Ivan Melezh: life and work

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

Ivan Melezh is a Belarusian writer and publicist, winner of many literary awards, a participant in hostilities in the Great Patriotic War. At one time he was presented to two orders. After his death, he left a great literary heritage to posterity.

Ivan Melezh: biography

He was an extremely modest person, shy. He knew how and loved to listen to his interlocutor, did not dare to interrupt him even when he was completely wrong. Ivan Pavlovich himself spoke calmly, restrainedly, judiciously, as if weighing every word, every thought. And it was clear: he knew the true value of the word.

Ivan Melezh was born on February 8, 1921 in the village of Glinishche, Khoiniki district, in the very depths of the Belarusian Polesie. From there, from the depths of the people, the heroes of Ivan Pavlovich also came into the light and went into literary immortality: it was there that he studied their characters, made generalizations of human traits, behavior, characters … A village in a peaceful creative life, native places and war, the fate of an individual and people as a whole during severe, deadly trials - these were the main topics of the deep, talented and unique research work of Melezh-writer, Melezh the creator. Ivan Melezh himself had to experience severe and cruel trials … Immediately after the end of the local ten-year period, the 17-year-old boy was invited to work in the Khoiniki district committee of the Komsomol. The following year, 1939, Ivan enters an extremely prestigious institution of higher education - the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature. Then he began to appear in print with poetry. One of the first among them was the poem "Motherland", published in February 1939 in the "Red Shift". It seemed that such an interesting, rich and eventful life lay ahead! However, fate decreed otherwise … Already from the first year of the Moscow Institute, Melezh was drafted into the Red Army, and in the summer of 1940 he took his first baptism of fire - he participated in the liberation of Northern Bukovina.

In the ranks of the Soviet army

From the first days of the Great Patriotic War - he was at the front. Fights with huge, irreparable losses of fighting friends near Uman, Nikolaev, Rostov-on-Don, Lazovaya. The enemy bullet does not pass by Ivan either: in June 1942 he is seriously wounded. Treatment in a hospital in Tbilisi, and the commission recognizes him as "unfit for military service."

Life after injury

Ivan Melezh is sent to the rear: first to Buguruslan, then to Moldova, where he teaches military training at the Pedagogical Institute. The exhausted but powerful body, soul and character of the young man yearn for knowledge, and happiness finally smiles at him: in 1943 Ivan was transferred to the Belarusian Stateuniversity, which was then based at the Skhodnya station near Moscow. He combines the work of the same teacher of military training with studies at the correspondence department of the philological faculty of the Belarusian State University, after which he is transferred to a hospital and already in the liberated Minsk he receives a diploma of higher education. The thirst for knowledge, however, does not decrease: Melezh Ivan Pavlovich enters graduate school and begins to teach his native Belarusian literature there, at his native university. It was then that he made his first serious claim in fiction - with his stories and short stories, essays and essays.

Creativity

Ivan Melezh began to print in 1939, when his first poem was published. After the first wound, while in a Tbilisi hospital, he began to write prose, and immediately after the war he published the first collection of short stories and tried his hand at dramaturgy. The first prose work by Ivan Melezh was published in 1943.

Even during his lifetime (and Melezh lived, unfortunately, so little - only 55 years old!) His works were called one such "high" and, at the same time, well-deserved word - a classic! Ivan Pavlovich's Polissya Chronicle was put on a par with Mikhail Sholokhov's The Quiet Don, and some even higher.

Polesskaya Chronicle

"The Polissya Chronicle" is a large-scale work that fully reflects one of the most important and traditional themes of Belarusian literature - peasant. Ivan Pavlovich was able to convey to readers the atmosphere and spirit of the 20s of the XX century - a time that becamethe history of our Fatherland, both evolutionary-renewed and contradictory-tragic. The only pity is that the third of the novels of the "Polesskaya Chronicle" - "Snowstorms, December" - remained unfinished …

The first two parts of the Polissya Chronicle - the novels "People in the Swamp" and "The Breath of a Thunderstorm" - were awarded the highest Soviet literary award - the Lenin Prize. Ivan Melezh was also awarded the title of People's Writer of Belarus, laureate of the State Prizes of the USSR and the BSSR, was awarded several orders and medals. He was elected a deputy of the Supreme Council of the BSSR, was the chairman of the Belarusian Committee for the Protection of Peace, a member of the World Peace Council.

People in the Swamp

Ivan Melezh "People in the Swamp" - the novel was included in the trilogy "Polesskaya Chronicle" and brought the author world fame and recognition. The work has been repeatedly translated into other languages and is rightfully considered the most significant in the work of Ivan Melezh.

In the center of the story are simple peasants, residents of a Belarusian village. The author describes the time of the establishment of Soviet power. Initially, the novel was conceived as a lyrical one, and there really is a love conflict here - a love story of the main characters. Against the backdrop of the relationship between Vasily Dyatlik and Anna Chernushka, Ivan Melezh tells about the life of peasants at that difficult time, describing in detail the traditions and customs of Belarusians. The novel has been repeatedly filmed and staged.

Thunder Breath

The reader gets acquainted with the second part of the Polissya Chronicle, wherewill meet with familiar heroes - Vasily Dyatlik, Anna Chernushka, Filimon, "Bolshevik with a human face" Aleyka. The writer continues to develop the plot, which can be called the saga of Polissya. The center of the world created by Melezh is still the inhabitants of a small village cut off from the world. Vasily and Anna still love each other no matter what. But the dream of the promised land does not leave Vasily …

Minsk direction

In 1947-1952. Ivan Pavlovich Melezh wrote the novel "Minsk Direction", in which he showed the liberation of Belarus by the soldiers of the Red Army and partisans in April-July 1944. The novel is dedicated to the final stage of the Great Patriotic War - the liberation of Belarus from the fascist invaders. Homeland: both on the front roads and behind enemy lines. The writer drew in the novel a whole gallery of images ready to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of a free life.

The stories of Ivan Melez provided him with immortality. Streets in several cities of Belarus are named after him. The name of the writer was given to a secondary school in his homeland, a library and a gymnasium in Gomel. Since 1980, the Union of Writers of the BSSR has been awarding the Ivan Melez Literary Prize.