Nadezhda Mandelstam - Hope Against Hope

had she been less valorous, intelligent and loving than she is, Mandelstam would no doubt have died several years earlier, and his work, that great con­cealed body of poetry and prose that never emerged in public print, would almost certainly have perished. In addition to everything else that it is, this splendid book is a record of how those things did not happen, and that is sufficient.

London / Easter 1970

Translator's Preface

All notesy except in the few cases where otherwise indicated, have been supplied by the translator, and the author bears no responsi­bility whatsoever for them. In order to keep footnotes to a minimum, most names of persons have been annotated in an Appendix, arranged in alphabetical order, at the end of the book. There is also a special note (page 419) on the various literary movements and organizations mentioned frequently in the text.

One short chapter of the original has been ormtted in translation be­cause it would make little sense for a reader unable to read Mandel- stam's verse in Russian. The full Russian text of Mrs. Mandelstam'¹ s book has been published under the title Vospominania by the Chek­hov Press (New York, 1910).

Mrs. Mandelstam refers to her husband throughout as O.M. (for Osip Mandelstam). In translation this has been reduced, for sim­plicity's sake, to M. Sometimes he is referred to in quoted conversa­tion by his first name and patronymic: Osip Emilievich.

CONTENTS

A May Night 5

Confiscation 6

Morning Thoughts 10

The Second Round 16

Shopping Baskets 19

"Integral Moves" 21

Public Opinion 24

Interview 29

Theory and Practice

Leaving for Exile 39

On the Other Side 41

The Irrational 44

The Namesake 51

A Piece of Chocolate 53

The Leap $6

Cherdyn 60

Hallucinations 65

Profession and Sickness 70

"Inside" 7 4

Christophorovich

Who Is to Blame? 8$

The Adjutant 89

On the Nature of the

Miracle 93

Journey to Voronezh 97

Thou Shalt Not Kill 1 о i

The Woman of the

Russian Revolution 108

Transmission Belts 112

Voronezh 118

Doctors and Illnesses 123

The Disappointed

Landlord 128

Money /37

3 2 The Origins of the Miracle 14$

The Antipodes 149

Two Voices 155

The Path to

Destruction 1$ 7

Capitulation 162

The Change of Values 170

Work 180

Moving Lips 184

Book and Notebook 190

Cycle 192

The Last Winter in

Voronezh 19$

The Ode 198

Golden Rules 204

"Hope" 210

"One Extra Day" 214

The "Bessarabian

Carriage" 214

The Illusion 221

The Reader of One

Book 225

Tikhonov 232

The Bookcase 235

Our Literature 244

Italy 246

The Social Structure 253

"NeTreba" 258

The Earth and Its

Concerns 260

Archive and Voice 269

Old and New 277

A "Convicted Person" 282

Chance 28$

The Electrician 290

In the Country 293

Ordeal by Fear 297

Cow or Poetry

Reading? 300

The Old Friend 304

Tania, the Non-Party

Bolshevik 307

Poetry Lovers 314

Eclipse 319

A Scene from Life 322

The Suicide 32$

73

75

77

79

82

71 Rebirth 328

The Last Idyll 334 The Textile Workers The Shklovskis 346 Maryina Roshcha 3 jo The Accomplice 352 The Young Lady of

Samatikha 356 The First of May 360 Gugovna 363 The Trap 367 The Window on the

34'

Sophia Embankment 369 The Date of Death 376 One Final Account 391

419

Appendix a. Notes on Persons Mentioned in the Text 399 в. Note on Literary Movements and Organizations

Index 421

Osip Mandelstam, 1922

Osip Mandelstam, 1936

N M Y

i A May Night

After slapping Alexei Tolstoi in the face, M. immediately re- ii turned to Moscow.* From here he rang Akhmatova every day, begging her to come. She was hesitant and he was angry. When she had packed and bought her ticket, her brilliant, irritable husband Punin asked her, as she stood in thought by a window: "Are you praying that this cup should pass from you?" It was he who had once said to her when they were walking through the Tretiakov Gallery: "Now let's go and see how they'll take you to your execu­tion." This is the origin of her lines:

"And later as the hearse sinks in the snow at dusk . . .

What mad Surikov will describe my last journey?"

But she was not fated to make her last journey like this. Punin used to say, his face twitching in a nervous tic: "They're keeping you for the very end." But in the end they overlooked her and didn't arrest her. Instead, she was always seeing others off on their last journey—including Punin himself.

Akhmatova's son, Lev Gumilev, went to meet her at the station— he was staying with us at that time. It was a mistake to entrust him with this simple task—he of course managed to miss her, and she was very upset. It wasn't what she was used to. That year she had come to see us a great deal and she was always greeted at the station by M.

* See the note on Alexei Nikolayevich Tolstoi in the Appendix, where notes on most other persons mentioned by the author will also be found.

3

himself, who at once started to amuse her with his jokes. She remem­bered how he had once said angrily, when the train was late: "You travel at the same speed as Anna Karenina." And another time: "Why are you dressed like a deep-sea diver?"—it had been raining in Leningrad and she had put on boots and a rubber mac with a hood, but in Moscow the sun was shining and it was very hot. Whenever they met they were cheerful and carefree like children, as in the old days at the Poets' Guild.* "Stop it," I used to shout, "I can't live with such chatterboxes!" But

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