HOPE AGAINST HOPE: A Memoir

by Nadezhda Mandelstam ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 28, 1970

Poetry is respected only in this country--people are killed for it. There's no place where more people are killed for it."" The country is Russia and the words are those of Osip Mandelstam, the greatest modern Russian poet. Here the judgment is that of Clarence Brown who translated Mandelstam's poetry and who contributes the introduction to his widow's memoir. You may also quarrel with his contention that there is ""humor"" or ""joy"" in it, but not with the ultimate importance he claims for it or his admiration for this ""vinegary, Brechtian, steel-hard woman of great intelligence, limitless courage, no illusions, permanent convictions."" True, more often than not man is capable of limitless courage during times of crisis, or as she says, ""in the face of doom, even fear disappears."" Some of the book returns in time to earlier periods and discusses Mandelstam's poetry and position as an Acmeist (which he defined as ""nostalgia for a world literature""). Most of it however deals with the period following his first arrest (1934) after he had written a counter-revolutionary poem (""All we hear is the Kremlin's mountaineer/ The murderer and peasant-slayer""). For three years the Mandelstams lived in Voronezh where following his interrogation, he was ill mentally as well as physically (angina pectoris). Although pensionless and unpublishable, he continued to write his later poems which she was to commit to memory in order to safeguard their survival--in particular the ""Ode to Stalin"" in which the poet, ""half-alive himself/ begs a shadow for alms."" There was a brief interval of freedom in 1937 before his re-arrest when he was sent away to become an ""addressee unknown."" The last hazy era preceding his death is partially filled in by witnesses and throughout the book their artist friends appear, in particular Pasternak, Ehrenburg, and his acolyte Akhmatova. . . . Regardless of your familiarity with Mandelstam, the book is a direct and eloquent statement of the Russian experience at this time, a unique document, a splendid testament.

Pub Date: Sept. 28, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION