Nikolay Glazkov
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Nikolay Ivanovich Glazkov ( rus, Николай Иванович Глазков, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪdʑ ɡlɐˈskof, a=Nikolay Ivanovich Glazkov.ru.vorb.oga; 30 January 19191 October 1979) was a Soviet Russian poet who coined the term
samizdat Samizdat (, , ) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual rep ...
.


Life

Glazkov was born in the village of Lyskovo, in what is now
Nizhny Novgorod Oblast Nizhny Novgorod Oblast () is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of Nizhny Novgorod. It has a population of 3,119,115 as of the 2021 Ru ...
, Russia. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a teacher of German language. The family moved to Moscow in 1923. Glazkov began writing poetry at a very early age. As a student, he attended the literature faculty of Moscow State Pedagogical University. In 1938 his father was repressed during the
Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...
, and in 1940 Glazkov was thrown out of university as a relative of an
enemy of the people The terms enemy of the people and enemy of the nation are designations for the political opponents and the social class, social-class opponents of the Power (social and political), power group within a larger social unit, who, thus identified, ...
. Soon afterwards, however, he was allowed to attend
Maxim Gorky Literature Institute The Maxim Gorky Literature Institute () is an institution of higher education in Moscow, Russia. It is located at 25 Tverskoy Boulevard in central Moscow. History The institute was founded in 1933 on the initiative of Maxim Gorky, a writer, foun ...
, from which he graduated in 1942. Upon graduation he worked as a village teacher, but in 1944 he returned to Moscow. He worked odd jobs such as loading trucks and sawing lumber, all the while publishing poetry both officially and unofficially. Parodying the ceremonious names of the official printing organs of the Soviet Union, he printed his poetry under the publishing house name of ''Samsebyaizdat'' (which literally translates as something like ''self-publishing house''). This is later shortened to ''samizdat'', a term now known to any student of Soviet literature. Through the 1950s and 1960s, Glazkov continued to be published with and without the consent of the Soviet authorities. He made a cameo appearance as the peasant in the hot air balloon at the beginning of Tarkovsky's 1966 film ''
Andrei Rublev Andrei Rublev (, ; ) was a Russian artist considered to be one of the greatest medieval Russian painters of Orthodox Christian icons and frescoes. He is revered as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and his feast day is 29 January. Ear ...
''. He died on 1 October 1979 in Moscow.


Work and reputation

There are many facets to Glazkov's extremely prodigious poetic output. On one hand, he was known for neologisms and clever use of the Russian language to make seemingly impossible rhymes. In this, he was sometimes seen (as he himself asserted) as a follower of Velimir Khlebnikov. He was also noted for his lighthearted jokey verse, such as a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's "
The Raven "The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a distraught lover who is paid a visit ...
" where the narrator, after being made quite gloomy by the raven's predictions of woe decides to test him by asking whether he knows any cities in Chile. He is also somewhat of an alternative cult figure, both for his short, humorous-philosophical poetry and his relationship with the Soviet regime. Since much of his best poetry was indeed ''samizdat'', his poems have been retold, rearranged and worked their way into the national consciousness. He was also known to have issued poems that were deliberately badly written, ostentatiously rhyming ''Communism'' and ''socialism'' any chance he could get, or "censoring" his own poems. He would also translate poetry from nearly every language, often showing off with disrespect of the original work such as sticking in parts of other poems in the middle. Glazkov himself is a frequent personage in his poetry, where he is often (partially ironically) treated as an amazing genius.


References

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http://er3ed.qrz.ru/glazkov.htm
{{DEFAULTSORT:Glazkov 1919 births 1979 deaths Burials at Vostryakovskoye Cemetery 20th-century Russian poets 20th-century Russian male writers Moscow State Pedagogical University alumni Russian male poets Soviet male poets People from Lyskovsky District Soviet poets