From the book of destinies. YU riy Kuznetsov was born on February 11, 1941 in the village of Leningradskaya, Krasnodar Territory. Father is a career military man, mother is a school teacher.
In the same forty-first, Polikarp Kuznetsov went to the front, and the family went to his small homeland - the village of Aleksandrovskoye, Stavropol Territory, and a little later moved to the Kuban town of Tikhoretsk. There, in the house of his grandparents, the future poet spent his childhood and early youth. Yuri’s father died in Crimea in 1944, and memories of him, as well as the echoes of the war, according to Kuznetsov, became important motivating motives for his poetry (the first poems of YUKwrote at the age of nine).
After leaving school, Kuznetsov served in the army (1961-1964), worked as an inspector in the children's room of the police (1964-1965), in the editorial office of the newspaper "Komsomolets Kubani" (1965-1966). Studied for one year at Kuban University (Krasnodar).
In 1965 he entered the Literary Institute named after A.M. Gorky, who graduated in 1970 (he studied at the poetry seminar of S.S. Narovchatov). After a short stay in his homeland, he returned to Moscow the same year. Worked as an editor at the Sovremennik publishing house (1971-1976). In 1974 he joined the Writers' Union of the USSR, and in 1975 - the CPSU...
Critics believe that the feeling of the impending universal Apocalypse, so characteristic of Kuznetsov’s poetics, first appeared to him during the Cuban missile crisis (from 1961 to 1963 he was in Cuba). The poet spoke about this in a poem dated October 25, 1962: I remember the night with continental rockets, / When every step was an event of the soul, / When we slept, by order, undressed / And the horror of space thundered in our ears...
His early poems were included in the book “The Thunderstorm,” published in Krasnodar in 1996. However, the name of the poet became known to a wide circle of readers after the appearance of the collections “In Me and Nearby - Distance” (1974), “The Edge of the World - Around the First Corner” (1976), “Coming out onto the road, the soul looked back” (1978).
Researchers of creativity YKThey also expressed an interesting idea. The impetus for the creation of a special poetic world, a special linguistic manner and a bright metaphorical language was Yuri Polikarpovich’s acquaintance with the works of A.N. Afanasyev and V.F. Miller dedicated to Slavic mythology. In any case, such a poetic world exists according to pre-Christian laws. Hence, special attention to the categories of kinship and family ties, the basis of which is the triangle “father - mother - son”...
Almost all of the poet’s works are interesting and unique. Among which, however, critics most often recall the lines “I drank from my father’s skull...”, which at one time caused fierce controversy. Among the undoubted successes of the South Caucasushis friends always attributed the short parable “The Atomic Tale”, and such multidimensional creations as “Eternal Snow”, “Four Hundred”, “Golden Mountain”, “Home”, “Marriage”, “Snakes at the Lighthouse”, “Aphrodite”, "Seventh"…
Yuri Kuznetsov is also known for his sharply satirical poems - “Hump Straightener”, “Parrot”, “Conversation of the Deaf”, “Nose”...
In the stormy ideological polemics of the seventies and eighties, the name of the poet, who was actively developing a kind of “Slavic myth,” was taken up by one side and exalted, while the other, on the contrary, belittled and debunked.
In the period from 1981 to 1986, he published three books at once - “I will set my soul free,” “Neither early nor late,” “The soul is faithful to unknown limits.”
In 1990, Yuri Kuznetsov became a member of the board of the Writers' Union of the RSFSR, then one of the leaders of the Moscow Writers' Organization.
The collection “The Soul is Faithful to Unknown Limits” was awarded the State Prize of the RSFSR (1990). Among the awards that the poet treasured were the Order of the Badge of Honor (1984) and... Certificate of Honor from the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation (2002). In September 1997, he was elected academician of the Academy of Russian Literature.
From 1987 until the last days of their legal commissionsled a poetry seminar at the A.M. Gorky Literary Institute (full-time and part-time departments, Higher Literary Courses).
Yuri Kuznetsov was also involved in poetic translations (among the authors whose texts he worked with were A. Atabaev, J. Pilarzh, F. Schiller). Selected translations by YUKcollected in the book “Transplanted Flowers” (1990).
Evgeniy Peremyshlev
One of my friends, who reads a lot and has written a lot himself, once remarked: half of today’s poets write “like Joseph Brodsky,” the other half imitates Yuri Kuznetsov.
Perhaps the statement is somewhat generalized and categorical, but there is truth in it: for the last thirty years, the influence of Kuznetsov’s poetry on the literary process is undeniable. His intonation is invisibly, or even clearly, present in the works of Viktor Lapshin, Oleg Kochetkov, Nikolai Zinoviev, Igor Tyulenev, Evgeny Semichev, Vladimir Shemshuchenko, Svetlana Syrneva, Diana Kan, Marina Strukova and other poets, mainly representing the Russian hinterland today , perhaps the most interesting, continuing the traditions of Russian poetic classics.
Yuri Kuznetsov also influenced what the author of these lines wrote and writes, which I do not hide and am in no way ashamed of: without relying on the work of his predecessors, a more or less significant author cannot appear. After all, Yuri Kuznetsov skillfully used the riches of literature and not only Russian. Derzhavin, Pushkin, Tyutchev, Lermontov, Boratynsky, Nekrasov, Blok, Yesenin and other poets, Christian mythology, ancient literature, folk epic, philosophy, history - all this and much more were absorbed in his poems. And, of course, they contain the natural talent of the poet himself, with whom fate brought me together more than once.
In the mid-70s, it seems, in Literaturnaya Gazeta, I read a review of the collection of the poet Yuri Kuznetsov, unknown to me until then, “There is a distance in me and nearby,” published by the Sovremennik publishing house. I don’t remember what was written in it: probably, as usual, the author was praised for something, reproached for something, but the publication quoted the poem “Return,” which I remembered after the first reading:
The father walked, the father walked unharmed
Through a minefield.
Turned into billowing smoke -
No grave, no pain.
Mom, mom, war won’t bring me back...
Don't look at the road.
A column of spinning dust is coming
Across the field to the threshold.
It’s like a hand waving from the dust,
Living eyes shine.
Postcards move at the bottom of the chest
Frontline.
Whenever his mother is waiting for him,
Through the field and arable land
A column of swirling dust wanders, -
Lonely and scary.
Now this poem has become a classic, and once again, rereading it, I again and again experience, if not shock, then emotional excitement: it is so piercing and accurate to convey the tragedy that the war brought, and also the pain from loneliness, from the fatherlessness that resulted in fate there is emptiness, a gap. My father did not die in that war, but my “one-wingedness” is its consequence, a wound that still hurts.
Somewhat later, I became the owner of the collection “The Distance is in Me and Near Me.” It happened like this.
Once (then I lived in the Far East), while on a journalistic business trip, I was sitting in the waiting room of a railway station. Nearby, on a bench, a guy, a soldier, apparently just retired to the reserves, was leafing through a collection of poems. I was curious: who the author was, and involuntarily envied the owner of the book, because they were poems by Yuri Kuznetsov. We started talking. It turned out that the guy was going to his homeland, Moscow, after his service, and a friend sent him the book to the army. And the former soldier complained that he couldn’t catch the train for the second day and that in the morning at the buffet he exchanged his last “C”.
There was something crunching in my pocket. We had a friendly lunch at the station restaurant and talked about poetry and poets. And when we parted, the guy gave me “The distance is in me and nearby.” After reading the book, and then rereading it several times, I realized that a poet had appeared who would become like an older brother, like a teacher to me.
Many lines, stanzas, and poems were immediately imprinted in my memory: “But my fingers will remain scratching. And the lips will remain screaming,” “The chair in my jacket will come up to the phone and say: - He’s out.” All came out. I don’t know when he will come!”, “Father,” I shout. - You didn’t bring us happiness!.. - My mother closes my mouth in horror”, “And you want to stroke your dear face - Your hands slide through the air”, “I’ve come. And now with my eyes you will look at the earth. And you will cry with my tears - And there will be no mercy for you”, “But the Russian heart is lonely everywhere... And the field is wide, and the sky is high” and so on. They are poetic aphorisms that have entered the minds and hearts of readers of poetry and are gradually entering the speech cycle even of those who are indifferent to poetry.
Vladimir Soloukhin wrote that memorability is one of the main signs of true poetry. I agree with him. I will refer to my own experience. At one time I read a lot, for example, Andrei Voznesensky, Joseph Brodsky, but almost nothing from the poems of these authors “stuck” in my memory. And the lines of Yuri Kuznetsov, read more than thirty years ago, live in me and, probably, will live until the end of my days.
Unfortunately, I did not save the collection “In Me and Nearby - Distance”. At the end of the 70s, I took this book to the construction of BAM, where I worked for a newspaper for some time. I lived in a dorm with an engineer from Moscow. I had to go on a business trip, but not a ruble in my pocket. I borrowed a quarter from a Muscovite, and when I returned two weeks later, I found a note: “When you pay off the debt, I will return the books.” I looked at what my creditor took. It turned out that there were collections by Bunin, Yesenin, Pasternak, Akhmatova, and also by Rubtsov and Kuznetsov. Yes, the engineer had literary taste. I sent him a quarter, but I never received the books.
But Yuri Kuznetsov’s collection “The End of the World - Around the First Corner” (1976) is still with me. Having purchased this book at the same time as “Plantains” by Nikolai Rubtsov, there is something symbolic and iconic in this.
In the early 80s, I moved to Belgorod and began visiting Moscow, where I met with the front-line poet Viktor Kochetkov. In the early 70s, Viktor Ivanovich was the leader of a seminar for young writers of the Far East in Khabarovsk; later he published my poems in the Moscow magazine, and when my collection “Sky and Field” was published in Blagoveshchensk, he wrote a preface to it. During our meetings in the capital, he talked about Yuri Kuznetsov, with whom he was friends, and I, naturally, listened with attention, but I could not imagine that Yuri Polikarpovich would play a significant role in my literary destiny.
In 1989, my third book of poems, “The Commandment,” was published in Voronezh, and I submitted documents to join the Union of Writers of the USSR. In Belgorod, however, it was not without difficulties between the “hammer and the anvil,” and my “papers” were sent to Moscow. I called Viktor Ivanovich, who was on the admissions board of the Writers' Union. He said, “Don't worry. I’ll try to have Kuznetsov as your reviewer.” But, really, I got even more excited, because I knew from Viktor Ivanovich how seriously Yuri Polikarpovich takes poetry. He told the Belgorod prose writer Nikolai Ryzhikh about his worries; he knew the poet from his studies at the Literary Institute, to which he, with his characteristic temperament and optimism, said: “Everything will be fine: the Yura does not drown Russian poets. Be that as it may, in March 1991 I was accepted into the Writers' Union; there were only two or three votes against my candidacy.
In September of the same year I met Yuri Polikarpovich. This happened in the writers' house of creativity in Makeyevka, where I arrived. The next meeting of the admissions board of the Writers' Union was held here, and Viktor Ivanovich Kochetkov introduced me to Kuznetsov. The three of us sat, I, of course, listened more than I spoke. At the same time, Kuznetsov signed his “Favorites” for me, published by the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house. Just two words “In good memory” (the poet in general, as far as I know, left laconic autographs on books), but they are prohibitively expensive for me. And a few days later we were already sitting in a larger and noisier company in the Central House of Writers, and then for the first time I dared to read several of my poems. Then the poet Vladimir Andreev, who participated in a friendly feast, said: “Kuznetsov liked your poems.” I don’t know how true this was, but I really was pleased.
For the 50th anniversary of the Victory, I held a literary competition on the pages of the Belgorod newspaper Smena. As a reward for the winners, I decided to ask Yuri Kuznetsov to send autographed books. I wrote a letter, not really hoping for a response. And suddenly the writer Nikolai Ryzhikh, who visited Moscow for the magazine “Our Contemporary,” brought several copies of Kuznetsov’s “Selected,” which was published by the publishing house “Khudozhestvennaya Literatura.” One was signed: “To Valery Cherkesov.” So a second book with the autograph of Yuri Kuznetsov appeared in my library.
When I presented “Favorites” to the winners of the literary competition, I was happy for them: such a gift! Alas, they hardly understood this...
Yuri Kuznetsov came to the Belgorod region several times - for the presentation of the magazine “Our Contemporary”, for poetry days, we shook hands and talked. I won’t say that there were long conversations on literary topics, rather, non-binding communication, and at the same time, Yuri Polikarpovich, it seems to me, did not like empty chatter and jokes, he was taciturn, often thoughtful, this seemed to make him withdrawn from everything that was insignificant to him.
Once, at Poetry Day in the city park, his performance did not go well. He arrived by train early in the morning, apparently tired on the road, and even a heated meeting. The poet began to read some poem, got confused, fell silent, and began to read again. Afterwards, Yuri Polikarpovich, apparently somewhat annoyed and dissatisfied with his performance, came up to me and said: “Let’s go to the hotel.” We sat in the room together for an hour until our fellow poets returned from the park. I remember he spoke about the coming greedy time, when society is degrading mentally and spiritually in the pursuit of material wealth, that poets and poetry must take on the mission of spiritual guides, that the golden and silver ages of literature are over, but its revival will certainly come. And also about Russia, Rus', which will endure and endure everything, the guarantee of this is our great culture. Perhaps he did not speak as pompously as I convey, but that was the essence.
I also remember a somewhat funny incident. In Prokhorovka there was a governor's reception, so to speak, in a narrow circle. On the tables there is food and drink - whatever the stomach desires. Before the meal, Yuri Polikarpovich looked around the table, approached the waiter and suddenly asked: “Is there a buffet here?” He was clearly taken aback by such an unexpected question; he blinked his eyes often, wondering what else the Moscow guest wanted? The waiter was rescued by the host of the reception, Belgorod Governor Evgeny Savchenko, asking: “Yuri Polikarpovich, do you need something?” The poet calmly said: “Yes, cigarettes.” I've run out." The waiter smiled with relief and brought cigarettes of different brands. I don’t remember which ones the poet chose.
When the first part of Yuri Kuznetsov’s poem “The Way of Christ” - “The Childhood of Christ” was published in Our Contemporary, I gave the issue to my son to read: he has been interested in Christianity from a young age. Kolya said: “I wish I could get a book like this!” Having dared, I outlined this request in a letter to Yuri Polikarpovich, and after some time the package arrived. It contained the first edition of “The Way of Christ” (“Soviet Writer”, 2001) with the following inscription: “God help Kolya Cherkesov. Yuri Kuznetsov."
At the end of October, and maybe at the beginning of November 2003, I went to the Belgorod Writers' Organization. We talked with the chairman of the organization, poet Vladimir Molchanov, about the upcoming Belgorod issue of Our Contemporary. Volodya said something like this: “I talked on the phone with Kuznetsov about the poetry selection that will be in the issue. And he remarked ironically, “I’m selecting the poems, and the bumps will fall on you, Molchanov.”
This half-joking remark shows Kuznetsov’s attitude towards poetry. As far as I know, he did not really recognize authorities and big names and, when selecting poems for the magazine, was guided only by the talent of the author and the originality of the text. So in “Our Contemporary” large selections of Sergei Tashkov, Yuri Shumov, Dmitry Mamatov and some other Belgorod poets appeared, with whom we did not really take into account. From the heap of poems that I sent, he selected only a few, but published them quite often. Sometimes I was perplexed when I saw my publication: why did these particular lines appear, and not others that I considered the best? But some time passed, and I understood that Kuznetsov was right: he subtly felt the secondary nature and banality that provincial and metropolitan poets are guilty of, so with him the poetry in “Our Contemporary” was truly selected.
And literally a few days after that conversation in the writers’ organization about Yuri Kuznetsov, there was tragic news that stunned, shocked, and saddened. And when I learned that he said goodbye to this light in a dream, I remembered the final lines of “The Way of Christ”:
My golden poem dissuaded me
Everything else is blind, deaf, and dumb.
God! I cry and drive away death with my hand.
Give me great old age and wise peace!
As a true poet, Yuri Kuznetsov turned out to be a prophet in predetermining his fate and his poetry.
An issue of Our Contemporary with poetry and prose by Belgorod residents was published in January 2004. It also contains a large selection of materials “Under the sign of conscience”, dedicated to the memory of Yuri Kuznetsov: memories of the poet, his poems and the article “Outlook”, which became his spiritual testament: “The man in my poems is equal to the people”, “...But the main thing is Russian a myth, and this myth is a poet. The rest is legend."
Lines from his preface to the Young Guard’s “The Chosen One” often come to mind: “My poetry is the question of a sinner. And I will answer for her not on earth.”
Russian saints have always considered themselves sinners.
Illustrations:
portraits of Yuri Kuznetsov from different years;
the poet's autograph on the book "The Way of Christ".
Yuri Polikarpovich Kuznetsov (1941-2003) was born on 02/11/1941 in the village of Leningradskaya, located in the Krasnodar Territory. His father was a career military man, and his mother taught at school.
In 1941, my father was taken to the front, after which the family moved to his homeland, in the Stavropol region in the village of Aleksandrovskoye, and some time later settled in Tikhoretsk. Here, in the house of his grandparents, Kuznetsov spent his childhood and early years of youth. In 1944, his father died in Crimea, and memories of him and the war years, according to Kuznetsov himself, were the most important motivation for his poetry, the first manifestations of which took place at the age of nine.
After graduating from school, Kuznetsov served in the army from 1961 to 1964. Then he worked in the police as a children's room inspector (1964-65). Then there was work in the editorial office of the newspaper Komsomolets Kubani (1965-1966). There was one year of study at Kuban University in Krasnodar.
He entered the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute in 1965 and graduated in 1970. He took part in Narovchatov’s poetry seminar. After spending a short time in his native place, Kuznetsov returned to Moscow, where he worked at the Sovremennik publishing house as an editor (1971-1976). At the onset of 1974, he joined the Writers' Union of the USSR, and in 1975 became a member of the Party.
During the same period, Kuznetsov’s poetics changed radically. Most likely, the feeling of an approaching universal catastrophe first began to appear during the Cuban missile crisis, when from 1963 to 1963, Yuri Polikarpovich was part of the Soviet contingent of troops in Cuba, regarding which he spoke in his own poem, which was dated October 25, 1962 . This poem talks about the horror of consciousness associated with possible military actions and the catastrophe that followed them.
Meanwhile, eschatological motivation will begin to appear a little later. The early poems, which were collected in the book “Prose”, published in Krasnodar (1966), have weak expressiveness and do not have any individual coloring. In poetics, the breakdown occurred in the seventies of the last century. Poems and verses, combined into single collections “Around the First Corner - the End of the World” (1976), “Far - Both Near and in Me” (1974), began to attract the attention of critics and readers.
Working within the framework of topics that were allowed for a Soviet poet (childhood and war memories, lyric landscapes, etc.), Kuznetsov creates a world of poetry endowed with a complex topology. Spatio-temporal indicators remain unchanged, but the categories of characters and objects become such that they provide an undeniable opportunity to end up in places where these criteria become ineffective.
Among Kuznetsov’s poetic images, the most important is the image of a “failure” into the unknown, a “gap,” a “gaping,” a “hole.” Its cosmos is formed by the living mass, regardless of whether it is animals in front of us or representatives of humanity. Under the influence of unlimited forces, they are formed from the unknown, identical to a tornado, representing a certain spontaneity of action.
There was a definite opinion that the impetus for the development of the newly-minted poetics was acquaintance with the activities regarding the mythology of the Slavs by A. N. Afanasyev or V. F. Miller. In any case, the world of poetry in question exists on the basis of pre-Christian laws. Here, special attention is shown to the main categories of family-kinship relations and kinship in general, the foundation of which is considered to be a trivial triangle, at the head of the corners of which are the son, mother and father.
It is worth noting that these angles, as well as the relationships, are very unequal. The father himself and his actions do not undergo discussion, being elevated in the family hierarchy to an unattainable height, while the father’s departure to the front and his subsequent death is a modification of the same motive. The mother’s attitude towards the father is unquestioning acceptance, unshared subordination and sacrifice of following her fate, which is a projection of the father’s fate. It is on this basis that the phrases of the lyrical character receive the meaning of the curse, but in reality they simply state the true state of concepts and things, and the whole scene is filled with tragedy: “I scream, Father, you didn’t bring us happiness, and my mother covers my mouth in horror.”
In this triad, the son’s destiny turns out to be quite dramatic. He will have to replace his father, but such a replacement will not be able to ease his mother's lot. It must grow identically to an ear of grain on the ground that was sprinkled with the father’s blood. The predestined and inevitable usurpation of the father's power splits the son's nature, giving rise to loneliness and bitterness in him, which cannot but influence the conflicts of love. The now mature son's relationship with a woman will be devoid of happiness and quite tense. The noted duality of the lyrical character - complete detachment and desire for human communication - can be viewed exclusively in this light by critics. This is justified by the fact that the unity of the clan and its integrity cannot be replaced by any, even the strongest friendship, or common thoughts. This is exactly how it is worth interpreting the openly declared lines: “I drank from my father’s skull...”.
A very fierce controversy broke out around these poems. Front-line poet M.A. Sobol even came out with a rebuke-poem “The Heir,” demonstrating that in order to interpret the world of the poet Kuznetsov, cultural schemes and categories of morality that are alien to him are often used. In this mythopoetic space, the dead are not irrevocably and completely dead, and “incomplete death” can be traced here. Enemy and friendly soldiers, who died in battle on the tops of the mountains, “lie like alive,” “watch and wait.” One gets the feeling that by resorting to incredible efforts one can force them to speak and move, or bring them from the remote places in which they live to the thresholds of their homes. This is included in the list of human capabilities. It’s not for nothing that Kuznetsov’s lyrical character often acts as a mediator between the worlds of the dead and the living. The items that are given leading importance in this case are part of the mystical arsenal. This shadow, thickening and increasing, along which feet, nails and footprints calmly walk, as if on a board or bridge. The poet in his works makes appeals to such layers of human consciousness, in comparison with which a fairy tale is irreparably modern and on this basis becomes relative, on the basis of which it is worthy of debunking in an ironic way. Told in a modern way, the tale is undeniably monstrous - Ivanushka, after finding a frog across three seas based on the flight of an arrow, decided to conduct a simple experiment, for which he opened the body of a reptile and passed electricity through it (“Atomic Tale”).
In this case, there is a contrast of knowledge not with the induction of bliss, but with the knowledge of antiquity. The title of the work itself identically refers to the scientific delights of the 20th century and to the atomism of antiquity, but in reality, most likely, the poet did not imagine either one or the other. Recoding from an allegorical pagan system into Christianized symbolism, due to the discrepancy between the systems themselves, leads to the generation of disharmony. Oppositions such as “light - darkness”, “heaven - earth” definitely serve to express the opposition of differing principles, and are not categories of assessment. These extremes are inseparable.
Visually perceived by the mind, but consistently recreated constructions of literature were best achieved by Kuznetsov. The opposites of the mind were the fundamental elements of the model of art that he developed, since in this world a significant place is occupied by mechanisms and technical devices - locomotives, goggles, etc. - a direct result of the activity of the mind. For this poetics, simple euphony and musicality are simply alien, and modest rhymes serve to embody a sound rather than a semantic harmony.
Failure to maintain structural balance, most often found in poems about love, transforms into banality and melodrama. Not particularly successful were those poetic works where there is a variation in motivations, which, according to tradition, is associated with Yesenin’s poetry: “Aquarius” is a story about returning to one’s city; “The Last Horses” - thoughts about the already lost daring. Small poems can be considered as identically unsuccessful - “The Seventh”, “Aphrodite”, “Marriage”, “Home”, “Snakes at the Lighthouse”, where the leading factor is not the plot component, but the impulse of the lyrics and a certain sequence of images. Among the most significant successes, it makes sense to include poems of sharply satirical content, often macabre, including: “The Nose”, “Conversation of the Deaf”, “Parrot”, “Hump Straightener”.
Of no small importance in Kuznetsov’s poetic work was his open predisposition to provocation, playing with quotes from Russian classical poetry and verbal clichés. It would seem that the lengthy titles of Kuznetsov’s collections were considered by critics as purposefully devoid of unambiguity or as complete constructions completely impossible to interpret, which to a certain extent is true. Meanwhile, in the titles themselves there is an opportunity to see a unique storyline of its kind, not entirely constructed - the wandering of a soul that finds itself free in the nooks and crannies of an anisotropic world. It is quite enough to reconsider the names themselves, but without discounting the fact that this meta-plot is endowed with a rather serious inversion: “The soul is faithful to unknown limits” (1986), “I will set my soul free” (1981). In the somewhat protracted discussion of ideology in the 70s and 80s, the name of Kuznetsov, a gifted man who with impressive activity was developing some unique form of “Slavic myth,” appeared as a serious argument. On some sides there was praise of the poet, but on the other hand there was a complete debunking of him.
At the onset of 1990, Kuznetsov joined the board of the Writers' Union of the RSFSR, and then became a member of the leadership of the Moscow writers' organization. For such a collection as “The Soul Is Faithful to Unknown Limits,” he was awarded the State Prize of the RSFSR in 1990. Among other awards, there is the Order of the Badge of Honor and a diploma from the Ministry of Education. In 1997, in September, Kuznetsov was elected academician to the Russian Academy of Literature. From 1987 until his death, he conducted poetry seminars at the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute.
During the poet's life, more than fifteen collections of poetry were published. Kuznetsov was also involved in poetic translations (Schiller, J. Pilarzh, A. Atabaev). Some translations found their home in the publication “Transplanted Flowers,” which was published in 1990. Yu. P. Kuznetsov died in Moscow, November 17, 2003.
Please note that the biography of Yuri Polikarpovich Kuznetsov presents the most important moments from his life. This biography may omit some minor life events.
YURI KUZNETSOV (February 11, 1941, Leningradskaya village, Krasnodar Territory - November 17, 2003, Moscow) - Soviet and Russian poet, laureate of the State Prize of the RSFSR (1990), professor at the Literary Institute, was editor of the poetry department in the magazine “Our Contemporary”, member of the Union writers of Russia, academician of the Academy of Russian Literature (since 1996).
Until the end of his life he conducted poetry seminars at the Literary Institute and at the Higher Literary Courses. He published about twenty books of poetry. The author of numerous poetic translations of both poets from national republics and foreign ones (J. Byron, J. Keats, A. Rimbaud, A. Mickiewicz, V. Nezval, etc.), also translated Schiller’s “The Maid of Orleans”
In 1998, with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus', Alexy II translated into modern Russian and presented in poetic form the “Sermon on Law and Grace” by Metropolitan Hilarion, for which he was awarded a literary prize.
Born in Kuban in the village of Leningradskaya, Krasnodar Territory, on February 11, 1941, in the family of a career military man and a teacher. The poet's father, the chief of intelligence of the corps, died on Sapun Mountain in 1944 in the battle for the liberation of Sevastopol. This death subsequently had a great influence on the work of Yuri Kuznetsov. War raged through the village where the poet lived in early childhood.
The poet spent his adolescence in Tikhoretsk, and his youth in Krasnodar. After graduating from school, Kuznetsov studied for one year at Kuban University, from where he joined the army. He served as a signalman in Cuba at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the world was on the brink of nuclear war. After the army he worked in the police for some time. In 1970 he graduated with honors from the Literary Institute. A. M. Gorky.
He wrote his first poem at the age of nine. The first publication was published in a regional newspaper in 1957. Kuznetsov first announced himself as a poet while a student at the Literary Institute. A. M. Gorky, with the poem “Atomic Tale,” which was a compelling argument in the so-called dispute between “physicists and lyricists.”
The name of Yuri Kuznetsov was constantly present in criticism in the 1970s-1980s, causing a lot of controversy and interest among readers (for example, a dispute about the morality or immorality of the line “I drank from my father’s skull”). This short poem about the skull became the most vivid expression of the poet’s grief and pain about the cruelty of the war, which deprived an entire generation of the opportunity to sit down at the table with their fathers; the sons were left with only what lay in the graves: instead of a “fairy tale of a face” - only skulls...
Military lyrics and poems about the Great Patriotic War occupy a significant place in the work of Yuri Kuznetsov. According to the poet, memories of the war became the most important motives of his poetry. According to some critics, the poem from military lyrics “Return” occupies a special place in the poet’s work, making a strong emotional impression on the reader. The work of Yuri Kuznetsov serves as inspiration when writing musical works. Thus, composer Viktor Gavrilovich Zakharchenko set about 30 of the poet’s poems to music, including “Return”, “When I don’t cry, when I don’t cry”, etc. They are performed by the State Academic Kuban Cossack Choir.
The key words in the poetic world of Yuri Kuznetsov are symbol and myth, gap and connection. In his work, Yuri Kuznetsov often addresses the eternal problems of good and evil, divine and human; philosophy, mythology and civic poetry are intertwined in his poems. An example of this is the broad-based poems on biblical themes (“The Path of Christ”, “The Descent into Hell”), which he wrote in recent years. The titles of Yuri Kuznetsov's books, as he admits, are a kind of poetic manifestos.
Kuznetsov died in Moscow on November 17, 2003 from a heart attack. He wrote his last poem, “Prayer,” nine days before his death. This is the testament of the poet, who was called “the twilight angel of Russian poetry,” “the most tragic poet of Russia.” He was treated differently. Apologists deified him; for his opponents he was a “ghoul.” One thing is indisputable: Yuri Kuznetsov became one of the most striking phenomena in poetry of the era of the so-called “stagnation”.
Yuri Polikarpovich Kuznetsov
Brief biography of the contemporary poet.
Year of birth: 1941
Yuri Kuznetsov was born in 1941. February 11 in the village of Leningradskaya, which is located in the Krasnodar Territory. He composed his first poem at the age of 9. It was published in the local regional newspaper in 1957.
Yuri served in the Soviet Army from 1961 to 1964, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as such times were called then. After serving, he went to work in the police.
Simultaneously with work, he studied at the Literary Institute. Gorky. He graduated from his studies in 1970.
A little later, Yuri went to work at the publishing house at that time, the popular newspaper Sovremennik, as an editor.
In 1973 - 1975, critics throughout the USSR argued about the morality of the poet, because his poems had a double meaning, and this was not encouraged in those days:
- “I drank from my father’s skull...”;
- "Magbet"
(“For the fact that you burn in fire
In this and this world,
Let me kiss
These hands are for you, lady."
Yuri Kuznetsov published about 20 collections of his poems.
His name is rather known as the person who made the most accurate translation of The Maid of Orleans, which Schiller wrote.
Kuznetsov has been a laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation since 1990.
These days, Yuri Polikarpovich is the head of the poetry department in the magazine “Our Contemporary”. At his age, Yuri Polikarpovich participates in the editorial board.
Updated: 2013-05-14
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