Heinrich Sapgir - biography, photos. Heinrich Sapgir - biography, photos Semyon Sapgir performance
Genrih Sapgip Career: Poet
Birth: Russia "Altai Territory" Biysk, 11/20/1928 - 7.10
Genrikh Sapgir - Soviet and Russian poet, prose writer, screenwriter, songwriter. Born on November 20, 1928 in the city of Biysk.
Heinrich Veniaminovich did not differ in good health. My heart has been beating for a long time. He suffered a heart attack in the early 90s, doctors, friends warned him more than once: "It's time to think about yourself, love yourself." But he took it all as a joke. I thought - it’s not about him, it has nothing to do with him, but:
When I was a soldier, I always wanted to eat - that's me. The rest, I thought, was not with me - and how they were wounded, and how he died in the hospital, in bandages and blood.
Genrikh Sapgir was born in Biysk, Altai. This fact is no less original than his work. He said jokingly more than once: "There are Bukharian and Siberian Jews, but the Altai Jews - I, obviously, alone." It so happened that in 1928 Sapgir's parents, who had previously lived in the famous Vitebsk, ended up on a long business trip to Biysk. There, in this center of Altai, Heinrich was born. Soon, after the birth of little Heinrich, his mother left for Moscow with him, and the rest of his life passed - with departures, departures - in this city. But both in Vitebsk and in Moscow, Heinrich's parents spoke Yiddish, and that same language forever remained in his memory: Jewish words, phrases, sayings often interspersed in his speech with Russian.
For the first time, the noise about the name of Sapgir arose when the famous writer's almanac "Metropol" (1979) appeared. In it, along with poems by E. Yevtushenko, A. Voznesensky, verses by G. Sapgir and E. Rein were published. Then both he and Rein "got away with it" - against the backdrop of celebrities, their names were not honored. But, at the same time, the collection "Metropol" marked the first publication of Sapgir's "adult" poems in the USSR.
The first book of children's poems by G. Sapgir was published in the USSR in 1960, the second - already solid, "Favorites", was published in 1993 in Moscow. This book was evidence that a master entered Russian literature. Who is he? Poet? Prose writer? An experimenter writing for a prepared reader? One thing was clear - the name of Heinrich Sapgir broke into Russian literature firmly and for a long time.
My acquaintance with Genrikh Veniaminovich took place by telephone, in the autumn of 1991 he called me. I remember his sound, accent - in particular. It seemed to me a little shtetl-Jewish. But this is by phone. In life, both the sound and the accent were completely different. Why did you call me at home? I was glad that in my book I mentioned the name of my favorite poet and friend Ovsei Ovseevich Driz. At that time, not only did I not know him personally, but I was not familiar with his work, in addition to translations from Ovsei Driz.
In recent years, we have met often, talked for a long time. I remember the summit at the end of December 1995 at the anniversary of Evgeny Borisovich Rein. Heinrich Veniaminovich read the verses. I realized right away that these verses have something to do with the hero of the day, although in general, as with most true poets. Sapgir published them in full in his book "Flying and Sleeping", dedicating them to Evgeny Rein and titled "Untitled".
Running away from jealous depression
and yearning like Faust for youth
wallowed all day long - dried up on the beach
shrunken to black
poet - vobla imagination
and yet she caught up with you
cornered like a woman
threw it into the pillow
and you saw yourself from behind
through inverted binoculars:
don't imagine that you're all alone
hear the crunch and rustle -
steps on the pebbles after you
a whole gang of the living and the dead
enter the eyes and ears
like in your home
perhaps they will fly with you to Paris
and to America - in the porthole
cute group in the clouds - all the same -
either green or red
on the flashing wing of a Boeing
Heinrich Sapgir is an amazing storyteller. Perhaps, from the people with whom I met, only Evgeny Rein could "compete" with him in this skill. Once Heinrich in a taxi forgot a folder with other people's manuscripts, which he was given to read. Rising home and ringing the gate, he remembered the forgotten and immediately rushed down in the hope of returning the papers. Of course, that taxi was no longer there, but he got into another and caught up with the manuscripts "near his home, near the Novoslobodskaya metro station. Luckily there was a traffic jam." Not having paid off with the "new" driver, he generously thanked the first taxi driver, and when he came home, he remembered that he had upset his savior. Fortunately, he remembered the number of the car. He had to look for the person he needed through a taxi company in order to pay him off. And so he did.
In one of our conversations, Heinrich said: "Ask me whatever questions you want. You can find answers to any of your questions in my books. I think I gave you my last book. And at the moment, let's raise another koishu (glass - Heb. )".
If Sapgir had translated only "The Wise Men of Kholem" by Driz, making them a part of Russian literature, then this alone would be enough to classify him as a Russian-Jewish writer. But he also wrote wonderful verses on biblical subjects, in particular "Psalms of David" and "Three Lessons of Hebrew".
what are you worried about
what role does that play!
What is it? What is the occupation?
allowed?
stinks in here
it is truth?
the truth is that you
what a truth!
stay calm
Trust me
drop it
I'm still waiting
trouble
relatives most likely
hard to say
do me a favour
sit quietly do not climb
Go to hell!
hello goodbye
Take care of yourself
nigmar hainyan
Literary critic Andrei Ranchin was right when he wrote about Sapgir's work: "Probably, the main quality of Heinrich Sapgir's poetic gift is independence from any canons and frameworks. Sapgir often writes like this, there was not a single poet, not a single poetic text purely before him. He remains himself themselves in "imitations" of poets of different epochs".
"Ovsei Driz's poems, from the long cycle" The Wise Men of Helom, "I happened to hear the translator perform at the last, it seems, lifetime evening of the poet. Ovsei read his poems: he sang in the original language. The impression is still huge, a quarter of a century later. : Driza was not the only one who translated Sapgir, but today only these translations are allowed and should be re-read - masterpieces worthy of Sholom Aleichem," - this is written in "An Anthology of Important Poetry in Russian Translations of the 20th Century". Here are excerpts from the brilliant "Kheloma" poetic duet Sapgir-Driz:
It's hard to believe
I don't argue with you
But in the city of Helome,
There was no bath.
From the poorest
To the richest
Everyone washed in troughs,
Basins and ears.
Until it arrived
News to Helom
What's beyond the sea
There are Turkish baths.
Turkish baths
From pure marble:
Do you want to wash
Ride yourself across the sea.
And somehow they came
To the wise men, the townspeople:
It's time for us to build
turkish baths,
Turkish baths
Of pure marble
To not ride
It's hard to believe
I don't argue with you
But whatever the wisest,
sparkling eyes,
The carpenter filed
The wisest advice
which have not been heard
A thousand years
Plane boards!
Strict, don't be lazy.
But just put them down
Planed down.
It's hard to believe
But in the Turkish bath
People are washing
Since then in Turkish.
With iron bars
Like in the clouds.
They sit in boots
And in shoes.
Heinrich Sapgir translated a few dozen poems by Driz. Their creative community was a continuation of personal friendship. Distant in age (Heinrich was twenty years younger than Ovsey), who received a different upbringing (Ovsey Driz, who grew up in the town of "Krasnoe" in Podolia, who knew Jewish traditions and Yiddish from childhood, Henry, as already mentioned, grew up in Moscow), they supported a friend of a friend in both bad and good times. Driz's poems have not been published in their native language for a long time, since 1934. But in 1959, his collection "Merry Baker" was published in Russian. It contained a lot of translations by G. Sapgir, although, in fact, as in the following collections by Driz "Top of Summer" (1961), "The Tree Has Arrived (1966).
What most of all united these two different people? Love for children, for their imagination; belief in the reality of fantasy and, of course, a joke. G. Sapgir called O. Driz "the main pioneer of the country", because the birthday of Ovsey - May 19 - coincided with the birthday of the pioneer organization named after. V.I. Lenin. All this is true, but most of all they had in common reverence for the Talmud.
Oh, how beautiful the leaves are born!
Like the fists of a newborn
Still compressed,
still closed,
But already aimed at the sky:
All is mine!
Oh, how beautifully the leaves die!
Like open palms of wax
Who goes to another world:
Look
We didn't take anything with us.
This poem testifies that both Ovsei Driz and Henry Sapgir knew the Talmud. It says: "A person comes into the world with clenched palms, and, as it were, says: the whole world is mine, but leaves it with open palms, and, as it were, says: look, I do not take anything with me."
I think that the top of the mountain, whose name "Sapgir-Driz" was the poem "Purple Day".
A lot of memories and poems have been written about the funeral of Mikhoels. The unforgettable lines of Peretz Markish from his poem "Mikhoelsu - an unquenchable lamp" and now, more than half a century after this funeral of the actor, cannot leave indifferent. And moreover, against the background of this majestic poem "Purple Day" by Driz, translated by G. Sapgir, remains a symphony of memory and sorrow that has entered eternity.
The day was purple
Cloudy skies - fish scales
Somewhere trams, cars were noisy,
And in this place on Malaya Bronnaya,
There was silence
And in a strange procession
yellow - red - green
There were jokes in silence.
It was gloomy and damp
The jesters carried on their shoulders
Went cautiously
Like on the edge of an abyss
In its solemn absurdity
Magnificent jesters
Silence mourned him
Only the bells tinkled,
Sewn on jester's caps:
Ding, ding, ding, ding.
The day was purple.
The sky floated like a big fish.
The trumpets didn't cry.
And the flutes did not squeal.
Only the bells were crying
They rang: ding - ding,
ding ding.
The day was like darkness.
The flour distorted the comedian's mask.
Look, there on the roof of the house
A gray-haired violinist appeared.
And soared a blue frying pan of hair!
And the violin sang
Gold fish!
Cry, fish, cry.
Above the face of the king - the secret of secrets:
This ancient violinist.
There was a great Einstein.
But the jesters did not know this.
And the day was purple
It was damp.
“Having entered the“ strange country of Sapgir ”, you soon feel, of course, as in reality. The world itself slipped him a template for bending his own idea of \u200b\u200bthe world order.
But the truth sparkles in this poetry not only from the clashes of incompatible concepts and shifts in meaning, but also from the very construction of the verse. Sapgir masters in all areas of poetic form-creation," Andrey Bitov, one of the most prominent writers of our time, said about him.
One of his best books, Flying and Sleeping, was published in 1997. Reading this book, I often recalled the paintings of the early Chagall. There is something in common between these two artists (in fact, in the title of the book "Flying:" there is already something Chagall, Vitebsk). I think, most likely, these two artists are united by the desire to bring joy to themselves with their creations, joy that overwhelms their own heart. They acted as advised by the Baal Shem Tov: "He who lives in joy does the will of the Creator." I believe that both Chagall and Sapgir, creating their creations, least of all thought about admirers, admirers. Although they understood that they exist and, of course, they will be after that. The fantasies they create will exist forever. Einstein said: "To the one who creates, the fruits of his own imagination seem so necessary and natural that he himself considers them not as ways of thinking, but given realities, and wants everyone to think so."
Here is the only one of G. Sapgir's extremely characteristic short stories:
PRINCESS.
A strange occupation, this girl remembered herself as a princess.
When I was a princess, she said.
What did you eat then? - I ask.
Fricassee and blancmange.
What is it, I don't know. Apparently, he was not a prince in a past life.
Also read the biographies of famous people:
Heinrich Altshuller Genrih Altshuller
Heinrich Boll Genrih Boll
Belle has always been a writer on a grand scale, concerned about the fate of both a whole generation of Germans and an individual who is forced to live in...
Heinrich Borovik Genrih Borovik
Laureate of the USSR State Prizes, writer, publicist, playwright, public figure, chairman of the Artem Charitable Foundation.
Heinrich Woeflin Genrih Voeflin
I am a formalist among art historians." I take this title as an honorary title, since it is about the fact that I always saw the first task ..
Genrikh Veniaminovich Sapgir(11/20/1928) - Russian poet. The boy began to read very early and a lot, not always understanding what he was reading. Young Heinrich also tried to write as a child, in the first grades of school. He studied at the literary studio of the poet Arseny Alving.
Sapgir was one of those who returned poetry to poetry for kids. In the 1960s, there was a publishing house in Moscow that published books for the little ones. It was called "Baby". In this publishing house there lived an editor-in-chief named Uncle Yura, and if in an adult way - Yuri Pavlovich Timofeev. It was he who once asked the poet Heinrich Sapgir: “And write poetry for us!”
- About what? Saphir asked.
- About anything. Well, for example, about the fact that April is in the yard.
- And if it's April, can I write about cats?
“Good,” Uncle Yura said.
And these verses came out:
Meow! Finally warm. Spring.
In April, cats are not up to sleep.
I do not understand how in April
Children can sleep in bed.
Would walk on their rooftops
Under a big and red month.
And after that, children's poems fell from Sapgir, like apples from an apple tree, if you shake it. The heroes of the poet's poetic tales - Losharik, the Ogre and the Princess, the daredevils from the country of Laughing, the train from Romashkov, gained wide popularity. Fruitful was the work of Sapgir with the wonderful storyteller G. Tsyferov on the scripts for the cartoons "Losharik", the Train from Romashkov, "My Green Crocodile", "The Frog is looking for dad."
Heinrich Sapgir wrote children's poems in such a way that it would be interesting for himself, that adults would like it, that children would be delighted. This proves that the poems he wrote work 365 days a year. Every day. And even in the evening, and even at night ...
Books:
"Wonder Forests"
"Clock"
"Poems"
"Painted Sun"
"My friend is an umbrella"
"Mysteries from the Garden"
"Circus"
“How the donkey fell ill with sadness and other tales”
From the book of fate. Born November 20, 1928 in Biysk, Altai Territory, the son of a Moscow engineer who was in Altai on a business trip and soon returned to Moscow with his family.
Since 1944 - a member of the literary studio of the poet and artist Yevgeny Kropivnitsky at one of the Moscow houses of pioneers. Since the late 50s, a close circle of aesthetically close poets and artists formed around Kropivnitsky and his student, the artist Oscar Rabin, who later received the name of the “Lianozovo school” (Rabin lived not far from the Lianozovo station near Moscow).
In the Soviet years, Genrikh Veniaminovich worked a lot for children: he wrote the scripts for the classic cartoons “Losharik”, “The Train from Romashkov”, “About Foma and Yerema”, “Sineglazka”, “How the donkey fell ill with sadness” and many others; what is called, the song on his words is heard - “The Green Carriage” (translated from Yiddish, poems by Ovsey Driz), as well as songs from the cartoons “The Adventures of the Yellow Suitcase”, “Visiting the Dwarves”, “Blue Elephant”, “Santa Claus and the Gray Wolf", "Cinderella", "The Princess and the Ogre" and a number of others.
In 1979, Genrikh Sapgir participated in the Metropol almanac. The first publications of "adult" poems by Sapgir: abroad - in 1968, in the USSR - in 1989. He also acted as a translator (first of all, of the outstanding Jewish poet Ovsei Driz, German concrete poetry and the American poet Jim Cates).
Compiled the poetic section of the anthology "Samizdat of the Century" (1998), on the basis of which the Internet project "Unofficial Poetry" was created.
Laureate of the Pushkin Prize of the Russian Federation, awards of the magazines "Znamya" (1993) and "Sagittarius" (1995, 1996), award "For Special Merits" of the Turgenev Festival of Short Prose (1998).
During the years of perestroika, he became a member of the Writers' Union of Moscow (since 1988), although he had a negative attitude towards the idea of the Writers' Union. Has been a member of PEN since 1995; before his death, he joined the DOOS group (in 1999).
He died on October 7, 1999 from a heart attack in a Moscow trolley bus on the way to the presentation of the anthology Poetry of Silence, where he was supposed to speak.
As literary scholars write, Genrikh Veniaminovich successfully combined humor and irony, parody and satire, everyday episodes of an anecdotal nature and phantasmagoria in such books as "Poems" (1987), "Moscow Myths" (1989), "Pushkin's Drafts" (1992) , Favorites...
Fragments to the biography of the poet
Time is undoubtedly the best judge that determines the strength of a work of art or literature. I involuntarily thought about it again, opening a book of poems by Heinrich Sapgir, The Folder, published in Russia more than a year ago and which reached me quite recently. His poetry - for children and adults - the inter-age boundary between which was always a blurry space, was equally saturated with elements of play, light, kindness ... The Moscow avant-garde (late 50s - early 60s), one of leaders of which he turned out to be, was conditionally designated as "barrack poetry" ...
However, it is not the term that is important, but its essence: in the Word or groups of Words, Heinrich Sapgir looked for and found some new resources, the energy of his work led the reader into such zones of perception of the world, where, it would seem, known things, concepts and ideas changed, varied , were exposed in a new way, and attempts to determine this, indicate the literary coordinates and the origin of his work went into the abyss, where only on the surface were the names of Kropivnitsky or Kholin, and much deeper - Kharms, Khlebnikov ... Sapgir, however, always broke out of what -the schemes that critics and literary critics selected for him, somehow imperceptibly mixed all the cards, leaving his interpreters with a nose.
Reading his poetry is a pleasure. However, to determine what exactly, I, in all honesty, will not undertake to say. How, in fact, to determine - how can we like this or that cloud, tree, bird, apple? .. Especially - a flashed shadow, the sound of raindrops, the crunch of snow ...
Sapgir's poetry is woven from the constant play of characters and things, their shadows, the sensations they evoked, ideas about what they associated with. Not at all, not from someone, but from him. In Skladnya, a volume of more than 900 pages, compiled from collections of poems from 1958 to the late nineties, that is, in fact, to those that he wrote shortly before his death, all this is clearly visible, obviously, and if I do not I am quoting nothing now, then - deliberately, because to illustrate what is at stake, I would have to quote a lot. Considering that Sapgir's texts are not particularly difficult to find in our Internet time, that is, they remain potentially available to those who wish (books that came out from under the printing press are still a different matter!), I leave the possibility of searching to the personal discretion of each . However, for those who are familiar with the poetic work of this master a little, and for those who know him quite well, it will be necessary to make an exception. This concerns a poem, which for some reason he did not include in any of his known books and which, I strongly suspect, has remained unpublished to this day ...
sat in the baby
evil
it squeezed
plump tender fists
trampled
pink feet
(all in bandages)
mouth -
wider face:
give!
earth smeared with sky
thick pie -
Over the horizon
eat - do not want ...
but when they stayed
the last crumbs
the old man howled:
Oh my God! God!
I was devoured
evil
Printed on a typewriter on a separate sheet with the words: “In memory of Lena”, it is kept by his daughter from her first marriage, a journalist of the International French Radio, Elena Genrikhovna Sapgir, who has been living in France for a long time (for me, by friendship, - Lena) - do not confuse c her namesake, collaborating with the newspaper "Russian Thought" ...
Having received kind permission to publish Evil, I learned from Lena a rather curious story about this text. Her father, she said, sometimes showed special generosity - having heard from one of his acquaintances or friends a warm response to one or another of his poems, he could make a grand gesture: “Well, I dedicate it to you!”.
However, when she asked to dedicate the "Evil" she liked very much to her, her father unexpectedly showed restraint unusual for him, obvious unwillingness ... Why? He did not speak directly about this, but, as Elena suggests, perhaps the very idea of \u200b\u200b"giving evil" was hindered by a certain psychological, subconscious-mystical barrier. However, he still made this gift. No, not handing the page with "Evil" directly into the hands of his daughter, who visited him, but without saying anything, putting it in a magazine with her new publication, which she took with her when she flew from Moscow to Paris. The date next to the signature indicates that it was August 14, 1995.
During the fire that happened to Lena in January 2005, which, among many things, took away some of the things related to the memory of his father (his typewriter also died in the fire then), but - not dedicated, but donated! - "Evil" survived. Metaphor in this case, of course, without bitterness.
For the first time, Heinrich Sapgir was able to see France in the fall of 1987. Meetings with relatives and friends were exceptionally warm and joyful. The artist William Bruy, who had a large workshop in Paris, organized the author's evening of the poet on November 27 there. The poems that Sapgir prepared for reading, the friends decided to release as a separate book. The idea was twofold: to capture a memorable event and, through the sale of the collection, to support the author financially. The notebook with a volume of 42 pages was called extremely modestly: "Poems 87". The typographical work was done in the publishing house "Syntax" by Maria Rozanova (Sinyavskaya). However, the gift was provided with a joke: instead of "Syntax" in the imprint of the collection, the non-existent publishing house "Afonya" was indicated. “Afoney” was really Elena Afanasyeva, a highly professional compositor known in the creative circles of Russian Parisians, who worked at that time for Rozanova. The drawing for the cover of "Poems 87" was made by a Russian Parisian, graphic artist Vitaly Statsinsky.
Speaking of Elena Afanasyeva, it should be noted that she took on "Poems 87" not just "for the company", but turned out to be the initiator of the action - she had known Genrikh Sapgir for a long time, she had been friends with him since 1968! ..
The publishing house "Afonya", meanwhile, was also indicated in another collection of the poet: "FACES OF SOCA", published in Paris in 1990. The publisher of this small book (which, of course, was typed by E. Afanasyeva, and designed by Alexei Khvostenko) is also the Association of Russian Artists and Publishers. There were no other books in Paris under the brand name of the Afonya Publishing House, except for these two, Sapgir's, there were. However, since de facto it turned out to be indicated (and according to the Russian proverb: written with a pen - do not cut down with an ax), I think that when compiling reference books on the history of the press of Russian emigration in France, it is not necessary to forget about him, even with his mythical status. Bibliophiles will at least have one less question.
What circulation did "Poems 87" and "FACES OF SOCA" have? According to Elena Afanasyeva, each is printed in an amount not exceeding 100 copies.
1. G. Sapgir, Skladen, ed. Time, M., 2008
First publication: Literary European, 148, Frankfurt am Main, 2010.
The material for the "45th Parallel" was provided by the author of the essay.
Illustrations:
portrait of the poet by Dmitry Savitsky;
Heinrich Sapgir at the dacha of the artist William Brui
during his first visit to France in 1987
(picture from the personal archive of E. Sapgir);
original poem "Evil";
covers of some books for children.
Loading...