Badly Great

Zabolotsky Nikolai Alekseevich (1903 - 1958), poet, translator.

Born on April 24 (May 7 n.s.) in Kazan in the family of an agronomist. My childhood years were spent in the village of Sernur, Vyatka province, not far from the city of Urzhum. After graduating from a real school in Urzhum in 1920, he went to Moscow to continue his education.

Enters Moscow University into two faculties at once - philological and medical. The literary and theatrical life of Moscow captured Zabolotsky: performances by Mayakovsky, Yesenin, futurists, and imagists. Having started writing poetry in school, he now became interested in imitating either Blok or Yesenin.

In 1921 he moved to Leningrad and entered the Herzen Pedagogical Institute, joined the literary circle, but still “did not find his own voice.” In 1925 he graduated from the institute.

During these years, he became close to a group of young poets who called themselves “Oberiuts” (“Union of Real Art”). They were rarely and little published, but they often gave readings of their poems. Participation in this group helped the poet find his path.

At the same time, Zabolotsky actively collaborates in children's literature, in the magazines for children "Hedgehog" and "Chizh". His children's books in verse and prose, “Snake's Milk,” “Rubber Heads,” etc., were published. In 1929, a collection of poems, “Columns,” was published, and in 1937, “The Second Book.”

In 1938 he was illegally repressed and worked as a builder in the Far East, Altai Territory and Karaganda. In 1946 he returned to Moscow. In the 1930s - 40s he wrote: “Metamorphoses”, “Forest Lake”, “Morning”, “I am not looking for harmony in nature”, etc. Over the last decade, he has worked a lot on translations of Georgian classic poets and contemporaries, and visits Georgia.

In the 1950s, Zabolotsky’s poems such as “The Ugly Girl,” “The Old Actress,” “The Confrontation of Mars,” etc., made his name known to a wide readership. He spends the last two years of his life in Tarusa-on-Oka. He was seriously ill and suffered a heart attack. Many lyrical poems were written here, including the poem "Rubruk in Mongolia". In 1957 he visited Italy.

AUTUMN MORNING

The lovers' speeches are cut short,

The last starling flies away.

They fall from the maples all day long

Silhouettes of crimson hearts.

What have you done to us, autumn!

The earth freezes in red gold.

The flame of sorrow whistles underfoot,

Moving heaps of leaves.

Materials used from the book: Russian writers and poets. Brief biographical dictionary. Moscow, 2000.

* * *

Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky (1903 - 1958) belongs to the first generation of Russian writers who entered the creative period of life after the revolution. His biography is striking in his amazing devotion to poetry, hard work to improve his poetic skills, purposeful development of his own concept of the universe and courageous overcoming of the barriers that fate erected on his life and creative path. From a young age, he was very particular about his works and their selection, believing that he needed to write not individual poems, but a whole book. Throughout his life, he compiled ideal sets several times, over time supplementing them with new poems; previously written ones he edited and in a number of cases replaced them with other versions. A few days before his death, Nikolai Alekseevich wrote a literary will, in which he indicated exactly what should be included in his final collection, the structure and title of the book. In a single volume, he combined bold, grotesque poems of the 20s and classically clear, harmonious works of a later period, thereby recognizing the integrity of his path. The final collection of poems and poems should have been concluded with an author’s note:

"This manuscript includes the complete collection of my poems and poems, established by me in 1958. All other poems ever written and published by me, I consider either accidental or unsuccessful. There is no need to include them in my book. Texts of this manuscript checked, corrected and finally established; previously published versions of many verses should be replaced by the texts given here."

N.A. Zabolotsky grew up in the family of a zemstvo agronomist, who served on agricultural farms near Kazan, then in the village of Sernur (now the regional center of the Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic). In the first years after the revolution, the agronomist managed a state farm in the provincial town of Urzhum, where the future poet received his secondary education. From childhood, Zabolotsky brought back unforgettable impressions of Vyatka nature and his father’s activities, a love of books and an early realized calling to devote his life to poetry. In 1920, he left his parents’ home and went first to Moscow, and then to next year to Petrograd, where he entered the department of language and literature of the Pedagogical Institute named after A. I. Herzen. Hunger, an unsettled life and a sometimes painful search for his own poetic voice accompanied Zabolotsky’s student years. He read with enthusiasm Blok, Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Gumilyov, Yesenin, but soon realized that his path did not coincide with the path of these poets. Closer to his search were Russian poets of the 18th century, classics of the 19th century, and one of his contemporaries - Velimir Khlebnikov.

The period of apprenticeship and imitation ended in 1926, when Zabolotsky managed to find an original poetic method and determine the range of its application. The main theme of his poems of 1926-1928 is sketches of city life, which absorbed all the contrasts and contradictions of that time. To a recent villager, the city seemed either alien and ominous, or attractive with its special quaint picturesqueness. “I know that I am getting confused in this city, although I am fighting against it,” he wrote to his future wife E.V. Klykova in 1928. Understanding his attitude towards the city, Zabolotsky, back in the 20s, tried to connect social problems with ideas about the relationships and interdependence of man and nature. In the poems of 1926 "The Face of a Horse",

“In Our Dwellings” the natural philosophical roots of the creativity of those years are clearly visible. The prerequisite for the satirical depiction of the vulgarity and spiritual limitations of the average person (“Evening Bar”, “New Life”, “Ivanovs”, “Wedding”...) was the conviction of the harmfulness of the city residents’ departure from their natural existence in harmony with nature and from their duty to towards her.

Two circumstances contributed to the establishment of Zabolotsky’s creative position and unique poetic manner - his participation in the literary community called the Association of Real Art (among the Oberiuts - D. Kharms, A. Vvedensky, K. Vaginov, etc.) and his passion for the painting of Filonov, Chagall, Bruegel. .. Later he recognized the kinship of his work of the 20s with the primitivism of Henri Rousseau. The ability to see the world through the eyes of an artist remained with the poet throughout his life.

Zabolotsky's first book, "Columns" (1929, 22 poems), stood out even against the background of the diversity of poetic movements in those years and was a resounding success. Some favorable reviews appeared in the press, the author was noticed and supported by V. A. Goffman, V. A. Kaverin, S. Ya. Marshak, N. L. Stepanov, N. S. Tikhonov, Yu. N. Tynyanov, B. M . Eikhenbaum... But the further literary fate of the poet was complicated by the false, sometimes downright hostile and slanderous interpretation of his works by the majority of critics. The persecution of Zabolotsky especially intensified after the publication in 1933 of his poem “The Triumph of Agriculture.” Having just recently entered literature, he already found himself labeled as a champion of formalism and an apologist for an alien ideology. The new book of poems he compiled, ready for printing (1933), could not see the light of day. This is where the poet’s life principle came in handy: “We must work and fight for ourselves. How many failures are still ahead, how many disappointments, doubts! But if at such moments a person hesitates, his song is sung. Faith and perseverance. Work and honesty...” (1928, letter to E.V. Klykova). And Nikolai Alekseevich continued to work. His livelihood was provided by his work in children's literature, which he began back in 1927 - in the 30s he collaborated in the magazines "Hedgehog" and "Chizh", wrote poetry and prose for children. The most famous are his translations - an adaptation for youth of S. Rustaveli's poem "The Knight in the Skin of a Tiger" (in the 50s a complete translation of the poem was made), as well as adaptations of Rabelais' book "Gargantua and Pantagruel" and de Coster's novel "Till Eulenspiegel".

In his work, Zabolotsky increasingly focused on philosophical lyrics. He was fond of the poetry of Derzhavin, Pushkin, Baratynsky, Tyutchev, Goethe and, as before, Khlebnikov, and was actively interested in the philosophical problems of natural science - he read the works of Engels, Vernadsky, Grigory Skovoroda... At the beginning of 1932, he became acquainted with the works of Tsiolkovsky, which impressed him indelible impression. In a letter to the scientist and great dreamer, he wrote: “...Your thoughts about the future of the Earth, humanity, animals and plants deeply concern me, and they are very close to me. In my unpublished poems and verses, I resolved them as best I could.”

The basis of Zabolotsky’s natural philosophical concept is the idea of ​​the universe as a single system that unites living and nonliving forms of matter, which are in eternal interaction and mutual transformation. The development of this complex organism of nature proceeds from primitive chaos to the harmonious order of all its elements. And the main role here is played by the consciousness inherent in nature, which, in the words of K. A. Timiryazev, “smolders dully in lower beings and only flares up as a bright spark in the human mind.” Therefore, it is man who is called upon to take care of the transformation of nature, but in his activity he must see in nature not only a student, but also a teacher, for this imperfect and suffering “eternal winepress” contains within itself the beautiful world of the future and those wise laws that should be guided by the person. The poem "The Triumph of Agriculture" states that the mission of reason begins with social improvement human society and then social justice extends to man's relationship with animals and all of nature. Zabolotsky remembered Khlebnikov’s words well: “I see freedom for horses and equal rights for cows.”

Gradually, Zabolotsky’s position in the literary circles of Leningrad strengthened. With his wife and child, he lived in the “writer’s superstructure” on the Griboyedov Canal, actively participated in public life Leningrad writers. Poems such as “Farewell”, “North” and especially “Goryai Symphony” received favorable reviews in the press. In 1937, his book was published, including seventeen poems (“Second Book”). On Zabolotsky’s desk lay the beginnings of a poetic adaptation of the ancient Russian poem “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and his own poem “The Siege of Kozelsk,” poems, translations from Georgian... But the prosperity that came was deceptive...

On March 19, 1938, N.A. Zabolotsky was arrested and separated from literature, from his family, and from free human existence for a long time. The incriminating material in his case included spiteful critical articles and a review “review” that tendentiously distorted the essence and ideological orientation of his work. Until 1944, he served undeserved imprisonment in forced labor camps in the Far East and Altai Territory. From spring until the end of 1945, he lived with his family in Karaganda.

In 1946, N.A. Zabolotsky was reinstated in the Writers' Union and received permission to live in the capital. A new, Moscow period of his work began. Despite all the blows of fate, he managed to maintain internal integrity and remained faithful to his life’s work - as soon as the opportunity arose, he returned to his unfulfilled literary plans. Back in 1945 in Karaganda, while working as a draftsman in the construction department, during non-working hours Nikolai Alekseevich basically completed the transcription of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, and in Moscow he resumed work on the translation of Georgian poetry. His poems from G. Orbeliani, V. Pshavela, D. Guramishvili, S. Chikovani - many classical and modern poets of Georgia - sound wonderful. He also worked on the poetry of other Soviet and foreign peoples.

In the poems written by Zabolotsky after a long break, continuity with his work of the 30s is clearly visible, especially with regard to natural philosophical ideas. These are the poems of the 10s, “Read, trees, the poems of Geeiod,” “I am not looking for harmony in nature,” “Testament,” “Through Levenguk’s magic device”... In the 50s, the natural philosophical theme began to go deeper into the verse, becoming, as it were, its invisible foundation and giving way to reflection on the psychological and moral connections of man and nature, on the inner world of man, on the feelings and problems of the individual. In “Road Makers” and other poems about the work of builders, the conversation about human achievements, which began before 1938, continues (“Wedding with Fruits,” “North,” “Sedov”). The poet compared the affairs of his contemporaries and his experience of working on eastern construction sites with the prospect of creating a harmonious living architecture of nature.

In the poems of the Moscow period, spiritual openness and sometimes autobiography appeared that were previously unusual for Zabolotsky ("Blind", "In this birch grove", the cycle "Last Love"). Increased attention to the living human soul led him to psychologically rich genre-plot sketches ("Wife", "Loser", "At the Movies", "Ugly Girl", "Old Actress" ...), to observations on how spiritual disposition and fate are reflected in human appearance (“On the beauty of human faces”, “Portrait”). For the poet, the beauty of nature and its impact on the inner world of man began to have much greater importance. A whole series Zabolotsky's plans and works were associated with a constant interest in history and epic poetry ("Rubruk in Mongolia", etc.). His poetics was constantly improved, the formula of creativity became the triad he proclaimed: thought - image - music.

Not everything was simple in the Moscow life of Nikolai Alekseevich. The creative upsurge that manifested itself in the first years after his return gave way to a decline and an almost complete switch of creative activity to literary translations in 1949-1952. It was a worrying time. Fearing that his ideas would again be used against him, Zabolotsky often restrained himself and did not allow himself to transfer onto paper everything that was ripening in his mind and asked to be written into a poem. The situation changed only after the 20th Party Congress, which condemned the perversions associated with Stalin’s personality cult. Zabolotsky responded to new trends in the life of the country with the poems “Somewhere in a field near Magadan”, “Confrontation of Mars”, “Kazbek”. It became easier to breathe. Suffice it to say that in the last three years of his life (1956-1958) Zabolotsky created about half of all the poems of the Moscow period. Some of them appeared in print. In 1957, the fourth, most complete collection of his lifetime was published (64 poems and selected translations). After reading this book, an authoritative connoisseur of poetry, Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky, wrote enthusiastic words to Nikolai Alekseevich, so important for a poet unspoiled by criticism: “I am writing to you with the same respectful timidity with which I would write to Tyutchev or Derzhavin. For me there is no doubt that the author of “Cranes” , “Swan”, “Give me a corner, starling”, “Loser”, “Actresses”, “Human faces”, “Morning”, “Forest Lake”, “Blind”, “At the cinema”, “Walkers”, “ Ugly girl", "I am not looking for harmony in nature" - truly great poet, whose work sooner or later Soviet culture (maybe even against its will) will have to be proud of as one of its highest achievements. To some of today these lines of mine will seem reckless and a gross mistake, but I answer for them with all my seventy years of reading experience" (June 5, 1957).

K.I. Chukovsky's prediction is coming true. Nowadays, the poetry of N. A. Zabolotsky is widely published, it has been translated into many foreign languages, is comprehensively and seriously studied by literary scholars, dissertations and monographs are written about it. The poet achieved the goal that he had strived for throughout his life - he created a book that worthily continued the great tradition of Russian philosophical lyricism, and this book came to the reader.

Reprinted from the Moshkov Library website

http://kulichki.rambler.ru/moshkow SEDOV

He died clutching his faithful compass.

Nature is dead, encased in ice,

She lay around him, and the face of the sun was like a cave

It was difficult to see through the fog.

Shaggy, with straps on the chest,

The dogs barely dragged their light load.

A ship buried in an icy grave

Left far behind.

And the whole world was left behind!

To the land of silence, where the giant pole

Crowned with an icy tiara,

I brought the meridian together with the meridian;

Where is the semicircle of the aurora

Crossed the sky with a diamond spear;

Where is the age-old dead silence

Only one person could break -

There, there! To the land of foggy nonsense,

Where it ends last life thread!

And the groan of the heart and the last moment of life -

Everything, give everything, but win the pole!

He died in the middle of the road

We are tormented by illness and hunger.

Ice-cold feet with scorbutic spots,

The dead lay before him like logs.

But strange! In this half-dead body

There still lived a great soul:

Overcoming the pain. barely breathing

Bringing the compass barely closer to your face,

He checked his route along the arrow

And he drove forward his funeral train...

O end of the earth, gloomy and sad!

What kind of people have been here!

And there is a grave in the far North...

Far from the world it rises.

Only the wind howls sadly there,

And the smooth veil of snow shines.

Two true friends, both barely alive,

The hero was buried among the stones,

And he didn’t even have a simple coffin,

He didn’t have a pinch of his native land.

And he had no military honors,

No funeral fireworks, no wreaths,

Only two sailors, kneeling,

Like children, they cried alone in the snow.

But people of courage, friends, do not die!

Now that it's over our heads

Steel whirlwinds cut through the air

And disappear in the blue haze,

When, having reached the snowy zenith,

Our flag flutters over the pole, winged,

And indicated by the angle of the theodolite

Moonrise and sunset, -

My friends, at a national celebration

Let us remember those who fell in the cold land!

Arise, Sedov, brave son of the earth!

We replaced your old compass with a new one,

But your campaign in the harsh North

They could not forget in their campaigns.

And we would live in the world without limits,

Biting into the ice, changing river beds, -

The Fatherland raised us into a body

Breathed in a living soul forever.

And we will go to any tracts,

And if death overtakes the snow,

I would ask only one thing from fate:

Die like Sedov died.

1937 YIELD TO ME, STARLING, CORNER

Give me a corner, starling,

They put me in an old square.

I pledge my soul to you

For your blue snowdrops.

And spring whistles and mutters,

Poplars are flooded knee-deep.

The maples are waking up from their sleep,

So that the leaves flutter like butterflies.

And such a mess in the fields,

And such streams of nonsense,

What should you try after leaving the attic?

Don't rush headlong into the grove!

Start the serenade, starling!

Through the timpani and tambourines of history

You are our first spring singer

From the Birch Conservatory.

Open the show, whistler!

Throw back your pink head,

Breaking the shine of the strings

In the very throat of a birch grove.

I would try my best myself,

Yes, the wanderer butterfly whispered to me:

“Who is a loudmouth in the spring,

And spring is good, good!

The whole soul was covered with lilacs.

Raise your spirit, soul,

Over your spring gardens.

Sit on a high pole

Blazing across the sky with delights,

Cling like a web to a star

Along with bird tongue twisters.

Turn your face to the universe,

In honor of blue snowdrops,

With an unconscious starling

Traveling through spring fields.

1948 WILL

When in my declining years my life runs out

And, having extinguished the candle, I will go again

Into the vast world of foggy transformations,

When millions of new generations

Fill this world with the sparkle of miracles

And they will complete the structure of nature, -

Let my poor ashes be covered by these waters,

Let this green forest shelter me.

I won't die, my friend. Breath of flowers

I will find myself in this world.

Centuries-old oak my living soul

It will cover its roots, sad and stern.

In its large sheets I will give shelter to the mind,

With the help of my branches I nurture my thoughts,

So that they hang over you from the darkness of the forests

And you were involved in my consciousness.

Over your head, my distant great-grandson,

I'll fly in the sky like a slow bird,

I will flash above you like a pale lightning,

Like summer rain I'll fall, sparkling over the grass

There is nothing more beautiful in the world than existence.

The silent darkness of the graves is an empty languor.

I have lived my life, I have not seen peace;

There is no peace in the world. Life and me are everywhere.

I was not born into the world when from the cradle

My eyes looked into the world for the first time, -

For the first time on my earth I began to think,

When the lifeless crystal sensed life,

When is the first time a raindrop

She fell on him, exhausted in the rays.

Oh, it was not for nothing that I lived in this world!

And it’s sweet for me to strive from the darkness,

So that, taking me in your palm, you, my distant descendant,

Finished what I didn't finish.

1947 CRANES

Leaving Africa in April

To the shores of the father's land,

They flew in a long triangle,

Drowning in the sky, cranes.

Stretching out silver wings

Across the wide firmament,

The leader led to the valley of plenty

Its small people.

But when it flashed under the wings

Lake, transparent through and through,

Black gaping barrel

It rose up from the bushes towards us.

A ray of fire struck the bird's heart,

A quick flame flared up and went out,

And a piece of wondrous greatness

It fell on us from above.

Two wings, like two huge griefs,

Embraced the cold wave

And, echoing the sorrowful sob,

The cranes rushed into the heights.

Only where the stars move,

To atone for one's own evil

Nature returned to them again

What death took with it:

Proud spirit, high aspiration,

An unyielding will to fight -

Everything from the previous generation

Youth passes on to you.

And the leader in a metal shirt

Sank slowly to the bottom,

And the dawn formed over him

Golden glow spot.

1948 READING POEMS

Curious, funny and subtle:

A verse that hardly resembles a verse.

The murmur of a cricket and a child

The writer has comprehended it perfectly.

And in the nonsense of crumpled speech

There is a certain sophistication.

But is it possible for human dreams

Sacrifice these amusements?

And is it possible to have a Russian word?

Turn the goldfinch into a chirp,

To make sense a living basis

Couldn't it sound through it?

No! Poetry sets barriers

Our inventions, for she

Not for those who, playing charades,

Puts on a sorcerer's cap.

The one who lives real life,

Who has been accustomed to poetry since childhood,

Eternally believes in the life-giving one,

The Russian language is full of intelligence.

1948

* * *

I was raised by harsh nature,

It's enough for me to notice at my feet

Dandelion fluff ball,

Plantain hard blade.

The more common a simple plant,

The more it excites me

Its first leaves appear

At dawn of a spring day.

In the state of daisies, at the edge,

Where the stream, panting, sings,

I would lie all night until the morning,

Throwing your face back into the sky.

Life is a stream of glowing dust

Everything would flow, flow through the sheets,

And the misty stars shone,

Filling the bushes with rays.

And, listening to the spring noise

Among the enchanted grasses,

I would still lie and think, I think

Boundless fields and oak forests. 1953

WALKERS

In homemade zipuns,

From distant villages, from beyond the Oka,

They walked, unknown, three -

In worldly affairs, walkers.

Rus' was tossed about in hunger and storm,

Everything was mixed up, shifted at once.

The hum of the stations, the scream in the commandant's office,

Human grief without embellishment.

For some reason only these three

Stand out in a crowd of people

They didn’t scream madly and fiercely,

They didn’t break the line.

Peering with old eyes

What need has done here,

The travelers grieved, but they themselves

They spoke little, as always.

There is a trait inherent in the people:

He does not think with his mind alone, -

All your soulful nature

Our people connect with him.

That's why our fairy tales are beautiful,

Our songs, put together in harmony.

They contain both mind and heart without fear

They speak the same dialect.

The three spoke little.

What words! That wasn't the point.

But in their souls they have accumulated

A lot for this long journey.

That's why, perhaps, they were hiding

There are alarming lights in their eyes

At a late hour, when we stopped

They are at the threshold of Smolny.

But when their owner is hospitable,

A man in a shabby jacket

I'm worn out to death by work,

I spoke to them briefly,

He talked about their meager area,

He spoke about the time when

Electric horses will come out

To the fields of people's labor,

He said how life will spread its wings,

How, having perked up, all the people

Golden loaves of abundance

It will carry across the country, rejoicing, -

Only then is there severe anxiety

In three hearts melted like a dream,

And suddenly a lot became visible

From what only he saw.

And the knapsacks untied themselves,

Gray dust in the dust room,

And they appeared bashfully in their hands

Stale rye pretzels.

With this artless treat

The peasants approached Lenin.

They all ate. It was both bitter and delicious

A meager gift from a tormented land. 1954

UGLY GIRL

Among other children playing

She resembles a frog.

A thin shirt tucked into panties,

Rings of reddish curls

Scattered, long mouth, crooked teeth,

The facial features are sharp and ugly.

To two boys, her peers,

The fathers each bought a bicycle.

Today the boys, in no hurry for lunch,

They drive around the yard, forgetting about her,

She runs after them.

Someone else's joy is just like your own,

It torments her and breaks out of her heart,

And the girl rejoices and laughs,

Captivated by the happiness of existence.

No shadow of envy, no evil intent

This creature doesn't know yet.

Everything in the world is so immensely new to her,

Everything is so alive that for others is dead!

And I don’t want to think while watching,

What will be the day when she, sobbing,

She will see with horror that among her friends

She's just a poor ugly girl!

I want to believe that the heart is not a toy,

It is hardly possible to break it suddenly!

I want to believe that this flame is pure,

Which burns in its depths,

He will overcome all his pain alone

And will melt the heaviest stone!

And even if her features are not good

And there is nothing to seduce her imagination, -

Infant grace of the soul

It already shows through in any of her movements.

And if this is so, then what is beauty?

And why do people deify her?

She is a vessel in which there is emptiness,

Or a fire flickering in a vessel? 1955

ABOUT THE BEAUTY OF HUMAN FACES

There are faces like lush portals,

Where everywhere the great appears in the small,

There are faces - like miserable shacks,

Where the liver is cooked and the rennet is soaked.

Other cold, dead faces

Closed with bars, like a dungeon.

Others are like towers in which for a long time

Nobody lives and looks out the window.

But I once knew a small hut,

She was unprepossessing, not rich,

But from the window she looks at me

The breath of a spring day flowed.

Truly the world is both great and wonderful!

There are faces - similarities to jubilant songs.

From these notes, like the sun, shining

A song of heavenly heights has been composed,

1955 DON'T LET YOUR SOUL BE LAZY

Don't let your soul be lazy!

So as not to pound water in a mortar,

The soul must work

Drive her from house to house,

Drag from stage to stage,

Through the wasteland, through the brown forest,

Through a snowdrift, through a pothole!

Don't let her sleep in bed

By the light of the morning star,

Keep the lazy girl in the black body

And don't take the reins off her!

If you decide to cut her some slack,

Freeing from work,

She's the last shirt

He will rip it off you without mercy.

And you grab her by the shoulders,

Teach and torment until dark,

To live with you like a human being

She studied again.

She is a slave and a queen,

She is a worker and a daughter,

She must work

And day and night, and day and night!

The article talks about a brief biography of Zabolotsky, a Russian poet and translator.

Biography of Zabolotsky: early years

Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky was born in 1903 near Kazan. The family had peasant origins. From childhood he was fascinated by poetry. In elementary school, he published a handwritten journal with his poems. He graduated from college and after a short study in medicine, he entered the Petrograd Pedagogical Institute. young man attracted the activities of a new creative generation. He is interested in imagists and futurists. Zabolotsky joins a literary circle, but is still in a creative search. Participation in a small association of poets who published little and performed reading their own poems in a narrow circle helped the poet find his own style. Zabolotsky received his diploma in 1925, already firmly knowing in which direction his poetic work would develop.
Zabolotsky undergoes military service, which had a great influence on him. After her, the poet’s work acquires its own special unique style. The poet actively works in the field of children's literature. In 1927, his poems first appeared in print, and after some time a collection of the poet’s poems, “Columns,” was published, which in a satirical form depicts the paintings of the NEP period. Zabolotsky describes the images of the new Soviet philistinism, which he hated as a revolutionary poet. The collection was welcomed positive reviews, which then gave way to harsh criticism. The poet was accused of taking a hostile position towards the young Soviet state, but no measures were taken against him. Zabolotsky continued to publish.
In the 30s In the poet’s work, a certain turning point or, rather, a rethinking of values ​​occurs. The rebellious revolutionary spirit gives way to a calm philosophical attitude towards life. In Zabolotsky’s work, descriptions of the beauty of nature and its spiritualization appear. The poet turns to the spiritual principles of human life. This turn also did not suit the representatives of the official ideology. The poet continues to be closely monitored.
Soon he wrote the poem "The Triumph of Agriculture", which became the reason for the real persecution of the poet. He was branded as a supporter of bourgeois ideology and, most dangerously, the poem was regarded as a criticism of collectivization. A strict ban was imposed on Zabolotsky’s work. However, the poet continued to work in the field of children's literature, writing stories and poems in children's publications.

Biography of Zabolotsky: serving his sentence and the last years of his life

In 1938, Zabolotsky was arrested on charges of anti-Soviet activity. HE was subjected to severe torture, but never admitted his guilt. The poet spent five years in the camps, after which he served exile until 1946. While serving his sentence, Zabolotsky continued to work on a translation from Old Russian of “The Words of Igor’s Campaign.” The highest skill with which Zabolotsky completed this work was recognized by leading Soviet specialists in the field of ancient Russian literature and poetic circles. The poet's translation of the Lay is still considered one of the best. Numerous commendable reviews allowed Zabolotsky to return to Moscow, and he was soon able to restore his membership in the Writers' Union.
In Moscow, Zabolotsky faced further increased ideological pressure. A couple of years later he was ordered to leave Moscow, but the poet was again helped by the intercession of influential cultural figures. His position remained precarious; his past as a political prisoner affected all areas of his life. Therefore, he did not even try to publish his works, but began to translate. He was especially interested in the work of Georgian poets, including central place occupied by Sh. Rustaveli.
But he did not stop writing his own poems. Death of Stalin and the beginning Khrushchev's thaw allowed the poet to publish a collection of poems "Last Love". The writer's activities in the 50s. was especially productive, his name became widely known in the country. Shortly before his death, the poet visited Italy.
Zabolotsky died in 1958, leaving behind a large number of wonderful poems and wonderful translations.

(1903-1958) Russian poet

A poet of thought, a poet of philosophical reflection and classical completeness of verse - this is how Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky entered our poetry. He wrote poetry sparingly, only when an idea had matured, and left behind only a volume of his poetic works and several books of translations, unanimously recognized as exemplary.

Nikolai Zabolotsky was born in Kazan. At that time, his father served as an agronomist on a Kazan zemstvo farm seven kilometers from the city. The poet was proud of his pedigree. His grandfather was a Nikolaev soldier, his father was a rural agronomist. Nikolai's childhood years were spent in the Vyatka province, in the village of Sernur, not far from the city of Urzhum. Impressions of the local nature, its pristine freshness, remained in the poet’s soul for the rest of his life and were reflected in his work. Here he graduated from three classes primary school, here I first began writing poetry. As a seven year old child he has already chosen his future profession.

In 1913, Nikolai Zabolotsky was admitted to the Urzhum Real School and from that time on he lived outside his family, coming home only on vacation. His youthful world took shape during the First World War in the setting of a small provincial town located 180 kilometers from railway. Such a life suited the young man little; he longed for the center, for living life, for art.

After graduating from a real school in Urzhum, Zabolotsky in 1920, as a seventeen-year-old young man, went to Moscow to continue his education and entered the philological and medical faculties of Moscow University at the same time.

However, life in Moscow did not suit him, and in August 1921 he left for Petrograd, where he entered the Pedagogical Institute. Herzen at the Department of Language and Literature of the Faculty of Social and Economics. The poet did not intend to be a teacher. He only wanted to receive the philological education necessary for writing. Nikolai Zabolotsky lived in a student dormitory, wrote a lot, imitating Mayakovsky, Blok, and Yesenin. He did not yet have his own voice in poetry, but was considered a capable student and at one time even thought of devoting himself entirely to science. However, the attachment to poetry turned out to be stronger, and Zabolotsky abandoned these thoughts.

In 1925, he graduated from the institute, having by that time a voluminous notebook of not very good poems and a small basket of property. But the young man wanted to become a writer at all costs, so he was persistent and purposeful. " We must conquer life,” he wrote in February 1928. - We have to work and fight for ourselves. How many failures are still ahead, how many disappointments and doubts! But if at such moments a person hesitates, his song is finished. Faith and perseverance, work and honesty. ..My life is forever connected with art - you know that. You know what the writer's path is. I renounced worldly prosperity, “social status”, broke away from my family - for art. Outside of it, I am nothing...»

In 1926, Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky was drafted into the army and served in Leningrad in a team of short-term soldiers. He was a member of the editorial board of the military wall newspaper, which was considered the best in the area. In 1927, having passed the platoon commander exam, he was transferred to the reserve.

It should be noted that at this time Nikolai Zabolotsky actively collaborated in children's literature - he wrote in magazines for children “Hedgehog” and “Chizh”, “Pioneer” and “Koster”. He published several children's books, the best of which were adaptations of “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by Francois Rabelais and “Till Eulenspiegel” by C. de Coster. Of course, children's literature did not exhaust his interests, and he continued to write lyrics. In 1929, Zabolotsky’s first book of poems, “Columns,” was published, written in a satirical spirit in relation to the philistine, NEP reality that surrounded the poet.

In 1930, the young poet married E.V. Klykova, two years later a son, Nikita, was born into the family, and five years later, a daughter, Natasha.

In his creative development, Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky constantly turned to the pure springs of classical Russian poetry - the poems of Pushkin, Tyutchev, Baratynsky. The poetry of Nikolai Zabolotsky is the poetry of thought, which is expressed in a metaphorical, figurative form. The poet is invariably concerned with the problem of creativity. Many of his poems recreate the very process of the birth of a work of art - inspiration, the emergence of a subconscious plan and the triumph of thought in the completed whole. In the poem “Beethoven” the creator’s thought arises “in the face of world space” and becomes music:

And through the peace of the world's space, the ninth wave passed to the very stars... Open, thought! Become music, word, strike the hearts so that the world may triumph!

The poet perceives nature as a historical reality, changing under the influence of human reason and labor. Hence the path to such poems as “City in the Steppe”, “North”, “Road Makers”, in which the construction of a road is carried out in conditions of virgin nature Far East. The poet himself took part in its construction. Nikita Zabolotsky recalled: “My father spoke scantly about his life and work at construction sites. I only remember his story about how once at work in a quarry where they mined building stone, the father had to climb a high, almost vertical rock to secure the ropes at the top necessary to prepare for the next explosion.

I had to press my whole body against the cliff and carefully choose barely noticeable ledges where I could put my foot. And suddenly some root sticking out of the stones caught on the temple of the glasses, and the glasses hung on one ear. Losing glasses in such a situation meant that a nearsighted person would fall off a cliff. My hands were busy, and only by bending my whole body, with incredible efforts, was it possible to return the glasses to their place.”

In Zabolotsky's later poems, the greatness and spirituality of the world acquires special transparency. In them, nature does not suppress man, does not oppose him, but gives him the joy of recognition; for him it is embodied in the landscape of his native land that is familiar and close to his heart:

I was raised by harsh nature. It’s enough for me to notice a ball of fluff at Dandelion’s feet. Plantain hard blade...

Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky is a poet with a heightened sense of color and picturesqueness. This feature of his poetic vision manifested itself throughout his creative career.

The poet’s attitude towards nature is defined as recognition of the world, its “living features”, as the unity of man with nature. The knowledge of nature becomes more intimate, more human, just as nature itself manifests itself in the reality of the depicted landscape:

Who responded to me in the thicket of the forest? Was the old oak whispering with the pine, Or was the rowan tree creaking in the distance? Or the goldfinch ocarina began to sing, Or the robin, little friend. She suddenly answered me at sunset?...

Nikolai Zabolotsky has always loved painting. He was fond of the works of P. Filonov, M. Chagall, and the old Flemings. The poet highly valued the integrity and keen-sighted naivety of such primitivist artists as Henri Rousseau and Niko Pirosmanishvili. He loved the work of Pieter Bruegel, whose sense of nature and pictures of peasant labor and fun were especially close to the poet.

There was one tragic period in the life of Nikolai Zabolotsky, which he endured courageously and with dignity. On March 19, 1938, the poet was arrested by the NKVD and sentenced to five years in prison. Only in May 1946 did he receive permission to move to Moscow and continue his literary work.

Speaking about his work, one cannot fail to mention his numerous translations from Georgian poetry (he owns a translation of Shota Rustaveli’s poem “The Knight in the Skin of a Tiger”), a poetic adaptation of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” on which he worked for about eight years.

In the last years of Zabolotsky’s life, his work became more and more noticeable in his appeal to people, the emergence of a personal theme, and an interest in everyday life. At this time he wrote such poems as “The Ugly Girl”, “At the Movies”, “The General’s Dacha”, “The Old Actress” and others. The poem “The Ugly Girl” - about the fate of a girl who does not yet realize that she is “just a poor ugly girl” - has become especially widely known.

During these years, Nikolai Zabolotsky also began to write love lyrics, which found expression in the cycle of poems “Last Love” (1956-1958). These are poems about love, which has retained its constant power and is especially painfully experienced in a breakup:

Juniper bush, juniper bush.

The cooling babble of changeable lips.

A light babble, barely reminiscent of resin,

Pierced me with a deadly needle!

Every creative stage Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky should not be understood as a mechanical diagram. Each of them, while maintaining the originality of the poetic structure, left their mark on his further work, enriching it with new discoveries. Therefore, the “classicism” of the poems of the last period is by no means addressed to the past, is not a stylization of the classics, but is deeply modern, even polemical in relation to modern poetry.

The poet spends the summer and autumn of the last two years of his life in Tarusa-on-Oka. By this time he had suffered a heart attack and was seriously ill. In general, not very fond of long walks, he now led a sedentary lifestyle due to illness, often resting on a bench in the garden under a huge pear tree. Somehow he worked especially well in Tarusa. Many lyric poems were written there. But Nikolai Zabolotsky’s health deteriorated, and on October 14, 1958, he died from a second heart attack.

The poet was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow. Death caught him in his prime creative activity, on the eve of new plans and works.

Awareness of the poet's high mission made him especially demanding of both himself and those around him. No wonder Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeev once said about him to N.K. Chukovsky: “What a firm and clear person!”

Biography

ZABOLOTSKY, NIKOLAI ALEXEEVICH (1903−1958), Russian poet, translator. Born on April 24 (May 7), 1903 near Kazan. His paternal grandfather, having served the required quarter of a century as a soldier under Nicholas I, signed up as a Urzhum tradesman and worked as a forestry inspector. One of his two sons, the father of the poet, received a government scholarship and studied to be an agronomist. He married late and took as his wife a city teacher, “sympathetic to revolutionary ideas.” The family lived in the village of Sernur; the son, the first of six children, studied away from home, at a real school in Urzhum. After graduating from college in 1920, Zabolotsky went to Moscow, where he simultaneously entered the philological and medical faculties of Moscow University, but soon moved to Petrograd and entered the Pedagogical Institute. He participated in the literary circle “Word Workshop”, was not selected to join the proletarian literary avant-garde, but found common language with poets who considered themselves the “left flank” of the Leningrad branch of the All-Russian Union of Poets (soon abolished).

In 1926-1927 Zabolotsky served in the army, then received a position in the children's book department of the State Publishing House. The department was headed by S. Marshak, E. Schwartz, L. Chukovskaya, N. Oleinikov worked in the department. The department published not only books, but also two children's magazines - "Chizh" and "Hedgehog". Like-minded poets of Zabolotsky, D. Kharms and A. Vvedensky, were involved in the work, and a poetry group with its own program was formed. At the end of 1927 it began to be called the Association of Real Art (first OBERIO, then OBERIU), its adherents - Oberiuts. The Oberiut manifesto appeared at the beginning of 1928 in the Posters of the House of Press, the section “Poetry of the Oberiuts” was written by Zabolotsky. In the spirit of the then cult of innovation, it was stated: “We are the creators of not only a new poetic language, but also the creators of a new sense of life and its objects.” At the same time, he called himself “a poet of naked concrete figures, moved close to the viewer’s eyes.” By this time, several poems by Zabolotsky had been published randomly, more or less confirming this declaration (Evening Bar, Football, Snowball Fight, etc.). They went unnoticed, but published in an edition of 1200 copies. the collection Stolbtsy (1929), which included 22 poems, “caused quite a scandal in literature,” as Zabolotsky told a friend, adding: “... and I was numbered among the wicked.” An article in the magazine “Print and Revolution” (1930, No. 4) was called the System of Girls, in the magazine “Stroyka” (1930, No. 1) - The Decay of Consciousness. The book was assessed as a “hostile attack”, but no direct orders were given to Zabolotsky and he (through N. Tikhonov) managed to establish a special relationship with the magazine “Zvezda”, where about ten poems were published, which replenished Stolbtsy in the second (unpublished) edition of the collection (in the final edition, first reproduced in the 1965 edition, the section Columns and Poems contains 46 poems).

Columns and the adjacent poems of 1926−1932 were experiments in verbal plasticity, focused on everyday everyday speech and bringing poetry closer to modern painting. Stolbtsov’s still lifes, genre scenes and sketches were motivated “in the Oberiut way”: “Look at the object with your bare eyes and you will see it for the first time cleared of shabby literary gilding... We expand the meaning of the object, word and action.” This “expansion of meaning” gradually alienated Zabolotsky from other Oberiuts and was clearly reflected in the poem The Triumph of Agriculture, written in 1929-1930 and fully published in the magazine “Zvezda” in 1933: it was a kind of “mystery-bouffe”, glorifying collectivization as the beginning of the universal landscaping. His complete loyalty is evidenced by a poem on the death of Kirov (1934), unthinkable in the context of the work of other Oberiuts. At the same time, in the poem The Triumph of Agriculture, as in the subsequent ones - The Mad Wolf (1931) and Trees (1933), the influence of V. Khlebnikov was felt. Like other left-wing poets, Khlebnikov was a cult figure for Zabolotsky; the aspiration of Khlebnikov’s poetic thought towards the creation of a utopia, the “institution” of world harmony, was especially close to him. It was time to become acquainted with the works of K. E. Tsiolkovsky, in which Zabolotsky saw confirmation of Khlebnikov’s visionary dreams. The publication of The Triumph of Agriculture entailed the withdrawal of the issue of “Stars” with the text of the poem from circulation, the assessment of the author in the organ of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) “Pravda” (in the article by V. Ermilov, Foolish Poetry and the Poetry of Millions) and defamation in other periodicals. The book Poems 1926−1932, prepared for publication, could not be published; an attempt to publish poems and poems of 1926−1936 was in vain. Seventeen new poems by Zabolotsky, mostly published in the newspaper Izvestia and as close as possible to the average level of Soviet intellectual (“thinking”) poetry of the 1930s, made up the collection Second Book (1937), which, apparently, was supposed to indicate a complete “reforging” of the author of Columns and the Triumph of Agriculture. Zabolochky also published translations and retellings for children and youth of Gargantua and Pantagruel by F. Rabelais, one of Gulliver's Travels by J. Swift, Till Eulenspiegel by S. de Coster, as well as a poetic adaptation of Shota Rustaveli's poem The Knight in the Skin of a Tiger. Nevertheless, in 1938 he was arrested and convicted as a member of a fictitious terrorist organization of Leningrad writers. His “case”, the investigation with torture and the camp ordeals are briefly described in his memoirs, The History of My Imprisonment (magazine “Daugava”, 1988, No. 3). The Kolyma term was interrupted, and already in 1943 Zabolotsky received the status of an exiled settler, first in Altai, then in Kazakhstan. In 1946 he moved to Moscow, in 1948 he published a collection of Poems, in which works of Georgian themes predominate, among them the Gori Symphony, an akathist to Stalin, written back in 1936 and republished for the leader’s seventieth birthday. Zabolotsky was asked to turn his 1930s retelling of Shota Rustaveli's poem into a complete translation. Like the poetic transcription of the Tale of Igor’s Campaign commissioned from him, this was one of the most prestigious and profitable translation works of the Soviet era. No lyrics from the camp-exile period have survived, and there is no evidence of its existence; new poems begin to appear in 1946. They represent the result of creative evolution, which was determined back in 1934-1937. Zabolotsky uses the poetics of cruel romance; it is also typical for poems with a tragic sound (In this birch grove, old tale, Memory, Somewhere in a field near Magadan, etc.). Meanwhile, the poem The last poppies are flying around contains a direct and open author’s confession: “There is no sadder betrayal in the world than betrayal of oneself.” Both the lifetime collection of Poems (1957) and the posthumous Selections (1960) give a deliberately distorted idea of ​​Zabolotsky’s lyrics, including only a little more than half of his works from 1936-1958 and completely cutting off poems and poems of the early period that contradicted the splendid image Soviet poet. Zabolotsky himself did not renounce his early work and did not give up hope of publication more or less full meeting. He compiled it twice - in 1952 and 1958; anticipating the obligatory claims of stylistic censorship, he tried without much success to smooth out the texts of 1926−1936, contrary to the then programmatic “beauty of clumsiness” (Battle of the Elephants, 1931): “The whole world of clumsiness is full of meaning!” For the first time, Zabolotsky’s poetry was presented to the reader with sufficient completeness in 1965 (Large series “Poet’s Library”). A number of early poems and the poem Birds (1933) remained unpublished until 1972. original form Columns and poems from the 1930s were republished in the book Spring Days Laboratory (1987). Zabolotsky died in Moscow on October 14, 1958.

Zabolotsky Nikolai Alekseevich (1903 - 1958) - Russian poet, translator. Born on April 24, 1903 (May 7, 1903) near the city of Kazan. Grandfather Zabolotsky had two sons, one of whom was his father. Nikolai's father, having received a state scholarship, was able to study as an agronomist. He married a city school teacher relatively late.

The family of Nikolai Zabolotsky lived in the village of Sernur. He was the first of six children to study at a secondary school in the city of Urzhum. In 1920, after graduating from college, he went to Moscow. There he immediately entered two faculties of Moscow University: medical and philological. Soon after this he moved to Petrograd, where he entered the Pedagogical Institute.

From 1926 to 1927 Zabolotsky served in the army. After returning from the army, he was accepted into the children's book department of the State Publishing House. S. Marshak was the head of the department. L. Chukovskaya, E. Shvarts, N. Oleynikov also worked in the department. The department printed children's books and two children's magazines with the titles "Chizh" and "Hedgehog". At the end of 1927, the resulting poetic group received the name “Union of Real Art”.