Georgy Samchenko

Samchenko was born on January 25, 1940 in Melitopol, Ukraine. Other sources claim that the poet's father died in the Battle of Stalingrad, while a third account states that Dmitry Samchenko served as a platoon commander in the Second Separate Rifle Battalion of the First Guards Rifle Brigade, rose to the rank of lieutenant, and died on February 18, 1943, during the Battle of Leningrad. He was a Kuban Cossack from the hamlet of Kharkovsky in the Nevinnomyssky District of the Ordzhonikidze Krai, married to Pelageya Ivanovna Samchenko. In the 1960s, adopting the literary pseudonym Yegor Samchenko, he began publishing in the Simferopol youth newspaper Krymsky Komsomolets. The Krymsky Komsomolets literary studio included, besides Yegor, writers Ruslan Kireev, poet Vladimir Lentsov, and playwright Valentin Krymko, who at the time went by the surname Gurevich and later by Pridatko. All of them later moved to Moscow and became members of the Union of Writers of the USSR. Before becoming an established poet, Georgy used to work as a laborer, soldier, and was a student. After graduating from the Zaporizhzhia Medical Institute in 1964, Georgy lived in Solnechnogorsk at Baranova Street, 24/9, apt. 47, where he served as the chief psychiatrist of the Solnechnogorsky District of the Moscow Oblast. The psychoneurological department of the Solnechnogorsk District Hospital was established in 1973. In the spring of 1972, together with poets from the Literary Studio at the Moscow City Organization of the All-Union Leninist Communist Youth League: Boris Kamianov, Viktor Gofman, and Sergey Goncharenko, he attended a literary seminar led by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who held a high opinion of the aspiring poet's skill. The aspiring poet's first book of poems —Hard Carriage— was published in 1975 by the Sovremennik publishing house, and in 1976, after the release of just one book, he was accepted into the Union of Writers of the USSR. A similar reader's competition was later held by the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. In Smena, the poet-critic published a review of the collection Spring by Pravda publishing house in 1980, which featured winners of the newspaper's poetry contest. However, some time later, the poet lost his job at Smena and was dismissed from the editorial staff. His next book, I Help to Live, was published in 1987 by Soviet Writer. As noted in the book's annotation, it is permeated with a sense of history (poems such as ''The Solitude of Dmitry Donskoy, Ivan the Terrible, Avvakum's Bonfire, and other poems from the section Russian, Russia''). In the same year, Yegor Samchenko engaged in a dialogue with writer Daniil Granin about perestroika. The third book, Faces of Freedom, was published in 1989, again by Sovremennik. The collection was named after a poem published in the previous book. The publisher's annotation described the new book as sharply social, with its lyrical theme spanning from Pythagoras to N. F. Fyodorov. It included some works from the previous collection I Help to Live (Autumn Priapus, Lenin, The Secret of Blok, Sparrow, On Saturday, at the End of the Day..., and others). Unlike the two previous books, the author included his own preface, in which he shared some creative principles. He described how the poem The Secret of Blok was created: "When I was writing The Secret of Blok, I was a bearer of Blok". He linked ecology and ethics topics: "It seems to me that thought is a completely moral organization, absolutely excluding evil. That's not enough. A collective field of morality is required, under which, perhaps, superconductivity is only possible. By solving the problem of ecology, we protect ourselves. It's very possible that we are not only protecting ourselves". In his final years, according to M. I. Sinelnikov, Yegor Samchenko was addicted to alcohol, lost his job, and was abandoned by his wife and daughter, with his few remaining friends turning away. All those events are reflected in many lines of the book titled I Help to Live, published in 1987. The fallen poet pestered Sinelnikov and Alexander Mezhirov with late-night calls. Out of pity for Samchenko's plight, Mikhail Sinelnikov lent him a substantial sum of money without conditions, enough to last several months, but Samchenko squandered it in a few days. Upon learning of Sinelnikov's failed patronage, poet Yevgeny Rein reproached him: "How could you give money to someone like Samchenko!" A decade after the publication in Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poetic anthology, few remembered Samchenko except his poet friends. However, a Russian language and literature teacher from Kazan, F. Kh. Mustafina, when teaching the topic of Vocabulary, suggested that her students read a poem by "a certain poet E. Samchenko" In her article Language Culture as Part of National Culture, published in the proceedings of the republican scientific-practical conference "Russian Language as a State Language in the National-Regional Conditions of Tatarstan" on December 7, 2007, she notes that this poem by Yegor Samchenko, despite its pathetically enthusiastic tone, provoked a storm of indignation among her students. In the 2000s and 2010s, his contemporaries' memoirs began to be published (M. I. Sinelnikov, G. A. Yelin, O. A. Nikolaeva, Y. M. Polyakov, S. K. Vermisheva). Poet and entrepreneur D. A. Mizgulin, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Victory, initiated the publication of a fifteen-volume poetic anthology War and Peace edited by B. I. Lukin as part of the publishing project Literary Fund Road of Life. In the ninth book of this anthology, for the first time in twenty-five years since Yevgeny Yevtushenko's publication in Strophes of the Century (not counting the publication of translations into Russian of the crown of sonnets The Trunk of Life by Chuvash poet N. A. Tevetkel in the magazine Lik in 2011), a selection of four poems by Yegor Samchenko dedicated to the war theme was published: Frost and Sun. The Chimes Strike...; I Still Remember, // How During the War...; Uncle Fedya; Interview with Pokryshkin. The publication included a brief biographical note, which, due to the scarcity of information, listed Samchenko's death date as 1994 (the date of his last publication in Nash Sovremennik) with a question mark. == Artistic work and criticism ==

Failures in Poetic Translations In collaboration with Igor Shklyarevsky, Samchenko translated poems from Turkmen by Italmaz Nuryev (1976). He translated the poems of Georgian poet Simon Chikovani alone for the ''Poet's Library (Major Series, 1983). Despite the favor shown to Yegor Samchenko by literary luminaries, his work often became the subject of criticism from fellow writers. He was reproached for the inaccuracy of his poetic translations. Poet and journalist Stanislav Zolotsev reviewed the joint poetic translations by Shklyarevsky and Samchenko in the magazine Druzhba Narodov''. While generally approving of Igor Shklyarevsky's work, the critic noted that the Turkmen poet's poems seem as if written by two different people, and the issue lies not with Nuryev but with his translators. "Against the backdrop of Shklyarevsky's work, the lackluster quality of the pages worked on by Yegor Samchenko stands out. His translations bear traces of haste, and certain poetic lines sound with an accent". The critic was outraged that Samchenko translated not one or two but thirty-five poems by the Georgian poet in this manner. Ilya Dadashidze remarked that if the late Simon Ivanovich could have seen such translation attempts, he would have reiterated his opinion about poetry translators: "I ask that I not be translated at all". In connection with Samchenko's Georgian translations, Ilya Dadashidze mentioned an article in the magazine Literaturnaya Gruziya titled How Not to Translate, authored by poet, literary critic, and scholar Tatyana Bek. The reviewer wrote that Samchenko's translations of Simon Chikovani's poetry distorted the original beyond recognition (e.g., "naked beauty" became "beauty of nudity" and so on), were unscrupulous and filled Chikovani's poems with Samchenko's own additions. In 1984, the publishing house Sovremennik released a book by Yakut poet Savva Tarasov —On the Banks of Sine—, translated by E. Samchenko, N. Kondakova, and I. Bekhterev. Translator Marina Tishchenko responded to its release in the magazine Polar Star. She expressively characterized Samchenko's difficulty with combining phrases as foolish, and added: "There is no need to talk about possible Yakuts ancestors, when the translator has problems even with Russian grammar". Critics Samchenko's original poetry was also criticized. For instance, Stanislav Rassadin was not impressed by his first book of poems Hard Carriage, and also disliked the "touching fraternization" with M. Yu. Lermontov. Stanislav Rassadin had rejected Yegor Samchenko's poetry for years. Twelve years later, the critic was similar. This time, he chose the poem "On Saturday, at the end of the day, a bright spirit entered me..." to illustrate the poetic ineptitude of the reviewed poet. The critic's disappointment was not lessened by the fact that the poem was published "in a good magazine" Critical judgments about Samchenko's poetry were also expressed by T. Parshina, G. Krasukhin, E. Kalmanovsky, S. Zolotsev. Critic Gennady Krasukhin had doubts about the same poems criticized by Stanislav Rassadin: And the French poet asked..., Longing for Lermontov, and also the poem And the friend of the steppes, Kalmyk: allusions to Lermontov and Pushkin. In the first case, his dissatisfaction stemmed from the obscurity of the poetic thought; the author clearly overdid it, camouflaging his poetic leitmotif from readers. In the second case, G. G. Krasukhin argued that Samchenko lacks sensibility. The less sensibility a poet has, the more self-conceit and self-absorption he writes. According to the critic, the third poem also suffers from the lack of sensibility: a system of heterogeneous allusions referring to Pushkin's poetry (Moldavia and Friend of the steppes, the Kalmyk) is not cohesive. Like Stanislav Rassadin, Gennady Krasukhin blamed the editors of the Sovremennik publishing house, Leonid Vyunik and Sergey Susha, for allowing what he considered imperfect poems. In the reviewed article Stop, Moment, You Are Beautiful, which provoked Volgin's negative reaction, Yegor Samchenko criticized the poems of Igor Volgin as well. Critic Valentin Kamenev shared Igor Volgin's opinion. In his review of the article by the Solnechnogorsk doctor, who, in V. F. Kamenev's characterization, spoke no less than on behalf of "the culture of the Russian poetic word" but had a rather vague notion of modesty and tact, the critic noted that Yegor Samchenko, adopting a haughty and careless pose, condescendingly reproached bold young poets "with an exhaustive presence of an absence of poetic fate and an uncommon expression," although the books of these authors deserved the most serious criticism. Valentin Kamenev added that Samchenko surely reveled in his own eloquence, but his authorial style was far from ideal, as Yegor's article was filled with clichés and turns characteristic of the era of so-called propagand criticism. Critic L. G. Baranova-Gonchenko, in the article Romantic Cloak and Patched Jacket, reproached Yegor Samchenko (along with Sergey Kunyaev) for indifference to the work of young Soviet poets of the 1980s: "Prefacing a discussion about the new poetic wave, poet E. Samchenko and critic S. Kunyaev show persistent unanimity in failing to notice the 'uncommon expression' of the new generation's face. And in vain". Baranova-Gonchenko's article was published in the third issue of the magazine Literaturnaya Uchyoba and addressed Samchenko's articles Wave? Yes, as an Uncertainty and Kunyaev's Well-Learned Lesson, published in the previous issue of the same Literaturnaya Uchyoba, which polemically touched on the issue of the "new wave" of poetry in the 1980s. Among the few sympathetic critics who highlighted both the positive and negative aspects of Yegor Samchenko's work was Leningrad writer and theater scholar Yevgeny Solomonovich Kalmanovsky. In a separate article, Poems — Words or Deeds?, dedicated to analyzing Samchenko's book Hard Carriage, he wrote that the book has a good title, though it does not reflect the essence of its author's creative principles. The title Hard Carriage evokes everyday, mundane, and quite democratic associations in the reader, whereas the author's poems are predominantly complex, lofty monologues about himself. According to the critic, it would have been preferable to name the debut book My heart met the sky... after a line from the poem I fell, rose, smiled... published in the book. Yevgeny Yevtushenko admired Yegor Samchenko's poetry from the moment the latter appeared in the poetry seminar of the Literary Studio at the MGC Komsomol in 1972. According to the recollections of Samchenko's seminar classmate Georgy Yelin, the recognized luminary lavished compliments on the poetic metaphors in Samchenko's poems Judo and The Ink Ran Out at Night: "'The water is full-breasted in the glass jug' — an excellent line! 'The curtain caught a chill' — top marks! 'Your photograph closed its eyes' — simply great! And this is outright genius: '...and the pine table rustled'! Only Zabolotsky could have dared such boldness!" According to M. I. Sinelnikov, there could not have been many poems that brought Yegor Samchenko fame as an outstanding poet: these are poems about approaching death, featuring the image of a grave over which a Judish wife leans, about a mother who washed floors in a Stalinist prison (the poem I bow to glory... from the book I Help to Live, 1987), about the dying Alexander Blok (the poem The Secret of Blok from the books I Help to Live, 1987, and Faces of Freedom, 1989), about the Persian poet-Sufi Jalaluddin Rumi, and about an unfortunate Jew married to a fatal Russian woman. Sinelnikov likens these poems by Yegor Samchenko to Pasternak's image of passion as electrical wires under voltage, striking fatally: "We are wires under current!" The critic conveys his impression of Samchenko's poetry: "It seemed to me that such fierce sensuality, such temperament had not yet existed in Russian poetry. Perhaps in Samchenko, this was not Russian — rather Ukrainian, Shevchenkian?" He considers Samchenko's most outstanding work to be the poem dedicated to Ivan the Terrible, despite the fact that its rhythm was borrowed from the poetry of A. K. Tolstoy, but in Samchenko's hands, it turned out far more powerful. Vladilen Prudovsky, Viktor Zavadsky, Alexey Pyanov, Alexander Ivanov. Alexander Ivanov's parody Star to Himself performed by the author, was broadcast on Central Television on September 15, 1978, in the first episode of the television program Around the Laughter. In this parody, the image of an unlucky poet reading poems not with his tongue but with his hands emerges. Poet Nikolai Glazkov, in turn, wrote the poem Deaf-Mutes, which plays on the image of a deaf-mute poet. == Worldview. Language ==

Ideologically, Yegor Samchenko was aligned with the right wing of the Soviet Writers' Union and maintained close ties with writers of the so-called "patriotic" movement, including V. V. Kozhinov, S. Yu. Kunyaev, and others. In 1980, he dedicated an article titled Beauty and Utility to the work of the latter, published in the magazine Ogonyok. In it, Samchenko wrote sympathetically about the spontaneous and selfless sense of civic duty in his poet-friend's work. Samchenko shared with Stanislav Yuryevich an interest in Russian history, particularly the Battle of Kulikovo and Dmitry Donskoy, as well as the poetry of Pushkin, Lermontov, Blok, Yesenin, Zabolotsky, and Smelyakov. In this article, Samchenko demonstrated a degree of independence from the views of the influential secretary of the Moscow Writers' Organization. For instance, he disagreed with Kunyaev's accusations against Osip Mandelstam: "True, sometimes Kunyaev is overly categorical in his comparisons. (I note in parentheses that categoricalness is not only a resounding but also an argument to discuss. Comparing Yesenin and Mandelstam, calling Mandelstam 'stuck' in poetic secondariness, Kunyaev is no less categorical than Tynyanov, whom he criticizes for 'erasing' Blok as a tradition and calling Yesenin's poetry a 'resounding coin, often... counterfeit')". Samchenko's love for Mandelstam's poetry and his distinctive position within the conservative camp were later noted by Mikhail Sinelnikov. Philologist and cultural scholar G. Ch. Huseynov, in his work Soviet Ideologemes in Russian Discourse of the 1990s, analyzing the perception of Russian profanity by representatives of various strata of the Russian intelligentsia, distinguishes variants of liberal-Western, official-Western, and official-pochvennichestvo (i.e., conservative-folk) linguistic purism. He attributes M. M. Zhvanevsky to the first group, I. L. VolginThe angry one is everywhere. Everywhere the democracy-profanity. And five memorial candles are standing by the wall. If snipers are in the tank, Sleep peacefully, Ostankino...Since Yegor's family —Dmitry Ivanovich and Pelageya Ivanovna Samchenko— originated from the Kuban, archaic and dialectal words in his historically oriented poems were used in 1998 by the compiler of an author's dictionary of the Kuban dialect, P. I. Tkachenko. When publishing the poem Your Faithful Wife Golovata in the collection I Help to Live, Samchenko provided his own commentary to clarify certain historical realities: who Anton Golovaty was, what a "figure" (a tall pole with a torch at the end) meant, and so on. Pyotr Tkachenko used the word "zalogа" from Samchenko's poetic vocabulary in his dictionary, explaining that in the Kuban, a zaloga referred to a border post manned by one or two Cossacks or a type of Cossack border service. This was followed by a poetic example of the word "zalogi" from Samchenko's book: "And, like the light at the zalogi of Labinskaya". == Contemporaries on Yegor Samchenko ==

The memory of Yegor Samchenko endures due to his extravagant manner of interacting with fellow poets. Memoirists unanimously agree that Samchenko was a born psychiatrist and, at the same time, a highly gifted poet, a quality that permeated everything he did. For instance, Georgy Yelin recalled a humorous incident during Boris Slutsky's seminar when an alcoholic, confused by a sign reading "Comradely Court" above the studio door, wandered into the poetry class. Only Yegor Samchenko, leveraging his professional skills as a psychiatrist, managed to rid the audience of the persistent intruder. G. A. Yelin recalled: "Only Yegor Samchenko (a psychiatrist from Solnechnogorsk), wildly gifted and now completely forgotten, succeeded—literally grabbing the old man by the collar: 'Come on, Yaroslav, I'll read you my genius poems!' Stunned by the audacity and the familiar 'you,' Smelyakov suddenly softened, and the entire Central House of Writers witnessed Samchenko reading his manuscript to the master in the downstairs buffet..." Critic Sergey Kunyaev, providing brief characterizations of the poets mentioned in Oleg Dmitriev's impromptu poem, dismissively touched on the Solnechnogorsk author: "Yegor Samchenko, introduced to the circle by Shklyarevsky (whom Yegor always looked up to), will remain an enthusiastic spectator, never writing a single truly complete poem and drowning his creative inadequacy in horse-like doses of alcohol". . Russian-Armenian poetess Seda Vermisheva recalled that to become a part of Moscow's literary life, she sought help from poetess and translator Tatyana Spendiarova, daughter of composer Alexander Spendiarov. Spendiarova introduced her to a circle of Moscow poets distinguished by their reverent attitude toward the work of Osip Mandelstam: Adelina Adalis, Lyudmila Migdalova, nonconformist artist Borukh Shteinberg —son of poet Arkady Shteinberg— and another representative of Moscow's underground, poet Leonid Gubanov. According to Seda Vermisheva, the center of this group was Yegor Samchenko. Poet and writer Yuri Polyakov, editor-in-chief of Literary Gazette, wrote in his 2017 memoir Fragments of a Poet: "Mental illnesses and eccentricities were also encountered in our midst. One need only recall the poet Yegor Samchenko, formerly the chief psychiatrist of an entire Moscow region district. Well, in conversation, he himself reminded me of a patient who had escaped from an asylum". Mikhail Sinelnikov, discussing the literary preferences of poet Alexander Mezhirov, mentions his fondness "for the half-mad Yegor Samchenko, who made a sudden leap". Indeed, in Alexander Mezhirov's article On the Poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko in the almanac Poetry No. 56 in 1990, Yegor Samchenko is named among the most influential contemporary poets, alongside A. Voznesensky, B. Akhmadulina, J. Brodsky, and Yu. Kazakov. However, elsewhere, Sinelnikov recounts Mezhirov's angry remark about Samchenko: "A duplicitous degenerate!" Samchenko employed this technique in crafting the image of his lyrical hero in the poem A Short Afterword: "And I catch myself thinking: / From one temple, I'm Rasputin, / From the other, I'm the Cheka itself. / My assassin and I, we're in harmony, / I've come to love us for the truth. / I'm Felix, once, I'm Felix, Felix! / I poisoned, I shot." Here, Felix refers to both Felix Yusupov, one of the organizers of Grigory Rasputin's murder, and Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder and head of the Cheka. Mikhail Sinelnikov on Yegor Samchenko Poet, translator, and literary scholar Mikhail Sinelnikov synthesized the contradictory facets of the poet and psychiatrist's character. After Samchenko's death, Sinelnikov dedicated him a full article, Russian Wall Newspaper, in the November 2002 issue of the Russian-Jewish magazine Lehaim. According to his assessment, Samchenko was difficult to tolerate; his drunken antics, strange conversations, and megalomania irritated many, exuding a kind of "high-voltage tension" that periodically shocked with the "spark of a meticulously cultivated mental illness". Consequently, few desired to engage with Samchenko in everyday life for extended periods. "And an unsympathetic type, too," the memoirist concludes, as Samchenko's appearance was far from impeccable: either unwashed or disheveled, his mere presence caused strangers to steer clear. Sinelnikov believes Samchenko's work has been unjustly forgotten in the 21st century. He cites the opinion of Samchenko's literary mentor, poet Boris Slutsky, who saw in him the future of Russian poetry. Sinelnikov considers this prediction justified: without Samchenko's poems about Ivan the Terrible, it is hard to imagine a complete picture of 20th-century Russian poetry. If tasked with compiling an anthology of forgotten Soviet poets, Sinelnikov names Samchenko as the first whom he would include. Samchenko's mark was that he could write either powerful or weak poems, but never mediocre ones that fade quickly, whereas great poems often emerge from worse ones. Mikhail Sinelnikov calls Samchenko's association with the antisemitic wing of Russian literature and the editorial board of Nash Sovremennik a dramatic chapter in his biography. Yet, the person who valued Yegor Samchenko most was B. A. Slutsky, who paved his way in poetry, mentored him paternally —beyond the duties of a literary guide— lent him money, and even bought him clothing and shoes. In gratitude for Slutsky purchasing a new winter coat, Samchenko dedicated a poem Coat to him in his debut collection Hard Carriage, though it was criticized by Stanislav Rassadin. Nevertheless, one day, after thanking Slutsky for his care, Samchenko declared to his mentor: "But I won't be friends with you anymore, Boris Abramovich, now I'm an antisemite". This outburst deeply wounded the war-veteran poet. However, according to M. I. Sinelnikov, the cause of Samchenko's antisemitism lay not in ideological convictions but in alcohol-induced demoralization. The author again quotes Alexander Mezhirov: "Yes, here the madness of Ivan the Terrible coincided with the madness of the Central House of Writers restaurant!" Despite this incident, Samchenko did not become antisemite; he retained respect for his mentor and love for his poetry, and he revered the poetry of Osip Mandelstam and his Conversation About Dante. It is reflected in Samchenko's poem ''To the 'Conversation About Dante''. For this reason, right-wing literati were hesitant to fully embrace him: "Samchenko wasn't entirely 'ours,' somewhat 'both ours and theirs'! [...] Even duplicitous and pliable, Samchenko was unfit for a veche gathering. He was too much a poet to become an 'active bayonet' or join, for example, the poetry section's bureau..." Sinelnikov attempts to compare Samchenko's unbearable character and the measure of his talent to the contentiousness and genius of M. Yu. Lermontov: "But, my God, could anyone tolerate Lermontov! [...] The comparison seems impossible, and yet, and yet..." == Notes ==