For more than half a century, Alexander Kushner has been rightfully considered one of the most significant quantities in Russian poetry. What keeps the reader's attention to this author for such a long period of time? Let's try to figure it out.
Biography Facts
Alexander Semenovich Kushner was born in 1936 in the Northern capital. If we accept as an axiom the assertion that the place of birth and the small homeland are essential in the fate of a person, then for the poet this assertion is even more obvious. Childhood passed in an intelligent Leningrad family, which largely predetermined the further choice of the path.
The philological education at the Herzen Pedagogical Institute and the further work of a teacher in a specialty directly preceded the arrival in large literature. It should be borne in mind that Alexander Kushner, as a poet, began long before that. Poems young man wrote back in elementary school. This was a way for him to express his feelings and thoughts.
"Times do not choose"
From the very first steps in literature, Alexander Kushner declared himself as a strong professional with his recognizable and unlike voice. His poetry was initially far from the routine and everyday realities of Soviet life. No “socialist realism" can be found in it. The poet always turned his lines somewhere on top of everyday life, reflecting and exploring timeless phenomena, images and meanings. That is why he managed to say his word in Russian literature.
Some of his lines have become a classic classic. It is difficult today to find someone who would not know that "Times do not choose, they live and die in them." Among other things, many of his poems have become bard songs and sound very good with a guitar. This is despite the fact that Alexander Kushner, whose photo is traditionally decorated with collections of bard poetry, never composed special texts for vocal performance. As, however, he never objected to the performance of his poems in musical accompaniment. One way or another, the author’s song became another unexpected facet of his work.
St. Petersburg in the work of the poet
Since the golden nineteenth century, two main directions have been clearly traced in Russian poetry. Very conditionally they are designated as "St. Petersburg and Moscow schools." One of them is characterized by breadth, recklessness and vivid imagery, while the other is characterized by strictness of style and fidelity to the classical principles of harmony and composition. Alexander Kushner is a poet of the St. Petersburg tradition. Moreover, he is one of its most striking representatives of the Soviet and post-Soviet historical period.
Despite the fact that the specific realities of the Northern capital do not so often flash in his poems, Alexander Kushner is unrepresentable without Petersburg. The city is literally dissolved in its images and constantly echoes the verses of the great predecessors - Blok, Annensky, Gumilyov, Akhmatova and Mandelstam. With St. Petersburg, the poetry of Alexander Kushner is united by a single architectonics of Russian classicism. It exists and develops in a spiritual space unified with this city.
Alexander Kushner and Joseph Brodsky
Two prominent contemporaries were born and took place as poets on the banks of the Neva at about the same time. For a long time they were united by personal friendship and creative competition. Moreover, the relations of the two poets were by no means always smooth and conflict-free. Of course, everyone felt in another, comparable in size personality. The friendship of poets continued after Brodsky's forced emigration. Their dialogue was never interrupted, only passed into the epistolary form.
The future Nobel laureate dedicated two poems to his friend, and Kushner devoted a whole poetic cycle. The sudden death of Joseph Brodsky in January 1996 was a severe shock for Alexander Kushner. Just a year before this, Brodsky was leading his friend's poetic evening in New York. This meeting with readers was brilliant and left vivid memories for everyone present.
Children's poems by Alexander Kushner
Alexander Kushner devotes considerable attention in his work to poetry for the smallest. His children's poems are not only widely published and read, but are also present in the form of songs in plays and cartoons. The poet does not consider the children's audience secondary. Moreover, he is sure that a person cannot be formed into a full-fledged personality without constant communication with samples of high literature. Indeed, in childhood, a person is especially susceptible to everything that he sees and hears. All this has a decisive significance for the formation of both personality and destiny. And such a position resonates with a young audience. People who were born already in the third millennium meet in poetry of the poet from the last century something close to themselves. Alexander Kushner is not a stranger to them.