Russian and Soviet poet Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky was born near St. Petersburg, in Tsarskoye Selo (now the city of Pushkin), on April 10, 1895. He was literally destined to become a poet: his father taught the Law of God in that very gymnasium, where the director was the best of the mentors - Innokenty Annensky. There Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky met with Nikolai Gumilyov, who studied at the same gymnasium, and until the end of his life considered these two people as his main teachers.
The path to literature
The poet received an excellent home education as well as a gymnasium, after graduation he entered the university at the faculty of history and philology. When Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky enthusiastically studied in the first year, the First World War began. Before the war itself, the poet’s first poetry collection was published: “Gymnasium years”. And the first publication, young Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky had the opportunity to boast (but hardly used it) four years earlier - in 1910, when his poems appeared in the journal "Apprentice".
It was a wonderful time! Nearby was a female gymnasium, where the future Akhmatova studied, but for now, the talented girl Anya Gorenko was a friend of Vsevolod for many, many years. Tsarskoye Selo disposed to poetic research: these world-famous palaces and parks are the splendor of Versailles, harmony, poetic charm and joy for the eyes are everywhere. The poet's soul was receptive - the aesthetic impact of the surrounding gave an eternal attraction to grace, beauty, transparency. And Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky wrote poetry just such, permeated with harmony and unhurried grace, related to the kindred of his native city. The Pushkin Muse is few people of the "Tsarskoye Selo" not a soul.
Parents
The most serious influence on the poetic tastes of the poet was made by his mother, who was in correspondence with her great countryman - Leo Tolstoy. She came from a huge village family, but was educated and creatively gifted from birth, had a rich imagination and used the word with great freedom: her speech was figurative, fluid, smooth and always friendly.
The poet’s father was born in those places that his son had to defend during the Great Patriotic War - not far from Tikhvin. The family went here on vacation for the summer, and the future poet absorbed the charms of the village life of the village of Ilyinsky no less willingly than the refined beauty of his native city. The combination is strange and bizarre, but also very interesting embodied in poetic lines. Vsevolod Christmas poems wrote full-blooded, with a steady sense of happiness and harmony with the whole world.
Freakishness of combinations
In the poet’s soul, various and unlike each other elements always coexisted in kindness and joy: the city palace intertwined with the village life, and high intelligence in the simple-minded peasant talk. That is how talent was formed. Vsevolod Christmas poems wrote joyful and happy, despite the fact that the era turned out to be the same: difficult, harsh, at times - merciless.
And, when everything seemed to collapse, everything seemed to be illuminating like a sunbeam in the names of his books: “Summer” - edition of 1921, “Window to the Garden” - 1939 ... Times that Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky lived through, whose biography It was built for more than eighty years, incorporating everything that happened with the native land, reflected in his work without strain and pathos.
Fidelity to the melody
And his subsequent works never lost optimism: "Oriole", "Russian Dawns", "Golden Autumn" ... Even the last book, published just before his death, in 1976, was called "Face to the Dawn." Sunny poet, joyful and surprisingly intelligent. No noise, roar and thunderstorms of the new era could shake his purely Pushkin's love of life, organicness, a sense of great time, next to which all wars and revolutions are small particulars, like dust on Orpheus's harp.
Many art critics are sure that it was Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky who raised this harp, which was dropped by Nikolai Gumilyov. His biography is not distinguished by such sharp turns, tragedies and heroics as the Gumilevskaya one. But three quarters of a century to write verses generous for joy is more than a feat, isn't it?
The very beginning
The young poet was very, very lucky for the mentors. The magazine "Pupil", published on the basis of the First Gymnasium of St. Petersburg, was edited by a Latin teacher, who later became universally known as a historical novelist Vasily Grigorievich Yan, whose sagas about Genghis Khan and Batu will always be extremely popular, they have been translated into more than fifty languages. The real name of the Latin teacher is Yanchevetsky, it was he who edited the first, still children's, poems. Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky never reissued the first book about the gymnasium years or the publications from the magazine "Pupil", considering them to be imitative and student.
However, they were not at all helpless, even the very first. Apukhtin, Nadson ... And as adults, many people who consider themselves poets sin by almost direct borrowing, which little Rozhdestvensky did not have at all. The cycle, which is dedicated to Pushkin, is well thought out, precisely balanced, equipped with an interest in folk art, and meditations from Baratynsky amaze with intelligence and sentiment, which is not at all inherent in young talents.
Student
Since 1914, Rozhdestvensky Vsevolod Aleksandrovich is on the list of students at St. Petersburg University. Political fermentation, disputes practically did not concern him, he did not take part in them. Modernism, which seduced most of his entourage, also did not become close to him, the poet did not honor anyone like Blok. But fate did not leave him without significant acquaintances. Larisa Reisner studied at the same faculty, a bright figure who has not lost this quality so far.
Together they attended the faculty "Circle of Poets" and were almost equally active. Larisa’s father helped to publish a magazine that was the organ of this circle, called "Rudin." Only eight issues appeared, in which there remained three poems written by an adult poet, Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky. It was not just a circle, it was a school of poetry, in which Yesenin, Mandelstam and many other Petersburg poets of that time were noted.
The choice
Gradually, democratic and revolutionary views under the influence of Larisa Reisner began to dominate in the circle. In October 1917, she earned eternal fame as the commissar of the Baltic Fleet. And the commander of the Red Army was Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky.
The Voice of the Motherland, the famous poem of 1941, sounded so loud precisely because a young poet, a quarter century ago, participated with his battalion in all the turbulent events that created the very Motherland, for which, without sparing their lives, the whole people fought.
Meetings
At the end of his life, Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky wrote an autobiography, “Pages of Life,” and this book became almost immediately a bibliographic rarity, despite the not too small circulation. This is because people in his life often came not just extraordinary, but legendary. For example, he was a tutor in the family of Maxim Gorky, and the writer had a very high opinion of the talent of the young man, took an active part in his creative life, talked a lot and willingly, advised, instructed. Rozhdestvensky talked a lot with the wonderful owner of the "House of the Poet" in Koktebel - Maximilian Voloshin.
It is not in vain that Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky absorbed poetry as a "science of happiness." The meeting with Alexander Blok determined a lot in poetic addictions. The attraction to the accuracy and rigor of acmeism has passed, the magic and magic of the inner music of words began. When Blok broke off relations with Acmeists, Rozhdestvensky stayed with Blok, so as not to write "without a deity, without inspiration." The science of poetry can be mastered easily if the taste is impeccable. And the poet Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky was also right in this confidence.
Poems about the war
The Great Patriotic War made the poet a militia literally on the very first day. “To the defense of Leningrad” - this newspaper sent its correspondent to any, even the most difficult, tasks. Then he was seconded to the Seventh Army and performed any military work. At the same time, verses were composed. In 1943, the book Voice of the Motherland was published, and in 1945, Ladoga. These were all kinds of evidence that the poet was worried, what the poet saw, heard and felt. Odes and satires, essays and ballads, correspondence and songs.
But, as before, any poetic word of Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky was transparent and clean. This master - in the best sense of the word - is a traditionalist: classical art is enriched by the enormous, complicated life experience of the first half of the twentieth century, it passed through many arts, returned from many dead ends of the style labyrinth, but appeared before readers in strict poetic forms filled with the purity of living breathing.
Post-war time
The war was difficult. Almost immediately after its completion, in 1947, the book "Native Roads" was published, after which the poet became silent for eleven years. After military verses, the soul did not immediately tune in to the former world and way. And anyone outside Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky could write outside this state. Only policemen touched his repressions, even before the revolution, when dissenting students swept out like a broom at St. Petersburg University. In addition to poetic work, Vsevolod Aleksandrovich could do very, very much more.
Of course, he used these skills while waiting for peace of mind. He was engaged in translations, wrote opera libretto (fifteen were written and staged, among them many operas that have become classics). The last period of creativity - already poetic - is almost entirely occupied by the theme of Russian art. Cycles of poems dedicated to the greatest architects in Russia have been written. The poet philosophizes, contemplating native landscapes. And a very large place in his work is occupied by memoirs.
Caucasus
Love for these fertile and grateful lands originated in the 1920s, and it was here that Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky returned from time to time all his life. These travels are reflected in the poems "Tsey", "Hunter Vasso", "Caucasian meeting" and many others. Here the poet found an inexhaustible source for his work.
Mountain cycles are genuine poetic masterpieces. The powerful beauty of the local nature was able to complement the lovely landscapes of the Tikhvin village and the aristocratic harmony of the Tsarskoye Selo species. The Tsei Gorge attracted the poet like a magnet, from here the optimism inherent in the poet acquires a certain primordial character, and inspiration is charged like a gun.