Alexander Vampilov
Encyclopedia
Alexander Valentinovich Vampilov (Cyrillic: Александр Валентинович Вампилов) (19 August 1937, Cheremkhovo, near Irkutsk
– 17 August 1972 at Lake Baikal
) was a Russia
n playwright. His play Elder Son was first performed in 1969, and became a national success two years later. Many of his plays have been filmed or televised in Russia. His four full-length plays were translated into English and Duck Hunting was performed in London
.
ancestry, and his mother, Anastasia Prokopievna was Russian, daughter of Russian Orthodox Church
priest. His father was arrested for alleged nationalist activity.
The young Alexander taught himself guitar and mandolin, and his first comic short stories appeared in magazines in 1958, later collected as A Confluence of Circumstances under the name "A. Sanin". After studying literature and history at the Department of Philology at Irkutsk University, graduating in 1960, he turned to theatre. He was executive secretary of an Irkutsk newspaper from 1962 to 1964, and later formed an acquaintance with popular dramatist Aleksei Arbuzov
.
The first production of Farewell in June in Moscow in 1966 was unsuccessful, but by the early 1970s he was becoming very well known, and his humanity and insight has been compared with that of Chekhovhttp://www.bookrags.com/biography-aleksandr-valentinovich-vampilov-dlb/index.html.
He married in the early 1970s, and drowned in 1972, while fishing on Lake Baikal
. Last Summer in Tchulimsk was his final play.
Irkutsk
Irkutsk is a city and the administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, one of the largest cities in Siberia. Population: .-History:In 1652, Ivan Pokhabov built a zimovye near the site of Irkutsk for gold trading and for the collection of fur taxes from the Buryats. In 1661, Yakov Pokhabov...
– 17 August 1972 at Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal is the world's oldest at 30 million years old and deepest lake with an average depth of 744.4 metres.Located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, it is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the...
) was a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n playwright. His play Elder Son was first performed in 1969, and became a national success two years later. Many of his plays have been filmed or televised in Russia. His four full-length plays were translated into English and Duck Hunting was performed in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Life
Vampilov was the fourth child in the family of schoolteachers. Нis father, Valentin Nikitich, was of BuryatBuryats
The Buryats or Buriyads , numbering approximately 436,000, are the largest ethnic minority group in Siberia and are mainly concentrated in their homeland, the Buryat Republic, a federal subject of Russia...
ancestry, and his mother, Anastasia Prokopievna was Russian, daughter of Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
priest. His father was arrested for alleged nationalist activity.
The young Alexander taught himself guitar and mandolin, and his first comic short stories appeared in magazines in 1958, later collected as A Confluence of Circumstances under the name "A. Sanin". After studying literature and history at the Department of Philology at Irkutsk University, graduating in 1960, he turned to theatre. He was executive secretary of an Irkutsk newspaper from 1962 to 1964, and later formed an acquaintance with popular dramatist Aleksei Arbuzov
Aleksei Arbuzov
Aleksei Nikolaevich Arbuzov was a Soviet playwright.Arbuzov was born in Moscow, but his family moved to Petrograd in 1914. Orphaned at the age of eleven, he found salvation in the theater, and at fourteen he began to work in the Mariinsky Theatre...
.
The first production of Farewell in June in Moscow in 1966 was unsuccessful, but by the early 1970s he was becoming very well known, and his humanity and insight has been compared with that of Chekhovhttp://www.bookrags.com/biography-aleksandr-valentinovich-vampilov-dlb/index.html.
He married in the early 1970s, and drowned in 1972, while fishing on Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal is the world's oldest at 30 million years old and deepest lake with an average depth of 744.4 metres.Located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, it is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the...
. Last Summer in Tchulimsk was his final play.
Works
- Farewell in June (Прощание в июне) (1966, rewritten 1970)
- The Elder Son (Старший сын) (1967)
- House, Overlooking the Field (Дом окнами в поле)
- Provincial Ancedotes (Провинциальные анекдоты) (1968, comprising the one-act plays An Incident with a Paginator (Случай с метранпажем) and Twenty Minutes with an Angel (Двадцать минут с ангелом))
- Duck Hunting (Утиная охота) (1970)
- Last Summer in Chulimsk (Прошлым летом в Чулимске) (1972)
External links
- 65th birth anniversary of famous writer, playwright Alexander Vampilov, Pravda, 19 August, 2002. Also http://english.pravda.ru/culture/2002/08/19/34763.html.
- http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3763/is_199609/ai_n8756041
- Entry at IMDB
- Biographical article in Russian