studied there. Hope entered the women's gymnasium with a very progressive system of education. Not all subjects were given to her equally well, but most of all she loved history. Parents then had the means to travel with their daughter to travel. Thus, Nadia was able to visit Switzerland, Germany, France. She did not finish higher education, although she enrolled at the Law Faculty of Kyiv University. Hope was carried away by painting, and besides, the complex years of the revolution were rife.

Love for life

This time was the most romantic in a girl's life. Working in Kiev in an art workshop, she met a young poet. She was nineteen years old, and she was a supporter of "love for an hour," which was very fashionable at that time. Therefore, the relationship between young people began on the first day. But Osip fell in love with an ugly but charming artist, who won her heart. Later she said that he felt as if they would not have to enjoy each other for long. The couple married, and now it was a real family - Mandelstam Hope and Osip. My husband was terribly jealous of his young wife and did not want to part with her. There are many letters of Osip to his wife, which confirm the stories of friends of this family about the feelings that were between the spouses.

"Black" years

But family life was not so rosy. Osip was amorous and inclined to betrayal, Nadezhda was jealous. They lived in poverty and only in 1932 they received a two-room apartment in Moscow. And in 1934 the poet Mandelstam was arrested for poetry directed against Stalin, and sentenced to three years of exile in the city of Chernin (on the Kama). But since the repression nuts were only just beginning to twist, Mandelstam Hope was allowed to accompany her husband. Then, after the hassle of influential friends, Osip's sentence was softened, replacing him with a ban on living in major cities of the USSR, and the spouses left for Voronezh. But the arrest broke the poet. He became subject to depression and hysteria, tried to commit suicide, began to suffer from hallucinations. The couple tried to return to Moscow, but they did not get permission. And in 1938 Osip was arrested for the second time and died in transit camps under unclear circumstances.

Fear and flight

Mandelstam Hope was left alone. Still unaware of her husband's death, she wrote him letters in conclusion, where she tried to explain what kind of children's games she now sees as her past quarrels and how she regrets about those times. Then she considered her life unhappy, because she did not know the real grief. She kept her husband's manuscripts. She was afraid of searches and arrest, memorized all that he created, both poetry and prose. Therefore, Nadezhda Mandelstam often changed her place of residence. In the city of Kalinina, she was caught by the news of the beginning of the war, and she and her mother were evacuated to Central Asia.

Since 1942 she lives in Tashkent, where she graduates from an external university and works as an English teacher. After the war, Hope moved to Ulyanovsk, and then - to Chita. In 1955 she became the head of the English language department at the Chuvash Pedagogical Institute, where she also defended her Ph.D. thesis.

last years of life

In 1958, Mandelstam Nadezhda Yakovlevna retired and settled near Moscow, in the town of Tarusa. Many former political prisoners lived there, and the place was very popular with dissidents. It is there that Nadezhda writes her memoirs, begins to publish for the first time under a pseudonym. But her pension is not enough for her, and she again gets a job at the Pskov Pedagogical Institute. In 1965, Nadezhda Mandelstam finally gets a one-room apartment in Moscow. There she spent the last years. In her beggarly flat, the woman managed to keep a literary salon, where not only the Russian, but also the Western intelligentsia made pilgrimage. At the same time, Hope decided to publish a book of his memoirs in the West - in New York and Paris. In 1979, she began heart problems to such a serious degree that she was prescribed a strict bed rest. The relatives arranged around her around the clock duty. December 29, 1980, she was overtaken by death. Hope sung in the Orthodox rite and buried on January 2 next year at the Troekurovsky cemetery.

Nadezhda Mandelstam: books and the reaction of contemporaries

From the creativity of this persistent dissident, her "Memoirs", which were published in New York in 1970, and her second "Second Book" (Paris, 1972), are best known. It was she who provoked a sharp reaction of some friends of Hope. They found that Osip Mandelstam's wife distorts the facts and tries to reduce personal scores in his memoirs. Just before Nadezhda's death, the Third Book also appeared (Paris, 1978). At her fees she treated friends and bought them gifts. In addition, all the archives of her husband, the poet Osip Mandelstam, the widow transferred to Princeton University in the United States. She did not live to see the rehabilitation of the great poet and told relatives before death that he was waiting for her. She was such, Nadezhda Mandelstam. The biography of this brave woman tells us that even in the "black" years you can remain a real, decent person.