"In such times as these it is easy to lose hope. Nadezhda Mandelstam, whose husband, the poet Osip Mandelstam, died in 1938 in a "transit camp" at Vladivostok, wrote a book about their life of unspeakable suffering under Stalin. This book she called Hope Against Hope. After his death she wrote a second book, and wished it to be called in English Hope Abandoned. In South Africa we are still writing the first book. We trust that we shall never have to write the second."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Alan Paton, Federation or desolation?, Alfred and Winifred Hoernlé Memorial Lecture, South Africa Institute of Race Relations, 23 May 1985.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nadezhda_Mandelstam
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Nadezhda Mandelstam
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.
22 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Nadezhda Mandelstam →
Related Quotes
"when her husband is taken away, a woman turns to stone, into an automaton, into I don't know what, the frozen express…"
"How can I forget when our life together was cut short literally in midsentence? The words never said are like a lump …"
"Why were they all so eager for fame? Surely nothing was ever less worth thinking about. (p 427)"
"Now again we are not supposed to remember the past and think-let alone speak about it. (42: Last Letter)"
"Nationalism, like the ideas of Leo Tolstoi, is an attempt to stop the course of history. Everything leading to separa…"
"The man governed by license is prepared to destroy everything and everybody that stands in his way-himself first and …"
"I am now faced with a new task, and am not quite sure how to go about it. Earlier it was all so simple: my job was to…"
"People like myself were the lucky ones who had not gone to prison. Knowing what it was like to live in "freedom," I w…"
"It is true that "forced labor" is too mild a term for the camps of the twentieth century and that nobody in the world…"
"I am even now constantly tormented by the thought of those years of life we were not allowed to live. I am always won…"