Enriching the Russian Language

On November 22, 1887, Samuil Marshak was born. A poet, translator, playright, dramatist, literary critic and editor, Marshak was born in Voronezh and began writing poetry at a very early age.

When he was just 15, Marshak’s family moved to Petersburg, where he came into contact with Vladimir Stasov and, through him, Fyodor Shalyapin and Maxim Gorky, who all took an active interest in his future. Stasov arranged for Marshak, the son of a Jew from the Pale of Settlement, to be enrolled in a gymnasium, an exceptional accomplishment at that time. Following that, Marshak lived for two years in Yalta, financed by Shalyapin and Gorky, then returned to Petersburg, where he began to be published in Satirikon, one of the most popular Russian journals of humor.

From 1912-1915, Marshak lived in England and studied at the University of London. In the years that followed, he saw published his first translations into Russian of poems by Burns, Blake, Wordsworth and others.

Returning to Russia in 1917, he focused his efforts on helping children orphaned by war and revolution, even creating a “Children’s Village” in Krasnodar (then Yekaterinodar), complete with a school, library, workshops and theater.

In 1922, Marshak moved to Petersburg, where he became the head of the literary repetoire section of the Theater of Young Viewers and soon began publishing children’s works that would become beloved by generations of Russian children: (Kids in Cages, Fire, Circus, Baggage, Post Office).

Marshak contributed an amazingly large body of work across many genres of fiction and, as his stature rose, he helped other lights of Russian literature shine. From 1924-1934, he headed the Children’s Department of the state-owned publishing house Gosizdat, publishing such authors as Paneleev, Bely, Kharms and Vvedensky. Not without reason, therefore, Marshak’s long-time patron, Maxim Gorky, called him “the founder of our children’s literature.”

In 1937, Marshak moved to Moscow, continuing to write poems for children and translating English literature and poetry into Russian. During WWII, he put his pen into the service of the Motherland, authoring the seminal war film Young Fritz, or Sentimental Recollections, and writing numerous poems and agitation pieces. His work gained a deeper psychological and lyrical tone during this era, but did not lose its life-affirming, childlike worldview. During the war, Marshak also finished an epochal work of literature: his translation of all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets into Russian.

After the war, the poet did not slacken his pace, producing such beloved works as The Multicolored Book, Byl-Nebyltsa, Krugly god, and Vaksa Klyaksa. In 1963, Marshak was awarded the Lenin Prize for his collected lyrical works (he had won state prizes in 1942, 1946, 1949 and 1951). His “lyric epigrams” of this era were particularly popular, ranging from the self-critical to the philosophical (i.e. “Everyone who draws breath on this earth/Despite their self-perception/Is just a reflection in a mirror/No more, no less.”). So widely influential was his work, that many of his poems have enriched the Russian language with new expressions and aphorisms.

Samuil Marshak died July 4, 1964, in Moscow.