Hope Against Hope [Paperback]

Nadezhda Mandelstam (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0689705301 | ISBN-13: 978-0689705304 | Publication Date: February 1, 1976 | Edition: 7th printing

The story of the poet Osip Mandelstam, who suffered continuous persecution under Stalin, but whose wife constantly supported both him and his writings until he died in 1938.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Nadezhda means "hope" in Russian. And Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of Osip Mandelstam, one of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century, is aptly named, for it is hope alone that seems to have buoyed her strength during very trying times. In this, the first of two volumes of her memoirs, she offers a harrowing account of the last four years she spent with her late husband. She re-creates in terse, stripped-to-the-bone sentences the atmosphere of intense paranoia that enveloped Russia's literary intelligentsia. In 1933, Osip had written a lighthearted satire ridiculing Stalin. It proved to be a 16-line death sentence. Nadezhda recalls the night the secret police came for him: "There was a sharp, unbearably explicit knock on the door. 'They've come for Osip,' I said." He was arrested, interrogated, exiled, and eventually rearrested. Nadezhda chronicles each turn of event, describing her feelings of heartbreak and joy with self-effacing discipline. Not only does Mandelstam write with the vitality and insight of the classic Russian novelists, she is far too selfless to write an account of her own travails. Instead, she acts as witness to a society's. Similarly, although Osip's mind became unbalanced by his ordeal in prison, his spirit remained unbroken; it is this liberating, imaginative force that Nadezhda celebrates in Hope Against Hope. --Lilian Pizzichini, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

"        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."
--George Steiner, The New Yorker

"        Surely the most luminous account we have--or are likely to get--of life in the Soviet Union during the purges of the 1930's."
--Olga Carlisle, The New York Times Book Review

"        No work on Russia which I have recently read has given me so sensitive and searing an insight into the hellhouse which Russia became under Stalin as this dedicated and brilliant work on the poet Mandelstam by his devoted wife."
--Harrison E. Salisbury

Of the eighty-one years of her life, Nadezhda Mandelstam spent nineteen as the wife of Russia's greatest poet in this century, Osip Mandelstam, and forty-two as his widow. The rest was childhood and youth."
                So writes Joseph Brodsky in his appreciation of Nadezhda Mandelstam that is reprinted here as an Introduction. Hope Against Hope was first published in English in 1970. It is Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoir of her life with Osip, who was first arrested in 1934 and died in Stalin's Great Purge of 1937-38. Hope Against Hope is a vital eyewitness account of Stalin's Soviet Union and one of the greatest testaments to the value of literature and imaginative freedom ever written. But it is also a profound inspiration--a love story that relates the daily struggle to keep both love and art alive in the most desperate circumstances.

Nadezhda Mandelstam was born in Saratov in 1899. She met Osip Mandelstam in 1919. She is also the author of Hope Abandoned (1974). She died in 1980. Nadezhda means "hope" in Russian. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Scribner Paper Fiction; 7th printing edition (February 1, 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689705301
• ISBN-13: 978-0689705304
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,325,487 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What can I say, this book humbles me, April 20, 2004

By 

Campbell Roark "tri-zeta" (from under the floorboards and through the woods...) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (Paperback)

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.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful portrait of a genius, July 27, 2000

By 

"lampros" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (Paperback)

This is one of the most wonderful books i have ever read and a sensational portrait of the russian poet Ossip Mandelstam. The book focus on mandelstam's last years when he was under the pressure and prosecution of Stalin. The prose is beautiful, full of musings on the condition of Art. She also draw a very clear portrait of what Stalinism meant for artists and people in general in Russia. But for me the most important part of the book is to see the way Ossip dealt with horror and Death. For me, this book is one of the best studies about the condition of human beings. A must.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating look at Russia shortly after the revolution., September 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (Paperback)

Highly recommended reading. This is a detailed but very readable account of the years following the revolution as recalled by the wife of one of Russia's leading poets. It is a witty, frank, and intelligent analysis of conditions that contrast so starkly with the premise of the revolution - freedom and equality for all people.