Brief biography of Mandelstam. Mandelstam Osip Emilievich - biography and works Brief biography of Mandelstam

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam (1891-1938). In 1891, in the family of a Jewish merchant from Warsaw, a boy was born who, three decades later, would become a great Russian poet.

Little Osya received a home education, and after the family moved to St. Petersburg, he studied at a private school. Education continued in Europe. Mandelstam studied at the Sorbonne (1908) and Heidelberg University (1908-1910), and was fond of French poetry. Both European universities were not graduated, however, like St. Petersburg: the young man plunged headlong into bohemian life.

Mandelstam's first collection of poems, “Stone” (1913), went through three editions. Osip is a member of the “Acmeists” group, is friends with Gumilyov and Akhmatova, and is close to Marina Tsvetaeva.

With the outbreak of World War II, the poet strives to go to the front, but due to health reasons he is not subject to conscription. I can’t even become a Red Cross nurse. The October Revolution was greeted with enthusiasm by him. Mandelstam works in the system of the People's Commissariat of Education and travels a lot.

Impressions from the times of the imperialist war and two Russian revolutions formed the basis of the collection “Tristia”, which was published in separate parts in Berlin and Kharkov. The poet’s personal life improved after the break with Tsvetaeva. In 1922, he married Nadezhda Khazina (immediately falling 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, and literary studies. Relations with the authorities became increasingly tense. The epigram he wrote about Stalin and his entourage becomes the reason for his arrest. But the sentence is unexpectedly lenient - exile.

The thirties marked the heyday of Mandelstam's creativity. However, there is nowhere to print. Disgrace, exile, short - only a year of freedom, and a new sentence for anti-Soviet activities. Having received 5 years in the camps in 1938, the poet lived only two. In the fall of the forties, he died in Vladlagpunka (Vladivostok) and was buried in a common grave.

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam was born on January 3 (15), 1891 in Warsaw into a Jewish family. The father of the future poet was a glove maker and merchant. In 1897, the future Osip Emilievich moved to St. Petersburg with his family.

In 1900, Mandelstam entered the Tenishev School. In 1907, he attended lectures at St. Petersburg University for several months. In 1908, Osip Emilievich left for France and entered the Sorbonne and Heidelberg University. During this period, Mandelstam, whose biography as a writer was just beginning, attended lectures by J. Bedier, A. Bergson, and became interested in the works of C. Baudelaire, P. Verlaine, F. Villon.

In 1911, due to the difficult financial situation of the family, Mandelstam had to return to St. Petersburg. He entered the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University, but did not take his studies seriously, so he never completed the course.

The beginning of creative activity

In 1910, Osip Emilievich's poems were first published in the St. Petersburg magazine Apollo. Mandelstam's early work gravitates towards the symbolist tradition.

Having met Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova, Mandelstam becomes a regular participant in the meetings of the “Workshop of Poets”.

In 1913, the poet’s debut collection of poems, “Stone,” was published, which was then completed and republished in 1916 and 1921. At this time, Mandelstam took an active part in the literary life of St. Petersburg, met B. Livshits, Marina Tsvetaeva.

In 1914, an important event occurred in Mandelstam’s short biography - the writer was elected a member of the All-Russian Literary Society. In 1918, the poet collaborated with the newspapers “Strana”, “Evening Star”, “Znamya Truda”, and worked at “Narkompros”.

Years of the Civil War. Mature creativity

In 1919, while traveling to Kyiv, Mandelstam visited the poetic cafe “HLAM”, where he met his future wife, artist Nadezhda Khazina. During the civil war, the writer wandered with Khazina throughout Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia. Osip Emilievich had a chance to escape with the White Guards to Turkey, but he chose to stay in Russia. In 1922, Mandelstam and Khazina got married.

Mandelstam's poems during the Revolution and Civil War were included in the collection “Tristia” (1922). In 1923, the collections “The Second Book” and the third edition of “The Stone” were published. In 1925, the writer’s autobiographical story “The Noise of Time” was published. In 1927, the story “The Egyptian Stamp” was completed. In 1928, Mandelstam’s last lifetime books, “Poems” and “On Poetry,” were published.

Last years and death

In 1933, Mandelstam wrote an anti-Stalin epigram, for which he was sent into exile. From 1934 to 1937, the writer was in exile in Voronezh, lived in poverty, but did not stop his literary activity. After permission to leave, he was arrested again, this time exiled to the Far East.

On December 27, 1938, Osip Emilievich Mandelstam died of typhus in a transit camp on the Second River (now the outskirts of Vladivostok). The poet's burial place is unknown.

Chronological table

Other biography options

• The future poet’s grandmother, Sofya Verbovskaya, brought young Mandelstam to V. Ivanov’s poetry circle.
• Mandelstam was fluent in French, English and German, translated the works of F. Petrarch, O. Barbier, J. Duhamel, R. Schiquele, M. Bartel, I. Grishashvili, J. Racine and others.
• Mandelstam was in love with Marina Tsvetaeva and was very upset about the breakup - because of the unsuccessful romance, the writer was even going to go to a monastery.
• The works and personality of the poet Mandelstam were under the strictest ban in Russia for almost 20 years. His wife, Nadezhda Yakovlevna, published three books of memoirs about her husband.

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam was born January 3(15), 1891 in Warsaw in a merchant family. A year later the family settled in Pavlovsk, then in 1897 moves to live in St. Petersburg.

In 1907 He graduated from the Tenishev School in St. Petersburg, which gave him a solid knowledge of the humanities, from here his passion for poetry, music, and theater began (the director of the school, the symbolist poet Vl. Gippius, contributed to this interest). In 1907 Mandelstam leaves for Paris, listens to lectures at the Sorbonne, and meets N. Gumilyov. Interest in literature, history, and philosophy leads him to the University of Heidelberg, where he attends lectures throughout the year. Happens on visits to St. Petersburg. Since 1911 Mandelstam studied at St. Petersburg University, studying Old French language and literature. In 1909 met Vyacheslav Ivanov and Innokenty Annensky and entered the circle of poets close to the Apollo magazine, where his poems first appeared in print ( 1910 , № 9).

Poetry 1909-1911. imbued with a sense of the illusory nature of what is happening, the desire to escape into the world of pristine musical impressions (“Only read children’s books”, “Silentium”, etc.); they were influenced by the Symbolists, mainly French. In 1912 Mandelstam comes to Acmeism. For the poems of this period included in the collection “Stone” ( 1913 ; second updated edition, 1916 ), are characterized by acceptance of the external reality of the world, saturation with material details, and a craving for strictly verified “architectural” forms (“Hagia Sophia”). The poet draws inspiration from images of world culture, enriched with literary and historical associations (“Dombey and Son”, “Europe”, “I have not heard the stories of Ossian”, etc.). Mandelstam is inherent in the idea of ​​the high significance of the artist’s personality and worldview, for whom poetry “is the consciousness of his own rightness” (article “About the interlocutor”).

Since 1916 Beginning with the anti-militaristic poem “The Menagerie,” Mandelstam’s poetry takes on a more lyrical character and responds more vividly to modern reality. The verse, becoming more complex, acquires side associative moves, which makes it difficult to understand. In 1918-1921. Mandelstam worked in cultural and educational institutions and visited Crimea and Georgia. In 1922 he moves to Moscow. During the intensified struggle of literary groups, Mandelstam maintains an independent position; this leads to the isolation of Mandelstam's name in literature. Poetry 1921-1925 are few in number and marked by a keen consciousness of “resignation”. The autobiographical stories “The Noise of Time” date back to this time ( 1925 ) and the story “Egyptian Brand” ( 1928 ) – about the spiritual crisis of an intellectual who lived on “cultural rent” before the revolution.

1920s were for Mandelstam a time of intense and varied literary work. New poetry collections have been released: “Tristia” ( 1922 ), "Second Book" ( 1923 ), "Poems" ( 1928 ). He continued to publish articles on literature - the collection “On Poetry” ( 1928 ). Several books for children were also published: “Two Trams”, “Primus” ( 1925 ), "Balls" ( 1926 ). Mandelstam devotes a lot of time to translation work. Fluent in French, German and English, he undertook (often to earn money) translations of prose by contemporary foreign writers. He treated poetic translations with special care, demonstrating high skill. In the 1930s When open persecution of the poet began, and it became increasingly difficult to publish, translation remained the outlet where the poet could save himself. During these years he translated dozens of books. The last work published during Mandelstam’s lifetime was the prose “Journey to Armenia” (“Star”, 1933 , № 5).

Autumn 1933 writes the poem “We live without feeling the country beneath us...”, for which in May 1934 was arrested. Only Bukharin’s defense commuted the sentence - he was sent to Cherdyn-on-Kama, where he stayed for two weeks, fell ill, and was hospitalized. He was sent to Voronezh, where he worked in newspapers and magazines, and on the radio. After the end of his exile, he returns to Moscow, but is forbidden to live here. Lives in Kalinin. Having received a ticket to a sanatorium, he and his wife left for Samatikha, where he was again arrested. Sentence: 5 years in camps for counter-revolutionary activities. He was sent by stage to the Far East. In the transit camp on the Second River (now within the boundaries of Vladivostok) December 27, 1938 year Osip Mandelstam died in a hospital barracks in the camp.

Mandelstam's verse, outwardly traditional (in meter, rhyme), is distinguished by its semantic complexity and is based on a large philological culture. The subject part of words is often replaced by an associative part, which has roots in the historical life of the word.

The convergence of words with different meanings and elevated intonation traditionally go back to the high, “odic” style, originating from M.V. Lomonosov. In 1933 The book “Conversation about Dante” was written, in which Mandelstam’s views on poetry are most fully outlined.

Osip 1 Emilievich Mandelstam was born on January 3, 1891 in Warsaw; he spent his childhood and youth in St. Petersburg. Later, in 1937, Mandelstam wrote about the time of his birth:

Here “into the night” contains an ominous omen of the tragic fate of the poet in the twentieth century and serves as a metaphor for the entire twentieth century, according to Mandelstam’s definition - “the century of the beast.”

Mandelstam's memories of his childhood and youth are restrained and strict; he avoided revealing himself, commenting on himself and his poems. He was an early ripened, or rather, a poet who saw the light, and his poetic manner is distinguished by seriousness and severity.

What little we find in the poet’s memoirs about his childhood, about the atmosphere that surrounded him, about the air that he had to breathe, is rather painted in gloomy tones:

"Forbidden Life" is about poetry.

Mandelstam’s family was, in his words, “difficult and confused,” and this was manifested with particular force (at least in the perception of Osip Emilievich himself) in words, in speech. The speech “element” of the family was unique. Father, Emilius Veniaminovich Mandelstam, a self-taught businessman, was completely devoid of a sense of language. In the book “The Noise of Time,” Mandelstam wrote: “My father had no language at all, it was tongue-tied and tongueless... A completely abstract, invented language, the florid and twisted speech of a self-taught person, the bizarre syntax of a Talmudist, an artificial, not always agreed upon phrase.” The speech of the mother, Flora Osipovna, a music teacher, was different: “Clear and sonorous, literary great Russian speech; its vocabulary is poor and condensed, its turns are monotonous - but this is a language, there is something radical and confident in it.” From his mother, Mandelstam inherited, along with a predisposition to heart disease and musicality, a heightened sense of the Russian language and accuracy of speech.

In 1900-1907, Mandelstam studied at the Tenishevsky Commercial School, one of the best private educational institutions in Russia (V. Nabokov and V. Zhirmunsky studied there at one time).

After graduating from college, Mandelstam traveled abroad three times: from October 1907 to the summer of 1908 he lived in Paris, from the autumn of 1909 to the spring of 1910 he studied Romance philology at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, from July 21 to mid-October he lived in the Berlin suburb of Zehlendorf. The echo of these meetings with Western Europe can be heard in Mandelstam's poems right up to his last works.

The formation of Mandelstam's poetic personality was determined by his meeting with N. Gumilev and A. Akhmatova. In 1911, Gumilyov returned to St. Petersburg from the Abyssinian expedition, and all three then often met at various literary evenings. Subsequently, many years after the execution of Gumilyov, Mandelstam wrote to Akhmatova that Nikolai Stepanovich was the only one who understood his poems and with whom he talks and conducts dialogues to this day. Mandelstam’s attitude towards Akhmatova is most clearly evidenced by his words: “I am a contemporary of Akhmatova.” To publicly declare this during the years of the Stalinist regime, when the poetess was disgraced, one had to be Mandelstam.

All three, Gumilyov, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, became the creators and most prominent poets of a new literary movement - Acmeism. Biographers write that at first there was friction between them, because Gumilyov was despotic, Mandelstam was quick-tempered, and Akhmatova was capricious.

Mandelstam's first collection of poetry was published in 1913; it was published at his own expense 2 . It was assumed that it would be called "Sink", but the final name was chosen differently - "Stone". The name is quite in the spirit of Acmeism. The Acmeists sought to rediscover the world, as it were, to give everything a clear and courageous name, devoid of the elegiac hazy flair of the Symbolists. Stone is a natural material, durable and solid, an eternal material in the hands of a master. For Mandelstam, stone is the primary building material of spiritual, and not just material, culture.

In 1911-1917, Mandelstam studied at the Romance-Germanic department of the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University.

Mandelstam's attitude towards the 1917 revolution was complex. However, any attempts by Mandelstam to find his place in the new Russia ended in failure and scandal. The second half of the 1920s for Mandelstam were years of crisis. The poet was silent. There were no new poems. In five years - not a single one.

In 1929, the poet turned to prose and wrote a book called “The Fourth Prose.” It is small in volume, but it fully expresses the pain and contempt of the poet for opportunist writers (“members of MASSOLIT”) that had been accumulating for many years in Mandelstam’s soul. "The Fourth Prose" gives an idea of ​​the poet's character - impulsive, explosive, quarrelsome. Mandelstam very easily made enemies for himself; he did not hide his assessments and judgments. From “The Fourth Prose”: “I divide all works of world literature into those that were authorized and those written without permission. The former are scum, the latter are stolen air. I want to spit in the face of writers who write pre-authorized things, I want to hit them on the head with a stick and seat everyone at the table in the Herzen House, placing a glass of police tea in front of each and giving each one a Gornfeld urine test.

I would forbid these writers to marry and have children - after all, the children must continue for us, the most important thing to finish for us - while the fathers are sold to the pockmarked devil for three generations ahead."

One can imagine the intensity of mutual hatred: the hatred of those whom Mandelstam rejected and who rejected Mandelstam. The poet always, almost all the post-revolutionary years, lived in extreme conditions, and in the 1930s - in anticipation of inevitable death. There weren’t many friends and admirers of his talent, but they were there.

Mandelstam early realized himself as a poet, as a creative person who was destined to leave his mark on the history of literature and culture, and moreover, “to change something in its structure and composition” (from a letter to Yu.N. Tynyanov). Mandelstam knew his worth as a poet, and this was manifested, for example, in an insignificant episode that V. Kataev describes in his book “My Diamond Crown”:

“Having met the nutcracker (i.e. Mandelstam) on the street, one writer acquaintance very friendly asked the nutcracker a traditional secular question:

What new things have you written?

To which the nutcracker suddenly, completely unexpectedly, broke free from the chain:

If I wrote something new, then all of Russia would have known about it long ago! And you are ignorant and vulgar! - the nutcracker shouted, shaking with indignation, and pointedly turned his back on the tactless fiction writer." 3

Mandelstam was not adapted to everyday life, to a settled life. The concept of home, home-fortress, very important, for example, in the artistic world of M. Bulgakov, was not significant for Mandelstam. For him, home is the whole world, and at the same time in this world he is homeless.

K.I. Chukovsky recalled Mandelstam in the early 1920s, when he, like many other poets and writers, received a room in the Petrograd House of Arts: “In the room there was nothing belonging to him, except cigarettes, not a single personal thing. And then I I understood its most striking feature - its non-existence." In 1933, Mandelstam finally received a two-room apartment! B. Pasternak, who visited him, left and said: “Well, now we have an apartment - we can write poetry.” Mandelstam was furious. He cursed the apartment and offered to return it to those for whom it was intended: honest traitors, imagers. It was terrifying in front of the payment that was required for the apartment.

The consciousness of the choice made, the awareness of the tragedy of his fate, apparently strengthened the poet, gave him strength, and imparted a tragic, majestic pathos to his new poems 4. This pathos lies in the opposition of a free poetic personality to his age - the “beast age”. The poet does not feel insignificant in front of him, a pathetic victim, he realizes himself as an equal:

In the home circle this poem was called "Wolf". In it, Osip Emilievich predicted his future exile to Siberia, his physical death, and his poetic immortality. He understood a lot earlier than others.

Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam, whom E. Yevtushenko called “the greatest poet’s widow in the twentieth century,” left two books of memories about Mandelstam - about his sacrificial feat as a poet. From these memoirs one can understand, “even without knowing a single line of Mandelstam, that on these pages they remember a truly great poet: in view of the quantity and strength of evil directed against him.”

Mandelstam's sincerity bordered on suicide. In November 1933 he wrote a sharply satirical poem about Stalin:

And Osip Emilievich read this poem to many acquaintances, including B. Pasternak. Anxiety for the fate of Mandelstam prompted Pasternak to declare in response: “What you read to me has nothing to do with literature, poetry. This is not a literary fact, but an act of suicide, which I do not approve of and in which I do not want to take part. I didn’t read anything, I didn’t hear anything, and I ask you not to read them to anyone.” Yes, Pasternak is right, the value of this poem does not lie in its literary merits. The first two lines here are at the level of the best poetic discoveries:

Surprisingly, the sentence given to Mandelstam was rather lenient. People at that time died for much lesser “offenses.” Stalin’s resolution simply read: “Isolate, but preserve,” and Osip Mandelstam was sent into exile in the distant northern village of Cherdyn. In Cherdyn, Mandelstam, suffering from mental illness, tried to commit suicide. Friends helped again. N. Bukharin, already losing his influence, wrote to Stalin for the last time: “Poets are always right; history is on their side”; Mandelstam was transferred to less harsh conditions - to Voronezh.

Of course, Mandelstam's fate was predetermined. But to punish him severely in 1933 would have meant publicizing that ill-fated poem and, as it were, settling personal scores between the tyrant and the poet, which would have been clearly unworthy of the “father of nations.” Everything has its time, Stalin knew how to wait, in this case - the great terror of 1937, when Mandelstam was destined to perish unknown along with hundreds of thousands of others.

Voronezh sheltered the poet, but sheltered him with hostility. From Voronezh notebooks (unpublished during his lifetime):

The poet struggled with approaching despair: there was no means of livelihood, people avoided meeting him, his future fate was unclear, and with all his being as a poet, Mandelstam felt: the “beast of the century” was overtaking him. A. Akhmatova, who visited Mandelstam in exile, testifies:

“Fear and the muse are on duty...” The poems came unstoppably, “irretrievably” (as M. Tsvetaeva said at the same time - in 1934), they demanded an outlet, they demanded to be heard. Memoirists testify that one day Mandelstam rushed to a pay phone and read new poems to the investigator to whom he was assigned: “No, listen, I have no one else to read to!” The poet's nerves were exposed, and he poured out his pain in poetry.

The poet was in a cage, but he was not broken, he was not deprived of the inner secret of freedom that raised him above everyone even in captivity:

The poems of the Voronezh cycle remained unpublished for a long time. They were not, as they say, political, but even “neutral” poems were perceived as a challenge, because they represented Poetry, uncontrollable and unstoppable. And no less dangerous for the authorities, because “a song is a form of linguistic disobedience, and its sound casts doubt on much more than a specific political system: it shakes the entire way of life” (I. Brodsky).

Mandelstam's poems stood out sharply against the background of the general flow of official literature of the 1920s and 30s. Time demanded the poems it needed, like the famous poem by E. Bagritsky “TVS” (1929):

Mandelstam understood: he could not stand “next to the century”; his choice was different - opposition to the cruel time.

Poems from the Voronezh notebooks, like many of Mandelstam’s poems of the 1930s, are imbued with a feeling of imminent death; sometimes they sound like spells, alas, unsuccessful:

In May 1937, the Voronezh exile expired. The poet spent another year in the vicinity of Moscow, trying to obtain permission to live in the capital. Magazine editors were even afraid to talk to him. He was a beggar. Friends and acquaintances helped: V. Shklovsky, B. Pasternak, I. Erenburg, V. Kataev, although it was not easy for them themselves. Subsequently, A. Akhmatova wrote about 1938: “It was an apocalyptic time. Trouble followed on the heels of all of us. The Mandelstams had no money. They had absolutely nowhere to live. Osip was breathing poorly, catching air with his lips.”

On May 2, 1938, before sunrise, as was customary then, Mandelstam was arrested again, sentenced to 5 years of hard labor and sent to Western Siberia, the Far East, from where he would never return. A letter from the poet to his wife has been preserved, in which he wrote: “My health is very poor, I’m extremely exhausted, I’m emaciated, I’m 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.” .

The poet’s death occurred in the Vtoraya Rechka transit camp near Vladivostok on December 27, 1938... One of the poet’s last poems:

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 matter. Osip Emilievich himself spoke about his relationship with the literature around him, admitting that he is “floating on modern Russian poetry.”

The work and biography of Mandelstam as a representative of the Silver Age is 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 and 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 writes 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 leads a stormy poetic life, being at its epicenter. You 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.

The mournful elegies in his second book, Tristia, in 1922, are 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 the 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 catchphrase “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 an 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.