Mandelstam was born in
Warsaw, to a wealthy Jewish family. His father, a tanner by trade, was able to receive a dispensation freeing the family from the
pale of settlement, and soon after Osip's birth they moved to
Saint Petersburg. In
1900 Mandelstam entered the prestigious
Tenishevsky school, which also counts
Vladimir Nabokov and other significant figures of Russian (and Soviet) culture among its alumni. His first poems were printed in the school's almanac in
1907.
In April
1908 Mandelstam decided to enter the
Sorbonne to study literature and philosophy, but he left the following year to attend the
University of Heidelberg. In
1911, in order to continue education in the
University of St. Petersburg, he converted to
Methodism (which he did not practice) and entered the university the same year
http://www.aalto.vbg.ru/Unit3/contacts5.shtmhttp://www.jewishgen.org/LITVAK/HTML/OnlineJournals/Mandelshtam.htm.
Mandelstam's poetry, acutely
populist in spirit after the
first Russian revolution, became closely associated with
symbolist imagery, and in 1911 he and several other young Russian poets formed "Poets' Guild" (Russian: Цех Поэтов,
Tsekh Poetov), under the formal leadership of
Nikolai Gumilyov and
Sergei Gorodetsky. The nucleus of this group would then become known as
Acmeists. Mandelstam had authored the manifesto for the new movement -
The Morning Of Acmeism (
1913, published in
1919). 1913 also saw the publication of the first collection of poems,
The Stone (Russian: Камень,
Kamyen), to be reissued in 1916 in a greatly expanded format, but under the same title.
In
1922 Mandelstam arrived in
Moscow with his newlywed wife
Nadezhda. At the same time his second book of poems,
Tristia, was published in
Berlin. For several years after that, he almost completely abandoned poetry, concentrating on essays, literary criticism, memoirs (
The Din Of Time, Russian: Шум времени,
Shum vremeni; Феодосия,
Feodosiya - both
1925) and small-format prose (
The Egyptian Stamp, Russian: Египетская марка,
Yegipetskaya marka -
1928). As a day job, he translated (19 books in 6 years), then worked as a correspondent for a newspaper.
Mandelstam's non-conformist, anti-establishment tendencies always simmered not far from the surface, and in the autumn of
1933 they broke through in form of the famous "
Stalin Epigram".
The poem, sharply criticising the "Kremlin highlander", was described elsewhere as a "sixteen line death sentence", likely prompted by Mandelstam's seeing (in the summer of that year, while vacationing in
Crimea) the effects of the
Great Famine, a result of
Stalin's collectivisation in the USSR and his drive to exterminate the "
kulaks". Six months later Mandelstam was arrested.
However, after the customary
pro forma inquest he not only was spared his life, but the sentence did not even include
labor camps - a miraculous event, usually explained by historians as owing to Stalin's personal interest in his fate. Mandelstam was "only" exiled to
Cherdyn in Northern
Ural with his wife. After his attempt to commit
suicide the regime was softened, and he was banished from the largest cities but otherwise allowed to choose his new place of residence. He and his wife chose
Voronezh.
This proved a temporary reprieve. In the coming years, Mandelstam would (as was expected of him) write several poems which seemed to glorify Stalin (including
Ode To Stalin), but in
1937, at the outset of the
Great Purge, the literary establishment began the systematic assault on him in print, first locally and soon after that from Moscow, accusing him of harboring
anti-Soviet views. Early next year Mandelstam and his wife received a government voucher for a vacation not far from Moscow; upon their arrival in May 1938 he was promptly arrested again and charged with "counter-revolutionary activities".
Four months later Mandelstam was sentenced to hard labor. He arrived at transit camp near
Vladivostok and managed to pass on a note to his wife back home with a request for warm clothes; he never received them. The official cause of his death is an unspecified illness.
Mandelstam's own prophecy was fulfilled:
:"
Only in Russia poetry is respected – it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?"
Nadezhda Mandelstam presented her account of the events surrounding her husband's life in
Hope against Hope (ISBN 1-86046-635-4) and later continued with
Hope Abandoned (ISBN 0-689-10549-5).
