1.2 Translator’s Biography
Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak
How to fit in a few pages of a brief autobiography a long life, full of numerous events?
S.Y. Marshak
Samuil
Yakovlevich Marshak was a successful poet, translator, and one of the
first authors of children's books in the Soviet Union. All Russians,
adults and children alike, know and love Samuel Marshak’s poems.
M
arshak
was born on 22 October 1887. He spent his childhood in Vitebsk and
Ostrogozhsk, a suburb of Voronezh.
Baron
David Ginzburg took an interest in Marshak and introduced him to the
influential critic Vladimir Stasov. Stasov was so impressed by the
schoolboy's literary talent that he helped Samuel to apply to one of
the best gymnasiums in Saint Petersburg in spite of the laws of Pale
of Settlement*.
* The Pale of Settlement was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited.
In 1904 Samuil was diagnosed with tuberculosis and could no longer continue to live in the cold climate of Saint Petersburg. Maxim Gorky arranged for Samuil to live with his family in Yalta, the resorttown on the coast of Black sea (1904-1906). In Yalta Marshak was first published in magazine “Еврейская жизнь”.
In January 1912 he married Sophia Milvidskaya, who he had met during his trip to the Middle East. Due to so-called “political insecurity” Marshak failed to gain admission at Russian university. In autumn 1912 he and Sophia Mikhailovna moved to England.
He studied philosophy at the University of London. Later he wrote that it had been the university library that made him fall in love with English culture and poetry. Shortly before World War I, in 1914, he returned to Russia.
Y
ears
spent in Great Britain had a great impact on Marshak’s creative
work, especially trips to Scotland. Not only did he learn the
language, but made long journeys on foot, talking to people who speak
that language, imbued with the spirit of the country.
Having returned to Russia he started translating poems of William Blake and Robert Burns. It seems that if there hadn’t been those trips, Marshak wouldn’t have been able to depict Burns’ feelings so vividly and truthfully.
Marshak devoted his whole lifetime to literary work and translation. His active creative work lasted for more than 50 years. He translated lyrics by Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Kipling and also the English folk ballads. In Russia his translations of Shakespeare sonnets are considered classics. Apart of that he continued writing both children and “adult” poems. According to Gorky, he was the founder of Soviet children’s literature.
He was awarded four Stalin and one Lenin Prizes. Samuil Marshak died on 4th July 1962. The evidence of breadth and strength of his talent was a wreath of heather, sent to his funeral from Scotland, from the motherland of Robert Burns, whose fresh and natural lyrics Marshak turned into a fact of Russian literature.