Lazar Lagin - the one who gave the kids a miracle

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

It was he who wrote the scripts for the cartoons "About the Evil Stepmother", "Attention, wolves!" and several others. It was from his pen that the fantastic novels "Atavia Proxima", "The Island of Disappointment", novels and pamphlets came out. It was he who recalled Mayakovsky in the book Life Ago. But it seems that his most important work, by which he was recognized and still loved and remembered, is the fairy tale story "Old Man Hottabych". Lazar Lagin gave all the boys and girls of the Soviet Union (as well as their parents) the belief that miracles exist, and cherished desires can come true no matter what.

Childhood and youth

In 1903, on November 21 (December 4), a boy was born into a Jewish family with very modest material we alth, who was given the name Lazar at birth (as an adult, he took the pseudonym Lazar Lagin - according to the first syllables of his own names and surname - Lazar GINzburg). He was the eldest offive kids, Joseph Faivelevich and Khana Lazarevna Ginzburg. Joseph worked as a raft driver. A year after the birth of their son, the family, having saved up money, moved to Minsk. Dad opened a hardware store in this town.

The boy was only 10 years old when the First World War (1914) began, and just three years later, the October Revolution (1917).

At the age of fifteen (1919), Lazar Lagin graduated from high school in Minsk and, having received a matriculation certificate, went to the Civil War as a volunteer. During this period of his life, he organizes the Komsomol in Belarus and even for some time is one of its leaders.

The beginning of the creative path

The guy starts writing early, and since 1922 his poems and notes have already been printed on the pages of various newspapers. The level of his lines was quite high, but… As the author himself, Lazar Iosifovich, once noted with a whiff of irony, recalling his first literary works, he has a great merit for the literature of his Fatherland - he stopped in time and stopped rhyming words forever.

Then, in Rostov-on-Don, he met Vladimir Mayakovsky and showed him his poems. The famous poet praised Lagin's work. A little later, already in Moscow, at each meeting he asked the question of why Lazar Iosifovich did not bring him his new lines.

The next year the guy starts his studies at the vocal department of the Minsk Conservatory. Very little time passes, and he realizes that the theoryMusic does not interest him at all. So school ends before it really starts.

Moscow life

The day comes when Lazar Lagin moves to the capital - the city of Moscow. His biography is replenished with the following fact - he graduated from the institute, which in the future became known as "Plekhanovsky". After receiving a diploma, Lazar Iosifovich serves in the army. He does not leave thoughts about studying. And a little later, from 1930 to 1933, when he entered the Institute of Red Professors, where he defended his dissertation and received a Ph. D. in economics. Lagin worked for some time at the institute as an assistant professor, even led teaching work. In parallel, he was able to write several brochures in his speci alty.

After some time, very fruitful work at the institute was interrupted. Lazar Lagin was recalled to a new job, which was offered in the Pravda newspaper. A little later, he works in the Crocodile magazine. It was in it that in 1934 he would become deputy editor-in-chief (famous journalist Mikhail Koltsov).

In the literary field, Lagin begins as a Komsomol poet and feuilletonist. His first book, 153 Suicides, is published. Just after this work of his comes out of print, Lazar Iosifovich becomes a member of the Writers' Union. In the same book, one of the pamphlets, "Satan's Elixir", was published. In the post-war years, this pamphlet turned out to be a very interesting science fiction novel "Patent AB". However, five years later, a feuilleton was published in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, inwhich expressed the idea that the idea of the novel was borrowed from the story of Alexander Belyaev. But the special commission came to the conclusion that plagiarism is excluded.

How was old Hottabych born?

At the end of the thirties, Lazar Lagin, whose books were of great interest to readers of different ages both in Soviet times and in recent years, was sent on a long-term business trip to the island of Svalbard. Once he read the work of Thomas Anstey Guthrie "The Copper Jug", and, being impressed by this book, in the Arctic begins to write a story about the adventures of an ordinary boy Volka, whose life changed dramatically after he freed the most wonderful old man Hottabych from a magic lamp.

First, this fairy tale story was published in the Pionerskaya Pravda newspaper and Pioneer magazine. But the fairy tale became a separate book only two years later, in 1940. Interestingly, the first edition was strikingly different from the subsequent one, which readers were able to purchase as early as 1951. For 11 years, characters and episodes have been changed, new interesting pages have appeared in the book itself. And the script of the film, which both adults and children watch with equal pleasure to this day, was written by the author on the basis of the second edition of the fairy tale.

Lazar Lagin was very careful and attentive to the political situation in the country, which was constantly undergoing changes. Therefore, almost every edition of his fairy tale ruled.

New Works

Lagin's favorite work- the novel "The Blue Man", which tells about the journey from the Soviet Union of the fifties to the time of Tsarist Russia. This creation, which he wrote for 7 years, is not considered so successful by contemporaries. More interesting is the cycle "Injurious Tales", which Lagin wrote from 1924 until the end of his life. He did not have time to finish his story "Filumena-Filimon".

Several cartoons were even shot according to Lagin's scripts.

The earthly path of the literary father of the wizard Hottabych ended on June 16, 1979 in Moscow.