The Third Book

Two memoir volumes by Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam, "Memories" and especially "The Second Book," have become her literary testament, an invaluable monument to her husband — the amazing poet Osip Mandelstam — and a true witness to the terrible years of Russia. Having fulfilled her difficult mission, Nadezhda Yakovlevna almost withdrew from literary affairs, but the tireless and persistent requests of friends urged her to continue her memories — to describe the times of her childhood and adolescence, the pre-Mandelstam years. The memoirist did not particularly love to remember this time — she thought of her biography as inseparable from her meeting with Mandelstam and their shared and divided life, in which, according to her words, the constants were "lightness and the awareness of inevitability." Lack of lively interest, old age, and illness led to the fact that "The Third Book," aside from several essays about childhood, parents, and family, did not become an author's collection. However, close friends of Nadezhda Yakovlevna found it desirable to gather all that she had ever written into one volume.
This book fulfills that wish. Compiled from heterogeneous materials, it includes autobiographical chapters, letters, critical articles, as well as the first attempts of the writer's pen published in the collection "Tarusa Pages." A special place in the publication is occupied by Nadezhda Yakovlevna's comments on the poems of Osip Mandelstam from 1930-1937.