"Do not renounce, loving ": the story of one of the most famous poems by Veronica Tushnova

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

On March 27, 1911, Veronika Mikhailovna Tushnova was born - a poetess, on whose verses such popular songs as "One Hundred Hours of Happiness", "And you know, there will still be!..", "Do not renounce, loving." Collections of her poems were not on library shelves or on the shelves of bookstores. The fact is that the aching frankness and confessionality of her poetry were not in tune with the time of collective enthusiasm. And even after perestroika, Russian publishing houses did not really like Tushnova's poems. But they were full of girls' diaries. These poems were rewritten, memorized, they sunk into the soul in order to stay there forever.

Veronica Tushnova was born in Kazan. Her father was a teacher of microbiology, and later a full member of the All-Union Agricultural Academy. Lenin. The future poetess spoke fluent French and English, and after graduation she entered the medical faculty of Kazan University. So the father wanted, dreaming that his daughter would continue his work. Veronika Mikhailovna was finishing her education in St. Petersburg, where her family moved. There she took up painting and began writing poetry.

In 1938, Veronica got married and gave birth to a daughter. Before the war, she entered the Literary Institute, only she did not have to study there, the war began. And after her - evacuation and work in the hospital.

Veronika Tushnova returned to Moscow two years after the war. She broke up with her husband and released her first collection of poems. In the same year, the poetess became a participant in the First Meeting of Young Writers and returned to the Literary Institute, although she was no longer a student, but the leader of a creative seminar.

In the early 1950s, Veronika Tushnova married the writer (and later the editor-in-chief of the Detsky Mir publishing house) Yuri Timofeev. They lived together for about 10 years. But Veronika Mikhailovna, as a creative and impulsive person, could not give her husband what he was looking for: he wanted borscht and home comfort, and she had almost nothing to do with the housework. Tushnova was going through a very difficult parting with her husband, and it was in those days that soulful lines were born to her, to which the popular composer-songwriter Mark Minkov later wrote music.

Critics note that almost all of Veronica Tushnova's poems are love lyrics. But it is unlikely that her poetry would have stood the test of time if her poems were about the worries of two lovers. Tushnova's verses talk about what happiness is. Simple human happiness.