Aleksandr Tvardovsky
Aleksandr Tvardovsky | |
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Vasili Tyorkin ] |
Aleksandr Trifonovich Tvardovsky (Russian: Александр Трифонович Твардовский, IPA:
Biography
Tvardovsky was born into a Russian family in Zagorye, in the Smolensky Uyezd of the Smolensk Governorate of the Russian Empire. At the time of his birth, the family lived on a farm that his father had purchased in installments from the Peasant Land Bank. Tvardovsky's father, the son of a landless soldier, was a blacksmith by trade. The farm was situated on poor land, but Tvardovsky's father loved it and was proud of what he had acquired through years of hard labor. He transmitted this love and pride to Aleksandr.[1]
Tvardovsky's father was a well-read and intelligent man who often read to Aleksandr and the rest of the family. From an early age, Aleksandr became familiar with the works of Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolay Nekrasov and others. He began composing poetry while still very young. At age 13, he showed some of his poems to a young teacher who gave him misleading criticism, telling him that poetry should be written as unintelligibly as possible. His first published poem was "A New Hut", which was printed in the newspaper, Smolensk Village. After its publication, he collected his poems and showed them to the poet, Mikhail Isakovsky. Aleksandr later acknowledged Isakovsky's influence, saying that he had been the only Soviet poet who had had a beneficial effect on him.[1]
He left the village school because of poverty after attending only four classes and devoted himself entirely to literature. At the age of 18 he went to Smolensk, but was unable to find literary work. In the winter of 1930, after visiting Moscow, he returned to his native village.[2] During this period, he entered a Pedagogical Institute with the help of a party official, but didn't finish his studies there. He completed his education later at the Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature in Moscow. His poem The Land of Muravia was written in 1934–36 and was favorably received by the critics.[1] This poem, along with his other early narrative poem, The Road to Socialism (1931), were products of Tvardovsky's effort to come to terms with collectivization. He was awarded the Stalin Prize for The Land of Muravia.[2]
Tvardovsky's father was accused of being a
Tvardovsky acknowledged the guilt he felt about his father in his late poem, "By Right of Memory" (1968).[2]
In 1939, he participated in the march into Western Belorussia, and also in the
Tvardovsky fought hard to maintain the traditional independence Novy Mir had, even against official disapproval. During his editorship, the magazine published
In January 1963, Tvardovsky was attacked in Izvestia for publishing Yashin's story, which was considered too pessimistic. The chief editor of Izvestia, Alexei Adzhubey, was a son-in-law of the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, but the editorial appears to have been organised behind their backs while Khrushchev and Adzhubey were visiting Poland and East Germany. Attacks on Tvardovsky persisted for three months, but he did not issue any apology or retraction.[6] On 18 August 1963, Izvestia published Tvardovsky's poem Tyorkin in the Other World, a satire in which the hero continued to meet bureaucratic obstruction even if the afterlife, with an introduction praising the work, signed by Adzhubey. Tvardovsky wrote this poem in 1954, but it was banned for nine years, and was one of the reasons that he was temporarily dismissed from the editorship of Novy mir.[7] A few days before it was finally published, Tvardovsky was accorded the honour of being invited to recite the poem to Khrushchev and a group of foreign writers in Gagra.[8]
These political ups and downs in Tvardovsky's reputation were part of the power struggle between Khrushchev and hard line communists seeking to protect the legacy of the dictator, Joseph Stalin, whose crimes Khrushchev denounced. In his memoirs, Khrushchev wrote that "Tvardovsky's books - especially his epic poem about Vasili Tyorkin - were a source of strength to us all in World War II ... Tvardovsky gave us some great art, but he ended without recognition and without honour."[9]
In January 1965, a few month after Khrushchev had been ousted, Tvardovsky wrote an article commemorating 40 years of Novy Mir, in which he singled out several new young writers for praise, including Andrei Sinyavsky. ON 15 April, Izvestia - under a new chief editor - commissioned a piece accusing Tvardovsky of 'losing his sense of proportion' when he criticised Stalinist literature, and of being too much of an admirer of Solzhenitsyn.[10] Five months later, Sinyavsky was arrested. According to rumour, the authorities then intended to sack Tvardovsky and appoint Konstantin Simonov in his place, but Simonov refused the position, and Tvardovsky's staff threatened to strike.[11]
In February 1970, Tvardovsky was dismissed from Novy Mir. In May, Zhores Medvedev, a contributor to Novy Mir was arrested and interned in a psychiatric hospital in Kaluga. It was common practice in the USSR to abuse psychiatry to silence critics. Tvardovsky and the writer Vladimir Tendryakov visited Medvedev on 6 June, when according to Medvedev, "the doctors were deeply affected by their conversation" and agreed to release Medvedev. On the day he was released, on 17 June, Tvardovsky was summoned before a communist party official, rebuked for interfering in the case and told "we were going to give you a very different award."[12] This was a reference to his 60th birthday, when he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner "for services to the development of Soviet poetry"[13] - implying that he would have received a more prestigious award if he had not intervened.
Devastated at losing the editorship of Novy Mir, Tvardovsky's health collapsed, and he died in December 1971. On hearing of his death, Solzhenitsyn wrote:
There are many ways of killing a poet. The method chosen for Tvardovsky was to take away his off-spring, his passion, his journal. The sixteen years of insults meekly endured by this hero were little, so long as his journal survived, so long as literature was not stopped, so long as people were printed in it and people read it. Too little! So they heaped the coals of disbandment, destruction and injustice upon him. Within six months, these coals had consumed him. Six months later, he took to his death-bed.[14]
Tvardovsky received the
Legacy
Vasili Tyorkin
Tvardovsky's most popular long poem,
The poem is regarded by critics as a masterpiece, remarkable for "positive good humor, its freedom from dogma, and its closeness to the reality of <Soviet> life", "a national and even international horizon". It is also unique as a work written during Stalin's regime, as it lacks ideological content, glorification of Stalin and the Soviet state, and triumphalist tone which were required for a work of "Socialist realism". Tvardovsky's wife wrote in 1943: "I have the impression that it is getting dangerous here to pronounce your name aloud", but the poem's popularity saved it from the censorship.[17]
Other works
Tvardovsky's World War II-themed poem, A House by the Road, was the basis for Valery Gavrilin's 1984 symphonic suite of the same name. In 1963, Tvardovsky published Tyorkin in the Other World, a satire on the everyday life in the Soviet Union and Stalinism. Tyorkin gets in hell for a short time and finds out that hell is a lot like everyday life in the Soviet Union.[2]
Honouring
A
A Russian crewed freighter, registered in the Cook Islands, is named after Tvardovsky.[19]
Selected works and English translations
- Vasili Tyorkin] (Russian: Василий Тёркин. Книга про бойца, 1941–1945)
- Tyorkin & The Stove Makers, translated by Anthony Rudolf, ISBN 0856350664
- Vassili Tyorkin: A Book About a Soldier, translated by Alex Miller, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975.
- Vasili Tyorkin: A Book About a Soldier, translated by James W. Womack, Smokestack Books, Ripon, 2020, ISBN 1916012108.
- Tyorkin & The Stove Makers, translated by Anthony Rudolf,
- Tyorkin in the Other World
- Tyorkin in the Other World, translated by Patricia Wheeler, Smokestack Books, 2022, ISBN 1838465359.
- Tyorkin in the Other World, translated by Patricia Wheeler, Smokestack Books, 2022,
- "Stovemakers" (short story)
- Such a Simple Thing and Other Stories, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1959.
- Tyorkin & The Stove Makers, translated by Anthony Rudolf, ISBN 0856350664
- Selected Poetry, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1981.
- Russian Poetry 1917-1955. Selected, translated and with an introduction by Jack Lindsay, 1955.
References
- ^ a b c d e f Alexandrova, Vera (1963). A History of Soviet Literature. New York: Doubleday. pp. 284–294.
- ^ ISBN 0-300-04971-4.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-141-01351-0.
- ISBN 978-1-538-10221-3.
- ^ 1972 Britannica Book of the Year (covering events of 1971), "Obituaries 1971" article, page 532, "Tvardovski, Aleksandr Trifonovich" item
- ^ Tatu, Michel (1969). Power in the Kremlin. London: Collins. pp. 301, 310, 319.
- ^ ""…Потому как на тот свет Не придешь повторно»: 55 лет назад 18 августа 1963 года впервые была напечатана поэма Александра Твардовского «Теркин на том свете"". Волгоградская Универсальная Наычная Библиотека им. М. Горского. Retrieved 29 November 2022.
- ^ Tatu. Power in the Kremlin. p. 356.
- ^ Khrushchev, Nikita (1974). Khrushchev Remembers, The Last Testament. Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown. p. 82.
- ^ Tatu. Power in the Kremlin. p. 470.
- ^ Tatu. Power in the Kremlin. p. 475.
- ^ Medvedev, Zhores and Roy (1974). A Question of Madness. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. pp. 139, 145–46.
- ^ Joseph Pearce, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2011, p. 213.
- ^ Solzhenitsyn, Alexander (5 January 1972). "Obituary". A Chronicle of Current Events (23): 99–100. Retrieved 29 November 2022.
- ^ "Новодевичье кладбище - Твардовский Александр Трифонович". novodevichye.com. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
- ISBN 978-0-253-32893-9.
- ^ For the Homeland but Not for Stalin: On Alexander Tvardovsky’s "Vasili Tyorkin: A Book about a Soldier"/
- ^ Dictionary of Minor Planet Names – p.271
- ^
Losirene Lacanivalu (2019-07-18). "Cooks ship detained". Cook Island News. Retrieved 2019-07-20.
The ship is owned by NWS 6 Balt Shipping Company, a Maltese company and a current member of the Cook Islands Ship Owners Association.
External links
- Aleksandr Tvardovsky. Autobiography (in Russian)
- Aleksandr Tvardovsky poetry at Stihipoeta (in Russian)
- Encyclopedia of Soviet Writers article on Tvardovsky (in English)
- Stovemakers, (short story), from Such a Simple Thing and Other Stories, FLPH, Moscow, 1959. (in English)
- Aleksandr Tvardovsky. Poems (in Russian)