Nikolai Ivanovich Rylenkov ( 02/02/1909 – 06/23/1969) - Russian poet, prose writer, translator, one of the founders of the Smolensk poetry school. Nikolai Rylenkov was born in the village of Alekseevka, Roslavl district, Smolensk province, and was left without parents at an early age. He graduated from the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute, about which a memorial plaque by the sculptor A. G. Sergeev is installed on the facade of his building.
Arrived in Smolensk in the mid-20s. Here Rylenkov belongs to the university circle, in the newspaper “Rabochy Put” he publishes the first poem “Toloka”, published without the knowledge of the young author under the name “Mutual Aid” (11/14/1926). From the mid-30s to the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, 6 poetry books were published, the first “My Heroes” (1933). The most significant is the final collection “Birch Woods” (1940), which identified the main themes of Rylenkov’s poetry, to which he remained faithful throughout his entire career: Russian art, Russian nature, Russian history.
Since 1934, Rylenkov has been a Delegate to the First Congress of Soviet Writers from the Smolensk Writers' Organization. From the first days of the Great Patriotic War - at the front: platoon commander in a sapper battalion, war correspondent for the front-line press. The historical theme absorbs from this time and military theme. From 1943 to 1945 he published 4 collections of poems: “Farewell to Youth”, “Blue Wine”, “Father’s House” and “Smolensk Forests”. Immediately after the liberation of Smolensk he returned to hometown. Actively participates in the life of the writers' organization, being long years its chairman, was elected as a delegate to a number of congresses of Soviet writers.
IN post-war years More than 30 poetic and prose books by Rylenkov are published. In 1969, the last lifetime collections “Snowwoman” and “Crane Trumpets” were published.
In the mid-50s he returned to prose. One of the books that attracted the most reader’s attention is the story about the events of the Great Patriotic War “On the Old Smolensk Road”.
In the 60s, he turned to the genre of lyrical prose: he published a book on writing, a volume of essays, and literary portraits“The Soul of Poetry” and “The Road Goes Beyond the Outskirts.”
In 1962, he completed work on a literary adaptation of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.” In the 50-60s he was fruitfully engaged in translation activities. He dedicates many works to Smolensk, its land and its workers; he compares his work with the work of a tiller and grain grower.
In the last years of his life he developed a new genre of epitaphs. Rylenkov's poems are engraved on stone in the Kutuzovsky Garden near the fortress wall (Memory of Heroes Square) and on the monument to the Sorrowful Mother in Readovka. On the facade of buildings in Zapolny Lane, building 4 and along Nakhimson Street, building 16 - memorial plaques(sculptor A. G. Sergeev).
Bibliography:
About the work of N.I. Rylenkov:
A. V. Makedonov “Essays on Soviet poetry” - Smolensk, 1960
L. S. Dobrokhotova, V. A. Kryukova, Yu. V. Pashkov “Nikolai Ivanovich Rylenkov” - reference index of literature - Smolensk, 1969
G. S. Merkin “Lyrics of N. I. Rylenkov” - Smolensk, 1971
E. I. Osetrov “Muse in a birch forest” - Smolensk, 1971
V. A. Zvezdaeva “Nikolai Rylenkov” - Smolensk, 1994
In the story "The Tale of My Childhood" Rylenkov recalls: “The village of Alekseevka, where my parents were peasants and where I grew up, was one of the most remote corners of the forested Roslavl district... During the years of my childhood, there were not even fifty households in it. Almost at its very outskirts, dense forests began...” The father is remembered “walking with his head naked and with a seeder on his chest along the field, surrounded by the golden radiance of scattered grain.” WITH early childhood Rylenkov mastered “the tricky science of how to build huts, how to plant trees, what time to start sowing.” Fate “stubbornly taught me to walk barefoot on the hard stubble.” Towards difficulties rural life personal grief increased: in 1916, Rylenkov’s father died, in 1919, his beloved mother died.
5 classes primary school Rylenkov graduated in 4 years and entered high school in the village Tyunino, where he participated in the release of the school handwritten magazine “Sparkles”. The father, a village literate and book lover, dreamed of making his son a village teacher, and Rylenkov entered the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute. He lived hard in Smolensk, doing odd jobs, but continued literary creativity. I have been drawn to poetry since childhood. Rylenkov grew up in an environment where folklore was present in everyday life, and in the Rylenkovs’ house the poems of the great Russian poets were heard.
In 1926, ninth-grader Rylenkov brought poetry to the editorial office of the newspaper “Smolenskaya Derevnya,” and in 1929 he began publishing in the local newspapers “Our Derevnya,” “The Way of Youth,” and “Bryansky Rabochiy.”
In 1933 he graduated from the Faculty of Language and Literature pedagogical institute, worked as a teacher, then as an editor in a book publishing house, and headed the criticism department in the Smolensk newspaper “Rabochy Put”.
In 1933 in Smolensk, Rylenkov published his first book of poems, “My Heroes.” The second book, also in Smolensk, was the collection “Meetings”. At the end of the 1930s, “Poems about a Prosperous Life” and the poem “Earth” were published, followed by “Birch Forest” (1940). From his first books, Rylenkov declared himself as a singer of his native land. Rylenkov creates poems about the history of Smolensk “Master Fyodor Horse”, “Kutuzov on the Road”, “Monument of 1812 in Smolensk” and others. Rylenkov's poems receive recognition and speak favorably of them. Since 1936, Rylenkov has headed the Smolensk writers' organization. Becoming a master of the epic genre, he writes poems on themes of Russian history " Big road"(1938), "Skomorokh Ovsey Kolobok" (1939), "The Great Jam" (1940).
In the first days of the Great Patriotic War Rylenkov volunteered, although he was not subject to conscription due to health reasons. He took books and Heine with him to the front, commanded a sapper platoon, and at night, by the light of a smokehouse in dugouts, he continued to write poetry. The theme of Russia is filled with increasingly significant content. In the poems of the war years, journalistic appeals appear that were previously not typical for Rylenkov. Rylenkov became a military journalist, leaflets with his poems and appeals were dropped from airplanes behind enemy lines to partisans and residents of the temporarily occupied Smolensk region and Belarus; the author was awarded a medal"Partisan of the Great Patriotic War." Rylenkov works in different genres, writes poetry, songs, ballads, poems “April”, “Forest Lodge”, “Return”, “Creation of the World”, “In the Native Land”. Rylenkov’s poem “Take revenge, comrade” was sung like a folk song.
In 1943-44, books of Rylenkov’s poems “Blue Wine”, “Farewell to Youth”, “Smolensk Forests” were published. In one of his wartime speeches, A. Surkov, speaking about lyrics, noted “With you and without you, beautiful poems by N. Rylenkov...”. Rylenkov’s pre-war lines also took part in the war - at secret gatherings, young Smolensk underground workers read the invocation lines of Rylenkov’s poem “The Great Zamyatnya,” dedicated to the struggle of the residents of Smolensk against the invaders in former times. In verse 1945 Mother country appears in the aura of a winner.
In 1946, Rylenkov published a book with recordings of partisan songs “ Living water"(Smolensk).
Rylenkov turns to prose, comprehending the path traversed by the people, the stories “Great Rosstan”, “On the Old Smolensk Road” appear, autobiographical trilogy: “The Tale of My Childhood”, “I am fourteen years old”, “The road goes beyond the outskirts”. The language of this prose is pure and capacious - “the Russian language with all its inherent charms, with all the shades - modesty, simplicity, shyness, clarity, smile, sincerity.” Rylenkov was also criticized for his allegedly passive admiration of nature, for the lack of citizenship in his poems about it. Indeed, the poet sensitively hears “the chilly shudder of the apple tree,” among his heroes are “willow, green willow,” viburnum and rowan (the title of one of his books, “Rowan Light,” is typical). Rylenkov approaches nature from the position of a folk worldview; it is in the spirit of folk poetry that he addresses the birch tree as a living creature: the birch tree is indeed animated, it repeats “girls’ chants at the window”, it “wades” the “white-white reach”, “nods from the hill” to the poet; Wherever he is, “there are light brown birches in his soul,” he calls his native Smolensk region a birch land. The images of nature in Rylenkov’s work are deeply civic and patriotic. In Rylenkov’s prose sketches “Blue Eyes of Winter”, “My Sleepless Spring”, “What Summer Smells”, “Autumn Rainbow”, the experience of a poet and a peasant is combined. “The guiding thread of the cranes” runs through all of the poet’s work; he called his last book “Crane Pipes.”
A poem written in 1948 became a folk song. Rylenkova“A girl is walking across the field.” Many composers (M. Fradkin, A. Flyarkovsky, I. Massalitinov, etc.) turned to Rylenkov’s song poems.
Rylenkov created his own poetic retelling of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.”
The last decade of the poet’s life was especially productive; books of prose “The Magic Book” (1964), “On Lake Sapsho” (1966) and others were published, books of poetry “Roots and Leaves” (1960), “Thirst” (1961), “Fifth time of year", "Selected Lyrics" (both - 1965), "Snow Girl" (1968), "Book of Time" (1969), etc.
A significant contribution to literature was Rylenkov’s books on the history of poetry - “Traditions and Innovation” (1962), where Russian poetry is presented in detail from M. Lomonosov to V. Bokov, “The Soul of Poetry” (1969), which includes articles about, Surikov, Shevchenko, Blok and many others. Rylenkov’s poems are also dedicated to many poets. His poems about M. Glinka and Beethoven were included in the anthology “Music in the Mirror of Poetry.” A manifestation of the poet’s “good soul” (that’s the name of the book about him) were also his translations of poets from the neighboring Smolensk region of Belarus - Y. Kolas, P. Brovka, M. Tank, A. Kuleshov, P. Panchenko, A. Velyugin, A. Zaritsky, F. Pestrak, P. Trusa, K. Kireenko, as well as articles about their work. Rylenkov translated poems and poets of other nations, some of the translations are collected in the book “Crane Pipes” (1972).
Nowadays a street, library, and school in Smolensk bear the name of Rylenkov. His lines are inscribed at the Smolensk fortress wall on the grave of those killed during the Great Patriotic War.
Died N. I. Rylenkov June 23, 1969, buried in Smolensk at the Fraternal Cemetery. The grave is on the central alley.
Rylenkov Nikolay Ivanovich, Russian Soviet poet.
Member of the CPSU since 1945. Born into a peasant family. Graduated from the Faculty of Literature and Language of the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute (1933). Participant of the Great Patriotic War 1941−45. Published since 1926. The first book of poems is “My Heroes” (1933). Author of the collections “Birch Forest” (1940), “Blue Wine” (1943), “Book of Fields” (1950), “Roots and Leaves” (1960), “Rowan Light” (1962), etc., and several poems.
In R.'s lyrics, which tend towards classical and folklore traditions, captures the richness of the Russian landscape, the bright attitude of a new man, a patriot and a worker. R. owns songs, a poetic retelling of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” (1966), stories, essays, autobiographical and historical stories, and a collection of articles “Traditions and Innovation” (1962).
Awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and medals.
Rylenkov Nikolai Ivanovich (1909-1969) - Russian and Soviet writer. Born on February 2 (15), 1909 in the village of Alekseevka. Parents were peasants. Nikolai became an orphan early. He first studied in the village of Tyunino, and then in 1926 completed his secondary education in the city of Roslavl. The year he graduated from school, the first publication of his poem “Toloka” took place in the newspaper “Rabochy Put”, the editors of which renamed the work without the author’s consent to “Mutual Aid”. He got a job as a teacher in a village school in the Bryansk region.
In 1927 he returned to his native village and headed the village council of Alekseevka. In 1930 he became a student at the Faculty of Literature and Language at the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute. He completed his studies in 1933. This year, the first collection of Rylenkov’s poems, “My Heroes,” was published. He got a job in the editorial office of the periodical “Working Way”.
During World War II, he took an active part in hostilities in 1941-1945, commanding a platoon of sapper battalions and working as a war correspondent. During this time, Rylenkov published 4 collections of poems. Joined the All-Union communist party Bolsheviks in 1945.
Since 1958 he has been a member of the board of the Writers' Union of the RSFSR, and since 1965 he has become its secretary. In 1962, he completed work on a retelling in poetic form of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and published it the following year in “ Literary newspaper" Later this work was published as a separate book. Latest books, published during the writer’s lifetime, were “Snow Girl” and “Crane Trumpets”.
Years of life: 1909 - 1969.
Russian Soviet poet.
Your own song
What is the gift of a poet? - Experience of generations,
Speaking in clear language.
Nikolay Rylenkov
Fate was not at all kind to Nikolai Rylenkov, who was orphaned at an early age and with great difficulty paved the way to knowledge, as if bequeathed to him by his father, who dreamed of seeing his son as a teacher.
One of the writer’s autobiographical stories talks about how bitter it was for him that he poorly remembers the real features of his father’s face. But his father was forever remembered by him in the majestic appearance of a rural worker of those distant years - “walking with a naked head and with a seeder on his chest along the field, surrounded by the golden radiance of scattered grain.”
Such paintings are a thing of the past long ago, but the poetry of selfless, earnest labor emanating from them, like the light of extinct stars, nourished the poet’s work all his life. And one of the most touching memories of her mother is also connected with the centuries-old occupation of a peasant woman: “All her neighbors were amazed and envious of her smooth and thin yarn... True, by spring all her fingers were cut by the harsh thread.”
The story from which these lines are taken is called “The Tale of My Childhood,” and if at first such a title may seem sentimental to the reader, then details like those just given reveal the full ambiguity of this title: we are talking about a time that has irrevocably gone into the past, seen through a bittersweet haze of memories of the irrevocable time of the author’s pre-orphan life.
Nikolai Ivanovich Rylenkov belonged to that generation of workers and peasants’ children, “the firstborn of a harsh time,” who were lucky enough, already in the difficult post-revolutionary years, to have the opportunity to join a truly high culture.
True, the education of the future writer, both due to family circumstances and due to restructuring in schools, was somewhat delayed (born in 1909, Rylenkov graduated from the Smolensk Pedagogical Institute in 1933), but during these years the huge world knowledge. And he retained his youthfully enthusiastic, loving attitude towards the treasures of science and art, towards the poetry of human thought throughout his life:
Having confused any dates in life,
We will not forget the day and hour,
When to the entrances of the institutes
We approached for the first time.
How did we pick up books?
That best gift of all the gifts
How diligence conquered
We are old professors.
(“To Friends”, 1958)
“The young teacher’s basque”, “in the corners of the library there are old oak cabinets” - all this will later be mentioned in Rylenkov’s numerous poems about the school in Tyunin, where his “attempts of writing” were supported.
Later, already publishing poetry in newspapers, he worked as a village teacher, volost statistician, secretary, and chairman of the village council. The critic A.V., who met him then. Makedonov recalls how he was struck “in this... one-year-old by the variety of his erudition, and his remarkable memory for poetry, and his boundless love for them, and the breadth of his literary horizons and taste.” [ kind soul: Book about Nikolai Rylenkov. Memoirs, poems, articles, reviews. M.: Sov. Russia, 1973, p. 143.]
Already at this time, Rylenkov was noticed by the most authoritative writer in Smolensk at that time - Mikhail Isakovsky, who, in the words of Nikolai Ivanovich, “picked up every successful line” in his poems, but at the same time “mercilessly ridiculed... addiction to floweriness, to verbal pretentiousness."
Upon moving to Smolensk in 1930, the young poet found himself in one of the most important centers of literary life of that time. One can argue about the legality of what was subsequently put forward by A.V. Makedonov’s term “Smolensk school” in relation to the work of a number of poets who came from these places. However, the indisputable fact remains that literary life it was in full swing here. True, the club of poets "Arena", which Rylenkov heard about back in Tyunin, has already disintegrated, but around the local newspapers "Rabochiy Put" and "Young Comrade", the magazines "Offensive" [ “This was our Smolensk literary sky, where our wings grew stronger in our first flights,” one of the memoirists conveys Rylenkov’s later words about this magazine (Kind Soul: A Book about Nikolai Rylenkov. Memoirs, poems, articles, reviews, p. 74).] And " Western region“A large and actively working group of writers united, the soul of which was Isakovsky. Alexander Tvardovsky quickly gained strength, rapidly past the path from his first immature poems to “The Country of Ant”.
Nikolai Rylenkov, who belonged to the next generation after Isakovsky and was in close contact with Tvardovsky in the late 20s and early 30s, faced a real danger of falling under the influence of any of them, since their success and popularity were clearly evident even then.
It’s as if the memory of these temptations was inspired by Rylenkov’s later poem “Bluethroat” (1953) - about an “echo bird” that “would either begin to echo the oriole... then it would pull up the nightingale, falling a little short”:
No wonder we say:
Not every nightingale is in the dark.
You'd better be a tit,
Yes, sing your song!
Of course, “my own song” was not easy. In Rylenkov’s early poems, Yesenin’s intonations are sometimes clearly heard (“I don’t regret anything today, but tomorrow I will feel sorry for a lot. Well, well! It will be gratifying for me to shine the first star of memories”). Later, in poems on topical political topics, partly included in the poet’s first book, “My Heroes” (1933), there was a student’s copying of Mayakovsky’s propaganda techniques.
However, by the mid-thirties, the young poet begins to give clear preference traditional themes of lyrics - nature, love, concentrated reflection.
Evening wind, calm down,
The dawn is clear and pure.
The nightingale got drunk on the dew
From a maple leaf.
The nightingale got drunk on the dew,
I hold back my sigh...
And then it fell from the branches
Silver peas.
And then it fell from the branches
Into the silence of the forest,
And I held it in my hand
One pea.
(“Evening wind, wind more quietly...”, 1939)
At that time, such poems often found themselves out of favor with critics. They innocently ignored the fact that even if these lyrics did not talk about large, central events era, but addressed the most important problems and experiences for every person. Subsequently, Tvardovsky remarked, speaking about the love theme: “What is so essential for individual person“What often determines his fate, distorting it or rewarding it with the highest human joy, cannot but be of keen interest to everyone.” (And this statement is all the more important because Tvardovsky himself almost did not pay tribute to this eternal theme and was an extremely impartial judge here.)
Despite disapproving reviews from critics, Rylenkov continued to develop his “ungrateful” themes, daring to turn even to such a “compromised” genre as romance:
Childhood flies like a silver star in the palm of your hand,
It flickers and rings, hastening to assure everyone,
That we live - we don’t get tired, look - we don’t get enough of it
For this first snow, for this first snow.
("First Snow", 1940)
Already in Rylenkov’s poems of these years, one can feel a great poetic culture, a flair for the word, and a refined technique that allows one to paint vivid pictures of the most “ordinary” reality:
You can’t tear your hot soles off the ground,
Look at the tree - it stands like it was carved.
Slow minutes furry bumblebees
They are barely crawling, heavy from the heat.
(“You won’t tear off the soles
hot from the earth...", 1939)
Unobtrusive alliteration (“THE SLOW MINUTE FAIRY BUMBELES”) gives the line a melodious, cello-like sound.
In general, the poet’s desire to depict a simple, deeply democratic life, his “fearlessness” of purely prosaic details is noteworthy: “Wake up at dawn and, after drinking a glass of milk, hastily walk onto the porch through the dark vestibule...”; and one of his first experiments in the form of a sonnet begins with lines that are very unusual for this type of poetry:
Cabbages have been cut down from the vegetable gardens.
Still in the morning, elastic and juicy,
Those who smell delicious first of frost,
The piles are piled up in large piles.
Rylenkov’s landscapes in their accuracy are reminiscent of Bunin’s poems, which he was fond of, and... entries in the “magic book” of Demyan Sidorovich, the village “chronicler”, depicted in the story of Rylenkov himself:
The roads are not dusty yet
And plantain is softer than silk,
They will still quail in the rye
The quail calls loudly.
(“The roads are not yet dusty...”, 1938)
“Simple colors, precise words,” as the poet himself will soon say, reflecting on Levitan’s paintings.
Another facet of Rylenkov’s work from this time is quite remarkable: an appeal in a number of poems and poems to national history(“The Great Zamyatnya”, “The Youth with the Bridle”, “The Wedding of Marina Mnishek”). As if in anticipation of the approaching severe trials, the poet’s gaze snatches from the historical distance the people who selflessly fought against the enslavers.
As you know, during the Great Patriotic War, lyric poetry experienced a rapid flowering, becoming the voice and interlocutor of millions of people, imbued with their feelings, thoughts and concerns. She revealed all her capabilities, which can be described in Rylenkov’s later (1963) poems:
How monotonously the forest rustles in silence,
Dropping tangled shadows to the ground,
But wait, think, don’t rush,
Don't reproach him with monotony.
Its on the verge of summer and spring
The thunderstorm will catch you with its wing more than once,
And you will hear the string sound of a pine tree,
And the murmur of the oak and the babble of the aspen.
And Rylenkov’s own dramatic experience at a time of military thunderstorm made his lines especially convincing. Recalling what he experienced in her first months, the poet will say:
Grief followed everyone's paths,
Choking in the dust.
Having lost both homes and families,
We took care of our Moscow.
(“April”, 1942)
The words spoken in the famous Tolstoy epic - “The fire of Smolensk and its abandonment were an era for Prince Andrei” - were filled with the most vivid meaning in that sadly memorable year of 1941 for many, especially for those who grew up on this land.
It is noteworthy that the most heartfelt, most memorable works “are about the suffering of incredible blood memorable day"were born in Russian Soviet poetry from immigrants from the Smolensk region - Alexander Tvardovsky and Mikhail Isakovsky (the first and his hero, famous Vasily Terkin, made him a native of Smolensk).
Rylenkov assessed his own contribution to the poetry of those years soberly, modestly, but without unnecessary self-deprecation:
Maybe my poems are a historian
It will not be recorded in the chronicles of the war.
Maybe on the days of national celebrations,
Where orchestras burn with copper,
About halts, about campfires
The lines that are not mine will thunder.
But, left alone, my peer
He will open them like his own diary,
He will read to himself and say - there is in them
The smoke of war that penetrated my soul...
(“Like wormwood, the bread of separation is bitter to me...”, 1943)
Indeed, many lines of his war poems expressed all the pain of the first months of the war, when “through separation we walked to the east... when under the harsh sky of our homeland the headwind was bitter, like a reproach,” and the extremely heightened feeling of love for our native land ( “The Russian painted sky opened up before me... The sun of my life, Russia..."), and the impossibility of coming to terms with the fact that in the places where you grew up, there is now an enemy: “he walks around the outskirts dashingly, speaks German.”
The mercilessly sober school of war strengthened Rylenkov’s already nascent hostility to the crackling, empty phrase and rhetoric:
No vows, no loud words from now on
We will not say it in vain. ...
And on lips burned with thirst,
No means no and yes means yes!
We recognize each other in songs,
That hearts are sealed with blood...
From words learned and insipid,
We turned away during the days of war.
(“From the words,
rote and insipid...", 1945)
In the autobiographical poem “April” (1942), the hero’s wife tells him during a long-awaited meeting how, having read a Soviet leaflet on the occupied land, “I saw the battlements of the Kremlin towers through the dense rain net.”
The most obvious meaning of this image, which suggests itself to any reader, is that the heroine seemed to see with her own eyes distant Moscow, the stronghold against which the formidable wave of Hitler’s invasion crashed.
But Smolensk also has its own Kremlin, built by the famous Russian master Fyodor Kon, to whom Rylenkov dedicated the lines many years later:
He will build such a fortress here,
What will become a support for the homeland in troubles?
(“Master Fedor Kon in Smolensk”, 1963)
Perhaps, the vision that appeared before the heroine’s eyes is especially and significant because here, as another poet said, “the image enters the image.”
There is also a more modest, but equally exciting moment of such spiritual insight in the poem “April”, when the hero finally receives news - a telegram about the missing family:
Like the windows of a dear home,
Glowed in the darkness
Three such long-awaited words:
"Zhenya Batyushkova with children."
This visible image is definitely close to the one just discussed. The windows of an ordinary house appear to have a clear, although not at all intrusive, relationship with the most majestic symbols of national glory.
The same lyrical soulfulness marks Rylenkov’s poems dedicated to the victory that had already emerged in the last years of the war. In “The Creation of the World” (1944), its features merge with the traditional image of spring, but at the same time, “the messengers of young spring,” if we recall Tyutchev’s expression, do not at all resemble conventionally allegorical figures and are likened real heroes those days:
Again the banks of streams and rivers
The rushing winds are tight.
A March scout came out in the fog
Looking for a way for spring.
He knew that here, along the Dnieper,
Traces of war are still fresh,
What smells like gunpowder and blood
Recent battles.
There are no traces of familiar signs,
He must go everywhere himself
So that somewhere on an enemy mine
Spring did not explode on the way.
These worries and fears, this everyday behavior of a “conventional” character (“he sat down on the edge of a crater, walking with the warmth of the air”), which make March akin to a soldier frozen over the winter, difficult to make his way to the West, color the entire narrative in a completely unique way.
So “July the golden-browed” subsequently, like a real collective farm foreman, sighs, looking at his labor army:
Brown-haired teenagers were sitting
By the burnt out fire.
And he didn't know what to do with them,
How to take them out into the swath,
So above the river reaches
I would like to catch sun dragonflies.
And the poet himself in his post-war work is similar to his heroes, who again returned to their native lands, to life interrupted by the war and their usual work. Rylenkov’s “Self-Portrait” (final version - 1957) is smiling and attractive complete absence any pomposity and posture:
Like Lel from the green oak grove,
I did not walk in a wreath of flowers.
I didn’t play the pipe in the spring,
And I went to the field behind the plow,
To the oak grove where the orioles sang,
Took Pegasus out at night.
“On the old Smolensk road” - that’s what it was called historical story Rylenkov about the Patriotic War of 1812.
The poet seemed to return to his “old Smolensk road” and after the war to his former dear topics"traditional" lyrics.
However, let's read one of his poems from 1946:
Spring is looking into our eyes again,
There is no respite for reflection.
They say that the first thunderstorm
It breaks buds on trees.
They say that from the second thunderstorm
A thick warmth flows across the earth
And the floodplains are noisy,
Overgrown with young grass.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
But, remembering everyone who grew up with us,
You, who have matured in distant campaigns,
You’ll be silent and say: how many thunderstorms are there?
It flashed over our youth!
How many times our path is in thick smoke
Fleeing lightning illuminated,
And isn’t it time for everything to bloom,
What is stored at the bottom of our souls!
Unfortunately, in the first post-war years, not everything was conducive to this long-awaited prosperity. “Memorized and insipid” words, suppressed during the days of military thunderstorms, reappeared in the literary fields. Among those who went, the idyllic “cornflowers” grew thickly blue as the “bread” grew. Unfortunately, Rylenkov, who himself lived in a city that was rising from the ruins with great tension, knew difficult life villages of these years, and was unable, in the poems “Shepherd”, “Agronomist”, “In the mowing”, “A teacher lives here”, “Girls go to the club” to resist the superficially blissful reflection of life that then became widespread in literature. It is not for nothing that the poet later wrote, not without bitterness: “... I look beyond the boundaries of the years and I don’t want to take with me everything I have acquired.”
From the second half of the fifties, a new rise in Rylenkov’s poetry was indicated, when time itself contributed to the strengthening and development of its best features, increasing depth and artistic freedom.
During the war, Rylenkov said that his youth perished under the ruins and should be “buried according to military regulations.” However, the poem “You’ll give everything for this feeling...” (1904) breathes with what youthful audacity:
The hand squeezes a pencil
Like a poplar branch.
He is also swollen with juices
And also full of freshness.
I wouldn't be surprised if suddenly
The leaf on it will cut through.
Polemicizing with critics, who still sometimes reproached him for monotony (“They say that there are a lot of paths and stitches in my poems”), the poet defended his creative position, finding a strong and convincing image to express it:
They are like the strings of a lyre, I
I go through it day after day.
("Response", 1963)
However, this activity is not at all equivalent to monotonously “playing” your favorite melody! The furrow laid by Rylenkovsky Pegaska noticeably deepens.
The story “The Magic Book” ended with the story of the heroic death of a rural chronicler and a significant episode: the author gets a precious relic - “a burnt fragment of a pencil, the same pencil with which Demyan Sidorovich made his last notes.”
The harsh handwriting of this “pencil” seems to be noticeable in a number of the poet’s poems. So, for example, Rylenkov always had a passion for the sonnet, but, to be honest, his previous works of this kind often seemed dictated rather by an ardent desire to “ride” this unruly horse, a form that is relatively rarely encountered today. In the sonnets last period creativity, you clearly feel that their lines are dictated by a feeling, thought, experience - your own, that of the people, of previous generations.
This is the “Inscription on old book"(1958):
I've seen a lot of changes over the years,
In the cycle of days of passion, foam boiled.
I knew the earthly rulers of greatness and captivity,
And so I say: don’t bend the knee!
This is the sonnet “The soul strives deeper, to the fundamental principles.” (1965):
There, where it’s a shame to live on everything ready-made,
Where conscience does not give remission,
If you remain silent while taking water into your mouth,
Before the lie that the saint hid behind the word.
Rylenkovsky's Pegasus does not wander carefree through the idyllically serene meadows and forests, but honestly carries the heavy load of problems and worries of a tense, difficult century:
For everything, for everything he will ask us
time is strict,
You can't tell him
standing aside
What's wrong with a pure heart
I went out on the road
And I was mistaken -
through someone else's fault.
We have excuses
it does not suit the wicked,
Not for that
we argued with fate,
And above all
I value the sacred right -
Be the strictest
judge for yourself.
(“For everything, for everything he will ask us for everything...”, 1963)
And even the most secluded lyrical paths, along which Rylenkov’s muse sometimes wanders, ultimately lead us to the same “old Smolensk road” - to thoughts about the fate of the people, the world, humanity, so characteristic of great Russian poetry, which has always been for it essential condition full existence.
Here is a poem very characteristic of Rylenkov (1966):
What is citizenship? -
no need to ask
And you have to live it,
how to breathe air.
All that is civil
in which the mind of the century shines,
Than conscience
will answer the call of time,
What is given power
and in troubles to exalt.
What is citizenship? -
no need to ask.
“Everything in which the mind of the age shines is civic” - the poet was faithful to this deep and wise formula both in his literary affections and in his own work.
In one of last poems Rylenkov wrote:
Don't complain that the feather
It's getting heavier in my hand,
Not a drop of ink
And life hangs on him.
This same “weight” of what has been experienced and changed one’s mind is palpable in the poet’s prose. For the most part, it consists of novellas and stories of an autobiographical nature, depicting the environment of the future writer’s childhood and youth, the people of the then village, the youth of the twenties, eager for knowledge (“The Tale of My Childhood”, “I am fourteen years old.” “The road goes beyond the outskirts”, “The Magic Book”, etc.).
There were all sorts of legends about Demyan Sidorovich’s “magic book”. It contained many records about the weather and various natural phenomena, and the “chronicler” himself used to say to fellow villagers who pestered him with questions: “A magic book - it is in front of everyone’s eyes, but not everyone knows how to read it.”
And getting acquainted with this story, where the hero’s spare but accurate notes about “those elusive signs of the approach of spring, which are noticeable only to a very experienced eye,” are replaced by pictures of the awakening of nature, written by the author himself, you remember his numerous landscape poems and are ready to see in This kinship with the eternal peasant observation is one of the sources of the literary destiny of Rylenkov himself.
Demyan Sidorovich likens nature to a magic book, but not lesser basis life in general can be likened to it, which is also “before everyone’s eyes, but not everyone knows how to read it” - can see the meaning and beauty of the most everyday activities and, as Gogol put it, “the simple greatness of ordinary people” - all that makes up the life of the people, their history.
The story “On Lake Sapsho” is related to the “village essay”, which was very widespread in the 50s and 60s, to the variety of it that is characterized by such works as “Village Diary” by Efim Dorosh, which combined topical journalistic thoughts about the problems of agriculture , modern culture etc. with portraits of contemporaries, lyrical sketches, excursions into the distant past.
All these elements are also evident in Rylenkov’s story. A lyrical pencil, like a poplar branch, drawing the beauty of places covered with memories of those who lived here. famous traveler Przhevalsky, is replaced by businesslike and sharp notes in the spirit of Demyan Sidorovich, who wrote down everything “thoroughly” in his book. Here, for example, is how a “festival” organized in a local village was caustically described by eyewitnesses: “The bosses will gather people in the heat, and they themselves will climb onto a truck and begin to tell the shepherds and milkmaids how to feed and milk the cows. And they will kill themselves and others.”
Rylenkov’s prose heritage also contains many poetic sketches of Russian nature, gravitating towards the genre of prose poems. “The Blue Eyes of Winter” ends remarkably: “...along the first route I am always drawn to the village. And the first winter for me is like a letter from there, from the depths of Russia.”
The same lyrical current prevails in articles and essays dedicated to the dear author’s heart Smolensk, the fate of this entire long-suffering and persistent region, which is so heartfeltly described in famous poem Nikolai Rylenkov (1954):
Always thoughtful, modest,
Like a willow by a stream,
My home side
My Smolensk region.
Burnt like a willow
There have been thunderstorms more than once.
It seemed like there wasn’t a single leaf,
And look - she came to life!
But this filial attachment to the Smolensk region, to the native Central Russian nature, to its singers never led to a narrowing of Rylenko’s interests, to any “parochial” or aesthetic limitations. The breadth of his horizons that he developed with youth, remained unchanged in the future.
Who truly loves their homeland,
Love will not cloud his eyes,
He looks down on someone else's land
It won’t happen to those who love another distance, -
he wrote a few months before his death. And in his writings it is not difficult to find poems about distant, “exotic” lands (for example, about Georgia), and a lengthy essay “Koktebel Elegy”, full of long-standing and thoughtful interest in the poetic world of Maximilian Voloshin, seemingly infinitely alien to him in his literary destiny , environment, creative positions, and articles about Akhmatova and Pasternak.
Nikolai Rylenkov passed away early, in 1969, barely reaching sixty years of age.
He forever remained faithful to the “commitment” he took upon himself in his youth:
Just remember under the spacious sky
Your eternal debt to the fields and forests...
(“Viburnum again over the sleeping river...”, 1936)
As if remembering these words, he wrote in his declining years: “I haven’t forgotten about my debts, but I didn’t have time to pay everything.” Convinced of the correctness of his creative principles, the poet, however, continued to consider himself a debtor, especially looking back at what was happening around him:
O Motherland, you are still little sung,
My verse flutters like a timid swallow,
When a rocket follows a rocket
To the heavenly distances from your vastness.
("Cosmonauts", 1962)
But this already came from his human modesty and natural admiration for the exploits of his compatriots. The lines just quoted need “correction”, correction with words that were spoken by the poet himself in poems dedicated to Yuri Gagarin, and became an aphorism:
And where, poetry, is your space?
- Yes, in the human soul.
Nikolai Rylenkov has done a lot in exploring this vast space.
A.M. Turkov
Turkov, A. His own song: [life and work of N.I. Rylenkova] / A. Turkov // Rylenkov, N.I. Collected works: in 3 volumes / N. I. Rylenkov; comp.: E.A. Rylenkova. - M., 1985. – T.1. - P. 3-16.
We also offer literature on the topic from the Kanavinskaya Central Library collection:
Works:
- Rylenkov N.I. Collected works: in 3 volumes / comp.: E.A. Rylenkova, A.M. Turkov. - Moscow: Sovremennik, 1985.
T. 1: Poems (1924-1949); Poems. - 448 p.
T. 2: Poems (1950-1969); Poems. - 527 p.
T. 3: Novels, stories. - 544 p. - Rylenkov N.I. Magic book: stories. - Moscow: Soviet Russia, 1964. - 352 p.
- Rylenkov N.I. Lyrics/ comp. A. Turkova. - Moscow: Children's literature, 1981. - 175 p. : ill. - (Schoolchild's poetry library).
- Rylenkov N.I. Father's land. - Moscow: Soviet Russia, 1977. - 384 p.
- Rylenkov N.I. A fairy tale from my childhood: stories, poems. - Moscow: Children's literature, 1965. - 333 p.
- Rylenkov N.I. A fairy tale from my childhood: stories, poems / fiction. Yu. Ignatiev. - Moscow: Children's literature, 1976. - 335 p. : ill. - (School library).
Nikolai Ivanovich Rylenkov was born on February 2 (5), 1909 in the village of Aleksovo, Roslavl district, Smolensk province, into a peasant family. He studied in the village of Tyunin. In 1926 he graduated from high school in Roslavl, after which he worked as a rural teacher and chairman of the village council. In 1933 he graduated from the department of language and literature.
N.I. Rylenkov – participant in the Great Patriotic War. Served as commander of a sapper platoon, was a military journalist, and a staff member partisan detachment.
Rylenkov’s first poems were published in 1926. In 1933, the first collection of the poet’s poems, “My Heroes,” was published in Smolensk.
In the 40-50s, poems became widely known. They poetically reflect spiritual world Soviet man, they are permeated with a feeling of love for native land and her people. Especially close to the poet are rural workers, people of the new rural village. The 60s were fruitful for N.I. Rylenkov. During this period, his collections “Thirst”, “Rowan Blossom”, “Roots and Leaves”, “Snowflake”, “The Fifth Season” were published.
Rylenkov's lyrics of the 60s are characterized by thoughts about work and duty, about native nature and its ennobling influence on people.
Rylenkov also owns prose works: about the Russian village - “The Tale of My Childhood”, about the events of the Great Patriotic War, as well as the historical story “On the Old Smolensk Road”.
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