Toward a Personal Memoir of Nadezhda Iakovlevna Mandel’shtam

Abstract

In mythology, there are tales, in which the Hero sets out for distant lands to seek his fortune. He thinks he knows his goal and where he is headed. He bounces along the road jauntily, perhaps even whistling with the joy of being alive and the triumph of being an independent, fully capable adult. He may have doubts, but he conceals them, trusting to luck and bravado. Along the way, he encounters an old man or old woman, the Wise Person, who gives instructions and tasks to do, warns of perils, tells him exactly where to go, whom he will meet and what words to speak, who reveals secrets and says mysterious things. Events take on a peculiar character-whatever they had seemed to be before, they now turn out to be something else. People change form and reveal their true natures. The encounter is unexpected. The outcome is unknown. When it is over, the Hero has entered a new stage of life. The road behind has closed; he cannot turn back. This is what happened to me, and the person I met on my path was Nadezhda Iakovlevna Mandel'shtam. The year was 1970, the place was Moscow. It was during the Brezhnev era, a dark period. After the terror of the Stalin time, there was the loosening of the 1960s, the so-called Thaw. Now there was a tightening. I, who had not experienced any of this history, and only dimly aware of what lurked in the impenetrable landscape on either side of my whistling path, met my adventure with great excitement, concealed my doubts, and followed my luck. Now it is the twenty-first century and Nadezhda Iakovlevna has entered a new period. She has passed her 100th birthday, and many wish to understand her. What I can say is that she had a profound psychological effect on people. She was powerful, truly in the mythic sense. She was a presence one could not ignore and which I still feel. I can summon her up in a moment. All I have to do is go down the narrow tube of my memory, falling swiftly through thirty years, and I see her sitting at the end of the tube, a tiny figure at her table, with a shawl, a cigarette, and her cracked voice. She is looking at me with a look of recognition. She is saying, Devochka, where have you been? To help in this record of Nadezhda Iakovlevna that we are putting together, all I can tell you is the effect she had on me, as seen through two lenses, one on each end of the thirtyyear-long tube. First there is the lens of who I was in 1970, a young graduate student. Then there is the lens of who I am today. In 1970, I was almost fifty years younger than