A short biography of Mandelstam. Brief biography of Mandelstam Osip Emilievich
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam (1891 -1938) was born in Warsaw. His father grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family. Emilius Veniaminovich fled to Berlin as a young man and independently became familiar with European culture, but was never able to speak Russian or German purely.
Mandelstam's mother, a native of Vilna, came from an intelligent family. She instilled in her three sons, of whom Osip was the eldest, a love of music (she played the piano) and Russian literature.
Mandelstam spent his childhood in Pavlovsk; from the age of six he lived in St. Petersburg. At the age of 9, Osip entered the Tenishev School, which was famous for educating thinking youth. Here he fell in love with Russian literature and began writing poetry.
The parents did not like the young man’s passion for politics, so in 1907 they sent their son to the Sorbonne, where Mandelstam studied the works of French poets from different eras. He met Gumilyov and continued his writing experiments. After the Sorbonne, Mandelstam studied philosophy and philology at the University of Heidelberg.
Since 1909, Mandelstam has been a member of the literary circle of St. Petersburg. He attends meetings in the “tower” of Vyacheslav Ivanov and meets Akhmatova.
The beginning of creativity
Mandelstam's debut took place in 1910. The poet's first 5 poems were published in the Apollo magazine. Mandelstam becomes a member of the "Workshop of Poets", reads poetry in "Stray Dog".
Due to the impoverishment of his family, Mandelstam could not continue his studies abroad, so in 1911 he entered the Romano-Germanic department of the Faculty of History and Philosophy in St. Petersburg. To do this, the young man had to be baptized. The question of Mandelstam's religiosity and faith is very complex. Both Judaism and Christianity influenced his prose and poetic images.
In 1913, Mandelstam's first book, “Stone,” was published. It was reprinted three times (1915, 1923), the composition of the poems in it changed.
Mandelstam - Acmeist
All his life, Mandelstam was faithful to the literary movement of Acmeism, which advocated the concreteness and materiality of images. The words of Acmeism poetry must be precisely measured and weighed. Mandelstam's poems were published as an example of Acmeist poetry under the declaration of 1912. At this time, the poet often published in the magazine Apollo, which was originally the organ of the Symbolists, to whom the Acmeists opposed themselves.
Fate in the revolution and civil war
Serving as a minor official did not bring money. Mandelstam wandered after the revolution. He visited Moscow and Kyiv, and in Crimea, due to a misunderstanding, ended up in the Wrangel prison. The release was facilitated by Voloshin, who argued that Mandelstam was incapable of service and political convictions.
Mandelstam's Hope and Love
In 1919, Mandelstam found his Nadezhda (Khazina) in the Kiev cafe KHLAM (artists, writers, performers, musicians). They got married in 1922. The couple supported each other all their lives, Nadezhda petitioned for commutation of sentences and release.
Peak of poetic creativity
In 1920-1924. Mandelstam creates, constantly changing his place of residence (Petrograd room in the “House of Arts” - a trip to Georgia - Moscow - Leningrad).
In 1922-23 Three collections of Mandelstam’s poetry (“Tristia”, “Second Book” and the latest edition of “Stone”) are published, poems are published in the USSR and Berlin. Mandelstam actively writes and publishes journalism. The articles are devoted to problems of history, cultural studies, and philology.
In 1925, the autobiographical prose “The Noise of Time” was published. In 1928, a collection of poems was published. This is the last poetry book published during the poet's lifetime. At the same time, a collection of articles “On Poetry” and the story “The Egyptian Brand” were published.
Years of wandering
In 1930, Mandelstam and his wife traveled around the Caucasus. The journalism “Travel to Armenia” and the cycle of poems “Armenia” were created. Upon their return, the Mandelstam couple moved from Leningrad to Moscow in search of housing, and soon the impractical Mandelstam received a pension of 200 rubles a month “for services to Russian literature.” Just at this time, Mandelstam was no longer published.
Civil feat of the poet
After 1930, the nature of Mandelstam’s work changed, the poems acquired a civic orientation and conveyed the feelings of the lyrical hero who lives “without feeling the country beneath him.” For this pamphlet and epigram on Stalin, Mandelstam was first arrested in 1934. A three-year exile in Cherdyn was replaced with an exile in Voronezh at the request of Akhmatova and Pasternak. Sheltering the Mandelstams after exile was an act of civil courage. They were forbidden to settle in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In 1932, Mandelstam was arrested for counter-revolutionary activities and died the same year in a Vladivostok transit prison from typhus. Mandelstam was buried in a mass grave, the burial place is unknown.
- “Notre Dame”, analysis of Mandelstam’s poem
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 subject. 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. One 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 now famous line “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.
Osip Mandelstam - life and work
Introduction
Baratynsky once called a painter, sculptor, and musician happy:
Incisor, organ, brush! Happy is he who is at ease
To them sensually, without going beyond them!
There is hops for him at this worldly festival!
Poetry, alas, is not included in this small list. Even if we pay attention to how long artists live, what kind of longevity they are given. For example, Titian lived 100 years, Michelangelo lived 89 years, Matisse - 85 years, Picasso - 92 years...
Still, let’s not be upset. After all, it is to them that poetry and prose are given the great ability to penetrate into the depths of the human soul, to comprehend the tragedy of the world, to shoulder all the burdens, 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 fight against historical, social and personal fate, poetry found the strength (especially Russian poetry of the 20th century) to find joy and happiness...
The twentieth century brought unheard-of suffering to man, but in these trials it taught him to value life and happiness: you begin to appreciate what is taken out of your hands.
It is characteristic that not in the 30s, in the era of terrible state pressure on people, but in much easier times - in the 70s - the spirit of despondency and denial penetrated into our poetry. disappointments. “The whole world is a mess” - this is the simple slogan proposed 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 suffered,” but also under the sign of acquisitions. We have not accumulated material values, not prosperity, not self-confidence, “not a peace full of proud trust” - we have accumulated experience. Historical, human. To think otherwise is to betray our friends who passed away during this era and helped us cope with it.
The purpose of writing my essay is to tell about a person who lived a difficult, but at the same time wonderful life, leaving as a legacy the best part of himself in his poems, which true connoisseurs of poetry often called brilliant.
The work of Osip Mandelstam is usually attributed to the poetry of the “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 created at the turn of the century.
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam was born in Warsaw on the night of January 14-15, 1891. But he considered not Warsaw, but another European capital - St. Petersburg, his city - “darling to tears.” Warsaw was not the hometown of the poet’s father, Emilius Veniaminovich Mandelstam, a far from successful merchant who constantly expected his leather business to end in bankruptcy. In the fall of 1894, the family moved to St. Petersburg. However, the poet’s early childhood was not spent in the capital itself, but 30 kilometers from it - in Pavlovsk.
The sons were raised by their mother, Flora Verblovskaya, who grew up in a Russian-speaking Jewish family, not alien to the traditional interests in literature and art of the Russian intelligentsia. The parents had the wisdom to send their contemplative and impressionable eldest son to one of the best educational institutions in St. Petersburg - the Tenishev School. Over seven years of study, students acquired a greater amount of knowledge than is provided on average by a modern 4-year college.
In high school, in addition to his 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, Mandelstam in the fall of 1907 went to Paris, the Mecca of young, artistically minded intellectuals.
Having lived in Paris for a little over six months, he returns to St. Petersburg. There, a true success for him was a visit to V. Ivanov’s “Tower” - the famous salon, where the best representatives of the literary, artistic, philosophical and even mystical life of the capital of the empire gathered. Here V. Ivanov taught a course on poetics, and here Mandelstam could meet the young poets who became his life’s 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 trepidation” in the atmosphere of the era. In the symbolic poems of Mandelstam, published 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 publication of the poet’s first book (“Stone” 1930) was 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-calibrated rhythms, a flair for style, a lacy composition, but most of all, Music, to which the poet was ready to sacrifice even poetry itself. The same readiness to go to the end of a once-made decision is visible in the acmeistic verses of “The Stone.” “He loves buildings in the same way,” wrote Gumilyov, “as other poets love grief or the sea. He describes them in detail, finds parallels between them and himself, and builds world theories based on their lines. It seems to me that this is the most successful approach...” However, behind this success one can see the innate qualities of the poet: his grandiose love of life, a heightened sense of proportion, obsession with the poetic word.
Like most Russian poets, Mandelstam responded in poetry to the military events of 1914–1918. But unlike Gumilyov, who saw the world war as a mystery of the spirit and volunteered to go to the front, Mandelstam saw war as a misfortune. He was released from service due to illness (asthenic syndrome). He told one of our memoirists about his attitude towards the war: “My stone is not for this sling. I wasn't preparing to feed on blood. I didn't prepare myself to be cannon fodder. The war is being waged without me.”
On the contrary, the revolution aroused tremendous enthusiasm in him as a person and as a poet - to the point of losing mental balance. “The revolution was a huge event for him,” Akhmatova recalled.
The culminating event of his life was a clash with the security officer Yakov Blumkin. Prone to dramatic effects, Blumkin boasted of his unlimited power over the life and death of hundreds of people and, as proof, pulled out a stack of arrest warrants, signed in advance by the chief of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky. As soon as Blumkin entered any name into the warrant, the life of an unsuspecting person was decided. “And Mandelstam, who trembles in front of the dentist’s machine as if in front of a guillotine, suddenly jumps up, runs up to Blumkin, snatches the warrants, tears them into pieces,” wrote G. Ivanov. In this act the whole of Mandelstam is both a man and a poet.
The years of the civil war passed for Mandelstam on the road. He lives in Kharkov for about a month; in April 1919 he came to Kyiv. There he was arrested by counterintelligence of the Volunteer Army. This time Mandelstam was rescued from arrest by Kiev poets and put him on a train going to Crimea.
In Crimea, Mandelstam was arrested again - 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. Many memoirs have been written about this four-month stay in his hometown - from October 1920 to March 1921. By the time he left 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. Arriving 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 appeared before us, born in music and light.”
Life was filled to the limit, although throughout the 30s it was life on the brink of poverty. The poet was often in a nervous, excited state, realizing that he belonged to another century, that in this society of denunciations and murders he was 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 external life, one conflict followed another. In the summer of 1932, the writer S. Borodin, who lived next door, 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 “court of honor” was taking place, Mandelstam slapped him in the face with the words: “I punished the executioner who issued a warrant to beat my wife.”
In 1934, he was arrested for an anti-Stalinist, angry, sarcastic epigram, which he carelessly read to his many acquaintances.
Nervous, exhausted, he did not behave very stoically during the investigation and named the names of those to whom he read these poems about Stalin, realizing that he was putting innocent people in a dangerous situation. A sentence 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 and awaiting execution, he jumped out of a window, hurt himself and broke his shoulder. We find details of these days in the memoirs of A. Akhmatova: “Nadya sent a telegram to the Central Committee. Stalin ordered the case to be reconsidered and allowed him to choose another place. It is unknown who influenced Stalin - perhaps Bukharin, who wrote to him: “Poets are always right, history is for them.” In any case, Mandelstam’s fate was eased: he was allowed to move from Cherdyn to Voronezh, where he spent about three years.
Osip Mandelstam was born in Warsaw on January 15, 1891 into the Jewish family of an unsuccessful businessman who was always moving from place to place due to his trading failures. Osip's father wrote and even spoke Russian poorly. And the mother, on the contrary, was an intelligent, educated woman from a literary background, despite her Jewish origin, and spoke beautiful and pure Russian speech. His grandparents preserved the “black and yellow ritual,” that is, the Jewish one, in their homes. The father wanted to see his son as a rabbi and therefore forbade him to read ordinary secular books. Only the Talmud. At the age of fourteen, Osip ran away from home to Berlin, where he briefly studied at a higher Talmudic school, and read mainly Schiller and the works of philosophers. Then he graduated from the Teneshevsky Commercial School in St. Petersburg, where his family lived at that time. There he began his first poetic attempts. Then - a trip to Paris, where he became interested in French symbolism. By the way, much later, already a mature poet, Mandelstam called symbolism “a wretched nothingness.” In 1910, Osip studied at the University of Heidelberg (only two semesters), where he studied Old French. Then - admission to St. Petersburg University at the Faculty of History and Philology. Whether he graduated from it is not known for certain.
Creation
It all started when philology student Osip Mandelstam joined a group of young, talented and cocky Acmeist poets. Their community was called the “Workshop of Poets.” They poeticized the world of primordial emotions, emphasized associations on objects and details, and preached the unambiguousness of images. Acmeism assumed perfection, sharpness of verse, its brilliance and sharpness, like a blade. And perfection can be achieved only by choosing untrodden paths and seeing the world exactly for the first and last time. These were Mandelstam’s guidelines for the rest of his life. The poet gave the same name to the first three collections - “Stone”; they were published between 1913 and 1916. He even wanted to give his fourth book the same title. Akhmatova once suggested that Mandelstam did not have a teacher, because his poems are some kind of new, unprecedented “divine harmony.” But Mandelstam himself called F.I. Tyutchev his teacher. In a poem in 1933, Tyutchev wrote about a stone that fell from nowhere. And it seems that Mandelstam made these poems his “cornerstone.” He wrote in his article “The Morning of Acmeism” that he picked up the “Tyutchev stone” and made it the foundation of “his building.” In his later study, “Conversation about Dante,” he again talked a lot about the stone, and from his thoughts it follows that for him the stone is a symbol of the connection of times, phenomena and events; it is not only a particle of the universe, but an animated witness of history. And the world of the immortal human soul is also a tiny gem or meteorite, thrown into the universe by someone. Hence the comprehensive philosophical system of Mandelstam’s poetic creativity. In his poems live Hellenic heroes, Gothic temples of the Middle Ages, great emperors, musicians, poets, philosophers, painters, conquerors... In his poems there is a mighty force, and the power of a thinker, and encyclopedic erudition, but at the same time, they also sound gullible , the childish intonation of a simple-minded, even naive person, as he, in fact, was in ordinary life.
During the "Stalin years"
In the 30s, Mandelstam was no longer published. And at the end of May 1934 he was arrested - one of his “friends” reported to the authorities about the epigram on “Comrade Stalin”. He was exiled to Cherdyn, after which he was forced to live in Voronezh for several years, since the punishment included a ban on living in large cities. There he lived with his selfless wife and devoted friend Nadezhda Yakovlevna, who wrote two volumes of memoirs about her husband and accomplished an extremely dangerous task - she saved and organized the poet’s archive, which in those years could be equated to a feat. At the beginning of May 1938, Mandelstam was arrested again. And this time to certain death. When, how and where this amazing poet with the soul of a child died, no one knows, just as no one knows where his grave is. We only know that this is one of the common burials at some transit point near Vladivostok.
Osip Emilievich Mandelstam (1891-1938) first appeared in print in 1908. Mandelstam was among the founders, but occupied a special place in Acmeism. Most of the poems from the pre-revolutionary period were included in the collection (first edition - 1913, second, expanded - 1916). Early Mandelstam(until 1912) gravitates towards themes and images.
Acmeistic tendencies were most clearly manifested in his poems about world culture and architecture of the past (, and others). Mandelstam proved himself to be a master of recreating the historical flavor of the era (, and others). During the First World War, the poet writes anti-war poems (, 1916).
The poems written during the years of the revolution and civil war reflected the difficulty of the poet’s artistic comprehension of the new reality. Despite ideological hesitations, Mandelstam looked for ways to creatively participate in a new life. His poems of the 20s testify to this.
New features of Mandelstam’s poetry are revealed in his lyrics of the 30s: a tendency towards broad generalizations, towards images that embody the forces of the “black soil” (the cycle “Poems 1930-1937”). Articles on poetry occupy a significant place in Mandelstam's work. The most complete presentation of the poet’s aesthetic views is contained in the treatise “Conversation about Dante” (1933).
Biography from Wikipedia
Osip Mandelstam was born on January 3 (January 15, new style) 1891 in Warsaw. Father, Emil Veniaminovich (Emil, Khaskl, Khatskel Beniaminovich) Mandelstam (1856-1938), was a master glove maker and was a member of the first guild of merchants, which gave him the right to live outside the Pale of Settlement, despite his Jewish origin. Mother, Flora Osipovna Verblovskaya (1866-1916), was a musician.
In 1897, the Mandelstam family moved to St. Petersburg. Osip was educated at the Tenishevsky School (from 1900 to 1907), the Russian forge of “cultural personnel” of the early twentieth century.
In 1908-1910, Mandelstam studied at the Sorbonne and the University of Heidelberg. At the Sorbonne he attends lectures by A. Bergson and J. Bedier at the College de France. Meets Nikolai Gumilyov, is fascinated by French poetry: Old French epic, Francois Villon, Baudelaire and Verlaine.
In between trips abroad, he visits St. Petersburg, where he attends lectures on poetry at the “tower” by Vyacheslav Ivanov.
By 1911, the family began to go bankrupt and studying in Europe became impossible.
In order to bypass the quota for Jews when entering St. Petersburg University, Mandelstam was baptized by a Methodist pastor. On September 10 of the same 1911, he was enrolled in the Romance-Germanic department of the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University, where he studied intermittently until 1917. He studies carelessly and never finishes the course.
In 1911, he met Anna Akhmatova and visited the Gumilyov couple.
The first publication was the magazine “Apollo”, 1910, No. 9. He was also published in the magazines “Hyperborea”, “New Satyricon”, etc.
In 1912 he met A. Blok. At the end of the same year, he became a member of the Acmeist group and regularly attended meetings of the Workshop of Poets.
He considered his friendship with the Acmeists (Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilev) to be one of the main successes of his life.
The poetic searches of this period were reflected in the debut book of poems “Stone” (three editions: 1913, 1916 and 1922, the contents varied). He is at the center of poetic life, regularly reads poetry in public, visits Stray Dog, becomes acquainted with futurism, and becomes close to Benedict Livshits.
In 1915 he met Anastasia and Marina Tsvetaev. In 1916, Marina Tsvetaeva entered the life of O. E. Mandelstam.
After the October Revolution, he worked in newspapers, in the People's Commissariat for Education, traveled around the country, published in newspapers, performed poetry, and gained success. In 1919, in Kyiv, he met his future wife, Nadezhda Yakovlevna Khazina.
Poems from the time of the First World War and the Revolution (1916-1920) made up the second book “Tristia” (“Sorrowful Elegies”, the title goes back to Ovid), published in 1922 in Berlin. In 1922, he registered his marriage with Nadezhda Yakovlevna Khazina.
In 1923, the “Second Book” was published and with a general dedication to “N. X." - to my wife.
During the civil war he wanders with his wife throughout Russia, Ukraine, Georgia; been arrested.
From May 1925 to October 1930 there was a pause in poetic creativity. At this time, prose was written, to the “Noise of Time” created in 1923 (the title plays on Blok’s metaphor “music of time”), the story “The Egyptian Brand” (1927), varying Gogol’s motifs, was added.
He makes his living by translating poetry.
In 1928, the last lifetime collection of poetry, “Poems,” was published, as well as a book of his selected articles, “On Poetry.”
In 1930 he finished work on the “Fourth Prose”. N. Bukharin is concerned about Mandelstam’s business trip to Armenia. After traveling to the Caucasus (Armenia, Sukhum, Tiflis), Osip Mandelstam returned to writing poetry.
Mandelstam's poetic gift reaches its peak, but it is almost never published. The intercession of B. Pasternak and N. Bukharin gives the poet small breaks from everyday life.
He independently studies the Italian language, reads the Divine Comedy in the original. The programmatic poetological essay “Conversation about Dante” was written in 1933. Mandelstam discusses it with A. Bely.
In Literaturnaya Gazeta, Pravda, and Zvezda, devastating articles were published in connection with the publication of Mandelstam’s “Travel to Armenia” (Zvezda, 1933, No. 5).
In November 1933, Osip Mandelstam wrote an anti-Stalin epigram, which he read to fifteen people.
B. Pasternak called this act suicide.
One of the listeners denounces Mandelstam. The investigation into the case was led by N. Kh. Shivarov.
On the night of May 13-14, 1934, Mandelstam was arrested and sent into exile in Cherdyn (Perm region). Osip Mandelstam is accompanied by his wife, Nadezhda Yakovlevna.
In Cherdyn, O. E. Mandelstam attempts suicide (throws himself out of the window). Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam writes to all Soviet authorities and to all her acquaintances. With the assistance of Nikolai Bukharin, Mandelstam is allowed to independently choose a place to settle. The Mandelstams choose Voronezh.
They live in poverty, and occasionally a few persistent friends help them with money. From time to time O. E. Mandelstam works part-time at a local newspaper and in the theater. Close people visit them, Nadezhda Yakovlevna’s mother, artist V.N. Yakhontov, Anna Akhmatova.
The Voronezh cycle of poems by Mandelstam (the so-called “Voronezh notebooks”) is considered the pinnacle of his poetic creativity.
In a 1938 statement by the Secretary of the USSR Writers' Union V. Stavsky addressed to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs N. I. Yezhov, it was proposed to “resolve the issue of Mandelstam”; his poems were called “obscene and slanderous.” Joseph Prut and Valentin Kataev were named in the letter as having “spoken sharply” in defense of Osip Mandelstam.
Soon Mandelstam was arrested a second time and sent along a convoy to a camp in the Far East.
Osip Mandelstam died on December 27, 1938 from typhus in the Vladperpunkt transit camp (Vladivostok). Rehabilitated posthumously: in the case of 1938 - in 1956, in the case of 1934 - in 1987. The location of the poet's grave is still unknown.