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Yaroslav Vasylovych Smelyakov |
I was born in a small district town. and to this day I remember it with love a miserable little house built on the edge of the alley that led to the river, — Yaroslav Smelyakov wrote in the poem “The Returned Homeland.” He began writing early. In the 1930s he attended literary circles at "Komsomolskaya Pravda" and "Ogonyok," where he was noticed by already famous poets M. Svetlov and E. Bagritsky. He typeset his first poems and his first poetry collection, "Work and Love" (1932), himself, working as a compositor at one of Moscow's printing houses. His early poetry glorified shock labor and the new socialist way of life; it was characterized by romantic uplift and youthful zeal—that is, it was fully in the spirit of the times. For him, as once for Mayakovsky, the question of whether to accept or not accept the revolution and everything that stood behind it was decided unequivocally: he accepted it with heart and mind, glorifying it in his work. But, like many other talented, sincere, and enthusiastic people, he did not escape the punitive measures of the authorities whom he praised. On a false denunciation by Smelyakov, he was arrested in 1934 (for the first time). Later—twice more. He was rehabilitated in 1956, of course, "for lack of corpus delicti." Between his first and second prison terms he fought and defended the Motherland, which he loved not as a stepson. He went to war as a private soldier, fought in Karelia, was surrounded, and until 1944 was in Finnish captivity. Isn’t that grounds for a new arrest? In 1948, a new book of poems, “Kremlin Firs,” was published, which included the best works of the pre- and post-war period; in 1956, he published the verse novella “Strict Love.” His collections “Conversation about the Main Thing” (1959) and “Day of Russia” (1967) became notable phenomena in poetry. The poet expressed his life credo in a poem that later became a song: If I get sick,
I won't go to doctors. Addressing friends (Don't think this is delirium): Make the steppe my bed, Cover my windows with fog, Place it at the head of the bed. the night star. I went straight ahead. I was not known as a shrinking violet. If I am wounded in just battles, bandage my head with a mountain road and cover me with a blanket in autumn flowers. The years of life in Lutsk, in Volhynia, increasingly surfaced in his memory at the decline of his—not years, but life. Perhaps that is why he chose to translate Petru Zadnipru's poem (from Moldovan) "Barefoot Childhood," which seemed to be like his own childhood:
Barefoot childhood in the village
is seen and dreamed more and more often; I want to those days and to that land to return at least for a day. …One day would be enough for me, when I lived in springtime, and my grandmother drove me off the tempting cherry tree to school. …No one keeps me here, I enjoy complete freedom, - they won’t let me return to childhood Only my own years matter to me. Yaroslav Smelyakov died on November 27, 1972 in Moscow. Nataliia Pushkar |