Beschreibung:

MANDEL'SHTAM, Osip Emil'evich (1891-1938). Autograph letter signed ('O. Mandel'shtam') to Nikolai Semenovich Tikhonov ('to the editor of Zvezda '), Voronezh ('V'), 13 January 1937. In Russian, one page, 140 x 100mm (light spotting; small chip in the bottom margin; staple holes in the top margin). Provenance : Sofiia Poliakova (1914-1994, philologist; by repute). Mandel'shtam on the Voronezh Notebooks – his final masterpiece . 'I write to tell you about the continuation of my work on a new book of poetry, which I am writing in Voronezh. I attach a control list of poems for December to January. My earlier Voronezh work, though included in the book, does not concern me at the moment. Drafts are in Krasnaya Nov [a literary periodical]. The remainder are with me. The poem 'Birth of a Smile' is only now just completed; consider the earlier text a variant'. The Voronezh poems – a cycle of poems composed in exile between 1935 and 1937 – were very nearly lost to posterity: publishing them might cost an editor – like Tikhonov – his life, and being found with manuscript versions of the poems would certainly lead to penal servitude. In her memoirs, Nadezhda Mandel'shtam records how they survived: she memorized many, and entrusted others to Sergei Rudakov. 'During the whole of our three years in Voronezh, I made copies of everything and distributed them to such people as I could find, but apart from my brother Evgeni (who in any case kept nothing at his own home) I had nobody I could rely on to take them. Not, that is, until Sergei Borisovich Rudakov turned up' ( Hope against Hope , p.271). The poet and public figure Nikolai Tikhonov (1896-1979) was close to Pasternak and many other contemporary authors. He published promising collections of poetry in the 1920s and, after the Second World War, headed the Writers' Union; he was awarded numerous prizes, both for his poetry, and for his civic work, including as Chairman of the Soviet Peace Committee. The poem referred to in the letter, 'Birth of a Smile', is included in Mandel'shtam's published works as part of the Second Voronezh Notebook. This letter was published in Glagol, no. 3 (Ann Arbor: 1981), pp.293-294.