Ilya Selvinsky
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Ilya Lvovich Selvinsky (Russian: Илья Сельвинский, 24 October 1899 – 22 March 1968) was a Soviet poet, dramatist, memoirist, and essayist born in Simferopol, Crimea.
Biography
Selvinsky grew up in
Selvinsky published his first poem in 1915 and in the 1920s experimented with the use of
In the late 1930s Selvinsky was an important mentor to the younger generation of Soviet Russian poets. During World War II, Selvinsky served as a military journalist and combat political officer in his native
Through a combination of personal bravery and political navigation, Selvinsky weathered the storms of Stalinism. He remained a proud Jew during the most antisemitic of the Soviet years and despite direct official ostracism. Shortly before his death, Selvinsky published the autobiographical novel O My Youth (1966), where Jewish themes figured prominently. Selvinsky died in Moscow in 1968.
A poetic virtuoso of high caliber, Selvinsky holds a prominent place in the history of modern Russian poetry and in the history of Jewish literature and Shoah literature. Selvinsky's uneclipsed literary achievements include the epic poem The Lay of Ulyalaev and the novel in verse Fur Trade (1928).
References
Vera S. Babenko. Voina glazami poeta: Krymskie stranitsy iz dnevnikov i pisem I. L. Sel’vinskogo. Simferopol’: Krymskaia Akademiia gumanitarnykh nauk; Dom-muzei I. L. Sel’vinskogo, 1994.
Aleksandr Gol'dshtein. "O Sel’vinskom." Zerkalo 15-16 (2000). *[1]
Iakov Khelemskii. "Kurliandskaia vesna." In O Sel’vinskom: vospominaniia, edited by Ts. A. Voskresenskaia and I. P. Sirotinskaia, 125–175. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1982.
Maxim D. Shrayer. "Ilya Selvinsky." In An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry, 1801-2001, 2 vols., edited by Maxim D. Shrayer, 1: 226–227. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2007.
Maxim D. Shrayer. "Selvinskii, Ilia Lvovich." In The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, 2 vols., edited by Gershon David Hundert, 2: 1684–1685. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. *[2]
Maxim D. Shrayer. Jewish-Russian Poets Bearing Witness to the Shoah, 1941-1946: Textual Evidence and Preliminary Conclusions." In Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures. ICCEES, edited by Stefano Garzonio, 59–119. Bologna: Portal on Central Eastern and Balkan Europe, 2011. *[3]
Maxim D. Shrayer. I SAW IT: Ilya Selvinsky and the Legacy of Bearing Witness to the Shoah. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013.
Harriet Murav, "Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Literature in Post-Revolution Russia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).