The Russian writer Vadim Shefner, whose biography began the year the Russian Empire entered the First World War, left this world at the beginning of the third millennium. A significant part of his work fell on the Soviet era. But he was never an orthodox Soviet writer . Vadim Shefner did not oppose official literature and did not go into conflict with the nomenclature bureaucracy, but he felt comfortable only apart from it.
Facts from the biography of the writer
In the formation and development of any creative personality, the place of birth and the environment in which the childhood and youth passed are of great importance. Shefner Vadim Sergeevich was born in the capital of the empire in the family of a military man. It’s just that a prosperous childhood cannot be called already because it coincided with wars, revolutions, hunger, devastation and poverty. After the death of his father from tuberculosis, Vadim Shefner was brought up in an orphanage in Staraya Russa.
Returning later to Petrograd, he graduated from a vocational school and worked at industrial enterprises. The first literary experiments in verses and prose, and the first publications in periodicals belong to the same time (30s). From the first days of the war, Vadim Shefner was an ordinary on the Leningrad Front. Later, in the midst of the Leningrad blockade, he became a correspondent for the front-line newspaper
The Banner of Victory. He ended the war with the rank of senior lieutenant.
Poetry
Back in the pre-forties, the beginning writer was able to publish his first poetic experiments. But, one can say, it was at the war that Shefner Vadim Sergeevich took place as a poet. The first significant book of his poems was published in 1943 in the besieged city. Many lines in it are devoted to the heroic defense of Leningrad. The poem "Meeting in the suburbs", written and published later, is devoted to the same topic.
These are literary facts. Vadim Shefner, whose poems hardly address military topics, began as a front-line poet. Poetic creativity passed through all his long life, but he himself refused to indicate for himself the priority of directions. Both prose, and poetry, and science fiction were equally significant for Vadim Shefner. The border between them was impossible.
Prose of the sixties
Really famous in the literary world Vadim Shefner became in the sixties. This was the period of the so-called "Khrushchev thaw," when the country was undergoing a period of rapid renewal. At this time, a new generation quickly burst into art and literature. Many of its representatives managed to go through the fronts of the Great Patriotic War and the Stalinist camps. They had something to say to the world. Always aloof from political passions, Vadim Shefner was, nevertheless, a particle of his front-line generation. All these years, the writer works hard and selflessly. Widely published. Gets recognition from readers and critics. And not going to stop there.
The prose and poetry of Vadim Shefner is not lost in the general stream in the following years, when the
Khrushchev thaw was replaced by an endless Brezhnev stagnation. His books are too individual and do not look like anyone else. Despite the fact that their author never sought to climb into the front ranks and be in the public eye. But perhaps that is why he reflected his time so vividly and peculiarly.
Fantasy
In relation to what Vadim Shefner writes, any genre definitions seem very conditional. In the prose of this author, it is often difficult to draw a line between fiction and reality, between everyday everyday life and waking dreams. And this very little resembles what is usually taken to mean fiction. And it seems that the author does not care at all - with what term his prose will be designated. He himself claims that fiction for him is nothing more than a continuation of poetry by other means.
But the very development of this genre, the work of Vadim Shefner had a significant impact. This is recognized by many luminaries of Soviet and Russian science fiction. And the author himself ironically designated his fantastic works as "fairy tales for the smart" and "semi-probable stories." In 1999, the writer won the Paladin of Fiction Prize.
Sister of Sorrow
One of the unconditional peaks in the writer's work is the novel “Sister of Sorrow” written in 1968. It can not be called fully autobiographical work. But in its very plot and in the many depictions of the realities of pre-war Leningrad depicted in it, it is to a large extent just that. In the center is the fate of three friends living in the same room in a hostel on Vasilyevsky Island. Very soon everyone will find war and blockade. Of course, no one knows about this. But in a strange way they anticipate what should happen in a year or two. It is dissolved in the atmosphere. Though not pronounced aloud.
The author in this work proved himself to be a subtle stylist and a brilliant master of prose. He himself considered this story his peak.
Poems for children
Many works of the poet Vadim Shefner are addressed to the younger generation. Sometimes it is difficult to notice at first sight. The fact is that Vadim Shefner always communicates with children without flirting. He speaks with them in the same language as with adults. And such an approach forms both the level of thinking and the way of perceiving reality. Perhaps this is why the young generation is known for such a poet and science fiction writer as Vadim Shefner. His books are read today. It is likely that they will not be forgotten tomorrow.