Mandelstam Nadezhda: biography and memoirs

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:55

Mandelstam Nadezhda… This amazing woman, with her life, death and memories, caused such a huge resonance among Russian and Western intellectuals that discussions about her role in the difficult thirties and forties of the twentieth century, about her memoirs and literary heritage continue to this day since. She managed to quarrel and separate former friends on both sides of the barricades. She remained faithful to the poetic heritage of her tragically deceased husband Osip Mandelstam. Thanks to her, much of his work has been preserved. But not only this went down in history Nadezhda Mandelstam. The memoirs of this woman have become a real historical source about the terrible time of Stalin's repressions.

Childhood

This curious and talented girl was born in 1899 in a large family of Jewish Khazins who converted to Christianity. His father was an attorney, and his mother worked as a doctor. Nadia wasyoungest. At first, her family lived in Saratov, and then moved to Kyiv. The future Mandelstam studied there. Nadezhda entered a women's gymnasium with a very progressive education system at that time. 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. Thus, Nadia was able to visit Switzerland, Germany, France. She did not complete her higher education, although she entered the law faculty of Kyiv University. Nadezhda became interested in painting, and besides, the difficult years of the revolution broke out.

Love for life

This time was the most romantic in the girl's life. While working in Kyiv 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 then very fashionable. Therefore, relations between young people began on the very first day. But Osip fell in love with an ugly but charming artist so much that he won her heart. Afterwards, she said that he seemed to feel that they would not have long to enjoy each other. The couple got married, and now it was a real family - Nadezhda and Osip Mandelstam. The husband was terribly jealous of his young wife and did not want to part with her. Many letters from Osip to his wife have been preserved, which confirm the stories of acquaintances of this family about the feelings that were between the spouses.

"Black" years

But family life was not so rosy. Osip turned out to be amorous and prone to betrayal, Nadezhda was jealous. They lived in poverty and only in 1932 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 Chernyn (on the Kama). But since the nuts of repression had just begun to be tightened, Nadezhda Mandelstam received permission to accompany her husband. Then, after the hassle of influential friends, Osip's sentence was mitigated, replaced by a ban on living in large cities of the USSR, and the couple left for Voronezh. But the arrest broke the poet. He became prone to depression and hysteria, tried to commit suicide, began to suffer from hallucinations. The couple tried to return to Moscow, but did not receive 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 not knowing about the death of her husband, she wrote letters to him in conclusion, where she tried to explain what kind of children's games she now sees their past quarrels and how she regrets those times. Then she considered her life miserable, because she did not know real grief. She kept her husband's manuscripts. She was afraid of searches and arrest, she memorized everything that he created, both poetry and prose. Therefore, Nadezhda Mandelstam often changed her place of residence. In the city of Kalinin, 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 has been living in Tashkent, where shegraduates from high school and works as an English teacher. After the war, Nadezhda 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, Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam 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 to live, 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 her last years. In her beggarly apartment, the woman managed to keep a literary salon, where not only Russian, but also Western intelligentsia made a pilgrimage. At the same time, Nadezhda decided to publish a book of her memoirs in the West - in New York and Paris. In 1979, she began to have heart problems so serious that she was prescribed strict bed rest. Relatives arranged a round-the-clock duty near her. On December 29, 1980, she was overtaken by death. Nadezhda was buried according to the Orthodox rite and buried on January 2 next year at the Troekurovsky cemetery.

Nadezhda Mandelstam: books and the reaction of contemporaries to them

Of the works of this staunch dissident, her "Memoirs", which were published in New York, are best known. York in 1970, as well as an additional "Second Book" (Paris, 1972). It was she who caused a sharp reaction from some of Nadezhda's friends. They considered that the wife of Osip Mandelstam was distorting the facts and was trying to settle personal scores in her memoirs. Just before Nadezhda's death, The Third Book was also published (Paris, 1978). With her fees, she treated her friends and bought them gifts. In addition, the widow gave all the archives of her husband, the poet Osip Mandelstam, to Princeton University in the United States. She did not live to see the rehabilitation of the great poet and told her relatives before her death that he was waiting for her. Such was she, Nadezhda Mandelstam. The biography of this brave woman tells us that even in the "black" years, you can remain a real, decent person.