Yelisaveta Grigoryevna Polonskaya

Elizaveta Grigorievna Polonskaja , born Elizaveta Grigorievna Mowschenson , ( Russian Елизавета Григорьевна Полонская , maiden name Russian Елизавета Григорьевна Мовшензон * June 14 ^{. Jul} / 26. June  1890 ^greg. In Warsaw ; † 11. January 1969 in Leningrad ) was a Russian writer , Poet , translator and founding member of the Petrograd Serapion Brothers .

Life

Jelisaveta Grigoryevna came from a Jewish, Russian-speaking family. Her father Grigory Lvovich Mowschenson (1861-1915), born in Daugavpils and a graduate of the Riga Polytechnic was traffic engineer , who as an engineer outside the Pale of Settlement was allowed to live. Her mother Charlotta Iljinitschna nee Meilach (1861-1946) was the daughter of the bank clerk Elija Moissejewitsch (Mowschewitsch) Meilach in Białystok and a graduate of the Bestuschewskije kursy . Jelisaweta Grigoryevna grew up in Białystok and then in Łódź . She received lessons in French , German , Italian and English . With the help of her mother, she joined secret groups studying Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky and political economy . Because of the pogroms , the father sent the family to his sister-in-law Fanny in Berlin in 1905 , where Yelisaveta Grigoryevna joined a social democratic working group and studied Karl Marx . At the end of 1906 the family finally settled in St. Petersburg . Jelisaveta Grigoryevna attended the private Chitrovo grammar school, worked in workers' associations and distributed underground literature and Lenin's writings from Finland .

In September 1908, Yelisaveta Grigoryevna went to France to visit distant relatives because of the threat of arrest and studied medicine at the University of Paris . She attended meetings of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and got to know Russian symbolists . In 1909 she came into closer contact with Ilja Grigorjewitsch Ehrenburg . Her first poems appeared in Paris . In 1914 she completed her medical degree. After the start of the First World War , she worked for a few months in a hospital in Nancy and then helped set up a military hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine .

In 1915, Yelisaveta Grigoryevna answered a call to Russian doctors abroad and returned via Greece to Petrograd , where her father had just died. She received her medical degree from Dorpat University and went to the Galician Front , where she headed an epidemiological department of the 8th Army . In Kiev she met the engineer Lev Dawidowitsch Polonski know, with whom she had their son Mikhail (1916-1995). She took the name Polonskaya, although they did not get married because of an existing engagement Polonskis (not even after the death of Polonskis' wife). In April 1917, Polonskaya returned to Petrograd to support her family. She became the assistant to the city doctor for the poor on Vasilyevsky Island , where she only experienced the October Revolution as an observer.

After the October Revolution, Polonskaya worked in various positions in the medical system of the Soviet Union . In addition, she continued to write. 1919–1920 Polonskaya studied in the literary studio of the publishing house Vsemirnaja Literatura (world literature) initiated by Maxim Gorki at the People's Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR with Nikolai Stepanowitsch Gumilev , Kornei Ivanovich Chukovsky , Mikhail Leonidowitsch Losinski and Viktor Borissowitsch Schklowski . There she met the writers who formed the group of Serapion brothers with her in 1921. She was particularly close to Lev Natanowitsch Lunz , who like her insisted on artistic independence. After the gradual dissolution of the group after Lunze's death, she stayed in contact with some Serapion brothers and their friends, in particular with Weniamin Alexandrowitsch Kawerin and Kornei Ivanovich Tschukowski. Her second collection of poems appeared in 1923 and her third in 1929. She also worked as a translator . It began with Rudyard Kipling's Ballad of East and West . Works by William Shakespeare , Victor Hugo , Julian Tuwim and others followed, as well as the Armenian national epic David von Sasun . Chukovsky helped her establish herself as a poet for children.

In 1931 Polonskaya gave up her medical career and worked as a writer and journalist . After the start of the German-Soviet war and the Leningrad blockade , she and her family were evacuated to the Urals , first to Polasna and in November 1942 to Molotov . In 1944 they returned to Leningrad. Her mother died in 1946 and her novel Gorod (The City) was rejected by the publisher and she had to repay her advance from Litfond . During the Zhdanovshchina with the two-camp theory and violent attacks against Mikhail Mikhailovich Soschtschenko and others, she was endangered because of her membership of the Serapion brothers at the time. The measures against the doctors' conspiracy also threatened later . Due to illness, she had to give up writing in 1967. It was forgotten. It was not until 2001 that Wolfgang Kasack praised her poetry.

Polonskaja's younger brother was the art scholar Alexander Grigoryevich Mowschenson .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Leslie Dorfman Davis: Serapion Sister: The Poetry of Elizaveta Polonskaja . Northwestern University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8101-1579-4 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Names: Elizaveta Polonskaya . In: The People of the Book in the World of Books . No. 86 , June 1, 2010 ( narodknigi.ru [accessed September 27, 2018]).
3. ↑ Электронная еврейская энциклопедия: ПОЛО́НСКАЯ Елизавета Григорьевна (урожденная Мовшензон) accessed September 27, 2018.
4. ↑ Movshenson Grigorii (accessed on 26 September 2018).
5. ↑ Wolfgang Kasack: Лексикон русской литературы XX века = Lexicon of Russian Literature from 1917 . Культура, Moscow 1996, ISBN 5-8334-0019-8 , p. 325 .