The beginning of the Soviet era in our country was marked by the appearance of many works of literature belonging to the pen of famous and still little-known authors. One of such talents was the Soviet poet Wolf Erlich, whose work we will talk in more detail.
For modern readers, this name is almost unknown, but contemporaries well knew the bright and piercing poetic terms of this poet.
What did this man remember?
We will try to answer this question.
The childhood and youth of the poet
Wolf Erlich was born in the city of Simbirsk in 1902. His father was a pharmacist, his mother a housewife. The name of the poet goes back to the Hebrew language and means "God-fearing man."
It was very difficult for the future poet, as a native of a Jewish family, to prove his right to higher education. And from childhood, the boy dreamed of a career, and of literary fame. He brilliantly graduated from high school, entered Kazan University, but he failed to obtain a diploma from this prestigious institution: the Civil War began, which drastically changed the life of a provincial youth.
Wolf Erlich entered the Red Army, but he did not have to fight as a simple soldier. Having shown his education, he was appointed to the post of secretary of the pedagogical laboratory of the education department.
After the war, he moved to the then post-revolutionary Petrograd, decided to continue his studies, entered the literary and art department of Petrograd University, but was expelled for poor progress.
In those same years, the young poet became close friends with the circle of imagists, trying to establish himself in the literary field.
Literary success
Since 1926, Wolf Erlich begins to publish his work in print, one after another he publishes collections of poems. Among them are books entitled "In the Village", "Arsenal", "Wolf's Sun" and others.
Three years later (in 1929), he publishes his poem dedicated to the revolutionary populist Sofia Perovskaya, who organized the assassination of Emperor Alexander. His poems are published in popular literary magazines of that time, such as “Red Night”, “Star”, “Literary Contemporary”.
Wolf Iosifovich Erlich becomes a member of the newly organized union of writers. Already in the late 1920s, he was fond of translations, translates a lot from the Armenian language.
Mature years
Erlich combines literary activity with hard work for the benefit of the Bolshevik party.
So, since 1925, he has been holding the post, which was called the “KGB” post. This was the post of the officer on duty at the Leningrad Council.
Erlich later worked as an editor of several literary magazines, working on film scripts.
His life ends tragically. The reason for this was the repression that Stalin consistently carried out among the old Bolsheviks. In 1937, the poet was arrested, sentenced under the infamous article number 58 to execution, the sentence was carried out in the same year.
Love for Armenia
Wolf Erlich wrote many poems during his life, his biography reveals to us the sources of his creative inspiration. And one of them was Armenia.
Erlich made his first trip to this land with N. Tikhonov in the 1920s. He fell in love with the beauty of these places. The poet later wrote in letters to his relatives that he had never seen anything better.
The poet created a whole series of poems about Armenia, which were then included in his collections “Alagez Stories”, “Armenia” and others.
Throughout his subsequent life, the poet sought to come to these parts. Here he was arrested. Friends believed that he was accidentally arrested. On this day he came to visit one Armenian family, the feast lasted until late in the evening, and at night the NKVD officers came to arrest the owners. Together with all, Erlich was also arrested. For a long time nothing was known about his fate. Only in 1956 did his relatives receive an opinion on his post-mortem rehabilitation.
Friendship with S. Yesenin
Wolf Erlich and Yesenin were friends, they were united by a common participation in the activities of the “order” of imagists, common interests and views on literature. Erlich often supported his talented friend, dealt with issues of publishing his works, and organized joint poetry evenings.
Arriving in Leningrad in December 1925, Yesenin wanted to stay with Erlich, but then changed his mind and rented a room in the infamous hotel in the city center. He gave Ehrlich his farewell poem, "Goodbye, my friend," which he asked to read at home.
Erlich fulfilled the request, but when he read the poem at home, he saw that his lines were written in blood. He rushed back to the hotel, but Yesenin was already dead.
After the discovery of the body of Sergei Yesenin in the hotel, Erlich helped organize the funeral. He also spoke at the court, where he spoke out in support of the version of suicide, presenting the text of Yesenin's last poem.
Some modern literary scholars have different assessments of the role of Erlich in the fate and death of Yesenin. Some accuse him of being an agent of the GPU, so his relationship with the great poet was not friendship, but banal surveillance. It is difficult to answer these people after so many years from the day of the death of both Yesenin and Erlich himself. The only answer is Yesenin’s lines in which he refers to Ehrlich as a close friend.
The value of the creative path of the poet
Many contemporaries remember Wolf Erlich. His photo, taken in 1928, gives him a humble man who knows the value of his word.
His contemporaries believed that the tragic death of Wolf interrupted not only his life, but also future literary successes. Ehrlich’s talent could still be fully revealed, the poet was full of creative forces and hopes, but could not realize them, sharing partly the sad fate of people of his generation who went through the crucible of the civil war, full of faith in the possibility of building a socialist welfare society, who made mistakes on the field of building a new state, however, faced with the inevitable and terrible reality that led to their death.