Writer Goff Inna

2025 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2025-01-24 17:46

Inna Goff is a popular Soviet writer who is the author of the text of the legendary song called "Russian Field". Do you want to know more about the life and work of this poetess?

Biography

The future writer was born on October 24, 1928 in the family of a successful phthisiatrician Anatoly Goff and French teacher Zoe Goff. Unfortunately, the girl's youth fell on the years of the Great Patriotic War, which influenced her work. In the summer of 1941, the city of Kharkov was under siege. It is for this reason that the Goff family is evacuated to the Siberian city of Tomsk. There, Inna gets a job in a hospital and works as a nanny. She will tell more than once in her works about the difficult years experienced in the military rear (hospitals, queues, constant deaths, shattered hopes, etc.)

Post-war period

When the war is over, Inna moves to Moscow. There she enters the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute and attends the seminars of the poet Mikhail Svetlov. And later, having changed direction, he comes to the lectures of the prose writer Konstantin Paustovsky. In her student years, Inna married her classmate Konstantin Vanshenkin, who would become a famous poet in the future.

It was during this period that Goff Inna will awaken herself in the literary craft. And success does not bypass the talented writer. The first rays of glory illuminate Inna in 1950. At the first All-Union competition for the best children's books, Goff received her first prize for a short story called "I am the taiga." Great interest was attracted by another work of Inna - "Heartbeat". A few years later, a new book by the writer, Boiling Point, is published. In it, Inna Goff talks about ordinary workers of a chemical plant located in the Moscow region.

Creativity

Inna's work was a huge success both among critics and among ordinary readers. Literary experts noted the liveliness of the language and the enthusiasm that was present in the works of Goff. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that large publishing houses willingly printed the young writer. Thus, in 1960, the story "Northern Dream" was published. And in 1961, a cycle called "Queue for kerosene" was published. 1963 was marked by the release of Inna's novel The Phone Rings at Night. In these works, the girl reproduced her youthful impressions of the difficult times of the Great Patriotic War.

The writer has mastered the genres of novel and story to perfection. All Goff characters were endowed with living human characters, which made them want to empathize. Inna's heroes fell into a difficult, but nevertheless, beautiful world. And the atypical views of the writer on seemingly banal things and her delightful sense of humor gaveworks of special charm.

Gradually Inna Goff begins to change her repertoire: the girl moves from folk images to more elegant, one might say elite prose. Thus, the cycles “How the Gondoliers Dressed” and “Travel Stories” are dedicated to traveling around Italy, and “Familiar Trees” are the writer’s sketches about the Moscow region.

Poems by Inna Goff

In our time, the writer is known not only for writing interesting stories, but also for her lyrical works.

Goff Inna started writing poems in her youth. However, the girl quite quickly and unexpectedly switched to prose. Nevertheless, she did not stop writing poems. For many years, Inna wrote what is called "on the table." And only thanks to Mark Bernes, Jan Frenkel and Eduard Kolmanovsky, who set Goff's poems to music, the general public was able to get acquainted with the writer's lyrics. At the moment, such songs as “Northern Wind”, “I Smile at You”, “Russian Field”, “When You Fall Out of Love”, “August” and others are recognized folk classics.