Sergey Dovlatov, writer: life and work

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Sergei Dovlatov is a writer whose life was told by him during his lifetime. The stories of the lyrical hero in his books have become a true autobiography.

Leningrad

In the first year of the Great Patriotic War, a son was born in the Leningrad theater family of Donat Mechik, who later took the surname Dovlatov. The writer, who has become one of the most widely read authors of recent decades, spent the first years of his life in Ufa. He served in the zone, worked in a large-circulation Leningrad newspaper, acted as a secretary and acted as a guide. In his spare time he wrote stories. However, none of Dovlatov's books was published in Leningrad. As, however, in any other city of the USSR.

Sergey Dovlatov is an author whose prose, like life, is full of sadness and self-irony. A person who writes cannot refuse literary activity, since it is an integral part of his entire existence. But if a person living in the world of words does not provide a material basis for a favorite business, he finds himself in a difficult situation. The way out of this situation for Dovlatov was emigration.

New York

I saw a completely different world in this American citywriter Dovlatov. His biography includes a ten-year period of stay in exile. During these years he worked as a journalist in a prestigious publication, worked on a popular Russian-language radio, and it was then that he became famous. Great contemporaries spoke highly of his work: Kurt Vonnegut, Irving Howe, Viktor Nekrasov, Vladimir Voinovich. Twelve books by Dovlatov were published abroad. Most of them were translated into English, German and other languages during the author's lifetime.

Death overtook him in an ambulance. A few meters remained to the hospital. Carelessness, due to which there was no medical insurance at the right time, and fate were to blame for the premature death. In the courtyard of the hospital for the poor, one of the most published authors today, Sergei Dovlatov, died. The writer Igor Efimov once said about him: "He died from undeserved dislike for himself." One of the streets of New York is named after the famous emigrant.

Zone

The author of this story, in one of his letters to the publisher, once said that the events that formed its basis predetermined his fate as a writer. A person becomes an artist when he has the ability to extract images and storylines from the dark abyss.

In his youth, one of Dovlatov's favorite writers was Ernest Hemingway. Obviously, under the influence of the American and world classics, the unique Dovlatov style was also formed: realism, conciseness, and the absence of metaphors. However, as the author of The Zone himself said, he wanted to be likeonly for Chekhov. Ordinary people and the situations in which they found themselves interested him like nothing else.

The story "The Zone", like other works, was first published in the USA. The book is a reflection of the criminal world, of which Dovlatov himself was an eyewitness. The writer presented the events in a peculiar chaotic style. Working as a warden, he saw the horrors and savagery of the world in which he found himself. But he was able to convey everything he saw on paper simply, without pathos. Happiness, pleasure, joy, anger, envy - all these categories are present in any society. And it doesn't matter who its members are - criminals or respectable citizens. One can see a certain absurdity in how simple and naive the joys and hopes of a person who finds himself behind bars in inhuman conditions can be. But Sergei Donatovich, perhaps, became a writer because he was able to consider the classic image of the “little man” in time.

Reserve

Sergey Dovlatov is a writer whose books became a continuation of his personal tragedy. Many authors who belong to his generation suffered a sad fate. They were not recognized in their homeland, lived almost in poverty, and were persecuted by the KGB. But the works of Dovlatov, despite all the blows of fate, are permeated with lyricism and self-irony. This is the hallmark of his prose.

A few years before his departure, Dovlatov worked in the Pushkin Reserve, in the Pskov region. His books were not published. There was nothing to support the family. But it was not the work of a guide that inspired the writer to create anotherautobiographical book, but the ubiquitous "little man".

The author of the "Reserve" describes his characters in an unusual perspective. A special place is occupied at first glance by the secondary hero Ivan Mikhalych: a drinking man, but a noble one, since he does not collect or sell bottles. The charming image of a village drunkard, the eccentric personality of a local brawler, an unpleasant but frank conversation in the office of a state security officer. And all this against the backdrop of constant experiences caused by separation from the family. This is Dovlatov's extraordinary gift: not to write about the important, but to speak, and the simpler the better.