Oleg Haslavsky was born on 8 July 1948 in
Taganrog,
Soviet Union. Until the age of seven, he lived with his parents in
Lviv. Jewish on the father's side, he was always fascinated by learning different languages and cultures, which was rather unusual in the realities of provincial, even though multinational, USSR. This linguistic and personal curiosity led him to three of his passions, namely literature, foreign languages and psychology. During his school years he studied painting in Taganrog Art Studio under the supervision of Valentina Russo. due to personal motives of the faculty dean. His student status was later fully reinstated, to only be transferred to the
Kolomna Pedagogical Institute, where he graduated from the faculty of foreign languages in 1972. A fulfilled dream of becoming a linguist was combined with receiving a right to practice clinical psychology upon graduation. From 2005 until 2020, during lengthy trips to
France,
Germany,
Austria,
Switzerland and
Bulgaria, he completed numerous photography, digital graphics and painting projects. Haslavsky spoke and translated from
French,
English,
Bulgarian,
Polish, and
Ukrainian. He also had a good knowledge of
German and
Italian. He translated various poems of
François Villon,
Arthur Rimbaud,
Paul Verlaine,
Charles Baudelaire,
Guillaume Apollinaire,
Maurice Maeterlinck,
Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński,
Cyprian Kamil Norwid,
Bolesław Leśmian,
Taras Shevchenko, poetry and prose of
Tadeusz Borowski, as well as
Edmond Rostand's comedy
Cyrano de Bergerac. In 2002, he translated
Lewis Carroll's ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'', which he amended in 2019. He never sought publication of his poetry. The first representative publication took place only in 2008 in the
Moscow journal
Corostel. Provincial letters. After two books published in Russia, Oleg published four books in London, which, sadly, appeared already after his death. The biggest collection of Haslavsky's literary works can be found in
Kaleidoscope, a mix of poetry, poetic translations and prose. He died in Taganrog on 19 December 2021, at the age of 73. == Books by Oleg Haslavsky ==