Boris poplavsky biography. Boris Poplavsky - Dystopia

You gave me a delightfully slow look,
And fell asleep leaning back, returned to dreams.
I saw how in a mysterious pose he admires hell
Traveler angel in a crumpled spring suit...

Where the product of creativity is likened to sleep, an ecstatic state, euphoria or dysphoria, exaltation, trance, drug intoxication. Where the perception of art becomes a mystical experience, and words line up in a sacred song. Where every poem is a sacrament. The world of Boris Poplavsky is located there: an exile, the first Russian surrealist poet, a vagabond and a drug addict, a man who did not find a place for himself anywhere in this world, except for the world of poetry.

Poplavsky's time is a special period of the transformation of art from a product of the representation of the surrounding world into a product of the representation of the human psyche, its secret inclinations and prohibitions, its specific perception of reality. Poplavsky's time is a time of heightened sublimation caused by a universal crisis of consumption, a time where the dilemma of consuming in excess of the vital or denying bourgeois values ​​led some to moral impoverishment, while others to search for new meaning in the depths of their own psyche.

Dali slept.
Without sandals, a beggar crept into the Eternal City.
Mothers wept in the towers.
The sentinel was stung by cold.
The reflections of the planets were locked in the temples at night.
Hard hands erased the faces of wondrous coins.

"Diary of Apollo Bezobrazov" 1934

Most of the active creative life Boris Poplavsky was in Paris (1919 - 1935), where he led a rather poor life according to his convictions, was a frequenter of cereal drinking establishments, used drugs, but at the same time did not forget about poetry and was regularly published in literary magazines of Russian emigration ("Numbers", "The Will of Russia", "Modern Notes", "Link"), attended literary meetings of associations of poets (" green lamp"," Nomad ").

Montparnasse was his spiritual ghetto. There he disappeared in taverns, swallowing ethyl poison in the name of denying the usual way of life, had acquaintances with a marginal layer of Parisians. Probably visited brothels. Wandered the paved sidewalks, swaying with intoxication. And in this world of decline, in this endless oblivion, in this decaying society, Poplavsky created his dark, painful, painfully close to madman poetic style at the intersection of sleep and wakefulness, truth and fiction, pleasure and suffering.

The specificity of Poplavsky's versification consisted in a special unique use of expressive means, which were formed under the influence of surrealism, first of all, the work of Arthur Rimbaud, and Russian symbolism, first of all, Alexander Blok. His poems, immersing the reader in a psychedelic world of exceptional experiences, sometimes lost touch with the language as a system of symbols, turning the text into either nonsense, or into a mystical system separated from the usual language, addressing directly to the unconscious. Each poem by Boris Yulianovich is like an excerpt from a religious text, a prayer to the dark gods, a gnostic perception of the earthly world, where the key to a correct understanding of creativity is abstraction, avoidance of a concrete perception of things and concentration on sensual images.

Despite the abundance of tropes, Poplavsky's poetry in the technical sense is quite simple: most of the poems are written in quatrains, and rhymes are born from simple words. But this simplicity is more than offset by the images and themes of creativity. One has only to look at the list of his poems (“Sentimental Demonology”, “Assassination with Wrong Means”, “Spring in Hell”, “Black Hare”), as the mind is captured by an irresistible desire to look behind these labels, to open these hidden suitcases or bags of darkness, where the aesthetics of the gloomy appears in all its glory.

Boris Poplavsky was actively interested in philosophy and theology, under the influence of which his themes for poems were born, among which the central place was occupied by the theme of death, more precisely, the enjoyment of dying, a kind of masochistic fatalism associated with the theme of love, as well as descriptive topics in which it is difficult to draw a line between reality and illusion. He was the first poet to place death in a trochaic pentameter. That is why the literary critic M. L. Gasparov called Poplavsky "the master of choreic death."

Who is there with the strange flag? Nepomniachtchi.
Who is there who fell on his back ... Not hearing.
Who is there, reminiscent of the winter sun,
Wrapped in thought, unknown, unused?
What is he waiting for... Return train... Return

This short poem well demonstrates the specifics of Poplavsky's poetry. Poplavsky's poetry is a yearning for that time where a person is not awake. Where he sleeps and has painful dreams, where he is under the influence of a narcotic or psychotropic substance, where he has gone mad and delirious, where he has not yet been born or has already died. Poplavsky's poetry is a conscious attempt to break with reality, to reject the material world, to go anywhere, but not stay here.

During his lifetime, Boris Yulianovich published only one collection of poetry called "Flags" in 1931. His novels "Apollo Bezobrazov" and "Home from Heaven" failed to be published during his lifetime. The collections of poems "Snow Hour", "Automatic Poems", "Airship of an Unknown Direction" were published posthumously.

Boris Poplavsky died in 1935 from the action of a drug, which he took with a casual acquaintance named Yarkho. Naturally, versions with murder and suicide were considered, but this is no longer so important. The mob of Montparnasse took away his poisoned body. Death has come, and those who in their creativity enjoyed dying, enjoyed it in the material world, which they despised and shunned so much. The poet went where he wanted to go. He went into the world of the absence of consciousness, into the world of eternal sleep, went into non-existence, the longing for which never left him.

(1903 - 1935)

1. I am buried in two cemeteries ...

The unexpected and strange death of the thirty-two-year-old poet shook Russian Paris. Late in the evening, October 8, 1935, Boris Poplavsky, obeying the request of the 19-year-old poet Sergei Yarkho (Yarko), a native of Moscow, who for some reason called himself "High Serene Prince Bagration", took a large dose of drugs. He was found early in the morning, along with an acquaintance, in a small clothing store owned by his mother. Poplavsky died in his sleep, facing the wall. He went to that unknown, fantastic world, to that dream or half-sleep in which he was all recent times, not saying goodbye to anyone, but leaving behind a black, deep abyss, filled to the brim with the secret writing of his visions, loneliness, poverty. Sergei Yarkho died in the hospital, having outlived Poplavsky by only a few hours. Later, a medical examination established the cause of death: poisoning with a strong dose of substandard drugs.

The death of Boris Poplavsky is the death of one of the most tragic and significant poets " lost generation". Whether it was suicide, murder, or accidental death, no one knew. The next day, the newspapers wrote that he had been overdosed on drugs by some Montparnasse rogue, either Russian or Bulgarian, who was afraid to die alone, and therefore took Boris with him.

You said: death threatens me,

Green hand in the green sky.

But here she is fawning on a chair,

Sleeps in its barbaric splendor.

She came, I let her in myself,

So the brave clown injects morphine,

When flying through the air without strength,

He is full of unearthly indifference. one

We will never know - did he plan his imminent death or had a premonition of it? I quote prophetic lines from Poplavsky's poem, as if predicting his own death:

Goodbye epic life

The night salutes with an unknown flag

And in the fingers of the loser trembles

Newspaper of the world with a full house of mourning.

On the day of the funeral of Boris Poplavsky, the sky was gray over Paris, and cold autumn rain was falling without ceasing. “It seemed that he was walking over the whole world, that he connected all the streets and all passers-by with his gray, salty fabric,” it seemed that the city plunged into evening darkness, and the light of a new day would never shed on the dark streets of Paris. According to eyewitnesses, at the last memorial service in a miserable Russian church with colored glass, on which pictures of sacred content were painted with an inept hand, a lot of people gathered, there was a pile of flowers, and “roses really smelled of death”: “Rose evening, roses smell of death, / And green snow falls on the branches. It was stuffy and cramped, the young ladies were crying loudly, cheap French candles were flickering dimly, hot wax was dripping on their hands. The church was so quiet that the sound of rain came through the open door.

The October Parisian rains mourned the impoverished Parisian wanderer and the great Russian poet: “October is circling like that whitish hawk, / Its gray feathers are in the sky ...”. He was buried in the cemetery of a working-class Parisian suburb of Ivry. In 1948, the ashes of Boris Poplavsky were transferred to the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.

I'm buried in two cemeteries,

I go underground and into the sky.

And accomplish two different requirements

Two witches I'm in love with.

Soon, over the sleeping poor Russian quarter, deep night. Thick soapy clouds floated somewhere to the east, touching the tops of bare trees. A heavy, starless sky hung gloomily over the city, covering with mystery so many destinies lost in a foreign land. The rain did not stop, and gas lamps barely flickered in the cobweb of fine rain, casting long bizarre shadows on the wet, water-shiny asphalt. The night sang its lullaby about another dead poet, about a soul lost in a vast cold world, which no one could save or break the barrier of endless, tragic loneliness ...

2. On the edge of heaven, on the edge of the night ...

Boris Poplavsky loved to wander around Paris at night, along its deserted squares and boulevards, under the dark starry sky from Montparnasse to the Chatelet, philosophizing, thinking about his place in life. He, like the hero of his novel, Apollon Bezobrazov, “wandered around the city and among acquaintances”, when “lanterns already in yellow rows” saw off the dying day, and the world seemed to him “a huge, red-hot, stone landscape”. The lilac sunset "was exhausted in the sky, like a fireworks nearing its end", and with this sunset the life of a great Russian poet was leaving. Sometimes, tired of aimlessly walking around the city, he sat for a long time on a park bench, listening to the night silence of the city, watching how a huge, like the sun, "muddy-orange" moon rose in the sky, and restlessness and uncertainty reigned in his soul. tomorrow. On the way home, he bought tobacco and hollow French candles that cost pennies (probably to work at night). And then, in a small wretched apartment, by the light of barely flickering candles, he wrote down new lines of poetry born during a night walk:

Down there, accustomed to despair,

People sleep from happiness and work,

Only a beggar listens to silence

And it goes, I don't know where.

Lonely on a park bench

Looks up, shackled in winter,

Thinking there are so many stars, so bright

My terrible lot is illuminated.

He often sat at night with fellow writers in a small cafe "Rotonde" ("Le Rotonde") in Montparnasse. For a poor Russian emigrant, this was the only place where one could spend an evening over one cup of coffee. “People sit at the tables of Montparnasse, many of whom did not have lunch during the day, and in the evening find it difficult to ask for a cup of coffee. At Montparnasse they sometimes sit until the morning, because there is no place to spend the night” 2 . Writers and representatives of European avant-garde painting gathered in the Rotunda cafe. New ideas and new trends in art were born there. Picasso, Derain, Vlaminck, Modigliani, Soutine came to the cafe "Rotonda". Sometimes Wassily Kandinsky, who came from Germany, ran in. However, the cafe was also a haven for Russian literary bohemia. There they read poems until morning, discussed or simply argued about the meaning of life and the meaning of their beggarly existence, recalled the past:

Until the evening, the balls are knocking in the tavern,

I look at them, the clock goes back,

I don't participate, I don't exist in the world,

I live in a cafe like drunkards live.

As Zinaida Shakhovskaya wrote, "the cafe was a club, a salvation from loneliness" 3 . Over one cup of coffee sat up late, until the last subway. Then they wandered through the night streets of sleeping Paris, through the markets and boulevards, filled with youthful delight, “in search of an ideal incarnation, feat and sin”, continuing to philosophize, discuss the latest events in Russia, the murder royal family still hoping for a speedy return. But Poplavsky's Montparnasse is not only "night vigils in cafes". It was about God, about music and justice, about fate, but never about happiness. In the poem "Leaving Yalta" Boris Poplavsky says:

Who knew then ... Is it possible to die?

The old man calmly offered communion ...

Well, let's believe, cry and burn,

But never talk about happiness.

He wrote in the novel "Apollo Ugly": "At that time we were constantly accompanied by a feeling of some special solemnity, as if we were walking in a cloud or in the glow of a sunset ...". The three of us often walked - Vasily Yanovsky (who became a famous memoirist and prose writer), Nikolai Gronsky (a poet who died young under the wheels of a train at a metro station) and Boris Poplavsky. Sometimes they were joined by Pavel Gorgulov (a poet later executed for an attempt on the life of French President Doumer). They talked about love, about Zoshchenko, about Proust, recalling the past years: “And people wept in the morning from terrible pity, / Having accidentally seen the past years in a dream.” And for some time there was a feeling that they were returning briefly to former Russia, to the atmosphere of the Silver Age, but soon, as if waking up from a terrible dream, they understood:

Russia is gone! Don't cry, don't cry my friend

When the candles go out on the tree,

A dream comes, the candles suddenly went out,

Above the Christmas tree is darkness, above the Christmas tree are stars, eternity.

3. The wagons, swaying, go to the west ...

Boris Yulianovich Poplavsky was born on July 7, 1903 in Moscow. Poplavsky's parents were professional musicians. Mother, Sofya Valentinovna Kokhmanskaya, played the violin, father, Yulian Ignatievich, played the piano. Boris's father was an unusually talented and gifted man. His talent was noticed by P.I. Tchaikovsky, whose student he was. However, Yulian Ignatievich left music and took up industrial activities. The poet's mother, like many in the circles of the Russian progressive intelligentsia at that time (A. Bely, M. Voloshin, D. Klenovsky, N. Berdyaev, Z. Gippius, D. Merezhkovsky, etc.), was fond of occultism, anthroposophy, esoteric philosophy, echoing theosophy. It is known that Helena Blavatsky, a theosophical philosopher, occultist and spiritualist, was a distant relative of Sofya Valentinovna. In Philadelphia (USA) there is still a Theosophical Society, which was first born in 1875 in a small house on Samson Street, where Helena Blavatsky lived. There the foundations of a wider theosophical movement were laid. Boris showed from childhood an interest in theosophy, occultism, religion, an interest in the knowledge of the soul and spiritual consciousness, which deepened later, reflected on his work and laid the foundation for his "journey into himself." In 1922 in Berlin, he notes in his diary: "I became acquainted with the Theosophical teaching, which is, first of all, the persistent education of the intellect and feelings through concentrated thinking and prayer." At the end of the twenties, Poplavsky wrote two poems "The Astral World" and "Lumiere Astrale", from which it becomes clear that he was well acquainted with the teachings of Helena Blavatsky, where she first indicates that the astral light is a subtle body, always connected with the soul , as "immortal, luminous and starlike".

Boris wrote his first poem at the age of twelve or thirteen out of a sense of rivalry with his sister Natalya, who influenced his work. Boris's mother was a power-hungry and cruel woman. Boris's relationship with his mother did not develop. She was not for him that soft, kind, all-understanding mother that the rushing young man needed so much. The constant enmity with her affected the personality of the poet himself. Attachment to the father and friendship with him helped to resist the hysterical outbursts of the mother. Later, the duality of character became a feature not only of his personality, but also of his work. Natalya, the poet's sister, grew up in the same difficult atmosphere as Boris. An avant-garde poetess, a beauty, she moved in the circles of literary bohemia, where she introduced Boris. But along with this, she opened to him another world - the world of hashish and cocaine. The life of Natalia was no less tragic than the life of Boris. She published in Russia one book of poems, Poems of the Green Lady. Her poem "You are driving drunk and very pale" became especially famous. There are different versions of this poem, set to music. Natalia soon leaves her family to "seek new happiness." Natalya Poplavskaya died in Shanghai in the second half of the twenties from lobar pneumonia caused by the abuse of opium. Brother Valentine, a former officer, will enroll in the Sorbonne, but will not be able to study due to poverty and will be forced to become a taxi driver.

After the October Revolution, the family lived a short time in Constantinople, where Boris joined the Theosophical Society. In May 1921, Poplavsky's father and son left for Paris. They settle in a poor hotel on Jacob Street, where Poplavsky's mother also later arrives.

Boris dreamed of becoming an artist and showed the ability to paint. In Paris, he attends the Grande Chaumière Art Academy in Montparnasse. He is especially fond of working on portraits (he worked for several months in a portrait studio). Poplavsky paints from life, but also tries his hand at then-fashionable cubism and paints Suprematist paintings, but the talent of the young Poplavsky is manifested at this time not only in painting. He writes poetry, speaks to a Russian audience, attends classes at the Faculty of History and Philology of the Sorbonne. Due to lack of money, classes soon have to be abandoned, but he continues to independently study philosophy and world literature. He spent 1922 in Berlin, where he met with many prominent writers and artists.

The personal life of the young poet did not develop for a long time. “The sad fact was that outside of the literary ladies (who were not made for vulgar relationships), no one paid any attention to us. And no wonder: poorly dressed, without money and, most importantly, without the habit of an easy life and pleasant connections, ”wrote Vasily Yanovsky in the Champs Elysees. There were fleeting hobbies and partings.

We parted; after all, we are not forever

To be ashamed of the intimacy that has long since passed,

Like autumn walking along the embankment

Do not return in your footsteps.

But the life of the poet changed when, in 1931, in a philosophical circle, Boris met Natalya Ivanovna Stolyarova, where L. B. Savinkov brought her and her sister. Her fate was unusual. Natalya was left an orphan early. Both sisters lived with a family of acquaintances in France, studied at the French Lyceum, were interested in the literary life of Paris, and attended literary and philosophical circles. With this meeting, Boris Poplavsky is associated with moments of happiness and endless hours of suffering. Shortly after they met, Natalia Stolyarova becomes Boris' fiancee. The poet dedicated one of his best poetic cycles “Over the Solar Music of Water”, published posthumously in the collection “Snow Hour” (Paris, 1936), to her.

Death is deep, but Sunday is deeper

Transparent leaves and hot herbs,

I suddenly realized that it could be spring

Beautiful world and joyful and right.

In Poplavsky's poetry, sunshine appears, "the soul wakes up and listens." Feelings for Natalya Ivanovna became the "sunny page" of his biography. But Poplavsky's happiness was short-lived and the "sunshine" light soon faded, plunging him again into the darkness in which he was last years. In December 1934, Natalya Stolyarova left for the USSR with her father. With the departure of the beloved, hope leaves, the dream of happiness disappears. In 1934, the poet wrote: “I lie down on the warm heather, forgetting / That I suffered for a long time, loving.”

Before leaving, Boris Poplavsky and Natalya Stolyarova agreed that if she did not return in a year and if he received good news from her, he would go to Russia to see her. It has now become known that the father of N. I. Stolyarova was shot shortly after returning to the USSR. Back in 1935, she received letters from Poplavsky, but in the same year, while in the Crimea, she learned about his death. In 1937, Natalia Stolyarova was arrested and sentenced to eight years. All letters and autographs of Poplavsky were seized from her during the search. After her release, she worked as Solzhenitsyn's secretary. Natalya Ivanovna Stolyarova died in Moscow in 1984.

Poplavsky began to print even before emigration in the provincial almanacs. In 1931, his first book of poems, Flags, was published in Paris. After his death - "Snow Hour" (1936), "Airship of an Unknown Direction" (1965), which included poems discovered after his death, and a three-volume collection of his poems was published in 1980-1981 at the University of Berkeley, edited by S. Karlinsky. Two unfinished novels also remained after his death: "Apollo Bezobrazov" and "Home from Heaven". Now the poems and prose of Boris Poplavsky are widely known in Russia.

4. Spiritual world of Boris Poplavsky

Many have written about the poet's giftedness and his extraordinary personality. His philosophical statements were recorded and passed from mouth to mouth. His ability to love passionately and hate just as passionately, his ability to think abstractly and fanatically idolize poetry, his extraordinary erudition, the purity and complexity of his soul, the sharpness and flexibility of his mind put him forward among the geniuses. “But the distinguishing feature of his nature was the genius that burst through all barriers, unrestrainedly and continuously pouring out of him,” said Yu. Felzen 4 .

Now it is believed that in the history of Russian literature of the twentieth century there was no name more mysterious and mysterious than Boris Poplavsky. Here is what the well-known literary critic, professor Vadim Kreid writes about Boris Poplavsky: “Not everything in Poplavsky's life seems crystal clear to us. There were aspects of his spiritual experience that we can say that he learned to live without leaving traces. In particular, the reading of Taoist literature had an effect: the grain fell on prepared soil. Just as this aspect of his life is mysterious and not self-evident, so is his death also mysterious.

FROM early years the future poet is fond of painting and music, literature and philosophy. They wrote about him that his vision of the world was vague, his vision of himself was vague. The path into oneself, into one's depth, inner clarification, spiritualization, understanding oneself and God were for Poplavsky a long and painful process. In creativity, he felt freer than in life. The mystical world in which the poet lived seemed to him "a huge red-hot stone landscape." According to friends, his mystical life was full of frightening contradictions. In the circle in which Poplavsky communicated, there was no more brilliant person, more than he thought not so much about literary everyday life, but about religious and metaphysical problems, to which until the end of his short life "he tried to find his own key." "Later he studied the writings of St. Francis, St. Teresa, the mystics of the Middle Ages, and especially stubbornly - Schelling" 6 . Professor Kreid in this article points to the fact that in addition to Poplavsky's friendly relations with Alexander Ginger, to whom he dedicated a cycle of poems, "these poets were brought together by an in-depth and, to a large extent, practical interest in mysticism."

Poplavsky was fond of Joyce, his novel "Ulysses", at the age of seventeen he read Jacob Boehme, was influenced by Dostoevsky and Blok. "Among other features, he was a writer-thinker" 7 . Vasily Rozanov, a famous Russian writer and religious philosopher, had a noticeable influence on the mood of Russian decadence, on symbolist poets, including the formation of the worldview of Boris Poplavsky. According to N. Tatishchev, Rozanov was one of Poplavsky's favorite writers. The teachings of V. Rozanov were close to him, especially in their spiritual and ecclesiastical approach. The sensitive and suffering soul of the poet sought an answer in religious philosophy, and the feeling of complete and final hopelessness that became the lot of exiles in a foreign land often forced the poet to seek an answer in religion. Nikolai Berdyaev said that a person exists only if there is a God, and truth is the illumination of darkness. These philosophical worldviews can be traced in Poplavsky's later poems, in which he often turns to God in search of his truth.

Be quiet and listen to the rain.

Not in truth, not in miracle

And in pity your God,

Everything else is a lie.

5. From life to sleep

In the 10-20s, a new trend was formed in Germany, called expressionism. And if surrealism can be understood as an image of objects and images with the help of their spiritual inner illumination, refraction in one's own imagination or subconscious, or as a fiction of a sick imagination, then expressionism is a transfer of a state of mind (pain, repentance, despair, jealousy) with the help of objects or images seen inside oneself and, most importantly, the transfer of these images with the help of paints.

Boris Poplavsky, who lived most of the time in France, was considered a surrealist poet, where this trend originated. They called him "the first and last Russian surrealist" in poetry, as well as "little Andrei Bely", Blok and the Russian "Rimbaud". However, when analyzing Poplavsky's poetry, one begins to understand that Boris Poplavsky was not only a surrealist poet, as many researchers of his poetry believe, but more of an expressionist poet. Poplavsky's talent as a poet lay precisely in the fact that he was also a gifted artist. Poplavsky's poetry is united with painting by the fact that, like a real artist, he does not paint a picture exactly as he sees it, does not copy the external form, but interprets it, passes it through his own "I". An expressionist artist or poet does not take his images from the surrounding world, but depicts what he sees or feels inside himself, and then his work becomes a way of expressing emotions or a state of mind (longing, pity, anxiety, etc.) through strange mystical images, subjective interpretation of the real state of the human soul. One of the foundations of surrealism was the idea of ​​capturing what you saw in a dream immediately after waking up. It could be hallucinations, subconscious images that have not yet been touched by reality.

Expressionism carried elements of surrealism. In the poetry of the expressionists, as in the poetry of the surrealists, the real and the unreal, dream and reality are often intertwined. Their dream is an endless stream of thick images, lines of poetry are "a voice heard in a dream." And it’s scary to wake up and forget your dream: “Rise the sun! Our souls will grow cold, / We will become big, we will forget our dream. So the teaching of Sigmund Freud on the origin of dreams, illusions and hallucinations becomes popular among expressionists. Creativity becomes an expression of their inner dissatisfaction, isolation, loneliness. Elements of the expressionist trend are clearly visible in the poetry of Boris Poplavsky. Poplavsky believed that poetry should reflect “the crooked lines of the soul”, “sleep and death, silence and memory”, “the last heat of the soul, the last light”, those shades of feelings that the poet himself experienced.

One of the features of early expressionism was its prophetic sentiment. Of the early Expressionist poets, in terms of mood, he was close to the German poet Georg Geim, who tragically died at the age of 24. He, like Poplavsky, even in the diaries in which he described his dreams, predicted his early death. In 1924, Poplavsky wrote: "I remember death sang to me in my youth / Do not wait for the fatal time." Imagery and musicality, mood of hopelessness and self-absorption - character traits poetry of these two great poets. Compare at least the description of the night. From Georg Geim:

From the east, darkness pours abundant wine

Sapphires from an open urn,

And in a black robe, the dead of night rises

With all your might on high koturny.

(Translated by Yuri Kuimov)

And Boris Poplavsky:

Clouds shone over the ball of music,

Burning bright green at the entrance,

There was life, but ten steps away

The night turned blue, and the years floated into eternity.

Through the flow of colors and unusual images expressionists expressed feelings such as fear, anger, pain, suffering. We observe the same thing in the poetry of Poplavsky, who wrote, characterizing the main goal of his work: “To deal with the disgusting doubling of real and described life. Concentrate in the pain... To express at least the anguish of that which cannot be expressed.” This state of pain is conveyed to the reader, for reading his poems evokes a realistic sensation of physical pain. The poet himself wrote about the possibility of "indulging in the power of the elements of mystical analogies", creating "mysterious pictures that, by a known combination of images and sounds, would purely magically evoke in the reader the feeling of what was to come to me." Here are some of the names of Poplavsky's poems: "Repentance", "Disgust", "Pity", "The Spirit of Music", "The Spirit of Air", "Unselfishness", "Memory", etc. Expressionist artists were accused of individualism. For Poplavsky, these were "searchs for the most individual, most subjective perception of the world and spirit."

And everyone suddenly remembered that he was alone.

Screamed alone! choking on bile.

Reading his terrible, poignant lines, one recalls the painting by the famous Norwegian expressionist artist, Edvard Munch, “The Scream” - a lonely deformed man with a yellow-green face on a huge bridge, screaming into the void against the background of the silhouette of mountains, the sea and people standing indifferently in the distance. His color scheme is most often yellow, green, red. With the help of paints, Poplavsky, like Munch, conveyed the depth of emotional experience.

Light from the yellow window

Falls on hard ice.

There the soul lies sick.

Who is walking in the snow?

Munch said that in the painting "The Scream" he wanted to convey a cry, a cry of the soul, which he hears everywhere and in everything. Here, in this small passage, we see - life has no meaning, a person is lonely and helpless in this huge yellow world. No wonder the paintings of Edvard Munch were called "Melancholy", "Death in the sick room", "Despair", "Gap", "Rivalry", "Fear", etc. Both in Munch and in Poplavsky, the state of anxiety is expressed with the help of color. Often it is dominated by yellow, as a symbol of inexplicable anxiety, longing, foreboding of death, when "the world is terrible, the sun breathes death":

Yellow smoke over the low moon

Late hour, inexplicable light.

My God! how hard it is in the spring,

And you can not sleep, and there is no happiness.

Why do I compare Poplavsky's poetry with Expressionist painting? As I already wrote, Poplavsky was not only a poet, but also an artist. He studied painting in Germany during the heyday of expressionism, met with W. Kandinsky in Berlin, and, possibly, in Paris, in the same cafe "Rotonda". Kandinsky's expressionism was described by critics as "the creation of new worlds, despite the existence of nature", and they also wrote that Kandinsky's work is "color in a picture - this is an event - a symphony. Form is secondary, primary is spiritual-abstract-absolute and mystical from the bottom of the soul” 8 .

Poplavsky was also familiar with M. Chagall, who has “a sense of color and space, as a means of expressing demonic tremors of the heart and brain, flesh and spirit, animal and human deep torment of the soul - despair - inner human world" 9 . Poplavsky was close in his means of expression to the works of Marc Chagall. If Poplavsky had succeeded as an artist, it is possible that he would have reached the same height in painting as in poetry.

Everything is silent. The height is green.

Wake up hedgehog kings.

And, like dead, bright snakes,

Lighting up, crawling lanterns.

On the yellow sky with neat ink

The city is drawn with a cold hand.

The paintings of Marc Chagall are distinguished by their bright colors, and we find the same bright harmony of colors in Poplavsky's poetry. Shortly after moving from Vitebsk to Paris, Chagall painted the nostalgic painting "Memoirs of a Poet", which Poplavsky could not fail to notice. The image of the poet, a deformed man, lying in the foreground of the picture, against the backdrop of a carefully painted estate, evokes a feeling of painful longing and expectation of something better.

Tyutchev languished in the silence of the night,

And Blok sighed in the dark under the covers.

And only I, under the bright moon,

Waiting smiling girl from the basement.

... Maybe I wanted to understand the unfortunate,

Silent as a stone, shallow as water,

Like the sky, white, low and beautiful,

Like a girl, sad forever.

But happiness did not obey the poet,

It spent the summer in Paris.

I fell silent, went into the sand,

Lie down on the grass like a soft ox

Above me the jasmine blossomed,

The Golden Assumption of Bees.

I am calm, I sleep for centuries,

The ghost of a thought that was on the run

Today lies at my feet,

I stare at my enemy.

In the painting of Marc Chagall, we meet with magical images: lovers fly over the city, clocks, violins, fish, animals, a jar of flowers stands in the middle of the river. Boris Poplavsky has Shagalov's images - “A cow flies across the sky / And dogs on the wings of the lungs” or “A passenger monster appears between the stars. / Flies. And we fly away together”, “The garden floats in a raspberry glow of roses”. I don’t know if Poplavsky saw Marc Chagall’s painting The Flying Carriage, but we can find the same images in Poplavsky’s poem:

And then on the street, on the square

Under the transparent beat of the clock from the corner,

The blue horse ran

Blue glass carriage.

However, we can find in the poetry of Boris Poplavsky and chaotic improvisations in the spirit of Wassily Kandinsky.

Gardens are in bloom.

White castles rise like smoke.

And through the dark blue forest,

Bright dark burning sand.

In this one quatrain, one can notice the qualities that are inherent in expressionist painting - the depth of colors, chaotic images, as if drawn through smoke or a dream. Through these strange images, the poet conveys the inner state of a lost person, his spiritual confusion and disappointment with life. This poem ends with an allegorical depiction of death:

Quietly the skull looks out the window.

It's very dark in this room

Only silently, at the very bottom,

The crooked shadow sleeps on the wall.

Poplavsky often does not write poetry, but draws them, conveying his inner state by creating bizarre, mysterious images - the fruit of his subconscious vision of the world. A vivid example of this is the poem “The Goddess of Life” written by him in 1928, where each quatrain is a separate expressionist picture. The poem ends with the image of death: "And in the distance, where the castle of red plates, / Dreamed of death, curly Heraclitus."

Expressionists saw the world and things through the prism of their sensations. Their work was characterized by nervous emotionality and a tragic attitude. They believed that earthly life is illusory - it is only a filter that can purify a person and lead to God. According to expressionists, pain and suffering enable a person to comprehend the essence of existence, the meaning of being. In their works, an important place is occupied by death, which is the conclusion of human suffering. Many of Boris Poplavsky's poems end either with thoughts about death, or with its images, as in the poem "Sentimental Demonology": "While on the chest, it's cold and stuffy / Death won't fall like a woman in a coat." It is precisely such artistic principles and expressionistic techniques that the poetry of Boris Poplavsky obeys. Vadim Kreid writes in an article about Poplavsky: “In his dreams he sees himself as an artist rather than a poet,” and further: “Disappointment in his abilities soon followed, and he returns to poetry. But the interest in painting, which manifested itself both in his articles and in poetic work, did not leave him to the end.

6. Color spectra of Poplavsky's poetry

A distinctive feature of expressionist artists was the spontaneous choice of colors under the influence of momentary mood and emotional state souls. The intensity of color is associated with the attitude of expressionists, both in literature and in painting. Wassily Kandinsky was called "the great composer of colors". Boris Poplavsky, by analogy, can be called "the great poet of colors." Expressionists made extensive use of the contrast of various colors in order to increase their "glow", which enhances the impact on the viewer. Poplavsky uses the word as an artist uses paint to paint the picture that has subconsciously formed in his imagination. In almost all of his poems there are always color spectra. These are paintings drawn with a brush and the artist's imagination. In just one small poem, Hamlet, he uses seven different shades of color. Poplavsky's poem, dedicated to G. Ivanov, abounds in colors. In this poem, pictures are intertwined, depicted in lilac and pink colors, symbolizing the arrival of spring. Georgy Ivanov, who himself dreamed of becoming an artist, often used the same techniques. His favorite colors are blue, pink, green, black. He loved not only the colors themselves, but also the play of "shadows and light." In the poetry of G. Ivanov there are different color shades that convey the depth of his state of mind. Ivanov’s light, its “unearthly radiance” is also in Poplavsky’s poetry, when “life shines, it is close to reward”, when he sees between the trees the radiance of water, or a river shining in the sun, but this radiance is not long, it goes away with beloved, and in his poetry winter is again - “the sadness of winter squeezes my heart”, “against the background of joy, calm and boredom”.

The first lines of Poplavsky's poems often immediately give us a color description: "Blue, blue dawn rising ...", "Light from the yellow window ...", "Blue soul of the ray ...", "On marble, among green waters…”, “The days turned blue, they turned lilac…”; or the names of poems - "Green Horror", "White Light", Black and White, etc. Poplavsky often does not write out images, but draws them with various colors, for example, stars:

Blue looked to the oceans

The blacks on the tower called the night.

White descended into the mists,

The scarlet ones flew away at dawn.

The picture of apple trees growing by the road is conveyed to them not only visually, but also allegorically - against the background of the black world - apple trees in a white dress of brides:

In a black world where souls are hostile

Where sunsets call to die

Quiet apple trees in a wedding dress

From the suburbs they go to the field.

Poplavsky felt the gamut of colors, as a composer feels the subtleties of a musical work. Paints of various shades prevail in the poetry of Poplavsky the artist.

7. The fire of the moon in an unfinished glass ...

For Poplavsky, poetry is also an immersion in another, astral world of non-existence, "withdrawal into oneself." The poems of Boris Poplavsky are unusual, they look like a dream or delirium (“On a huge black slope / We glided into silence and sleep”), mutterings of a man drugged by images, elements and verses, (“Chinese evening is indifferently quiet / He, like poetry, muttered and verse", "Sleep and death, silence and memory / Bring back to life the dead day"). And it's scary to wake up from this dream, and "it's scary to live awake from sleep." His poetry is the confession of a man who has come to a dead end in life, but who has not sought a way out of this tragic state, or rather, who has seen a way out of it only in death. This state Adamovich called "wandering at the edge of the abyss."

Sleep. Lie covered with a blanket

Like a warm coffin to go to bed,

Listen to the sound of belated trams,

Don't dine, don't turn on the lights.

For Boris Poplavsky, as for many emigration poets, death was a kind of deliverance from suffering, a way out of the impasse into which emigration had driven him. "Death is inevitable and beautiful (even if it is evil)" - an entry from Poplavsky's diary. Death is the leitmotif of all his poetry, thoughts about it never leave the poet ("Life backs away carelessly into death"). Poplavsky, even seemingly in calm tones, has restlessness, despair, anxiety, death:

And spring, bottomless pinking,

Smiling, retreating into the firmament,

Opens a dark blue fan

With a distinct inscription: death.

“It is no coincidence that the leading themes of their work were in-depth introspection, persistent attempts to sort out their painfully contradictory feelings, doubts, hopes, despair...,” Adamovich wrote in his book “Loneliness and Freedom” 11 about the Russian poets of Paris, which fully applies and to the work of Poplavsky. Death, despair, tragic, insane loneliness (“loneliness in oneself”), rejection - the inability to adapt to a new world for him - are one of the main themes of Boris Poplavsky's poems.

Drink wine, read poetry to each other,

Let's forget the world. The world is unbearable for me -

He is only a weakness, a solar blizzard

In the fatal radiance of unearthly winters.

Poplavsky has some kind of mystical experience of penetrating into other realities. He cannot find the truth on earth, he has no hope, no consolation, no way out of material troubles, a constant feeling of humiliation: "We are going to a restaurant where he stands on the clock / An evil lackey, dissatisfied with our clothes." Complete poverty, internal, deep discord with reality, the richness of his spiritual world and the squalor of the external, misunderstanding on the part of many friends and relatives, the absence of a listener, the complexity and spontaneity of his multifaceted and gifted nature - made him an outcast, an extra person.

Life has passed behind fears and dreams,

Distant edges fade.

Sunset misery over the houses

My new fate.

There was no real ground underfoot, life and sleep merged into one long, meaningless eternity, without a future, without a present. Only the past remained, vague memories of Russia, of happy childhood, but even this memory grew pale, went out like a flash, like the reflections of night lamps, interfered with life, sleep: “Who is screaming over the snowy lodging for the night? / It is the memory that prevents me from sleeping.”

The emptiness of existence, its meaninglessness and hopelessness, poverty, pushed some emigrants to commit suicide. Although the philosophical understanding of death is characteristic of many Russian poets, this theme dominated especially painfully in the works of Russian poets abroad, in particular among the poets of the “Parisian note”.

In the poetry of Boris Poplavsky, the boundaries of two worlds - the material and the spiritual - are erased. The world, things, space - everything is blurry, everything is relative. The world blurs, distorts - this is a chaotic heap of images, things. We find ourselves in such a poetic space of Poplavsky, which includes intuition and intellect, intertwined with his spiritual vision and sense of time and the world, i.e. this is the space of the soul and the world, when the poet tries to express the inexpressible with the help of images: “We danced our life to the noise / Huge trumpets where time rumbled.” Its space is saturated with the most unexpected and bizarre images, a kind of "poetic collage", as in the paintings of surrealist and expressionist artists. They are mystically mysterious, musical, colorful. They combine colors smoothly passing into each other.

The coincidence of the inner intonation inherent only to him with the rhythm of his versification created the music of his poetry. Poplavsky's poems are musical, as if they are surrounded by some kind of mysterious-sounding aura, where words merge with music. “Music comes to the soul like spring, then like a woman. The soul rushes into it and disappears into it, captured by it. The most obvious embodiment of it is a woman, ”the poet writes. His poems fascinate with a subtle, sensitive melody, enveloping him with some kind of magical power. They are narcotic, the sound is hypnotizing, you want to read and read them, listening to their terrible, bewitching, melodic whisper.

Bright evening in the autumn park

The music sang: "I'll be back, I'll be back."

In the evening wonderfully beautiful and brief

The heart cannot forget its sadness.

The music of his poems is light and at the same time dramatic. In some of them, one can catch the romantic-musical notes and rhythms of both Alexander Blok and Georgy Ivanov, poets whom he especially admired:

The delightful evening was full of smiles and sounds.

The blue moon sailed high sounding.

In the semi-darkness You extended your immortal hand to me.

An unforgettable hand that sleepily fell from his shoulder.

Here is a poem by Georgy Ivanov, where the same music is heard: “And again, in the romantic Summer Garden, / In the blue whiteness of St. Petersburg May, / I will silently pass through the deserted alleys, / Embracing your precious shoulders.”

And these lines are from a poem by Boris Poplavsky

reminiscent both in musicality and emotionality of the lines from the famous poem by A. Blok:

May is cruel with white nights!

Eternal knock on the gate: come out!

Blue haze behind

Uncertainty, doom ahead!

And no less famous poem by Georgy Ivanov:

Anyway, don't hold out your hands

Anyway, there's nothing to save

Only blue waves of separation

Only the blue words "I'm sorry."

In 1928, Poplavsky left the following entry in his diary: “The spirit of music does not come to the soul, the soul can become it, but weakened, fall into the music, and then sound sweet (like Blok).” After Poplavsky's death, G. Gazdanov wrote: "Together with him, that last wave of music, which of all his contemporaries was heard only by him, fell silent."

Poetry for Boris Poplavsky is a form of original thinking, a form of expressing one's ideas through secret images that lead away from reality and lead to the unraveling of the comprehension of the eternal Meaning through figurative symbolism. N. Berdyaev wrote that to comprehend the meaning of life is the most important thing, the meaning lies outside the world, and the world rests on a mystery in which rational thinking ends. Poplavsky's poetry is multi-layered and multi-faceted, multi-faceted and multi-valued - the poet uses musical sounds, the sound writing of a poetic word, rhythm and rhythm, a multi-layered palette of colors, colors from white to black. With the help of these techniques, he conveys his inner state, an intuitive sense of the world, the search for the Meaning and secrets of the universe.

In Poplavsky's poetry, we rarely find storylines, but he was constantly looking for new forms, his own, unusual and unprecedented, liberated images that do not obey any established canons of poetics, go beyond the real into a mysterious and incomprehensible world. He gave the reader the opportunity to look with him into other mystical worlds, catch their astral light and hear the quiet whisper of other planets. There is a certain understatement, a sense of mystery in his poetry. The poet does not explain the meaning of his mystical images, but with their help he conveys to us his mood, state of anxiety and foreboding of death. The play of words, colors and sounds, combined with the mystical images of Poplavsky, creates his dramatic sense of the world. Often the density of images, the intensity of emotions and colors deprive the poetry of Boris Poplavsky of air, the reader, together with the poet, suffocates in cold, indifferent Paris: “Paris is cold. Paris is hungry. / Paris does not eat chestnuts in the street. Paris is dressed in beggarly rags. / Paris, as if standing in a stall, sleeps in the subway” (Paul Eluard).

8. Sleep and death, silence and memory...

The lyrical hero of Boris Poplavsky, like the character in Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream", screams into the void, and readers and friends of the poet hear this cry for help, but there is no answer, no one around - only vacuum, emptiness, cold, fear ... They, like A. Blok, "they scream and cry uncontrollably."

… Why were you in a hurry to die?

Are you better off in an icy hell?

I shout: answer ...

No, only cold and fear.

A person who stands over an abyss needs only one step to fall to the very bottom and perish. He is like a runner flying to the finish line, and behind it is emptiness, an abyss. And he no longer feels anything but this swift fall into the abyss - into the abyss of death. How could one not hear a cry for help in these emotionally powerful lines of Poplavsky in the poem "The Manuscript Found in a Bottle"?

Honey, we're dying, cuddle up to me.

The sky oppresses us, the blue firmament strangles us.

Honey, we're waking up, it's in a dream.

Honey, it's not true. Honey, this is death.

“The death of Poplavsky is connected with the insoluble question of the last human loneliness on earth. He paid dearly for his poetry. Were there people who sincerely and warmly loved Poplavsky - were there such people among his many friends and acquaintances? I think no; and it is very scary” (Gaito Gazdanov) 12 . It would seem that friends should have experienced not only admiration for his talents, but also felt intuitively in what a difficult state of mind the poet was. Explicit depression, a state of depression, "loneliness in oneself", inability to endure material difficulties were left without help. An entry from Poplavsky's diary: "Meanwhile, my life is passing by, and from day to day it is waiting for salvation." But salvation did not come. Although back in 1931, reflecting on death, he would write: “Life passed with fears and dreams…”

In the life of a poet, nothing was more important than his poetry. He waited for understanding, but instead he met with cold silence and the feeling that no one needed his poetry. Gradually he fell silent, began to write less. He was extremely sensitive to frequent criticism of his works, and this misunderstanding of his work hurt deeply. And he could not live without creativity. The poet found himself in a vacuum in which he gradually died. He was suffocating without air in the four walls of his loneliness, he was terrified "to open his eyes to the unreal, to see the room, to feel tired and cold, to plunge into fear again." And he was tired, and constantly thought about death.

Light snow fell on lilacs

At a fine hour.

Huge angel on the hill

In cold pink fire

Tired, gone.

Creative numbness, search for oneself, mental rushing and return to drugs, "the painful fabric of his verse" were noticed by his fellow writers, but no step was taken towards them. Ironically, after the death of Boris Poplavsky, he was called the first poet of the Russian emigration. V. Khodasevich wrote in 1938: "As a lyric poet, Poplavsky was undoubtedly one of the most talented in exile, perhaps even the most talented" 13 .

According to Father B. Poplavsky, the last years of his life were “deeply mysterious”, as if he was gradually leaving this world, experiencing an ever-increasing mortal anguish. Fate was not generous to Russian poets - Poplavsky got death by lot. “And yet, if you look at least a little deeper, it becomes clear the terrible inner non-randomness of this misfortune, as if accidental. It may even be a coincidence that it happened precisely on such and such a day and hour, precisely with Poplavsky, because of the damned heroin. But it is not at all accidental that it happened at all in a young literary milieu, among the emigrant Montparnasse. Something of that sort, some kind of catastrophe in general, was not only possible, but it was necessary to wait” 14 .

Illustrations:

photographs of Boris Poplavsky of different years;

autographs and book covers;

the last refuge of the poet

_______________________________________

1 Poplavsky Boris. Poems. - Tomsk: Aquarius, 1997. In the future, B.P.'s poems will be quoted from this book.

2 Varshavsky V.S.. The unnoticed generation. - New York: Izd. Chekhov, 1956, p. 167

3 Shakhovskaya Z. A. Reflections. - Paris: YMCA-Press, 1975. S. 143.

4 Felzen Yu. Poplavsky // Almanac "Circle", No. 1, 1936. S. 172-176.

5 Kraid V. Boris Poplavsky and his prose. // Youth, No. 428, 1991, p.1 - 6.

6 Kraid V. Boris Poplavsky. unknown poems. // Star, No. 7, 1993, p. 112

8 Micic L. Modern new and anticipated painting // Zenith 1921, no. 10, p. eleven.

10Kreid Vadim. Boris Poplavsky and his prose. // Youth, No. 428, pp. 1-6.

11 Adamovich G. Loneliness and freedom. - New York: Izd. Chekhov, 1955.

12 Gazdanov G. About Poplavsky. // Modern notes, 1935. No. 59. P. 462 - 465.

13 From the book "Boris Poplavsky in the assessments and memoirs of his contemporaries". - Art. Petersburg: Logos Publishing House, Blue Rider, 1993.

Biography

Since 1921, B. Yu. Poplavsky has been actively involved in the literary life of Russian Paris. In the early 1920s, he was a member of the avant-garde "left" associations. At the same time, the poet continues his education, attending classes at the Faculty of History and Philology of the Sorbonne. Soon he had to stop these studies, and later the library of St. Genevieve became a university for him, where he studied books on history, philosophy and theology. Literary life in the 1920s was concentrated in cafes, where the entire “Russian Montparnasse” gathered. There Poplavsky spoke at literary and philosophical debates, read his poems.

Poplavsky died in Paris on October 9, along with his casual acquaintance - S. Yarkho from drug poisoning (according to one version, it was suicide, according to another, a friend of Poplavsky decided to commit suicide, who wanted to "grab" someone to the next world) .

Creation

Poplavsky's prose and poetry are characterized by the influence of the work of Arthur Rimbaud, French surrealism and Russian symbolism (primarily Blok); in addition, in the early 1920s, Poplavsky was strongly influenced by Ilya Zdanevich and later wrote that he was at that time "a sharp futurist". Author of the poetry collection "Flags" (1931) and the posthumously published collections "Snow Hour" (1936), "In a wreath of wax" (1938), "Airship of unknown direction" (1965), "Automatic verses" (1999), and also novels "Apollo Ugly" (1932), "Home from Heaven" (fragments appeared in 1936-1938, full edition in 1993).

The main theme of his poetry is death, and the motive is the enjoyment of death, dying. Poplavsky is known for developing this motif through the famous pentameter trochaic (K. Taranovsky), which allowed M. L. Gasparov to call him "the master of choreic death."

In his poetics he widely used metabolas, metaphors and personifications. Poplavsky's novels contain a large number of gradations.

Of the Soviet poets of that time, in terms of the structure of his poetics, Boris Poplavsky is closest to Boris Pasternak and the poets of OBERIU, primarily Zabolotsky.

Since 1929, Poplavsky's poems have been constantly published in Sovremennye Zapiski, almost inaccessible to "young authors". B. Yu. Poplavsky regularly publishes poems and critical articles in the journal "Numbers".

In 1931, Poplavsky's first collection of poetry "Flags" was published. By this time, Poplavsky was “accepted” everywhere, including the Merezhkovskys.

It soon became clear that he was a wonderful speaker. In a word, everything develops in the literary fate of Poplavsky very successfully.

The collection "Flags" turned out to be the only lifetime collection of B. Yu. Poplavsky. Attempts to release the novel "Apollo Bezobrazov" ("Home from heaven" Poplavsky finished a few days before his death) as a separate edition were unsuccessful.

Poplavsky's poems from the collection "Flags" exist at the junction of two cultures. They refract the experience of both new Russian (A. Blok, B. Pasternak) and French (Rimbaud, Apollinaire) poetry. His poems often represent a "retelling" of some non-existent paintings. It is no coincidence that Poplavsky's poetry was repeatedly correlated with Chagall's painting and, noting the powerful melodic beginning, they nevertheless found it "more picturesque than musical."

In the poems of B. Yu. Poplavsky of the 1930s (the posthumous collection "Snow Hour") there is less formal "intention", and the "tragic impressionism" of the best makes one speak of Poplavsky as a worthy successor to the traditions of Russian metaphysical lyrics.

Prose, which has a greater degree of formal freedom, becomes the next stage of development for the "poet of self-knowledge". But the very prose of B.Yu. Poplavsky undergoes an evolution similar to his poetry: from Apollo Bezobrazov (1932), replete with brilliant stylistic games, to cruelly confessional, autobiographical.

Articles 1933-34 - new stage in the work of Poplavsky-critic. The meeting with N. I. Stolyarova did not make any special changes in the life of the poet, but in his work the tonality of the worldview became different.

Compositions

• Flags, Paris, 1931
• Apollo Bezobrazov. Chapters from the novel // "Numbers", No. 2-3, 1930. No. 5, 1931; "Experiments", No. 1, 5, 6, 1953-1956
• Article "Around" Numbers ", 1934.
• Snow hour, Paris, 1936
• Home from heaven Chapters from the novel // "Circle", No. 1-3, 1936-1938; Russian Thought, 1982, 14.1., 21.1., 28.1. and 5.2.
• In a wreath of wax, Paris, 1938
• Airship of unknown direction, Paris, 1965
• Collected works. In 3 vols., Berkeley, 1980-1981 (edited by Simon Karlinsky)
• Under the flag of the stars, Poems, St. Petersburg, 1993
• An attempt with unsuitable means. M., 1997.
• Dadaphonia. M., 1999.
• Automatic verses. M., 1999.
• Works. M., 1999.
• Unpublished poems. M., 2003.

Literature

• Boris Poplavsky in the assessments and memoirs of his contemporaries. St. Petersburg, Düsseldorf, 1993
• Menegaldo E. The poetic universe of Boris Poplavsky. - St. Petersburg. : Alateya, 2007. - ISBN 978-5-903354-54-2

Links

• Boris Poplavsky: poetry, prose, criticism, memoirs (Russian)
• Poplavsky Boris Yulianovich (Russian)
• Boris Yulianovich POPLAVSKY (1903-1935) (Russian)

melodeclamations

• Melodeclamation of Boris Poplavsky's poem "Salome"

Categories:

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• June 7
• Born in 1903
• Born in Moscow
• Deceased October 9
• Deceased in 1935
• Deceased in Paris
• Poets in alphabetical order
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• Died from poisoning
• Russian poets
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• Russian emigrants of the first wave in France
• Buried in the cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois
• Surrealism
• Russian writers of the first wave of emigration

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See what "Poplavsky, Boris Yulianovich" is in other dictionaries:

POPLAVSKY Boris Yulianovich- (1903 1935) Russian poet. In 1921 he emigrated. Lyrics (collections Flags, 1931, Snow Hour, published 1936, In a wreath from the army, published 1938) are marked by features of surrealism, a combination of mystical and Christian motifs with specifics ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Poplavsky, Boris Yulianovich- POPLAVSKY Boris Yulianovich (1903 35), Russian poet. Emigrant (since 1921). In the lyrics (collections “Flags”, 1931, “Snow Hour”, published in 1936, “In a Wreath of Wax”, published in 1938), features of surrealism, a combination of mystical and Christian motifs with ... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

Poplavsky Boris Yulianovich- (1903 1935), Russian poet. In 1921 he emigrated. In the lyrics (collections "Flags", 1931, "Snow Hour", published in 1936, "In a wreath of wax", published in 1938) features of surrealism, a combination of mystical and Christian motifs with specifics ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Poplavsky Boris Yulianovich- Boris Yulianovich Poplavsky (1903 1935), the most prominent poet and prose writer of the Russian diaspora (the first wave of emigration). Born on May 24 (June 6) in Moscow, in a Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian family. Father graduated from the Moscow Conservatory (student of P. I. Tchaikovsky) ... Wikipedia

Poplavsky, Boris Yulianovich- Genus. 1903, mind. 1935. Poet. Works: "Flags" (collection of lyric poems, 1931), "Snow hour" (collection of lyrics, 1936), "In a wreath from the army" (collection, 1938). Since 1921 in exile ... Big biographical encyclopedia

Boris Yulianovich Poplavsky- (1903 1935) the most prominent poet and prose writer of the Russian diaspora (the first wave of emigration). Born on May 24 (June 6) in Moscow, in a Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian family. Father graduated from the Moscow Conservatory (student of P. I. Tchaikovsky), but left music and ... ... Wikipedia

POPLAVSKY- Boris Yulianovich (1903-35), Russian poet. Emigrant (since 1921). In the lyrics (collections Flags, 1931, Snow Hour, published in 1936, In a wreath of wax, published in 1938) features of surrealism, a combination of mystical and Christian motifs with specifics ... ... Modern Encyclopedia

Poplavsky- Contents 1 Men 1.1 A 1.2 B 1.3 C ... Wikipedia

Russian poets of the first emigration- The list of Russian poets of the first emigration includes authors who, after the October Revolution of 1917, found themselves outside Soviet Russia and continued their literary activity in other countries (as well as those who, like Boris Poplavsky, ... ... Wikipedia

Russian poets of the first wave of emigration- The list of Russian poets of the first wave of emigration includes authors who, after the October Revolution of 1917, found themselves outside Soviet Russia and continued their literary activities in other countries (as well as those who, like Boris ... ... Wikipedia

Boris Yulianovich Poplavsky is one of the emigrant poets of the early 20th century. Like Vladimir Nabokov, he left Russia at a young age with his family, not by choice. His work, which unusually combines the well-known Russian symbolism of the "Silver Age" and the French surrealist direction, is one of the most interesting examples of the poetry of the Russian emigration.
Poems by Boris Poplavsky often dealt with the theme of death as a desired event, and, unfortunately, this interest went beyond the scope of creativity. One version of it tragic death On October 9, 1935, at the age of only 32, there was a suicide. According to another, he was killed by an acquaintance who in turn committed suicide.

Before emigration
The future poet was born in Moscow on May 24 (June 7, according to the new style), 1903. His parents, with Lithuanian roots, were graduates of the Moscow Conservatory, students of Tchaikovsky - but his father left music in order to provide for his family, and went into business.
The family often traveled abroad, for Poplavsky French was practically a second family. He studied at the French Lyceum in Moscow.
Boris Poplavsky began to write poetry under the influence of older sister Natalia, who, unfortunately, died early, having managed to release a collection of her works before.
Immediately after the revolution, the family did not leave the country, but only moved first to Kharkov, and then to the Crimea - it was there, in 1919, that Boris Poplavsky's poems were first heard publicly in front of a significant audience.
It was only during the Civil War that the Poplavskys nevertheless left Russia, initially settling in Constantinople. It was then that Boris Yulianovich realized that he wanted to devote himself to poetry.

Creativity in exile
In the capital Ottoman Empire who lived out her last days, the Poplavsky family did not linger. Soon they moved to where most of the Russian emigrants flocked - to Paris. Here Poplavsky plunged headlong into literary life.
In Paris, the poet created a local branch of the famous "Workshop of Poets", although it is rather difficult to attribute it to the Acmeists - Boris Poplavsky already wrote poetry under the strong influence of French authors.
Also, Poplavsky was simultaneously a member of a mass of various poetic associations (“Gatarapak”, “Through”, and others). He also showed himself as an art critic, devoting articles to the work of Marc Chagall and other famous artists.
Poplavsky himself at one time was engaged in porter, studying in Berlin. Later he studied at the Paris Sorbonne, seriously taking a great interest in theology. His poetic work evolved, in many ways starting to resemble poets from OBERIU.
In 1931, Boris Poplavsky released his only lifetime collection of poems - "Flags". Another, called "Snow Hour", saw the light after the death of the poet.

Mysterious death
The death of the poet has remained a mystery. It is known that he, along with his casual acquaintance by the name of Yarkho, died from an overdose of a certain narcotic substance. There were rumors that Yarkho decided to commit suicide, while Poplavsky deliberately poisoned. Alas, we will never know the truth.

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