Human Conditions: ‘Hope against Hope’ by Nadezhda Mandelstam

After reciting an unflattering poem about Stalin to a small group of friends, Osip Mandelstam was betrayed to the police and endured five years in exile before dying in transit to the gulag. His wife, Nadezhda, spent the rest of her life dodging arrest, advocating for Osip’s work and writing what came to be known as ‘Hope against Hope’.

‘Hope against Hope’ is a testimony of life under Stalin, and of the ways in which ordinary people challenge and capitulate to power. It’s also a compendium of gossip, an account of psychological torture, a description of the poet’s craft and a love story.

Pankaj Mishra joins Adam to discuss his final selection for Human Conditions, and explore the qualities that make ‘Hope against Hope’ so compelling: Nadezhda Mandelstam’s uncompromising honesty, perceptiveness and irrepressible humour.

This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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Further reading in the LRB:

Seamus Heaney: Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v03/n...

Clarence Brown: Every Slightest Pebble
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n...

Frances Stonor Saunders: The Writer and the Valet
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n...

Close Readings is a multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books exploring different periods of literature through a selection of key works. Enjoy an introductory grounding like no other from Europe's leading literary journal: fluent, rigorous, irreverent and never boring.

Find more episodes here:    • Close Readings  

Running in 2024:
ON SATIRE with Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell
HUMAN CONDITIONS with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards
AMONG THE ANCIENTS II with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones

Plus two bonus series:
MEDIEVAL LOLS with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley
POLITICAL POEMS with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford

Also included in the Close Readings subscription, the full series of:

AMONG THE ANCIENTS I with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones
MEDIEVAL BEGINNINGS with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley
THE LONG AND SHORT with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry
MODERN-ISH POETS: SERIES 1 with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry

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