Varlam Shalamov poetry. The life of prisoners in the works of Shalamov

Varlam Shalamov, famous Soviet writer and the poet, seriously suffered from political repression- spent more than fifteen years of his life in camps. He himself formulated the reason for this briefly and succinctly - in his words, in those years “there was a systematic extermination of those who remembered from Russian history recent years not something to remember.” After his imprisonment, his life was not easy either.

It turned out that it was the “camp” theme that became central to Shalamov’s work. He saw his mission as bringing to the public the truth about what he and hundreds of thousands of other Soviet citizens faced, many of whom did nothing to deserve it. The poems of Varlam Shalamov are a real monument to this tragedy of the 20th century. The poet died on January 17, 1982 in a home for the disabled, where living conditions were little better than those in the camps.

Origin and early life of the poet
Varlam Shalamov was born into the family of a Vologda priest on June 5 (18 according to the new style) June 1907. He decided not to pursue a spiritual career - he entered a regular gymnasium in the year the First World War began, and graduated from it after the revolution. In 1924 he left for Moscow, where he entered the University - but was unable to complete his studies, since his origins from the family of a clergyman were revealed. Unlike most outstanding poets, Varlam Shalamov did not write poetry in his youth.

Already in early years Shalamov developed a heightened sense of justice; he admired the “People’s Will.” So active civil position these years did not promise anything good.

Repression
Shalamov was first arrested in February 1929 - allegedly for participation in the Trotskyist movement. He was sentenced to three years of imprisonment "extrajudicially" - as a "socially dangerous element." After his release in 1932, he returned to the capital and began working as a journalist in a number of publications, for example, the magazine “October”.

However, soon, in 1937, he was arrested again - and again for “Trotskyist activities.” This time the sentence is five years, but Shalamov will be released only in 1951, since in 1941, during his imprisonment, he was tried again for anti-Soviet agitation. According to Shalamov, the reason for this was his public statement about Bunin as a classic of Russian literature.

However, at least there was something good in this situation: Varlam Shalamov began writing poetry in the camp, in 1949.

Varlam Shalamov after imprisonment
After his release in 1951, Varlam Shalamov seriously took up literary work- as a writer and poet. However, the “liberation” was very conditional - he still did not have the right to leave Kolyma. Only at the end of 1953 Shalamov was allowed to leave these places. However, he still couldn’t live in Moscow - he had to settle in the Tver region.

Varlam Shalamov wrote poetry and prose mainly about his experiences in prison. " Kolyma stories" And poetry collection“Kolyma Notebooks” is a vivid example of this. At first it was possible to publish them only in Europe; In the USSR, Shalamov’s works were mainly published only with the beginning of “perestroika”.

In 1956, Shalamov was rehabilitated, but neither his broken family nor his damaged health could be restored. However, at least he was able to live in Moscow again.

The last years of the poet
After rehabilitation, Shalamov lived in the center of Moscow, worked a lot, communicated with famous writers of the era, especially Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

In 1972, Shalamov wrote a scandalous letter to Literaturnaya Gazeta, which spoke of the irrelevance of " Kolyma stories”, and their publication in emigrant publications was condemned. Naturally, the majority of dissidents reacted extremely negatively to this act and stopped communicating with Shalamov - although they said that he wrote the letter under pressure from the authorities. One way or another, after that he was accepted into the Writers' Union.

Over the past few years, the poet, who has been experiencing big problems health problems, he spent time in a nursing home.

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He started his creative path from writing poetry. He became famous thanks to his journalistic series dedicated to the lives of prisoners. Shalamov’s biography is reflected in his works, primarily in the books “My Several Lives” and “The Fourth Vologda”. The collection that brought the writer world fame is “Kolyma Stories.”

In order to learn more about Shalamov’s biography, you should, of course, read his books. Namely, read “Kolyma Stories”, “The Fourth Vologda”, a collection of poems “Kolyma Notebooks”. The same article presents the main facts from Shalamov’s biography.

The priest's son

The childhood and youth of the future writer had both happy and tragic times. Fate was not kind to Shalamov. But despite everything he last days remained human throughout his life.

Shalamov Varlam Tikhonovich was born in 1907, in the family of a hereditary clergyman. He remembered the first one well world war. My childhood memories are reflected in the above-mentioned book “My Several Lives.” Both Shalamov brothers were in the war. One of them died. After his death, his father became blind. Tikhon Shalamov outlived his eldest son by thirteen years.

early years

The family was friendly, with strong family traditions. Varlam Shalamov began writing poetry very early. The father supported his son's love of literature. However, soon the parental library was not enough for the boy.

People's Volunteers became Shalamov's youthful ideal. He admired their sacrifice and heroism, manifested in resistance to the power of the autocratic state. It is worth saying that already in early years future writer demonstrated amazing talent. In one of the books, Shalamov said that he does not remember himself being illiterate. He learned to read at the age of three.

In his adolescence, he was most attracted to the adventure works of Dumas. Later, the range of literature that aroused insatiable interest in future prose writers expanded surprisingly. He began to read everything: from Dumas to Kant.

Years of study

In 1914, Shalamov entered the gymnasium. He managed to complete his secondary education only after the revolution. Ten years after entering the gymnasium, the future writer moved to the capital. In Moscow, he worked as a tanner at the Kuntsevo plant for two years. And in 1926 he entered Moscow State University, the Faculty of Soviet Law.

When submitting documents to the university, Shalamov hid his social background. He did not indicate that he belonged to a family in which men had been priests for generations. For which he was expelled.

First conclusion

The first arrest of Varlam Shalamov occurred in February 1929. The young poet was detained during a raid on an underground printing house. After this event, Shalamov was labeled a “socially dangerous element.” He spent the next three years in camps. During this period, Shalamov worked on the construction of a chemical plant under the leadership of a man who later became the head of the Kolyma Dalstroy.

Second arrest

In 1931, Shalamov was released from a forced labor camp. For some time he worked in the trade union magazines “For Mastery of Technology” and “For Shock Work”. In 1936 he published his first prose work, The Three Deaths of Doctor Austino.

In 1937 came new wave repression. She did not escape Varlam Shalamov either. The writer was arrested for counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities. Shalamov was again placed in Butyrka prison, he was sentenced to five years. At the beginning of August, he and a large party of prisoners were sent by ship to Magadan. For a year he worked in the gold mines.

Shalamov's term was increased in December 1938. He was arrested in the camp “lawyer case.” Since 1939, he worked at the Black River mine, as well as in the coal faces. In “Kolyma Stories,” Shalamov not only talked about the life of prisoners, but also told about state of mind person, long time deprived of freedom.

The life of prisoners in the works of Shalamov

The main components of a prisoner's existence are insomnia, hunger, and cold. No friendships could be formed in such an environment. According to Shalamov, affection and mutual respect could only be established in freedom. In the camp, a person was deprived of everything human, only anger, mistrust and lies remained in him.

Denunciations were widespread in the camps. They also had a place in freedom. Shalamov's second term ended in 1942. But he was not released: a decree was issued according to which the prisoners were to remain in the camp until the end of the war. In May 1943, Shalamov was arrested. The reason for his misfortune this time was praise for the writer Ivan Bunin. Shalamov was arrested following a denunciation from fellow prisoners. A month later he was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Paramedic

In 1943, Shalamov fell into the category of so-called goons - prisoners who were in the last stage of physical exhaustion. In this state, he was admitted to the camp hospital, and after discharge he worked for several years at the Spokoiny mine.

Shalamov was admitted to the hospital several times. So, in 1946 he was hospitalized with suspected dysentery. Thanks to one of the doctors, Shalamov, after recovery, was sent to a paramedic course at a hospital located twenty-three kilometers from Magadan. After graduation, he worked in the surgical department. He worked as a paramedic for several years after his release.

The prison term ended in 1951. Around this time, Shalamov sent Boris Pasternak a collection of his poems. In 1953, returning to Moscow, Shalamov met with relatives. Pasternak helped him establish contacts in literary world. In 1954, Varlam Shalamov began work on “Kolyma Tales.”

Family

In the mid-fifties, Shalamov divorced Galina Gudz, whom he married in 1932. The writer was married twice in total. In 1956 he married Olga Neklyudova. In his first marriage, the prose writer had a daughter, Elena. Shalamov divorced Neklyudova, a children's writer, in 1965. There were no children in this marriage. Neklyudova had a son, who later became a famous folklorist.

Last years

Shalamov's biography includes twenty years of camps. The stay in prison did not pass without a trace. In the late fifties he suffered a serious illness, for a long time was treated at the Botkin hospital. After recovery, he published a collection of poems, “Flint.” And three years later - “The Rustle of Leaves”.

In the late 70s, the writer began to sharply lose his hearing, vision, and ability to coordinate movements. In 1979, Shalamov was sent to a boarding house for the elderly and disabled. Two years later he suffered a stroke. In 1982, Shalamov was examined, as a result of which he was transferred to a boarding school for psychochronic patients. However, during transportation, the author of “Kolyma Tales” caught a cold and contracted pneumonia. Shalamov Varlam Tikhonovich died on January 17, 1982. He was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery. A monument by sculptor Fedot Suchkov was later erected at the writer’s grave.

Shalamov's creativity

Mentioned above is the acquaintance of the hero of today’s article with the author of Doctor Zhivago. Pasternak highly valued the poems of Varlam Shalamov. Poets connected long-term friendship. However, after Pasternak refused Nobel Prize, their paths diverged.

Among the poetry collections created by Varlam Shalamov, in addition to the above, it is also worth mentioning “Moscow Clouds”, “Boiling Point”, and the cycle “Road and Fate”. The Kolyma Notebooks included six poems and poems. TO prose works Varlamov Shalamov’s works include the anti-novel “Vishera” and the story “Fyodor Raskolnikov”. In 2005, a film based on “Kolyma Tales” was released. Several documentaries are devoted to the work and biography of Shalamov.

“Kolyma Tales” was first published in the West. The next time this collection was published four years later in London. Both the first and second editions of Shalamov’s Kolyma Stories were published against his will. During the writer’s lifetime, none of his works dedicated to the Gulag were published.

"Kolyma Tales"

Shalamov's works are imbued with realism and unbending courage. Each of the stories included in “Kolyma Tales” is reliable. The collection tells about the life that had to be experienced a large number of people. And only a few of them (Varlam Shalamov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn) were able and found the strength to tell readers about the ruthless Stalinist camps.

In “Kolyma Tales” Shalamov raised the main moral question Soviet era. The writer revealed the key problem of that time, namely the confrontation between the individual totalitarian state, not sparing human destinies. He did this by depicting the life of prisoners.

The heroes of the stories are people exiled to camps. But Shalamov not only told about the harsh, inhuman, unfair punishments to which they were subjected. He showed what a person turns into as a result of long-term imprisonment. In the story “Dry Rations” this topic is explored especially clearly. The author talked about how the oppression of the state suppresses the individual and dissolves his soul.

In an environment of constant hunger and cold, people turn into animals. They don't realize anything anymore. They only want warmth and food. Basic things become the main values. The prisoner is controlled by a dull and limited thirst for life. The author himself argued that “Kolyma Tales” is an attempt to solve some important moral issues, which simply cannot be resolved on any other material.

Shalamov was born into the family of a priest, famous in Vologda for church and public figure Tikhon Nikolaevich Shalamov, who also came from a hereditary priestly family. He studied at the Vologda gymnasium.

In his youth, he was fascinated by the ideas of the Narodnaya Volya. The writer recalls in “The Fourth Vologda” how the revolution turned out for their family, which was repeatedly persecuted. In 1924 Shalamov left hometown. For two years he worked as a tanner at a tannery in Setun, and in 1926 he entered the Faculty of Soviet Law of Moscow state university, accepted Active participation in political and literary life capital Cities.

On February 19, 1929, he was arrested and imprisoned in Butyrka prison for distributing Lenin’s famous “Letter to the Congress.” He was sentenced to three years in prison in the Vishera department Solovetsky camps special purpose. In 1932 he returned to Moscow, where he again continued his literary work, was engaged in journalism, and collaborated in a number of small trade union magazines (“For Mastery of Technology”, etc.). One of Shalamov’s first stories, “The Three Deaths of Doctor Augustino,” was published in issue No. 1 of the “October” magazine.

In January 1937 he was arrested again and sentenced to five years in the Kolyma camps, and in 1943 to another ten years - for anti-Soviet agitation (he named the writer I. Bunina Russian classic).

Liberation. The path to literature

In 1951, Shalamov was released, but could not leave Kolyma; he worked as a paramedic near Oymyakon. In 1953 he settled in the Kalinin region, worked for two and a half years as a technical supply agent at a peat enterprise, and in 1956 after rehabilitation he returned to Moscow.

For some time he collaborated in the magazine “Moscow”, wrote articles and notes on the history of culture, science, art, and published poems in magazines. In 1961 he published his first poetry collection, Flint, at the Soviet Writer publishing house, and then several more were published. Shalamov’s main works, “Kolyma Stories,” were distributed in samizdat. February 23, 1972 in " Literary newspaper“Shalamov’s letter was published, where he protested against the publication of his stories abroad, which was perceived by many as his renunciation. In 1978 in London it was first published in Russian. big volume"Kolyma Tales".

In May 1979, Shalamov moved to a home for the disabled and elderly, from where in January 1982 he was forcibly sent to a boarding school for psychochronic patients, caught a cold on the way and soon died.

Transformed document

“Kolyma Stories” was written by Shalamov from 1954 to 1973. He himself divided them into six books: “Kolyma Stories”, “Left Bank”, “Shovel Artist”, “Sketches of the Underworld”, “Resurrection of Larch” and “Glove or KR- 2". The terrible camp experience, which consisted of multiple deaths and resurrections, of immense torment from hunger and cold, of humiliation that turns a person into an animal - this is what formed the basis of Shalamov’s prose, which he, who thought a lot about its originality, called “new.”

Its main principle is the connection with the fate of the writer, who must himself go through all the torment in order to then come forward with testimony. Hence the sketchy, documentary beginning, pioneering ethnography and naturalism, and a predilection for exact numbers.

The image of the camp in Shalamov's stories is an image of absolute evil. The story “Funeral Word” begins like this: “Everyone died...” The writer remembers everyone with whom he had to meet and become close in the camps. Names and some details follow. Who died and how. Scenes and episodes, like mosaics, form a terrible intricate pattern - the pattern of death.

Shalamov does not strive to amaze the reader, does not force intonation. On the contrary, his descriptions are emphatically everyday, slowly detailed, but almost every completely realistic detail in its ruthless expressiveness is a sign of the unreality of what is happening.

The writer shows that death in the camp world has ceased to be an event, an existential act, a final chord human life. The attitude of the prisoners towards her is as indifferent as towards everything else, with the exception of perhaps satisfying the eternal painful hunger. Furthermore- they strive to extract at least some benefit from it. There is a catastrophic devaluation of human existence and personality, changing all concepts of good and evil.

School of Evil

Corruption is one of the most menacing words in Shalamov’s verdict on the camp. From his own experience, the writer had the opportunity to be convinced that the moral and, especially, physical powers of a person are not limitless. In many of his stories, the image of a goner appears - a prisoner who has reached the utmost degree of exhaustion. The goner lives only by elementary animal instincts, his consciousness is cloudy, his will is atrophied.

Shalamov strictly links the extreme conditions with the soul, the physical nature of a person, vulnerable to hunger, cold, disease, beatings, etc. Dehumanization begins precisely with physical torment. No one, perhaps, described the pangs of hunger with such authenticity as Shalamov. In many of his stories in more detail the phenomenology of this natural human need is depicted, which has turned into a predatory passion, into a disease, into cruel torture.

Not just hunger or cold, backbreaking slave labor or beatings, but also the disintegrating consequences of these extreme conditions is the running theme of Shalamov’s stories. The physiology of the slow dying or equally slow recovery of a tortured and humiliated person - in any case, it is his pain and torment; in his tormented body a man is like in a prison from which he cannot escape.

A slap in the face to the regime

Shalamov in his prose (unlike, for example, A.I. Solzhenitsyn) avoids direct political generalizations and invective. But each of his stories is nevertheless a “slap in the face,” to use his own word, to the regime, the system that gave birth to the camps. The writer gropes for common pain points, links in one chain - the process of dehumanization.

What might not have been very noticeable “in the world”, in the camp - due to the impunity of those in power and the thieves declared to be “socially close” - manifested itself especially sharply. Humiliation, bullying, beatings, violence - common place camp reality, repeatedly described by Shalamov. The writer considers even rewards in the camp to be corruption, since the entire system of interaction between superiors and subordinates is based on lies, on awakening the basest and most vile in a person.

From story to story, Shalamov remembers that over the gates of almost every camp the famous Stalinist slogan “Labor is a matter of honor, a matter of glory, valor and heroism” was hung. The writer clearly showed what kind of work it really was - forced, humiliating, essentially slavish, forming the same slave psychology. Such work simply could not be honest.

Fate and chance

“Luck”, “chance” - key concepts in Shalamov's prose. Chance dominates the fate of the prisoner and invades his life with a favorable or, more often, evil will. This could be a savior case or a killer case.

Fate for Shalamov is also often tantamount to a happy or unhappy coincidence of circumstances. And the words " higher power“in relation to the fate of a prisoner, he uses it with irony: behind them are camp and non-camp authorities, someone’s dull diligence, indifference or, on the contrary, vindictiveness; behind them are intrigues, intrigues, passions that can influence the fate of the prisoner, for whom the main goal - survive, survive.

He valued those people all the more highly who were able to intervene in the course of circumstances and stand up for themselves, even at the risk of their lives. Those “who are not a dynamite cord, but an explosion,” as one of his poems says. About this, in particular, one of his best stories is “ Last Stand Major Pugachev": about an innocent prisoner who gathered comrades with the same instinct for freedom as his and died while trying to escape.

“Poems are pain, and protection from pain...”

Shalamov wrote poetry throughout his life. By 1953, his personal acquaintance with B. Pasternak , whom Shalamov extremely revered as a poet and who, in turn, highly appreciated Shalamov’s poems sent to him from Kolyma. Their remarkable correspondence also remains, in which the writer’s aesthetic and moral views are clearly expressed.

One of the key motifs of his poetry is the collision of two elements: ice, cold, nothingness and, on the other hand, heat, fire, life. The image of ice appears not only in Shalamov’s poems about nature. Echoes of another - a cold, windy, underground world - are heard in the lived-in, warm, but alarmingly fragile world of culture, so highly valued by the writer. There is no lasting, imperishable beauty in his poems. Even where she is ready to triumph, something prevents her.

In Shalamov's poetry, the feeling of a single fate, a single fate - nature and man - largely determines the author's attitude towards the world. In nature, something that seems to be characteristic only of man is suddenly indicated - an impulse, a nerve, a spasm, a tension of all forces.

Nature in Shalamov’s poems, as well as in his stories, often appears as “formidable landscapes”, where “ash clouds bind and encircle the forest”, where “the skeletons of antediluvian monsters, six-hundred-year-old poplars, stand in a rock-like crowd, the bones of weather-beaten whites” and where “the mountain range, what’s under your feet looks like a gravestone.” She may be beautiful, but there is no grace in her beauty; on the contrary, it is rather a burden and a threat.

Living the world

For Shalamov, poetry is not only aspiration upward, but also the world’s acquisition of flesh, muscle building, and the search for perfection. The effort of reunification, the will to the integrity of life is clearly palpable in it. For Shalamov, the reunification of the “scraps and fragments” of life is the habitation of the world, its domestication, which is what most of the motives of his poetry converge to. In his poems there is an urgent need for the warmth of the hearth, the roof, the house.

But settling down for him is also creativity in itself. in a broad sense, be it poetry, building a house or baking bread. In creativity, a person gains not only the joy of overcoming and the feeling own strength, but also a feeling of unity with nature. He feels like a co-creator, whose skill is a contribution to the almost miraculous transformation of the world.

Shalamov devoted many of his essays to reflections on poetry, its nature and laws, the psychology of creativity and the works of poets close to him.

E. A. Shklovsky

SHALAMOV, Varlam Tikhonovich [b. 18.VI (1.VII).1907, Vologda] - Russian Soviet writer. He studied at the Faculty of Soviet Law of Moscow State University (1926-29). Published since 1932. In 1937 he was illegally repressed. Having resumed literary work after rehabilitation, Shalamov has been speaking since 1957 primarily as a poet: collections of poems “Flint” (1961), “Rustle of Leaves” (1964), “Road and Fate” (1967), “Moscow Clouds” (1972). The main direction of Shalamov's poetry is philosophical lyrics. She is characterized by precise choice of words, restraint poetic means, rhythmic variety. He also publishes stories that are characterized by increased emotionality, laconicism, and literary articles; translates works of Bulgarian, Kazakh, Chuvash, Jewish and other poets.

Works: Mayakovsky talks to the reader, Ogonyok, 1936, No. 10; The Three Deaths of Dr. Austino, October, 1936, No. 1; Peahen and the tree, “Lit. contemporary", 1937, No. 3; Bunin’s work on the translation of “The Song of Hiawatha”, “VL”, 1963, No. 1; [About Yesenin], “Rural Youth”, 1965, No. 9; Pushkin Prize Academy of Sciences, in the book: Poetry Day, M., 1968.

Lit.: Slutsky B. , Flint strikes fire, “Lit. newspaper", 1961, October 5; Inber V. , Second meeting with the poet, “Lit. newspaper", 1964, June 23; Mikhailov O., By the very essence of being, “Lit. newspaper", 1968, January 31; Krasukhin G., Man and Nature, “Sib. lights", 1969, No. 1; Olgin D.M., “The measure of poetry is imperturbable”, “Lit. newspaper", 1972, November 29.

L. N. Chertkov

Brief literary encyclopedia: In 9 volumes - T. 8. - M.: Soviet encyclopedia, 1975