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13.07.202027.05.2017

Occupation:

poetry, prose

Ilya (Karl) Lvovich Selvinsky(1899-1968) - Russian Soviet writer, poet and playwright, representative of the literary movement of constructivism. Member of the CPSU(b) since 1941

The paternal grandfather, Elioghu (Eliyahu), was a Krymchak, at the age of 12 he became a cantonist and received the surname Selvinsky in the army.

Biography

Selvinsky was born into a Jewish family of a wealthy furrier contractor, participant Russian-Turkish war. Selvinsky began to study at the age of six in a Catholic monastery in Istanbul, in 1905, due to the financial failures of his father, the family returned to Simferopol, where they soon survived the pogrom, which was forever imprinted in the memory of the writer. Then Selvinsky lived in Evpatoria, where he graduated from the city school in 1915, and in 1919 with a gold medal from the gymnasium. During the holidays, Selvinsky traveled a lot, was a cabin boy, a fisherman, a port loader, an actor in a traveling theater, a wrestler in a circus. During the civil war, he joined the anarchist detachment of Marusya Nikiforova, and after its defeat he joined the Red Guard. In 1919 he entered the medical faculty of the Tauride University in Simferopol. In 1921 he moved to Moscow, studied at the Department of Law of the Faculty social sciences Moscow University, from which he graduated in 1923. Since 1922, Selvinsky worked in the Tsentrosoyuz, then in the Selsoyuz, and in 1928–32. - in Soyuzpushnina, thanks to which he traveled almost the entire country - the Central Russian strip, the Urals, the Far North and the Far East, Kyrgyzstan, Kamchatka. As a correspondent for the newspaper "Pravda" in 1933-34. participated in an expedition along the Northern Sea Route on the Chelyuskin steamer. During the Second World War, he was a battalion commissar (joined the Communist Party in 1941), fought on various fronts, was wounded several times. For many years Selvinsky taught at the M. Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow.

The beginning of the creative path

Selvinsky began to write poetry in his youth (first publication in 1915 in the newspaper Evpatoria News). The gymnasium poems were signed by Elliy Karl Selvinsky, adding to his slightly modified Jewish name the name of K. Marx, whose "Capital" he was fond of at that time. In 1920 he wrote several wreaths of sonnets similar in style to early poems; among them - "Bar Kokhba" (published in 1929 in the collection "Early Selvinsky"), dedicated to the leader of the anti-Roman uprising in Judea (see Bar Kokhba uprising). From imitation of A. Blok and I. Bunin, Selvinsky soon came to the rejection of traditional poetics. In experimental poems of the 1920s - early 1930s. Selvinsky uses various jargons, including thieves (“The Thief”, 1926), foreign vocabulary (Ukrainian, Gypsy, Jewish), creating macaronic verses. This period is characterized by the poems "Anecdotes about the Karaite philosopher Babakai-Sudduk" (1931) and the short story "Motke-Malkhamoves" (1926), written in a mixture of Odessa thieves' jargon and Jewish words (Yiddish, Hebrew), intonations and expressions (sometimes almost untranslatable into Russian: “And one pulled the other by the pants”). The image of the hero, the Odessa raider, arose under the influence of "Odessa stories" (1921–23) by I. Babel. In 1922–23 Selvinsky, together with K. Zelinsky, initiated the creation of a literary group of constructivists, who, like the LEF, sought to find ways to depict the themes of socialist reality. In their aesthetics, the constructivists were generally close to the LEF, which, however, did not prevent them from conducting fierce polemics (especially the leaders of the groups - Selvinsky and V. Mayakovsky). When the Literary Center of the Constructivists (1924–30), which included E. Bagritsky, Vera Inber, E. Gabrilovich (1899–1993) and others, took shape organizationally, Selvinsky became its main ideologist, theorist and leading poet. After the publication in 1926 of the collection of poems "Records", in 1927 - the poems "Ulyalaevshchina" (written in 1924) and "Notes of the Poet", and in 1928 - the novel in verses "Pushtorg" and the tragedy "Commander 2" Selvinsky acquired wide popularity. These works, built on the principle of constructivist "double realism", with its narrative, the introduction of numbers, technical terminology, digressions on economic topics, documents and statistics into the poetic text, were distinguished by bold experimentation. The colorfully written "Ulyalaevshchina" tells about the emergence and defeat of the anarchist-kulak uprising of Ulyalayev. The head of the uprising, as well as the anarchist Jew Stein depicted in the poem, according to official criticism, were much more expressive than the pale images of the communists (in 1956 a new version of the poem was published, in which V. Lenin became the central figure, and “seditious” » lines about freedom of creativity, etc.). In Pushtorg, through the tragic conflict between a brilliant specialist and an incompetent communist bureaucrat, Selvinsky emphasizes the tragic fate of the intelligentsia during the period of so-called socialist construction. Both in "Ulyalaevshchina" and "Pushtorg" there are Jewish reminiscences, such as "the Jew Bernadotte, the French marshal ...", "the biblical Haggadah", etc.

In Komandarm 2 (the tragedy staged by Vs. Meyerhold in 1929), the dramatic conflict is built on the clash of revolutionary expediency with the spontaneous impulse of the masses, and in contrasting two types of revolutionaries, civil war commanders Chuba and Okonnikov, were noticeable, especially in the theatrical incarnation, allusions to the struggle between J. Stalin and L. Trotsky. In the avant-garde socio-satirical play "Pao-pao" (1932), the orangutan, having freed himself from animal and bourgeois instincts under the influence of communist ideas, becomes a man (in 1956, Selvinsky revised the play, transferring the action from Germany in the 1920s to Nazi Germany ). In Selvinsky’s poetry collection “Declaration of Rights”, published in 1933, in the “Agitki” section, there was a small poem “From Palestine to Birobidzhan” (written in 1930), created for the propaganda purposes of OZET and opposing the failure of Zionism (especially after the 1929 riots , see Land of Israel (Eretz-Israel). Historical sketch) to the success of the construction of Jewish Birobidzhan. Jewish themes and reminiscences are also noticeable in Selvinsky's poetry of the 1930s; thus, in the lyrical poem “A Portrait of My Mother” (1934), the mother’s alienation from her son is conveyed by a comparison: “From now on, the son’s face is desecrated, like Jewish Jerusalem, which suddenly became a Christian shrine.” In the poems that were later included in the cycle “Foreign”, an anti-Nazi orientation is strong (“Anti-Semites”, “The Jewish Question”, “Fascism is War” - all in 1936). Since the late 1930s Selvinsky began to develop the genre of historical tragedy in verse, which eventually became the main genre in his work (“Knight John”, 1937; “Babek”, 1941; “Livonian War”, 1944; “From Poltava to Gangut”, 1951, “Big Kirill ", 1957). During the war years, the theme of patriotism, the great historical mission of Russia, becomes the main one in poetry, drama (General Brusilov, 1943) and Selvinsky's journalism.

persecution

Selvinsky, who was often subjected to official “developmental criticism,” fell into disgrace in 1943 for the poem “Russia” (1942) that I. Stalin did not like, in which, speaking about the greatness of the motherland, the poet thanked all his teachers, “from Pushkin to Pasternak. The persecution of Selvinsky resumed in 1946 (A. Fadeev's speech) and continued during the period of the struggle against cosmopolitanism (see Cosmopolitans). The poet was accused of contempt for Russia, its culture and people, of polluting the Russian language, of propagating enemy theories about the degeneration of the Soviet state apparatus, that he made “the anarchist, cosmopolitan Stein” the spokesman for his views, and other similar crimes.

During the Second World War

Some of Selvinsky's works were published in Hebrew, including excerpts from "Ulyalaevshchina" and the poem "Chelyuskiniana" (1937–38) translated by Avraam Shlensky.

Selvinsky died on March 22, 1968 in Moscow.

Family

The daughter of Ilya Selvinsky is the artist and poetess Tatyana Ilyinichna Selvinsky (born November 2, 1927, Moscow), laureate of the State Prize of Russia.

Artworks

Lyrics

"Gymnasium Muse". Cycle of poems
1926 - "Records". Poetry collection
1930 - "Declaration of the Poet's Rights"
1931 - "Electrozavodskaya newspaper" (poetry)
"Pacific Verses"
"Foreign"
Military poems (including "Motherland", "Who are we?", "I saw it!", "On Leninism", "Adzhi-Mushkay"; "Fascism" (1941))
1947 - "Crimea, Caucasus, Kuban". Collection.

Poems and novels in verse

1920 - "Youth". Crown of sonnets (poem).
1923-1924, published 1927 - Ulyalayevshchina. Poem
1927 - "Notes of a Poet". Poem (poetry story, includes a collection of poems "Silk Moon")
1927-1928, published 1929 - "Pushtorg". Novel in verse
1937-1938 - "Chelyuskiniana" poem
1956 - the second edition of "Ulyalaevshchina"
1960 - "Arctic" novel
"Three heroes" (a set of Russian epics).

Plays

1928 - "Commander 2". Tragedy (in verse)
1932 - "Pao-Pao". Drama
1933 - "Umka - Polar Bear". Play
1937 - "Knight John". Tragedy (in verse).
1941 - "Babek" (carrying an eagle on his shoulder). Tragedy (in verse).
"Russia". Drama trilogy.
- 1941-1944 - 1. "The Livonian War" (in verse).
- 1949 - 2. "From Poltava to Gangut".
- 1957 - 3. "Big Kirill".
1943 - "General Brusilov",
1947 - "Reading Faust". Tragedy
1962 - "A man is above his fate." Play
"The Swan Princess". Lyrical tragedy
"Tushino camp"

Prose

1928 - "Constructivist Code"
1959 - "Features of my life" Autobiographical manuscript
1962 - "Studio of verse". Book
published in 1966 - "Oh, my youth!" Novel (autobiographical).

Films

Awards

5 orders;
medals.

Quote

Notes

Links

Biography and works

Ilya Selvinsky on the site "Element"
Ilya Selvinsky on the site "Russian poetry of the 1960s"
Ilya Selvinsky at the Electronic Bookshelves of Vadim Ershov and Co.
Ilya Selvinsky on the Age of Translation website
Ilya Selvinsky on the site "Poetry of Moscow University from Lomonosov to ..."
Ilya Selvinsky on the site "The Best Russian Poets and Poems"

Selected works

"Ulyalaevshchina" in the Moshkov Library.
"Ulyalaevshchina". Facsimile reproduction of the 1935 edition in pdf at the ImWerden Library
"Poems for children 4-7 years old" in the library "ImWerden"
"Tushino camp" - Mirror: Literary and art magazine
"Kerch" on the site "Military Literature"

Poems for musical works

Selvinsky on the site "Soviet Music"

One of the smallest peoples of Russia - the Krymchaks, gave the country one of the prominent poets of the twentieth century. The poems of Ilya Selvinsky, as well as his prose and dramaturgy, have taken their rightful place in Soviet culture. It is unusual that his work turned out to be cyclical: towards the end of his life, Selvinsky returned with his old works, having substantially edited them.
The poet died in Moscow on March 22, 1968. He experienced a lot in 68 years: he fought in two wars, traveled in the Arctic, changed a lot of professions before his literary career.

Selvinsky's early years
Selvinsky was born into a Krymchak family on 11 (24 according to the new style) October 1899. It happened in the city of Simferopol. The family had glorious military traditions: my grandfather served in the Phanagoria regiment, my father was a veteran of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877. The poet himself will also have to spend a lot of time at the fronts.
Ilya Lvovich graduated primary school, then a gymnasium - and already in these young years he was engaged in poetry. Ilya Selvinsky first published his poems in 1915: they were published in the newspaper Evpatoria News.
The range of professions to which the poet dedicated his youth is amazing: from the work of a loader to the work of a model, a reporter, and even a wrestler in a circus. Also Selvinsky, seized by revolutionary sentiments, took part in the Civil War on the side of the Red Army.
After the war, he went to Moscow, where he entered the Moscow State University. Already by this moment, the poems of Ilya Selvinsky gained popularity, and he himself gained considerable weight in poetic circles. The Krymchak poet was reasonably considered the leader of the constructivist movement.
In 1926, the first collection of Selvinsky's poems was published, and the same period became a time for experiments for the author: he wrote bold and unusual poems, poems that were strange for their time. Alas, much of Selvinsky's work will still be misunderstood by the authorities.

Mature years of the poet
Surprisingly, against the background of such literary success, Selvinsky worked for some time as a welder at a factory in the late 1920s. And almost immediately after that, he sent him on a trip on the legendary Chelyuskin, as a correspondent for the Pravda newspaper.
He did not participate in further legendary and dramatic events around this ship, having left the board before the start of the drift and wintering. But even without the harsh nature of the Arctic, there were enough problems: in 1937, government resolutions were issued stating that Ilya Selvinsky wrote poetry "anti-artistic and harmful." Moreover, the officials even had questions about the harmless play "Umka the Polar Bear".
In 1941, Selvinsky was again at the front. There were enough poets on the fields of the Great Patriotic War, but hardly in the rank of lieutenant colonel, to which Selvinsky rose to the rank. The classic distinguished himself in battles, received several wounds - but, fortunately, he was lucky again in the war.
True, the war actually ended for Ilya Lvovich already in 1943 - he was summoned to Moscow, and again about the "wrong" poems. According to rumors, Stalin personally participated in the discussion of the situation, noting then that Trotsky and Bukharin highly valued Selvinsky as a poet.
Only in 1945 the title was returned to the classics, and again sent to the front.

Postwar years
At the end of the war, Selvinsky finally devoted himself entirely to literature. He published poems and novels in verse, plays, as well as prose. The last work, the lyrical theatrical tragedy "The Swan Princess", saw the light in the year of the author's death.

Poembook, 2015
All rights reserved.

And in the army he received the surname Selvinsky. Selvinsky was born into a Jewish family of a prosperous furrier contractor, a participant in the Russian-Turkish war. Selvinsky began to study at the age of six in a Catholic monastery in Istanbul, in 1905, due to the financial failures of his father, the family returned to Simferopol, where they soon survived the pogrom, which was forever imprinted in the memory of the writer. Then Selvinsky lived in Evpatoria, where he graduated from the city school in 1915, and in 1919 with a gold medal from the gymnasium. During the holidays, Selvinsky traveled a lot, was a cabin boy, a fisherman, a port loader, an actor in a traveling theater, a wrestler in a circus. During the civil war, he joined the anarchist detachment of Marusya Nikiforova, and after its defeat he joined the Red Guard.

In 1919 he entered the medical faculty of the Tauride University in Simferopol. In 1921 he moved to Moscow, studied at the Department of Law of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Moscow University, from which he graduated in 1923. - in Soyuzpushnina, thanks to which he traveled almost the entire country - the Central Russian strip, the Urals, the Far North and the Far East, Kyrgyzstan, Kamchatka. As a correspondent for the newspaper "Pravda" in 1933-34. participated in an expedition along the Northern Sea Route on the Chelyuskin steamer. During the Second World War, he was a battalion commissar (joined the Communist Party in 1941), fought on various fronts, was wounded several times. For many years Selvinsky taught at the M. Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow.

Selvinsky began to write poetry in his youth (first publication in 1915 in the newspaper Evpatoria News). Gymnasium poems were signed by Elliy Karl Selvinsky, adding to his slightly changed Jewish name the name of K. Marx, whose “Capital” he was fond of at that time. In 1920 he wrote several wreaths of sonnets similar in style to early poems; among them - "Bar Kokhba" (published in 1929 in the collection "Early Selvinsky"), dedicated to the leader of the anti-Roman uprising in Judea (see Bar Kokhba uprising). From imitation of A. Blok and I. Bunin, Selvinsky soon came to the rejection of traditional poetics. In experimental poems of the 1920s - early 1930s. Selvinsky uses various jargons, including thieves (“The Thief”, 1926), foreign vocabulary (Ukrainian, Gypsy, Jewish), creating macaronic verses. This period is characterized by the verses "Anecdotes about the Karaite philosopher Babakai-Sudduk" (1931) and the short story "Motke-Malkhamoves" (1926), written in a mixture of Odessa thieves' jargon and Jewish words (Yiddish, Hebrew), intonations and expressions (sometimes almost untranslatable into Russian: “And one pulled the other by the pants”). The image of the hero, the Odessa raider, arose under the influence of "Odessa stories" (1921–23) by I. Babel.

In 1922–23 Selvinsky, together with K. Zelinsky, initiated the creation of a literary group of constructivists, who, like the LEF, sought to find ways to depict the themes of socialist reality. In their aesthetics, the constructivists were generally close to the LEF, which, however, did not prevent them from conducting fierce polemics (especially the leaders of the groups - Selvinsky and V. Mayakovsky). When the Literary Center of the Constructivists (1924–30), which included E. Bagritsky, Vera Inber, E. Gabrilovich (1899–1993) and others, took shape organizationally, Selvinsky became its main ideologist, theorist and leading poet. After the publication in 1926 of the collection of poems "Records", in 1927 - the poems "Ulyalaevshchina" (written in 1924) and "Notes of the Poet", and in 1928 - the novel in verses "Pushtorg" and the tragedy "Commander 2" Selvinsky became widely known. These works, built on the principle of constructivist "double realism", with its narrative, the introduction of numbers, technical terminology, digressions on economic topics, documents and statistics into the poetic text, were distinguished by bold experimentation. The colorfully written "Ulyalaevshchina" tells about the emergence and defeat of the anarchist-kulak uprising of Ulyalayev. The head of the uprising, as well as the anarchist Jew Stein depicted in the poem, according to official criticism, were much more expressive than the pale images of the communists (in 1956 a new version of the poem was published, in which V. Lenin became the central figure, and “seditious” » lines about freedom of creativity, etc.). In Pushtorg, through the tragic conflict between a brilliant specialist and an incompetent communist bureaucrat, Selvinsky emphasizes the tragic fate of the intelligentsia during the period of so-called socialist construction. Both in "Ulyalaevshchina" and "Pushtorg" there are Jewish reminiscences, such as "the Jew Bernadotte, the French marshal ...", "the biblical Haggadah", etc.

Some of Selvinsky's works were published in Hebrew, including excerpts from "Ulyalaevshchina" and the poem "Chelyuskiniana" (1937–38) translated by A. Shlensky.

KEE, volume: 7.
Col.: 741–744.
Published: 1994.

Sea Sea! Crimean Sea!
My youth calls...
And if you really want happiness,
We will go to the Crimea!

I. Selvinsky, Crimea.

Ilya (Karl) Lvovich Selvinsky (1899-1968) - Russian Soviet writer, poet and playwright, representative of the literary movement of constructivism.

He nevertheless became a writer, despite the significant ability first to draw, and then to music, noticed in him in early childhood ...

Unlike his romantic father, his mother, as a woman of practical mind, spoke about his talents as follows: “If you are to be an artist (musician), then you must be outstanding, otherwise only a tramp will come out (or will start to chirp at weddings). But will it be outstanding? Unknown! After all, all children draw (or sing)." In general, there was no point in risking either the fate of his son or the funds for education (by the way, very meager funds). She saw her son with a normal education and a normal profession (preferably a doctor). Ilya had no choice but to urgently find a "less expensive" creative field, because the need to express himself was brewing and was looking for a way out. And a way out was found, especially since the “instrument” was already available - a donated pen with an imprint of the profile of the poet Pushkin, and the age was quite suitable for everything - 11 years old. And although there were still some doubts, but, as the poet himself later said, they were washed away by "a wave that surged into the soul from the Gulf of Kerkinitida." The blinding blue of the sea, which lay right outside the windows of the gymnasium, left no doubt, and so from childhood and passed through his whole life.

Later, in 1928, Vladimir Mayakovsky, who visited both this city and this gymnasium, said to Ilya in surprise: “I could not study at such a school. The sea climbs into all the windows ... ". And it just helped him. But the sea still had to be ...

The fact is that, in general, the well-to-do and prosperous Selvinsky family, consisting of a father, mother and six daughters, lived in Simferopol. In the same place, on October 11, 1899, a boy was finally born - our future poet (which, of course, no one suspected yet). And in 1905, a catastrophe occurred - my father went bankrupt, suddenly turning from a prosperous fur manufacturer, first into a furrier, and then completely into a simple worker. For three years they lived literally from hand to mouth, in semi-basement apartments. And only then we went to Evpatoria (the father was offered a good job). Settled right by the sea. In the same place, nearby, there was also an initial 4-year-old city school, to which Ilya was sent to study. It was in him that the teachers noticed his artistic and musical abilities. And in it was also written the first poem printed later in the local newspaper "Evpatoria News", which made it a kind of "landmark of the city."

Crimean landscape

In 1915, Ilya Selvinsky entered the gymnasium (then, of course, it could not have occurred to him that it would someday bear his name). He studies "excellently", while he loves to read, is fond of poetry, for which he receives the magnificent nickname Byron. Participates with pleasure in all school concerts, performances and literary evenings. He writes poetry and even plays. With all this, Ilya is not a slender and gentle young man, but a tall, noticeable and strong boy. In the Evpatoria Museum of Local Lore, you will be shown a photograph taken on March 26, 1916, in which a handsome young man with a proudly thrown head and a serious, thoughtful look (well, pure Byron) immediately stands out among the gymnasium students - this is Ilya Selvinsky. He really was broad in the shoulders and athletically complex - he was considered "the first strongman of the combined classes." By the way, any sports activities were encouraged in every possible way in the gymnasium, but “sea sports” were respected most of all. There was even a small fleet of its own - three gig boats and a scow, as well as a real sea uniform for the guys. And Ilya managed to participate in everything: he was an excellent swimmer, covering distances of 2-3 kilometers, he was a first-class rower, but he was especially fond of wrestling - French, American freestyle and jiu-jitsu. Well, it was not for nothing that the local Greeks - all as one fishermen and sailors - drew him into their craft. During summer holidays he often went with them for fish to the Tarkhankutsky lighthouse and, as expected, received his share. And one summer he even sailed as a cabin boy on the sailing schooner "St. Apostle Paul".

Ilya Selvinsky is a student of the Evpatoria gymnasium. 1910s

Everything would have gone on as usual, if there, far from the Crimea, in Petrograd, there had not been a revolution ... It had reached Evpatoria by 1918, appearing on the roads in the form of two cruisers - "Romania" and "Euphrosyne", which , giving a couple of volleys, sent a boat with sailors ashore. Those, in turn, entering the office of the "Russian Society of Shipping and Trade", announced the establishment of Soviet power in the city. The director of the gymnasium (with some of the rich residents of the city) emigrated to Turkey on an armadillo. The building itself was used as a hospital. And also at that time in Yevpatoriya a small theater called "Grotesque" was working - a kind of wandering music hall (there was even a Chinese with a small Himalayan bear!). And since classes at the gymnasium were not yet foreseen, Ilya joined the troupe as an actor and went with everyone along Taurica. But over time, the role of the watchman at the Indian temple in the play "Priestess of Fire" fed up with the guy, especially since, according to rumors, the German army occupied Ukraine and was approaching the Crimea. Selvinsky decides to look for the front and help "his own", even if they are Red Guards. It didn’t take long to search: at the Novoalekseevka station, Evpatoria acquaintances were found - brother and sister Nemichi, who were in a large united detachment, which included Evpatoria, Simferopol, and Yalta. With their help, he ended up in the detachment. The knowledge of wrestling techniques and the courage shown in the first battle by a boy in a gymnasium overcoat helped to gain authority. But already in the next battle at Perekop, Ilya received his first wound and concussion. The detachment went to Dzhankoy, and he was left in the small town of Armyansk in the care of one of the inhabitants. Nevertheless, the Reds were kicked out of the Crimea, and a week later his father came for him, and by the end of the summer Ilya was already at his desk again - in the last, eighth grade.

Ilya Lvovich Selvinsky with his wife Berta Yakovlevna. 1924

After graduating from the gymnasium excellently, in 1919 the young man went to Simferopol to study, as his parents dreamed, at the medical school (in fact, to visit philologists). However, at the same time, it was also necessary to earn money for education (1 thousand per year) and for food ... I had to take on literally everything: I worked as a loader, and a model, and a court chronicler in a newspaper, and even a wrestler in a circus under the name Lurich III, son of Lurich I. They paid well for the fight, but the rector of the Tauride University found out about this and put the question point-blank: either Ilya is a student or a circus performer, because the first is incompatible with the second. And then somehow his participation in the “red detachment” was discovered, for which he was arrested. The detachment itself, as it turned out, was shot somewhere near Kerch ... After spending first in the Simferopol and then in the Sevastopol prison for about a month, Ilya was released. Somehow I got to Evpatoria, and there my father was completely ill and the family was without a penny of money ... Again, I didn’t have to work anywhere: at agricultural work in the Moinaks German colony, then in the vineyards, at the water pump in the Dulber Hotel. This hotel belonged to the artist of the Art Theater Duvan-Tortsov, whose family was the center of the intelligentsia of that Evpatoria, and Ilya studied at the same gymnasium with his sons. He will return to this "Dulber" and will live in it in 1929. with his wife, Berta; and many more events will take place in the same "dulber" in his biographical novel "Oh, my youth!" about his native Evpatoria ... In the meantime, having worked in the hotel basement from 7 am to 3 pm, the young man quickly changed into his existing suit with a “fantasy” tie and rushed to the second floor of the Dulber, where artists, writers, musicians gathered for five o’clock tea, artists, art historians. In those years, many people came to the Crimea, hoping to wait out the "red fever" that happened to the country.

So in the process of creative discussions, the style of the young poet was gradually developed. Despite all the ups and downs of fate, Selvinsky continued to write, but in fact he had no style and wanted to improve. Impressionism became a school… But then the hot days came, the verse had to be postponed, the Red Army entered the Crimea and, apparently, finally. Directly from the pumping station, Ilya Selvinsky was appointed head of the Thea-Unarbraz section, and then sent to study in Moscow, at a communist university. The Sociology of Arts was taught by Lunacharsky himself, and he taught in such a way that he suddenly wanted to become nothing less than a poet of the revolution. All the poetic minds of the capital were then strongly agitated (in those 1920s it was still possible to “be agitated”). Dozens of literary groups and movements were united by the SOPO (Union of Poets), headed by the chairman, Valery Bryusov himself. As Ilya Selvinsky later wrote: “There were many different things in the union, but the French slogan united: “Ghanger tout cela!” (to change all that!), for that is how the revolution was understood. And everything turned...

Then the life of the poet Ilya Selvinsky was different. There were many poems, and poems, and even plays. Successful and less successful. Sometimes he was called a formalist, sometimes he was highly praised. There was some weird stuff too. For example, in charge of a feather-down factory, as well as a fur instructor in Kyrgyzstan (preparation - you won’t believe it - “gopher skins”; then, however, they transferred to “large furs”). At the same time, intensive boxing ... But there was also leadership in the group of constructivist poets. In 1923 he graduated from the university and seemed to be engaged in professional literature. Finally, in 1926, the first collection of poems called "Records" was published, which, of course, included the "Crimean Collection" - but how could it be without it, how could it be without his beloved Crimea ?! But suddenly he wanted to and went for two years as a welder at an electric plant - isn't that strange? And then he went to Kamchatka as a "special representative of Soyuzpushnina". From the newspaper "Pravda" he was on an Arctic expedition: first with "Chelyuskin", then - with the Chukchi on dogs, he went all the way to the Bering Strait. What just happened to him in his great life ...

No, I didn't live an easy life
Perhaps because he dared
But I couldn't be unhappy
And that's why I was happy...

Ilya Selvinsky arrived in Evpatoria in August 1941, two months before the occupation of the city by the Nazis, as a correspondent for the newspaper Son of the Fatherland of the 51st Separate Army. And then, already a lieutenant colonel, in December 1943. takes part in the liberation of his native Crimea (in the Kerch landing).

SELVINSKY, ILYA LVOVICH(1899–1968), Russian poet, prose writer, playwright. Born October 12, 1899 in Simferopol in the family of a furrier. After the First Russian Revolution of 1905, fearing Jewish pogroms, the mother took the children to Constantinople. A year later, my father went bankrupt, and I had to return to the Crimea. In 1915, Selvinsky graduated from the Evpatoria Primary School and entered the gymnasium, which he graduated in 1919. While studying, earning a living, Selvinsky was a sailor on a fishing schooner, a model, a newspaper reporter, a factory worker, and an actor in a traveling music hall. During October revolution 1917 carried out the tasks of the Bolshevik underground, in the years civil war became a Red Guard, was wounded near Perekop. Upon his return to Sevastopol, he was arrested by the White Guard counterintelligence, released from prison at the request of friends.

Selvinsky began to write poetry while still a student at an elementary school (some of them were published in 1915 in the Evpatoria News newspaper). Poems written during the years of study at the gymnasium, the poet subsequently combined into a cycle Gymnasium muse. In early works Sound, Harbor, Breeze etc.) the influence of N. Gumilyov, I. Severyanin, A. Blok and I. Bunin is felt.

After graduating from the gymnasium, Selvinsky entered the medical faculty of the Tauride University. To earn money, he was hired to pump water to the Evpatoria hotel "Dyulber". Artists, writers, musicians, artists, art historians gathered at the hotel, accepting the gifted young man into their circle. In an autobiographical manuscript Features of my life(1959) Selvinsky wrote: “Impressionism became my school. Essence - boundless devotion to the god of art. Life side by side with people of black labor, the views of these people, their sympathies and assessments brought up spontaneous democracy in me and made me think more than once about the meaning of art, cut off from the people. The clash of these aspirations is palpable in the early poem (the crown of sonnets) Youth(1920): "And I'm nobody's. I dream about everything else. / Ringing, ringing wonderful pages, / A new volume appears behind the volume. / But in life you wander in empty air.

After the establishment of Soviet power in the Crimea, Selvinsky worked in the theatrical department of the Narobraz and at the same time studied at the law faculty of the Tauride University. In 1920 he transferred to Moscow State University at the Faculty of Social Sciences. The young poet immediately found himself in the thick of literary events: he read his poems in student audiences, his poetry was noticed by critics. In 1926 his first collection of poetry was published. Records. Selvinsky gathered a small circle of like-minded literary people, on the basis of which the LCC group (Constructivist Literary Center) was created in 1924. By 1929, in addition to Selvinsky, the LCC included E. Bagritsky, V. Asmus, E. Gabrilovich, V. Inber, V. Lugovskoy and other writers.

In 1928 Selvinsky wrote The constructivist code, in which the main aesthetic principles of the new trend in poetry were formulated: bar verse, local method (a technique in which the main thing is the functional meaning of rhyming words), etc. Constructivist code it was said that “the carrier of the constructivist (i.e., assertively organizational and cultural) movement should be first of all the proletariat, and then intermediate social groups under the ideological influence of the proletariat.

Creativity Selvinsky has always been distinguished by intensity. After graduating from Moscow State University (1923), he served for some time in the Central Union and often went on business trips, visited Far East and the Far North. During these years, he had the idea of a poetic epic Ulyalayevshchina(1923–1924, publ. 1927). The theme of the poem is the fight against gangs in the steppes, the rampant rebellious elements and its suppression. Even before publication, the poem was on the lists. Critics noted unexpected rhythms, the use of folklore and dialect, a combination of humor and lyricism, grotesqueness and realism. At the same time, the poet was accused of romanticizing the bandit leader Ulyalaev and schematizing the image of the communist commissar Guy. In 1956 Selvinsky published the second edition Ulyalayevshchina, focusing on the image of Guy and introducing into the text the image of Lenin dictating a decree on the tax in kind.

In 1927 he wrote a poetic story Poet's Notes. The protagonist, the poet Yevgeny Ney, is endowed with autobiographical features. The story ended with a collection of his poems. silk moon, in which the aesthetic preferences of Selvinsky the constructivist were clearly felt.

Selvinsky has always been attracted to dramaturgy. His poetic tragedy Commander-2(1928) was staged by Vs. Meyerhold. Subsequently, Selvinsky constantly turned to the dramatic form, creating a kind of "poet's theater". A significant place in it is occupied by poetic tragedies on historical themes – Wearing an eagle on his shoulder (1941), Livonian War(1944) and many others. others

The poet's impressions of work in the Central Union were embodied in a novel in verse Pushtorg(1927-1928), the main theme of which was the relationship of the intelligentsia with the Soviet government. The novel was written in octens, using a variety of intonational moves and metaphors.

After the dissolution of the LCC in 1930–1932, Selvinsky worked as a welder at the Moscow Electric Plant, authorized by the Soyuzpushnina in Kamchatka. In 1933 he became a correspondent for the newspaper Pravda, visited many countries of Western Europe, writing narrative poems about his trips ( Panna Poland, Conversation with the devil of Paris and etc.). During these years he also wrote a satirical fantasy drama pao pao(1932) - about an orangutan who, thanks to the communists, becomes a man, and a play Umka Polar bear (1933). Impressions from the Chelyuskin epic reflected in the poem Chelyuskiniana(1937–1938), and later in the novel Arctic(1960).

During the years of the Great Patriotic War Selvinsky was a war correspondent. military theme dedicated to his pathos-filled poems of the 1940s Motherland, Who are we?, I saw it!, About Leninism and many others. etc. in a poem Fascism(1941) defined fascism as "the revolt of the red beast / Against the dominion of man".

After the war, Selvinsky continued to work fruitfully in various genres. Published a book of theoretical articles verse studio(1962), a play about Lenin A man above his destiny(1962), autobiographical novel Oh my youth! (publ. 1966). Conducted a creative seminar at the Literary Institute named after A.M. Gorky and continued to write poetry. Poem An old man needs to get used to a lot ... written two days before his death.