Russian poetess Maria Stepanova: biography, creativity

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

Maria Stepanova is a modern Russian poetess who is often called a poet of European scale. Her poems to an unprepared person may seem very strange. The author has his own special style, and first of all, the inconsistency of endings and cases is striking. But, using such techniques, the Russian poetess successfully stands out among her colleagues. Few people know that this talented girl wrote her first poem at the age of three.

Childhood and family of the future poetess

Maria Stepanova is a native Muscovite. She was born on June 9, 1972. The poetess herself says that her family can be attributed to the middle stratum of the Moscow intelligentsia. Her father was a photographer and did various restoration work. Maria's mother worked as an engineer, but at the same time she wrote poetry herself. Having matured and become famous, the Russian poetess highly appreciated thesepoems and admitted that among them there were really good and strong things.

Stepanova considers her childhood quite happy. At first, she, like a simple child, dreamed of growing up and becoming a driver, then she wanted to be a pirate, but by the age of 7 she had a desire to become a poet. Surprisingly, Maria Stepanova came up with her first verse at the age of three. A little later, the parents of the young talent showed her works to the famous Moscow philologist R. Timenchik. After reading the poems of Maria Stepanova, he advised to leave the girl alone, not to make a little genius out of her and to protect her from the literary party. This was necessary so that it could fully form on its own. In many ways, Stepanova, whose biography later developed quite successfully, owes her success to the fact that her parents heeded this advice.

Recalling her school years, Masha says that she practically did not notice how they flew by. She was on quite normal terms with her classmates, but she didn't really care much about what was going on around her. She spent all her school time reading interesting books and hiding them under her desk during boring lessons.

Informal youth

Like any talented teenager, Maria Stepanova wanted to show her individuality and stand out from the crowd. At one time, she became interested in the hippie movement and in every possible way wanted to join this subculture. Stepanova recalls that she really wanted to stand out, but howright to do, she did not quite understand.

The Russian poetess, who is really known today in many countries, recalls that in her youth she sometimes looked very ridiculous - a girl, for example, easily combined very aggressive punk bracelets, decorated with five-centimeter metal spikes, and the most delicate hippie baubles. She always tried to get into an informal get-together of non-standard and talented personalities who at that time loved to while away their leisure time in the legendary Moscow cafe "Pentagon", located at Petrovka, 28.

Definition with profession

The dream of becoming a poet, which Maria Stepanova acquired at the age of seven, did not disappear over the years, as happens with many.

After graduating from school, the girl entered the Literary Institute. Gorky and successfully graduated in 1995.

Work in the media industry, OpenSpace.ru

Maria says that she never felt like a chosen genius poet and that is why, despite her great talent, she did not want to limit her activities to writing poetry. Stepanova was afraid to embody the image of a detached genius poet who communicates only with a select circle of people who understand him.

In one of the interviews, Maria stated that she made a decision long ago: her life will be “two-chamber” - she singles out one part for writing poetry, and her main work relates to a completely different story and to her poeticgenius has nothing to do.

Many heard about Maria Stepanova for the first time as the editor-in-chief of the socio-political online publication OpenSpace.ru. This resource covered the main news and events of modern culture and art. The main concept of the site was the idea of expert knowledge, and at one time the resource published the work of more than 500 authors in almost 10 categories.

Recognition in the information field

During the time that Stepanova was the editor-in-chief of OpenSpace.ru, the information resource received various awards, including:

• winner of the Steppenwolf Award;
• nomination in the network competition "Rotor";
• nomination "Editor of the Year" (for which Maria Mikhailovna Stepanova was nominated).

Project restart

In 2012, information appeared that the resource was completely changing the concept of its work. Maria and her entire team then left the editorial office in full force. They resumed their work in the same year, having already registered a completely new domain Colta.ru. For their financing, they chose the original method of crowdfunding, that is, public investment. In the first weeks of fundraising, the site received an amount that was able to fully support its life for the next three months.

Literary works

All this time, Stepanova did not forget about her writing. Despite the fact that she is known as an outstanding poetess, Maria writes a very interesting andsuccessful prose. In 2014, she released a collection of her essays titled Alone, Not Alone, Not Me. This collection is very specific and consists of three conditional parts.

The first one is serious extensive tests, manifestos, which Stepanova spent a lot of time and effort on writing. The second part contains stories about the fate of different people and about the various possible ways of human existence. Basically, these are stories about women's destinies and their loneliness.

In the second part, codenamed "Not Alone", examples of how you can overcome this loneliness are given. The plot of these stories contains images that suggest how to work with this terrible feeling, and examples of how to resist it.

The last part is a kind of mix, a "mixture", as Maria herself calls it. It contains various reviews, jokes. Also in the last part of the collection "Alone, not alone, not me" the author's reflections on those topics that really excite her are presented.

Besides essays, Maria wrote prose for the Matthew Passion 2000 project, which became popular in 2000. She acted as the author of the main idea for the creation of the project, and also wrote texts for it.

Stepanova is also engaged in journalistic work. She writes articles for some printed publications and at the same time she always chooses only those topics that are really interesting to her. This person is very self-critical, and in one of the interviews, Maria said that “everything she writes can be calledprose only with a certain stretch.”

Engaged in various activities, Stepanova never buried her natural talent for writing poetry.

Some of those who are familiar with her work consider the verse "Tir in Sokolniki Park" to be the visiting card of the poetess. But many fans do not agree with this judgment, because Maria's bibliography contains a large number of strong and worthwhile works.

In different periods of time, entire collections of books with her poems were published, including:

• "Lyrics, voice".
• "Songs of the Northern Southerners".
• “Here is light.”
• Kireevsky.
• "About twins".

Awards and achievements

The poems of this writer have been translated into many languages and published in Europe. At home, Stepanova's talent was also recognized, and at different times she was awarded the following prizes:

• Andrey Bely Prize;
• winner of the award. Pasternak;
• Znamya magazine award;
• Moscow account award.

In addition, in 2010, as a talented author, she was awarded a scholarship in memory of the Foundation. Brodsky. To date, her poems have been published and translated into several languages, including Finnish, Hebrew, Italian, English, French, as well as Serbo-Croatian and German.