Poet Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky: biography, creativity

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

Russian and Soviet poet Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky was born near St. Petersburg, in Tsarskoye Selo (now the city of Pushkin), on April 10, 1895. He was literally destined to become a poet: his father taught the Law of God in the same gymnasium, where the director was the best of the mentors - Innokenty Annensky. There, Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky also met Nikolai Gumilyov, who studied at the same gymnasium, and until the end of his life considered these two people to be his main teachers.

The Path to Literature

The poet received an excellent education at home, as well as at the gymnasium, after graduation he entered the university at the Faculty of History and Philology. When Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky enthusiastically studied in his first year, the First World War began. Just before the war, the first collection of the poet's poems, Gymnasia Years, was published. And with the first publication, young Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky had the opportunity to brag (buthardly used it) four years earlier - in 1910, when his poems appeared in the journal "The Apprentice".

It was a wonderful time! Nearby was a women's gymnasium, where the future Akhmatova studied, but for now the talented girl Anya Gorenko is a friend of Vsevolod for many, many years. Tsarskoye Selo was conducive to poetic research: these world-famous palaces and parks of it are the splendor of Versailles, harmony is poured everywhere, poetic charm and a joy to the eyes. The poet's soul was receptive - the aesthetic impact of the environment gave him an eternal craving for grace, beauty, and transparency. And Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky wrote poems just like that, permeated with harmony and unhurried grace akin to his native city. Pushkin's Muse few of the "Tsarskoselov" do not stir the soul.

Parents

The most serious influence on the poetic tastes of the poet was his mother, who was in correspondence with her great countryman - Leo Tolstoy. She came from a huge village family, but was educated and from birth was gifted creatively, possessed a rich imagination and used words with great freedom: her speech was figurative, fluid, smooth and always friendly.

The poet's father was born in the places that his son had to defend during the Great Patriotic War - not far from Tikhvin. Here for the summer the family went on vacation, and the future poet absorbed the delights of the village life of the village of Ilyinskoye no less willingly than the refined beauty of his native city. The combination is strange andwhimsical, but also very interestingly embodied in poetic lines. Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky wrote full-blooded poems, with a steady feeling of happiness and harmony with the whole world.

Crazy combinations

In the soul of the poet, various and dissimilar elements have always coexisted in goodness and joy at the same time: palace life is intertwined with urban life, high intelligence is woven into the simple-hearted peasant dialect. That's how the talent was born. Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky wrote joyful and happy poems, despite the fact that the era was the same for him: difficult, harsh, at times merciless.

And when everything seemed to collapse, as if a sunbeam illuminated the most difficult years in the titles of his books: "Summer" - edition of 1921, "Window to the Garden" - 1939… The times that Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky lived through, whose biography was built for more than eighty years, absorbing everything that happened to his native land, were reflected in his work without anguish and pathos.

Fidelity to the melody

And his subsequent compositions never lost optimism: "Oriole", "Russian Dawns", "Golden Autumn"… Even the last book published just before his death, in 1976, was called "Face to Dawn". Sunny poet, joyful and surprisingly reasonable. No noise, roar and thunderstorms of the new era could shake his purely Pushkinian love of life, organicity, a sense of great time, next to which all wars and revolutions are small.particularly similar to the dust on Orpheus' harp.

Many art critics are sure that it was Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky who picked up this harp, which was dropped by Nikolay Gumilyov. His biography is not distinguished by such sharp turns, tragedies and heroism as Gumilyov's. But for three quarters of a century writing poems generous with joy is more than a feat, isn't it?

The very beginning

The young poet was very, very lucky to have mentors. The magazine "Student", published on the basis of the First Gymnasium of St. Petersburg, was edited by a Latin teacher, who later became widely known as a historical novelist Vasily Grigorievich Yan, whose sagas about Genghis Khan and Batu will always be extremely popular, they are translated into more than fifty languages. The real name of the Latin teacher is Yanchevetsky, it was he who edited the first, still children's, poems. Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky never republished the first book about the gymnasium years, nor the publications from the journal "Student", considering them imitative and student.

However, they were not helpless at all, even the very first ones. Apukhtin, Nadson … And as adults, many people who consider themselves poets sin with almost direct borrowings, which little Rozhdestvensky did not have at all. The cycle, which is dedicated to Pushkin, is beautifully thought out, accurately weighed, equipped with interest in folk art, meditations from Baratynsky surprise with intelligence and sensibility, which is not at all inherent in young talents.

Students

Since 1914 ChristmasVsevolod Alexandrovich is on the list of students of St. Petersburg University. Political fermentation, disputes practically did not touch him, he did not take part in them. Modernism, which seduced most of his entourage, also did not become close to him, the poet did not honor anyone like Blok. But even now fate did not leave him without significant acquaintances. Larisa Reisner studied at the same faculty, a bright figure who has not lost this quality so far.

They attended the faculty's "Circle of Poets" together and were almost equally active. Larisa's father helped to publish a magazine, which was the organ of this circle, called "Rudin". Only eight issues were published, in which three poems remained, which were already written by an adult poet - Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky. It was not just a circle, it was a school of verse, in which Yesenin, Mandelstam and many other St. Petersburg poets of that time were noted.

Choice

Gradually democratic and revolutionary views under the influence of Larisa Reisner began to dominate in the circle. In October 1917, she earned eternal glory as a commissar of the B altic Fleet. And Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky became the commander of the Red Army.

"Voice of the Motherland" - the famous poem of 1941 - sounded so loud precisely because a quarter of a century ago the young poet participated with his battalion in all the turbulent events that created that very Motherland, for which, not sparing their lives, all the people fought.

Meetings

At the end of life VsevolodRozhdestvensky wrote his autobiography "Pages of Life", and this book almost immediately became a bibliographic rarity, despite the not too small circulation. This is because people often came into his life not just extraordinary, but legendary. For example, he was a tutor in the family of Maxim Gorky, and the writer had a very high opinion of the young man's talent, took an active part in his creative life, talked a lot and willingly, advised, and instructed. Rozhdestvensky also talked a lot with the wonderful owner of the Poet's House in Koktebel, Maximilian Voloshin.

It was not in vain that Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky absorbed poetry as "the science of happiness". The meeting with Alexander Blok determined a lot in poetic preferences. The inclination towards the accuracy and rigor of acmeism has passed, the magic and magic of the inner music of words has begun. When Blok broke off relations with the Acmeists, Rozhdestvensky stayed with Blok so as not to write "without a deity, without inspiration." The science of poetry can be mastered easily if the taste is impeccable. And the poet Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky also turned out to be right in this confidence.

War Poems

The Great Patriotic War made the poet a militia literally on the very first day. "To defend Leningrad" - this newspaper sent its correspondent to any, even the most difficult, tasks. Then he was seconded to the Seventh Army and did any military work. Poems were also composed at the same time. In 1943, the book "Voice of the Motherland" was published, and in 1945 -"Ladoga". These were all kinds of testimonies about what the poet was experiencing, what the poet saw, heard and felt. Odes and satires, essays and ballads, correspondence and songs.

But, as before, any poetic word of Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky was transparent and pure. This master - in the best sense of the word - is a traditionalist: classical art is enriched with a huge, most complex life experience of the first half of the twentieth century, it went through many trials, returned from many dead-end branches of the stylistic labyrinth, but appeared before readers in strict poetic forms filled with the purity of the living breathing.

Post-war

The war was difficult. Almost immediately after its completion, in 1947, the book "Native Roads" was published, after which the poet fell silent for eleven years. After military verses, the soul did not immediately tune in to the former world and harmony. And anyone could write outside this state, but not Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky. Repressions touched him only by the police, even before the revolution, when at St. Petersburg University, as if with a broom, dissident students were swept away. In addition to poetic work, Vsevolod Alexandrovich could do a lot more.

Of course, he used these skills while waiting for peace of mind. He was engaged in translations, wrote opera librettos (fifteen of them were written and staged, among them there are many operas that have become classics). The last period of creativity - already poetic - is almost entirely occupied by the theme of Russian art. Written cycles of poems dedicated to the greatest architectsin Russia. The poet philosophizes, contemplating native landscapes. And a very large place in his work is occupied by memoirs.

Caucasus

Love for these fertile and grateful lands originated in the 20s, and it was here that Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky returned from time to time throughout his life. These travels are reflected in the poems "Tsey", "Hunter Vasso", "Caucasian Meeting" and many others. Here the poet found an inexhaustible source for his work.

Mountain cycles are true poetic masterpieces. The powerful beauty of the local nature was able to complement the lovely landscapes of the Tikhvin village and the aristocratic harmony of the Tsarskoye Selo views. The Tsei Gorge attracted the poet like a magnet, hence the optimism inherent in the poet acquires a certain primordial nature, and inspiration is loaded like a gun.