Osip Mandelstam is a talented poet with difficult fate. He left behind an immortal legacy - beautiful works that still touch the thinnest strings. human soul. We know Mandelstam primarily by his work. But in the biography of the poet, there are also many interesting points. We bring to your attention little-known Interesting Facts from the life of Mandelstam that will surprise you.
- Born in Jewish merchant family, but abandoned Judaism and the family business. The poet's father was a Jew, a wealthy Warsaw merchant and 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. Was Joseph, and became Osip.
- Didn't dedicate a single verse to my first love. It's a paradox, but the poet, who left behind more than one hundred 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 an artist who came to paint his portrait. But Mandelstam did not become generous with the poems of his beloved. Which, of course, made him very upset. But the inspiration never came.
- Illness prevented going to the front during the First World War. Like most friends, with the outbreak of the First World War, Mandelstam was eager to go to the front and stand up for the Motherland. But he was not taken as a volunteer. It turned out that the poet had cardiac asthenia. Then he made attempts to get a job as a military orderly. I even went to Warsaw for this, but in vain - not fate.
- Was not meticulous. In any case, people around him thought so. Entire stories were told about the poet's inaccuracy. But he was constantly so passionate about himself and deepened in his inner world that sometimes he forgot to take care of himself and keep order. So, the mother of a friend of the poet Maximilian Voloshin complained more than once about the slovenliness of Mandelstam, who often stayed at their house for a long time. In one of the letters to her son, she was very upset about the fact that Osip was throwing cigarette butts on the sofa, and throwing books on the terrace. Madame Voloshin judged her son's whimsical friend as intelligent and talented, but sloppy and unceremonious.
- Studied at 2 Universities but never graduated. The first alma mater of the poet is St. Petersburg University. He continued his studies in Germany - became a student at the University of Heidelberg. But he often left, abandoned his studies, did not try very hard, more looking for himself. And he didn't get a degree.
- I wanted to go to the monastery after the break with Tsvetaeva. Many people know about the amorous relationship of the poet with Marina Tsvetaeva. But few people know that after breaking up with the object of his love dreams, Mandelstam was so upset that he seriously intended to go to the monastery.
- Organized a memorial service for Pushkin and personally served it. The poet highly appreciated the work of Pushkin. And I loved talking to him. Of course, in your imagination. Even discussed with his imaginary interlocutor. Mandelstam decided to express his respect and reverent attitude with a religious action. Once he gathered friends and inspired them to serve a requiem for Pushkin. When everyone gathered in the cathedral, Osip personally held a memorial service.
- Immediately after his marriage fell in love with another woman. After the marriage, the Mandelstam spouses had to live separately. He left his young wife in Kyiv, and he went to St. Petersburg. Here another amorous temptation was waiting for him - unexpectedly burst into his heart new love. This time to the actress Olga Arbenina, after meeting whom Mandelstam lost his peace. He called his love flour, treated it as a temptation. And silently suffered, remaining just a friend.
- Personally met with Lenin. The arrival of the revolution, the poet took positively. And he even began to work for the Soviet government, not suspecting what a 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 subdepartment 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, recorded and carefully kept his poems all her life. She also accompanied him in exile and suffered all the hardships with her husband. Thanks to her efforts, many beautiful poems have come down to posterity.
- 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. Some financial support from friends. And every day he expected to be shot.
- 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 at the site of the camp in which he died. This happened in 1998 in Vladivostok, the city where Mandelstam's life ended. Now in place of the terrible Stalin's camp where his remains lie, there is a monument.
- The first monument to Mandelstam was erected at his own expense by his sculptor. Interestingly, 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 burial place of the writer is still unknown.. Mandelstam's life ended tragically. He died of typhus in the inhuman conditions of the Stalinist camp in Vladivostok. The exact place of burial of the remains is unknown. However, like many of his comrades in misfortune, whose bodies were thrown into one large grave. The poems and personality of Mandelstam were under the strictest ban in his home country almost 20 years.
Mandelstam Osip Emilievich (1891─1938) - an outstanding Russian and Soviet poet, translator, prose writer, essayist. Thanks to its high lyrics and attempts to rethink world history and culture in a single context, he became one of largest quantities Russian poetry of the XX century. His poems are permeated with deep associative symbols coming from ancient traditions. Often in the work of the poet, architectural images are visible, emphasizing the harmony and clarity of his verbal forms. To a wide circle Readers are well aware of Mandelstam's collections of poems "Stone" and "Trisyia", as well as the collection of prose "The Noise of Time".
Childhood and youth
Osip Mandelstam was born on January 3 (15), 1891 in Warsaw. His father Emil Veniaminovich was engaged in leather business, then turned into a successful businessman, becoming a merchant of the first guild. Mother Flora Osipovna was a relative of the historian domestic literature S. Vengerova and taught music. A year after the birth of the boy, the family moved to Pavlovsk, and in 1897 moved to St. Petersburg.
Living in the capital Russian Empire and having a strong desire of parents to give their sons a good start in life, Mandelstam received an excellent liberal education. From 1899 he studied at the prestigious Tenishevsky commercial school, whose director and at the same time a teacher of literature was the Symbolist poet V. Gippius. It was during the years of his stay in it that he became interested in theater, music and, of course, poetry.
Thanks to the teacher, a turning point occurs in the mind of the future poet. Fascinated at first by the revolutionary style of S. Nadson, Mandelstam discovers the work of the Symbolists. Biggest Influence the poems of F. Sologub and V. Bryusov rendered to him. Therefore, the first adult attempts at writing something in common with their works.
After graduating from college in 1907, Mandelstam left for Paris in order to attend a course of lectures at the Faculty of Literature at the Sorbonne. In many ways, this trip was facilitated by the family, frightened revolutionary sentiment son. There he was able to feel the depth of the old French epic and was carried away by the work of the famous French poets C. Baudelaire, P. Verlaine, F. Villon. In 1910-1911, the poet studied for two semesters at the University of Heidelberg in Berlin, learning the wisdom of philosophy. He also lived in Switzerland for some time. In 1911 he was baptized in the Vyborg Methodist Church.
Due to the deterioration of the financial situation of the family, the poet interrupts his studies. After returning to Russia, he entered the historical and philological faculty of St. Petersburg University, where he studied at the department Romance languages. In 1911, Osip Emilievich met Anna Akhmatova and N. Gumilyov, with whom he would develop close friendship. For the first time, he became close to people about whom he spoke the word “we” with confidence. He later confessed great poetess that can conduct an imaginary conversation with only two people - with her and her husband N. Gumilyov.
In the field of poetry
While studying in Europe, Mandelstam came to St. Petersburg from time to time, where he developed connections with the local literary community. He listened with pleasure to a course of lectures in the most famous citadel of symbolism - the famous "tower" of the symbolist theorist V. Ivanov. In his apartment on the top floor, the whole color of Russian art was going to Silver Age"- A. Blok, A. Akhmatova, N. Berdyaev, M. Voloshin and others. Many great works sounded here for the first time, for example, "The Stranger" by A. Blok.
Mandelstam's first five poems were published in 1910 in the Russian illustrated magazine Apollo. These poems were largely anti-symbolic, in them " deep world”is opposed to prophetic pathos. Three years later, the first poetry collection of the poet, entitled "Stone", published by the Akme publishing house, saw the light of day. It contains works written between 1908 and 1911.
A certain spirit of symbolism can be traced in them, but already without its authentic form of otherworldliness. Now the symbolic skills were supposed to reflect three-dimensional realities, refracted through some kind of architectural content, in which he sees a clear content and structure. Hence the quite unpoetic name of the collection. With the advent of "Stone" Mandelstam immediately took his place among the largest Russian poets. In 1915, the Hyperborea publishing house republished the book, supplementing it with poems from the last two years.
Mandelstam entered the group of acmeists created in 1912, who opposed themselves to the symbolists and defended the materiality of images expressed with the help of exact words. In addition, he was a member of the St. Petersburg association "Workshop of Poets", founded by O. Gorodetsky and N. Gumilyov. One of the main goals proclaimed here was an attempt to distance itself from symbolism. True, for Mandelstam, staying in these communities was dictated more by the motives of friendship than by adherence to the ideas of acmeism. Therefore, during this period, the most optimistic poems of the poet were written, for example, "Casino", in which there are such lines:
I'm not a fan of preconceived joy
Sometimes nature is a gray spot
I, in a light intoxication, are destined
To taste the colors of a poor life
From the very first years of his work, Mandelstam felt himself a part of the world cultural space and in this he saw the manifestation of his own freedom. In this imaginary world there was a place for Pushkin and Dante, Ovid and Goethe. In 1916, the poet met M. Tsvetaeva, which grew into friendship. They even dedicated several works to each other.
Period "Tristia"
Poems written in full swing revolutionary events and the Civil War, formed the basis of a new collection, which was called "Tristia". In it the core poetic world Mandelstam became the antique style, which turned into the author's speech, reflecting his innermost experiences. Actually the word "triastia" is found in Ovid and means parting. As in "Stone", the verses here are also cyclical, but even more closely interconnected. Mandelstam liked to repeat words in poems, filling them with special meaning. During this period, there are more complex relationship the author to the word and images, which become more irrational. Interestingly, the collections themselves also have a connection: "Stone" ends, and "Tristia" begins with lines about Phaedra.
Such an expressive retreat into the ancient model of being, which serves as a kind of cultural code, was the result of serious political change and, above all, the coming to power of the Bolsheviks. Like many representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, Mandelstam at first did not accept new power and even wrote a poem in support of the deposed head of the Provisional Government A. Kerensky. It contains such multi-valued lines:
When October was preparing a temporary worker for us
A yoke of violence and malice
The new revolutionary idea was embodied in him with the destruction of order and the establishment of chaos. And this led the poet to real horror. But the ideological pendulum of contradictions, from which the worldview and work of Mandelstam was woven, rushed to the side and he soon took over Soviet power, which was reflected in the writing of the poem "The Twilight of Freedom".
Mandelstam in the 1920s
The period of the relatively liberal NEP coincided with the active literary work Mandelstam. Published in 1923 new compilation"The Second Book", and his poems begin to be published abroad. The poet writes a series of articles on key issues culture, history and humanism, - "On the nature of the word", "Human wheat" and others. In 1925, the autobiographical collection The Noise of Time was published, which became a kind of oratorio of the era with deeply personal memories. Along with this, several children's collections were released.
At this time, Osip Emilievich is actively engaged in translation activities, adapting into Russian the works of Petrarch, O. Barbier, F. Werfel and many other foreign authors. During the persecution, it was this work that became a creative outlet where one could express oneself. It is no coincidence that many critics note that poems translated by the poet sometimes sound better than the author's.
In 1930, Mandelstam visited Armenia and was impressed by what he saw. This coveted (as the poet himself said) country has long attracted him with its history and culture. As a result, "Journey to Armenia" and a cycle of poems "Armenia" were written.
Conflict with power
In 1933, Osip Emilievich wrote a poetic invective directed against I. Stalin. It began with the following lines:
We live under us without feeling the country
Our speeches are not heard for ten steps
Despite the bewilderment of those around him (according to B. Pasternak, it was suicide), caused by the reckless courage of the author, he said: “Poems should now be civil”. The poet read this work to many friends, relatives and acquaintances, so now it is difficult to determine who denounced. But the reaction of the Soviet authorities was lightning fast. By order of the then head of the NKVD, G. Yagoda, Mandelstam was arrested in his own apartment in May 1934. During this procedure, a total search was carried out - it is difficult to name places where the inspectors did not look.
True, the most valuable manuscripts were kept by relatives. There is another version of a possible disgrace. Shortly before these events, during a tense conversation, the poet hit A. Tolstoy on the cheek and he promised that he would not leave it just like that.
B. Pasternak and A. Akhmatova interceded for the great poet, N. Bukharin, a prominent party leader, who highly appreciated his work, tried to help Osip. Perhaps, thanks to his patronage, Mandelstam was sent first to Northern Ural to the city of Cherdyn, and from where they were transferred to a three-year exile in Voronezh. Here he worked in a newspaper and on the radio, leaving his spiritual confession in the form of three notebooks of poetry.
After his release, he will be forbidden to live in the capital, and the poet will go to Kalinin. But he did not stop writing poetry and was soon arrested again, having received 5 years in the camps for allegedly counter-revolutionary activities. The sick and weakened Osip Emilievich could no longer stand the new turn of fate. He died on December 27, 1938 in Vladivostok in a hospital barracks.
Personal life
Osip Mandelstam was married to Nadezhda Khazina, whom he met in 1919 in the Kiev cafe "H.L.A.M." After the wedding, which took place in 1922, she will become a faithful companion of the freedom-loving poet and will survive with him all the difficulties of the disgraced period. In addition, Mandelstam was not at all adapted to everyday life, and she had to take care of him like a child. Nadezhda Yakovlevna left brilliant memoirs, despite the inconsistency of assessments, which became an important source of study creative heritage Mandelstam.
Osip Emilievich (Joseph Khatskelevich) Mandelstam is a Jewish poet and essayist who lived in Russia and the USSR. Born January 3 (15), 1891, presumably died December 27, 1938. [ Brief information about him, see the articles Osip Mandelstam - a short biography, Mandelstam's work - briefly.]
Mandelstam was born in Warsaw (then part of the Russian Empire) into a wealthy family of Polish Jews. His father was a glove maker; mother, musician Flora Verblovskaya, was related to the famous literary critic S. Vengerov. Shortly after the birth of their son, the family moved to St. Petersburg. In 1900, young Osip entered the prestigious Tenishevsky School there.
Osip Mandelstam. Life and art
In October 1907, using the rich funds of his parents, Osip went abroad, where he spent several years, traveled around a number of European countries, studied at the Paris Sorbonne and at the German University of Heidelberg. When in 1911 financial situation his family deteriorated, Mandelstam returned to Russia and continued his education at the Romano-Germanic department of the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University. During this time, he converted from the Jewish religion to Methodism(one of the Protestant confessions) - they say that in order to get rid of the "percentage rate" for admission to the university. In St. Petersburg, Osip studied very unevenly and did not complete the course.
During the years of the revolution of 1905-1907, Mandelstam sympathized with the extreme left parties - the Social Democrats and Socialist-Revolutionaries, was fond of Marxism. After staying abroad (where he listened to lectures by A. Bergson and fell in love with poetry Verlaine, Baudelaire and Villon) he changed his outlook, became interested in idealistic aestheticism and at one time attended meetings of the Religious-Philosophical Society in St. Petersburg. In poetry, Osip Mandelstam at first gravitated towards symbolism, but in 1911 he and several other young Russian authors(Nikolai Gumilyov, Sergei Gorodetsky etc.) created the group "Workshop of Poets" and founded a new artistic movement- acmeism. Their theories were the opposite of the symbolist ones. Instead of foggy vagueness and mysterious mysticism, acmeists called for giving poetry, distinctness, clarity, filling it with realistic images. Mandelstam wrote a manifesto for the new movement (The Morning of Acmeism, 1913, published 1919). In 1913 he published his first collection of poems, The Stone, whose "tangible" title was in line with Acmeist principles.
According to some reports, Mandelstam had a love affair with Anna Akhmatova, although she insisted all her life that there was nothing between them but close friendship. In 1910, he was secretly and without reciprocity in love with the Georgian princess and socialite of St. Petersburg Salome Andronikova, to whom he dedicated the poem "Straw" (1916). From January to June 1916, the poet had a short relationship with Marina Tsvetaeva.
During First World War Mandelstam was not mobilized into the army due to "cardiac asthenia." During these years he wrote "anti-militarist" poems (" Palace Square”, “The Hellenes gathered in a war ...”, “Zverinets”), laying the blame for the bloodshed on all powers, but especially on the Russian tsar.
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam (1891-1938). In 1891, in the family of a Jewish merchant from Warsaw, a boy was born who in three decades would become a great Russian poet.
Little Osya was brought up at home, and after the family moved to St. Petersburg, he studied at private school. Education continued in Europe. Mandelstam studied at the Sorbonne (1908) and Heidelberg (1908-1910) University, was fond of French poetry. Both European universities were not finished, however, like St. Petersburg: the young man went headlong into bohemian life.
The first collection of poems by Mandelstam "Stone" (1913) went through three editions. Osip is a member of the Acmeist group, is friends with Gumilyov and Akhmatova, and is close friends with Marina Tsvetaeva.
With the outbreak of World War II, the poet strives to the front, but for health reasons is not subject to conscription. I can't even get a job as a Red Cross nurse. The October Revolution was greeted with enthusiasm. Mandelstam works in the system of the People's Commissariat of Education, travels a lot.
Impressions of times imperialist war and two Russian revolutions formed the basis of the collection "Tristia", which was published separate parts in Berlin and Kharkov. The personal life of the poet, after the break with Tsvetaeva, was getting better. In 1922 he married Nadezhda Khazina (he immediately fell in love with the actress Arbenina). It was thanks to Khazina that many of Osip Emilievich's poems were preserved.
From 1925 to 1930 the poet did not write poetry. He wrote children's books, was engaged in translations, literary criticism. Relations with the authorities became more and more tense. The epigram written by him on Stalin and his entourage becomes the reason for the arrest. But the verdict is unexpectedly soft - exile.
The thirties were the heyday of Mandelstam's work. However, there is no place to print. Opala, exile, short - just a year of freedom, and new verdict for anti-Soviet activities. Having received 5 years in the camps, in 1938, the poet lived only two. In the autumn of the fortieth, he died in Vladlagpunk (Vladivostok) and was buried in a common grave.
Osip Mandelstam was born on January 3 (15), 1891, in Warsaw in a Jewish family. His father was a successful leather goods merchant and his mother was a piano teacher. Mandelstam's parents were Jews, but not very religious. At home, Mandelstam was taught by educators and governesses. 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 Heidelberg University (1909-10). In 1911-17. he studied philosophy at St Petersburg University but did not graduate. Mandelstam was a member of the "Guild of Poets" from 1911 and personally supported close relations with Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov. His first poems appeared in 1910 in the Apollon magazine.
As a poet, Mandelstam became famous thanks to the collection "Stone", which appeared in 1913. The subject matter ranged from music to cultural triumphs such as Roman classical architecture and the Byzantine Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. He 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 topics was the concept of a link. 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 briefly worked 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 tasteless. He enjoyed reading Pasternak and also admired Akhmatova.
In 1922, Mandelstam married Nadezhda Yakovlevna Khazina, who accompanied him through many years of exile and imprisonment. In the 1920s, Mandelstam made a living writing children's books and translating the works of Anton Sinclair, Jules Romain, Charles de Coster, and others. He did not compose poetry from 1925 to 1930. Importance of conservation cultural tradition became an end in itself for the poet. Soviet authority I doubted very much his sincere loyalty to the Bolshevik system. To avoid conflicts with influential enemies, Mandelstam traveled as a journalist to distant provinces. Mandelstam's 1933 trip to Armenia 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. Iosif Vissarionich took this incident under personal control and had telephone 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 be the first, to greet the dead is their vocation. And it is criminal to demand caresses from them."
The second time Mandelstam was arrested for "counter-revolutionary" activities in May 1938 and sentenced to five years in a labor camp. Under interrogation, he confessed that he had written a counter-revolutionary poem.
In the transit camp, Mandelstam was already so weak that it became clear to him that he did not have long to go. On December 27, 1938, he died in a transit prison and was buried in a common grave.
Heritage
International fame Mandelstam began to recognize in the 1970s, when his work was published in the West and in the Soviet Union. His widow Nadezhda Mandelstam published her memoirs Hope Against Hope (1970) and Hope Abandoned (1974), which depict their lives and the Stalinist era. Mandelstam's Voronezh Poems, published in 1990, is the closest approximation the poet planned to write if he survived.
Mandelstam wrote wide range essay. "Talk about Dante" was considered a masterpiece contemporary criticism with his bizarre use of analogies. Mandelstam writes that Pushkin's magnificent white teeth are the masculine pearl of Russian poetry. He sees Divine Comedy as "a journey with conversations" and draws attention to Dante's use of colors. The text is constantly compared to the music.
