Zabolotsky N.A. (1903-1958), poet

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ZABOLOTSKY Nikolay Alexeevich (1903-1958), poet, translator. In Petrograd from 1921. Graduated from Faculty of Social Economy (Department of Language and Literature) of the Herzen Leningrad State Pedagogic Institute (1925). In the middle of the 1920s he drew together a group of young Leningrad poets (D. Kharms, A.I. Vvedensky and others), took part in the creation of OBERIU (Association of Realistic Art) group (1927), and contributed to children magazines Chizh and Ezh. In 1938 he was arrested on a false charge of Trotskyist activities, sentenced to five years confinement and two years exile. From 1946 lived in Moscow. He left a brilliant description of post-revolutionary Leningrad in his first book of poems (Columns, 1929), he made great use of the artistic device of ostranenie (literally, making strange, making the familiar and commonplace seem strange or alien) and the comparison of absolutely heterogeneous objects and phenomena (Red Bavaria, Obvodny Canal, etc.). Subsequently, the lyric poetry of Zabolotsky developed from the description of a bounded and closed world of the city to a desciption of the world of nature and the Universe. When he was a student, he lived at 73-75 Krasnykh Zor Street (today Kamennoostrovsky Avenue), in the first half of the 1930s, at 36 Bolshaya Pushkarskaya Street, where he wrote his poem A Celebration of Agriculture (journal Zvezda, 1933), that led to his persecution; in 1935-38 he lived at 9 Griboedova Canal Embankment (collective memorial plaque).

References: Македонов А. В. Николай Заболоцкий: Жизнь. Творчество. Метаморфозы. Л., 1987; Лощилов И. Феномен Николая Заболоцкого. Helsinki, 1997.

D. N. Akhapkin. Kharms Daniil (real name Yuvachev Daniil Ivanovich)
Vvedensky Alexander Ivanovich
Zabolotsky Nikolay Alexeevich
Bolshaya Pushkarskaya St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 36
Griboedova Canal Embankment/Saint Petersburg, city, house 9
Kamennoostrovsky Ave/Saint Petersburg, city, house 75
Kamennoostrovsky Ave/Saint Petersburg, city, house 73
Македонов А. В. Николай Заболоцкий: Жизнь. Творчество. Метаморфозы. Л., 1987
Лощилов И. Феномен Николая Заболоцкого. Helsinki, 1997 OBERIU
Chiz and Yezh (Siska and Hedgehog), journals
Zvezda (The Star), journal