Alexander Galich: biography, personal life, creativity

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

This article is dedicated to the biography and work of Alexander Arkadyevich Galich, a Russian poet and prose writer, as well as a screenwriter, playwright, songwriter and performer.

The surname Galich was born as a creative pseudonym as a result of the merger of the first letters of the surname and name, as well as the ending of the patronymic: G (-insburg) + AL (-eksandr) + (Arkadiev-) ICH.

Biography

Alexander Ginzburg was born on Ukrainian soil in the city of Yekaterinoslav (in Soviet times - Dnepropetrovsk, then - Dnieper) in October 1918. His father was the Jewish economist Aron Ginzburg, and his mother was Feiga (Faina) Veksler, who worked at the conservatory.

In 1920, the Ginzburg family moved to Sevastopol, and three years later - to Moscow. There the boy graduated from high school. The biography of Alexander Galich would be incomplete if not to mention that his first poem (signed - Alexander Ginzburg) was called "The World in the Mouthpiece" and was published in the newspaper "Pionerskaya Pravda" in 1932. Others later appeared in this paper.poems by young Galich.

He was born on October 19 - it was the opening day of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, where Pushkin studied. The uncle of the future poet was a well-known literary critic, Pushkinist Lev Ginzburg. Probably, from his hand in the Ginzburg family, it was believed that such a coincidence was a special sign. Perhaps that is why, at the end of the ninth grade, Galich entered the Literary Institute. Soon he became a student of the Opera and Drama Studio.

In the end, he had to make a choice between two educational institutions, and he made it in favor of the Studio and Stanislavsky, who taught there for the last year. But he did not finish his studies there, moving to the Studio Theater under the guidance of famous playwrights Alexander Arbuzov and Valentin Pluchek.

Galich's stage and authorial debut was the play "The City at Dawn", which premiered in 1940. As a playwright, he participated in the creation of this play ("The City at Dawn" was written by a group of authors), in addition, Galich wrote songs for the play. The debut acting role of the future poet is the role of Komsomol organizer of the construction site Borshchagovsky.

At the beginning of the war, Galich was drafted into the army, but doctors discovered a congenital heart defect in the young man, and thus he was released from service.

Next, Galich gets a job in a geological exploration expedition and goes to the south of the country as part of it. In Grozny, he managed to work as part of the local theater troupe, and then he moved to the newly formed by the forces of Arbuzov's former studio members and the playwright himselfa small theater in the city of Tashkent.

Private life

Galich met his future wife, actress Valentina Arkhangelskaya, at the same time in Tashkent. They also decided to get married there, but it so happened that a suitcase was stolen from them, where all the documents lay. The marriage had to be postponed - they got married in 1942 in Moscow. Soon the couple had a daughter, who was named Alexandra (Alena).

However, in 1945, the wife of Alexander Galich was offered a place in the troupe of the Irkutsk Drama Theater, and she left Moscow. And although she became a leading actress in this provincial theater, for the most part her departure was dictated by the cramped living conditions in which the newlyweds lived. Nevertheless, Valentina's departure was the cause of the divorce that followed her departure.

In 1947, Galich entered into a new marriage. His second wife was Angelina Nikolaevna Shekrot (Prokhorova).

Children

The first daughter of Galich, also named Alexandra (Alena Galich-Arkhangelskaya), later became an actress.

In 1967, from an extramarital affair with Sofia Mikhnova-Voitenko (Filkinstein), who worked as a costume designer at the Gorky Film Studio, a son, Grigory, was born. Subsequently, he became a Russian religious and public figure, a bishop of the Apostolic Orthodox Church.

Creativity

Alexander Galich's scripts were used to film such feature films as "Taimyr Calls You" (1948), "True Friends" (1954, in both cases the scripted plays were written by Galich in collaboration with the Soviet playwright KonstantinIsaev) and "On the Seven Winds" (1962).

From the 1950s, the poet began to select the first melodies for his texts, accompanying himself on a seven-string guitar (see photos of Alexander Galich taken at concerts). In this work, he was based mainly on the romance style of Vertinsky, but he managed to find and develop his own style. The poems of Alexander Galich, performed as songs, already by the sixties, along with the work of Bulat Okudzhava and Vladimir Vysotsky, found their audience. These were works of tragic, sometimes tragicomic content, most often they had an acute social coloring.

True, the first songs - such as "Helen" (1959), "About painters, a stoker and the theory of relativity" and "Law of Nature" (1962) can be considered politically harmless. But these songs were already the real songs of Galich, it was already his style. In addition, there has been a turning point in them - a transition from the creative path of an ordinary, quite prosperous Soviet writer to the work of a disgraced poet.

This turning point was also facilitated by the fact that his play "Matrosskaya Silence", written specifically for the then recently created Sovremennik Theater, was banned from showing. The play was already rehearsed, the performance was waiting for its premiere. But the author was told: "You have a distorted idea of the role of the Jews in the Great Patriotic War" - and the play was shelved. Later, Alexander Arkadyevich Galich will describe this episode in his biography in his story."Dress rehearsal". What else can be said about the work of this man.

Songs and books by Alexander Galich

At one time, the songs of this poet were so popular that their words were known by heart. For example, Galich's poem-song "Prospector's w altz" with a refrain became famous:

Keep quiet - you'll be rich!

Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Or the shrill "When I get back" is a longing song:

When I get back, The nightingales will whistle in February –

That old motif –

that long-standing, forgotten, sung.

And I will fall, Defeated by his victory, And I poke my head, like a pier, into your knees!

When I get back.

When will I be back?!..

No less famous and memorable were his listeners and other songs: "In memory of Boris Pasternak", "Ask, boys!", "Are you leaving?! Leave - for customs and clouds…", "We are no worse than Horace", "Once again about the devil", "Draft epitaph", "Kaddish" (in memory of Janusz Korczak), "Train" and many others.

Which poems by Alexander Galich are the best? Read - and choose for yourself.

Conflict

Galich's further songwriting led to a conflict with the authorities. He was banned from performing and concerts, blocked access to publications in magazines and the publication of his own works, he was not given permission to release records … All that remained for the poet waswho wants to be heard, in such a situation - to perform at small "home" concerts with his friends. So at one time Galich's songs began their "walking" - on self-made tape recordings, often of not the best quality. And yet, he became very popular pretty quickly.

In 1969, the publishing house "Posev", founded by Russian emigrants in Germany, released a collection of lyrics of his songs. This publication became the reason for further persecution of Alexander Galich - he was expelled from the Union of Writers of the USSR and the Union of Cinematographers. In 1972, Galich was actually "written off" - due to several heart attacks that happened during all these troubles, he receives a second disability group and a pension of 54 rubles.

Emigration

In 1974, Galich was actually forced to emigrate - by a decree of Glavlit, on direct orders from "above", all his previously published works were under a direct ban. They say that Galich left with modest luggage - a typewriter and two suitcases.

He found his first refuge in Norway, then moved to Munich, where he broadcast on the American radio station "Liberty". Alexander Galich spent his last years in Paris.

Death

On December 15, 1977, new equipment was brought to Galich's apartment in Paris - it was the Grundig stereo combine. Its connection was appointed tomorrow, but the owner did not want to wait for the arrival of the master anddecided to do it myself.

Little aware of technical issues, Galich touched the hole with high voltage with an antenna wire. He was electrocuted and fell on the radiator, as a result of which the circuit was closed. Journalist Fyodor Razzakov wrote in one of his books that when his wife returned, Galich was still alive, but the called doctors arrived too late - the poet's heart, which by that time had already suffered several heart attacks, could not stand it.

True, Galich's daughter Alena later claimed that the poet was killed by the "long-armed" KGB. There were even rumors that Galich was "visited" by a CIA killer, but this information is denied by many of Galich's friends, in particular Russian and American artist and sculptor Mikhail Shemyakin:

No KGB, no one hunted him. Just ignorance, because he bought the equipment, we wanted to make a record with him. But he decided to make master tape himself at home. The wife went to the store, he began to fiddle with the equipment, not understanding anything what to include where. You know, so, in Russian: let's include it here. And, in general, he made it so that he short-circuited this equipment somewhere, and when he touched it - that's it, he was electrocuted.

The grave of Alexander Galich is located in the famous "Russian" cemetery of the French town of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois, not far from Paris.