Boris Slutsky
Encyclopedia
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
poet of Russian language
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
.
Lived his childhood and youth in Harkov
Kharkiv
Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...
. In the year 1937 entered the law institute of Moscow, and since
1939 studied also at the Institute of literature "Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...
" till 1941.
Joined a group of young poets like M. Kulchitzki, Pavel Kogan, S.Narovchatov, David Samoilov and others who made acquaintance in autumn 1939 at the seminary of Ilya Selvinsky
Ilya Selvinsky
Ilya Selvinsky was a Russian poet, and known leader of the Constructivist movement; as such, he implemented "a scientific approach into the realm of poetry."...
at the State Literary Publishing House Goslitizdat and called themselves "the generation of the year 1940".
Between 1941-1945 he served in the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
(he was a politruk of an infantry platoon
Platoon
A platoon is a military unit typically composed of two to four sections or squads and containing 16 to 50 soldiers. Platoons are organized into a company, which typically consists of three, four or five platoons. A platoon is typically the smallest military unit led by a commissioned officer—the...
), his war experiences colouring much of his poetry. After ending the war as major, he worked on the radio (1948–1952).
In 1956 Ilya Ehrenburg
Ilya Ehrenburg
Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg was a Soviet writer, journalist, translator, and cultural figure.Ehrenburg is among the most prolific and notable authors of the Soviet Union; he published around one hundred titles. He became known first and foremost as a novelist and a journalist - in particular, as a...
created a sensation with an article quoting a number of hitherto unpublished poems by Slutsky, and in 1957 Slutsky's first book of poetry, Memory, containing many poems written much earlier, was published. Together with David Samoylov
David Samoylov
David Samoylov , pseudonym of David Samuilovich Kaufman . He is a notable poet of War generation of Russian poets, and considered one of the most important Russian poets of the post-World War II era.-External links:* * *...
, Slutsky was probably the most important representative of the War generation of Russian poets
War generation of Russian poets
War Generation is a name applied to the young Russian poets whose youth was spent fighting in the World War II and whose best poems reflect upon wartime experiences...
and, because of the nature of his verse, a crucial figure in the post-Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
literary revival. His poetry is deliberately coarse and jagged, prosaic and conversational. There is a dry, polemic quality about it that reflects perhaps the poet's early training as a lawyer. Slutsky's search was evidently for a language stripped of poeticisms and ornamentation; he represented the opposite tendency to that of such neo-romantic or neo-futuristic poets as Andrey Voznesensky
Andrey Voznesensky
Andrei Andreyevich Voznesensky was a Soviet and Russian poet and writer who had been referred to by Robert Lowell as "one of the greatest living poets in any language." He was one of the "Children of the '60s," a new wave of iconic Russian intellectuals led by the Khrushchev Thaw.Voznesensky was...
.
As early as in 1953 - 1954, earlier than the 20th Congress of CPSU, Slutsky wrote verses condemning the Stalinist regime. These ones have circulated in "Samizdat" in the 1950s and were published in the West (in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
) in an anthology in 1961. He did not confirm and not deny his paternity of them.
In his works Slutsky approached also Jewish themes, including from the Jewish tradition, about the antisemitism, including the antisemitic phenomena in the Soviet society, the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
, etc.
He translated to Russian from the Yiddish poetry, e.g., from works of Leib Kvitko
Leib Kvitko
Leib Kvitko was a prominent Yiddish poet, an author of well-known children's poems and a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee . He was one of the editors of Eynikayt and of the Heymland, a literary magazine...
, Aaron Verghelis, Shmuel Galkin, Asher Shvartsman, Yakov Sternberg.
In 1963 an exceptional performance was the editing under his guidance of the first anthology of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i poetry.
("The poets of Israel")
One of his cousins was the Israeli general Meir Amit
Meir Amit
Meir Amit was an Israeli politician and general. He served as Director of the Mossad from 1963 to 1968 before entering politics and holding two ministerial positions.-Biography:...
.