Nude With Shawl

Country: Spain

Manufactory: Lladro

Date of establishment: 2010

Sculptor: Eva Maria Cuerva

Size (cm): 43*30

Porcelain Story

"From a half-darkened hall, suddenly,

You slipped out in a light shawl

We did not disturb anyone,

We didn't wake the sleeping servants..."

These lines belong to a man whose work some lovers of poetry consider genius, and others... And others hardly know him, for he has long been forgotten. And the school curriculum, including that of the former Soviet republics, hardly even mentions him.

Osip Mandelshtam was born on 15 January 1891 to a family of Polish Jews in Warsaw. His father was a wealthy merchant in the glove trade. And so the family was allowed to live outside the settled area, despite their nationality. At first Osip graduated from the Tenishev Commercial School in St. Petersburg. But then, fascinated by theatre and poetry, he left for France. He studied at the Sorbonne, where fate brought him together with Nikolai Gumilev, and at the University of Heidelberg, at the time considered one of the most prestigious in Europe. Mandelstam's acquaintances admired his talents. For example, he managed to learn Italian on his own. So well, in fact, that he read Dante's poetry in its original language.

Then there were his wanderings through Russia, Georgia and Ukraine. In the Crimea he was arrested by the White Guards, who suggested he flee the Bolshevik-occupied country to Turkey. But Mandelstam decided to stay. As it turned out later, on his own head...

In the summer of 2018, a plaque honouring Osip Mandelstam and his wife Nadezhda Mandelstam (Khazina) was unveiled on the wall of house number 3/1 on Maria Zankovetska Street in Kiev. They often visited Nadia's parents in this house. And Osip met his future spouse in house number 4 on Nikolayevskaya Street (now Gorodetsky). In the famous Kyiv cafe known at the time as "KhLAM" (Artists, Writers, Artists and Musicians) he was often reciting poems. And she sat in a corner with a bunch of lilies in her hands and literally devoured him with amorous eyes...

In 1933 Osip wrote anti-Stalinist epigram and read it in a small circle of literary friends. Boris Pasternak, who was present, called it "suicide". And someone in the audience denounced the poet...

"We live without feeling the country beneath us.

Our speeches cannot be heard from ten paces.

And where there's enough for half a speech,

They'll remember the Kremlin Highlander.

His fat fingers, like worms, are fat.

And his words, like ponderous weights, are true.

The cockroach's moustache laughs.

And his shins shine...".

Mandelstam was arrested and exiled first to Cherdyn-on-Kama, and then to Voronezh. After his return from exile to Moscow, he was not long at liberty. A second arrest and sending to a transit camp in Vladivostok were the last for Mandelstam. He died in 1938.

"From a half-darkened hall, suddenly,

You slipped out in a light shawl..."