Vladislav Khodasevich
Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich (Russian: Владисла́в Фелициа́нович Ходасе́вич; 16 May (28 May) 1886 – 14 June 1939) was an influential Russian poet and literary critic who presided over the Berlin circle of Russian emigre litterateurs.
Life and career
Khodasevich was born in
In the year 1917, Khodasevich gained wider renown by writing a superb short piece The Way of Corn, a reflection on the biblical image of wheat as a plant that cannot live if it does not first die. This poem is eponymous with Khodasevich's best known collection of verse, first published in 1920 and revised in 1922.
Patronized by
During his first years in Berlin, Khodasevich wrote his two last and most metaphysical collections of verse, Heavy Lyre (1923) and European Night (1927). The former contained the most important rendition of the Orpheus theme in Russian poetry, the esoteric Ballad. Khodasevich did not align himself with any of the aesthetic movements of the day, claiming Alexander Pushkin to be his only model. He even penned several scholarly articles exploring the master-stroke of the great Russian poet.
In the mid-1920s, Khodasevich switched his literary activities from poetry to criticism. He joined
Despite a physical infirmity that gradually took hold of him, Khodasevich worked relentlessly during the last decade of his life. Most notably, he wrote an important biography of Gavrila Derzhavin (translated into English and published by University of Wisconsin Press in 2007) in 1931, which he attempted to style in the language of Pushkin's epoch. Several weeks before Khodasevich's death, his brilliant book of memoirs, Necropolis, was published. Although severely partisan, the book is invaluable for its ingenious and detailed characterizations of Maxim Gorky, Andrei Bely, and Mikhail Gershenzon. He died from cancer of the liver in 1939.[3]
English translations
- Necropolis, Columbia University Press, 2019 (The Russian Library). Translated by Sarah Vitali.
- Khodasevich, Vladislav. 2014. Selected Poems, 1st Edition. Peter Daniels (Translator), Michael Wachtel (Introduction). The Overlook Press. 2014. ISBN 978-1-4683-0810-5(Parallel text in Russian and English)
- Khodasevich, Vladislav. Derzhavin: A Biography. Angela Brintlinger (Translator). University of Wisconsin Press. 2007. ISBN 978-0-299-22420-2
See also
References
- ISBN 978-1-58765-075-8.
- ^ Loewen, Donald James (2001). Life beyond the lyric: the prose autobiographies of Russian poets. University of Wisconsin--Madison.
- ISBN 978-1-4683-0810-5
External links
- English translations of 4 blank verse poems, "November the 2nd," "Midday," "Encounter," and "House" in The Hopkins Review
- (in English) The Poems by Vladislav Khodasevich
- (in Russian) Works by Vladislav Khodasevich at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)