The famous Soviet poet Vadim Sergeevich Shefner is often referred to the generation of the creative intelligentsia, called the "sixties" in commemoration of the years of the "Khrushchev thaw".
“Word can kill, word can save
In a word, you can lead the shelves behind you …"
A quote from an idealistic-philosophical poem by Vadim Shefner about the word is often heard in everyday life, although it is unlikely that the speakers know about the authorship of the lines.
Childhood and youth
The poet owes his unusual birth on January 12, 1915 to the long ice road across the Gulf of Finland, where he was born in a sleigh on the way to the maternity hospital. The whole life of a talented poet, prose writer and science fiction writer is connected with the city on the Neva, with the exception of a few years spent in Staraya Russa.
Shefner has deep noble roots. Men in the family went mainly along the military path. Grandfather Alexey Karlovich Shefner is considered the founder of the city of Vladivostok. Father - an officer of the tsarist army, who graduated from the Corps of Pages, became a military expert in the Red Army. He died early of consumption in the hungry winter of 1923.
Mom, the granddaughter of the vice admiral, received an excellent education at home. In Soviet times, she worked as a teacher mainly in orphanages, where Vadim lived. It was she who instilled in the child a love of poetry.
The boy began to write poetry early, but their theme left much to be desired, there were even frankly obscene verses.
After leaving school, he did not dare to enter the university because of problems with mathematics, he continued his education through factory training. At the same time, his poetry becomes deep and serious. And only in the 35th year, Shefner entered the workers' school, and then received a higher education.
Creation
The first publications of the poet's poems were in the factory multi-circulation at the place of work, since the 36th year, works have been regularly published in large newspapers and serious magazines.
In 1940, Vadim Shefner joined the Writers' Union and published his first collection of poems.
During the war, poetry temporarily faded into the background. This period of biography was marked by service in the defense units of Leningrad, extreme exhaustion from a meager ration, treatment in a hospital, appointment as a front-line newspaper correspondent and joining the ranks of the CPSU. However, even in a difficult time for the country, at the very peak of the blockade, a new collection of the poet's poems was published.
In the post-war years, prose, fiction (which he himself did not consider as such), translations, deep philosophical poetry aimed at defining good and evil, a call for the total eradication of the latter, appeared in Shefner's work.
Among the publications of Vadim Shefner there are about 30 books of poetry, many author's collections of prose, two two-volume editions of selected works, collected works.
Personal life
The fate, muse and wife of the poet from 1942 until her death in 2000 was Ekaterina Pavlovna Grigorieva, who gave him a son, Dmitry, in the 46th year.
Together they lived happy years and a difficult time of persecution and accusations of the poet in cosmopolitanism.
Modest, decent, deeply intelligent, talented poet and prose writer Vadim Shefner survived his wife by only two years.
