The works of this brilliant St. Petersburg poet and prose writer fell into the golden fund of Russian literature. He was spared official recognition and awards, but he still remains one of the most beloved authors among connoisseurs of his native literature. Yes, in fact, Vadim Shefner did not expect fame. His books show that in his work he was happy thanks to his wonderful heroes, because they are bright and kind, eagerly eager to invent a kind of worldwide “sweeper of adversity.” This fantastic device will be entrusted with the responsibility of protecting the inhabitants of the Earth from all sorts of intrigues and vicissitudes of fate.
Biography
Shefner Vadim Sergeevich disturbed his mother with his birth on the way from Kronstadt to Oranienbaum. This road was built on the ice of the Gulf of Finland. In the magazine “Nevskoe Vremya” dated January 12, 1995, Vadim Shefner said about himself that in his family there were Russified Germans, Scandinavians and Baltic Germans, the so-called Baltic Germans. The writer's great-grandfather was one of the founders of Vladivostok. In the Far East, even a cape is named after Alexei Karlovich Shefner.
Vadim Sergeevich’s father, having studied in the Corps of Pages, a prestigious military educational institution of the Russian Empire, founded back in 1750 by Elizaveta Petrovna, was an officer in the Life Guards of the Moscow Regiment before the revolution. Then he served in the Red Army as a military expert and died of hunger in the winter of 1923.
Because of the famine in Petrograd, Vadim Shefner himself was transported to Staraya Russa, where his father was then serving. As a boy, he lived mainly in orphanages, since his mother often worked there as a teacher. In 1924, the Shefner family returned home to Petrograd, where Vadim went to school and, upon graduation, began to study a profession at the Chemical Training Plant named after. Mendeleev. Then he went to study at the workers' faculty of Leningrad University. All these years he practiced at the Elektroapparat and Proletary factories, where he served as a physical education instructor, a draftsman-archivist, a foundry molder, and a librarian.
The beginning of creative activity
He first began publishing his poems in the factory’s large-circulation publication “Proletary” in 1933. And then off we go. The brilliant “Ballad of the Sea Stoker” appeared in the magazine “Cutter”. In 1935, he joined the literary association at the Smena newspaper under the leadership of I. Brazhnin. And then he was published in the “Young Association”, headed by A. Gitovich. In 1939 he was accepted into the USSR Writers' Union, and in 1940 the poet published his first book of poetry.
The Great Patriotic War
When the war began, Scheffner, who was a free rider due to a blind eye, went to the front. He served near Leningrad in an airfield service battalion.
Since January 1942, Vadim Shefner began working for the newspaper “Banner of Victory”, from there he was hospitalized in a state of terrible dystrophy, where the man was barely saved from death. But he did not waste this time in vain and published many poems of a propaganda nature, under which he signed as “fighter Vadim Shefner.” He finished the war as a senior lieutenant and then joined the ranks of the CPSU. And only now he completely immersed himself in his favorite literary field. He began to write a lot about his contemporaries: B. Likharev, A. Gitovich, A. Chivilikhin, S. Spassky, S. Botvinnik, I. Nertsev, A. Andreev, A. Shevelev, A. Rytov, etc.
Character
Before the war, his first poetry books contained poems that breathed with alarming notes of foreboding war. His work was similar to the work of such writers as K. Simonov, N. Mayorov, M. Kulchitsky, P. Kogan. In the poems “The Legend of Dead Sailors,” “Anxiety,” and “The Soldier’s Grave,” he wrote about the crimson glow of five-pointed stars and the noise of invincible banners.
The book “The Bright Coast,” published in 1940, contained poems of a different kind, where the mystery of the world and the “invisible tremor of existence” were felt. The poet continued the same mood in poetry during wartime. It is enough to read his collection “Defense” of 1943 and other poems, where Vadim Shefner has already greatly transformed himself in his work. Poems of a propaganda nature “Mirror”, “First Love”, “Rose Hip”, “Marble” contain wartime plots, where cruel political nudity and very deep philosophical thoughts sound.
The poet’s disgrace begins with his book “Suburb,” published in 1946. They practically stop printing it. At this time, a stubborn struggle against cosmopolitanism begins.
A very important event was Shefner’s book “Signs of the Earth,” which was published in 1961. Then discussions between “physicists and lyricists” began, and the problems of confrontation between city and countryside, civilization and nature intensified. The poet proclaimed that “wise designers bring us closer to nature.” He spoke so beautifully and wisely about natural expediency, which is akin to modern civilization and its “geometric comfort.” He wrote the following lines: “This beauty has been achieved at the cost of millions of years,” and adds: “This simplicity has been achieved.” And then some critics started talking about him as a poet of natural philosophy.
Philosophy
In Shefner’s interweaving of the natural and the intellectual, the visible and the existing, the eternal and the forever gone, one manifestation of the psychological state of the lyrical hero was embodied, which is absolutely not subject to any rational scheme (poems “The First Bridge”, “Friends”, “Continuity”).
Here's an example: in the poems "Snake" Vadim Shefner furiously calls for the extermination of the evil that hangs over people. He writes: “Kill the snake in their path,” and then: “You are not alone in the world.” In the book “Vaults” (1967), in the poem “I asked the memory,” he extols and relies on the memory of the past, and immediately in another poem “Forgetting” he declares memory destructive. With this clear distinction between the past and the future, he still values the present more.
Vadim Shefner's 1979 poem "Night Swallow" is filled with the roar of a rocket ship and the "abyss of the universe." But the author focuses on the sensations of the immediacy of existence: “This paradise that is visible from the window is still beautiful, because it is not eternal.” Shefner is a rationalist, and at the same time he is impressionistic. Over time, he begins to praise the houses of the Petrograd side - “St. Petersburg modernism,” their “alarming incompleteness” and “ingenuous eclecticism.”
Vadim Shefner, “Fairy Tales for Smart People”
The phrase “Fairy Tales for Smart People” (this is the name of one of the collections of works by Vadim Shefner) contains the very name of the genre created by the author, which constantly borders on fantasy, fairy tales, parables and realism. These works were written already in the 70s and 80s.
Despite all the amusingness and humor of these tales, the works included in the collection are very truthful and, despite all their phantasmagoric nature, are endowed with significant ideological and moral values. Shefner was very sympathetic to the work of Jonathan Swift, considering him a brilliant science fiction writer, and imitated him a little.
His prose (the first publication was in the Leningrad magazine in 1940, it was the story “The Day of Someone Else’s Death”) also notes the duality of the fantastic and the autographic. He describes his childhood and adolescence, mixing his memories with fantasies (“The Happy Loser” (1965), “Sister of Sorrow” (1970), “Clouds Above the Road” (1957), “The Name of the Bird” (1976 g.) and utopian works about the distant 22nd century called “The Debtor's Shack” and “The Girl at the Cliff” (1964).
Vadim Shefner: “Words”, verse
This work is endowed with wisdom. Vadim Shefner focuses his attention on something very simple - words that are of great importance in our lives. But we don't think much about it. However, if not for words, it is unlikely that people would be able to communicate with each other, learn, learn from experience and receive all the necessary information. How many different words we say a day and often don’t even think about their meanings and results, because words can hurt, kill, or save someone, and even leave behind shelves of stories. Words can be good and evil, nowadays we hear a lot of evil words, and often this happens unintentionally and thoughtlessly, but, as they say, a word is not a sparrow... Therefore, we all need to be careful with words and try to save, and not kill or use them as weapons against people.
Conclusion
When only socialist realism was written in literature, he invariably remained a nobleman. Vadim Shefner wrote poetry and prose as he felt at the genetic level. This was manifested in the fact that he remembered not so much the rights of this status, which was out of the question in Soviet times, but rather the responsibilities that he assumed voluntarily. His heroes could not act badly and dishonestly; for them there were simply no such concepts as “profitable” or “unprofitable.” However, they perfectly understood where there was good and where there was evil, and they stubbornly built their lives in accordance with these ideas. And, no matter how it may look a little idealistic and naive in our eyes, they were what they were intended to be and what we should all become, but did not become, despite our efforts.
All of Shefner’s heroes are unusually sincere - “technological” everyday hypocrisy is absolutely unusual for their natures. It’s as if they were born and, having found themselves in the world of childhood, have not yet had time to comprehend the saving laws of everyday life. And soon they come across those many corners that an experienced person can easily navigate around. Naive heroes don’t even try to achieve any benefits or success in life, however, by being overwhelmed by everyday absurdities, surprising others and acting kindly in absurd and funny ways, they suddenly get from life what is simply impossible to achieve in other ways - love and happiness .
I was born in Petrograd on January 12, 1915. My mother is Evgenia Vladimirovna Shefner, the daughter of Vice Admiral Vladimir Vladimirovich von Lindeström. My father is Sergei Alekseevich Shefner, an infantry lieutenant colonel; his father Alexey Karlovich Shefner was a military sailor. He left Russia a good memory of himself: in Vladivostok there is Captain Shefner Street, and near the Far Eastern port of Nakhodka there is Cape Shefner.
The mother was of the Lutheran religion, the father was Orthodox. I am baptized in the Orthodox Church.
Be afraid of distant relatives
More than tigers and wolves, -
Soar into the sky, dig into the ground,
So as not to hear their calls!
Shefner Vadim Sergeevich
We lived on the Sixth Line of Vasilyevsky Island. When there was hunger in Petrograd, my mother took me to the Tver province, to a village with a nanny. We lived there for five months. I remember a huge Russian stove, I remember how warm and cozy it was in the hut.
I spoke in detail about the days of my youth in the story “A Name for a Bird.” There I told my readers about our departure in 1921 to Staraya Russa, where my father was then serving in the army. About my mother’s worries and worries, about my father’s death from consumption, about how I lived there in the orphanage where my mother got a job as a teacher, about my first lessons in the first grade of the Old Russian school, about returning to my native St. Petersburg after almost a four-year absence.
Mother read a lot. Not only prose, but also poetry. Her memory was excellent, she remembered many poems by Fet and Tyutchev, and she knew almost everything by Pushkin. One must think that it was from her that I inherited my love for poetry, but at first this love was somehow frivolous. I wrote poems—teases, hooligan ditties, and in the sixth grade I even wrote an obscene song. But serious poetry did not work out.
In 1931, after graduating from seven-year school, I did not dare to take the exam at the university, because I knew that I was stupid in mathematics and would not pass the exam. I decided to become a factory worker, as students of the FZU (Factory Apprenticeship) were jokingly called.
To do this, I went to the Labor Exchange, and there I received a referral to a technical school, which was located on Vosstaniya Street. I was accepted there without difficulty. I was enrolled in the Ceramic Group, and for two years I became a fireman at a porcelain factory (Proletary).
Vadim Sergeevich Shefner was born on January 12, 1915 in Petrograd into the family of an infantry officer. He is the grandson of Alexei Karlovich Shefner, captain-lieutenant, founder of the port of Vladivostok.
He spent almost all of his childhood and youth in Petrograd-Leningrad. But in 1921 the family left for Staraya Russa to visit their father’s place of service. After his father’s death from consumption, Vadim Shefner lived with his mother-teacher at an orphanage in Staraya Russa, and after some time returned to Petrograd. After school he graduated from the Federal Educational Institution, and in the 1930s he was a worker at various Leningrad factories.
In the first months of the Great Patriotic War, he was a private in an airfield service battalion near Leningrad; from 1942, he was a front-line correspondent for the Leningrad Front newspaper “Victory Banner”; he ended the war with the rank of senior lieutenant. Member of the CPSU(b) since 1945.
He started writing poetry in childhood. In 1933, he published his first poem, “The Ballad of the Stoker,” in the magazine “Rezec.” Since 1938, he studied at the poetry seminar-studio “Youth Association” at the USSR Writers' Union (headed by A. I. Gitovich; Yu. N. Tynyanov, A. A. Akhmatova, N. A. Zabolotsky, M. M. Zoshchenko and others), where he became close friends with the poets V. A. Lifshits and A. T. Chivilikhin. In 1940 he published his first book of poems, The Bright Coast.
The second book of poems (“Defense”) was published in 1943 in besieged Leningrad. In 1943-1945 he created his largest poetic work - the poem “Meeting in the Suburbs”, which reflects the events of the heroic defense of Leningrad.
In the post-war years, along with poetic creativity, he was also engaged in poetic translation - from Chinese, from Sanskrit and Prakrit and from the languages of the union republics of the USSR (Georgian, Belarusian, Latvian, etc.). He published prose in magazines (Literary Contemporary, Zvezda, etc.) since 1940. The first collection of prose (“Clouds over the Road”) was published in 1957. He considered the story “Sister of Sorrow” to be his most significant prose work.
Since the 1960s, he also worked in the genre of science fiction, defining his fantastic works as “semi-probable stories” and “fairy tales for smart people.”
In 1973-1975 he created the story “A Name for a Bird, or Tea Party on the Yellow Veranda” (with the subtitle “Chronicle of Impressions”), in which he laid the foundation for another layer of his creativity - memoir prose.
With a certain degree of convention, in his prose one can distinguish layers of orphanage and war stories, humorous and philosophical fiction. Many critics noted that it was impossible to draw a line between his fantastic work and work where the fantastic component is not clearly expressed, and also called him “a science fiction writer in poetry.”
Died on January 5, 2002 in St. Petersburg. The funeral service took place in the Vladimir Cathedral on January 8. According to the will of the writer, there was no civil memorial service or farewell speeches. He was buried at the Kuzmolovskoye cemetery (Vsevolozhsk district, Leningrad region).
About myself:
I was born in Petrograd on January 12, 1915. My mother Evgenia Vladimirovna Shefner daughter of Vice Admiral Vladimir Vladimirovich von Lindeström, my father Sergei Alekseevich Shefner infantry lieutenant colonel; his father Alexey Karlovich Shefner was a military sailor. He left Russia a good memory of himself: in Vladivostok there is Captain Shefner Street, and near the Far Eastern port of Nakhodka there is Cape Shefner.
The mother was Lutheran, the father was Orthodox. I am baptized in the Orthodox Church.
We lived on the Sixth Line of Vasilyevsky Island. When there was hunger in Petrograd, my mother took me to the Tver province, to a village with a nanny. We lived there for five months. I remember a huge Russian stove, I remember how warm and cozy it was in the hut.
I spoke in detail about the days of my youth in the story “A Name for a Bird.” There I told my readers about our departure in 1921 to Staraya Russa, where my father was then serving in the army. About my mother’s worries and worries, about my father’s death from consumption, about how I lived there in the orphanage where my mother got a job as a teacher, about my first lessons in the first grade of the Old Russian school, about returning to my native St. Petersburg after almost a four-year absence.
Mother read a lot. Not only prose, but also poetry. Her memory was excellent, she remembered many poems by Fet and Tyutchev, and she knew almost everything about Pushkin. One must think that it was from her that I inherited my love for poetry, but at first this love was somewhat frivolous. I wrote poems, teasers, hooligan ditties, and in the sixth grade I even wrote an obscene song. But serious poetry did not work out.
In 1931, after graduating from seven-year school, I did not dare to take the exam at the university, because I knew that I was stupid in mathematics and would not pass the exam. I decided to become a factory worker, as the students of FZU (Factory Apprenticeship) were jokingly called.
To do this, I went to the Labor Exchange, and there I received a referral to a technical school, which was located on Vosstaniya Street. I was accepted there without difficulty. I was enrolled in the Ceramic Group, and two years later I became a fireman at a porcelain factory (Proletary).
Firing porcelain is not an easy task, and serious people worked there. Then I finally began to write poetry seriously, and in 1933 my poem was first published in the factory newspaper.
In 1934, my poems began to be published in city newspapers, and from 1936 in magazines. In 1940, the Leningrad publishing house "Soviet Writer" published my first book of poems, "The Bright Coast." I was accepted into the Writers' Union based on her manuscript in 1939.
My left eye was irreparably damaged as a child, and I can only see with my right eye. Therefore, before the war, I was a white ticket student, not liable for military service, and I was not called up for military training. But when the Great Patriotic War began in 1941, I came in handy here too, was drafted and became a private in the 46th BAO (Airfield Maintenance Battalion). In the summer of 1942, from this battalion I was redeployed to the army newspaper "Victory Banner". I worked there as a poet and as an ordinary journalist. After the Victory, he returned home with two military orders - "Red Star" and "Patriotic War II degree" and with medals, including the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad". I also have post-war awards. I think the main one was the Pushkin Prize in 1997. My second book of poems was published in besieged Leningrad, in 1943. A thin, nondescript book “Protection” in a paper cover. All the poems in it are about the war, about my hometown. I keep it carefully.
The third book of poems "Suburb" was published in 1946, the fourth "Moscow Highway" in 1951, the fifth "Seaside" in 1955... But I will not list all my books here after all, among them there are unsuccessful. Instead, I will list books that include both relatively recent poems and selected poems from days gone by. Here they are: “Personal Eternity” 1984, “Years and Moments” 1986, “In This Century” 1987, “Architecture of Fire” 1997.
And the first place in terms of the number of poems is occupied by the first volume of my four-volume “Collected Works,” published in 1991. It includes selected poems for half a century, from 1938 to 1988.
My first prose, the story “Clouds over the Road,” was published in Leningrad in 1957. Looking from today, I admit that the story is not very successful. And my second book, “Now, Forever and Never,” does not make me happy today. But I consider my third book, “The Happy Loser,” published in 1965, to be successful. The fairy tale included in it, “The Girl at the Cliff,” was then republished more than once, and in 1991, the Moscow publishing house “Znanie” gave it a circulation of 500,000 copies.
I consider my most powerful prose work to be the story “Sister of Sorrow,” published in 1970. This is a sad story about the Leningrad blockade, about love. I still receive good responses to this story. I’m not offended at myself for my science fiction novel “The Debtor’s Shack.” This is a very interesting fairy tale novel. This novel is stylistically related to my “Fairy Tales for Smart People,” published as a separate book. I have already mentioned my autobiographical story “A Name for the Bird,” and now I will say that in 1995, my other autobiographical story “The Velvet Road” was published in the magazine “Star”.