Nadezhda Mandelstam Quotes

Russian writer and educator

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Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam (Russian: Надежда Яковлевна Мандельштам, IPA: [nɐˈdʲeʐdə ˈjakəvlʲɪvnə mənʲdʲɪlʲˈʂtam]; née Khazina [Хазина]; 30 October [O.S. 18 October] 1899 – 29 December 1980) was a Russian Jewish writer and educator, and the wife of the poet Osip Mandelstam who died in 1938 in a transit camp to the gulag of Siberia.

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Alternative Names: Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam • Nadezhda Mandelshtam • Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelshtam • Nadezhda Khazina • Nadezhda Yakovlevna Khazina • Nadezhda Iakovlevna Mandel’shtam

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Now again we are not supposed to remember the past and think-let alone speak about it. (42: Last Letter)

Why were they all so eager for fame? Surely nothing was ever less worth thinking about. (p 427)

How can I forget when our life together was cut short literally in midsentence? The words never said are like a lump in my throat, and the thought of them torments me. (28: Stages in My Life)

when her husband is taken away, a woman turns to stone, into an automaton, into I don't know what, the frozen expression I must have had during those last minutes I have seen only on the faces of other women whose husbands had been arrested. (28: Stages in My Life)

I am even now constantly tormented by the thought of those years of life we were not allowed to live. I am always wondering what they would have been like if we had not been cheated of them. (28: Stages in My Life)