What life path did Barto Agnia walk? The biography of the beloved poetess, on whose poems several generations of children grew up, is of interest both to children who know her rhymes by heart, and to parents raising their children on such familiar lines. The famous “A goby is walking, swinging ...”, “Our Tanya is crying loudly ...”, “They dropped the bear on the floor ...” are associated with the baby’s first steps, the first word “mother”, the first teacher, the first school bell. The style of these favorite lines is very light, the author speaks with the child, as if he is the same age, in a language he understands.
Not everyone knows about the personal tragedy of this bright man, about the important life role that Agnia Lvovna Barto took on, whose biography is closely connected with children. In the postwar years, the famous poetess helped meet thousands of people lost during the war.
Agnia Barto: creativity and biography
For children, Agniya Barto is the very first and beloved writer whose poems, having matured and created families, are already being told to their children. Agnia Lvovna was born on February 4, 1906 in the family of Volov Lev Nikolaevich - a veterinarian. The family led a typical way of life of those times quite well-to-do at home: with home primary education, French, formal dinners. The father was engaged in upbringing; being a fan of art, he saw his daughter a famous ballerina, whom Agnia did not become. The girl was interested in a different course - a poem, which she became interested in after her gymnasium friends.
In 1925, the first books of poetry for children were published: "The Chinese Woman Wang Li," "The Thief-Bear." Agnia was very shy and, having once decided to read her poem to Chukovsky, she attributed authorship to a five-year-old boy. Finally, a talented girl decided on the topic of poetry after a conversation with Vladimir Mayakovsky, in which he spoke about the need for a fundamentally new children's poetry that could play an important role in educating a future citizen. Agnia Barto believed that her works would bring up highly cultured, patriotic, honest citizens of her country. Agnia Barto's biography for children is related to his favorite poems; from the poet's pen from 1928 to 1939, such collections of poems came out: “Boy on the contrary”, “Brothers”, “Toys”, “Bullfinch”.
The life of a poetess: creative and personal
Agnia Barto’s personal life was not boring; early enough she started a family with the poet Pavel Barto, gave birth to a child - the son of Garik.
The first marriage cracked, possibly due to youthful rush, and maybe this is due to professional success, which Pavel Barto could not put up with. At age 29, Agnia went to another man - energy scientist Andrei Vladimirovich Scheglyaev, who became the main love of her life. Agnia gave birth to a daughter Tatyana from him. The unconflicted nature of Agnia Barto and the authority of the dean of the Power Engineering Faculty of MPEI (“the most beautiful dean of the Soviet Union”) - Andrei Vladimirovich - attracted actors, musicians, writers to their home. Agnia Barto was very close friends with
Rina Zelenaya and Faina Ranevskaya.
Barto Agniya, whose biography arouses the interest of already matured generations who grew up on their favorite poems, traveled quite a lot as a part of delegations from the Soviet Union, in 1937 participated in the International Congress for the Protection of Culture held in Spain. It was there that she saw with her own eyes what fascism was, because the meetings were held in the flaming besieged Madrid, and orphaned children wandered among the destroyed houses. The most difficult impression on Agnia was made by the conversation with the Spaniard, who showed a photograph of her son and covered her head with a finger, explaining in such a way that the shell had torn off the boy. How to convey the feelings of a mother who survived her own child? She received an answer to this terrible question a few years later.
Barto Agnia: biography during the war
Agnia Barto knew about the inevitability of a war with Germany. In the late 30s, she visited this clean, tidy country, saw pretty curly girls in dresses decorated with a swastika, and heard Nazi slogans sounding on every corner. With the poetess the war was treated mercifully; even during the evacuation, she was next to her husband, who had been sent to the Urals, namely to Sverdlovsk. According to Agnia Barto, which was soon confirmed by the words of the writer Pavel Bazhov, the Urals were closed, harsh and incredulous people. Sverdlovsk teenagers, taking the place of adults who had left for the front, worked at defense plants.
Agnia simply needed to communicate with the children, from whom she drew stories and inspiration. To at least somehow approach them, the poetess mastered the profession of a turner of the 2nd category. Working on a lathe, she assiduously proved her usefulness to a society forcibly placed in the framework of a brutal war. Agnia Lvovna spoke on the radio of Moscow and Sverdlovsk, wrote military articles, essays, poems. She spent 1942 on the Western Front, being a correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda. In the post-war years, she visited England, Bulgaria, Japan, Iceland and several other countries.
The personal tragedy of Agnia Barto
The poetess returned to Moscow in 1944. Life has returned to normal, friends were returning from evacuation, the children began to study again. Everyone was looking forward to the end of the war. May 4, 1945 was a tragic day for Agnia. On this day, a truck driving around the corner knocked down 15-year-old Garik, who was riding a bicycle, to death. Victory Day faded for the mother’s heart, her baby was gone. Having survived this tragedy hard, Agnia turned all her love to her daughter Tatyana, while continuing to stubbornly engage in creativity.
The 1940-1950s were marked by the release of new collections by Agniya Barto: “Funny Poems”, “First Grader”, “Poems for Children”, “Zvenigorod”. At the same time, the poetess worked on the scripts for children's films “Alyosha Ptitsyn develops character”, “Foundling”, “Elephant and rope”. In 1958, a significant cycle of satirical children's poems “Leshenka, Leshenka” and “Grandfather’s granddaughter” was written.
Favorite poetess of all generations
Barto Agnia, whose biography is interesting to her fans, thanks to the written poems, has become an influential writer, the darling of the entire Soviet Union, “the face of the Soviet children's book”. In 1947, the poem Zvenigorod was published, telling about children who lost their parents during the war. It was written after visiting the orphanage in Zvenigorod - a town near Moscow. This poem, in which conversations with children were used, was destined for a special share. After the release of Zvenigorod, Agniya Lvovna received a letter from a woman who lost her eight-year-old daughter during the war. Fragments of the memories of the children depicted in the poem seemed familiar to the woman, and she rejoiced in the hope that Agnia communicated precisely with her missing daughter. So actually it turned out. Native people met 10 years later.
On the Mayak radio station in 1965, the program “Looking for a Man” began to air, hosted by Agnia Barto. The search work was based on childhood memories, which, according to the writer, are so tenacious and sharp that they remain with the child for life. For 9 years of painstaking work Agnia Barto managed to unite thousands of human destinies.
In her personal life, everything went well: her husband successfully moved up the career ladder, Agnia became the grandmother of the great grandson Vladimir, for whom she wrote the poem “Vovka is a good soul”. The poetess still traveled around the world, was the face of any delegation, because she knew how to keep herself in society, spoke several languages, danced beautifully and dressed beautifully. The doors of Agnia Barto's house were always open to guests; Academics, budding poets, famous actors and students of MPEI gathered at one table.
The last years of Agniya Barto
In 1970, Andrei Vladimirovich, the husband of Agnia Barto, whom she survived for 11 years, died of cancer. All these years Agniya Lvovna worked tirelessly, wrote 2 books of memoirs, more than a hundred poems. Fearing loneliness, she could spend hours talking on the phone with friends, often tried to see her daughter and grandchildren. With gratitude, she is remembered by the families of repressed acquaintances, to whom Agnia Lvovna found good doctors, helped to get scarce medicines, and “broke through” apartments - even for strangers.
Agnia Barto died in Moscow in 1981, on April 1. Having performed the autopsy, the doctors were shocked by very weak vessels and did not understand how in the last 10 years the blood entered the heart of such a bright person. A short biography of Agniya Barto covers the key moments of her life, difficult and fruitful; we still read her poems, educate children on them, raise grandchildren.