Leonid Dobychin
Leonid Dobychin | |
|---|---|
Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (?) | |
| Occupation | Poet, writer |
| Citizenship | Russian Empire (1899–1917) Soviet Russia (1917–1922) Soviet Union (1922–1934) |
| Notable works | The Town of N Encounters with Lise |
Leonid Ivanovich Dobychin (Russian: Леони́д Ива́нович Добы́чин) (June 17 [O.S. June 5] 1894, Ludza, Vitebsk Governorate — March 28, 1936 [?]) was a Russian and Soviet writer.
Early life
The author's father was Ivan Andrianovich Dobychin (1855—1902), who in 1896 moved the family to Dvinsk (now
Career
His first stories were published in 1924 in the Leningrad journal Russkii sovremennik. In the autumn of 1925 Dobychin made his first, unsuccessful, attempt to relocate to Leningrad. At this time he came to know the
Solomon Volkov wrote:
A writer who surpassed Zoshchenko in a desire for simplicity and laconic writing was Leonid Dobychin, a remote and lonely man who managed to produce three small books before vanishing in 1936... Dobychin's works, which were greatly esteemed among Leningrad writers, were met with hostility by the critics as collections of "man-in-the-street gossip, foul anecdotes and operetta episodes." A critic reviewing Dobychin's book fumed, "The streets of Leningrad are filled with various people, most of whom are healthy, life-loving and energetic builders of socialism, but the author writes: 'Gnats bustled.'" ... Dobychin's work was an extreme expression of the attempts by some masters of the new Petersburg prose to achieve simplicity and a laconic tone.[4]
The same author said, "In Leningrad, people compared him to Joyce and Proust, although he wrote microscopic stories."[5] Kaverin wrote, "The author — indignant, ironic, pained by the vulgarity of some and the unconscious cruelty of others — is clearly visible on every page."[6] And, according to Boris Lanin, "Dobychin's experimentalism was not understood by his contemporaries, as it adhered neither to the dictates of socialist realism nor imitated the ornamental prose of Pil'niak and Zamiatin, and he remained on the periphery of Russian literary life."[7] Dobychin's work was not republished in Russia until 1989.
Notes
- ^ Злой рок рода Добычиных, Nasha Gazeta
- ISBN 5-94848-245-6), vol. 1, pp. 629–632.
- ISBN 1-884964-10-9), p. 53.
- ISBN 0-684-83296-8), pp. 383–84.
- ISBN 0-7432-3639-4), p. 267.
- ISBN 0-19-815666-9), p. 127.
- ^ Cornwell and Christian (eds.), Reference Guide to Russian Literature, p. 53.
Translations
- Richard Chandler Borden and Natalia Belova (tr.), The Town of N (Northwestern University Press, 1998), ISBN 0-8101-1589-1
- Richard Chandler Borden and Natalia Belova (tr.), Encounters with Lise and other stories (Northwestern University Press, 2005), ISBN 0-8101-1972-2
External links
- Selection of works (in Russian, with photo)
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