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The war turned Simonov to prose. At first, Simonov turns to journalism, since working for a newspaper requires efficiency in depicting events. But soon Simonov’s stories began to appear on the pages of “Red Star”. Here's what he himself wrote about it later:
“When I left for the war as a war correspondent for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, the last thing I wanted to do was write stories about the war. I thought of writing anything: articles, correspondence, essays, but not stories at all. And for about the first six months of the war, this is how it happened.
But one day in the winter of 1942, the newspaper editor called me and said:
Listen, Simonov, remember, when you returned from Crimea, you told me about the commissar who said that the brave die less often?
Perplexed, I replied that I remember.
So,” said the editor, “you should write a story on this topic.” This idea is important and, in essence, fair.
I left the editor with timidity in my soul. I had never written a story, and this proposal scared me a little.
But when I leafed through the pages in my notebook relating to the commissar the editor was talking about, so many memories and thoughts came flooding back to me that I myself wanted to write a story about this man... I wrote the story “The Third Adjutant” - the first story that ever wrote in his life."
In his prose work, K. Simonov did not deviate from his basic literary principles: he wrote about war as the hard and dangerous work of the people, showing what efforts and sacrifices it costs us every day. He wrote with the stern mercilessness and frankness of a man who saw the war as it was. K. Simonov comprehends the problem of the relationship between war and man. War is inhumane, cruel and destructive, but it produces a huge increase in civic engagement and conscious heroism.
Many biographers, describing the military activities of K. Simonov as a correspondent and writer, speak, on the basis of his works, about his personal courage. K. Simonov himself does not agree with this. In a letter to L.A. He writes to Fink on December 6, 1977: “I saw people of “great courage” in the war, I had the inner opportunity to compare them with myself. So, based on this comparison, I can say that I myself was not a person of “great personal courage.” I think that, in general, he was a man of duty, as a rule, but not beyond that. I didn’t feel like a soldier; sometimes, due to the course of circumstances, I found myself in the soldier’s shoes in the sense that I found myself in the same position, temporarily and not permanently, which is very important. A person who has been in the position of a soldier for a long time and constantly can feel like a soldier. I haven’t been in this position for a long time and constantly.” In Simonov's prose we find a story about the “great courage” and heroism of a soldier - an ordinary soldier and an officer.
When Simonov turned to prose, he immediately realized its features and advantages. Prose allowed him to engage in more detailed and thorough socio-psychological research of man. Already the first story by K. Simonov allows us to say how many features of Simonov’s prose developed. Very sparingly, telling only individual details about the immediate battle episodes, Simonov pays the main attention to the moral and ideological basis of actions. He talks not only about how a person behaves in war, but also why his hero acts this way and not otherwise.
Simonov's interest in the inner world of his heroes must be especially emphasized, because many critics are convinced of the empirical-descriptive, informative nature of his prose. The life experience of a war correspondent, the imagination and talent of an artist, closely interacting with each other, helped Simonov to a large extent avoid both dangers - both descriptiveness and illustrativeness. The prose of a journalist - this characteristic of K. Simonov’s military prose is widespread, including under his own influence. “I didn’t want to separate essays from stories,” he wrote, reprinting his front-line prose, “because the difference between the two is mostly only in the names - real and fictitious; there are real people behind most stories.” Such self-characterization is not entirely objective, since the essays are inferior to the stories of K. Simonov both in the degree of generalization and in the depth of philosophical issues.
Simonov Konstantin (real name - Kirill) Mikhailovich (1915-1979) - poet, prose writer, playwright.
Born on November 15 (28) in Petrograd, he was raised by his stepfather, a teacher at a military school. My childhood years were spent in Ryazan and Saratov.
Having graduated from the seven-year school I in Saratov in 1930, he went to the factory head teacher to study as a turner. In 1931, the family moved to Moscow, and Simonov, having graduated here as the head teacher of precision mechanics, went to work at the plant. During these same years he began to write poetry. He worked at the plant until 1935.
In 1936, the first poems of K. Simonov were published in the magazines “Young Guard” and “October”. After graduating from the Literary Institute. M. Gorky in 1938, Simonov entered graduate school at the IFLI (Institute of History, Philosophy, Literature), but in 1939 he was sent as a war correspondent to Khalkin-Gol in Mongolia and never returned to the institute.
In 1940 he wrote his first play, “The Story of a Love,” staged on the stage of the Theater. Lenin Komsomol; in 1941 - the second - "A guy from our city."
For a year he studied at the war correspondents' course at the Military-Political Academy and received the military rank of quartermaster of the second rank.
At the beginning of the war he was drafted into the army and worked for the newspaper "Battle Banner". In 1942 he was awarded the rank of senior battalion commissar, in 1943 - the rank of lieutenant colonel, and after the war - colonel. Most of his military correspondence was published in Red Star. During the war years, he also wrote the plays “Russian People”, “So It Will Be”, the story “Days and Nights”, two books of poems “With You and Without You” and “War”; His lyric poem “Wait for me...” became widely known.
As a war correspondent, he visited all fronts, walked through the lands of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland and Germany, and witnessed the last battles for Berlin. After the war, his collections of essays appeared: “Letters from Czechoslovakia”, “Slavic Friendship”, “Yugoslav Notebook”, “From the Black to the Barents Sea. Notes of a War Correspondent”.
After the war, Simonov spent three years on numerous foreign business trips (Japan, USA, China).
From 1958 to 1960 he lived in Tashkent as a Pravda correspondent for the republics of Central Asia.
The first novel, Comrades in Arms, was published in 1952, then the first book of the trilogy, The Living and the Dead (1959). In 1961, the Sovremennik Theater staged Simonov's play "The Fourth". In 1963, the second book of the trilogy appeared - the novel “Soldiers Are Not Born.” (In 19/0 - 3rd book “The Last Summer”.)
Based on Simonov's scripts, the following films were produced: "A Guy from Our City" (1942), "Wait for Me" (1943), "Days and Nights" (1943), "Immortal Garrison" (1956), "Normandie-Niemen" (1960, together with Sh. Spaakomi, E. Triolet), “The Living and the Dead” (1964).
In the post-war years, Simonov's social activities developed as follows: from 1946 to 1950 and from 1954 to 1958 he was editor-in-chief of the magazine "New World"; from 1954 to 1958 he was editor-in-chief of the New World magazine; from 1950 to 1953 - editor-in-chief of the Literary Newspaper; from 1946 to 1959 and from 1967 to 1979 - secretary of the USSR Writers' Union.
K. Simonov died in 1979 in Moscow.
(to the 100th anniversary of K. M. Simonov)
The year of the 70th anniversary of the Victory coincided with the 100th anniversary of the poet and warrior Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov. Konstantin Simonov became one of the symbols of the wartime, like his famous poem “Wait for me” - a spell, a prayer. His ashes were scattered on a field in Buinich, near Mogilev, where he once fought, where the heroes of his famous novel “The Living and the Dead” Serpilin and Sintsov met.
Konstantin (Kirill) Mikhailovich Simonov was born in 1915 in Petrograd into the family of a tsarist general and a princess from an old Russian family (nee Princess Obolenskaya). He never saw his father: he went missing at the front in the First World War (as the writer noted in his official biography). The boy was raised by his stepfather, who taught tactics at military schools and later became the commander of the Red Army. Konstantin's childhood was spent in military camps and commander's dormitories. After finishing seven classes, he entered the factory school (FZU), worked as a metal turner, first in Saratov, and then in Moscow, where the family moved in 1931.
From 1934 to 1938 he studied at the Literary Institute. M. Gorky.
The war for Simonov began not in forty-one, but in thirty-nine at Khalkhin Gol, where a poet was needed. The editor of the newspaper of our group of troops, “Heroic Red Army”, published in Mongolia, sent a telegram to the Political Directorate of the Army: “Send a poet urgently.” It was there that he received his first literary military experience, and many new accents of his work were determined. In addition to essays and reports, the correspondent brings a cycle of poems from the theater of war, which soon gains all-Union fame.
Front-line correspondents K. Simonov (left), I. Zotov, E. Krieger, I. Utkin in the front line during the days of the defense of Moscow
From the first days of the Great Patriotic War, Konstantin Simonov was in the active army. As a war correspondent, he visited all fronts, was directly and in the chains of counterattacking infantrymen, went with a reconnaissance group behind the front line, participated in a combat campaign of a submarine, was among the defenders of Odessa, Stalingrad, among the Yugoslav partisans, in advanced units: during the Kursk battle, the Belarusian operation, in the final operations to liberate Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Simonov was present at the first trial of war criminals in Kharkov, and was in the newly liberated Auschwitz and in many other places where the decisive events of the war took place. In 1945, Simonov witnessed the last battles for Berlin. He was present at the signing of Hitler's surrender in Karlshorst. Awarded four military orders.
After Pravda published the poem “Wait for Me,” dedicated to the woman he loved, actress Valentina Serova, K. Simonov became the most famous and revered poet in the country.
Valentina Serova. Still from the film “Wait for Me.”
Valentina Serova and Konstantin Simonov at the front.
The “military theme” became the life and destiny of the poet Konstantin Simonov; it entered his lyrics not with the roar of artillery, but with a piercing melody, courageous and tender. His poems about love and loyalty, about valor and cowardice, about friendship and betrayal - the soldiers passed on to each other and rewrote them. They helped me survive.
"We'll know how I survived.
Just you and me"
K. Simonov's prose is men's prose. His war is voluminous, he sees it from different points and angles, moving freely in its space from the trenches of the front line to army headquarters and the deep rear. The first novel, “Comrades in Arms,” is dedicated to the events at Khalkin Gol, published in 1952.
One of the most famous works about the Great Patriotic War is a large true work, the trilogy “The Living and the Dead.” It became an epic artistic narrative about the path of the Soviet people to victory in the Great Patriotic War. The author combined two plans - a reliable chronicle of the main events of the war, seen through the eyes of the main characters Serpilin and Sintsov, and an analysis of these events from the point of view of the author’s contemporary understanding and assessment.
In the second part of the trilogy “Soldiers are not born” - the Battle of Stalingrad, the unadorned truth of life and war at a new stage - overcoming the science of winning. Belarus in 1944, the offensive operation “Bagration” - these events formed the basis of the third book, which Simonov called “The Last Summer”.
Simonov bequeathed to scatter his ashes on the Buynichesky field near Mogilev, where in 1941 he managed to escape from encirclement. The memorial sign reads: “All his life he remembered this battlefield and bequeathed his ashes to be scattered here.”
Bas-relief in the city of Arsenyev (Primorsky Territory) (Sculptor - G. Sharoglazov) Installed on the facade of the Askold Palace of Culture, where in August 1967, Konstantin Simonov spoke to the residents of Arsenyev, donating a fee for one of his books for the construction of a monument to the writer V .TO. Arsenyev.
Based on Simonov's scripts, the following films were produced: “A Guy from Our City” (1942), “Wait for Me” (1943), “Days and Nights” (1944), “Immortal Garrison” (1956), “Normandie-Niemen” (1960, together with S. Spaakomi, E. Triolet), “The Living and the Dead” (1964)
Read books by K.M. Simonov in the libraries of the Central Library:
Simonov, K.M. Through the eyes of a man of my generation: reflections on I.V. Stalin / K.M. Simonov. – M.: Pravda, 1990.- 428 p.
Simonov, K.M. Wait for me, and I will return / K.M. Simonov. – M.: AST, Astrel, 2010. – 352 pp.: ill.
Storage: Central City Hospital, Library No. 9
Simonov, K.M. “Wait for me...”: poems / K.M. Simonov; thin A. Moshchelkov. – M.: Det.lit., 2012. – 286 p.: ill. (School library)
Storage: library complex "Green World", library complex "Livadia", Library No. 10, Library No. 14
The book includes selected poems by Konstantin Simonov, written from 1937 to 1976, in the author's latest edition.
Trilogy "The Living and the Dead":
Simonov, K.M. The Living and the Dead: A Novel/ K.M. Simonov. – M.: AST, Transitkniga, 2004. – 509 p. – (World classics)
Storage: Central City Hospital
Simonov, K.M. The living and the dead: a novel in the third book. Book 1. The Living and the Dead/ K.M. Simonov. – M.: Artist. lit., 1990.- 479 p.
Storage: Library No. 4, Library No. 23
Simonov, K.M. The Living and the Dead: A Novel in 3 books. Book 2. Soldiers are not born/ K.M.Simonov. – M.: Khudozh.lit., 1990. – 735 p.
Simonov, K.M. The Living and the Dead [Text]: a novel in 3 books. Book 3. Last summer/ K.M. Simonov. – M.: Artist. lit., 1989. – 574 p.
Storage: Library No. 4, Library No. 23
Simonov, K.M. The Living and the Dead: A Novel in 3 books. Book 3. Last summer/ K.M. Simonov. – M.: Education, 1982. – 510 p. - (School library)
Storage: Central City Library, Central Children's Library, Library complex "Green World", Library complex "Livadia", Library complex "Semya", Library No. 9, Library No. 10, Library No. 14, Library No. 15.
Simonov, K.M. Different faces of war [Text]: diaries, poems, prose; to the 60th anniversary of the Great Victory/ K.M. Simonov; comp. A. Simonov.- M.: Eksmo, 2004.- 639 p.
Storage: Library No. 23 
Library resources and the Internet were used in preparing the information.
Information prepared by Irina Khrienko.
Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov (November 28, 1915, Petrograd - August 28, 1979, Moscow) - Russian Soviet writer, poet, public figure.
Born in Petrograd, he was raised by his stepfather, a teacher at a military school. My childhood years were spent in Ryazan and Saratov.
After graduating from a seven-year school in Saratov in 1930, he went to study to become a turner. In 1931, the family moved to Moscow, and Simonov, having graduated from the factory teacher of precision mechanics here, went to work at the plant. During these same years he began to write poetry. Worked until 1935.
In 1936, the first poems of K. Simonov were published in the magazines “Young Guard” and “October”. After graduating from the Literary Institute. M. Gorky in 1938, Simonov entered graduate school at the IFLI (Institute of History, Philosophy, Literature), but in 1939 he was sent as a war correspondent to Khalkin-Gol in Mongolia and never returned to the institute.
In 1940 he wrote his first play, “The Story of a Love,” staged on the stage of the Theater. Lenin Komsomol; in 1941 - the second - “A guy from our city.” During the year he studied at the military correspondent course at the Military-Political Academy and received the military rank of quartermaster of the second rank.
At the beginning of the war he was drafted into the army and worked for the newspaper “Battle Banner”. In 1942 he was awarded the rank of senior battalion commissar, in 1943 - the rank of lieutenant colonel, and after the war - colonel. Most of his military correspondence was published in Red Star. During the war years, he also wrote the plays “Russian People”, “Wait for Me”, “So It Will Be”, the story “Days and Nights”, two books of poems “With You and Without You” and “War”.
After the war, his collections of essays appeared: “Letters from Czechoslovakia”, “Slavic Friendship”, “Yugoslav Notebook”, “From the Black to the Barents Sea. Notes of a war correspondent."
After the war, he spent three years on numerous foreign business trips (Japan, USA, China). From 1958 to 1960 he lived in Tashkent as a Pravda correspondent for the republics of Central Asia.
The first novel, Comrades in Arms, was published in 1952, followed by a larger book, The Living and the Dead (1959). In 1961, the Sovremennik Theater staged Simonov’s play “The Fourth.” In 1963-64 he wrote the novel “Soldiers Are Not Born.” (In 1970 - 71 a continuation will be written - “The Last Summer”.)
Based on Simonov’s scripts, the following films were produced: “A Guy from Our City”, “Wait for Me”, “Days and Nights”, “Immortal Garrison”, “Normandy-Niemen”, “The Living and the Dead”.
In 1974 he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.
Books (6)
The so-called personal life
“...More than twenty years ago, while working on the trilogy “The Living and the Dead,” I conceived another book - from Lopatin’s notes - a book about the life of a war correspondent and about the people of the war, seen through his eyes.
Between 1957 and 1963, the chapters of this future book were published by me as separate, but at the same time small stories connected with each other by a common hero (“Panteleev”, “Levashov”, “Inozemtsev and Ryndin”, “The Wife Has Arrived”). Subsequently, I combined all these things into one story, calling it “Four Steps.” And he continued the story that began in it and finished it with two more stories (“Twenty days without war” and “We won’t see you…”).
This is how this novel developed in three stories, “The So-Called Personal Life,” which I bring to the attention of readers.” Konstantin Simonov
Different faces of war. Stories, poems, diaries
The book “Different Faces of War” consists of four blocks: diaries, stories and poems, connected by a common time and place of action.
Many details of the diaries are interpreted in the stories, many poems highlight or reveal the background of the events described in prose. The fifth block, “Stalin and the War,” sums up K.M. Simonov’s many years of thinking about Stalin and his role in the huge mechanism of the great war.
Konstantin Simonov is a famous writer, poet and journalist. His works, written during the war, were not just a reflection of reality, but also a kind of prayer. For example, the poem “Wait for Me,” composed in the summer of 1941 and dedicated to Valentina Serova, still gives hope to soldiers going to the battlefield. The literary genius is also known for his works “Kill Him”, “Soldiers Are Not Born”, “Open Letter”, “The Living and the Dead” and other remarkable and ingenious creations.
Childhood and youth
On a cold autumn day in the city on the Neva, which was formerly called Petrograd, on November 28, 1915, a son was born into the family of Major General Mikhail Agafangelovich Simonov and his wife, Princess Alexandra Leonidovna Obolenskaya, who was named Kirill.
Kirill is the writer’s real name, but due to the fact that Simonov lisped and did not pronounce a hard “l”, he began to call himself Konstantin, but the writer’s mother did not recognize her son’s pseudonym, so she always affectionately called her son Kiryusha.
The boy grew up and was brought up without a father, because, as the biography compiled by Alexei Simonov says, traces of his grandfather were lost in Poland in 1922: the main breadwinner in the house went missing while participating in the First World War. And therefore, Konstantin Mikhailovich’s memories are more connected with his stepfather than with his father.
In search of a better life, the mother of the future writer moved with her son to Ryazan, where she met Alexander Grigorievich Ivanishev, who worked as a military specialist and later led the workers’ and peasants’ Red Army. It is known that warm friendly relations arose between Obolenskaya’s new husband and his stepson.
While the head of the family was at work, Alexandra prepared lunches and dinners, ran the household and raised Konstantin. The prose writer recalled that his parents often discussed politics, but Konstantin Mikhailovich practically did not remember all these conversations. But, when the head of the family entered the service at the Ryazan Infantry School as a tactics teacher, a negative opinion about him reigned in the family, in particular, adults criticized his activities as the People's Commissar of Military Affairs to smithereens.
Then this position was taken by Konstantin, who was received well, but the tactics of his follower, Konstantin’s stepfather, did not like. The writer also remembers that the news of the death of Vladimir Ilyich was a deep shock for his family; there were tears in the eyes of his parents, but at that time they were not very aware that a fighter against Trotskyism had come to replace him.
When the boy turned 12 years old, an event was imprinted in his memory that he remembered for the rest of his life. The fact is that Simonov came across the concept of repression (which at that time was just beginning to show its first shoots) and by coincidence, returning to the house to retrieve a forgotten item, he personally observed a search in the apartment of his distant relative, a paralyzed old man.
“...The old man, leaning against the wall, reclining on the bed, continued to scold them, and I sat on a chair and looked at all this... There was not shock in my soul, but strong surprise: I suddenly encountered something that seemed completely out of place. combined with the life that our family lived...,” recalled Konstantin Mikhailovich in his memoirs.
It is worth noting that in childhood the future writer was not tied to a specific place, because due to the specific profession of his stepfather, the family moved from place to place. Thus, the writer’s youth was spent in military camps and commander’s dormitories. By coincidence, Konstantin Mikhailovich graduated from seven classes of a comprehensive school, and then, carried away by the idea of socialist construction, chose a mundane path and went to get a working specialty.
The young man's choice fell on a factory apprenticeship school, where he learned the profession of a turner. There were cloudless days in the biography of Konstantin Mikhailovich. His stepfather was arrested for a short period of time and then fired from his position. Therefore, the family evicted from their living space was practically left without a livelihood.
In 1931, Simonov moved to Moscow with his parents, but before that he worked as a metal turner in a Saratov factory. In parallel with this, Konstantin Mikhailovich received his education at the Literary Institute named after, where his creative potential began to manifest itself. Having received his diploma, Konstantin Mikhailovich was accepted into graduate school at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History named after N. G. Chernyshevsky.
War
Simonov was drafted into the army, where he served as a war correspondent before announcing the attack on the radio. The young man was sent to write articles about the battles at Khalkhin Gol, a local conflict between the Empire of Japan and Manchukuo. It was there that Simonov met, who received the popular nickname Marshal of Victory.
The writer did not return to graduate school. When the Great Patriotic War began, Simonov joined the ranks of the Red Army and published in the newspapers Izvestia, Battle Banner and Krasnaya Zvezda.
For his merits and courage, the writer, who visited all fronts and saw the lands of Poland, Romania, Germany and other countries, was awarded many notable awards, and also went from senior commissar of the battalion to colonel. Konstantin Mikhailovich’s service record includes the medal “For the Defense of the Caucasus”, the Order of the Patriotic War of the first degree, the medal “For the Defense of Moscow”, etc.
Literature
It is worth noting that Simonov is a universal writer. His track record includes both short stories and short stories, as well as poems, poems, plays and even entire novels. According to rumors, the master of words began to write in his youth, while at the university.
After the war, Konstantin Mikhailovich worked as an editor at the New World magazine, went on numerous business trips, observed the beauty of the Land of the Rising Sun and traveled around America and China. Simonov also served as editor-in-chief of Literaturnaya Gazeta from 1950 to 1953.
It is known that after the death of Joseph Stalin, Konstantin Mikhailovich wrote an article in which he called on all writers to reflect the great personality of the Generalissimo and write about his historical role in the life of the Soviet people. However, this proposal was received with hostility, who did not share the opinion of the writer. Therefore, by order of the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Simonov was removed from his position.
It is also worth saying that Konstantin Mikhailovich participated in the struggle against a separate layer of the intelligentsia. In other words, the writer had no sympathy for his colleagues in the workshop -, and. Those who wrote “inappropriate” texts were also persecuted.
In 1952, Konstantin Simonov published his debut novel, which was called “Comrades in Arms,” and seven years later the writer became the author of the book “The Living and the Dead” (1959), which grew into a trilogy. The second part was published in 1962, and the third in 1971. It is noteworthy that the first volume was almost identical to the author’s personal diary.
The plot of the epic novel is based on the events that took place during the war, from 1941 to 1944. We can say that Konstantin Mikhailovich described what he saw with his own eyes, artistically embellishing the work with metaphors and other speech patterns.
In 1964, the eminent director Alexander Stolper transferred this work to television screens, making a film of the same name. The main roles were played by Alexey Glazyrin and other famous actors.
Among other things, Konstantin Mikhailovich translated texts into Russian by the author of the famous book about the adventures of Mowgli, as well as the works of the Azerbaijani poet Nasimi and the Uzbek writer Kahkhar.
Personal life
The personal life of Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov could serve as the basis for an entire novel, for the biography of this man is rich in events. The writer's first chosen one was the writer Natalya Ginzburg, who came from a noble and respected family. Konstantin Mikhailovich dedicated the poem “Five Pages” to his beloved, but the relationship between the two creative personalities was a fiasco.
Simonov's next chosen one was Evgenia Laskina, who gave the writer a son, Alexei (1939). Laskina, a philologist by training, worked as a literary editor, and it was she who published the immortal novel “The Master and Margarita” in 1960.
But this relationship also came apart at the seams, because, despite the birth of a small son, Konstantin Mikhailovich plunged headlong into an affair with a Soviet actress who played in the films “Hearts of Four” (1941), “Glinka” (1946), “Immortal Garrison” "(1956) and other films. In this marriage, a girl, Maria, was born (1950). The actress inspired Simonov's creativity and was his muse. Thanks to her, Konstantin Mikhailovich published several works, for example, the play “A Guy from Our City.”
According to rumors, Valentina saved the writer from inevitable death. Rumor has it that Konstantin Mikhailovich went to the capital of France in 1946, where he was supposed to persuade Ivan Alekseevich to return to his homeland. However, secretly from her husband, his beloved told Bunin in confidence about what awaited him on the territory of the USSR. Scientists were unable to prove the authenticity of this story, but Valentina no longer went on joint trips with her husband.
Fortunately or unfortunately, Valentina Serova and Konstantin Simonov broke up in 1950. It is known that the writer’s ex-wife died in 1975 under unclear circumstances. The writer sent a bouquet of 58 scarlet roses to the coffin of the woman with whom he lived for 15 years.
The fourth and last love in Simonov’s life turned out to be art critic Larisa Zhadova, who, according to a contemporary, was a tough and conscientious young lady. Larisa gave her husband a girl, Alexandra (1957), and the daughter from Larisa’s first marriage to the poet Semyon Gudzenko, Ekaterina, was also raised in the house.
Death
Konstantin Simonov died in Moscow in the summer of 1978. The cause of death was a malignant lung tumor. The body of the poet and prose writer was cremated, and his ashes (according to his will) were scattered over the Buinichi field, a memorial complex located in the city of Mogilev.
Bibliography
- 1952 – “Comrades in Arms”
- 1952 – “Poems and Poems”
- 1956–1961 – “Southern Tales”
- 1959 – “The Living and the Dead”
- 1964 – “Soldiers are not born”
- 1966 – “Konstantin Simonov. Collected works in six volumes"
- 1971 – “The Last Summer”
- 1975 – “Konstantin Simonov. Poems"
- 1985 – “Sofya Leonidovna”
- 1987 – “The Third Adjutant”