Schwartz Evgeny Lvovich is an outstanding Russian Soviet playwright, storyteller, screenwriter and prose writer who created 25 plays. However, not all of his works were published during his lifetime. He owns such famous plays as “The Dragon”, “Ordinary Miracle”, “Shadow”, etc.
Fully giving himself away - that’s how Schwartz Evgeny Lvovich worked. A short biography for children will be interesting in that, thanks to his scripts, such masterpieces of cinema as Cinderella, Don Quixote, First Grader and many others have appeared. He sharply turned his professional fate from a lawyer to a playwright and writer, and did not regret what he had done never, but more on that later.
Schwartz Evgeny Lvovich: biography
The future writer was born in Kazan on October 21, 1896 in the family of the Orthodox Jew Lev Borisovich Schwartz and Maria Fedorovna Shchelkova, both of them were medical workers. Lev Borisovich graduated from Kazan Medical University, in which he met his future wife, Maria Fedorovna, who attended obstetric courses at that time. In 1895 they got married. In the same year, Lev Borisovich became an Orthodox Christian in the Kazan Mikhailo-Arkhangelsk Church.
Soon they had a little Schwartz, Yevgeny Lvovich. The biography further indicates that his family moved from Kazan to Armavir.
Father's arrests and exile
Although Lev Schwartz was one of the “unreliable” students, he completed his studies at the university well and in 1898 left for Dmitrov. And in the same year he was arrested for suspicion of anti-government propaganda. His family was sent to Armavir, then Akhtyr and Maykop. However, this was not the only episode of the proceedings with government officials; there will still be arrests and exile.
But events related to the political preferences of his father will hardly affect his little son. Eugene was also baptized in the Orthodox Church, and therefore he always considered himself a Russian. Orthodoxy for him was equal to belonging to the Russian nationality, and he did not separate himself from it in any way.
Childhood
It was in Maykop that Shvarts Evgeny Lvovich spent his childhood and youth. A brief biography of the writer indicates that he recalled that time with special warmth and tenderness.
In 1914, he entered the University. Shanyavsky in Moscow at the Faculty of Law. But after a couple of years I realized that this was not his vocation and decided to devote himself to literature and theater.
Revolution and civil war
When in 1917, Schwartz went to military service, there was a revolution, and Eugene joined the volunteer army. In the battle for Yekaterinodar, he received a strong concussion, and he was demobilized. This wound did not pass for the writer without a trace, then his whole hand tremor accompanied him.
After the demobilization, Schwartz, Eugene Lvovich (a brief biography of which is presented to your attention) does not for a moment forget about his dream. He becomes a student at Rostov University. Working in the Theater Workshop, he meets Nikolai Oleinikov, who will later become his best friend and co-author.
Theatrical work
In 1921, Schwartz, Yevgeny Lvovich, came to Petrograd on tour with his theater in which he worked. Critics noted his magnificent acting inclinations. But he decided to leave this and became the secretary of the children's writer Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky, whom he helped in numerous literary issues.
And then, in 1923-1924, Yevgeny Lvovich Schwartz worked on feuilletons for print media in the city of Donetsk under the pseudonym Grandfather Sarai.
After, in 1924, he again returned to Leningrad, to the editorial office of the State Publishing House, where he helped young authors find their ways in literary art. Schwartz also participated in the creation of children's comic magazines "Hedgehog" and "Chizh". He wrote poems and stories there, talked with OBERIU groups.
Literary work
The first work that brought Eugene Schwartz success was the play Underwood, written in 1929. In 1934, after persuading N. Akimov, he created the first satirical play The Adventures of Hohenstaufen.
In 1940, the drama Shadow was written, which was a political satire, but she did not stay on stage for long - she was simply removed from the repertoire. During this performance, the laughter was incredible, but then bitter thoughts were in the minds of the audience.
After that, Eugene Schwartz worked on several realistic, contemporary themes, works. During the Second World War in evacuation, he lived in Kirov and Stalinabad. There he created his masterpiece "Dragon", which fell into the classification of a harmful fairy tale and, like other dramatic works, did not have a long century on stage.
After a series of such failures, the playwright joked with friends that maybe he should write a play about Ivan the Terrible and name it “Uncle Vanya”?
Only after the death of Stalin thanks to the efforts of Olga Berggolz, who highly appreciated the work of Schwartz, was his first collection of works seen.
Schwartz Evgeny Lvovich: interesting facts
From childhood, the writer was distinguished by wit and imagination. Numerous photos of Schwartz Eugene Lvovich show us a solid and serious facial expression, but almost always with a very sweet and childishly naive smile.
One of his contemporaries recalled that in those days when the writer worked in the magazines Chizh and Hedgehog, the premises of the sixth floor of the State Publishing House on Nevsky 28 were shaken daily from laughter. It Schwartz and Oleinikov amused colleagues with their jokes. They needed an audience, and they found it.
The first book of poetry for the children of the famous writer was published in 1925 - “The Story of the Old Violin”. Then the plays “Treasure”, “The Adventures of Hohenstaufen”, arrangements and alterations of the stories of Perrault and Andersen were published: “The Naked King”, “Swineherd” (1934), “Little Red Riding Hood” (1937), “The Snow Queen” (1938), “ Shadow ”(1940),“ Ordinary Miracle ”(1954).
Liberty
With the onset of true freedom, his plays began to be staged in fairy tales abroad - in Germany, Israel, the USA, Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. Our contemporary director Mark Zakharov created the magnificent film “An Ordinary Miracle”.
Viewers and readers do not get tired of admiring the bold flight of the writer’s thoughts and his relaxedness, but once it was “Aesopian language”. Schwartz admired and even envied Picasso, who was independent in views, internally free, and therefore did everything he wanted.
After the death of the master, his Telephone Book was published, where he wrote down his memories of people in alphabetical order. These memoirs are unusually interesting, because the era of the 20-50s is captured in them, this is his “trampled field” of life.
In them, Schwartz does not appear as an all-forgiving good man, in his memoirs he is extremely sincere and free. Here one feels a certain ruthlessness and sophistication, taunts and ridicule sprinkled one after another. His main principle was to look facts directly in the face and not go away from them.
Beloved women
In his youth, he long looked after Gayana Khaladzheva - the future wife, but she did not give in, as he was fabulously poor, although he promised her golden mountains as a real storyteller. The second wife was Ekaterina Ivanovna. Before his death, and he was dying very hard, he tried to deceive fate and even signed up for the complete works of Charles Dickens, but he died long before the release of the last volume.
Schwartz died Evgeny Lvovich January 15, 1958. He was buried at the Theological Cemetery in Leningrad. Several biographical documentaries were filmed about the talented writer.