Blog on next two poets chosen to be honored in my, Second Poets Tribute Series
Fourth poet, Vladimir Nabokov and fifth poet Alexander Pushkin
(4.) Vladimir Nabokov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov
Life and career
Russia
Nabokov was born on 22 April 1899 (10 April 1899 Old Style), in Saint Petersburg,[a] to a wealthy and prominent family of the Russian nobility that traced its roots to the 14th-century Tatar prince Nabok Murza, who entered into the service of the Tsars, and from whom the family name is derived.[8][9]:16[10] His father was the liberal lawyer, statesman, and journalist Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov (1870–1922) and his mother was the heiress Yelena Ivanovna née Rukavishnikova, the granddaughter of a millionaire gold-mine owner. His father was a leader of the pre-Revolutionary liberal Constitutional Democratic Party and wrote numerous books and articles about criminal law and politics.[11] His cousins included the composer Nicolas Nabokov. His paternal grandfather, Dmitry Nabokov (1827–1904), was Russia's Justice Minister during the reign of Alexander II. His paternal grandmother was the Baltic German Baroness Maria von Korff (1842–1926). Through his father's German ancestry, he was related to the composer Carl Heinrich Graun (1704–1759).[12]
Vladimir was the family's eldest and favorite child, with four younger siblings: Sergey (1900–45), Olga (1903–78), Elena (1906–2000), and Kirill (1912–64). Sergey was killed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945 after publicly denouncing Hitler's regime. Ayn Rand recalled Olga (her close friend at Stoiunina Gymnasium) as a supporter of constitutional monarchy who first awakened Rand's interest in politics.[13][14] Elena, who in later years became Vladimir's favorite sibling, published her correspondence with him in 1985 and was an important source for later biographers of Nabokov.
Nabokov spent his childhood and youth in Saint Petersburg and at the country estate Vyra near Siverskaya, south of the city. His childhood, which he called "perfect" and "cosmopolitan", was remarkable in several ways. The family spoke Russian, English, and French in their household, and Nabokov was trilingual from an early age. He related that the first English book his mother read to him was Misunderstood (1869) by Florence Montgomery. In fact, much to his patriotic father's disappointment, Nabokov could read and write in English before he could in Russian. In Speak, Memory Nabokov recalls numerous details of his privileged childhood, and his ability to recall in vivid detail memories of his past was a boon to him during his permanent exile, providing a theme that echoes from his first book Mary to later works such as Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. While the family was nominally Orthodox, there was little religious fervor, and Vladimir was not forced to attend church after he lost interest. In 1916, Nabokov inherited the estate Rozhdestveno, next to Vyra, from his uncle Vasily Ivanovich Rukavishnikov ("Uncle Ruka" in Speak, Memory), but lost it in the October Revolution one year later; this was the only house he ever owned.[citation needed]
The Rozhdestveno estate 16-year-old Nabokov inherited from his maternal uncle. Nabokov possessed it for less than a year before losing it in the October Revolution.
Nabokov's adolescence was also the period in which his first serious literary endeavors were made. In 1916, Nabokov published his first book, Stikhi ("Poems"), a collection of 68 Russian poems. At the time he was attending Tenishev school in Saint Petersburg, where his literature teacher Vladimir Vasilievich Gippius had been critical of his literary accomplishments. Some time after the publication of Stikhi, Zinaida Gippius, renowned poet and first cousin of Vladimir Gippius, told Nabokov's father at a social event, "Please tell your son that he will never be a writer."[15]
Emigration
After the 1917 February Revolution, Nabokov's father became a secretary of the Russian Provisional Government in Saint Petersburg. After the October Revolution, the family was forced to flee the city for Crimea, not expecting to be away for very long. They lived at a friend's estate and in September 1918 moved to Livadiya, at the time part of the Ukrainian Republic; Nabokov's father became a minister of justice in the Crimean Regional Government.
After the withdrawal of the German Army in November 1918 and the defeat of the White Army (early 1919), the Nabokovs sought exile in western Europe. They settled briefly in England and Vladimir enrolled in Trinity College of the University of Cambridge, first studying zoology, then Slavic and Romance languages. His examination results on the first part of the Tripos, taken at the end of second year, were a starred first. He sat the second part of the exam in his fourth year, just after his father's death. Nabokov feared he might fail the exam, but his script was marked second-class. His final examination result was second-class, and his BA conferred in 1922. Nabokov later drew on his Cambridge experiences to write several works, including the novels Glory and The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.
In 1920, Nabokov's family moved to Berlin, where his father set up the émigré newspaper Rul' ("Rudder"). Nabokov followed them to Berlin two years later, after completing his studies at Cambridge.
Berlin years (1922–37)
In March 1922, Nabokov's father was fatally shot in Berlin by the Russian monarchist Pyotr Shabelsky-Bork as he was trying to shield the real target, Pavel Milyukov, a leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party-in-exile. This mistaken, violent death echoed again and again in Nabokov's fiction, where characters would meet their deaths under accidental terms. (In Pale Fire, for example, one interpretation of the novel has an assassin mistakenly kill the poet John Shade, when his actual target is a fugitive European monarch.) Shortly after his father's death, Nabokov's mother and sister moved to Prague.
Nabokov stayed in Berlin, where he had become a recognised poet and writer within the émigré community and published under the nom de plume V. Sirin (a reference to the fabulous bird of Russian folklore). To supplement his scant writing income, he taught languages and gave tennis and boxing lessons.[16] Of his 15 Berlin years, Dieter E. Zimmer has written: "He never became fond of Berlin, and at the end intensely disliked it. He lived within the lively Russian community of Berlin that was more or less self-sufficient, staying on after it had disintegrated because he had nowhere else to go to. He knew little German. He knew few Germans except for landladies, shopkeepers, and immigration officials at the police headquarters."[17]
In 1922, Nabokov became engaged to Svetlana Siewert; she broke off the engagement in early 1923, her parents worrying that he could not provide for her.[18] In May 1923, he met a Russian-Jewish woman, Véra Evseyevna Slonim, at a charity ball in Berlin.[16] They married in April 1925.[16] Their only child, Dmitri, was born in 1934.
In 1936, Véra lost her job because of the increasingly anti-Semitic environment; also in that year the assassin of Nabokov's father was appointed second-in-command of the Russian émigré group. In the same year, Nabokov began seeking a job in the English-speaking world. In 1937, he left Germany for France, where he had a short affair with Russian émigrée Irina Guadanini. His family followed him to France, making en route their last visit to Prague, then spent time in Cannes, Menton, Cap d'Antibes, and Fréjus and finally settled in Paris. In May 1940, the Nabokovs fled the advancing German troops to the United States on board the SS Champlain, with the exception of Nabokov's brother Sergei, who died at the Neuengamme concentration camp on 9 January 1945.[19]
United States
The house at 957 East State St., Ithaca, New York, where Nabokov lived with his family in 1947 and 1953 while teaching at Cornell University. Here he finished Lolita and started writing Pnin.
The Nabokovs settled in Manhattan and Vladimir began volunteer work as an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History.[20]
Nabokov joined the staff of Wellesley College in 1941 as resident lecturer in comparative literature. The position, created specifically for him, provided an income and free time to write creatively and pursue his lepidoptery. Nabokov is remembered as the founder of Wellesley's Russian Department. The Nabokovs resided in Wellesley, Massachusetts, during the 1941–42 academic year. In September 1942 they moved to Cambridge, where they lived until June 1948. Following a lecture tour through the United States, Nabokov returned to Wellesley for the 1944–45 academic year as a lecturer in Russian. In 1945, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He served through the 1947–48 term as Wellesley's one-man Russian Department, offering courses in Russian language and literature. His classes were popular, due as much to his unique teaching style as to the wartime interest in all things Russian.[citation needed] At the same time he was the de facto curator of lepidoptery at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology.[21] After being encouraged by Morris Bishop, Nabokov left Wellesley in 1948 to teach Russian and European literature at Cornell University, where he taught until 1959. Among his students at Cornell was future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who later identified Nabokov as a major influence on her development as a writer.[22]
Nabokov wrote Lolita while travelling on butterfly-collection trips in the western United States that he undertook every summer. Véra acted as "secretary, typist, editor, proofreader, translator and bibliographer; his agent, business manager, legal counsel and chauffeur; his research assistant, teaching assistant and professorial understudy"; when Nabokov attempted to burn unfinished drafts of Lolita, Véra stopped him. He called her the best-humored woman he had ever known.[16][23][24]
In June 1953 Nabokov and his family went to Ashland, Oregon. There he finished Lolita and began writing the novel Pnin. He roamed the nearby mountains looking for butterflies, and wrote a poem called Lines Written in Oregon. On 1 October 1953, he and his family returned to Ithaca, New York, where he would later teach the young writer Thomas Pynchon.[25]
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vladimir-Nabokov
(5.)
Fifth poet- Alexander Pushkin
(1.) https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pushkin
Alexander Pushkin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
He was a Russian poet, novelist, dramatist and writer of short stories.
Many think he was the greatest Russian poet.
Aleksandr Pushkin by Vasily Tropinin
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was born 26 May 1799 (6 June New Style) 1799, Moscow, and died 29 January 1837 (10 February, New Style), St Petersburg. He was a Russian poet, novelist, dramatist and writer of short stories.
Many think he was the greatest Russian poet. He started the great tradition of Russian literature. Pushkin wrote in a way that no other Russian had done: he used the Russian language as it was spoken instead of writing in a style based on old church books. His influence on other Russian writers was enormous and several Russian composers set his stories and poems to music. His poetry is very hard to translate well into other languages because the words are full of special meanings in Russian culture. His novels, especially Eugene Onegin, are widely read.
Pushkin was the great-grandson of an African slave of the Tzar Peter the Great. He was killed in a duel in 1837 at the age of 37.
Early years
Pushkin's father came from an old aristocratic family. On his mother's side Pushkin had African ancestors. His great-grandfather Abram Gannibal was an Abyssinian who was living in a palace of the Turkish sultan in Istanbul. The Russian ambassador bought him as a present for Peter the Great, the tsar of Russia. Gannibal became a favourite of Peter the Great and he was sent to Paris to study. He became very rich. Pushkin was proud of his great-grandfather and wrote about him in a novel called The Negro of Peter the Great.
In 19th century Russia all aristocratic families learned to speak French, so Pushkin and his brother and sister spoke and wrote in French more than in Russian. The children were cared for by a nurse, Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva. It was the nurse who taught them to love the Russian language. She told the children Russian folktales. Pushkin also spoke Russian to the peasants and he read many books in his father's library.
When he was 12 he went to a new school called the Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo. Years later this school was renamed Pushkin after their famous pupil. He soon started writing romantic poems in Russian using Russian tales of heroes and adventures. Ruslan and Ludmila was a poem that was later to be made into an opera by Mikhael Glinka.
Adulthood
In 1817, Pushkin got a job in the foreign office at St. Petersburg. He soon became interested in politics and supported the Decembrist revolt of 1825 when a group of noblemen and army officers tried to put another tsar in power and make him less powerful. Pushkin wrote some political poems. The result was that he was told he had to leave St. Petersburg. He had to spend six years in exile in the south of the country: in the Caucasus and the Crimea. He wrote about his experiences in the south in several romantic narrative poems (long poems which tell a story). He started work on a novel in verse called Yevgeny Onegin (or Eugene Onegin). He did not finish it until 1833. This was to be his most famous work. It was used by many musicians including Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky who made it into an opera. The poem shows typical Russian people in the society of his day.
Pushkin was angry that he was still in exile and he wrote many letters to his friends. Many of these letters were later published. He spent a lot of time drinking, gaming and fighting with swords. He fell in love with the daughter of a Count for whom he was working. The Count managed to get Pushkin exiled to his mother's estate near Pskov at the other end of Russia. Pushkin spent two years here. He was lonely, but he studied Russian history and talked to the peasants. The poems he wrote were full of ideas from Russian culture. He wrote one of his major works: Boris Godunov, a drama about a story from Russian history. The composer Modest Mussorgsky later made an opera from it. Boris Godunov was a cruel tsar in the 17th century. Pushkin's play shows that the ordinary people had a lot of power. This made it difficult for Pushkin to get it published.
Return from exile
After the revolt in 1825 the new tsar Nicholas I realized that Pushkin was by now very famous. He also realized that he had not taken part in the revolt, so he allowed him to return. The tsar said that he himself would censor Pushkin's works before they were allowed to be published. He said that he was going to be a good tsar and help the poor people (the serfs) to become free. Pushkin was in a difficult position because he could not write anything that the tsar would not like.
He had to be very careful not to say bad things about the rulers of the country. The police watched him very carefully. Yet at this time Pushkin wrote a large number of great works, almost each one of them being the first of their kind in Russian literature. One example is the short story The Queen of Spades, which Tchaikovsky made into an opera and which was to be a great influence on the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Last years
In his last years, Pushkin was again in government service in St. Petersburg. He married in 1831 and had to spend a lot of time in society at court. He wrote more and more prose. He wrote a history of Peter the Great and a historical novel The Captain's Daughter. He kept asking the tsar to let him resign from his job and go to the country to spend his time writing. The tsar would not allow that. In 1837, Pushkin was killed in a duel. He had been forced to fight the duel in order to defend his wife's honour.
Pushkin’s achievements
The Russian language today would be very different if it had not been for Pushkin. Using the language as it was spoken by the people he made it into a language which was simple but which could also express deep feelings. His works were a great influence on later writers like Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov and Leo Tolstoy. Yevgeny Onegin was the first Russian novel which told a story about the society of the time. His works have been translated into all the major languages
(2.)
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aleksandr-Sergeyevich-Pushkin