MANDELSHTAM, NADEZHDA YAKOVLEVNA

MANDELSHTAM, NADEZHDA YAKOVLEVNA (1899–1980), Russian writer and philologist. Mandelshtam was born in Saratov, to a lawyer father who was the son of a cantonist and turned to Russian Orthodoxy, and a Jewish mother who was a physician. She herself was baptized as a child. She was educated in Kiev, where she studied art in the studio of the painter A. Ekster and worked as an assistant stage designer. In 1919, she met the poet O.E. Mandelshtam , whom she married in 1921. She assisted her husband in his translation work, herself translating from English. After his exile and death, she preserved his manuscripts and helped to prepare them for publication. In 1956, she was awarded the degree of Candidate of Philological Sciences for her dissertation Function of the Accusative in Anglo-Saxon Poetic Monuments. Mandelshtam achieved considerable literary fame in the West following publication of her remarkable memoirs, Hope against Hope (1970). Her second book of memoirs, Vtoraya Kniga (1972), was translated into English as Hope Abandoned (1974). After her death her friends collected her poems, commentaries, and other materials into a third book of memoirs, published in Paris in 1987. Mrs. Mandelshtam lived in Moscow. She was buried at services conducted by the Russian Orthodox Church, with which she identified all her life.