Gennady Nikolayevich Aigi

Gennadiy Aygi ( Chuvash Геннадий Николаевич Айхи , Russian Геннадий Николаевич Айги * 21st August 1934 in Schaimursino , Chuvashia , † 21st February 2006 in Moscow ) was born, as Gennadi Nikolayevich Lisin was a Chuvash poet , who on Russian and Chuvash wrote . He has received numerous awards and is considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature .

life and work

The poet Gennadi Aigi was born in Shaimursino in what is now the Republic of Chuvashia. He belongs to the Chuvash ethnic minority.

His adopted Chuvash name means something like "the one there", "the same". His first poems in the 1950s were published in Chuvash. The volume of poetry with which Gennady Aigi wanted to complete his studies at the Maxim Gorky Institute for Literature in Moscow in 1957 was rejected. In 1958 he was expelled from the Komsomol and the Institute of Literature for "writing a hostile volume of poetry which undermines the foundations of the method of socialist realism ". At the beginning of the 1960s his verses first appeared in samizdat , later also in tamizdat .

Encouraged by his poet friend Boris Pasternak , he has been writing exclusively in Russian since 1960 - an attempt to overcome the exclusion linguistically. But as early as 1964 he was banned from publishing, which was to apply for around 25 years.

International impact

Despite the isolation, Gennadi Aigi, whom Roman Jakobson has described as the greatest living Russian poet, was soon well-known in Germany and France. In 1971 he became a highly acclaimed poet with the volume Beginning of the Clearance in Germany. He translated Dante and Federico García Lorca , Wladimir Majakowski and Walt Whitman into his mother tongue and was the editor of an anthology of Chuvash poetry. His poems have appeared in 23 countries, have been translated into 44 languages and have received numerous prizes.

Literary classification

Aigi's poetry is based on Chuvash folk tradition and is rooted in a deeply felt Orthodox belief. At the same time, a large number of literary models can be identified in his work. In addition to the French symbolists such as Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, these include the Russian futurists around Mayakovsky. Aigi's characteristic compositional principle is the extreme abbreviation and condensation of language made possible by breaking up classical poetic forms: For him, it is not about the description of the world, according to Aigi, but about the "abstracted absolutization of world phenomena by the poet". He went on to say, “My works are not symbols, metaphors, or allegories. My work is awakening through a shrill light, where a human tip - the word - becomes a haze, where man unites with nature and the universe. "

Others

Gennadi Aigi was a participant at the international literature festival berlin 2003.

Awards (selection)

1972 Poetry Prize from the Académie française
1987 Andrei Bely Prize
1991 Aleksei Krutschonych Prize
1993 Petrarca Prize
2000 Pasternak Prize of the PEN World Congress
Knight of the French Legion of Honor
2004 Ján Smrek Prize (in Bratislava, Slovakia)

membership

Member of the St. Petersburg Writers' Union (since 1991)
Member of the Russian PEN (since 1995)
Chairman of the editorial board of the Chuvash magazine Das Antlitz Tschuvaschiens (Russian: Лик Чувашии) since 1994

Works

Life after death sentence . Lamuv, Bornheim, 1982
Beginning of the clearing. Poems . Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1971 (new edition 1992, ISBN 3-518-22103-5 )
To the poet of the poet of the rose. Ten poems . Fuchstaler Presse, Denklingen 1991
From fields Russia. Poems. Prose . Illustrated by Kasimir Malewitsch , Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1991 (new edition 2002, ISBN 3-518-40341-9 )
And: for Malevich . 1991
Dedication roses . Rainer Verlag, Berlin 1991
Greetings to the song . Rainer, Berlin, 1992
Snow in the garden . 1993
Veronika's notebook. My daughter's first half year . Insel Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1993, ISBN 3-458-19133-X
Boris Pasternak. Memories on the occasion of his 100th birthday and seven poems . Rainer Verlag, Berlin 1993
Conversations à distance . Circé, Saulxures, 1994
With singing: To perfection. Poems . Edition per procura, Vienna 1995
der: there . With 40 photos by Günther Uecker , Verlag Galerie Erker, St. Gallen 1995
Purer than meaning. Poems . Illustrated by Günther Uecker, Verlag Galerie Erker, St. Gallen 1997
Selected works . Volume 1: Poems, Volume 2: Leaves in the Wind, Conversations, Speeches, Essays. Edition per procura, Vienna 1995/1998, ISBN 3-901118-19-5 and ISBN 3-901118-20-9
Wind outside the window. Mixed poems . Verlag Galerie Erker, St. Gallen 1998, ISBN 3-905546-45-0
Always different on earth. Poems . Translated by Walter Thümler. Leipziger Literaturverlag, Leipzig 2009, ISBN 9783866600751

Web links

Individual evidence

personal data
SURNAME	Aigi, Gennady Nikolaevich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Lissin, Gennadi Nikolajewitsch (maiden name); Айги, Геннадий Николаевич (Russian); Айхи, Геннадий Николаевич (Chuvash)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Russian lyric poet
DATE OF BIRTH	August 21, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH	Shaimursino , Chuvashia
DATE OF DEATH	February 21, 2006
Place of death	Moscow