Evgeny Schwartz: biography, photos, works

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

A wonderful playwright, prose writer, screenwriter Yevgeny Schwartz lived a very difficult life. Everything was enough in his life - there was a wound from which he did not recover until the end of his life, and refusals to publish and stage his works, and the loss of friends during the repressions. There was also a great love that lasted thirty years until his death.

Childhood and youth

Evgeny Schwartz was born in the family of a Jewish doctor, but he always considered himself Russian. He graduated from a real school, and soon a cadet, or rather, already promoted to the rank of ensign, at the age of eighteen he went to the front. During the capture of Yekaterinodar in the army of Kornilov, he received a shell shock. He's got hand tremors from her for the rest of his life.

After demobilization, he searches for himself, and only when he got to Leningrad, Evgeny Schwartz from 1923 began to be published in the children's magazines "Hedgehog" and "Chizh". He enters the literary milieu. He is warmly received as a wonderful storyteller and inventor. At the same time, he became close to the Serapion Brothers literary group, which includes Vsevolod Ivanov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Veniamin Kaverin. Kaverin introduces Evgeny Schwartz to his sisterCatherine. And the mutual love that they carried through their whole lives flares up. It is about this love, as many people think, that the Magician from the "Ordinary Miracle" speaks.

By this time, the first book was published, which brought success to Yevgeny Lvovich - "Stories of the Old Balalaika". Others follow her. The glory of a children's writer is assigned to Schwartz.

Dramaturgy

In 1929 in Leningrad, in the Youth Theatre, his first play "Underwood" was staged. Later two more plays. As a result, Yevgeny Schwartz was admitted to the Writers' Union. This, of course, is a success.

And he continues: his plays "Treasure", "Brother and Sister", "Little Red Riding Hood", "The Snow Queen" are staged.

But the NKVD defeated the Chizh publishing house. And Schwartz's friends Nikolai Oleinikov and Nikolai Zabolotsky were arrested. Children's literature is becoming suspicious and dangerous.

Evgeny Schwartz is trying to write adult comedies. But his plays, such as "Shadow", were too close to political satire, and therefore they were not staged. But newspaper articles are being published.

War

Yevgeny Lvovich spends the first blockade winter in Leningrad, and as he himself testifies, he sees how people cease to be people because of fear. But at the top, a decision was made to evacuate Schwartz to Kirov. There he will write the play "One Night", which no one will undertake to stage. The same thing will happen with the next play "Far Land". The play "Dragon" is also not staged.

Movie shooting

In 1946, the film "Cinderella" was released, until nowDarling. And the work of the screenwriter was separately noted.

In the same year he was awarded two medals: "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War" and "For the Defense of Leningrad". This is where all good things end. Hard times are coming. The new script "Tsar Vodokrut" was written in 1946, and the film based on it, "Marya the Master", was released only in 1960 after his death. Evgeny Schwartz will never see many of his works. The works, some of the most significant in his work, "Ordinary Miracle", "Shadow", "Kill the Dragon" will be staged by wonderful directors with great performers, but it's too late for the author.

Working tirelessly

Evgeny Schwartz is full of new ideas and plans. He writes more and more plays and scripts, which are almost all uncensored. "Vasilisa the Worker", "First Name", "One Day". And, finally, in 1954, Kozintsev takes on his script for Don Quixote. However, at the congress of Soviet writers, Yevgeny Schwartz is accused of separating form from content. Spit in the face. And for a while Evgeny Lvovich stops writing.

In 1956, for the sixtieth anniversary in Moscow and Leningrad, his program fairy tale "An Ordinary Miracle" was staged. In the same year, a solemn evening was held in Leningrad in honor of Yevgeny Lvovich. And by the end of the year he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. And for the first time his plays were published in one collection. This is what Evgeny Schwartz looks like (photo).

In 1957his film Don Quixote is shown in Cannes. This is a significant event in his life. But he alth is failing. On the eve of 1958, the premiere of the play "The Tale of the Young Spouses" takes place, which he had been waiting for ten years. And two weeks later, the writer dies. This is how the life of a wonderful storyteller, who was Evgeny Schwartz, was not easy. His biography consisted of work and attempts to stage his plays. And if he wrote unstrainedly, joyfully, all things began with the dark forces thickening, but the ending was usually joyful and cloudless. With his work, the writer brought hope to people. It is possible that Evgeny Schwartz did not have time to tell us everything. The biography will briefly list everything he wrote. After all, he gave everything in his works.

Life after death

In 1971, Nadezhda Kosheverova's film based on Schwartz's fairy tale play "Shadow" was released. In a fairy-tale magical land, a scientist, simple-hearted and trusting Christian-Theodore is in love with a beautiful princess.

But his Shadow has separated from him and seeks a high position.

Given the time when the play was created, the image of the Shadow is somewhat reminiscent of Hitler. Both the princess and the throne become dominated by the shadow. After long ups and downs, good, as happens with Schwartz, triumphs over evil. But the scientist no longer needs the traitorous princess and this kingdom. He leaves with the girl who always believed in him.

In 1988, director Mark Zakharov directs the film-parable "Kill the Dragon" based on Schwartz's play "The Dragon".

To the citywhere the merciless Dragon rules for four hundred years, the errant knight Lancelot falls.

Residents got used to all the harassment and believed that life is normal and right, even that the most beautiful girl in the city should be given to the Dragon every year. And the knight fell in love with this beautiful Elsa. The Burgomaster dissuades Lancelot from fighting as best he can.

He assures the knight that freedom will bring people confusion and unhappiness. But the knight did not give up his intention and destroyed the cruel dictator. It was his duty to fight the usurper. But people, as predicted by the mayor, did not understand what to do with their freedom. The city began to sink into the abyss of chaos. The souls of the people were not cured. Moreover, people decided that the mayor killed the Dragon, and gave him the beautiful Elsa as his wife. What remains for a knight to do when he realized that it was not enough to defeat evil? It is necessary to destroy all its consequences, and this is not at all as simple as killing the Dragon. Everyone needs to kill the dragon in their soul. The knight retires.

Kind storyteller Yevgeny Lvovich Schwartz always asked that his fairy tales not be searched for subtext and allegory. But all this was read at once, even where the author himself did not expect. And nowadays you just have to refer to his works again and again, because they are ambiguous.