Via an old Moscow Times comrade, John Freedman, an incredible piece of history torn from “the noise of time”: Nadezhda Mandelshtam, talking (in English) of her life with the martyred poet, Osip Mandelshtam. It was Nadezhda who was responsible for preserving much of Mandelshtam’s work from the ravages of Stalinist amnesia. It’s a voice from “a life and fate much greater than [our] own,” alive with an abiding humanity that feels, at times, like a thing vanishing from our earth. (But perhaps it’s always vanishing, this voice; perhaps it’s a cracked whisper passed down from generation to generation.) In any case, it’s an embracing encounter.
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