Unknown Marshak - great poet and worthy man

November 3, Samuel Marshak turns 128 years old. Unknown biography pages.

The textbook image of almost Grandfather Frost, composing good children’s poems, as fans of his work grow up, turns into an iceberg, which unexpectedly presented the world with its powerful underwater part.

One of the not too famous pages of his biography is a trip to Palestine and poetic works dedicated to her. For a native of a Jewish family, a descendant of Talmudist Aaron Shmuel Kaydanover, participation in the Zionist movement is a logical and consistent choice. A trip to the Middle East predetermined his personal fate, giving a meeting with Sofia Mikhailovna Milvidskaya and the long life that followed. The wonderful translations of Shakespeare’s English ballads and sonnets, for many still unsurpassed, were born as a result of a trip to England, where Marshak went with his beloved wife after the wedding. A few happy years, studying at the University of London, getting to know English folklore.

After returning from England - work in a private Finnish sanatorium. Dr. Lübeck, a clairvoyant and mystic, offered vacationers unconventional methods of treatment: vegetarianism, fasting, healing baths. Numerous Russian patients needed the services of an interpreter. Excellent knowledge of English was very helpful. An acceptable work schedule allowed Marshak to successfully combine it with literary work.

The poet’s biography page, which was carefully hushed up in Soviet times, is a conscious flight to Yekaterinodar, which for several years remained in the hands of the White Army. While in the territory occupied by the Bolsheviks all goods and products disappeared instantly, a card system was introduced, people learned what hunger was, in the rebellious region everything was exactly the opposite. Satiety and lack of deficiency were not the main factors that influenced Marshak’s sympathy for the White Guards. To an educated person who has traveled to many countries, the very atmosphere of denying habitual life values might seem unacceptable. During this period, many epigrams and satirical works were created, condemning the orders imposed by the Bolsheviks. They were signed with the pseudonym Dr. Fricken.

Even the status of the poet, approved by the Soviet regime, did not prevent him from always remaining a deeply decent and worthy person who stood up for those persecuted and destroyed by the authorities. He fearlessly rushed to the embrasure, defending Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Brodsky, Solzhenitsyn. In the savage 1937, he made his way to the reception of the all-powerful Vyshinsky, trying to protect the arrested students and members of his defeated editorial office, and saved some of them from inevitable death.

For the literary secretary (and now the famous TV presenter) Vladimir Pozner, cooperation with Samuel Yakovlevich was a terrific school, the discovery of the beauty of the beautiful Russian language and great literature.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru