Ivan Melezh is a Belarusian writer and publicist, laureate of many literary prizes, a participant in hostilities in the Great Patriotic War. At one time he was presented to two orders. After death, he left his descendants a great literary heritage.
Ivan Melezh: biography
He was an extremely modest man, shy. He knew how and loved to listen to the interlocutor, did not dare to interrupt him even when he was completely wrong. Ivan Pavlovich himself spoke calmly, restrained, judiciously, as if weighing every word, every thought. And that was understandable: he knew the true value of the word.
Ivan Melezh was born on February 8, 1921 in the village of Glinishche, Khoiniki district, in the very depths of Belarusian Polesye. From there, from the depths of the people, the heroes of Ivan Pavlovich came to light and went into literary immortality: it was there that he studied their characters, made generalizations of human features, behavior, characters ... A village in a peaceful creative life, native places and war, the fate of an individual man and the people as a whole during severe, deadly, trials - these were the main topics of the in-depth, talented and unique research work of Melezh the writer, Melezh the creator. Severe and cruel trials had to be tested by Ivan Melezh himself ... Immediately after the end of the local decade, the 17-year-old young man was invited to work in the Khoyniki district committee of the Komsomol. The following year, 1939, Ivan entered an extremely prestigious higher educational institution - the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature. Then he began to appear in print with poetry. One of the first among them was the poem "Homeland", published in February 1939 in the "Red shift". It seemed that ahead was such an interesting, eventful and eventful life! However, fate decreed in a different way ... Already from the first year of the Moscow Institute, Melezh was drafted into the Red Army, and in the summer of 1940 he received his first baptism of fire - he participated in the liberation of Northern Bukovina.
In the ranks of the Soviet army
From the first days of World War II - he is at the front. Fights with huge, irreparable losses of fighting friends near Uman, Nikolaev, Rostov-on-Don, Lazova. The enemy bullet does not go past Ivan either: in June 1942 he was seriously wounded. He was treated at a hospital in Tbilisi, and the commission found him "unfit for military service."
Life After Injury
Ivan Melezh was sent to the rear: first to Buguruslan, then to Moldova, where he teaches military training at the Pedagogical Institute. An exhausted but powerful organism, soul and character of a young man thirst for knowledge, and happiness finally smiles at him: in 1943 Ivan was transferred to Belarusian State University, which was then based at Skhodnya station near Moscow. He combines the work of the same teacher of military training with studies at the correspondence department of the philological faculty of BSU, after which he is transferred to a hospital and already in liberated Minsk receives a diploma of higher education. The thirst for knowledge, however, does not diminish: Melezh Ivan Pavlovich enters graduate school and begins to teach native Belarusian literature in the same place, at his native university. Then he made the first serious bid in fiction - his stories and short stories, essays and essays.
Creation
Ivan Melezh began to print in 1939, when his first poem was published. After the first wound, being in a Tbilisi hospital, he begins to write prose, and immediately after the war he releases his first collection of short stories and tries himself in drama. The first prose work of Ivan Melezh was published in 1943.
During his lifetime (and Melezh lived, unfortunately, so few - only 55 years!) His works were called one, so "high" and, at the same time, the word he deserved - a classic! The "Polesskaya Chronicle" by Ivan Pavlovich was put on a par with the "Quiet Don" by Mikhail Sholokhov, and some even higher.
"Polesskaya Chronicle"
The Polesie Chronicle is a large-scale work in which one of the most important and traditional themes of Belarusian literature is fully reflected - peasant. Ivan Pavlovich was able to convey to the readers the atmosphere and spirit of the 20s of the XX century - the time that has become both evolutionarily updated and contradictory-tragic in the history of our Fatherland. It is a pity that the third of the novels of the Polesie Chronicle - Blizzards, December - remained incomplete ...
The first two parts of the Polesskaya Chronicle, the novels People in the Swamp and Breath of a Thunderstorm, were awarded the highest Soviet literary award - the Lenin Prize. Ivan Melezh was also awarded the title of People's Writer of Belarus, laureate of State Prizes of the USSR and the BSSR, was awarded several orders and medals. He was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Council of the BSSR, was chairman of the Belarusian Peace Committee, a member of the World Peace Council.
"People in the Swamp"
Ivan Melezh “People in the Swamp” - the novel entered the trilogy “Polesskaya Chronicle” and brought the author world fame and recognition. Repeatedly, the work was translated into other languages ​​and is rightfully considered the most significant in the work of Ivan Melezh.
At the center of the story are ordinary peasants, residents of the Belarusian village. The author describes the time of the establishment of Soviet power. Initially, the novel was conceived as a lyrical one, and there really is a love conflict - the love story of the main characters. Against the background of relations between Vasily Dyatlik and Anna Chernushka, Ivan Melezh tells about the life of peasants at that difficult time, describing in detail the traditions and customs of Belarusians. The novel was repeatedly filmed and put on stage.
Thunder Breath
The reader gets acquainted with the second part of the Polesie Chronicle, where he will meet with familiar heroes - Vasily Dyatlik, Anna Chernushka, Filimon, Aleksey, the “Bolshevik with a human face”. The writer continues to develop the plot, which can be called the saga of Polesie. The center of the world created by Melezh is still the inhabitants of a small village cut off from the world. Vasily and Anna still love each other no matter what. But Vasily does not leave the dream of the promised land ...
“Minsk direction”
In the years 1947-1952. Ivan Pavlovich Melezh wrote the novel Minsk Direction, which showed the liberation of Belarus by Red Army soldiers and partisans in April-July 1944. The novel is dedicated to the final stage of World War II - the liberation of Belarus from fascist invaders. The author set the task in all colors to show the battle for Homeland: on front lines and in the enemy’s rear, the writer painted in the novel a whole gallery of images ready to sacrifice his own life for a free life.
The stories of Ivan Melezh provided him with immortality. Streets in several cities of Belarus are named after him. The name of the writer was given to a secondary school in his homeland, a library and a gymnasium in Gomel. Since 1980, the Union of Writers of the BSSR has been awarding a literary prize named after Ivan Melezh.