Customer Reviews:
 Slow but interesting Historical Content June 16, 2007
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
Yesterday I finally finished this memoir by N Mandelstam about her husband, the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. The book, however, to me felt less like a biography of a person then a memoir of a time. The Mandelstam's lived through a terrible period during the reign of Stalin. The historical information was, in parts, new to me, but I found the book itself ponderous to get through. Very late in the book the author actually gives some insight into how M (as she refers to him) composed his poetry, but I would have liked to have known more about the man as a poet rather than the intricacies of where they had to hid on any given day. I guess I was looking for more Anne Frank in a sense.
This is a memoir I would suggest more for those interested in Russian history rather than poets (like myself).
Hopelessly philosophical December 22, 2006
5 out of 15 found this review helpful
Nadezhda Mandelstam's account of the 18 years she spent with her poet husband, Osip Mandelstam "M" before he died in a Russian prison camp, is a dry, philosophical, difficult read and includes very little autobiographical information. The introduction by Clarence Brown provides a few facts. She was born "on October 31, 1899, in the town of Saratov. Her mother was a physician." Her father's occupation is unknown. She had two siblings, one of each and earned a PhD in English philology. Although she met her husband on May 1, 1919, the story really begins when they are first visited and searched, May 13, 1934. Information on events prior is provided later and in small doses. M had written but not published a derogatory poem about Stalin, and although it had been read by no more than a dozen people, and everyone knew that anyone could be picked up at any time for any reason, they all suspected the trouble began with the poem. In it, he mocks Stalin's appearance, ancestry, co-conspirators, "thin necked leaders" and the killings, "And every killing is a treat..." Hope Against Hope is filled with references to encounters, incidents, and conversations had with various friends, family members, colleagues, and acquaintances that she speculates as having affected their fates. As a result of questioning, M, quite luckily, is exiled instead of being sent directly to the Gulag. En route to Voronezh, Mrs. Mandelstam having chosen to accompany her husband in exile, they spend the night in Cherdyn, where he takes a suicidal jump out a window, fracturing his shoulder. In their new town, they subsist mainly on proceeds from translating work as well as some monetary help from friends and family. Pasternak, who aided them over the years, is mentioned several times including in a passage describing a conversation he had with Stalin in an (unsuccessful) attempt to help M's situation and, except for a negative comparison of him with another man (page 157), he is spoken of favorably. In fact, Pasternak was the only person who visited her after she found out about her husband's death. When his term is satisfied, they find that they are unable to obtain a permit to live in their apartment in Moscow, so are forced to relocate. Again, their friends and acquaintances help supplement their meager income from translating, which becomes increasingly difficult to obtain. During the winter of 1936-1937, M writes an Ode to Stalin, in an attempt to save himself. She clarifies what compelled him to do such a thing; he wrote it, "with a rope around his neck." On May 1, 1938, while staying at a sanatorium, M is taken in again. Months later, she receives a note (from him written to her brother) stating that he arrived at transit camp on October 12. Soon thereafter, she receives word that he is dead, his death certificate stating the cause of death as congestive heart failure and date as December 27, 1938. Although she hears both supporting and contradictory information on several scenarios surrounding his death, she never receives definitive proof of the cause or date. One line rings especially true and its message is repeated by others who wrote of the that time period in Russia, "We were all the same: either sheep who went willingly to the slaughter, or respectful assistants to the executioners." Nadezhda Mandelstam's challenging memoir will probably be of interest to fans of Russian history or Russian poetry. More everyman-friendly accounts of life in the Gulag include Journey into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg and Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov.
 Monumental November 18, 2006
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
The most brilliant book on the state of the Russian intelligentsia during the Stalin purges. Nadezhda Mandelstam's account of her husband Osip covers a whole generation of writers who suffered the harsh censorship of the regime and all the consequences that came out of any form of free expression in their work. Is a sad history of the decline of the Russian intelligentsia of everything genuine and original in the face of a state controlled literature and state controlled life. The authors' intellectual perseverance against all odds explains best that survival instinct so innate to the Russian intellectual from the Petrine era to today.
A truly great book October 31, 2004
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
This is a great book. The devotion of Nadezhda Mandelshtam to her husband, to his work is at the center of this work. She writes with poetic intensity and chronicles the story of their life together and their cruel separation . Her devotion her self- sacrifice and her great love for her husband make her story a heroic example. Her perceptiveness and the beauty of her language lift the work into a higher realm. It is intense and it is deep, and at times so painful as to be difficult to read.
What can I say, this book humbles me April 20, 2004
47 out of 48 found this review helpful
I'll start by reiterating George Steiner's quote, "Nothing one can say will either communicate or affect the genius of this book. To pass judgment on it is almost insolence--even judgment that is merely celebration and homage."And that is the truth, well-put. In this lucid tome Mandelstam's widow recounts the years of their exile, the real life people whom they met in their travels, the day-to-day hells of the Stalinist regime, the tiny mercies and kindnesses of others, the cowards and the idiots, the drive to create art out of the most dehumanizing experiences, the triumphs and pitfalls of the human spirit... I'm getting too flowery here, and this is a book that deserves to be read, not praised by some spoilt American white-boy pseudo-intellectual like myself. I just want to say that this book evokes the kind of courage and wit one seldom sees these days. Like Ahkmatova, like Yelena Sergeyevna Bulgakova, like so many Russian women, Nadezhda survived- because of her (and their) resilience we have not only her husband's works, but also this masterpiece. The chapters are short and so finely crafted that it shocks me. How someone can be so accurate, so succinct, so resolute and so honest all at once... If this were the standard by which writers judged their own works, well, amazon would have far fewer books to sell. If you are looking for a glimpse of what life was 'like' during Stalin's reign in Russia, if you are looking for an unflinching view of humanity and 'utopian' projects, or if you are looking for the most eloquent and disturbing memoir I have ever read- well, here, all I can do is add my empty two-cents.
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