Mandelstams' Struggles, Jewish Role in USSR Emerge in 'Hope Abandoned' Osip Mandelstam, now rec- ognized as one of Russia's greatest poets, and his wife, Nadezhda Mandelstam, were both persecuted. Osip was Stalin's victim because he had written a poem about the dictator and his crimes. He described Stalin as a het- man whose savoring of death was like a raspberry. (The raspberry reference is explained by Nadezhda Mandelstam in this footnote: ("In Russian malinovy de- rives from matina ("rasp- berry") and occurs in several expressions implying rich- ness, mellowness and warmth. The author mentions malinovy zvon for a rich chime of bells (though here the word is derived, by popu- lar etymology, from Malines, in Belgium, where such bells were cast). Mali= can also mean a feast or a treat, and is used in this sense in Man- delstam's poem about Stalin ("and every killing is a treat for the broad-chested Ossete" —quoted here in the text, where, as the author says, its use in a bitterly ironical sense does not contradict her point about the warm associa- tions of the word)." That started the series of cruelties, Mandelstam's ex- ile, his io rture which nearly drove him to suicide. The poem was written in 1934. The Mandelstams were then subjected to many harass- ments and they struggled in poverty during the coming years of misery. Then Man- delstam was arrested again in 1938. - He was not heard from and it was not until much later that his wife learned that he died seven months after his arrest. It is assumed that it was one of Stalin's purges: one of the murders. In 1970 Mrs. Mandelstam wrote the now famous ac- count of that struggle in "Hope Against Hope." The new work that supplements that classic, Nadezhda Man- d els t a m's "Hope Aban- doned," published by Athen- eum, like the earlier one brilliantly translated by Max Hayward, adds immensely to the knowledge about the poet and his able wife, whose descriptions of the Mandel- stam saga are now among the modern literary classics; whose thus recorded refer- ences to Russian authors serve magnificently as a lit- erary history; whose recol- lections of their Jewish back- ground implement knowledge about Russian Jewish experi- ences. "Hope Abandoned" is such a remarkable book that it could well be judged as in- separable from the best in modern historically descrip- tive chronicles about Russia, her authors and politicians, the struggles for freedom, the agonies and despairs. Perhaps it is because Nadezhda Mandelstam is now 74 that she can write without hindrance. But then this also is an age without Stalin. Yet, the Aleksandr L. Solzhenitsyn persecutions might also have been applied -to her. There are references to Solzhenit- syn in the Mandelstam story which rates many of the poets and novelists and serves as a guide to their 48—Friday, April 26, 1974 OSIP MANDELSTAM literary products as well as their personalities. She comments, as an ex- ample, about Joseph Alex- andrevich Brodski, and she states about the man now a member of the University of Mi Chi ga n faculty, about whom she declares: "I have heard Brodski read his verse. An active part in the process is played by his nose. I have never known anything like it before in all my life: his nostrils expand and contract and do all kinds of funny things, giving a nasal twang to each vowel and consonant. It is like a wind orchestra. He is, nevertheless, a remarkable young man who will come to a bad end, I fear. Whether a good poet or not, the fact is that he is one, and this cannot be denied him. In our time it is hard luck to be a poet—and a Jew into the bargain." The book is, of course, about Mandelstam. It is also about Mrs. Mandelstam the author. It is in many ways about themselVes as Jews and is a Jewishly philosophic commentary. The personal aspects, the recollections of the forced separation from her husband, the unending effort to keep aloft the glory of her hus- band's genius — these are major in the telling. Mrs. M. writes extensive- ly about the poet Anna Akh- matova who was her hus- band's loyal friend and whose activities are among the ma- jor dealt with in tackling the Russian literary folk. As on many other occasions, there are references to the Jews and Mrs. -M. wrote: "Where have so many Jews come from, after all the pog- roms and gas chambers? In the crowd at Akhmatova's funeral their numbers were disproportionately large. I never saw anything like this in my youth. Then there were many brilliant Russian intel- lectuals as well, but now you can almost count them on the fingers of one hand . . . Peo- ple say they have all been destroyed, but since all eth- nic groups were equally af- fected by the various waves of whole destruction, I do not find this explanation convin- cing. The fact is that the re- surgent intelligentsia of the present consists of Jews and half-Jews—though they often come from grimly positivist families in which the par- ents still go on mouthing the same old ossified balderdash. Many of the younger ones THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS have also become Christians. or think on religious lines. I once said to Akhmatova that we are going through the times of early Christianity all over again, which was why so many Jews were be- coming converts . . ." The irony of Jewishness is in evidence when Mrs. M. relates how at one time, dur- ing the Revolution, M. was referred to as the "Jewboy": "All this, however, was the natural rivalry between gen- erations, feuding among dif- ferent sects—what M. called 'literary malice' — and the `Jewboy' did not feel es- tranged from surroundings, because he was aware of liv- ing in a society made up of many different circles, each with its particular attitude to people. He already had his own group of friends, his `we,' and even in circles where he was not accepted there was always one or two people who stood up for the `Jewboy,' recognizing that he was endowed with a sense of his own 'poetic rightness.' " Nadezhda Mandelstam turned historian and religi- ous analyst in a chapter on "The Wandering Jew." She commented on the Russified Jews "who are a little like the Sadducees," about the per- secutions, the gas chambers, Stalin's anti-Semitism, his charges that Jewish physi- cians were Zionists and "kill- er doctors." Then she stated about her husband's Jewish- ness: "M., who was Osip, not Jo- seph, (the footnote states that the first is a popular Russian form of the second), in his birth certificate, never forgot he was a Jew, but his `blood memory" was of a peculiar kind. It went right back to his biblical ances- tors, to Spain, and to the Mediterranean. r e t a i n i n g nothing from the wanderings through central Europe. In other words, he felt his af- finity with the shepherds and kings of the Bible, with the Jewish poets and philosoph- ers of Alexandria and Spain, and had even decided that one of them was his direct ancestor: a Spanish poet who was kept on a chain in a dungeon during the Inquisi- tion." Additional comment about "The Doctors' Plot," the Sta- linist anti-Semitism, is im- plemented • with a compari- son, the form that the suf- ferings of Polish Jews had assumed. Then she wrote again: "A remarkable thing about the Jews is that, apart from suffering the lot of their own people, they also have to share the misfortunes of those in whose country they have put up their tents. Even a Jew who publicly renounces his Jewishness still goes to the gas chambers with the others, like any member of the alien tribe whose lan- guage he speaks. M., a Jew and a Russian poet, paid— and still pays—a double or treble price for everything. Even worse, he was a Euro- pean and a Russian intellec- tual brought up to believe that words were not to be treated lightly. All these crimes, taken together or separately, were punishable with all the severity of which our laws were capable." Portraying family relation- ships, two Jewish families with differing interests that were yet akin, Mrs. M. e m e r g e s here thoroughly links with M.—and together, another Mandelstam told her, "the family counted as a Yiches, as one coming from a noble rabbinical line." * * Much is said about her hus- band's poem "The Young Levite" in which is foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, as in prophecy. It is on the subject of "dying Petersburg, the end of the Petersburg of the Russian era." There is the personal note. There was an infatuation with Olga (Anna) Akhma- tova. There was the tense- ness until she found herself: "While he was still alive, I had no thought of 'finding myself.' We lived too intense- ly and intimately to think of `searching' f o r ourselves. There is a curious poem of M.'s which he wrote in the Crimea, while thinking of me. He did not tell me at the time what the meaning of that poem was—at that tender age I should have been up in arms if I had known the fate he had in mind for me. The poem is about a woman named Leah, not Helen, 'because to Ilium's sun you preferred a yellow twilight.' Our relationship must have aroused in him a keen awareness of his Jew- ish roots, a tribal feeling, a sense of kinship with his peo- ple—I was the only Jewess in his life. He thought of the en mountains,' and the erup- tions of color begin only after the meeting with the `Chief of the Jews,' to whom he will say a biblical selah in return for his 'crimson caress.' " * * NADEZHDA MANDELSTAM Jews as being one family, hence the theme of incest in the poem: 'Go, no one shall touch you, / let the incestu- ous daughter / lay her head at dead of night / on her father's breast.' The daugh- ter, having fallen in love with a Jew, was destined to re- nounce herself and be dis- solved in him: No. you will love a Jew / and disappear in him, and God be with you.' " Mrs. M.'s chapter about "The Chief of the Jews'• is about Mandel- stam's " `Canzone' Armenia, his 'Sabbath Land,' as he called it. Mrs. M. notes: "In his `Canzone' M. virtually names the country to which he is so powerfully drawn— since he hopes for a meeting with the 'Chief of the Jews,' this journal in the mind's eye is the Promised Land. It can be reached only by way of the 'land of unshav: In a time when the "Who Is a Jew?" question puzzles and dazzles many, this addi- tional comment by Nadezhda Mandelstam is of added in- terest: "I once read somewhe how an American journal,. _ asked his father, a learned rabbi: 'What is a Jew?' His father replied: 'Just a human being,' but then he thought a moment and added, 'only perhaps a little more of a human being than other peo- ple.' The same thing, I be- lieve, is true of poets: hence their sense of guilt, the need for repentance, the payment of 'dire retribution.' Isn't this the reason that 'in our most Christian world the poets are the Jews?' " "Hope Abandoned" is pow- erful, intriguing, informative, challenging. It's the type of book that compels the read- er's attention, keeping him glued to. contents that are filled with the exciting in- cidents that affected the Mandelstams and related to the agonies of a nation and a generation. In the author's own effective way, strength- ened by the perfect Max Hay- ward translation from the Russian, "Hope Abandoned" assumes a place of major significance in world litera- ture. —P. S. Alumni of 1st AZA Group to Celebrate Members of Detroit Chapter 63, the first AZA chapter here, was organized in the mid-1920s. Pictured above are the original members, some of whom are still active and who will participate in the 50th anniversary dinner of AZA April 28 at Adat Shalom Synagogue. The first chapter in the state was Phil Wasserman Chapter in Grand Rapid formed July 6, 1924. The members of Detroit Chapter No. 63 are, from left, first row. Reuben Halperin, Sam Farber, Leonard Goldstein, Philip Forman, Louis Cohen, Sam Charfoos, Hyman Schwartz and Sidney Rein; middle: Sam Goren, Max Zweig, Al Kaltz, Manton Saulson, Al Hendriks, Barney Nosanchuk and Dave Gooze; bottom: P. Raymond Feiler, Charles Stolarsky, Fred Goldstein, Jess Feiler, Harold Horwitz, Samuel Himel, Robert Zeff and Harold Raikow. Advisers were Henry Gottleib, Aaron Drook, Sam Raskin, Rabbi Gordon and Edmond Sloman. The chapter first met in the Kirby Center, in the Hastings area. Aleph Zadik Aleph (AZA), the boys' division of the Bnai Brith Youth Organization, will culminate its 50th birth- day celebration at the golden anniversary dinner, 6 p.m. Sunday at Adat Shalom Syn- agogue. The Bnai Brith Youth Or- ganization (BBYO), with over 1,000 members and 15,000 alumni in the metro- politan Detroit area, also has a number of chapters outstate. The golden anniversary dinner will be addressed by Dr. Daniel Thursz, dean of the school of social work and community planning of the University of Maryland; Mrs. Louis (Anita) Perlman, in- ternational chairman of the Bnai Brith youth commission and founder of Bnai Brith Girls (BBG); and Dr. Max F. Baer, international direc- tor of the nai Brith Youth Organization. Proclamations honoring the AZA 50th anniversary have been issued by Gov. William G. Milliken; the Michigan State Legislature, introduced by Senator Jack Faxon; Southfield Mayor Donald F: Fracassi; Oak Park Mayor David H. Shepherd; Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young; and Detroit Council President Carl Levin. For reservations call 354- 6113.