14 1925 October, the
Naum Korzhavin, poet, translator, and dissident, was born in Kyiv.
Oh, my life is such a mess and a nightmare.
A bloody trail - circles on the water.
How we lived! How we jumped merrily—
Crucian carp in a frying pan.
From a Jewish family. Real surname: Mandel.
After the war began, he was drafted into the army twice, but missed out on the front due to a heart defect and severe myopia. As he aged, his vision deteriorated: he wore thick glasses and watched television with marine binoculars. After a phone call, he would put the receiver down in his salad or soup; the laughter of his guests didn't bother him at all.
In 1947, while a student at the Moscow Literary Institute, he was sent to Lubyanka for "reading poetry of ideologically inappropriate content." By court order, he was exiled from Moscow as a "socially dangerous element."
We were born in a big country, Russia!
Like a mechanism moving its lips,
They explained some good thoughts to us
Teachers who didn't believe in them.
He earned his living through translations and published his poems in magazines during the "thaw." He enjoyed great popularity in samizdat, with copies of his works selling in the tens of thousands.
After speaking out against the arrest of Daniel, Sinyavsky, Galanskov and Ginzburg, he received a complete ban on publishing poetry.
The author of the toast that became the motto of the dissidents of the sixties: “To the success of our hopeless cause!”
After another interrogation at the prosecutor's office in 1973, he applied to leave the country, explaining his move by "lack of air for life."
We are talking about the fact that all of Europe is
This is complete bullshit,
We're reporting from the ass,
Where we have been for a long time.
He emigrated to the United States, where he continued to publish poetry collections and plays. He also criticized the shortcomings of the Western world.
After the onset of perestroika, he visited Russia and filled halls. He warned Russians against the ensuing euphoria of freedom. He said four simple words about the democrats in power: I don't trust them.
He died in 2018, at the age of 92.
When I get tired, I start to feel sorry
That I was born and live in hard times,
That years are wasted on understanding
Something that should be clear from birth
