Genrikh Sapgir (; November 20, 1928,
Biysk,
Altai Krai, Russia – October 7, 1999,
Moscow
Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
) was a Russian poet and fiction writer of
Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
descent.
Biography
He was born in Biysk to a family of a
Moscow
Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
engineer on a business trip. The family returned to Moscow fairly soon. In 1944 he joined the course of creative writing tutored by the artist and writer . Together with some other of Kropivnitsky's students he later formed the so-called of poets and writers, part of the
Soviet Nonconformist Art movement. Since 1959 Sapgir published his poetry for children. His other poems appeared only in émigré magazines, such as ''Continent'' and ''Strelets'' (''The Archer'').
According to
Anatoly Kudryavitsky,
"Genrikh Sapgir is the most prominent figure of the writers that came to be associated with the now well-known 'Lianozovo Group', which also included (1934-2009) and Igor Kholin (1920-1999). These Moscow poets sought out new models and positions and exploited the possibilities of inserting common speech directly in their texts. Each of them had a Dostoyevskian eye for everyday Russian life, which made their work immediately accessible."
During the perestroika period
Since 1989 his poetry, short stories, plays and novels have been widely published in Russia. Three volumes of his Collected Poems appeared at the end of the 1990s. He represented Russia at numerous international festivals of poetry, his work has been published in translation throughout the world. There are English translations by
Jim Kates,
Anatoly Kudryavitsky and Artyom Kotenko & Anthony Weir.
Andrew Bromfield published his translations of Sapgir's 'Very Short Stories'. Sapgir was the recipient of various awards including the
Pushkin Prize for poetry.
In 1999 he died of a heart attack in a Moscow trolley-bus on his way to the launch of the anthology of contemporary Russian poetry entitled "Poetry of Silence".
In Sapgir's biography published in 2004, David Shrayer-Petrov called him an "
avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
classic".
[ Shrayer, Maxim D., Shrayer-Petrov, D., ''Генрих Сапгир: Классик авангарда'' enrikh Sapgir: An avant-garde classic St Petersburg: Dmitri Bulanin Publishing, 2004.]
Books in English translation
* ''Psalms''. Translated by Jim Kates. Cold Hub Press, 2012.
References
Further reading
* Smith, A. 'Genrikh Sapgir: Klassik avangarda.'
The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 83, Number 4, 1 October 2005, pp. 746–747(2)
External links
Official website
translated by
Andrew Bromfield
Eight poems in Englishtranslated by Artyom Kotenko and
Anthony Weir
Five poems in Englishtranslated by Anatoly Kudryavitsky
translated by
Roman Turovsky
Ivan Karamazov's interview with Anatoly Kudryavitsky about Sapgir
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sapgir, Genrikh
Russian male poets
Russian male novelists
Russian male short story writers
1928 births
1999 deaths
People from Biysk
Writers from Moscow
Jewish Russian writers
Soviet Jews
Jewish writers
Burials in Troyekurovskoye Cemetery
20th-century Russian novelists
20th-century Russian short story writers
20th-century Russian poets
20th-century Russian male writers