Elena Schwartz is a poet whose work was banned in the USSR and studied at the Sorbonne and Harvard

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

She was vulnerable, like a teenager, nursed sick animals and could warm a person with just one word. Such a powerful fire lived in this mysterious poetess that it seemed that the entire energy of the Universe obeyed her fragile figure. Elena Schwartz was called an echo of the Silver Age of poetry. Brodsky loved her and accepted Akhmatov, but she herself did not recognize any authorities. And while in her homeland Elena Schwartz was published only in samizdat, Harvard, Cambridge and the Sorbonne have already included her styles in the compulsory curriculum.

First diaries

Lena was born in post-war Leningrad. Her mother, Dina Schwartz, was the head of the literature department of the BDT, where she worked in Georgy Tovstonogov's team for over forty years. The mother raised the girl alone, the family did not even mention her father. But Lena spent her childhood behind the scenes of the drama theater, where there was a friendly team, and the child was always in the spotlight.

The creative atmosphere of the theater was for the girl that magic seed, which grew into a huge poetic gift. Since childhood, Elena kept diaries, recording important events in her life. There, for the first time, she speaks of the theater as her own home. And for the first time she begins to create unusual rhymes, as if she puts into them the theatrical images that have passed through her soul.

At the age of fifteen, the girl plucked up courage and turned to Anna Akhmatova to assess her work. The poetess called Elena's poems evil. Schwartz called Akhmatova "an over-praised fool who, apart from herself, sees nothing around." This was not revenge for criticism at all, but a frank admission of a teenager defending his point of view.

Lena was not afraid to rebel against the opinion of the great poetess, and did not change anything in her poems. And she was right. Soon they were included in the programs of the most prestigious universities in the world. And Elena's diaries remained the only source of her biography.

Rhyme-soul

Having entered the philological faculty of the Leningrad State University, Elena was burdened by the framework of student studies. she dreamed that she would sooner be expelled, and then the girl could fully devote herself to her beloved work. She calls her studies a stuffy room, where she does not have enough air to "materialize her rhymes and populate the sky with them, like the light flesh of angels."

Leaving the University, Elena devoted herself to "pure art". She earned her living doing translations of plays for the theater. At a time when her works were widely popular in Europe, in the USSR Schwartz was known only to readers of samizdat. It was banned until perestroika.

Although those who had access to the so-called underground, they treated Elena with great respect, and many considered her a genius from poetry. This is what she was - a poetess who knows how to turn a simple word into a shining diamond. Either to throw the reader into the abyss seething with passions, then to take him to the quivering heavenly groves.

Critics wrote about Schwartz that she possessed the ability to create bizarre poetic silhouettes, on the verge of metaphysics, and those who could break through them received untold pleasure.“Inverted Everest”, “salty sea”, “faces corroded by darkness”, “cross sweating from fire”, “chilled Muses”, “unearthly architecture muttering” - only a poetess could juggle with words so boldly, passing images through her soul.

Confession

Even being in the “poetic underground”, Elena Schwartz limited her circle of contacts and remained a bright individual, not adhering to any literary trends. She was not a hermit, but kept apart, protecting her unearthly gift and freedom of personal space. In samizdat she was published under the pseudonyms Arno Zart and Lavinia Voron. In the mid-80s, in the wake of perestroika, it finally began to be published at home.

Domestic periodicals were at first wary of her, but soon many popular publications considered it an honor to collaborate with Elena Andreevna. In the late seventies, Schwartz won the Andrei Bely Prize, and in the late nineties, the Northern Palmyra. In 2003 she received the Triumph Prize. And in 2008, the Pushkin Foundation published her complete collected works.

The bright streak of the poet's recognition was overshadowed by an incurable disease. This fragile Petersburg woman fought steadfastly with the disease, but Schwartz could not defeat him, although there were still a lot of creative plans. The poetess called her life "solo on a hot pipe" (this is the name of one of her collections of poems).

She passed away in the spring of 2010, having written Thanksgiving a few days earlier and sent it to her few friends. So unexpectedly and sadly ended the life of an extraordinary woman - a knight of a poetic image.

… Many people compare the work of Elena Schwartz with Malevich's "Black Square". Someone will stop and, holding their breath, will be able to communicate with the Universe, and someone will simply pass by. Someone will call it high art, and someone will grin skeptically. And it is in this dispute of contradictions that the magic is born that connects mysticism with reality.

"BAPTISM IN A DREAM"

1991 year