In the outgoing year, the 125th anniversary of Osip Mandelstam passed quietly and imperceptibly. A well-known literary critic, translator, prose writer, essayist and one of the finest poets of the last century.

"I was born on the night from the second to the third..."

Osip Mandelstam was born in the capital of Poland, Warsaw, in January 1891. Almost immediately, the family moved to St. Petersburg. This is the city of childhood and youth of the poet.

Mandelstam, the poet's biography is a confirmation of this, did not like to remember these years, give them comments, as well as his own poems. As a poet, he matured quite early, so his style was very strict and serious.

Here are the grains that can be found about the years of childhood:

"From the pool of evil and viscous

I grew up, rustling with a reed,

And passionately, and languidly, and affectionately

Breathing forbidden life.

("From the pool of evil and viscous...")

In the last line, Mandelstam described his passion for poetry. The poet's biography begins with a family entangled in faith and nationality. This is especially noticeable in the author's speech, his style. The language environment in which little Osip grew up was a little strange. Father Emilius, self-taught and a businessman, had absolutely no sense of language. Ornate, almost always unspoken phrases, bizarre tongue-tied tongue - Osip described his father's speech in the book "The Noise of Time" with such epithets.

Mother was the complete opposite. When poverty vocabulary, conciseness and monotony of turns, the dialect of Flora, a music teacher, her Russian speech was clear, sonorous and bright. From his mother, the poet passed on a subtle sense of the language of Russian culture, its accuracy, musicality and grandeur.

Not a boy but a poet

Upon completion of the famous Tenishevsky School abroad, Mandelstam continues his studies. Biography (short) gives reason to think about the importance of this period: Western Europe can be traced in his poems until his death. For three years, Osip manages to fall in love with Paris, study Romance philology at the University of Germany and live for his own pleasure in the Berlin suburb of Zehlendorf.

But the most vivid impression that Mandelstam the poet showed to the world was from the meeting with A. Akhmatova and N. Gumilyov. They talked weekly at literary gatherings. Many years after the execution of Nikolai Gumilev, in a letter to Akhmatova, the poet writes that he still talks with him, because Gumilev was the only one who truly understood him.

The special attitude of the poet to Anna Akhmatova is well felt in his words: "I am a contemporary of Akhmatova". He spoke about it publicly, not being afraid of the regime of the existing power. And if you remember that Akhmatova was a disgraced poet, and also a woman, then for such statements one had to be Osip Mandelstam!

This was the period of a new trend in literature, which was created by A. Akhmatova with N. Gumilyov and O. Mandelstam. The biography of the poet restores this period of friction and controversy. The process was not easy: Anna Akhmatova was always capricious, Gumilyov was known as a despot, and Osip Emilievich easily flared up for any reason.

Attempt at writing

At the beginning of 1913, the poet published the first collection of poems at his own expense. Companions rejected the name "Sink", approved the acmeist one - "Stone". The current was famous for depriving the world of a foggy and elegiac light veil. Everything acquired clarity, firmness, strength and solidity. Moreover, this concerned both material bodies and spiritual culture.

New Russia

Osip Mandelstam, a brief biography practically does not affect this time, did not understand and did not accept the revolutionary changes of 1917. During this period, after studying at the Faculty of History and Philology at St. Petersburg University, he tries to find himself in a new country. But all attempts end in a quarrel, scandal and, consequently, failure. By 1920, the crisis was growing. For five years, Osip did not write a single line.

After another nine years, the book "The Fourth Prose" is published. This is a small cry of pain and hatred for the participants of MASSOLIT in terms of its spiritual outburst. In addition to furious statements against opportunistic writers, the book reveals the main features of the poet's temper. Mandelstam easily overgrown with enemies, throwing personality assessments and unflattering judgments, which he did not keep in himself, he was quarrelsome, explosive, uncompromising and impulsive.

Mutual hatred escalated. Many hated the poet, but Mandelstam also hated many. The biography makes it possible to trace the extreme conditions in which the poet lived. And by 1930, he had a premonition of death.

During these years, the state began to give apartments to cultural workers. In 1933 he received an apartment and Mandelstam. Biography and creativity are briefly described by the case of Pasternak. Much later, he recalled how he provoked an outburst of rage from Mandelstam when, leaving, he said that now there was a place to write poetry. The poet cursed the apartment and advised to give it to "honest traitors."

The path is chosen

The poet is strengthened more and more by the consciousness of the tragedy of the chosen fate. Power and pathos appeared in the verses. It consisted in a powerless opposition to the “age-beast” of the independent poet. The strength was in the feeling of being equal to the coming age:

“... Put me better, like a hat, in a sleeve

Hot fur coat of the Siberian steppes,

Take me to the night where the Yenisei flows

And the pine reaches the star

Because I'm not a wolf by my blood

And only an equal will kill me.”

("Per explosive prowess coming ages...")

The poet's entourage, his close people only after a while appreciated these predictive lines. Mandelstam already then had a premonition of the Siberian exile, the death and immortality of his lines.

Mandelstam: short biography (by date)

• 01/03/1891 - was born.
• 1900-1907 - studying at the Tenishevsky School.
• 1908-1910 - studying at the Sorbonne.
• 1913 - publication of the collection of poems "Stone".
• 1919 - meets his future wife.

• 1923 - The second collection of poems is published.
• 1934-1937 - exiled to Voronezh.
• 1938 - died in camps in the Far East.

Mandelstam: biography, interesting facts

Not many people know about Osip's love for Marina Tsvetaeva. But even less is known about the end of their relationship and the serious intention of the poet to go to the monastery.

The move to Voronezh happened “thanks to” the epigram on the “highlander ruling the country”. Stalin's reaction was, to put it mildly, strange: "isolate, but preserve."

The first memorial sign dedicated to the poet was put on his own savings by the sculptor V. Nenazhivin, who was impressed by Mandelstam's poems.

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 "in the night" contains an ominous omen tragic fate poet in the 20th century and serves as a metaphor for the entire 20th century, according to Mandelstam's definition - "the century-beast".

Memoirs of Mandelstam about childhood and youthful years restrained and strict, he avoided revealing himself, commenting on himself and his poems. He was an early mature, or rather, a poet who had seen his light, and his poetic manner is distinguished by seriousness and rigor.

The little that 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.

The Mandelstam family was, in his words, "difficult and confusing," and this was manifested with special force (at least in the perception of Osip Emilievich himself) in the word, in speech. The speech "element" of the family was peculiar. Father, Emily Veniaminovich Mandelstam, a self-taught merchant, was completely devoid of a sense of language. In the book The Noise of Time, Mandelstam wrote: “Father had no language at all, it was tongue-tied and tongueless ... A completely abstract, invented language, ornate and twisted self-taught speech, a bizarre Talmudic syntax, an artificial, not always agreed-upon phrase.” The speech of the mother, Flora Osipovna, a music teacher, was different: "Clear and sonorous, great literary Russian speech; her vocabulary is poor and concise, the turns are monotonous - but this is a language, there is something fundamental 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, accuracy of speech.

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

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

The formation of Mandelstam's poetic personality was determined by his meeting with N. Gumilyov and A. Akhmatova. In 1911, Gumilyov returned to St. Petersburg from the Abyssinian expedition, and then all three 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, conducts dialogues to this day. Mandelstam's attitude to Akhmatova is most clearly evidenced by his words: "I am a contemporary of Akhmatova." In order to publicly declare this during the years of the Stalinist regime, when the poetess was in disgrace, one had to be Mandelstam.

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

Mandelstam's first collection of poetry came out 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. Acmeists strove, as it were, to rediscover the world, to give everything a clear and courageous name, devoid of an elegiac foggy flair, like the Symbolists. Stone is a natural material, durable and solid, eternal material in the hands of a master. For Mandelstam, the stone is the primary construction material spiritual culture, not just material.

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

Mandelstam's attitude to the 1917 revolution was complex. However, any attempts by Mandelstam to find his place in 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 verses. In five years, none.

In 1929, the poet turns to prose, writes a book called "The Fourth Prose". It is not large in volume, but it fully spilled out that pain and contempt of the poet for opportunistic writers ("members of MASSOLIT"), which had accumulated 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 conceal his assessments and judgments. From the "Fourth Prose": "I divide all works of world literature into permitted and written without permission. The first are scum, the second are stolen air. I want to spit in the face of writers who write pre-authorized things, I want to beat them on the head with a stick and put everyone at the table in the Herzen House, placing a glass of policeman's tea in front of each and giving each one an analysis of Gornfeld's urine.

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

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

Mandelstam early realized himself as a poet, as creative person, which is destined to leave its mark on the history of literature and culture, 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 manifested itself, 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 I knew very friendly asked the nutcracker a traditional secular question:

What's new you wrote?

To which the nutcracker suddenly, quite unexpectedly, just fell off the chain:

If I wrote something new, then all of Russia would have known about it for a long time! And you are ignorant and vulgar! - shouted the nutcracker, shaking with indignation, and defiantly turned his back on the tactless novelist.

Mandelstam was not adapted to everyday life, to settled life. The concept of a house, a house-fortress, very important, for example, in the artistic world of M. Bulgakov, was not significant for Mandelstam. For him, the house 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: "There was nothing in the room that belonged to him, except for cigarettes - not a single personal item. And then I I understood its most striking feature - non-existence. In 1933, Mandelstam finally received an apartment - a two-room apartment! B. Pasternak, who visited him, said on leaving: "Well, now there is an apartment - you can write poetry." Mandelstam was furious. He cursed the apartment and offered to return it to those for whom it was intended: honest traitors, artists. It was horror before the payment that was required for the apartment.

Consciousness of the choice made, awareness of the tragedy of his fate, apparently, strengthened the poet, gave him strength, gave a tragic, majestic pathos to his new poems 4 . This pathos lies in the opposition of a free poetic personality to its age - the "age-beast". The poet does not feel himself insignificant before him, a miserable victim, he realizes himself equal:

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

Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam, whom E. Yevtushenko called "the greatest poet's widow in the 20th century," left two books of memoirs about Mandelstam - about his sacrificial feat of the poet. From these memoirs, one can understand, "even without knowing a single line of Mandelstam, that these pages recall a really 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 say 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. You tell me 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 is not in its literary merits. At the level of the best poetic discoveries here are the first two lines:

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

Of course, Mandelstam's fate was sealed. But to severely punish him in 1933 would have meant to advertise that ill-fated poem and, as it were, to settle the personal scores of the tyrant with the poet, which would be clearly not worthy of the "father of nations." There is a time for everything, Stalin knew how to wait, in this case - the great terror of 1937, when Mandelstam was destined to disappear without a trace along with hundreds of thousands of others.

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

The poet fought with the approaching despair: there was no means of subsistence, they avoided meeting him, his further fate was unclear, and with all his being as a poet, Mandelstam felt: the “age-beast” was overtaking him. A. Akhmatova, who visited Mandelstam in exile, testifies:

"Fear and muse are on duty..." Poems went on unstoppably, "irrecoverably" (as M. Tsvetaeva said at the same time - in 1934), they demanded an exit, demanded to be heard. Memoirists testify that once Mandelstam rushed to a pay phone and read new poems to the investigator to whom he was attached: "No, listen, I have no one else to read!" The poet's nerves were exposed, and he splashed out his pain in verse.

The poet was in a cage, but he was not broken, he was not deprived of the inner secret freedom that lifted him above everything even in prison:

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 were Poetry, uncontrollable and unstoppable. And no less dangerous for the authorities, because "the song is a form of linguistic disobedience, and its sound calls into question much more than a specific political system: it shakes the whole 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 verses he 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 Voronezh notebooks, like many of Mandelstam's poems of the 1930s, are imbued with a sense of imminent death, sometimes they sound like incantations, 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 begged. Friends and acquaintances helped: V. Shklovsky, B. Pasternak, I. Ehrenburg, V. Kataev, although it was not easy for them themselves. Subsequently, A. Akhmatova wrote about 1938: “The time was apocalyptic. Trouble followed all of us. The Mandelstams had no money. They had absolutely nowhere to live.

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, to the Far East, from where he would never return. The poet’s letter to his wife has been preserved, in which he wrote: “Health is very poor, exhausted to the extreme, emaciated, almost unrecognizable, but I don’t know if it makes sense to send things, food and money. Try it all the same. I’m very cold without things” .

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

Osip Mandelstam - life and work

Introduction

Once Baratynsky called a painter, sculptor, musician happy:

Cutter, organ, brush! Happy is he who is in good health

To them sensual, without stepping beyond them!

There is hops for him at the feast of the worldly!

Poetry, alas, is not included in this small list. Even if we pay attention to how long artists live, what longevity they have been granted. For example, Titian lived for 100 years, Michelangelo lived for 89 years, Matisse lived for 85 years, Picasso lived for 92 years...

Still, let's not get upset. After all, it is precisely to them that poetry, prose, is given the great ability to penetrate into the depths of the human soul, to comprehend the tragedy of the world, to shoulder all the hardships, all the pain, all the sorrow.

And at the same time do not despair, do not retreat, do not give up. Little of! In the struggle with historical, public and personal fate, poetry found the strength (especially Russian poetry of the 20th century) to find both joy and happiness ...

The twentieth century brought unheard-of suffering to man, but in these trials he taught him to value life, happiness: you begin to appreciate what is torn out of your hands.

It is characteristic that not in the 1930s, in the era of terrible state pressure on a person, but in much easier times - in the 70s - the spirit of despondency, denial penetrated into our poetry. disappointment. “The whole world is a mess” - such is the simple slogan offered by this poetry to man.

Looking back at the 20th century, I would like to say that in Russia it passed not only “under the sign of losses,” but also under the sign of gains. We have not accumulated material values, not well-being, not self-confidence, “not full of proud confidence” - we have accumulated experience. Historical, human. To think otherwise is to betray our friends who passed away in this era, who helped us cope with it.

The purpose of writing my essay is to tell about a person who lived through a difficult, but at the same time wonderful life, leaving a legacy of the best part of himself in his poems, which true connoisseurs of poetry often called brilliant.

The work of Osip Mandelstam is usually referred to as poetry. Silver Age". This era was distinguished by its complex political and social situation. Like each of the poets of the Silver Age, Mandelstam tried painfully to find a way out of the impasse that had developed at the turn of the century.

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam was born in Warsaw on the night of January 14-15, 1891. But not Warsaw, but another European capital - St. Petersburg, he considered his city - "born to tears." Warsaw was not a hometown for the poet's father, Emil Veniaminovich Mandelstam, a merchant far from prosperous, who kept expecting that his leather business was about to end in bankruptcy. In autumn 1894 the family moved to St. Petersburg. However, early childhood the poet was not held in the capital itself, but 30 kilometers from it - in Pavlovsk.

The sons were brought up by their mother, Flora Verblovskaya, who grew up in a Jewish Russian-speaking family, not alien to the traditional interests of the Russian intelligentsia in literature and art. The parents had the wisdom to send their contemplative and impressionable eldest son to one of the best educational institutions in St. Petersburg - the Tenishevsky School. For seven years of study, students acquired a large amount of knowledge than an average of a modern 4-year college gives.

In the senior classes of the school, in addition to an interest in literature, Mandelstam developed another interest: the young man tries to read Capital, studies the Erfurt Program and makes passionate speeches in the crowd.

After graduating from the Tenishev School, in the fall of 1907, Mandelstam went to Paris, the Mecca of young artistically minded intellectuals.

After living in Paris for a little over six months, he returns to St. Petersburg. There, a true success for him was a visit to the "Tower" of V. Ivanov - the famous salon, where the literary, artistic, philosophical and even mystical life of the capital of the empire gathered in the person of its best representatives. Here V. Ivanov taught a course on poetics, and here Mandelstam could get acquainted with the young poets who became his life companions.

While Mandelstam was living in Zehlendorf near Berlin in the summer of 1910, the St. Petersburg magazine Apollo published five of his poems. This publication was his literary debut.

The very fact of the first publication in "Apollo" is significant in the biography of Mandelstam. Already the first publication contributed to his literary fame. Let us note that the literary debut took place in the year of the crisis of symbolism, when the most sensitive of the poets felt a “new thrill” in the atmosphere of the era. In the symbolic verses of Mandelstam, printed in Apollo, the future acmeism is already guessed. But it took another year and a half for this school to fully develop in its main features.

The time preceding the release of the first book of the poet (“stone” 1930), perhaps the happiest in his life. This small collection (25 poems) was destined to be one of the outstanding achievements of Russian poetry. In the early poems of Mandelstam the Symbolist, N. Gumilyov noted the fragility of well-adjusted rhythms, a flair for style, a lacy composition, but most of all, Music, to which the poet is ready to sacrifice even poetry itself. The same willingness to go to the end at times decision is visible in the acmeistic verses of "Stone". “He loves buildings in the same way,” Gumilyov wrote, “as other poets love mountain or sea. He describes them in detail, finds parallels between them and himself, builds world theories on the basis of their lines. It seems to me that this is the most successful approach ... ”However, behind this success one can see the innate properties of the poet: his grandiose love of life, a heightened sense of proportion, an obsession with the poetic word.

Like most Russian poets, Mandelstam responded in verse to the military events of 1914-1918. But unlike Gumilyov, who saw in the world war the mystery of the spirit and went to the front as a volunteer, Mandelstam saw the war as a misfortune. He was released from service due to illness (asthenic syndrome). About his attitude to the war, he said to one of our memoirists: “My stone is not for this sling. I didn't prepare to feed on blood. I didn't prepare myself for cannon fodder. The war is being waged apart from me.”

On the contrary, the revolution in him as a person, and as a poet, aroused tremendous enthusiasm - up to the loss of mental balance. “The revolution was a huge event for him,” Akhmatova recalled.

The culminating event of his life was a clash with Chekist Yakov Blumkin. Prone to dramatic effects, Blumkin boasted of his unlimited power over the life and death of hundreds of people and, as proof, took out a bundle of arrest warrants signed in advance by Cheka chief Dzerzhinsky. As soon as Blumkin entered any name in the warrant, the life of an unsuspecting person was decided. “And Mandelstam, who is trembling in front of the dentist's typewriter, as if in front of a guillotine, suddenly jumps up, runs up to Blumkin, grabs the warrants, tears them to pieces,” wrote G. Ivanov. In this act, the whole of Mandelstam is both a person and a poet.

years civil war pass for Mandelstam on the road. About a month he lives in Kharkov; in April 1919 he arrives in Kiev. There he was arrested by counterintelligence of the Volunteer Army. This time, Kiev poets rescued Mandelstam from arrest and put him on a train going to the Crimea.

In the Crimea, Mandelstam was again arrested - as unreasonably and accidentally as the first time, but with the difference that now he was arrested by Wrangel intelligence. Far from those in power of any stripe, poor and independent, Mandelstam aroused distrust on the part of any authorities. From Tiflis, Mandelstam makes his way to Russia, to Petrograd. About this four-month stay in hometown- from October 1920 to March 1921 - many memoirs were written. By the time of his departure from Petrograd, the second collection of poems "Tristia" had already been completed - a book that brought its author world fame.

In the summer of 1930 he went to Armenia. The arrival there was for Mandelstam a return to the historical sources of culture. The cycle of poems “Armenia” was soon published in the Moscow magazine “ New world". E. Tager wrote about the impression made by the poems: “Armenia arose before us, born in music and light.”

Life was filled to the limit, although all the 30s it was a life on the verge of poverty. The poet was often in a nervous, excited state, realizing that he belongs to another century, that in this society of denunciations and murders he is a real renegade. Living in constant nervous tension, he wrote poems one better than the other - and experienced an acute crisis in all aspects of his life, except for creativity itself.

In the outer life one conflict followed another. In the summer of 1932, the writer S. Borodin, who lived in the neighborhood, insulted Mandelstam's wife. Mandelstam wrote a complaint to the Writers' Union. The court of honor that took place made a decision that was not satisfactory for the poet. The conflict remained unresolved for a long time. In the spring of 1934, having met the writer A. Tolstoy at the publishing house, under whose chairmanship the “trial of honor” was held, Mandelstam slapped him with the words: “I punished the executioner who issued the warrant to beat my wife.”

In my 1934, he was arrested for an anti-Stalinist, angry, sarcastic epigram, which he inadvertently read to his numerous acquaintances.

Nervous, exhausted, during the investigation he was very unstable and named the names of those to whom he read these poems about Stalin, realizing that he was putting innocent people in a dangerous position. The verdict soon followed: three years of exile in Cherdyn. He lived here with the knowledge that at any moment they could come for him and take him away to be shot. Suffering from hallucinations, while awaiting execution, he jumped out of the window, hurt himself and broke his shoulder. We find the details of these days in the memoirs of A. Akhmatova: “Nadya sent a telegram to the Central Committee. Stalin ordered to reconsider the case and allowed to choose another place. It is not known who influenced Stalin - maybe Bukharin, who wrote to him: "Poets are always right, history is for them." In any case, Mandelstam's fate was relieved: he was allowed to move from Cherdyn to Voronezh, where he spent about three years.

Osip Emilievich (Joseph Khatskelevich) Mandelstam is a Jewish poet and essayist who lived in Russia and the USSR. Born on January 3 (15), 1891, presumably died on December 27, 1938.

Mandelstam was born in Warsaw (which then belonged to Russian Empire) in 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 wealth of his parents, Osip went abroad, where he spent several years, traveled to 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 War ...”, “The Menagerie”), blaming all powers, but especially the Russian Tsar, for the bloodshed.

(January 3, old style) 1891 in Warsaw (Poland) in the family of a tanner and glove master. The ancient Jewish family of Mandelstams gave the world famous rabbis, physicists and doctors, translators of the Bible and literary historians.

Shortly after the birth of Osip, his family moved to the city of Pavlovsk near St. Petersburg, and then in 1897 to St. Petersburg.

In 1900, Osip Mandelstam entered the Tenishevsky Commercial School. A teacher of Russian literature Vladimir Gippius had a great influence on the formation of a young man during his studies. At the school, Mandelstam began to write poetry, at the same time he was carried away by the ideas of the Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Immediately after graduating from the school in 1907, Mandelstam went to Paris, listened to lectures at the Sorbonne. In France, Mandelstam discovered the old French epic, the poetry of Francois Villon, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine. He met the poet Nikolai Gumilyov.

In 1909-1910, Mandelstam lived in Berlin, studied philosophy and philology at Heidelberg University.

In October 1910 he returned to Petersburg. Mandelstam's literary debut took place in August 1910, when five of his poems were published in the Apollon magazine. During these years, he was fond of the ideas and work of symbolist poets, became a frequent guest of Vyacheslav Ivanov, the theorist of symbolism, who gathered talented writers.

In 1911, Osip Mandelstam, wanting to systematize his knowledge, entered the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University. By this time, he had firmly entered the literary environment - he belonged to the group of acmeists (from the Greek "acme" - highest degree something, blooming power), to the "Workshop of Poets" organized by Nikolai Gumilyov, which included Anna Akhmatova, Sergey Gorodetsky, Mikhail Kuzmin and others.

In 1913, the Akme publishing house published Mandelstam's first book, Stone, which included 23 poems from 1908-1913. By this time, the poet had already moved away from the influence of symbolism. During these years, Mandelstam's poems were often published in the Apollon magazine, and the young poet gained fame. In December 1915, the second edition of "Stone" was published (publishing house "Hyperborey"), almost three times more than the first in volume (the collection was supplemented with texts from 1914-1915).

At the beginning of 1916, at a literary evening in Petrograd, Mandelstam met Marina Tsvetaeva. From that evening, their friendship began, a kind of "poetic" result of which was several poems dedicated by poets to each other.

The 1920s were for Mandelstam a time of intense and varied literary work. New collections of poetry were published: Tristia (1922), Second Book (1923), Stone (3rd edition, 1923). The poet's poems were published in Petrograd, Moscow, Berlin. Mandelstam published a number of articles on the most important problems of history, culture and humanism: "Word and Culture", "On the Nature of the Word", "Human Wheat", etc. In 1925, Mandelstam published an autobiographical book, The Noise of Time. Several books for children were published: "Two Trams", "Primus" (1925), "Balloons" (1926). In 1928, Mandelstam's last lifetime book of poems "Poems" was published, and a little later - a collection of articles "On Poetry" and the story "Egyptian Mark".

Mandelstam devoted a lot of time to translation work. Fluent in French, German and English, he undertook (often for the purpose of earning) translations of the prose of contemporary foreign writers. He treated poetic translations with special care, showing high skill. In the 1930s, when the open persecution of the poet began and it became more and more difficult to print, translation remained the outlet where the poet could save himself. During these years he translated dozens of books.

In 1930, Mandelstam visited Armenia. The result of this trip was the prose "Journey to Armenia" and the poetry cycle "Armenia", which was only partially published in 1933.

In the fall of 1933, Mandelstam wrote a poetic epigram against Stalin "We live, not smelling the country under us ...", for which he was arrested in May 1934. He was sent to Cherdyn in the Northern Urals, where he stayed for two weeks, fell ill and was hospitalized. Then he was exiled to Voronezh, where he worked in newspapers and magazines, on the radio. After the expiration of the term of exile, Mandelstam returned to Moscow, but he was forbidden to live here. The poet lived in Kalinin (now the city of Tver).

In May 1938, Mandelstam was again arrested. Sentence - five years in the camps for counter-revolutionary activities. Stage was sent to the Far East.

Osip Mandelstam died on December 27, 1938 in a hospital hut in a transit camp on the Second River (now within the city of Vladivostok).

The name of Osip Mandelstam remained banned in the USSR for about 20 years.

The poet's wife, Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam, and the poet's friends preserved his poems, which became possible to publish in the 1960s. All of Mandelstam's works have now been published.

In 1991, the Mandelstam Society was created in Moscow, the purpose of which is to collect, preserve, study and popularize the creative heritage of one of the great Russian poets of the 20th century. Since 1992, the Mandelstam Society has been based at the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH).

In April 1998, as a joint project of the university and the Mandelstam Society, the Cabinet of Mandelstam Studies was opened. scientific library RGGU.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources