A short biography of Mandelstam is the most important thing. Osip Mandelstam: birth and family

Osip Mandelstam was born in Warsaw on January 15, 1891 into the Jewish family of an unsuccessful businessman who was always moving from place to place due to his trading failures. Osip's father wrote and even spoke Russian poorly. And the mother, on the contrary, is an intelligent, educated woman from a literary environment, despite Jewish origin, spoke beautiful and clear Russian speech. His grandparents preserved the “black and yellow ritual,” that is, the Jewish one, in their homes. The father wanted to see his son as a rabbi and therefore forbade him to read ordinary secular books. Only the Talmud. At the age of fourteen, Osip ran away from home to Berlin, where he briefly studied at a higher Talmudic school, and read mainly Schiller and the works of philosophers. Then he graduated from the Teneshevsky Commercial School in St. Petersburg, where his family lived at that time. There he began his first poetic attempts. Then - a trip to Paris, where he became interested in French symbolism. By the way, much later, already a mature poet, Mandelstam called symbolism “a wretched nothingness.” In 1910, Osip studied at the University of Heidelberg (only two semesters), where he studied Old French. Then - admission to St. Petersburg University at the Faculty of History and Philology. Whether he graduated from it is not known for certain.

Creation

It all started when philology student Osip Mandelstam joined a group of young, talented and cocky Acmeist poets. Their community was called the “Workshop of Poets.” They poeticized the world of primordial emotions, emphasized associations on objects and details, and preached the unambiguousness of images. Acmeism assumed perfection, sharpness of verse, its brilliance and sharpness, like a blade. And perfection can be achieved only by choosing untrodden paths and seeing the world exactly in the first and last time. These were Mandelstam’s guidelines for the rest of his life. The poet gave the same name to the first three collections - “Stone”; they were published between 1913 and 1916. He even wanted to give his fourth book the same title. once suggested that Mandelstam did not have a teacher, because his poems are some kind of new, unprecedented “ divine harmony" But Mandelstam himself called F.I. Tyutchev his teacher. In a poem in 1933, he wrote about a stone that fell from nowhere. And it seems that Mandelstam made these poems his “cornerstone.” He wrote in his article “The Morning of Acmeism” that he picked up the “Tyutchev stone” and made it the foundation of “his building.” In his later study, “Conversation about Dante,” he again talked a lot about the stone, and from his thoughts it follows that for him the stone is a symbol of the connection of times, phenomena and events; it is not only a particle of the universe, but an animated witness of history. And also the world of the immortal human soul- this is also a tiny gem or meteorite, thrown into the universe by someone. Hence the comprehensive philosophical system Mandelstam's poetic creativity. In his poems live Hellenic heroes, Gothic temples of the Middle Ages, great emperors, musicians, poets, philosophers, painters, conquerors... In his poems there is a mighty force, and the power of a thinker, and encyclopedic erudition, but at the same time, they also sound gullible , the childish intonation of a simple-minded, even naive person, as he, in fact, was in ordinary life.

During the "Stalin years"

In the 30s, Mandelstam was no longer published. And at the end of May 1934 he was arrested - one of his “friends” reported to the authorities about the epigram on “Comrade Stalin”. He was exiled to Cherdyn, after which he was forced to live in Voronezh for several years, since the punishment included a ban on living in major cities. There he lived with his selfless wife and devoted friend Nadezhda Yakovlevna, who wrote two volumes of memoirs about her husband and accomplished an extremely dangerous task - she saved and organized the poet’s archive, which in those years could be equated to a feat. At the beginning of May 1938, Mandelstam was arrested again. And this time to certain death. When, how and where this amazing poet with the soul of a child died, no one knows, just as no one knows where his grave is. We only know that this is one of the common graves at some transit point near Vladivostok.

Osip Mandelstam, born January 3 (15), 1891, in Warsaw into a Jewish family. His father was a successful leather goods dealer, and his mother was a piano teacher. Mandelstam's parents were Jews, but not very religious. In Mandelstam's homeland, teachers and governesses taught him. The child attended the prestigious Tenishev school (1900-07) and then traveled to Paris (1907-08) and Germany (1908-10), where he studied French literature at the University of Heidelberg (1909-10). In 1911-17 he studied philosophy at St. Petersburg University, but did not graduate. Mandelstam had been a member of the "Guild of Poets" since 1911 and personally maintained close ties with Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov. His first poems appeared in 1910 in the magazine Apollon.

As a poet, Mandelstam gained fame thanks to the collection "Stone", which appeared in 1913. Subjects ranged from music to such cultural triumphs as Roman classical architecture and the Byzantine Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. It was followed by "TRISTIA" (1922), which confirmed his position as a poet, and "poems" 1921-25, (1928). In Tristia Mandelstam made connections with the classical world and modern Russia, as in Kamen, but among the new themes was the concept of exile. The mood is sad, the poet says goodbye: “I studied the science of speaking well - in “headless sorrows at night.”

Mandelstam warmly welcomed February revolution 1917, but at first he was hostile to October revolution 1917. In 1918, he worked briefly in the Ministry of Education of Anatoly Lunacharsky in Moscow. After the revolution he became very disillusioned with modern poetry. The poetry of youth was for him the incessant cry of a baby, Mayakovsky was childish, and Marina Tsvetaeva was tasteless. He read Pasternak with pleasure and also admired Akhmatova.

In 1922, Mandelstam married Nadezhda Yakovlevna Khazina, who accompanied him throughout many years of exile and imprisonment. In the 1920s, Mandelstam made a living by writing children's books and translating works by Anton Sinclair, Jules Romain, Charles de Coster and others. He wrote no poems from 1925 to 1930. The importance of preserving cultural tradition became an end in itself for the poet. The Soviet government very much doubted his sincere loyalty to the Bolshevik system. To avoid conflicts with influential enemies, Mandelstam traveled as a journalist to distant provinces. Mandelstam's trip to Armenia in 1933 was his last major work published during his lifetime.

Arrests and death

Mandelstam was arrested in 1934 for an epigram he wrote about Joseph Stalin. Joseph Vissarionich took personal control of this incident and had phone conversation with Boris Pasternak. Mandelstam was exiled to Cherdyn. After a suicide attempt, which was stopped by his wife, his sentence was commuted to exile in Voronezh, which ended in 1937. In his notebooks from Voronezh (1935-37), Mandelstam wrote: “He thinks like a bone and feels the need and tries to remember his human form", in the end the poet identifies himself with Stalin, with his tormentor, cut off from humanity.

During this period, Mandelstam wrote a poem in which he again gave women the role of mourning and preservation: “To accompany the resurrected and to be the first to greet the dead is their calling. And to demand affection from them is criminal.”

Mandelstam was arrested for the second time for “counter-revolutionary” activities in May 1938 and sentenced to five years in a labor camp. During interrogation, he admitted that he had written a counter-revolutionary poem.

In the transit camp, Mandelstam was already so weak that it became clear that he did not have much time left. On December 27, 1938, he died in transit prison and was buried in a common grave.

Heritage

Mandelstam began to gain international fame in the 1970s, when his works were published in the West and the Soviet Union. His widow Nadezhda Mandelstam published her memoirs, Hope Against Hope (1970) and Hope Abandoned (1974), which depict their lives and Stalin era. Mandelstam's Voronezh Poems, published in 1990, is the closest approximation that the poet planned to write had he survived.

Mandelstam wrote wide range essay. The Conversations on Dante has been considered a masterpiece of modern criticism with its bizarre use of analogies. Mandelstam writes that Pushkin’s luxurious white teeth are the male pearl of Russian poetry. He sees Divine Comedy as a "conversational journey" and draws attention to Dante's use of colors. The text is constantly compared to music.

Osip Mandelstam is a talented poet with difficult fate. He left behind an immortal legacy - wonderful works, which still touch the most delicate strings of the human soul. We know Mandelstam primarily through his work. But the poet’s biography also contains a lot interesting moments. We bring to your attention little-known Interesting Facts from the life of Mandelstam that will surprise you.

Born into a Jewish merchant family, but abandoned Judaism and the family business. The poet's father was a Jew - a wealthy Warsaw merchant and was engaged in the leather trade. Osip was the eldest son, who was supposed to adopt his father's religion and become the first assistant in the family business. But he rejected Judaism and refused to engage in commerce. By the way, he also corrected the name given at birth. He was Joseph, but became Osip.
Didn't devote a single poem to my first love. It’s a paradox, but the poet, who left behind hundreds of poems, did not leave a single line for the first girl who touched his heart. It was Anna Zelmanova-Chudovskaya - a talented artist and very beautiful woman. Cupid's arrow struck the poet's heart when he posed for the artist who came to paint his portrait. But Mandelstam was never generous with his beloved’s poems. Which, of course, greatly upset him. But inspiration never came.
Illness prevented him from going to the front during the First World War. Like most of his friends, with the outbreak of World War I, Mandelstam longed to go to the front and defend the Motherland. But he was not accepted as a volunteer. It turned out that the poet had cardiac asthenia. Then he attempted to get a job as a military orderly. I even went to Warsaw for this, but in vain - no luck.
Wasn't neat. In any case, that’s what people around him thought. Entire stories were told about the poet’s carelessness. But he was constantly so passionate about himself and deep in his inner world that sometimes he forgot to take care of himself and maintain order. Thus, the mother of the poet’s friend Maximilian Voloshin more than once complained about the sloppiness of Mandelstam, who often stayed in their house for a long time. In one of her letters to her son, she was very upset that Osip was throwing cigarette butts on the sofa and throwing books on the terrace. Madame Voloshina assessed her son's quirky friend as smart and talented, but sloppy and unceremonious.
Studied at 2 universities but never received a diploma. The poet's first alma mater was St. Petersburg University. He continued his studies in Germany and became a student at the University of Heidelberg. But he often left, abandoned his studies, didn’t try very hard, focusing more on finding himself. And I didn’t receive a single diploma.
I wanted to go to a monastery after breaking up with Tsvetaeva. Many people know about the poet’s amorous relationship with Marina Tsvetaeva. But few people know that after breaking up with the object of his love dreams, Mandelstam was so upset that he was seriously planning to enter a monastery.
Organized a memorial service for Pushkin and personally celebrated it. The poet highly appreciated Pushkin's work. And he loved to talk with him. Of course, in your imagination. He even had a discussion with his imaginary interlocutor. Mandelstam decided to express his respect and reverent attitude through a religious act. One day he gathered friends and inspired them to serve a memorial service for Pushkin. When everyone gathered in the cathedral, Osip personally conducted the funeral service.
Immediately after his marriage he fell in love with another woman. After their marriage, the Mandelstams had to live separately. He left his young wife in Kyiv, and he himself went to St. Petersburg. Here another amorous temptation awaited him - a new love unexpectedly burst into his heart. This time to actress Olga Arbenina, after meeting whom Mandelstam lost peace. He called his love torment and treated it as a temptation. And he suffered in silence, remaining just a friend.
Personally met with Lenin. The poet perceived the arrival of the revolution positively. And he even started working for Soviet power, not suspecting what fatal role this regime would play in his life and the fate of the entire Russian intelligentsia. In 1918, he received the official position of head of a department at the People's Commissariat for Education. At this time he lived in the Moscow Hotel, where he once had to face Lenin himself.
Most of the poems came to us thanks to his wife. Mandelstam's wife Nadezhda collected, wrote down and carefully preserved his poems all her life. She also accompanied him in exile and endured all the hardships with her husband. Thanks to her efforts, many beautiful poetry came to descendants.
He was in exile, where he lived in poverty and constant expectation of execution. The poet, who did not accept Soviet power and was not afraid to openly declare this, was sent into exile. By the will of the authorities, he ended up in Voronezh, where he lived very poorly, surviving on low-paid transfers. Friends supported me a little financially. And every day he expected his execution.
A monument was erected in front of Mandelstam's house in exile. The poet's place of exile was Voronezh. Here, in front of the house where Mandelstam once lived, a monument was erected in 2007.
The first monument to the poet was erected on the site of the camp in which he died. This happened in 1998 in Vladivostok, the city in which Mandelstam’s life was cut short. Now in place of the terrible Stalin's camp where his remains rest, there is a monument.
The first monument to Mandelstam was erected on own funds his sculptor. It is interesting that the sculptor V. Nenazhivin was well acquainted with the work of Mandelstam. And his poems made such a strong impression that the sculptor erected the first monument to the poet with his own money.
The writer's burial place is still unknown. Mandelstam's life ended tragically. He died of typhus in the inhumane conditions of the Stalinist camp in Vladivostok. The exact location of the burial of the remains is unknown. However, like many of his comrades in misfortune, whose bodies were thrown into one large grave. Mandelstam's poems and personality were strictly prohibited in his home country almost 20 years.

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam is a 20th-century Russian poet, essayist, translator and literary critic. The poet’s influence on contemporary poetry and the work of subsequent generations is multifaceted; literary scholars regularly organize round tables on this occasion. Osip Emilievich himself spoke about his relationship with the literature around him, admitting that he is “floating on modern Russian poetry.”

Creativity and biography of Mandelstam as a representative Silver Age studied in schools and universities. Knowledge of a poet’s poems is considered a sign of a person’s culture on a par with knowledge of creativity or.

In Warsaw, on January 3, 1891, a boy was born into a Jewish family. He was named Joseph, but later he changed his name to “Osip”. Father Emil Mandelstam was a master glovemaker and a merchant of the first guild. This gave him the advantage of living outside the Pale. Mother Flora Ovseevna was a musician. She had a great influence on her son. In adulthood, Mandelstam will perceive the art of poetry as akin to music.

After 6 years, the family leaves Warsaw for St. Petersburg. Osip entered the Tenishev School and studied there from 1900 to 1907. This school is called the “forge of cultural personnel” of the early 20th century.

In 1908, Osip went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. There he spends two years. Mandelstam meets, becomes passionately interested in French poetry and epic. He reads out, and. And in between trips to Paris, he attends poetry lectures by Vyacheslav Ivanov in St. Petersburg, learning the wisdom of versification.

During this period, Mandelstam wrote a touching short poem“Tenderer than Tender”, dedicated to. This work is significant for the poet’s work as one of the few representatives of love lyrics. The poet rarely wrote about love; Mandelstam himself complained about “love dumbness” in his work.

In 1911, Emil Mandelstam suffered financial difficulties, so Osip could no longer study in Europe. To enter the University of St. Petersburg, he is baptized by a Protestant pastor. From this year until 1917, his studies continued intermittently at the Romano-Germanic department of the Faculty of History and Philology. He doesn't study too hard and never receives a diploma.

He often visits Gumilyov’s house and gets acquainted with. Subsequently, he considers friendship with them one of the greatest successes in life. Begins publishing in the magazine "Apollo" back in 1910 and continues in the magazines "Hyperborea" and "New Satyricon".

In 1912 he recognizes Blok and shows sympathy for the Acmeists, joining their group. Becomes a participant in the meetings of the "Workshop of Poets".

In 1915, Mandelstam wrote one of his most famous poems"Insomnia. Homer. Tight sails."

Literature

Osip Mandelstam's debut book was called "Stone" and was republished in 1913, 1916 and 1923 with different content. At this time he is leading a stormy poetic life, being at its epicenter. One could often hear Osip Mandelstam reading his poems in the literary and artistic cabaret “Stray Dog”. The period of "Stone" is characterized by a choice of serious, heavy, "severe-Tyutchev" themes, but ease of presentation, reminiscent of Verlaine.

After the revolution, the poet gained popularity, he actively published, collaborated with the newspaper "Narkompros" and traveled around the country, speaking with poetry. During the civil war, he had the chance to escape with the White Guards to Turkey, but he chose to remain in Soviet Russia.

At this time, Mandelstam wrote the poems “Telephone”, “Twilight of Freedom”, “Because I could not hold your hands...” and others.

Sorrowful Elegies in his second book "Tristia" in 1922, it is the fruit of the unrest caused by the revolution and the First World War. The face of the poetics of the Tristian period is fragmentary and paradoxical, it is the poetics of associations.

In 1923, Mandelstam wrote a prose work, “The Noise of Time.”

In the period from 1924 to 1926, Mandelstam wrote poems for children: the “Primus” cycle, the poem “Two Trams Klik and Tram”, the book of poems “Balls”, which included the poems “Galosh”, “Royal”, “Automobile” and others.

From 1925 to 1930, Mandelstam took a poetic break. He makes his living mainly by translations. Writes prose. During this period, Mandelstam created the story “The Egyptian Brand”.

In 1928, the poet’s last collection, “Poems,” and a collection of articles, “On Poetry,” were published.

In 1930, he traveled around the Caucasus, where the poet went on a business trip at the request of Nikolai Bukharin, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In Erivan he meets scientist Boris Kuzin, who had a great influence on the poet. And, although Mandelstam almost never published anywhere, he wrote a lot during these years. His article “Travel to Armenia” is published.

Upon returning home, the poet writes the poem “Leningrad,” which Mandelstam begins with the now famous line “I returned to my city, familiar to tears,” and in which he declares his love for his native city.

In the 30s, the third period of Mandelstam’s poetics began, in which the art of metaphorical cipher predominated.

Personal life

In 1919, in Kyiv, Osip Mandelstam falls in love with Nadezhda Yakovlevna Khazina. She was born in 1899 in Saratov into a Jewish family that converted to Orthodoxy. At the time of her meeting with Mandelstam, Nadezhda had excellent education. They met at the H.L.A.M cafe. Everyone spoke of them as clearly a couple in love. The writer Deitch writes in his memoirs how Nadezhda walked with a bouquet of water lilies next to Osip.

Together with Mandelstam, Khazina wanders around Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia during the civil war. In 1922 they get married.

She does not leave him even during the years of persecution, following him into exile.

Arrests and death

In 1933, according to Mandelstam, he actually committed suicide by reading an anti-Stalin work in public. After the poet witnessed the Crimean famine, Mandelstam wrote the poem “We live without feeling the country beneath us,” which listeners nicknamed “Epigram on Stalin.” Out of a dozen and a half people, there were those who denounced the poet.

A premonition of future repressions was the poem “For the explosive valor of the coming centuries...”, in which Mandelstam described the tragic fate of the poet.

On the night of May 14, 1934, he was arrested and subsequently exiled to Cherdyn, Perm Territory. There, despite the support of his wife, he makes a real suicide attempt, throwing himself out of the window. Nadezhda Mandelstam is looking for ways to save her husband and writes to all authorities, friends and acquaintances. They are allowed to move to Voronezh. There they live in complete poverty until 1937. After the exile ends, they return to Moscow.

Meanwhile, the “Mandelshtam issue” is not yet closed. The poet's poems, which "well-wishers" called obscene and slanderous, are being discussed at the level of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs and the Writers' Union. The clouds were gathering, and in 1938 Mandelstam was arrested again and sent to the Far East.

On December 27, 1938, the poet passed away. He died of typhus and, along with other unfortunates, was buried in a mass grave. Mandelstam's burial place is unknown.

Joseph Mandelstam

Russian poet, prose writer and translator, essayist, critic, literary critic; one of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century

short biography

early years

Osip Mandelstam born on January 15, 1891 in Warsaw into a Jewish family. Father, Emil Veniaminovich (Emil, Khaskl, Khatskel Beniaminovich) Mandelstam (1856-1938), was a master glove maker and a member of the first guild of merchants, which gave him the right to live outside the Pale of Settlement, despite his Jewish origin. Mother, Flora Ovseevna Verblovskaya (1866-1916), was a musician. In 1896 the family was assigned to Kovno.

In 1897, the Mandelstam family moved to St. Petersburg. Osip was educated at the Tenishevsky School (graduated in 1907), a Russian forge of “cultural personnel” at the beginning of the 20th century.

In August 1907, he submitted a request for admission as a volunteer to the natural department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. St. Petersburg University, but, having taken the documents from the office, he left for Paris in October.

In 1908-1910, Mandelstam studied at the Sorbonne and the University of Heidelberg. At the Sorbonne he attends lectures by A. Bergson and J. Bedier at the Collège de France. He meets Nikolai Gumilyov and is fascinated by French poetry: Old French epic, François Villon, Baudelaire and Verlaine.

In between trips abroad, he visits St. Petersburg, where he attends lectures on poetry at the “tower” by Vyacheslav Ivanov.

By 1911, the family began to go bankrupt and studying in Europe became impossible. In order to bypass the quota for Jews when entering St. Petersburg University, Mandelstam was baptized by a Methodist pastor in Vyborg.

Studies

On September 10, 1911, he was enrolled in the Romano-Germanic department of the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University, where he studied intermittently until 1917. He studies carelessly and does not complete the course.

Poems from the time of the First World War and the Revolution (1916-1920) made up the second book “Tristia” (“Mournful Elegies”, the title goes back to Ovid), published in 1922 in Berlin.

In 1923, the “Second Book” was published with a general dedication to “N. X." - to my wife. In 1922, the article “On the Nature of Word” was published as a separate brochure in Kharkov.

From May 1925 to October 1930 there was a pause in poetic creativity. At this time, prose was written, to the “Noise of Time” created in 1923 (the title plays on Blok’s metaphor “music of time”), the story “The Egyptian Brand” (1927), varying Gogol’s motifs, was added. He makes his living by translating poetry.

In 1928, the last lifetime collection of poetry, “Poems,” was published, as well as a book of his selected articles, “On Poetry.”

Business trips to the Caucasus

In 1930 he finished work on the “Fourth Prose”. N. Bukharin is concerned about Mandelstam’s business trip to Armenia. In Erivan, the poet meets the scientist, theoretical biologist Boris Kuzin, and a relationship develops between them. close friendship. The meeting is described by Mandelstam in “Travel to Armenia.” N. Ya. Mandelstam believed that this meeting turned out to be “fate for all three. Without her, Osya often said, perhaps there would be no poetry.” Mandelstam later wrote about Kuzin: “My new prose and all of it are imbued with his personality.” last period my work. To him and only to him I owe the fact that I introduced the so-called period into literature. "mature Mandelstam." After traveling to the Caucasus (Armenia, Sukhum, Tiflis), Osip Mandelstam returned to writing poetry.

Mandelstam's poetic gift reaches its peak, but it is almost never published. The intercession of B. Pasternak and N. Bukharin gives the poet small breaks in everyday life.

He independently studies the Italian language, reads the Divine Comedy in the original. The programmatic poetological essay “Conversation about Dante” was written in 1933. Mandelstam discusses it with A. Bely.

IN " Literary newspaper", "Pravda", "Zvezda" published devastating articles in connection with the publication of Mandelstam's "Travel to Armenia" (Zvezda, 1933, No. 5).

Arrests, exile and death

In November 1933, Osip Mandelstam wrote an anti-Stalin epigram, “We live without feeling the country beneath us,” which he reads to fifteen people.

Boris Pasternak called this act suicide:

One day, while walking along the streets, they wandered into some deserted outskirts of the city in the Tverskiye-Yamskiye area; Pasternak remembered the creaking of dray carts as the background sound. Here Mandelstam read to him about the Kremlin highlander. After listening, Pasternak said: “What you read to me has nothing to do with literature or poetry. This is not a literary fact, but an act of suicide that I do not approve of and in which I do not want to take part. You didn’t read anything to me, I didn’t hear anything, and I ask you not to read them to anyone else.”

One of the listeners reported on Mandelstam. The investigation into the case was led by Nikolai Shivarov.

On the night of May 13-14, 1934, Mandelstam was arrested and sent into exile in Cherdyn ( Perm region). Osip Mandelstam is accompanied by his wife, Nadezhda Yakovlevna. In Cherdyn, Osip Mandelstam attempts suicide (throws himself out of a window). Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam writes to all Soviet authorities and to all her acquaintances. With the assistance of Nikolai Bukharin, as a result of interference in the matter of Stalin himself, Mandelstam is allowed to independently choose a place for settlement. The Mandelstams choose Voronezh. They live in poverty, and are occasionally helped financially by a few friends who have not given up. From time to time O. E. Mandelstam works part-time at a local newspaper and in the theater. Close people visit them, Nadezhda Yakovlevna’s mother, artist V.N. Yakhontov, Anna Akhmatova. Here he writes the famous cycle of poems (the so-called “Voronezh Notebooks”).

In May 1937, the term of exile ends, and the poet unexpectedly receives permission to leave Voronezh. He and his wife return to Moscow for a short while. In a 1938 statement by the secretary of the USSR Writers' Union, Vladimir Stavsky, addressed to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs N.I. Yezhov, it was proposed to “resolve the issue of Mandelstam”; his poems were called “obscene and slanderous.” Joseph Prut and Valentin Kataev were named in the letter as having “spoken sharply” in defense of Osip Mandelstam.

At the beginning of March 1938, the Mandelstam spouses moved to the Samatikha trade union health resort (Egoryevsky district of the Moscow region, now assigned to the Shatura district). There, on the night of May 1-2, 1938, Osip Emilievich was arrested a second time and taken to the Cherusti railway station, which was located 25 kilometers from Samatikha. From there he was taken to the NKVD Internal Prison. Soon he was transferred to Butyrka prison.

The investigation into the case established that O. E. Mandelstam, despite the fact that he was prohibited from living in Moscow after serving his sentence, often came to Moscow, stayed with his friends, and tried to influence public opinion in their favor by deliberately demonstrating their “plight” situation and painful condition. Anti-Soviet elements among writers used Mandelstam for the purposes of hostile agitation, making him a “sufferer”, and organized money collections for him among writers. At the time of his arrest, Mandelstam maintained close contact with the enemy of the people Stenich, Kibalchich until the latter was expelled from the USSR, etc. A medical examination recognized O. E. Mandelstam as a psychopathic person with a tendency to obsessive thoughts and fantasizing. Accused of conducting anti-Soviet agitation, that is, of crimes provided for under Art. 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The case against O. E. Mandelstam is subject to consideration by the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR.

On August 2, a Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR sentenced Mandelstam to five years in a forced labor camp.

From the Vladperpunkt transit camp (Vladivostok), he sent the last letter in his life to his brother and wife:

Dear Shura!

I am located in Vladivostok, SVITL, barrack 11. Got 5 years for k.r. d. by decision of the CCA. The stage left Moscow, Butyrki, on September 9, and arrived on October 12. Health is very poor. Extremely exhausted. He's emaciated, almost unrecognizable. But I don’t know if it makes sense to send things, food and money. Try it anyway. I’m very cold without things. Dear Nadinka, I don’t know if you’re alive, my darling. You, Shura, write to me about Nadya right now. This is the transit point. They didn’t take me to Kolyma. Possible wintering.

My dear ones, I kiss you.

Shurochka, I’m still writing. Last days I went to work and it lifted my spirits.

They send us from our camp as a transit camp to permanent camps. I obviously fell into the “dropout” category, and I need to prepare for the winter.

And I ask: send me a radiogram and money by telegraph.

On December 27, 1938, just short of his 48th birthday, Osip Mandelstam died in a transit camp. (Varlam Shalamov indicates that Mandelstam could have died on December 25-26. In Shalamov’s story “Sherry Brandy” we are talking about the last days of the unnamed poet. After the poet’s death, for about two more days, prisoners in the barracks received rations for him as if he were alive - common at that time time in the camps practice. indirect signs and the title of the story can be concluded that the story is written about the last days of Osip Mandelstam). Until spring, Mandelstam’s body, along with the other deceased, lay unburied. Then the entire “winter stack” was buried in a mass grave.

Researchers of the poet’s work noted “a concrete foresight of the future, so characteristic of Mandelstam,” and that “the premonition tragic death permeates Mandelstam's poems." A foreknowledge of his own fate was a poem by the Georgian poet N. Mitsishvili translated by Mandelstam back in 1921:

When I fall to die under a fence in some hole,
And there will be nowhere for the soul to escape from the cast-iron cold -
I will politely leave quietly. I'll blend in with the shadows imperceptibly.
And the dogs will take pity on me, kissing me under the dilapidated fence.
There will be no procession. Violets will not decorate me,
And the maidens will not scatter flowers over the black grave...

I ask you: 1. To assist in the review of the case of O. E. Mandelstam and find out whether there were sufficient grounds for arrest and exile.

2. Check mental health O. E. Mandelstam and find out whether the link was natural in this sense.

3. Finally, check to see if there was any personal interest in this link. And one more thing - to find out not legal, but rather moral question: did the NKVD have enough grounds to destroy the poet and master during the period of his active and friendly poetic activity.

The death certificate of O. E. Mandelstam was presented to his brother Alexander in June 1940 by the Civil Registry Office of the Baumansky district of Moscow.

Rehabilitated posthumously: in the case of 1938 - in 1956, in the case of 1934 - in 1987.

The location of the poet's grave is still unknown exactly. The probable burial place is the old fortress moat along the Saperka River (hidden in a pipe), now an alley on the street. Vostretsova in the urban district of Vladivostok - Morgorodok.

Mandelstam's poetics

Periodization of creativity

L. Ginzburg (in the book “On Lyrics”) proposed to distinguish between three periods of the poet’s work. This point of view is shared by the majority of Mandelstam scholars (in particular, M. L. Gasparov):

1. The period of “Stone” - a combination of “Tyutchev’s severity” with “Verlaine’s childishness”.

“Tyutchev’s severity” is seriousness and depth poetic themes; “Verlaine’s childishness” is the ease and spontaneity of their presentation. The word is a stone. The poet is an architect, builder.

2. The “Tristian” period, until the end of the 1920s - the poetics of associations. The Word is flesh, soul, it freely chooses its subject meaning. Another face of this poetics is fragmentation and paradox.

Mandelstam wrote later: “Any word is a bundle, the meaning sticks out of it in different directions, and does not rush into one official point" Sometimes, in the course of writing a poem, the poet radically changed the original concept, sometimes he simply discarded the initial stanzas that served as the key to the content, so that the final text turned out to be a difficult-to-understand construction. This way of writing, producing explanations and preambles, was associated with the very process of creating a poem, the content and final form of which were not “predetermined” by the author. (See, for example, the attempt to reconstruct the writing of the “Slate Ode” by M. L. Gasparov.)

3. The period of the thirties of the XX century - the cult of creative impulse and the cult of metaphorical cipher.

“I alone write from my voice,” Mandelstam said about himself. First, the meter “came” to him (“movement of the lips,” muttering), and from the common metric root, poems grew in “twos” and “threes.” This is how the mature Mandelstam created many poems. Wonderful example this manner of writing: his amphibrachs of November 1933 (“The apartment is as quiet as paper”, “At our holy youth”, “Tatars, Uzbeks and Nenets”, “I love the appearance of fabric”, “Oh butterfly, oh Muslim”, “When, destroying the sketch”, “And the maple’s jagged paw”, “Tell me, draftsman of the desert”, “In needle-shaped plague glasses”, “And I leave space”).

N. Struve proposes to distinguish not three, but six periods:

Belated Symbolist: 1908-1911
Militant Acmeist: 1912-1915
Akmeist deep: 1916-1921
At the crossroads: 1922-1925
On the return of breath: 1930-1934
Voronezh notebooks: 1935-1937

Evolution of the Mandelstam metric

M. L. Gasparov described the evolution of the poet’s metrics as follows:

1908-1911 - years of study, poetry in the tradition of Verlaine’s “songs without words.” The metric is dominated by iambics (60% of all lines, iambic tetrameter predominates). Choreans - about 20%.
1912-1915 - St. Petersburg, Acmeism, “material” poems, work on “The Stone”. Maximum iambicity (70% of all lines, but iambic 4-meter shares the dominant position with iambic 5- and 6-meter).
1916-1920 - revolution and Civil War, development of an individual manner. Iambics are slightly inferior (up to 60%), trochees increase to 20%.
1921-1925 - transition period. The iambic recedes another step (50%, mixed-foot and free iambs become noticeable), making room for experimental meters: logaeda, accented verse, free verse (20%).
1926-1929 - pause in poetic creativity.
1930-1934 - interest in experimental meters continues (dolnik, taktovik, five-syllable, free verse - 25%), but a violent passion for three-syllables breaks out (40%). Yamba −30%.
1935-1937 - some restoration of metric balance. Iambics increase again to 50%, experimental dimensions drop to nothing, but the level of trisyllabics remains elevated: 20%

Mandelstam and music

As a child, at the insistence of his mother, Mandelstam studied music. Through the eyes of the poet of high book culture that was born in him, he even saw poeticized words in the lines of musical notation. visual images and wrote about this in the “Egyptian Mark”: “ Musical writing pleases the eye no less than music itself pleases the ear. The little blacks of the piano scale, like lamplighters, climb up and down... The mirage cities of musical notes stand like birdhouses in boiling resin..."In his perception came to life" concert descents of Chopin's mazurkas" And " parks with curtains Mozart", " music vineyard Schubert" and " low-growing bush of Beethoven sonatas», « turtles"Handel and " militant pages Bach”, and the musicians of the violin orchestra are like mythical dryads, mixed up " branches, roots and bows».

Mandelstam's musicality and his deep connection with musical culture noted by contemporaries. " Osip was at home in music“- wrote Anna Akhmatova in “Leaves from the Diary”. Even when he was sleeping it seemed " that every vein in him listened and heard some kind of divine music».

Composer Arthur Lurie, who knew the poet closely, wrote that “ live music was a necessity for him. The element of music fed his poetic consciousness" I. Odoevtseva quoted Mandelstam’s words: “ Since childhood, I fell in love with Tchaikovsky, I fell in love with Tchaikovsky for the rest of my life, to the point of painful frenzy... From then on I felt myself forever connected with music, without any right to this connection...“, and he himself wrote in “The Noise of Time”: “ I don’t remember how this reverence for the symphony orchestra was cultivated in me, but I think that I correctly understood Tchaikovsky, guessing in him a special concert feeling».

Mandelstam perceived the art of poetry as akin to music and was confident that in his creative self-expression true composers and poets are always on the way, " which we suffer, like music and words ».

He heard and reproduced the music of real poems when reading them in his own intonation, regardless of who wrote them. M. Voloshin felt this in the poet “ musical charm»: « Mandelstam doesn't want talk verse, is a born singer... Mandelstam's voice is unusually sonorous and rich in shades...»

E. G. Gershtein talked about Mandelstam’s reading of the last stanza of the poem “Summer” by B. Pasternak: “ What a pity that it is impossible to make a musical notation to convey the sound of the third line, this rolling wave of the first two words (“and the harp makes noise”), pouring, like the growing sound of an organ, into the words “Arabian hurricane”... He generally had his own motive. Once, in Shchipka, it was as if some wind lifted him from his place and carried him to the piano; he played a sonatina by Mozart or Clementi, familiar to me from childhood, with exactly the same nervous, soaring intonation... How he achieved this in music, I don’t understand , because the rhythm was not broken in any measure...»

« Music contains the atoms of our being", wrote Mandelstam and is " fundamental principle of life" In his article “The Morning of Acmeism” Mandelstam wrote: “ For the Acmeists, the conscious meaning of the word, Logos, is as beautiful a form as music is for the Symbolists" A quick break with symbolism and a transition to the Acmeists was heard in the call - “ ...and return the word to music"(Silentium, 1910).

According to G. S. Pomerants “ Mandelstam's space... is like the space of pure music. Therefore, it is useless to read Mandelstam without understanding this quasi-musical space.»:

You can't breathe, and the firmament is infested with worms,
And not a single star says
But God knows, there is music above us...
...And it seems to me: all in music and foam,
The iron world trembles so miserably...
...Where are you going? At the funeral funeral of the dear shadow
This is the last time we hear music!

"Concert at the Station" (1921)

In literature and literary criticism of the 20th century

An exceptional role in conservation poetic heritage Mandelstam of the 1930s was played by the life feat of his wife, Nadezhda Mandelstam, and the people who helped her, such as Sergei Rudakov and Mandelstam’s Voronezh friend Natalya Shtempel. The manuscripts were kept in Nadezhda Yakovlevna’s boots and in pots. In her will, Nadezhda Mandelstam actually refused Soviet Russia in any right to publish Mandelstam's works.

In the circle of Anna Akhmatova in the 1970s, the future laureate Nobel Prize According to literature, Joseph Brodsky was called “the younger Osei.” According to Vitaly Vilenkin, of all the contemporary poets, “Anna Andreevna treated only Mandelstam as some kind of miracle of poetic primordiality, a miracle worthy of admiration.”

According to Nikolai Bukharin, expressed in a letter to Stalin in 1934, Mandelstam is “a first-class poet, but absolutely out of date.”

Before the start of perestroika, Mandelstam’s Voronezh poems of the 1930s were not published in the USSR, but circulated in copies and reprints, as in the 19th century, or in samizdat.

World fame comes to Mandelstam's poetry before and regardless of the publication of his poems in Soviet Russia.

Since the 1930s, his poems have been quoted, and allusions to his poems have multiplied in the poetry of completely different authors and in many languages.

Mandelstam is translated into German by one of the leading European poets of the 20th century, Paul Celan.

The French philosopher Alain Badiou, in his article “The Century of Poets,” ranked Mandelstam among the six poets who also took on the function of philosophers in the 20th century (the other five are Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Trakl, Pessoa and Celan).

In the United States, Kirill Taranovsky, who conducted a seminar on Mandelstam’s poetry at Harvard, studied the poet’s work.

Vladimir Nabokov called Mandelstam " the only poet Stalin's Russia."

According to modern Russian poet Maxim Amelin: “During his lifetime, Mandelstam was considered a third-rate poet. Yes, he was appreciated in his own circle, but his circle was very small.”

Addresses

In St. Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad

1894 - Nevsky Prospekt, 100;
1896-1897 - Maximilianovsky Lane, 14;
1898-1900 - apartment building- Ofitserskaya street, 17;
1901-1902 - apartment building - Zhukovsky Street, 6;
1902-1904 - apartment building - Liteiny Avenue, 49;
1904-1905 - Liteiny Avenue, 15;
1907 - apartment building of A. O. Meyer - Nikolaevskaya street, 66;
1908 - apartment building - Sergievskaya street, 60;
1910-1912 - apartment building - Zagorodny Avenue, 70;
1913 - apartment building - Zagorodny Avenue, 14; Kadetskaya Line, 1 (from November).
1914 - apartment building - Ivanovskaya street, 16;
1915 - Malaya Monetnaya Street;
1916-1917 - parents' apartment - Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt, 24A, apt. 35;
1917-1918 - apartment of M. Lozinsky - Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt, 75;
1918 - Palace Embankment, 26, dormitory of the House of Scientists;
autumn 1920 - 02.1921 - DISK - 25th October Avenue, 15;
summer 1924 - the Maradudins’ apartment in the courtyard wing of the mansion of E.P. Vonlyarlyarsky - Herzen Street, 49, apt. 4;
end of 1930 - 01.1931 - apartment building - 8th line, 31;
1933 - hotel "European" - Rakova street, 7;
autumn 1937 - writer's housing cooperative (former house of the Court Stables Department) - Griboedov Canal embankment, 9.

In Moscow

Teatralnaya Square, Metropol Hotel (in 1918 - “2nd House of Soviets”). In number 253 no later than June 1918, after moving to Moscow, O. M. settled as an employee of the People's Commissariat for Education.
Ostozhenka, 53. Former Katkovsky Lyceum. In 1918-1919 The People's Commissariat for Education was located here, where O.E. worked.
Tverskoy Boulevard, 25. Herzen House. O. E. and N. Ya. lived here in the left wing from 1922 to August 1923, and then in the right wing from January 1932 to October-November 1933.
Savelyevsky lane, 9 (formerly Savelovsky. Since 1990 - Pozharsky lane). Apartment of E. Ya. Khazin, brother of Nadezhda Yakovlevna. O. E. and N. Ya. lived here in October 1923.
B. Yakimanka 45, apt. 8. The house has not survived. Here the Mandelstams rented a room at the end of 1923 - in the first half of 1924.
Profsoyuznaya, 123A. Sanatorium TSEKUBU (Central Commission for Improving the Living Life of Scientists). The sanatorium still exists today. The Mandelstams lived here twice - in 1928 and 1932.
Kropotkinskaya embankment, 5. TSEKUBU dormitory. The house has not survived. In the spring of 1929, O. E. lived here (the building is mentioned in the “Fourth Prose”).
M. Bronnaya, 18/13. From the autumn of 1929 to the beginning of 1930 (?) O. E. and N. Ya. lived in the apartment of the “ITR worker” (E. G. Gershtein)
Tverskaya, 5 (according to the old numbering - 15). Now in this building there is a theater named after. M. N. Ermolova. The editorial offices of the newspapers “Moskovsky Komsomolets”, “Pyatidenevka”, “Evening Moscow” where O.E. worked.
Pinch, 6-8. O. E. and N. Ya. lived in the service apartment of their father E. G. Gershtein. There is no data on the safety of the house.
Starosadsky lane 10, apt. 3. A.E. Mandelstam's room in a communal apartment. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Mandelstams often lived and visited here.
Bolshaya Polyanka, 10, apt. 20 - from the end of May until October 1931 at the architect Ts. G. Ryss’s apartment overlooking the Kremlin and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
Pokrovka, 29, apt. 23 - from November to the end of 1931 in a rented room, for which Mandelstam was never able to pay.
Lavrushinsky lane 17, apt. 47. Apartment of V. B. and V. G. Shklovsky in the “writer’s house”. In 1937-1938 O. E. and N. Ya. always found shelter and help here. At this address N.Ya. was again registered in Moscow in 1965.
Rusanovsky lane 4, apt. 1. The house has not survived. Apartment of the writer Ivich-Bernstein, who gave shelter to O. Mandelstam after the Voronezh exile.
Nashchokinsky lane 3-5, apt. 26 (formerly Furmanov St.). The house was demolished in 1974. There was a trace of its roof on the end wall of the neighboring house. O. Mandelstam's first and last own apartment in Moscow. The Mandelstams probably moved into it in the fall of 1933. Apparently, the poem “We live without feeling the country beneath us…” was written here. Here in May 1934 O.E. was arrested. A short time The Mandelstams stayed here again after returning from exile in 1937: their apartment was already occupied by other residents. In 2015, a “Last Address” sign was installed on a nearby building (Gagarinsky Lane, 6) in memory of Mandelstam.
Novoslobodskaya 45. Butyrskaya prison. Now - Pre-trial detention center (SIZO) No. 2. O. E. was kept here for a month in 1938.
Lubyanskaya sq. The building of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD. Now the building of the FSB of the Russian Federation. During his arrests in 1934 and 1938. O.E. was kept here.
Cheremushkinskaya st. 14, building 1, apt. 4. Moscow apartment N.Ya., where she lived since 1965 last years life.
Ryabinovaya st. Kuntsevo Cemetery. Old part. Area 3, burial 31-43. The grave of N.Ya. and the cenotaph (memorial stone) of O.E. The earth taken from the mass grave prisoners of the Second River camp.

In Voronezh

Revolution Avenue, 46 - the Mandelstams stayed here at the Central Hotel after arriving in Voronezh in June 1934.
St. Uritsky - O. E. managed to rent a summer terrace in a private house in the village near the station, where he and his wife lived from July to October, before the onset of cold weather.
St. Shveinikov, 4b (formerly 2nd Linenaya Street) - the so-called “Mandelshtam’s pit” (according to a poem he wrote in 1935). Since October 1934, the Mandelstams rented a room from agronomist E. P. Vdovin.
Corner of Revolution Avenue and st. 25 years of October - a room (“furnished room” - according to the memoirs of N. Ya. Mandelstam) they rented from an NKVD employee from April 1935 to March 1936. In this room in February 1936, the poet A. A. Akhmatova visited. A high-rise building was built on the site of the old house.
St. Friedrich Engels, 13. Since March 1936, the Mandelstams rented a room in one of the apartments of this house. In 2008, a bronze monument to the poet was erected opposite the house.
St. Pyatnitskogo (formerly 27 February street), no. 50, apt. 1 - Mandelstam's last address in Voronezh. From here Mandelstam left for Moscow in May 1937, after the expiration period ended. The house is destroyed.

Legacy and memory

The fate of the archive

The living conditions and fate of O. E. Mandelstam were also reflected in the preservation of his archival materials.

Chronic homelessness accompanied the poet in the post-revolutionary years. Some of the manuscripts that he had to carry with him were lost in Crimea already in 1920.

Personal documents and creative materials were taken away during arrests in 1934 and 1938. During his years of exile in Voronezh, Mandelstam donated part of his archive for preservation, including autographs early poems S. B. Rudakov. Due to the death of Rudakov at the front, their fate remained unknown.

Some biographical and business documents disappeared during the war in Kalinin, where they were left by N. Ya. Mandelstam in connection with the hasty evacuation from the city on the eve of its occupation.

A significant part of the collection of rescued documents in 1973 was sent by decision of the poet’s widow to France for storage and in 1976 transferred free of charge to Princeton University.

After the death of N. Ya. Mandelstam in the summer of 1983, her archive, kept by one of her friends and containing about 1,500 sheets of documents, books with autographs, photocopies and negatives, was confiscated by the KGB.

These and other materials preserved in Russia are concentrated mainly in large repositories - RGALI (stock 1893), IMLI RAS (stock 225) and GLM (stock 241). Partial documents related to the life and work of Mandelstam are also stored in other archives and private collections in Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, France, Germany and other countries.

Taking into account the dispersal of the poet’s archival heritage and with the goal of “identifying, describing and posting on the Internet all or as many as possible large number surviving creative and biographical materials Osip Mandelstam, regardless of where they are physically”, on the initiative of the Mandelstam Society, an Internet project was conceived and is being implemented jointly with the University of Oxford. Reunited virtual archive of Osip Mandelstam" The volume of documents to be scanned and placed in open access for all researchers, it is estimated at 10-12 thousand sheets.

Mandelstam Society

In 1991, with the aim of preserving, studying and popularizing creative heritage poet was founded Mandelstam Society, which brought together professional researchers and connoisseurs of O. E. Mandelstam’s work. Founders public organization became the Russian Pen Center and the Memorial Society. The first chairmen were S.S. Averintsev, and after his death - M.L. Gasparov.

Members of the society hold thematic meetings and conferences. Among the famous publications of the Mandelstam Society is the publication in 1993-1999. collected works of Mandelstam in 4 volumes, serial editions - “ Notes of the Mandelstam Society», « Library of the Mandelstam Society", collections of articles and conference materials.

In the mid-1990s, the Mandelstam Society came up with the idea of creating Mandelstam Encyclopedia, the concept of which was supported by the Russian State University for the Humanities and the Rossiyskaya Publishing House political encyclopedia"(ROSSPEN). The editorial board of the upcoming publication also included the alleged authors of the key articles, Averintsev and Gasparov. The latter, before his death in 2005, managed to prepare about 130 articles about individual poems of the poet.

Work on the encyclopedia continues in the Mandelstam Society, the Office of Mandelstam Studies Scientific library Russian state humanitarian university and the State Literary Museum, which took upon itself the selection of illustrations from its own collections for a 2-volume edition. In 2007, the publishing house of the Russian State University for the Humanities published a collection of selected methodological and dictionary materials from the encyclopedia project - “O. E. Mandelstam, his predecessors and contemporaries"

Memory

Mandelstam- anniversary card with original stamp. USSR, 1991

On February 1, 1992, in Paris, a memorial plaque was installed on the Sorbonne building in honor of the 100th anniversary of Osip Mandelstam. Sculptor Boris Lejeune
In 1998, a monument to Osip Mandelstam (author Valery Nenazhivin) was unveiled in Vladivostok. Later it was moved to the VSUES park.

Streets of Mandelstam

Poem by O. Mandelstam, written in 1935:

In 2011, in Voronezh, the possibility of renaming one of the streets to Mandelstam Street was considered. However, due to protests from residents who did not want to deal with re-registration of registration and documents, they decided to abandon the renaming.
In May 2012, the world's first Mandelstam Street appeared in Warsaw.
In 2016, in honor of the 125th anniversary of the poet’s birth, it was planned to name one of the streets in Moscow after him.