Hope Against Hope recounted the last four years in the life of the great Russian poet, Osip Mandelstam, and gave a hair-raising account of Stalin's terror. Hope Abandoned complements that earlier masterpiece, and in it Nadezhda Mandelstam describes their life together from 1919, and her own after Mandelstam's death in a labour camp in 1938.
First published by Collins and Harvill Press in 1971.
The memoir offers a poignant eyewitness account of life under Stalin's regime, focusing on the experiences of Nadezhda Mandelstam as she supports her husband, poet Osip Mandelstam, after his arrest for a satirical poem about Stalin. It details their struggles during his exile and subsequent death in a gulag, highlighting Nadezhda's efforts to preserve his literary legacy. Intertwining themes of love and resilience, the narrative serves as both a testament to the power of literature and a deeply moving love story amidst the horrors of political oppression.
Hope Against Hope recounted the last four years in the life of the great Russian poet, Osip Mandelstam, and gave a hair-raising account of Stalin's terror. Hope Abandoned complements that earlier masterpiece, and in it Nadezhda Mandelstam describes their life together from 1919, and her own after Mandelstam's death in a labour camp in 1938. She also sets out his system of values and beliefs, and provides striking portraits of many of their contemporaries including Boris Pasternak and their champion till his own downfall, Nikolai Bukharin, as well as an astonishingly candid picture of Anna Akhmatova.
Nadeschda Mandelstam (1899-1980), die ihren Mann, den Dichter Ossip Mandelstam, um viele Jahre überlebte, hat sich im Alter mit ihren Memoiren Das Jahrhundert der Wölfe und Generation ohne Tränen international einen Namen gemacht. Erst vor wenigen Jahren wurden in ihrem Nachlass Erinnerungen an Anna Achmatowa (1889-1966) entdeckt - ein bewegendes Dokument der Freundschaft in schwierigsten Zeiten. Achmatowa, die charismatische, unbeugsame Dichterin, bangt um ihren Sohn, der in den stalinistischen Gefängnissen inhaftiert ist, während die Freundin die Gedichte ihres 1938 im Lager umgekommenen Mannes rettet - indem sie jede Zeile seiner verbotenen Texte im Gedächtnis bewahrt. Dieses reiche Buch ist Dichterporträt und Zeitzeugnis zugleich - ein vierzig Jahre währendes Gespräch über Angst und Niedertracht, über die Macht und Ohnmacht von Liebe, Eros und Literatur.
