Poplavsky, Boris Yulianovich

Born May 24 ( June 6 ) in Moscow . His parents met while studying at the conservatory. Father, Julian Ignatievich (died in 1958), was semi-Russian, semi-Lithuanian, graduated from the Moscow Conservatory (student of P.I. Tchaikovsky ). Mother, Sofya Valentinovna Kokhmanskaya (died in 1948), belonged to a Baltic noble family, was going to become a violinist. After marriage, his father left the music and began to engage in commercial activities to provide for his family. The Poplavsky family had four children. Together with the mother, the children often went abroad, lived in Italy and Switzerland. Poplavsky’s early sister Natalya died (1900-1920), who published in 1917 a collection of poems “Poems of the Green Lady”.

Along with Russian, Boris Yulianovich got acquainted with French literature, read it in the original. French was his second native language.

In Moscow, B. Yu. Poplavsky began to study at the French Lyceum. There he began to write poetry - an example for him was sister Natalia. The development of enthusiasm was also facilitated by the fact that a literary and art circle was gathering in the Poplavsky house, poets and musicians performed.

After the revolution, father and youngest son leave for Kharkov, then live in Crimea. In January 1919 in Yalta, in the Chekhov literary circle, the first performance of the young poet took place.

In July, after the advance of the Volunteer Army , the Poplavsky returned to mainland Russia and settled in Rostov-on-Don. There B. Yu. Poplavsky attended the literary circle “Nikitinsky Subbotniks”.

In the last period of the Civil War, Poplavsky and his parents sailed to Constantinople . At this time, Boris realizes literature as a matter of his life. Together with V. A. Dukelsky, he created the local branch of the “ Workshop of poets ”, was a member of the Parisian literary groups “Gatarapak” ( 1921 - 1922 ), “Through” ( 1923 - 1924 ), the Union of Young Poets and Writers (with 1925 ), "Nomad". In addition to creativity, he was engaged in religious philosophy, he was also attracted to painting, he devoted a lot of time to art.

At the end of May 1921, Poplavsky and his father arrived in Paris. In 1922, he spent several months in Berlin, where he worked in a picturesque studio for portraits. In the future, he did not return to art. Interest in him was manifested only in art criticism, which he posted in the magazines “ Will of Russia ”, “ Numbers ” (many of his articles are devoted to the artists of Russian Paris: Marc Chagall , Mikhail Larionov , Abram Mincin , etc.)

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

Poplavsky died in Paris on October 9, 1935, together with his accidental acquaintance S. Yarkho from drug poisoning (according to one version, it was suicide, according to another, a friend of Poplavsky decided to commit suicide, who wanted to "take" someone to the other world) .

Poplavsky’s prose and poetry is characterized by the influence of the work of Arthur Rimbaud , French surrealism and Russian symbolism (primarily Blok ); in addition, in the early 1920s, Poplavsky was strongly influenced by Ilya Zdanevich and later wrote that he was at that time a “sharp futurist ”. Author of the poetry collection Flags (1931) and the posthumous collections of Snowy Hour (1936), Waxed Wreath (1938), Airship of Unknown Direction (1965), Automatic Poems (1999), and the novels Apollo Bezobrazov (1932, full publication in 1993), Home from Heaven (fragments appeared in 1936-1938, full publication in 1993).

The main theme of his poetry is death, and the motive is the enjoyment of death, dying. Poplavsky is known for developing this motif through the famous five-footed trochee ( K. Taranovsky ), which allowed M. L. Gasparov to call him “the virtuoso of the choreic death”.

In his poetry, he widely used metabols, metaphors and avatars. In the novels of Poplavsky there are a large number of gradations.

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

The unfulfilled idea of ​​publishing Poplavsky’s first poetry collection (“The Gramophone at the North Pole”), most likely, belongs to the poet, writer and publisher I. M. Zdanevich, with whom the poet was close in the mid-1920s.

In 1927, the publisher and journalist S. M. Romov planned to publish the book of his poems “Airship of unknown direction” (60 poems), which also did not appear.

For the first time, Poplavsky’s poems were published in 1928 in the Prague magazine Volia Rossii.

Since 1929, Poplavsky’s poems have been constantly published in the “Modern Notes” almost inaccessible to the “young authors”. In the journal "Numbers" B. Yu. Poplavsky regularly publishes poems, critical articles.

In 1931, Poplavsky’s first poetry collection Flags was published. By this time, Poplavsky was everywhere “accepted”, including with the Merezhkovsky.

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

The Flags collection turned out to be the only lifetime collection of B. Yu. Poplavsky. Attempts to release the novel Apollo Bezobrazov (The Home from Heaven by Poplavsky a few days before his death) as a separate publication did not succeed.

Poems of Poplavsky from the collection "Flags" exist at the junction of two cultures. The experience of both new Russian (A. Blok, B. Pasternak) and French (Rimbaud, Apollinaire) poetry is refracted in them. His poems often represent a “retelling” of some nonexistent paintings. It is no accident that Poplavsky’s poetry was repeatedly correlated with Chagall’s painting and, noting a powerful melodic beginning, nevertheless found it “more picturesque than musical”.

In the poems of B. Yu. Poplavsky of the 30s (the posthumous collection “Snow Hour”) there is less formal “intentionality”, and the “tragic impressionism” of the best forces to speak of Poplavsky as a worthy successor to the traditions of Russian metaphysical lyrics.

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

Articles 1933–34 are a new stage in the work of Poplavsky the critic. The meeting with N. I. Stolyarova did not make any special changes in the poet’s life, but in his work the tone of attitude was different.

Books

• Poplavsky Boris Flags: Poems. - Paris : Numbers, 1931
• Poplavsky Boris Snow hour: Poems 1931-1935. - Paris, 1936
• Poplavsky Boris From the diaries. 1928-1935. - Paris, 1938
• Poplavsky Boris In a wreath of wax: Fourth book of poems. - Paris: Book House, 1938
• Poplavsky Boris Airship of unknown direction. - Paris, 1965
• Poplavsky Boris Under the Star Flag: Poems. - St. Petersburg, 1993
• Poplavsky Boris Home from Heaven: Novels. St. Petersburg: Logos; Dusseldorf: The Blue Horseman, 1993
• Poplavsky Boris Unpublished: Diaries, articles, poems, letters. - M .: Christian Publishing House, 1996
• Poplavsky Boris Poems: “Flags”. "Snow hour." "In a wreath of wax." "An airship of unknown direction." - Tomsk: Aquarius, 1997
• Poplavsky Boris. Assassination attempt with unsuitable means: Unknown poems. Letters to I. M. Zdanevich / Compiled by Regis Geyro . - M .: Gilea , Blue Horseman, 1997 .-- 160 p. - 1000 copies.
• Poplavsky Boris Dadafoniya: Unknown poems 1924-1927. - M.: Gilea, 1999
• Poplavsky Boris Automatic poems. - M .: Consent, 1999
• Poplavsky Boris Unpublished verses. - M .: Terra, 2003
• Poplavsky Boris Orpheus in Hell: Unknown poems, poems and drawings. - M.: Gilea, 2009
• Poplavsky Boris Kuski. - Paris: Gilea, 2012 (circulation 50 + 50 numbered copies.)
• Poplavsky Boris Nothingness: Unknown poems of 1922-1935. - M.: Gilea, 2013

Publications

• The article Around the Numbers, 1934.
• Apollo Bezobrazov. Chapters from the novel // "Numbers", No. 2-3, 1930. No. 5, 1931; "Experiments", No. 1, 5, 6, 1953-1956.
• Home from heaven. Chapters from the novel // "Circle", No. 1-3, 1936-1938; "Russian Thought", 1982, 14.1., 21.1., 28.1. and 5.2.
• Ark: Poetry of the first emigration. / Comp., Ed. foreword and comment. W. Crade - M .: Politizdat , 1991 .-- S. 266-287. - 511 p.

Collected Works

• Collected works. In 3 volumes of Berkeley: Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1980-1981 (edited by Simon Karlinsky)
• Compositions. - M .: Summer Garden; The journal "Neva", 1999
• Collected works. In 3 volumes / Ed. A. Bogoslovsky, E. Menegaldo. - M .: Consent, 2000.

• Boris Poplavsky in assessments and memoirs of contemporaries. St. Petersburg, Düsseldorf, 1993
• Livak L. "Heroic times of young foreign poetry." The literary avant-garde of Russian Paris (1920-1926) // Diaspora: New materials. VII. SPb .; Paris: Atheneum; Phoenix, 2005.P. 131-242
• Menegaldo E. The Poetic Universe of Boris Poplavsky .. - SPb. : Aletheia, 2007 .-- ISBN 978-5-903354-54-2 .
• Tokarev Dmitry . “Between India and Hegel”: Creativity of Boris Poplavsky in a comparative perspective. - M .: New Literary Review , 2011. - 347 p. - (Scientific Library).

• Boris Poplavsky: poetry, prose, criticism, memories (Russian)
• Poplavsky Boris Yulianovich (inaccessible link) (Russian)
• Boris Yulianovich POPLAVSKY (1903-1935) (Russian)
• Graves of departed poets
• Mikhail Rakhunov . The death of Boris Poplavsky (Russian)

• Melodeclamation of a poem by Boris Poplavsky “Salome”