Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky. Brief biography of Nikolai Zabolotsky Nikolai Zabolotsky biography

“In general, Zabolotsky is an underrated figure. This is a brilliant poet... When you re-read this, you understand how to work further,” said the poet Joseph Brodsky back in the 80s in a conversation with the writer Solomon Volkov. Nikolai Zabolotsky remains just as underrated to this day. The first monument using public money was opened in Tarusa half a century after the poet’s death.

“A repressed talent, physically repressed during his life, and virtually pushed out of the literary arena after death, he created a new direction in poetry - literary scholars call it the “Bronze Age” of Russian poetry... The concept of the “Bronze Age” of Russian poetry is well-established, and it belongs to my late friend, Leningrad poet Oleg Okhapkin. So for the first time in 1975, he formulated it in his poem of the same name... Zabolotsky was the first poet of the “Bronze Age”, - said the ideological inspirer of the opening of the monument, philanthropist, publicist Alexander Shchipkov.

Tarusa sculptor Alexander Kazachok worked on the bust for three months. He drew inspiration from the work of Zabolotsky himself and from the memories of loved ones about him. I tried to understand the character in order not only to document facial features, but also to reflect the state of mind in the image. A half-smile froze on the poet’s lips.

“He was such a person on the inside, not on the outside, on the outside he was gloomy, but on the inside he was a pretty clear person. The singer of our Russian poetry, who loves Russia, loves the people, loves its nature,” sculptor Alexander Kazachok shared his impression.

People's love for Zabolotsky was manifested in the desire of the Tarussians to rename the city cinema and concert hall in honor of the poet, and in the children's favorite summer festival “Roosters and Geese in the City of Tarusa,” named after a line from the poem “Town” by Nikolai Zabolotsky.

Who should cry today?
In the city of Tarusa?
There is someone in Tarusa to cry -
To the girl Marusa.

They were disgusted with Marusya
Roosters and geese.
How many of them are there in Tarusa?
Jesus Christ!

The monument to Nikolai Zabolotsky found a place at the intersection of Lunacharsky and Karl Liebknecht streets - next to the house where the poet spent the summers of 1957 and 1958 - the last of his life. The ancient provincial town on the Oka River was destined to become the poetic homeland of Zabolotsky.

The poet settled here on the advice of the Hungarian poet Antal Gidas, who lived in the Soviet Union at that time. He had a chance to vacation in Tarusa with his wife Agnes. Remembering Zabolotsky’s brilliant translation into Russian of his poem “The Danube Moans,” Gidash wanted to get to know the poet better, to continue the communication that began in 1946 in the house of creativity of Soviet writers in Dubulti on the Riga seaside.

I found the dacha personally. Having opted for a house with two cozy rooms opening onto a terrace courtyard and a well-kept garden. Nikolai Zabolotsky came here with his daughter Natasha. The poet immediately fell in love with Tarusa, reminding him of the city of his youth, Urzhum: a river could be seen over the gardens and roofs of houses, roosters, chickens and geese milled about in front of the house. To use his own lines, here he lived “by the charm of his years.”

Nikolai Zabolotsky with his wife and daughter

House of Nikolai Zabolotsky in Tarusa

Nikolai Alekseevich devoted himself entirely to writing. The two Tarusa seasons became perhaps his most intense creative period. The poet wrote more than 30 poems. I read some of them that same year in Rome during a trip with a group of Soviet poets.

In the evenings, Zabolotsky met with the Gidashs and talked with artists walking along the banks of the Oka. He was an excellent connoisseur of painting and drew well himself.

In a letter to the poet Alexei Krutetsky on August 15, 1957, Zabolotsky himself said: “... I’ve been living on the Oka River for two months, in the old provincial town of Tarusa, which once even had its own princes and was burned out by the Mongols. Now this is a backwater, beautiful hills and groves, the magnificent Oka. Polenov once lived here, artists flock here in droves.”

Tarusa is a rare phenomenon for Russian culture. Since the 19th century, it has become a mecca for writers, musicians and artists. The names of Konstantin Paustovsky, Vasily Polenov and Vasily Vatagin, Svyatoslav Richter, and the Tsvetaev family are associated with it.

Here the writer Konstantin Paustovsky presented Zabolotsky with his recently published “Tale of Life”, signing: “ Dear Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky - as a sign of deep admiration for the classical power, wisdom and transparency of his poems. You are just a sorcerer!” And in a letter to Veniamin Kaverin, Paustovsky wrote: “Zabolotsky lived here in the summer. Wonderful, amazing person. The other day I came and read my new poems - very bitter, completely Pushkin-like in their brilliance, the power of poetic tension and depth.”

The following summer Zabolotsky returned to Tarusa. The poet David Samoilov, who visited him, recalled: “He lived in a small house with a high terrace. For some reason now it seems to me that the house was colorfully painted. It was separated from the street by a high fence with planked gates. From the terrace, over the fence, Oka was visible. We sat and drank Teliani, his favorite wine. He couldn’t drink, and he couldn’t smoke either.”

Zabolotsky fell in love with Tarusa so much that he began to dream of buying a dacha here and living on it all year round. I even noticed a new log house on a quiet green street, overlooking a forested ravine.

The plan was not destined to come true: soon his heart disease worsened, and on the morning of October 14, 1958, the poet passed away. Later, in Zabolotsky’s archive, a plan of the house that he so hoped to purchase in Tarusa was found.

“The Glass Bead Game” with Igor Volgin. Nikolai Zabolotsky. Lyrics

"Copper pipes. Nikolay Zabolotsky"

Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky (Zabolotsky) - Soviet poet, prose writer and translator. Born on April 24 (May 7), 1903 on a farm near Kazan in the family of an agronomist. The writer spent his childhood in Kizicheskaya Sloboda and in the village of Sernur, not far from the city of Urzhum. Already in the third grade, Nikolai published a school magazine, where he published his poems. Until 1920 he lived and studied in Urzhum, and then moved to Moscow. In his youth he liked the works of Akhmatova and Blok.

In Moscow, the writer enters the university in two faculties at once: philological and medical. He was fascinated by the cultural life in Moscow, but a year later he moved to Leningrad, where he entered the Pedagogical Institute. During his student years, he was part of a group of young poets who called themselves “Oberiuts,” which was an abbreviation of the phrase: Association of Real Art. It was by participating in the activities of this literary circle that he found himself and the style of his poetry.

After graduation, Zabolotsky served in the army. Then he worked in a children's publishing house and wrote such children's books as "Rubber Heads", "Snake's Milk", and others. In 1929, a collection of his poems entitled “Columns” was published. The second collection appeared in 1937 and was called “The Second Book.” A year later, the writer was repressed and sent to a camp for 5 years on false charges. After this imprisonment, he was sent into exile in the Far East. Zabolotsky was rehabilitated in 1946.

Returning to Moscow, he continued to write poetry, which had a more mature character and strict language. He traveled to Georgia and was interested in translations of Georgian poems. His name became known in wide circles in the 1950s, after the appearance of the poems “The Ugly Girl”, “The Confrontation of Mars” and some others. In recent years I have spent a lot of time in Tarusa. There the poet suffered a heart attack. The writer died on October 14, 1958 in Moscow from a second heart attack.

Citizenship:

Russian empire, THE USSR

Occupation: Language of works: Awards: in Wikisource.

Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky (Zabolotsky)(April 24 [May 7], Kizicheskaya Sloboda, Kaimar volost, Kazan district, Kazan province - October 14, Moscow) - Russian Soviet poet.

Biography

Zabolotsky was fond of painting by Filonov, Chagall, Bruegel. The ability to see the world through the eyes of an artist remained with the poet throughout his life.

After leaving the army, the poet found himself in the situation of the last years of the New Economic Policy, the satirical depiction of which became the theme of the poems of the early period, which made up his first poetry book, “Columns.” In 1929, it was published in Leningrad and immediately caused a literary scandal and mocking reviews in the press. Assessed as a “hostile attack,” it did not, however, cause any direct “organizational conclusions” or orders against the author, and he (through Nikolai Tikhonov) managed to establish a special relationship with the magazine “Zvezda,” where about ten poems were published, which replenished Stolbtsy in second (unpublished) edition of the collection.

Zabolotsky managed to create surprisingly multi-dimensional poems - and their first dimension, immediately noticeable, is a sharp grotesque and satire on the theme of bourgeois life and everyday life, which dissolves personality. Another facet of Stolbtsy, their aesthetic perception, requires some special preparedness of the reader, because for those in the know, Zabolotsky has woven another artistic and intellectual fabric, a parody. In his early lyrics, the very function of parody changes, its satistic and polemical components disappear, and it loses its role as a weapon of intraliterary struggle.

In “Disciplina Clericalis” (1926) there is a parody of Balmont’s tautological eloquence, ending with Zoshchenko’s intonations; in the poem “On the Stairs” (1928), Vladimir Benediktov’s “Waltz” suddenly appears through the kitchen, already Zoshchenko world; “The Ivanovs” (1928) reveals its parody-literary meaning, evoking (further in the text) the key images of Dostoevsky with his Sonechka Marmeladova and her old man; lines from the poem “Wandering Musicians” (1928) refer to Pasternak, etc.

The basis of Zabolotsky’s philosophical searches

With the poem “The signs of the zodiac are fading,” the mystery of the origin of the main theme, the “nerve” of Zabolotsky’s creative search begins - the Tragedy of Reason is heard for the first time. The “nerve” of this search will in the future force its owner to devote much more lines to philosophical lyrics. Through all his poems runs the path of the most intense adaptation of individual consciousness into mysterious world being, which is immeasurably wider and richer than the rational constructions created by people. On this path, the poet-philosopher undergoes a significant evolution, during which 3 dialectical stages can be distinguished: 1926-1933; 1932-1945 and 1946-1958.

Zabolotsky read a lot and with enthusiasm: not only after the publication of “Columns”, but also before, he read the works of Engels, Grigory Skovoroda, the works of Kliment Timiryazev on plants, Yuri Filipchenko on the evolutionary idea in biology, Vernadsky on the bio- and noospheres that embrace all living things and the intelligent on the planet and extolling both as great transformative forces; read Einstein's theory of relativity, which gained widespread popularity in the 1920s; “Philosophy of the Common Cause” by Nikolai Fedorov.

By the time “Columns” was published, its author already had his own natural philosophical concept. It was based on the idea of ​​the universe as unified system, uniting living and nonliving forms of matter that are in eternal interaction and mutual transformation. The development of this complex organism of nature proceeds from primitive chaos to the harmonious order of all its elements, and the main role here is played by the consciousness inherent in nature, which, in the words of the same Timiryazev, “smolders dully in lower beings and only flares up as a bright spark in the human mind.” Therefore, it is Man who is called upon to take care of the transformation of nature, but in his activity he must see in nature not only a student, but also a teacher, for this imperfect and suffering “eternal winepress” contains within itself the beautiful world of the future and those wise laws that should be guided by the person.

Gradually, Zabolotsky’s position in the literary circles of Leningrad strengthened. Many of his poems from this period received favorable reviews, and in 1937 his book was published, including seventeen poems (The Second Book). On Zabolotsky’s desk lay the beginnings of a poetic adaptation of the ancient Russian poem “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and his own poem “The Siege of Kozelsk,” poems and translations from Georgian. But the prosperity that followed was deceptive.

In custody

« The first days they didn’t beat me, trying to break me down mentally and physically. They didn't give me food. They weren't allowed to sleep. The investigators replaced each other, but I sat motionless on a chair in front of the investigator’s table - day after day. Behind the wall, in the next office, someone's frantic screams could be heard from time to time. My feet began to swell, and on the third day I had to tear off my shoes because I could not bear the pain in my feet. My consciousness began to become foggy, and I strained all my strength to answer reasonably and to prevent any injustice in relation to those people about whom I was asked..."These are the lines of Zabolotsky from the memoirs “The History of My Imprisonment” (published abroad on English language in the city, in the last years of Soviet power were published in the USSR, in).

He served his sentence from February 1939 to May 1943 in the Vostoklag system in the Komsomolsk-on-Amur region; then in the Altailaga system in the Kulunda steppes; A partial idea of ​​his camp life is given by the selection he prepared, “One Hundred Letters 1938-1944” - excerpts from letters to his wife and children.

Since March 1944, after liberation from the camp, he lived in Karaganda. There he completed the arrangement of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” (begun in 1937), which became the best among the experiments of many Russian poets. This helped in 1946 to obtain permission to live in Moscow.

In 1946, N. A. Zabolotsky was reinstated in the Writers' Union. A new, Moscow period of his work began. Despite the blows of fate, he managed to return to his unfulfilled plans.

Moscow period

The period of returning to poetry was not only joyful, but also difficult. In the poems “Blind” and “Thunderstorm” written then, the theme of creativity and inspiration sounds. Most of the poems of 1946-1948 have been highly appreciated by today's literary historians. It was during this period that “In this birch grove” was written. Outwardly built on a simple and expressive contrast of a picture of a peaceful birch grove, singing orioles of life and universal death, it carries sadness, an echo of what has been experienced, a hint of personal fate and a tragic premonition of common troubles. In 1948, the third collection of the poet's poems was published.

In 1949-1952, the years of extreme tightening of ideological oppression, the creative upsurge that manifested itself in the first years after the return was replaced by a creative decline and an almost complete switch to literary translations. Fearing that his words would be used against him again, Zabolotsky restrained himself and did not write. The situation changed only after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, with the beginning of the Khrushchev Thaw, which marked the weakening of ideological censorship in literature and art.

He responded to new trends in the life of the country with the poems “Somewhere in a field near Magadan”, “Confrontation of Mars”, “Kazbek”. Over the last three years of his life, Zabolotsky created about half of all works of the Moscow period. Some of them appeared in print. In 1957, the fourth, most complete collection of his lifetime poems was published.

The cycle of lyrical poems “Last Love” was published in 1957, “the only one in Zabolotsky’s work, one of the most painful and painful in Russian poetry.” It is in this collection that the poem “Confession”, dedicated to N.A. Roskina, is placed, later revised by the St. Petersburg bard Alexander Lobanovsky ( Enchanted, bewitched / Once married to the wind in the field / All of you seem to be shackled / You are my precious woman...).

Family of N. A. Zabolotsky

In 1930, Zabolotsky married Ekaterina Vasilievna Klykova. This marriage produced a son, Nikita, who became the author of several biographical works about his father. Daughter - Natalya Nikolaevna Zabolotskaya (born 1937), since 1962 the wife of virologist Nikolai Veniaminovich Kaverin (born 1933), academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, son of the writer Veniamin Kaverin.

Death

Although before his death the poet managed to receive both widespread readership and material wealth, this could not compensate for the weakness of his health, undermined by prison and camp. In 1955, Zabolotsky had his first heart attack, and on October 14, 1958 he died.

Creation

Zabolotsky's early work is focused on the problems of the city and the masses, it is influenced by V. Khlebnikov, it is marked by the objectivity characteristic of futurism and the variety of burlesque metaphors. The confrontation of words, giving the effect of alienation, reveals new connections. At the same time, Zabolotsky’s poems do not reach the same degree of absurdity as those of other Oberiuts. Nature is understood in Abolotsky’s poems as chaos and prison, harmony as delusion. The poem “The Triumph of Agriculture” combines the poetics of futuristic experimentation with elements of an 18th-century irocomic poem. The question of death and immortality defines the poetry of Zabolotsky in the 1930s. Irony, manifested in exaggeration or simplification, marks a distance in relation to what is depicted. Zabolotsky's later poems are united by common philosophical aspirations and reflections on nature, the naturalness of the language, devoid of pathos; they are more emotional and musical than Abolotsky's previous poems, and closer to tradition (A. Pushkin, E. Baratynsky, F. Tyutchev). To the anthropomorphic depiction of nature, an allegorical one is added here (“Thunderstorm”, 1946).

Zabolotsky-translator

Nikolai Zabolotsky is the largest translator of Georgian poets: D. Guramishvili, Gr. Orbeliani, I. Chavchavadze, A. Tsereteli, V. Pshavely. Zabolotsky is the author of the translation of Sh. Rustaveli’s poem “The Knight in the Skin of the Tiger” (the latest edition of the translation).

About Zabolotsky’s translation of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” Chukovsky wrote that it is “more accurate than all the most accurate interlinear translations, since it conveys the most important thing: the poetic originality of the original, its charm, its charm.”

Zabolotsky himself reported in a letter to N. L. Stepanov: “ Now that I have entered into the spirit of the monument, I am filled with the greatest reverence, surprise and gratitude to fate for bringing this miracle to us from the depths of centuries. In the desert of centuries, where not one stone was left on another after wars, fires and cruel extermination, stands this lonely, unlike anything else, cathedral of our ancient glory. It's scary, creepy to approach him. The eye involuntarily wants to find in it familiar proportions, the golden sections of our familiar world monuments. Wasted work! There are no these sections in it, everything in it is full of a special gentle wildness, the artist measured it with a different measure, not ours. And how touchingly the corners have crumbled, crows sit on them, wolves prowl, but it stands - this mysterious building, without knowing its equal, will stand forever, as long as Russian culture is alive". He also translated the Italian poet Umberto Saba.

Addresses in Petrograd - Leningrad

• 1921-1925 - residential cooperative building of the Third Petrograd Apartment Owners Association - Krasnykh Zori Street, 73;
• 1927-1930 - apartment building - Konnaya street, 15, apt. 33;
• 1930 - 03/19/1938 - house of the Court Stable Department - Griboyedov Canal embankment, 9.

Addresses in Moscow

• 1946-1948 - in the apartments of N. Stepanov, I. Andronikov in Moscow and in Peredelkino at the dacha of V. P. Ilyenkov
• 1948 - October 14, 1958 - Khoroshevskoe highway, 2/1 building 4, apartment No. 25. Place of life, work and death of the poet. The house was included in the register of cultural heritage, but was demolished in 2001 (see). In the summer months, N. Zabolotsky also lived in Tarusa.

Zabolotsky Nikolai Alekseevich (1903 - 1958) - Soviet poet, translator. He wrote a lot for children and translated foreign authors.

Nikolai Zabolotsky was born near Kazan on April 24 (May 7), 1903. The boy's father was an agronomist, his mother was a teacher. Impressions from childhood spent in a village atmosphere were clearly reflected in the poems that Zabolotsky began writing from the first grades of school.

At the Urzhum School, the boy was actively involved in history, painting, chemical experiments, got acquainted with the work of A. Blok. After entering Moscow for historical-philological and medical department, Nikolai moves to Petrograd and graduates there from the Faculty of Language and Literature at the Institute. Herzen.

After graduating from university, the poet served in the army for two years near Leningrad, and is one of the journalists for the local wall newspaper. Impressions from barracks life, encounters with different characters and situations become the starting point in finding one’s own literary style.

Previous creativity

After military service Zabolotsky starts working in the children's book department of the State Publishing House under the leadership of S. Marshak. Then to children's magazines "Hedgehog", "Chizh". The poet writes a lot for children, adapting the translation of “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by Rabelais for perception by young readers.

His first collection of poems was published in 1929 under the title “Columns” and caused a scandal in the literary society. The poems in the collection clearly showed a mockery of everyday life and philistinism. Prepared readers also noticed subtle parodies of the poetic styles of Balmont, Pasternak, and the images of Zoshchenko and Dostoevsky.

The next collection was published in 1937 and is called “The Second Book”.

Arrest and exile

On charges of anti-Soviet propaganda, which was fabricated from critics' reviews and denunciations that had little to do with the true themes of the poet's work, the poet was arrested in 1938. Attempts to pin the organization of a conspiracy association on him and sentence him to death did not yield results; despite the torture, the poet did not agree to sign false accusations. The events of this period are told by the poet in “The History of My Imprisonment” (the memoirs were published abroad in 1981, and in the USSR in 1988).

Zabolotsky spent 5 years in camps on Far East, then two years (1944-46) in Karaganda. There the poetic translation of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” was completed.

The 40s became a turning point not only in the life, but also in the work of the poet. From avant-garde works of the early period, full of sarcasm, irony, and various allusions, he moves on to classical poetry with simple and understandable images and situations.

Moscow period

In 1946, with permission from the authorities, Zabolotsky returned to the capital and his status as a member of the Writers' Union was returned to him. The third collection “Poems” was published in 1948.

After the creative upsurge of the first years of liberation, a period of calm began. Zabolotsky almost does not write, fearing ideological persecution and a repetition of the arrest story. To top it all off, in 1955 the poet suffered his first heart attack, which significantly undermined his health. The reason for it, K. Chukovsky, a close friend of Zabolotsky, called the temporary departure of the poet’s wife Catherine for another man.

By this time, there were many translations of the works of Georgian poets Rustaveli, Chavchavadze, Pshavela A. Tsereteli and others, who helped the poet keep himself and his family afloat.

A new creative upsurge begins after the debunking of the cult of Stalin and the beginning of the Thaw in 1956. This stage in the history of the country is reflected in the poems “Somewhere in a field near Magadan”, “Kazbek”. Three years before his death in 1958, Zabolotsky created most of the works included in the last period of his creativity.

In 1957, the last collection of poetry was published - the cycle “Last Love”. These are the poet’s lyrical poems, including the famous poem “Kissed, Bewitched.”

On October 14, 1958, Nikolai Zabolotsky had a second heart attack, which became fatal. The poet was buried in Moscow.

V.A. Zaitsev

Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky (1903-1958) is an outstanding Russian poet, a man of difficult fate, who has gone through a difficult path of artistic quest. His original and diverse creativity enriched Russian poetry, especially in the field of philosophical lyrics, and took a strong place in the poetic classics of the 20th century.

The future poet showed a penchant for writing poetry in childhood and school years. But serious studies in poetry began in the early twenties, when Zabolotsky studied - first at Moscow University, and then at Pedagogical Institute them. A.I. Herzen in Petrograd. In the “Autobiography” it is said about this period: “I wrote a lot, imitating Mayakovsky, Blok, Yesenin. I couldn’t find my own voice.”

Throughout the 20s. the poet goes through a path of intense spiritual search and artistic experiment. From his youthful poems of 1921 (“Sisyphean Christmas,” “Heavenly Seville,” “Wasteland Heart”), bearing traces of the influences of diverse poetic schools - from symbolism to futurism, he comes to the acquisition of creative originality. By the middle of the decade, his original poems were created one after another, which later formed the first book.

At this time, N. Zabolotsky, together with young Leningrad poets of the “left” orientation (D. Kharms, A. Vvedensky, I. Bekhterev and others) organized the “Union of Real Art” (“Oberiu”), Zabolotsky took part in drawing up the program and declaration group, undoubtedly putting its own meaning into its very name: “Oberiu” - “The unification of the only realistic art, and “u” is an embellishment that we allowed ourselves.” Having entered the association, Zabolotsky most of all sought to maintain independence, elevating “creative freedom of the members of the commonwealth” to the main principle.

In 1929, Zabolotsky’s first book, “Columns,” was published, which included 22 poems from 1926-1928. It immediately attracted the attention of readers and critics and evoked contradictory responses: on the one hand, serious positive reviews by N. Stepanov, M. Zenkevich and others, who celebrated the arrival of a new poet with his original vision of the world, on the other, rude, scathing articles under characteristic titles: “Cat system”, “Girls system”, “Disintegration of consciousness”.

What caused such a mixed reaction? The poems of “Stolbtsy” revealed the author’s sharply individual and alienated perception of contemporary reality. The poet himself later wrote that the theme of his poems was the deeply alien and hostile “predatory life of all kinds of businessmen and entrepreneurs”, “a satirical depiction of this life.” An acute anti-philistine orientation is felt in many of the book’s poems (“New Life,” “Ivanovs,” “Wedding,” “Obvodny Canal,” “People’s House”). In the depiction of the world of the philistines, features of absurdism appear; realistic concreteness coexists with hyperbolization and illogicality of images.

The book opened with the poem “Red Bavaria,” the title of which captures the characteristic realities of that time: this was the name of the famous beer bar on Nevsky. From the first lines there appears an extremely concrete, vivid and plastic image of the atmosphere of this establishment:

In the wilderness of the bottle paradise, where the palm trees had dried up long ago, playing under electricity, a window floated in a glass; it glittered on the blades, then sat down and became heavy; beer smoke curled over him... But it cannot be described.

The author, to a certain extent, in accordance with the self-characterization given by him in the “Declaration” of the Oberiuts, appears here as “a poet of naked concrete figures moved close to the viewer’s eyes.” In the description of the pub and its regulars that unfolds further, internal tension, dynamics and greater generalization consistently increase. Together with the poet, we see how “in that bottle paradise/ sirens trembled on the edge/ of the crooked stage”, how “doors on chains rotate, / people fall from the stairs, / crack a cardboard shirt, / dance in circles with a bottle”, how “men “Everyone was screaming too, / they were swinging on the tables, / on the ceilings they were swinging / bedlam with flowers in half ...” The feeling of the meaninglessness and absurdity of what is happening is intensifying, from everyday specifics a general phantasmagoria arises, which spills out onto the streets of the city: “My eyes fell, as if weights, / the glass was broken - night came..." And before the reader, instead of the "wilderness of bottle paradise" there already appears "... outside the window - in the wilderness of times... Nevsky in splendor and melancholy..." Generalized judgments of this kind are found and in other verses: “And everywhere there is crazy nonsense...” (“White Night”).

The very nature of the metaphors and comparisons speaks about the acute rejection of the bourgeois world: “... the groom, unbearably agile, / clings to the bride like a snake” (“New Life”), “in iron armor the samovar/ makes the noise of a household general” (“Ivanovs”), “Straight bald husbands / sit like a shot from a gun,” “a huge house, wagging its back, / flies into the space of existence” (“Wedding”), “A lantern, bloodless, like a worm, / dangles like an arrow in the bushes” (“People’s House ") and etc.

Speaking in 1936 in a discussion about formalism and being forced to agree with criticism’s accusations against his experimental poems, Zabolotsky did not abandon what he had done at the beginning of his path and emphasized: ““Stolbtsy” taught me to look closely at the outside world, aroused in me an interest in things , developed in me the ability to plastically depict phenomena. In them I managed to find some secret of plastic images.”

The poet comprehended the secrets of plastic representation not for the sake of a purely artistic experiment, but in line with the development of life content, as well as the experience of literature and other related arts. In this regard, the bright miniature “Movement” (December 1927) is interesting, built on the distinct contrast of the static-picturesque first and dynamic second stanza:

The driver sits as if on a throne, his armor is made of cotton wool, and his beard, like on an icon, lies jingling with coins.

And the poor horse waves its arms, then stretches out like a burbot, then again its eight legs sparkle in its shiny belly.

The transformation of the horse into a fantastic animal, with arms and twice the number of legs, gives impetus to the reader’s imagination, in whose imagination the initially seemingly monumental and motionless picture comes to life. The fact that Zabolotsky consistently searched for the most expressive artistic solutions in the depiction of movement is evidenced by the poem “Feast” written soon (January 1928), where we find a dynamic sketch: “And the horse flows through the air, / conjugates the body in a long circle / and with sharp legs/shaft cuts a smooth prison.”

The book “Columns” became a notable milestone not only in Zabolotsky’s work, but also in the poetry of that time, influencing the artistic searches of many poets. The severity of social and moral issues, the combination of plastic imagery, odic pathos and grotesque-satirical style gave the book its originality and determined the range of the author’s artistic capabilities.

Much has been written about her. Researchers rightly connect Zabolotsky’s artistic searches and the poetic world of “Stolbtsy” with the experience of Derzhavin and Khlebnikov, the painting of M. Chagall and P. Filonov, and finally, with the “carnival” element of F. Rabelais. The poet’s work in his first book relied on this powerful cultural layer.

However, Zabolotsky was not limited to the topic of everyday life and city life. In the poems “The Face of a Horse”, “In Our Dwellings” (1926), “Walk”, “The Zodiac Signs Fading” (1929) and others that were not included in the first book, the theme of nature arises and receives an artistic and philosophical interpretation, which becomes the most important in the poet's work in the next decade. Animals and natural phenomena are spiritualized in them:

The horse's face is more beautiful and smarter.
He hears the chatter of leaves and stones.
Attentive! He knows the cry of an animal
And in the dilapidated grove the roar of a nightingale.
And the horse stands like a knight on guard,
The wind plays in light hair,
The eyes burn like two huge worlds,
And the mane spreads like royal purple.

The poet sees all natural phenomena as alive, bearing human traits: “The river, like a nondescript girl, / Hidden among the grass...”; “Every little flower/Waves a little hand”; finally, “And all nature laughs, / Dying every moment” (“Walk”).

It is in these works that the origins of natural philosophical themes in the lyrics and poems of Zabolotsky of the 30-50s, his reflections on the relationship between man and nature, the tragic contradictions of existence, life and death, the problem of immortality.

The formation of Zabolotsky’s philosophical and artistic views and concepts was influenced by the works and ideas of V. Vernadsky, N. Fedorov, especially K. Tsiolkovsky, with whom he was in active correspondence at that time. The scientist’s thoughts about the place of humanity in the Universe undoubtedly worried the poet acutely. In addition, his long-standing passion for the works of Goethe and Khlebnikov clearly affected his worldview. As Zabolotsky himself said: “At that time I was interested in Khlebnikov, and his lines:

I see horse freedoms and equality of cows... -

struck me deeply. I liked the utopian idea of ​​animal emancipation.”

In the poems “The Triumph of Agriculture” (1929-1930), “Mad Wolf” (1931) and “Trees” (1933), the poet followed an intense socio-philosophical and artistic quest; in particular, he was inspired by the idea of ​​​​the “emancipation” of animals, due to deep belief in the existence of intelligence in nature, in all living beings.

Projected onto the conditions of collectivization unfolding in the country, embodied in the author’s reflections and philosophical conversations of the characters in his poem-disputes, this faith caused misunderstanding and sharp critical attacks. The poems were severely criticized in the articles “Under the Mask of Foolishness”, “Foolish Poetry and the Poetry of Millions”, etc.

Unfair assessments and the dismissive tone of criticism had a negative impact on the poet’s work. He almost stopped writing and at one time was mainly engaged in translation activities. However, the desire to penetrate into the secrets of existence, the artistic and philosophical understanding of the world in its contradictions, thoughts about man and nature continued to excite him, forming the content of many works, including the one completed in the 40s. the poem "Lodeinikov", fragments of which were written in 1932-1934. The hero, who bears autobiographical features, is tormented by the contrast between the wise harmony of the life of nature and its ominous, bestial cruelty:

Lodeinikov listened. Over the garden came the vague rustle of a thousand deaths. Nature, which had turned into hell, carried out its affairs without any fuss. The beetle ate the grass, the bird pecked the beetle, the ferret drank the brain from the bird's head, and the terribly distorted faces of the night creatures looked out from the grass. Nature's eternal winepress united death and being into a single club. But thought was powerless to unite its two sacraments.

(“Lodeinikov in the Garden”, 1934)

In the understanding of natural and human existence, tragic notes sound clearly: “On the abysses of torment our waters shine, / on the abysses of grief forests rise!” (By the way, in the 1947 edition, these lines were redone and smoothed out almost to complete neutrality: “So this is what the waters rustle about in the darkness, / What the forests whisper about, sighing!” And the poet’s son N.N. Zabolotsky is certainly right, who commented on these poems from the early 30s: “The description of the “eternal winepress” of nature indirectly reflected the poet’s perception of the social situation in the country”).

In Zabolotsky's lyrics of the mid-30s. Social motives arise more than once (the poems “Farewell”, “North”, “Gori Symphony”, then published in the central press). But still, the main focus of his poetry is philosophical. In the poem “Yesterday, Reflecting on Death...” (1936), overcoming the “unbearable melancholy of separation” from nature, the poet hears the singing of evening grasses, “and the speech of water, and the dead cry of stone.” In this living sound, he catches and distinguishes the voices of his favorite poets (Pushkin, Khlebnikov) and himself completely dissolves in the world around him: “... and I myself was not the child of nature, / but her thought! But her mind is unsteady!

The poems “Yesterday, Reflecting on Death...”, “Immortality” (later called “Metamorphoses”) testify to the poet’s close attention to the eternal questions of existence, which acutely worried the classics of Russian poetry: Pushkin, Tyutchev, Baratynsky. In them he tries to solve the problem of personal immortality:

How things are changing! What used to be a bird -
Now lies a written page;
Thought was once a simple flower;
The poem walked like a slow bull;
And what was me, then, perhaps,
The plant world is growing again and multiplying.
("Metamorphoses")

In The Second Book (1937), the poetry of thought triumphed. Significant changes have occurred in Zabolotsky’s poetics, although the secret of “plastic images” he discovered in “Columns” received a clear and very expressive embodiment here, for example, in such impressive pictures of the poem “North”:

Where are the people with icy beards?
Putting a conical three-piece cap on his head,
Sit in a sleigh and long pillars
They release an icy spirit from their mouth;
Where are the horses, like mammoths in shafts,
They run rumbling; where the smoke is on the rooftops,
Like a statue that frightens the eye...

Despite the seemingly favorable external circumstances of Zabolotsky’s life and work (the publication of a book, the high appreciation of his translation of “The Knight in the Skin of a Tiger” by Sh. Rustaveli, the beginning of work on poetic adaptations of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and other creative plans), trouble awaited him. In March 1938, he was illegally arrested by the NKVD and, after a brutal interrogation that lasted four days, and detention in a prison psychiatric hospital, he received a five-year sentence of forced labor.

From the end of 1938 to the beginning of 1946, Zabolotsky spent time in the camps of the Far East, Altai Territory, Kazakhstan, worked in difficult conditions in logging, blasting, and railway construction, and only thanks to a happy coincidence of circumstances was he able to get a job as a draftsman in a design bureau, which saved his life.

It was a decade of forced silence. From 1937 to 1946, Zabolotsky wrote only two poems developing the theme of the relationship between man and nature (“Forest Lake” and “Nightingale”). IN Last year Great Patriotic War and in the first post-war period he resumed work on a literary translation of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” which played an important role in returning him to his own poetic work.

Zabolotsky's post-war lyrics are marked by an expansion of thematic and genre range, deepening and development of socio-psychological, moral, humanistic and aesthetic motives. Already in the first poems of 1946: “Morning”, “Blind”, “Thunderstorm”, “Beethoven”, etc. - the opened horizons of a new life seemed to open up and at the same time the experience of cruel trials was reflected.

The poem “In this birch grove” (1946), all permeated by the rays of the morning sun, carries within itself a charge of high tragedy, the unabated pain of personal and national disasters and losses. The tragic humanism of these lines, their hard-won harmony and universal sound are paid for by the torment that the poet himself experienced from tyranny and lawlessness:

In this birch grove,
Far from suffering and troubles,
Where pink falters
Unblinking morning light
Where is the transparent avalanche
Leaves are pouring from high branches, -
Sing me, oriole, a desert song,
The song of my life.

These poems are about the life and fate of a person who has endured everything, but is not broken and has not lost faith, about the dangerous paths of humanity that have approached, perhaps, the last line, about the tragic complexity of time passing through the human heart and soul. They contain the bitter life experience of the poet himself, an echo of the past war and a warning about the possible death of all life on a planet devastated by an atomic vortex, global disasters(“...Atoms are shaking, / Whirling up houses like a white whirlwind... You fly over the cliffs, / You fly over the ruins of death... And a deadly cloud stretches / Over your head”).

We are faced with a prophetically, comprehensively comprehended universal catastrophe and the defenselessness of everything living on earth in the face of formidable, chaotic forces beyond the control of man. And yet, these lines carry light, purification, catharsis, leaving a ray of hope in the human heart: “Beyond the great rivers / The sun will rise... And then in my torn heart / Your voice will sing.”

IN post-war years Zabolotsky writes such wonderful poems as “Blind”, “I am not looking for harmony in nature”, “Memory”, “Farewell to friends”. The latter is dedicated to the memory of A. Vvedensky, D. Kharms, N. Oleinikov and other comrades in the Oberiu group, who became in the 30s. victims of Stalin's repressions. Zabolotsky's poems are marked by impressive poetic concreteness, plasticity and picturesqueness of the image and at the same time by a deep social and philosophical understanding of the problems of everyday life and being, nature and art.

Signs of humanism that are not characteristic of the official doctrine - pity, mercy, compassion - are clearly visible in one of Zabolotsky’s first post-war poems “Blind”. Against the backdrop of a “dazzling day” rising to the sky, lilacs blooming wildly in the spring gardens, the poet’s attention is focused on the old man “with his face thrown up to the sky,” whose whole life is “like a big familiar wound” and who, alas, will never open his “half-dead eyes.” " A deeply personal perception of someone else’s misfortune is inseparable from the philosophical understanding that gives rise to the lines:

And I'm afraid to think
That somewhere at the edge of nature
I'm just as blind
With his face upturned into the sky.
Only in the darkness of the soul
I watch the spring waters,
I'll talk to them
Only in my sad heart.

Sincere sympathy for people walking “through thousands of troubles”, the desire to share their grief and worries brought to life a whole gallery of poems (“Passerby”, “Loser”, “At the Movies”, “Ugly Girl”, “Old Actress”, “Where- then in a field near Magadan”, “Death of a Doctor”, etc.). Their heroes are very different, but with all the diversity of human characters and the author’s attitude towards them, two motives prevail here, incorporating the author’s concept of humanism: “Infinite human patience / If love does not go out in the heart” and “There is no limit to human strength / There is no limit... »

In the works of Zabolotsky of the 50s, along with the lyrics of nature and philosophical reflections, the genres of a poetic story and portrait built on the plot were intensively developed - from those written back in 1953-1954. poems “Loser”, “At the Movies” to those created in the last year of his life - “The General’s Dacha”, “The Iron Old Woman”.

In his unique poetic portrait “The Ugly Girl” (1955), Zabolotsky poses a philosophical and aesthetic problem - about the essence of beauty. Drawing the image of an “ugly girl”, a “poor ugly girl”, in whose heart lives “someone else’s joy as well as her own”, the author uses all his logic poetic thought leads the reader to the conclusion that “what beauty is”:

And even though her features are not good and she has nothing to seduce the imagination, the infantile grace of her soul already shines through in any of her movements.

And if this is so, then what is beauty and why do people deify it?

Is she a vessel in which there is emptiness, Or a fire flickering in the vessel?

The beauty and charm of this poem, revealing the “pure flame” that burns in the depths of the soul of an “ugly girl,” is that Zabolotsky was able to show and poetically affirm the true spiritual beauty of a person - something that was a constant subject of his thoughts throughout the 50s gg. (“Portrait”, “Poet”, “On the beauty of human faces”, “Old actress”, etc.).

The social, moral, and aesthetic motives intensively developed in Zabolotsky’s late work did not supplant his most important philosophical theme of man and nature. It is important to emphasize that now the poet has taken a clear position in relation to everything connected with the invasion of nature, its transformation, etc.: “Man and nature are a unity, and only a complete fool can talk seriously about some kind of conquest of nature and dualist. How can I, a man, conquer nature if I myself am nothing more than her mind, her thought? In our everyday life, this expression “conquest of nature” exists only as a working term, inherited from the language of savages.” That is why in his work of the second half of the 50s. The unity of man and nature is revealed with particular depth. This idea runs through the entire figurative structure of Zabolotsky’s poems.

Thus, the poem “Gombori Forest” (1957), written on the basis of impressions from a trip to Georgia, is distinguished by its vivid picturesqueness and musicality of images. Here are “cinnabar with ocher on the leaves”, and “maple in illumination and beech in the glow”, and bushes similar to “harps and trumpets”, etc. The poetic fabric itself, epithets and comparisons are marked by increased expressiveness, a riot of colors and associations from the sphere of art (“In the dogwood grove, bloody veins / The bush bristled...”; “... the oak raged, like Rembrandt in the Hermitage, / And the maple, like Murillo, soared on wings"), And at the same time, this plastic and pictorial representation is inseparable from the artist’s close thought, imbued with a lyrical sense of involvement in nature:

I've become nervous system plants,
I have become the reflection of stone rocks,
And the experience of my autumn observations
I once again wished to give back to humanity.

Admiration for the luxurious southern landscapes did not cancel the long-standing and persistent passions of the poet, who wrote about himself: “I was brought up by harsh nature...” Back in 1947, in the poem “I touched the leaves of the eucalyptus,” inspired by Georgian impressions, it is no coincidence that he connects his sympathies with pain and sadness with other, much more dear visions:

But in the furious splendor of nature
I dreamed of Moscow groves,
Where the blue sky is paler,
Plants are more modest and simpler.

In the poet’s later poems, he often sees the autumn landscapes of his homeland in expressive-romantic tones, realized in images marked by plasticity, dynamism, and acute psychologism: “All day long, / Silhouettes of crimson hearts fall from the maple trees... The flames of sorrow whistle underfoot, / In heaps rustling leaves" ("Autumn Landscapes"). But, perhaps, with particular force he manages to convey the “charm of the Russian landscape”, breaking through the dense veil of everyday life and seeing and depicting in a new way this at first glance “kingdom of fog and darkness”, in fact full of special beauty and secret charm.

The poem “September” (1957) is an example of the animation of a landscape. The solution to this artistic problem is provided by comparisons, epithets, personifications - all components of the poetic structure. The dialectic of the development of the image-experience is interesting (the relationship between the motifs of bad weather and the sun, withering and flourishing, the transition of associations from the sphere of nature to the human world and back). A ray of sun breaking through the rain clouds illuminated the hazel bush and evoked in the poet a whole stream of associations and reflections:

This means that the distance is not forever curtained by Clouds and, therefore, not in vain,
Like a girl, a nut tree burst into flames and shone at the end of September.
Now, painter, grab brush by brush, and on the canvas
Golden like fire and garnet Draw this girl for me.
Draw, like a tree, a shaky young princess in a crown
With a restlessly sliding smile On a tear-stained young face.

The subtle spirituality of the landscape, the calm, thoughtful intonation, the excitement and at the same time the restraint of tone, the colorfulness and softness of the drawing create the charm of these poems.

Noticing details with pinpoint precision, capturing the moments of nature’s life, the poet recreates its living and integral appearance in its constant, fluid variability. In this sense, the poem “Evening on the Oka” is typical:

And the clearer the details of the Objects located around become,
The more vast the expanses of the River meadows, backwaters and bends become.
The whole world is burning, transparent and spiritual, Now it is truly good,
And you, rejoicing, recognize many wonders in his living features.

Zabolotsky knew how to subtly convey the spirituality of the natural world and reveal the harmony of man with it. In his late lyric poetry, he moved towards a new and original synthesis of philosophical reflection and plastic depiction, poetic scale and microanalysis, comprehending and artistically capturing the connection between modernity, history, and “eternal” themes. Among them, the theme of love occupies a special place in his late work.

In 1956-1957 the poet creates the lyrical cycle “Last Love”, consisting of 10 poems. They unfold a dramatic story of relationships between middle-aged people, whose feelings have gone through difficult trials.

Deeply personal love experiences are invariably projected in these poems onto the life of the surrounding nature. In the closest fusion with it, the poet sees what is happening in his own heart. And therefore, already in the first poem, “a bouquet of thistles” carries reflections of the universe: “These stars with sharp ends, / These splashes of the northern dawn /... This is also an image of the universe...” (emphasis added by us. - V.Z.) . And at the same time, this is the most concrete, plastic and spiritual image of a passing feeling, an inevitable parting with a beloved woman: “...Where bunches of flowers, bloody, / Are cut straight into my heart”; “And a wedge-shaped thorn stretched / into my chest, and for the last time / the sad and beautiful gaze of her unquenchable eyes shines on me.”

And in other poems of the cycle, along with the direct, immediate expression of love (“Confession”, “You swore to the grave...”), it appears and is reflected - in the landscape paintings themselves, the living details of the surrounding nature, in which the poet sees “a whole world of jubilation and grief” (“Sea Walk”). One of the most impressive and expressive poems in this regard is “The Juniper Bush” (1957):

I saw a juniper bush in a dream,
I heard a metallic crunch in the distance,
I heard the ringing of amethyst berries,
And in my sleep, in silence, I liked him.
In my sleep I smelled a slight smell of resin.
Bend back these low trunks,
I noticed in the darkness of the tree branches
A little living likeness of your smile.

These poems amazingly combine the utmost realistic concreteness of visible, audible, perceived by all senses signs and details of the seemingly ordinary natural phenomenon and the special instability, variability, and impressionistic nature of visions, impressions, and memories. And the juniper bush itself, which the poet dreamed of in a dream, becomes a capacious and multidimensional image-personification, absorbing the ancient joy and today’s pain of passing love, the elusive appearance of the beloved woman:

Juniper bush, juniper bush,
The cooling babble of changeable lips,
A light babble, barely reminiscent of resin,
Pierced me with a deadly needle!

In the final poems of the cycle (“Meeting”, “Old Age”), the dramatic conflict of life is resolved, and painful experiences are replaced by a feeling of enlightenment and peace. The “life-giving light of suffering” and the “distant weak light” of happiness flashing in rare lightning flashes in our memory are unquenchable, but, most importantly, all the hardest things are behind us: “And only their souls, like candles, / Stream the last warmth.”

Late period Zabolotsky's work is marked by intense creative quests. In 1958, turning to historical themes, he created a unique poem-cycle “Rubruk in Mongolia”, based on the real fact of what was undertaken by a French monk in the 13th century. traveling through the expanses of what was then Rus', the Volga steppes and Siberia to the country of the Mongols. In the realistic pictures of life and everyday life of the Asian Middle Ages, recreated by the power of the poet’s creative imagination, in the very poetics of the work, a peculiar meeting of modernity and the distant historical past occurs. When creating the poem, the poet’s son notes, “Zabolotsky was guided not only by Rubruk’s notes, which he carefully studied, but also by his own memories of movements and life in the Far East, the Altai Territory, and Kazakhstan. The poet’s ability to simultaneously feel himself in different time periods is the most amazing thing in the poem cycle about Rubruk.”

In the last year of his life, Zabolotsky wrote many lyrical poems, including “Green Ray”, “Swallow”, “Groves near Moscow”, “At sunset”, “Don’t let your soul be lazy...”. He translates an extensive (about 5 thousand lines) cycle of tales from the Serbian epic and negotiates with the publishing house to translate the German folk epic “The Song of the Nibelungs.” His plans also include working on a large philosophical and historical trilogy... But these creative plans were no longer destined to come true.

With all the diversity of Zabolotsky’s creativity, it is necessary to emphasize the unity and integrity of his art world. Artistic and philosophical understanding of the contradictions of existence, in-depth thoughts about man and nature in their interaction and unity, a unique poetic embodiment of modernity, history, and “eternal” themes form the basis of this integrity.

Zabolotsky's work is fundamentally deeply realistic. But this does not deprive him of his constant desire for artistic synthesis, for combining the means of realism and romance, a complex-associative, conventionally fantastic, expressive-metaphorical style, which openly manifested itself in early period and preserved in the depths of later poems and poems.

Highlighting in Zabolotsky’s classical heritage “first of all realism in the broad sense of the word,” A. Makedonov emphasized: “This realism includes both the richness of forms and methods of life-likeness, up to what Pushkin called “the Flemish school motley rubbish,” and the richness of forms grotesque, hyperbolic, fabulous, conventional, symbolic reproduction of reality, and the main thing in all these forms is the desire for the deepest and most generalizing, multi-valued penetration into it, in all its fullness, diversity of spiritual and sensory forms of existence.” This largely determines the originality of Zabolotsky’s poetics and style.

In the programmatic article “Thought-Image-Music” (1957), summarizing the experience of his creative life, emphasizing that “the heart of poetry is in its content,” that “the poet works with his whole being,” Zabolotsky formulates the key concepts of his holistic poetic system: “Thought - Image - Music - this is the ideal trinity that the poet strives for.” This sought-after harmony is embodied in many of his poems.

In Zabolotsky’s work there is undoubtedly a renewal and development of the traditions of Russian poetic classics, and primarily the philosophical lyrics of the 18th-19th centuries. (Derzhavin, Baratynsky, Tyutchev). On the other hand, from the very beginning of his creative activity, Zabolotsky actively mastered the experience of poets of the 20th century. (Khlebnikov, Mandelstam, Pasternak and others).

Regarding his passion for painting and music, which was clearly reflected not only in the very poetic fabric of his works, but also in the direct mention in them of the names of a number of artists and musicians (“Beethoven”, “Portrait”, “Bolero”, etc.), the poet’s son wrote in the memoirs “About Father and Our Life”: “Father always treated painting with great interest. His penchant for such artists as Filonov, Bruegel, Rousseau, Chagall is well known.” In the same memoirs, Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, Schubert, Wagner, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich are named among Zabolotsky’s favorite composers.

Zabolotsky showed himself to be an excellent master of poetic translation. His poetic adaptations of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and “The Knight in the Skin of the Tiger” by Sh. Rustaveli, translations from Georgian classical and modern poetry, from Ukrainian, Hungarian, German, and Italian poets became exemplary.

Life and creative path of N.A. Zabolotsky reflected in his own way the tragic fate of Russian literature and Russian writers in the 20th century. Having organically absorbed huge layers of domestic and world culture, Zabolotsky inherited and developed the achievements of Russian poetry, in particular and especially philosophical lyrics - from classicism and realism to modernism. He combined in his work the best traditions of literature and art of the past with the most daring innovation characteristic of our century, rightfully taking his place among its classic poets.

L-ra: Russian literature. – 1997. – No. 2. – P. 38-46.

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