Nadezhda Mandelstam is not only the widow of the great poet.
In the 60s and 70s, thanks to his “Second Book” of Memoirs,
passed around no less than Solzhenitsyn or Nabokov,
thanks to his sharp mind and unbending character
she became a cult figure for the intelligentsia.
Akhmatova was in St. Petersburg, Mandelstam was in Moscow.
History will never forget the feat of a woman who kept a whole collection of poems in her mind for twenty years, maintaining clarity of vision despite terrible trials. But this is not “universal history.” This is the story of personalities, the story of great people. ...Three generations of the Shklovsky family were connected with Nadezhda Yakovlevna by almost family ties. Varvara Viktorovna SHKLOVSKAYA-KORDI remembers her
— Varvara Viktorovna, you inherited your friendship with Nadezhda Yakovlevna. Probably, the family had many stories about the origins of this friendship - about the Petrograd House of Arts, with which many anecdotes are associated. For example, about Mandelstam’s torn pants...
V.Sh.: - When Mandelstam brought Nadenka from Kyiv, he immediately brought her to meet her mother and father, with whom he was friends. At the same time, he held his hat in his hand, covering the hole in his pants. Mom said: “Osip Emilievich, take off your pants, now I’ll sew everything up for you.” Nadya objected: “No way! He will then understand that it can be sewn up!”
Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails.
I read the list of ships halfway through:
This long brood, this crane train,
That once rose above Hellas.
Like a crane's wedge into foreign borders -
On the heads of kings there is divine foam -
Where are you sailing? Whenever Elena
What is Troy alone for you, Achaean men?
Both the sea and Homer - everything is moved by love.
Who should I listen to? And now Homer is silent,
And the black sea, swirling, makes noise
And with a heavy roar he approaches the headboard.
— It feels like Mandelstam is the most pantsless person in Russian literature. Gorky gave him a sweater, although he refused to give him trousers. Gumilyov gave him the trousers, and Mandelstam even said that he felt very courageous in Gumilyov’s trousers. Then, it seems, Kataev gave him the trousers...
Kataev, it must be said, lied about everything in his “Diamond Crown”. Everyone died, he appointed himself the Soviet Walter Scott, and suddenly it turned out that the dead were more interesting to the reader than him, the “living classic”: Olesha, to whom he gave three rubles for a hangover or not, Babel, Mandelstam...
None of them had a second pair of trousers - that’s not what they were selling, as my father said. My father probably got his second pair of pants after he was seventy.
- There are legends about Mandelstam’s extreme helplessness: he was attacked by mockers and suffered from this, he did not know how to light the stove, while your father, they say, knew how to do this well...
Yes, none of them knew how to light a stove. But they remembered about Mandelstam. Of course, my father broke chairs more fun because he had a different design... But, in general, all these jokes are “named after Emma Gerstein.” Her scandalous memoirs about Nadenka are akin to The Diamond Crown. My mother said: there is truth and there is truth-womb. The fact that Nadezhda Yakovlevna had crooked legs is a typical truth. For some reason Emma Grigorievna doesn’t remember how much she did for Mandelstam, how many people she helped, how many she raised and taught. And he remembers about crooked legs... Very selective memory. She told me how she once entered the Mandelstams’ room in the Herzen House. Shklovsky sat cross-legged on the bed, and Mandelstam ran from corner to corner - they had some brilliant argument about literature: “You know, Varya, I can’t remember anything that they talked about...” This is typical . She remembers nonsense and gossip. And gossip, I think, enters a person not through the frontal lobes, but in other ways. Like pop music...
— When the Mandelstams returned to Moscow from exile in Voronezh, they were afraid to stay with you. Do you remember their appearance?
I remember my childhood difficulty... I’m 37, I’m ten years old. Parents are not at home. Osip Emilievich took a bath, I feed him in the room behind the kitchen. Nadenka, who loved to wash herself - she had missed this all her life - was splashing around in the bathroom... A neighbor-snitch, Lelya Povolotskaya, came. The writer Bruno Yasensky was supposed to live next to us in Lavrushinsky, but he didn’t make it to Lavrushinsky and disappeared on Lubyanka. A communal apartment was formed in his apartment, in which this same Lelya Povolotskaya lived. So she came in when the Mandelstams were there. I don’t remember under what pretext. This means that I needed her, on the one hand, not to find either Nadya or Osip Emilievich in the apartment, and on the other, not to rummage through her father’s manuscripts... And I jumped on one leg, pretending to be a child’s game.
- So somehow your consciousness accepted it?
This is the life that was offered to us. There was no other... Then, when Stalin died, Lelya came to us, sobbing, and asked my mother and aunt: “Why aren’t you crying? I know you never loved him!
—What impression did the Mandelstams make on you as a married couple?
Back then women weren't supposed to be smart. As Anna Andreevna said: “While our men were alive, we sat in the kitchen and peeled herring.” Once Nadezhda Yakovlevna allowed herself some decisive statements, and Osip Emilievich said: “Give a telegram to the Chinese in China: “Very smart, period I give advice, period, I agree to come, period.” And then he often said: “To China to the Chinese.” That's it... Not many people can stand smart wives. Nadezhda Yakovlevna, in addition to the girls' gymnasium, passed the exams for a good men's gymnasium. This was enough for her to pass exams as an external student during the war for the philological faculty of the university in Tashkent. Since childhood, she knew several languages: her parents took her around Europe a lot. We arrived at some new place and the next morning they let us out for a walk - say, in Switzerland. She said: “I still remember the disgust: you go down into the yard to jump in hopscotch, and then again there’s a different language.” She knew French perfectly. English. She spoke German. She learned Spanish - she needed to read something...
I remember a Swedish woman came to see her, and she spoke to her in Swedish. I asked: “Nadya, how many languages do you know?” -- "So how?" - “Well, to read, to have a conversation, so as not to feel like a stranger in another country?” She began to count, got lost... Then she said: “Probably about thirty.”
- Varvara Viktorovna, do you remember Nadezhda Yakovlevna after receiving the news of Mandelstam’s death?
Nadenka immediately aged terribly. And she was only 39 years old. And it was necessary to preserve everything that Osip Emilievich wrote.
And after the war, when she arrived in Moscow with a diploma, she went to the ministry, where the same unfortunates like her stood along the wall all day, usually two days. They were called into the office and given directions to provincial pedagogical universities. Nadenka agreed to everything. She was unpretentious. She demanded only one thing: the key to the teacher's toilet. She could not sit in a toilet for 12 people without partitions, with students. In my opinion, she had no other complaints. But for more than two years she did not work anywhere, because immediately, after the first demonstration lesson, where the head of the department and other teachers came, it became clear how educated she was. She couldn’t help anyone, but every time the head of the department started to get hysterical. And two years later she came to the ministry again, again stood in the corridor for two days and received the following direction... And then students came to her, these girls who had graduated from universities, who realized that they had put the sun on their heads instead of a hat.
- In her memoirs, Nadezhda Yakovlevna says several times: it is so impossible to live that you need to leave life... And then, when Mandelstam died...
She found something to do that kept her here...
- As you said well - “occupation”!
But of course! She remembered Osip Emilievich's poems by heart... She kept them in her memory for twenty years; she couldn't write them down on paper - and she couldn't die. She had no right.
- She was baptized in childhood... Did you happen to observe her communication with Father Alexander Men, her spiritual father?
Nadenka was very friendly with him. She lived with him at his dacha in Semkhoz for several years. I remember a dispute in Nadezhda Yakovlevna’s kitchen between Lev Gumilyov and Men. The dispute was about the devil and how to treat him. This was their first meeting. Arranged by Nadenka. Gumilev used all his knowledge, to which there was more complete knowledge and a more qualified answer. He jumped at Father Alexander from all sides and fired at him, but he reflected all his volleys with a soft smile...
Yes Yes. Finally, Gumilyov said that if the devil acts, it means that God condones evil, because it is said: not a single hair will fly off your head unless it is the will of God. “Here I agree with you,” said Men... It was an elegant argument... And it ended with Gumilyov telling Father Alexander: “Well, I didn’t expect to meet such an interlocutor. Not expected! But tell me, you didn’t expect anything like me.” Men replied: “Of course, it’s a draw, zeros.”
— Did Nadezhda Yakovlevna participate in their conversation?
No, she was silent, sitting in the corner. It was a duel.
--Nadezhda Yakovlevna died, knowing that in this country a person can rarely be calm about his posthumous fate. So, about Akhmatova’s funeral, she said: “In this country, a person cannot die in peace.” What do you remember about the death and funeral of Nadezhda Yakovlevna?
Until the last day she continued to joke. She said: “The doctors advise me that I walk twice as much as I want. That's how I walk. I want to go to the toilet, but when I come back, I don’t want to anymore...” She grew weaker, the meetings became shorter and shorter, but we never left her alone for a minute. They were on duty in turns... Then, when she was taken away, the apartment was sealed, it was unsealed after a certain time... But the archive did not disappear. And the bird did not disappear - there was such an iron bird that Osip Emilievich always carried with him. We took her away. This is the only surviving thing that Osip Emilievich held in his hands. Another blanket that was used to cover Nadechka in the coffin. About which Mandelstam wrote poems:
"We have a web
old Scottish plaid
You will cover me with it,
like a military flag when I die..."
Her funeral service was held in the Church of the Sign of the Mother of God behind the River Station. Next to her lay a woman - as if Fate had spoken - Anna lay next to her, with a simple, slightly swollen face. There were an awful lot of people, the entire church vestibule was packed. When we carried out the coffin, a crowd of people stood close to each other to the right and left of us, and we sang “Holy God, Mighty Holy, Immortal Holy, have mercy on us.” They walked and sang all the way to the car. Then the photograph appeared in the Parisian magazine Christian Messenger, and my neighbor, who visited the secretary of the Writers’ Union Verchenko, told me: “The emigrant magazine with your photograph is on Verchenko’s table. What will you say if they call you?” I answered: “What I can tell you: I buried a friend - the way I would like to be buried...”
Then, when the car drove into the cemetery, there were people in civilian clothes standing at the turn - they accompanied us the whole time. We turned and carried Nadenka’s coffin along a narrow path in the snow with the same singing...
Now next to her cross there is a memorial stone with the name of Osip Emilievich. Everything is correct: they come to her, which means they come to him too...
http://atv.odessa.ua/programs/17/osip_mandel_shtam_chast_2_1823.html?order=DESC?order=ASC
Fragment from Irina Odoevtseva’s book “On the Banks of the Neva”:
Steps on the stairs. Mandelstam cranes his neck and listens with a blissfully perplexed look.
- Is it Nadya. “She went shopping,” he says in a changed, warmer voice. - You will see her now. And you will understand me.
The door opens. But it is not Mandelstam’s wife who enters the room, but a young man. In a brown suit. Short-haired. With a cigarette in his teeth. He decisively and quickly approaches Georgy Ivanov and extends his hand to him.
- Hello, Georges! I recognized you immediately. Osya described you correctly - a brilliant St. Petersburger.
Georgy Ivanov looks at her in confusion, not knowing whether he can kiss the outstretched hand.
He had never seen a woman in a man's suit before. In those days this was completely unthinkable. Only many years later, Marlena Dietrich introduced the fashion for men's suits. But it turns out that the first woman in pants was not her, but Mandelstam’s wife. It was not Marlena Dietrich, but Nadezhda Mandelstam who revolutionized the women's wardrobe. But, unlike Marlena Dietrich, this did not bring her fame. Her bold innovation was not appreciated either by Moscow or even by her own husband.
- Again, Nadya, you put on my suit. After all, I don’t dress up in your dresses? What are you like? Shame, disgrace,” he attacks her. And he turns to Georgy Ivanov, seeking his support. - If only you, Georges, could convince her that this is indecent. She doesn't listen to me. And wears out my suits.
She shrugs her shoulder impatiently.
- Stop it, Osya, don’t make marital scenes. Otherwise Georges will think that you and I live like a cat and a dog. But we coo like doves - like “clay doves.”
She puts a grid with all kinds of packages on the table. NEP. And you can buy anything. There would be money.
- Well, you enjoy a friendly meeting here, while I prepare lunch.
Mandelstam's wife, despite her deceptive appearance, turned out to be a wonderful and hospitable housewife. Borscht and roast were followed by coffee with sweet pies and homemade jam.
- It’s Nadya herself. Who would have thought? - He looks tenderly at his wife. - She can do everything. And so neat. Economical. I would be lost without her. Oh, how I love her.
Nadya smiles shyly, putting some jam on him.
- Come on, Osya, family delights are no more interesting than marital scenes...
Book "Memories"
Nadezhda Yakovlevna MANDELSHTAM
The artist Nadenka Khazina became the wife of Osip Mandelstam in May 1919. They met in Kyiv when she was nineteen years old.
“We easily and madly got together on the first day, and I stubbornly insisted that two weeks would be enough for us, if only “without worries,” she later recalled. – I didn’t understand the difference between a husband and a casual lover...
From then on we never parted... He didn’t like to part so much because he felt how short our time was – it flew by like an instant.”
Nadenka Khazina (according to Anna Akhmatova, ugly, but charming) was born in Saratov in the family of a lawyer; her childhood and teenage years were spent in Kyiv. Her parents (apparently, not poor people at all) took her to Germany, France and Switzerland. Nadenka knew French and English perfectly, spoke German, and learned Spanish later - she needed to read something...
After graduating from high school, the girl took up painting. But everything was crossed out by her meeting with Osip Mandelstam. After getting married, they alternately lived in Leningrad, Moscow, Ukraine and Georgia.
“Osip loved Nadya incredibly, unbelievably,” recalled A. Akhmatova. – When she had her appendix cut out in Kyiv, he did not leave the hospital and lived all the time in the closet of the hospital porter. He did not let Nadya leave his side, did not allow her to work, was furiously jealous, asked her advice about every word in poetry. In general, I have never seen anything like this in my life. Mandelstam’s surviving letters to his wife fully confirm this impression of mine.”
In the fall of 1933, Osip Mandelstam finally received a Moscow apartment - two rooms on the fifth floor, the ultimate dream for that time. Before that, he and Nadya had to push around in different corners. It hasn’t been published for many years and no work has been given. Once Osip Emilievich said to his wife: “We need to change our profession - now we are beggars.”
You haven't died yet, you're not alone yet,
While with a beggar friend
You enjoy the grandeur of the plains
And darkness, and cold, and blizzard.
In luxurious poverty, in mighty poverty
Live calm and comforted, -
Blessed are those days and nights
And sweet-voiced work is sinless...
“When Mayakovsky arrived in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s, he became friends with Mandelstam, but they were quickly pulled apart in different directions,” Nadezhda Yakovlevna later recalled in her book. “It was then that Mayakovsky told Mandelstam his life wisdom: “I eat once a day, but it’s good...” In the years of famine, Mandelstam often advised me to follow this example, but the fact of the matter is that in times of famine people don’t have enough to this “once a day.”
And - nevertheless... As the poet Viktor Shklovsky recalled: “Living in very difficult conditions, without boots, in the cold, he managed to remain spoiled.” As a rule, Mandelstam took for granted any help provided to him and his Nadya. Here is a quote from the memoirs of another contemporary of his, Elena Galperina-Osmerkina:
“Osip Emilievich looked at me casually, but also arrogantly. This could be translated into words as follows: “Yes, we are hungry, but don’t think that feeding us is a courtesy. This is the duty of a decent person."
Many people remember Osip Emilievich’s young wife as a quiet and inconspicuous woman, the silent shadow of the poet. For example, Semyon Lipkin:
“Nadezhda Yakovlevna never took part in our conversations, she sat with a book in the corner, raising her bright blue, sad, mocking eyes at us... Only in the late 40s at Akhmatova’s on Ordynka I was able to appreciate Nadezhda Yakovlevna’s brilliant, caustic mind.”
Nadezhda Yakovlevna had a hard time with her husband. He was a lively person, amorous and quite spontaneous. He got carried away often and a lot, and, very jealous of his wife, brought his girlfriends to the house. Stormy scenes took place. Nadya, whose health left much to be desired, was treated, apparently, with disdain. It got to the point that the poet’s father, visiting his son and finding him with two women - his wife and another mistress with the affectionate nickname Buttercup, said: “It’s good: if Nadya dies, Osya will have Buttercup...”
Fate decreed otherwise: Buttercup, that is, Olga Vaksel, a passionate and emotional person, committed suicide in 1932. And Nadya... Nadya stayed with Osip.
Today, in most publications, the family life of the Mandelstam couple is shown in a rosy light: a loving husband, a devoted wife... Nadezhda Yakovlevna was truly devoted to the poet. And one day, exhausted by the duality of her position and leaving her husband with a hastily packed suitcase, she soon came back... And everything returned to normal. “Why did you get it into your head that you must be happy?” - Mandelstam responded to his wife’s reproaches.
...Reading his new poems to his wife, Osip Emilievich was angry that she did not immediately remember them. “Mandelshtam could not understand how I could not remember the poem that was in his head and not know what he knew. Dramas about this occurred thirty times a day... In essence, he did not need a wife-secretary, but a dictaphone, but from a dictaphone he could not demand additional understanding, as from me, she recalled. “If he didn’t like something that was written down, he wondered how I could meekly write down such nonsense, but if I rebelled and didn’t want to write something down, he said: “Tsits! Don’t interfere... If you don’t understand anything, keep quiet.” And then, having dispersed, he sarcastically advised sending to Shanghai... a telegram with the following content:
"Very clever. I give advice. I agree to come. To China. To the Chinese."
The story of the poet's exile in Voronezh is widely known. In May 1934, for the poem “We live without feeling the country beneath us...” he was exiled to Cherdyn-on-Kama for three years. They said that the nervous, weak Osya “betrayed” at the Lubyanka those nine or eleven people to whom he read his poems - among them his close friend Anna Akhmatova, and her son Lev Gumilyov, and the poetess Maria Petrovykh, with whom he was very keen. During a prison meeting with his wife, he listed the names of the people involved in the investigation (that is, those he named among the listeners) so that Nadezhda Yakovlevna could warn everyone.
After the efforts of Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova and other writers, the Mandelstams were allowed to travel to Voronezh. By the way, they chose this place themselves, obviously because of the warm climate; they were forbidden to live only in twelve cities of Russia.
After the first arrest, Osip Emilievich fell ill, according to Nadezhda Yakovlevna, with traumatic psychosis - with delusions, hallucinations, and a suicide attempt. Back in Cherdyn, the poet jumped out of a hospital window and broke his arm. Obviously, his mind was really clouded: Osip Emilievich considered the arches in honor of the Chelyuskinites to be erected... in connection with his arrival in Cherdyn.
In May 1937, the Mandelstams returned home to Moscow. But one of their rooms turned out to be occupied by a man who wrote denunciations against them, and the poet did not receive permission to stay in the capital. However, there was not much time left before the next arrest...
During these terrible years, hiding from the watchful eye of the Chekist, Nadezhda Yakovlevna carefully kept everything that was written by her husband: every line, every piece of paper that his hand touched. Like hundreds of thousands of wives of “Rus', writhing innocently under the bloody boots” (A. Akhmatova), she knocked on all doorsteps, stood in long lines in order to find out at least something about her husband. At that time she was lucky. She found out “for what” and how many years her husband received, but did not know where he was sent from Butyrka prison.
Still not knowing about her husband’s death, Nadezhda Yakovlevna asked Beria for intercession...
What remains is her letter addressed to Osip Emilievich, “a human document of piercing power,” as defined by Primorye local historian Valery Markov.
“Osya, dear, distant friend! My dear, there are no words for this letter, which you may never read. I write it into space. Maybe you'll come back and I'll be gone. Then this will be the last memory.
Oksyusha - our childhood life with you - what happiness it was. Our quarrels, our squabbles, our games and our love... And the last winter in Voronezh. Our happy poverty and poetry...
Every thought is about you. Every tear and every smile is for you. I bless every day and every hour of our bitter life, my friend, my companion, my blind guide...
A life of duty. How long and difficult it is to die alone - alone. Is this fate for us, the inseparable ones?..
I didn’t have time to tell you how much I love you. I don’t know how to say even now. You are always with me, and I, wild and angry, who never knew how to just cry, I cry, I cry, I cry. It's me, Nadya. Where are you? Goodbye. Nadia".
“In those days when this letter was written, O. Mandelstam was already in Vladivostok in a transit camp (the area of \u200b\u200bthe current Marine Town),” says V. Markov. – He probably felt when the lines of an unsent letter were born. How else can one explain that it was on these days, in the twentieth of October, that he wrote a letter to his brother Alexander (Shura), which, fortunately, reached the addressee.
“Dear Nadenka, I don’t know if you’re alive, my dove...” Mandelstam asked in a letter. These were the last lines of the poet read by his wife... On December 27, 1938, on a day filled with a blizzard, Osip Mandelstam died on a bunk in barracks No. 11. His frozen body with a tag on his leg, lying for a whole week near the camp infirmary along with the bodies of other “goneers” "was thrown into the former fortress moat in the new year - 1939."
By the way, according to the latest archival research, the poet died in the Magadan camps...
In June 1940, Nadezhda Yakovlevna was presented with Mandelstam’s death certificate. According to this document, he died in the camp on December 27, 1938 from cardiac paralysis. There are many other versions of the poet’s death. Someone said that they saw him in the spring of 1940 in a party of prisoners going to Kolyma. He looked about seventy years old, and he gave the impression of being mentally ill...
Nadezhda Yakovlevna settled in Strunino, a village in the Moscow region, worked as a weaver in a factory, then lived in Maloyaroslavets and Kalinin. Already in the summer of 1942, Anna Akhmatova helped her move to Tashkent and settled her. Here the poet’s wife graduated from the university and received a diploma as an English teacher. In 1956 she defended her Ph.D. thesis. But only two years later she was allowed to live in Moscow...
“Her character is capricious,” recalls Tashkent writer Zoya Tumanova, who studied English with Nadezhda Yakovlevna as a child. “She’s kinder to me than to the boys, sometimes she gently ruffles my hair, and she pokes my friends in every possible way, as if testing their strength.” In revenge, they look for lines in the book of poems by Innokenty Annensky - “Well, right about Nadezhda! Listen":
I love the resentment in her, her terrible nose,
And the legs are clenched, and the rough knot of braids..."
Seeing the teacher’s thick tome in Italian, the children asked: “Nadezhda Yakovlevna, do you read Italian too?” “Children, two old women, we have been studying literature all our lives, how can we not know Italian?” - she answered.
Nadezhda Yakovlevna lived to see the time when Mandelstam’s poems could already be transferred to paper. And poetry, and “The Fourth Prose”, and “Conversation about Dante” - everything that she memorized by heart. Moreover, she also managed to write three books about her husband... Her memoirs were first published in Russian in New York in 1970. In 1979, the poet’s widow donated the archives to Princeton University (USA).
When Nadezhda Yakovlevna received fees from abroad, she gave away a lot, or she simply took her friends and took them to Beryozka. She gave Father Alexander Menu a fur hat, which in her circle was called “Abram the Prince.” Many women she knew wore “mandelshtamkas” - that’s what they themselves called the short sheepskin coats from “Beryozka”, given by Nadechka. And she herself wore the same fur coat...
From archival publications in recent years, it is known that Nadezhda Yakovlevna tried to arrange her life on a personal level even at the time when her husband was in prison, and even after that. It didn’t work out... One day she admitted:
“I want to tell the truth, only the truth, but I won’t tell the whole truth. The last truth will remain with me - no one but me needs it. I think even in confession no one gets to this final truth.”
Mandelstam was completely rehabilitated only in 1987. According to the Russian tradition, there are some extremes - the works of an author, albeit gifted, but still not fully revealing his creative potential, are often put on a par with Pushkin’s masterpieces...
This curious and talented girl was born in 1899 into a large family of Jewish Khazins who converted to Christianity. His father was an attorney, and his mother worked as a doctor. Nadya was the youngest. At first, her family lived in Saratov, and then moved to Kyiv. The future Mandelstam studied there. Nadezhda entered a girls’ gymnasium with a very progressive education system at that time. Not all subjects were equally good for her, but most of all she loved history. Parents then had the means to travel with their daughter. Thus, Nadya was able to visit Switzerland, Germany, and 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, the relationship between the young people began on the very first day. But Osip fell so much in love with the ugly but charming artist that he won her heart. Subsequently, she said that he seemed to feel as if they would not have long to enjoy each other. The couple got married, and now it was a real family - Mandelstam Nadezhda and Osip. 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 friends of this family about the feelings that existed between the spouses.
"Dark" years
But family life was not so rosy. Osip turned out to be amorous and prone to cheating, 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 screws of repression were just beginning to be tightened, Nadezhda Mandelstam received permission to accompany her husband. Then, after the efforts of influential friends, Osip’s sentence was commuted, replacing it with a ban on living in major cities of the USSR, and the couple left for Voronezh. But the arrest broke the poet. He became susceptible to depression and hysteria, tried to commit suicide, and 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 Nadezhda was left alone. Still not knowing about her husband’s death, she wrote him letters in conclusion, where she tried to explain what kind of childish games she now sees their past quarrels as and how she regrets those times. Then she considered her life unhappy because she did not know real grief. She kept her husband's manuscripts. She was afraid of searches and arrest, memorized everything 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 lived in Tashkent, where she graduated from a university as an external student 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 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 was there that Nadezhda wrote her memoirs and began publishing for the first time under a pseudonym. But her pension is not enough to live on, and she again gets a job at the Pskov Pedagogical Institute. In 1965, Nadezhda Mandelstam finally received a one-room apartment in Moscow. She spent her last years there. In her miserable apartment, the woman managed to run a literary salon, where not only the Russian, but also the Western intelligentsia made pilgrimages. Then Nadezhda decides to publish a book of her memoirs in the West - in New York and Paris. In 1979, she began to have heart problems so severe that she was prescribed strict bed rest. Her relatives set up a round-the-clock watch near her. On December 29, 1980, she died. Nadezhda was buried according to the Orthodox rite and buried on January 2 of the following year on
Nadezhda Mandelstam: books and the reaction of contemporaries to them
Among the works of this staunch dissident, the most famous are her Memoirs, which were published in New York in 1970, as well as the additional Second Book (Paris, 1972). It was she who caused a sharp reaction from some of Nadezhda’s friends. They felt that Osip Mandelstam’s wife was distorting the facts and trying to settle personal scores in her memoirs. Just before Nadezhda’s death, the “Third Book” was also published (Paris, 1978). She used her fees to treat friends and buy them gifts. In addition, the widow donated all the archives of her husband, the poet Osip Mandelstam, to Princeton University in the United States. She did not live to see the great poet rehabilitated and told her loved ones before her death that he was waiting for her. This is how she was. The hope of this brave woman tells us that even in the “dark” years you can remain a real, decent person.
Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam (maiden name Khazina, October 30, 1899, Saratov, Russian Empire - December 29, 1980, Moscow, USSR) - Russian writer, memoirist, linguist, teacher, wife of Osip Mandelstam.
N. Ya. Mandelstam (nee Khazina) was born on October 30, 1899 in Saratov into a wealthy family of baptized Jews. Her father, Yakov Arkadyevich Khazin (d. 1930), was a sworn attorney, and her mother, Vera Yakovlevna Khazina, worked as a doctor. Nadezhda was the youngest child in a large family. In addition to her, two older brothers grew up in the Khazin family, Alexander (1891-1920) and Evgeniy (1893-1974) and sister Anna (d. 1938). At the beginning of the 20th century. the family moved to Kyiv. There, on August 14, 1909, N. Ya. entered the private women's gymnasium of Adelaide Zhekulina at Bolshaya Podvalnaya, 36. Most likely, the gymnasium was chosen by her parents as the closest educational institution to the family’s place of residence (Reitarskaya St., 25) . A special feature of the Zhekulina gymnasium was the education of girls according to the program of male gymnasiums. Having successfully passed the entrance exams, Nadezhda nevertheless studied at an average level. She had 5 points in history, “good” in physics and geography, and “satisfactory” in foreign languages (Latin, German, French, English). In addition, as a child, Nadezhda visited Western European countries with her parents several times - Germany, France and Switzerland. After graduating from high school, Nadezhda entered the Faculty of Law at St. Vladimir University in Kyiv, but dropped out of school. During the years of the revolution, she studied in the studio of the famous artist A. A. Exter.
On May 1, 1919, in the Kiev cafe “H. L.A.M" N.Ya. meets O.E. Mandelstam.
On May 26, 1934, at a Special Meeting at the OGPU Collegium, O.M. was sentenced to deportation for three years to Cherdyn. On May 28, N. Ya. obtained permission to accompany her husband into exile. Soon after arriving in Cherdyn, the initial decision was revised. Back on June 3, N. Ya. informed the poet’s relatives that Mandelstam was “mentally ill and raving” in Cherdyn. On June 5, 1934, N.I. Bukharin writes a letter to I.V. Stalin, where he reports on the poet’s difficult situation. As a result, on June 10, 1934, the case was reviewed and, instead of exile, O. Mandelstam was banned from living in 12 cities of the Soviet Union. The couple hastily left Cherdyn, deciding to settle in Voronezh. There the Mandelstam couple met the poet S.B. Rudakov and teacher of the Voronezh Aviation Technical School N.E. Stamp. From the last N.Ya. Mandelstam maintained relationships throughout her life.
After the second arrest, which occurred on the night of May 1-2, 1938, the poet was exiled to a transit camp near Vladivostok, where he died of typhus.
After the death of her husband, Nadezhda Yakovlevna, fearing arrest, changed her place of residence several times. In addition, she devotes her life to preserving her husband's poetic legacy. Fearing searches and arrest along with O.M.’s manuscripts, she memorizes Mandelstam’s poems and prose.
After the start of the Great Patriotic War, N. Ya. Mandelstam and his mother were evacuated to Central Asia. At first they lived in the village of Muynak in Kara-Kalpakia, then they moved to a collective farm near the village of Mikhailovka, Dzhambul region. There in the spring of 1942 they were discovered by E.Ya. Khazin. Already in the summer of 1942 N.Ya. Mandelstam with the assistance of A.A. Akhmatova moves to Tashkent. Presumably this happened around July 3, 1942. In Tashkent, she passed the university exams as an external student. At first, Mandelstam taught foreign languages at the Central House of Artistic Education of Children. In May 1944, he began working at the Central Asian State University as an English teacher.
In 1949, Mandelstam moved from Tashkent to Ulyanovsk. There she works as an English teacher at a local pedagogical institute. In February 1953, Mandelstam was fired from the institute as part of a campaign to combat cosmopolitanism. Since the dismissal practically coincided with the death of Stalin, serious consequences were avoided.
Thanks to the mediation of the influential Soviet writer A.A. Surkov, she gets a teaching position at the Chita Pedagogical Institute, where she works from September 1953 to August 1955.
From September 1955 to July 20, 1958, Mandelstam taught at the Cheboksary Pedagogical Institute, where she even headed the department. In 1956, she defended her PhD thesis in English philology “Functions of the accusative case based on materials from Anglo-Saxon poetic monuments” under the guidance of V. M. Zhirmunsky.
In the summer of 1958, Mandelstam retired and moved to Tarusa, a small town located 101 km from Moscow, which made it possible for former political prisoners to settle there. This made Tarusa a popular place among the dissident intelligentsia. The informal leader among the local intelligentsia was K.G. Paustovsky, who, having connections in Moscow, was able to attract the attention of the authorities to the problems of the provincial city. In Tarusa N.Ya. Mandelstam began writing her Memoirs. In 1961, taking advantage of the concessions from above, the collection “Tarussa Pages” was published in Kaluga, where N.Ya. Mandelstam published under the pseudonym "Yakovleva".
In 1962, dissatisfied with her modest pension, she got a job as a teacher at the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the Pskov State Pedagogical Institute, working there until 1964.
In November 1965, N. Ya. managed to move into her own Moscow one-room apartment on Bolshaya Cheryomushkinskaya Street, where she lived for the rest of her life. In her small apartment, she organized something like a social and literary salon, which was regularly visited by the capital’s intelligentsia (Yu. Freidin, A. Sinyavsky, S. Averintsev, B. Messerer, B. Akhmadulina, etc.), as well as Western Slavists ( S. Brown, J. Malmstad, P. Troupin, etc.), who were interested in Russian literature and the work of O.E. Mandelstam.
In the 1960s, Nadezhda Yakovlevna wrote the book “Memoirs” (first book edition: New York, Chekhov Publishing House, 1970).
In the early 70s, a new volume of N. Ya.’s memoirs was published - “The Second Book” (Paris: YMCA-PRESS, 1972), which caused a mixed reaction. Shortly before Mandelstam's death, Book Three was published abroad (Paris: YMCA-PRESS, 1978).
For many years she was a close friend of Anna Akhmatova, wrote a memoir book about her (first full publication - 2007).
Throughout the 1970s. Mandelstam's health steadily deteriorated. She rarely left the house and slept a lot. However, until the end of the decade, Mandelstam was able to receive friends and relatives at home.
In 1979, heart problems worsened. Her activity began to decline, and only her closest people provided help. At the beginning of December 1980, at the age of 81, Mandelstam was prescribed strict bed rest and was forbidden to get out of bed. On the initiative of one of the closest people, Yu. L. Freidin, a round-the-clock watch was organized. The people closest to her were entrusted to stand guard near the dying Mandelstam.
On the night of December 29, 1980, while Vera Lashkova was on duty, Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam died. Mandelstam was buried according to the Orthodox rite; farewell to the body took place on January 1, 1981 in the Church of the Mother of God of the Sign. She was buried on January 2, 1981 at the Staro-Kuntsevo (Troyekurovskoye) cemetery.
Taken from Wikipedia
N. Ya. Mandelstam (nee Khazina) was born on October 30, 1899 in Saratov into a wealthy family of baptized Jews. Her father, Yakov Arkadyevich Khazin (d. 1930), was a sworn attorney, and her mother, Vera Yakovlevna Khazina, worked as a doctor. Nadezhda was the youngest child in a large family. In addition to her, two older brothers, Alexander (1891-1920) and Evgeniy (1893-1974), and sister Anna (d. 1938) grew up in the Khazin family. At the beginning of the 20th century, the family moved to Kyiv. There, on August 14, 1909, N. Ya. entered the private women's gymnasium of Adelaide Zhekulina at Bolshaya Podvalnaya, building 36. Most likely, the gymnasium was chosen by her parents as the closest educational institution to the family’s place of residence (Reitarskaya Street, building 25). A special feature of the Zhekulina gymnasium was the education of girls according to the program of male gymnasiums. Having successfully passed the entrance exams, Nadezhda nevertheless studied at an average level. She was rated “excellent” in history, “good” in physics and geography, and “satisfactory” in foreign languages (Latin, German, French, English). In addition, as a child, Nadezhda visited Western European countries with her parents several times - Germany, France and Switzerland. After graduating from high school, Nadezhda entered the Faculty of Law at St. Vladimir University in Kyiv, but dropped out of school. During the years of the revolution, she studied in the studio of the famous artist A. A. Exter.
On May 1, 1919, in the Kiev cafe “H. L.A.M" N.Ya. meets O.E. Mandelstam. The beginning of the famous poet’s romance with the young artist was recorded in his diary by literary critic A. I. Deitch:
"Dark Days Comrade"
On May 26, 1934, at a Special Meeting at the OGPU Collegium, Osip Mandelstam was sentenced to deportation for three years to Cherdyn. On May 28, Nadezhda Yakovlevna obtained permission to accompany her husband into exile. Soon after arriving in Cherdyn, the initial decision was revised. On June 3, she informed the poet’s relatives that Mandelstam was “mentally ill and delirious” in Cherdyn. On June 5, 1934, N.I. Bukharin writes a letter to I.V. Stalin, where he reports on the poet’s difficult situation. As a result, on June 10, 1934, the case was reviewed and, instead of exile, Osip Mandelstam was banned from living in 12 cities of the Soviet Union. The couple hastily left Cherdyn, deciding to settle in Voronezh. There they met the poet S. B. Rudakov and the teacher of the Voronezh Aviation Technical School N. E. Shtempel. With the latter, N. Ya. Mandelstam maintained friendly relations throughout her life.
After the second arrest, which occurred on the night of May 1-2, 1938, the poet was exiled to a transit camp near Vladivostok, where he died of cardiac asthma.
Years of wandering
After the death of her husband, Nadezhda Yakovlevna, fearing arrest, changed her place of residence several times. In addition, she devotes her life to preserving her husband's poetic legacy. Fearing searches and arrest along with Osip Mandelstam's manuscripts, she memorizes his poems and prose.
N. Ya. Mandelstam found the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in Kalinin. The evacuation, according to her recollections, was rapid and “terribly difficult.” Together with her mother, she managed to board the ship, and they reached Central Asia along a difficult path. Before leaving, she collected the manuscripts of her late husband, but was forced to leave some of the documents in Kalinin. First, N. Ya. Mandelstam ended up in the village of Muynak in Kara-Kalpakiya, then she moved to a collective farm near the village of Mikhailovka, Dzhambul region. There, in the spring of 1942, she was discovered by E. Ya. Khazin. Already in the summer of 1942, N. Ya. Mandelstam, with the assistance of A. A. Akhmatova, moved to Tashkent. Presumably this happened around July 3, 1942. In Tashkent, she passed the university exams as an external student. At first, N. Ya. Mandelstam taught foreign languages at the Central House of Artistic Education of Children. In May 1944, he began working at the Central Asian State University as an English teacher.
In 1949, N. Ya. Mandelstam moved from Tashkent to Ulyanovsk. There she works as an English teacher at a local pedagogical institute. In February 1953, N. Ya. Mandelstam was fired from the institute as part of a campaign to combat cosmopolitanism. Since the dismissal practically coincided with the death of Stalin, serious consequences were avoided.
Thanks to the mediation of the influential Soviet writer A. A. Surkov, she received a teaching position at the Chita Pedagogical Institute, where she worked from September 1953 to August 1955.
From September 1955 to July 20, 1958, N. Ya. Mandelstam taught at the Cheboksary Pedagogical Institute, where she headed the department. In 1956, under the guidance of V. M. Zhirmunsky, she defended her PhD thesis in English philology on the topic “Functions of the accusative case based on materials from Anglo-Saxon poetic monuments.”
In the summer of 1958, N. Ya. Mandelstam retired and moved to Tarusa, a small town located 101 km from Moscow, which made it possible for former political prisoners to settle there. This made Tarusa a popular place among dissident intellectuals. An informal leader among the local intelligentsia was K. G. Paustovsky, who, having connections in Moscow, was able to attract the attention of the authorities to the problems of the provincial city. In Tarusa, N. Ya. Mandelstam began writing her “Memoirs”. In 1961, taking advantage of the relaxations from above, the collection “Tarussky Pages” was published in Kaluga, where N. Ya. Mandelstam was published under the pseudonym “Yakovleva”.
In 1962, dissatisfied with her modest pension, she got a job as a teacher at the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the Pskov State Pedagogical Institute, working there until 1964.
Return to Moscow
In November 1965, N. Ya. managed to move into her own Moscow one-room apartment on Bolshaya Cheryomushkinskaya Street, where she lived for the rest of her life. In her small apartment, she organized something like a social and literary salon, which was regularly visited by the capital’s intelligentsia (Yu. Freidin, A. Sinyavsky, V. T. Shalamov, S. Averintsev, B. Messerer, B. Akhmadulina, etc.) , as well as Western Slavists (S. Brown, J. Malmstad, P. Troupin, etc.), who were interested in Russian literature and the work of O. E. Mandelstam.
In the 1960s, Nadezhda Yakovlevna wrote the book “Memoirs” (first book edition: New York, Chekhov Publishing House, 1970). At the same time, in the mid-1960s, the poet’s widow began a lawsuit with the famous art critic, collector and writer N. I. Khardzhiev. Having quarreled over O. E. Mandelstam’s archive and the interpretation of individual poems by the poet, Nadezhda Yakovlevna decided to write her own commentary on her husband’s poems. This work was completed by the mid-1970s.
In the early 70s, a new volume of N. Ya.’s memoirs was published - “The Second Book” (Paris: YMCA-PRESS, 1972), which caused a mixed reaction. Shortly before Mandelstam's death, Book Three was published abroad (Paris: YMCA-PRESS, 1978).
For many years she was a close friend of Anna Akhmatova. After the poet’s death in 1966, she wrote memoirs about her (first full publication - 2007). Playwright A.K. Happy marriage with Gumilyov: she never loved him."
Death
Throughout the 1970s. Mandelstam's health steadily deteriorated. She rarely left the house and slept a lot. However, until the end of the decade, Mandelstam was able to receive friends and relatives at home.
In 1979, heart problems worsened. Her activity began to decline, and only her closest people provided help. At the beginning of December 1980, at the age of 81, Mandelstam was prescribed strict bed rest and was forbidden to get out of bed. On the initiative of one of the closest people, Yu. L. Freidin, a round-the-clock watch was organized. The people closest to her were entrusted to stand guard near the dying Mandelstam.
On the night of December 29, 1980, while Vera Lashkova was on duty, Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam died. Mandelstam was buried according to the Orthodox rite; farewell to the body took place on January 1, 1981 in the Church of the Mother of God of the Sign. She was buried on January 2, 1981 at the Staro-Kuntsevo (Troyekurovskoye) cemetery.
Heritage
The memoirs of N. Ya. Mandelstam were recognized not only as an indispensable source in the study of O. E. Mandelstam’s work, but also as significant evidence of the Soviet era, and especially Stalin’s time. The literary merits of her books were highly appreciated by many literary critics and writers (Andrei Bitov, Bella Akhmadulina, Sergei Averintsev and others). Brodsky compared the two volumes of her memoirs with “Doomsday on earth for her century and for the literature of her century.”
For many years N. Ya. Mandelstam was a close friend of Anna Akhmatova. After the death of the Russian poetess, Mandelstam wrote memoirs about Akhmatova. In them, she tried to critically evaluate Akhmatova’s personality and creativity (first full publication - 2007). .
Reception
Disputes about the meaning and objectivity of N. Ya. Mandelstam’s works began immediately after their publication. Many of those who knew N. Ya. and her husband personally split into two hostile camps. Some defend N. Ya. Mandelstam’s right to trial not only of the era, but also of specific people, others accuse the poet’s widow of settling scores with her contemporaries, slander and distortion of reality (this was especially true of the “Second Book”). The famous literary historian E. G. Gershtein in her memoirs gave a sharp rebuke to Mandelstam’s assessments in the “Second Book”, presenting counterclaims to the poet’s widow.
In the West, Mandelstam's memoirs received wide resonance. Both Memoirs and the Second Book were published in many countries, and the works themselves began to be regarded as an important source on Stalin's time.
