Schwartz Evgeny Lvovich: biography, creativity

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

Shvarts Evgeny Lvovich is an outstanding Russian Soviet playwright, storyteller, screenwriter and prose writer who created 25 plays. However, not all of his works were published during his lifetime. He owns such famous plays as "Dragon", "Ordinary Miracle", "Shadow", etc.

Completely giving all of himself - this is how Schwartz Evgeny Lvovich worked. A short biography for children will be interesting because, thanks to his scripts, such movie masterpieces as Cinderella, Don Quixote, First Grader and many others appeared. He abruptly turned his professional destiny from a lawyer to a playwright and writer, and never regretted what he did, but more on that later.

Schwartz Evgeny Lvovich: biography

The future writer was born in Kazan on October 21, 1896 in the family of an Orthodox Jew Lev Borisovich Schwartz and Maria Fedorovna Shchelkova, both of them were medical workers. Lev Borisovich graduated from Kazan Medical University, where he met his future wife, Maria Fedorovna, who was attending obstetric courses at that time. In 1895 they got married. ATthe same year, Lev Borisovich became an Orthodox Christian in the Kazan Mikhailo-Arkhangelsk Church.

Soon they had a little Schwartz Evgeny Lvovich. The biography further indicates that his family moved from Kazan to Armavir.

Arrests and exile of the father

Although Lev Schwartz was one of the "unreliable" students, he finished his studies at the university well and in 1898 left for the city of Dmitrov. And in the same year, he was arrested for suspicion of anti-government propaganda. His family was exiled to Armavir, then Akhtyr and Maykop. However, this was not the only episode of proceedings with government officials, there will be more arrests and exiles.

But events related to his father's political allegiances will hardly affect his little son. Eugene was also baptized in the Orthodox Church, and therefore he always considered himself to be Russian. Orthodoxy for him was equal to belonging to the Russian nationality, and he did not separate himself from it in any way.

Childhood

It was in Maikop that Schwartz Evgeny Lvovich spent his childhood and youth. A brief biography of the writer testifies that he recalled that time with special warmth and tenderness.

In 1914 he entered the University. Shanyavsky in Moscow at the Faculty of Law. But after a couple of years, he realized that this was not his calling and decided to devote himself to literature and theater.

Revolution and civil war

When in 1917 Schwartz went to military service, immediatelythere was a revolution, and Eugene got into the volunteer army. In the battle for Yekaterinodar, he received a severe concussion and was demobilized. This wound did not pass without a trace for the writer, then all his life he was accompanied by a hand tremor.

After demobilization, Schwartz Evgeny Lvovich (whose brief biography is provided to your attention) does not forget about his dream for a moment. He becomes a student at Rostov University. While working at the Theater Workshop, he met Nikolai Oleinikov, who later became his best friend and co-author.

Theatrical work

In 1921, Schwartz Evgeny Lvovich with his theater, where he worked, came to Petrograd on tour. Critics noted his excellent acting skills. But he decided to leave this too and became the secretary of the children's writer Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky, whom he helped in numerous literary matters.

And then, in 1923-1924, Schwartz Evgeny Lvovich worked on feuilletons for print media in the city of Donetsk under the pseudonym Grandfather Sarai.

After, in 1924, he again returned to Leningrad, to the editorial office of the State Publishing House, where he helped young authors find their way in writing. Schwartz also participated in the creation of children's humorous magazines "Hedgehog" and "Chizh". He wrote poems and stories there, talked with groups of OBERIU.

Literary creativity

The first work that brought success to Yevgeny Schwartz was the play "Underwood", written in 1929. In 1934, having been persuaded by N. Akimov, he created the first satirical play "The Adventure of Hohenstaufen".

In 1940, the drama "Shadow" was written, which was a political satire, but it did not stay long on the stage - it was simply removed from the repertoire. During this performance, the laughter was incredible, but then there were bitter thoughts in the minds of the audience.

After that, Evgeny Schwartz worked on several realistic works on modern themes. During the Second World War, in evacuation, he lived in Kirov and Stalinabad. There he created his masterpiece "Dragon", which fell into the classification of a harmful fairy tale and, like other dramatic works, did not have a long life on stage.

After a series of such failures, the playwright joked with his friends that maybe he should write a play about Ivan the Terrible and call it "Uncle Vanya"?

Only after Stalin's death, thanks to the efforts of Olga Bergholz, who highly appreciated Schwartz's work, his first collection of works saw the light of day.

Shvarts Evgeny Lvovich: interesting facts

The writer was witty and imaginative since childhood. Numerous photos of Schwartz Evgeny Lvovich show us a solid and serious expression on his face, but almost always with a very sweet and childishly naive smile.

One of his contemporaries recalled that in those days when the writer worked in the magazines "Chizh" and "Ezh", the premises of the sixth floor of the State Publishing House on Nevsky 28 shook daily with laughter. It was Schwartz and Oleinikov who amused their colleagues with their jokes. They needed an audience and they found it.

The first book of poems for children of the famous writer was published in 1925 - "The Tale of the Old Violin". Then the plays "Treasure", "The Adventures of Hohenstaufen", transcriptions and reworkings of the plots of Perrault and Andersen were published: "The Naked King", "Swineherd" (1934), "Little Red Riding Hood" (1937), "The Snow Queen" (1938), " Shadow (1940), Ordinary Miracle (1954).

Freedom

With the advent of real freedom, his plays of fairy tales began to be staged abroad - in Germany, Israel, the USA, Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. Our contemporary director Mark Zakharov created a magnificent film "An Ordinary Miracle".

Viewers and readers do not get tired of admiring the writer's bold flight of thought and his looseness, and once it was "Aesopian language". Schwartz admired and even envied Picasso, who was independent in his views, internally free and therefore did whatever he wanted.

After the death of the master, his “Phone Book” was published, where he wrote down his memories of people in alphabetical order. These memoirs are extremely interesting, because they capture the era of the 20-50s, this is his “trodden field” of life.

In them, Schwartz does not act as an all-forgiving good man, in his memoirs he is extremely sincere and free. Here one feels a certain ruthlessness and sophistication, barbs and ridicule pour one after another. His main principle was to face the facts and not stray from them.

Favorite women

In his youth, he courted Gayane Khaladzheva, his future wife, for a long time, but she did not give in, since he was fabulously poor, althoughpromised her mountains of gold like a true storyteller. The second wife was Ekaterina Ivanovna. Before his death, and he was dying very hard, he tried to cheat fate and even subscribed to the complete works of Charles Dickens, but he died long before the release of the last volume.

Schwartz Yevgeny Lvovich died on January 15, 1958. He was buried at the Bogoslovsky cemetery in Leningrad. Several biographical documentaries have been made about the talented writer.