Hope Against Hope; Hope Abandoned
Keene, Karlyn
"Hope Against Hope; Hope Abandoned" I had never dared hope I would one day see M. published, that I would hold his books in my hands, make notes in the margins, correct mistakes in the texts, and feel that joy of knowing that the work...
...He and Akmatova taught her to appreciate and understand poetry, and she became a gifted critic...
...Indeed, she seems somehow anxious that her life should end...
...To their life together, Osip Mandelstam gave firm direction...
...She has fulfilled her mission—the preservation, for future generations, of a great part of her husband's work...
...This is the material of which Hope against Hope and Hope Abandoned are written...
...We have seen how durable poetry is...
...The simple fact that they exist and that we are able to read them is remarkable...
...If M. had meekly agreed to receive his benefits, like the rest, he would have remained alive...
...He resumed writing five years later, and his "hard core, a deep bedrock of principles which set him apart from anyone of his own or later generations" also caused him to lash out again at the regime which was destroying a people he loved...
...He was insistent on molding her in his image...
...Anna Akmatova, probably Russia's greatest woman poet, was to say to her, when learning of Osip's death, "Now you are all we have left of Osip...
...Nadezhda Mandelstam is in her eighth decade, now residing in Moscow, a city where she was once forbidden to live for many years after her husband's death...
...In 1937, they were allowed to return to Moscow, but were denied housing because of Osip's previous arrest...
...Instead, Osip was exiled to Voronezh, where Nadezhda joined him...
...She has lived through "thaws"—and she has lived through periods of repression unparalleled in modern history...
...She has treasured friendships of some of twentieth century Russia's greatest literary minds...
...Her friend, Anna Akmatova, replied, "I am easy of mind now...
...The secret police interrogated Osip about the poem, but Bukharinthen a member of the Party's Central Committee and later executed after one of the great show trials in Moscow—intervened to save him from death...
...Soon it became clear to the Mandelstams who the victors of the Civil War were, and as always, "people were bowing and scraping to them...
...Through her he was able to keep contact with Akmatova and other friends...
...We would have lived a long and comfortable life together, and he would never have known the horror of waiting for death and his atrocious end in the concentration camp...
...It is difficult to comprehend that a single individual, whose poetry was a "purely personal affair," could present such a threat to a regime as powerful as the Soviet state...
...With brilliance and candor she describes the suffering of the Russian people since 1917...
...In Hope against Hope, Nadezhda Mandelstam states, "Poetry is a law unto itself...
...She would be content "to sit at his side, never saying a word or interrupting...
...Osip Mandelstam's work has been published in the West, and after a "qualified" rehabilitation and many years of expectation, a volume of selected poems appeared in the Soviet Union in 1974...
...But perhaps there ishope, and at least for Nadezhda Mandelstam there is peace of mind...
...As a result, he was arrested in 1934, after reciting a poem in which he referred to Stalin as a murderer and a "peasant slayer...
...Nadezhda Mandelstam is not optimistic about the future of her country...
...Unfortunately, 'compromise' in this country means something different from elswhere, namely selling yourself body and soul...
...Osip Mandelstam once said that in no other country was poetry so highly respected as in the Soviet Union, where people were killed for it...
...Both of her books today circulate only in samizdat (the illicit distribution of manuscripts typed or handwritten one-at-a-time by individuals), not exactly a sign that the system is any more open than it was under Stalin...
...Hope Abandoned covers a wider period of time, tracing the couple's life together, and includes Nadezhda Mandelstam's observations on the present-day conditions of the Soviet state...
...In 1925, he stopped writing original poetry...
...Though she often recoiled from his dominance, she has no regrets about the life they lived together...
...Osip's early work had been well received, and he became associated with a group of poets called the Acmeists, who rejected the other-worldly projection which had characterized Russian poetry for more than a decade...
...It has been a long and hard fight and Nadezhda often wonders about the suffering they had to endure...
...As a political commentator, she paints an unforgettable picture of the nature of totalitarian government...
...Nothing has escaped her watchful eye...
...She has known a good marriage, and she has devoted a lifetime to her husband's memory...
...As the character of the so-called open regime became known, literature and poetry were forced underground, extraordinary individuals committed hours and hours of work to memory, and Nadezhda Mandelstam must be considered the foremost among them...
...She has known cold, hunger, rotten living conditions, and isolation...
...it is impossible to bury it alive and even a powerful propaganda machine such as ours cannot prevent it from living on...
...She is an excellent historian though her method is quite unchronological...
...Who could have ever hoped for so much...
...She has been a part of a literary elite, and she has fought against theextinction of its work...
...Reading these two books was for me, positively numbing...
...Nadezhda Mandelstam dared to hope for so much, and for her efforts, another chapter in the horror story of the development of the Soviet state has been preserved...
...The books are remarkable as well because of what we can learn about twentieth century Russia...
...Just as Osip Mandlestam's poetry has proven durable, so will the valuable contribution of his wife...
...Osip's troubles began in 1923, when he was blacklisted and it became difficult for him to publish or to find work...
...I had never dared hope I would one day see M. published, that I would hold his books in my hands, make notes in the margins, correct mistakes in the texts, and feel that joy of knowing that the work of my life is done: the books are there, and though some things are lost, the bulk is preserved and exists...
...Her mission in life sustained her and without it she believes she would have long ago fallen by the wayside...
...Henceforth, Osip was in constant trouble with the Soviet regime...
...Her memory is incredible...
...Akmatova, Pasternak, and Mayakovski all come under her knowledgeable scrutiny...
...For the rest of her life, Nadezhda Mandelstam was devoted to the memory of her husband...
...She has known hope for the new regime, and she has witnessed the initiation and tightening of the stranglehold on the people...
...Few are left in the Soviet Union who have witnessed, much less been intimately involved in the cruel machinations of the Soviet state from its earliest days...
...On May 1, 1938 Osip Mandelstam was arrested once more, never to be seen by his wife again...
...She has seen friend turn informer, and has seen loved ones disappear never to be heard from again...
...Both are remarkable books...
...Of their relationship, she says, "In shaping himself, he shaped me as well, the two things went together...
...Hope against Hope traces the life of Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam from a knock on the door which announced their separation, to Osip's death sometime in 1938...
...It was almost as if he knew what the future was to hold, and he was determined to preserve as much as he could through his devoted wife...
...Nadezhda and Osip date their meetingfrom 1919, but they did no, live together until 1922, when the Civil War ended...
...My heart aches so much when I think of his last days that I involuntarily begin to wonder what it would have been if we had agreed to the sort of compromise always regarded as `reasonable.' I invariably advise my friends to do so...
...Not only does Nadezhda Mandelstam write well, but she is a gifted critic of her husband's work and the works of a host of other literary giants who were friends of the couple...
Vol. 8 • February 1975 • No. 5
