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Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin (Russian: Семён Израилевич Липкин) (6 September (19, New Style) 1911 – 31 March 2003) was a Russian writer, poet, and literary translator.

Semyon Lipkin
Lipkin and his wife, the poet Inna Lisnianskaya
Born(1911-09-06)6 September 1911
Odessa, Russian Empire
Died31 March 2003(2003-03-31) (aged 91)
Peredelkino, Russia
OccupationPoet, translator, memoirist, prose-writer, soldier
Period1911-2003
Genreliterature
SubjectWorld War II, History, Philosophy, Literature, Folklore, Jewish heritage, The Bible
Notable worksKvadriga Memoirs, The Lieutenant Quartermaster (An epic poem)

Lipkin's importance as a poet was recognized once his work became available to the general reading public after the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Throughout much of his working life, he was sustained by the support of his wife, poet Inna Lisnianskaya and close friends such as Anna Akhmatova, Joseph Brodsky and Alexander Solzhenitsyn (who thought him a genius and championed his poetry). Lipkin's verse includes explorations of history and philosophy, and exhibits a keen sense of peoples' diverse destinies. His poems include references to his Jewish heritage and to the Bible. They also draw on first-hand experience of the tragedies of Stalin's Great Purge and World War II (WWII). Lipkin's long-standing opposition to the Soviet regime surfaced in 1979-80 when he contributed to the uncensored almanac "Metropol"; he and Lisnianskaya then left the ranks of the official Writer's Union of the USSR.


Early years


Lipkin was born in Odessa, as the child of Israel and Rosalia Lipkin. Semyon Lipkin was of Jewish ethnicity.[1] His father had a tailoring business[2] and was active in the Menshevik movement.[3] According to Lipkin, his father took him to Odessa's Main Synagogue where he discussed politics with figures such as Hayyim Nahman Bialik.[3] His early education included Hebrew and Torah instruction alongside his studies at a gymnasium.[3] This was disrupted by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and by the 1918-20 Civil War. Lipkin spent a lot of time reading and educating himself at home. In 1929 he left Odessa for Moscow, where he studied engineering and economics and graduated from the Moscow Engineering-Economic Institute in 1937. While studying there, he had begun to teach himself Persian followed by the other languages of the oriental regions, which were disappearing as a result of Russification, including Northeast Caucasian languages, Kalmyk, Kirghiz, Kazakh, Tatar, Tajik and Uzbek, together with their histories and cultures.


Military career


Lipkin's military career started with the German invasion in June 1941, when he enlisted as a war correspondent with the military rank of senior lieutenant, at the Baltic Fleet base in Kronstadt near Leningrad. Later he was transferred to the 110th Kalmyk cavalry division (with which he got into the German encirclement), and then to the Volga River flotilla at Stalingrad. He took part in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942-43 and covered its events as a journalist.[3] Lipkin was awarded 4 military orders and a number of medals for his actions.


Literary career


Lipkin published his first poem when he was aged 15 and Eduard Bagritsky recognized its merit.[3] It was not until he entered his sixth decade that the regime permitted him to publish his own poetic work, and it wasn't until his seventh decade that recognition of his status as a poet was fully established, despite the fact that Anna Akhmatova and Joseph Brodsky (the Nobel laureate) amongst others in his immediate circle, acknowledged the greatness of his poems.

In the 1930s Lipkin met the 20th century Russian poets Osip Mandelstam, Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetayeva, along with the prose writers Vasily Grossman and Andrey Platonov, all of whom were described in his memoir Kvadriga.

Lipkin is also renowned as a literary translator and often worked from the regional languages which Stalin tried to obliterate.[citation needed] In his translations, Lipkin was known for also learning about the culture of the languages he translated such as Abkhaz, Akkadian, Buryat, Dagestani, Karbardinian, Kalmyk, Kirghiz, Tatar, Tadjik-Farsi and Uzbek.[4] Lipkin is also noted for hiding a typescript of his friend Vasily Grossman's magnum opus, Life and Fate, from the KGB and initiated the process that brought it to the West.[5][6] Martin Amis remarked, "If it were for nothing else than the part he played in bringing Life and Fate to publication Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin would deserve to be remembered."[citation needed]

Lipkin's extensive oeuvre of translation won many accolades. For his translations and literary work Lipkin was honoured with the title of Kalmykia national poet (1967) and later, Hero of Kalmykia (2001), People's Artist of Kabardino-Balkaria (1957), Outstanding Cultural Worker of the Uzbek Republic (1968), Rudaki State Prize of Tajik Republic (1967), Tukay State Prize of Tatarstan (1992), Andrey Sakharov "Courage in the Literature" Prize (1992), literary prizes of the magazines Ogoniok (1989) and "Luchnik (Archer)" (1994), and The Pushkin Prize of the Alfred Topfer Foundation (1995).[citation needed]


Poetry



Prose



Translations by Semyon Lipkin


Abkhaz
Akkadian
Buryat
Dagestani
Kabardian
Kalmyk
Kirghiz
Sanskrit
Tatar
Tadjik-Persian
Uzbek
Other various languages

English translations of Semyon Lipkin’s work



French translations of Semyon Lipkin’s work



Referenced Works



Friendship with Vasily Grossman


In 1961, the manuscript for the novel, Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman was banned by the Soviet authorities, and confiscated by the KGB. Semyon Lipkin saved a copy of his friend's typescript in a bag hanging under some coats on a peg at his dacha at Peredelkino and later passed it over to Elena Makarova and Sergei Makarov for safe keeping in their attic in Khimki, near Moscow. (Elena Makarova was Lipkin's step-daughter, the daughter of his widow the poet Inna Lisnianskaya. Sergei Makarov is Elena's husband.) In 1975 Lipkin asked the writer Vladimir Voinovich and Academician Andrey Sakharov to help to smuggle the manuscript from the USSR and get it published in the West, which eventually happened in 1980. In July 2013, Grossman's own manuscript and other papers confiscated by the KGB back in 1961 were finally released from detention and passed by the FSB secret service (former KGB) to the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI).


Chronology of historical events impacting Lipkin and his writing



References


  1. "Semyon Lipkin (1911–2003)". An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry. 2015. pp. 813–818. doi:10.4324/9781315706474-99. ISBN 9781315706474.
  2. "Semyon Lipkin. 'Cardinal Points' literary journal". www.stosvet.net. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  3. Shrayer, Maxim D. (2019-07-31). Voices of Jewish-Russian Literature: An Anthology. Academic Studies PRess. ISBN 978-1-64469-152-6.
  4. "Yvonne Green. Finding a Path. Translating Lipkin". Cardinal Points Journal. Retrieved 2021-02-18.
  5. Grossman, Vasily (2010). The Road: Stories, Journalism, and Essays. New York Review of Books. ISBN 978-1-59017-409-8.
  6. Toker, Leona (2019). Gulag Literature and the Literature of Nazi Camps: An Intercontexual Reading. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-253-04351-1.


Media related to Semyon Lipkin at Wikimedia Commons


На других языках

- [en] Semyon Lipkin

[ru] Липкин, Семён Израилевич

Семён Изра́илевич Ли́пкин (6 [19] сентября 1911, Одесса, Херсонская губерния, Российская империя — 31 марта 2003, Переделкино, Москва, Россия) — русский советский поэт и переводчик. Муж поэтессы Инны Лиснянской.


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