Vadim Sergeevich Shefner - Soviet poet, prose writer, science fiction writer.
Born January 12, 1915 in Petrograd in the family of an infantry officer. He is the grandson of Alexei Karlovich Shefner, lieutenant commander, founder of the port of Vladivostok.
He spent almost all his childhood and youth in Petrograd (Leningrad). In 1921, the family left for Staraya Russa to join his father's job. After the death of his father from consumption, Vadim Shefner, together with his mother-teacher, lived at an orphanage in Staraya Russa, after some time he returned to Petrograd. After school, he graduated from the FZU, in the 1930s he was a worker at various Leningrad factories.
In the first months of the Great Patriotic War, he was a private in an airfield service battalion near Leningrad, since 1942 he was a front-line correspondent for the newspaper of the Leningrad Front, Znamya Pobedy, and ended the war with the rank of senior lieutenant. Member of the CPSU (b) since 1945.
He began writing poetry at a young age. In 1933 he published his first poem "The Ballad of the Stoker" in the magazine "Cutter". Since 1938, he studied at the poetic seminar-studio "Youth Association" at the Writers' Union of the USSR (head - A. I. Gitovich, Yu. N. Tynyanov, A. A. Akhmatova, N. A. Zabolotsky, M M. Zoshchenko and others), where he became close friends with the poets V. A. Lifshitz and A. T. Chivilikhin. In 1940 he published his first book of poems, The Bright Coast.
The second book of poems ("Protection") was published in 1943 in besieged Leningrad. In 1943-1945, Vadim Shefner created his largest poetic work - the poem "Meeting in the Suburbs", which reflects the events of the heroic defense of Leningrad.
In the post-war years, along with poetic creativity, he also engaged in poetic translation - from Chinese, from Sanskrit and Prakrit, and from the languages ​​​​of the union republics of the USSR (Georgian, Belarusian, Latvian, etc.). He has been publishing prose in magazines (Literaturny Sovremennik, Zvezda, etc.) since 1940. The first collection of prose ("Clouds over the road") was published in 1957. He considered the story "The Sister of Sorrow" to be his most significant prose work.
Since the 1960s, he has also worked in the science fiction genre, defining his fantastic works as "semi-probable stories" and "fairy tales for smart people."
In 1973-1975 he created the story "A Name for a Bird, or Tea Party on a Yellow Veranda" (with the subtitle "Chronicle of Impressions"), in which he laid the foundation for another layer of his work - memoir prose.
He died on January 5, 2002 in St. Petersburg. The funeral service was held at the Vladimir Cathedral on January 8. According to the will of the writer, there were no civil memorial services and farewell speeches. He was buried at the Kuzmolovsky cemetery (Vsevolozhsky district of the Leningrad region).

The Russian writer Vadim Shefner, whose biography began in the year when the Russian Empire entered the First World War, left this world already at the beginning of the third millennium. A significant part of his work fell on the Soviet era. But he was never orthodox. Vadim Shefner did not oppose semi-official literature and did not go into conflict with the nomenklatura bureaucracy, but he felt comfortable only away from it.

Facts from the biography of the writer

In the formation and development of any creative personality, the place of birth and the environment in which childhood and youth passed are of great importance. Shefner Vadim Sergeevich was born in the capital of the empire in the family of a military man. That's just a prosperous childhood it can not be called already because it coincided with wars, revolutions, famine, devastation and poverty. After the death of his father from tuberculosis, Vadim Shefner was brought up in an orphanage in Staraya Russa.

Returning later to Petrograd, he graduated from a trade school and worked at industrial enterprises. The first literary experiments in verse and prose, and the first publications in periodicals belong to the same time (30s). From the first days of the war, Vadim Shefner was a private on the Leningrad front. Later, at the height of the Leningrad blockade, he became a correspondent for a front-line newspaper. He finished the war with the rank of senior lieutenant.

Poetic creativity

Even in the pre-war fortieth year, the novice writer managed to publish his first poetic experiments. But, one can say, it was in the war that Shefner Vadim Sergeevich took place as a poet. The first significant book of his poems was published in 1943 in a besieged city. Many lines in it are dedicated to the heroic defense of Leningrad. The poem "Meeting in the Suburbs", written and published later, is also devoted to the same topic.

These are literary facts. Vadim Shefner, whose poems almost never deal with military subjects, began as a front-line poet. Poetic creativity passed through his entire long life, but he himself refused to designate for himself the priority of directions. Both prose, and poetry, and science fiction were equally significant for Vadim Shefner. It was impossible to draw a line between them.

Prose of the sixties

Vadim Shefner became truly famous in the literary world in the sixties. This was the period of the so-called "Khrushchev thaw", when the country was going through a period of rapid renewal. At this time, a new generation quickly burst into art and literature. Many of its representatives managed to go through the fronts of the Great Patriotic War and Stalin's camps. They had something to say to the world. Always aloof from political passions, Vadim Shefner was, nevertheless, a part of his front-line generation. All these years the writer has been working hard and selflessly. Widely published. Receives recognition from readers and critics. And he's not going to stop there.

The prose and poetry of Vadim Shefner is not lost in the general flow in subsequent years, when he was replaced by the endless Brezhnev stagnation. His books are too individual and do not resemble anyone else. Despite the fact that their author never sought to climb into the front ranks and be in front of everyone. But, perhaps, that is why he reflected his time so vividly and in a peculiar way.

Fantasy

In relation to what Vadim Shefner writes, any genre definitions seem very arbitrary. In the prose of this author, it is often difficult to draw a line between fiction and reality, between everyday life and daydreams. And this is very little like what is usually understood as fantasy. And it seems that the author does not care at all what term his prose will be designated. He himself claims that fantasy for him is nothing more than a continuation of poetry by other means.

But the work of Vadim Shefner had a significant impact on the very development of this genre. This is recognized by many luminaries of Soviet and Russian science fiction. And the author himself ironically designated his fantastic works as "fairy tales for smart people" and "semi-probable stories." In 1999, the writer became a laureate of the "Paladin of Science Fiction" award.

"Sister of Sorrow"

One of the absolute peaks in the writer's work is the story "Sister of Sorrow" written in 1968. It cannot be called a fully autobiographical work. But in its very plot and in the many realities of pre-war Leningrad depicted in it, it is to a large extent just that. In the center of her fate are three friends living in the same room in a hostel on Vasilyevsky Island. War and blockade are waiting for everyone very soon. Of course, no one knows about this. But in a strange way they foresee what should happen in a year or two. It is dissolved in the atmosphere. Even though it's not spoken out loud.

Poems for children

Many works of the poet Vadim Shefner are addressed to the younger generation. Sometimes it's hard to see at first glance. The fact is that Vadim Shefner always communicates with children without flirting. He speaks to them in the same language as with adults. And such an approach forms both the level of thinking and the image of perception of reality. Perhaps that is why the younger generation knows such a poet and science fiction writer as Vadim Shefner. His books are still being read today. There is a possibility that they will not be forgotten tomorrow.

Died - January 5, 2002. The funeral service took place on January 8 in the writer's homeland in St. Petersburg in the Vladimir Cathedral.

About myself:

I was born in Petrograd on January 12, 1915. My mother - Evgenia Vladimirovna Shefner - daughter of Vice Admiral Vladimir Vladimirovich von Lindeström, my father - Sergey Alekseevich Shefner - infantry lieutenant colonel; his father, Alexei Karlovich Shefner, was a military sailor. He left a good memory of himself in Russia: in Vladivostok there is a street of Captain Shefner, and near the Far Eastern port of Nakhodka - Cape Shefner.

Mother was Lutheran, father was Orthodox.
I am baptized in the Orthodox Church.

We lived on the Sixth Line of Vasilyevsky Island. When it became hungry in Petrograd, my mother took me to the Tver province, to the village to the nanny. We lived there for five months. I remember the huge Russian stove, I remember how warm and cozy it was in the hut.

I spoke in detail about the days of my youth in the story “A Name for a Bird”. There I told my readers about our departure in 1921 to Staraya Russa, where my father then served in the army. About my mother's anxieties and worries, about my father's death from consumption, about how I lived there, in the orphanage, where my mother got a job as a teacher, about my first lessons in the first grade of an old Russian school, about returning to my native St. Petersburg after almost four years of absence.

Mother read a lot. Not only prose, but also poetry. Her memory was excellent, she remembered many of the poems of Fet and Tyutchev, and Pushkin knew almost everything. One must think that it was from her that I inherited my love for poetry, but at first this love was somehow frivolous. I composed teasing poems, hooligan ditties, and in the sixth grade I even wrote an obscene song. And serious verses did not turn out.

In 1931, after graduating from a seven-year school, I did not dare to take an exam at a university, because I knew that I was stupid in mathematics and would not pass the exam. I decided to become a factory worker - this is how the students of the FZU (Factory Apprenticeship) were jokingly called.

To do this, I went to the Labor Exchange, and there I received a referral to a technical school, which was located on Vosstaniya Street. I was accepted there without difficulty. I was enrolled in the Ceramics Group, and for two years I became a stoker at a porcelain factory (Proletary).

The firing of porcelain is not an easy task, and serious people worked there. Then I finally began to write poetry in earnest, and in 1933 my poem was first published in the factory newspaper.

In 1934, my poems began to be published in city newspapers, and since 1936 in magazines. In 1940, the Leningrad publishing house "Soviet Writer" published my first book of poems - "The Bright Coast". I was admitted to the Union of Writers according to her manuscript in 1939.

My left eye was irreparably damaged as a child, I can only see with my right eye. Therefore, before the war, I was a white ticket, not liable for military service, and I was not called up for military training. But when the Great Patriotic War began in 1941, I also came in handy, I was called up and became a private in the 46th BAO / Airfield Maintenance Battalion /. In the summer of 1942, I was transferred from this battalion to the army newspaper Znamya Pobedy. I worked there as a poet and as an ordinary journalist. After the Victory, he returned home with two military orders of the "Red Star" and "Patriotic War II degree" and with medals, including the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad". I also have post-war awards. I consider the Pushkin Prize in 1997 to be the main one.

My second book of poems was published in besieged Leningrad in 1943. A thin nondescript little book - "Protection" - in a paper cover. In it all the poems are about the war, about my native city. I keep it carefully.

The third book of poems - "Suburb" - was published in 1946, the fourth - "Moscow Highway" - in 1951, the fifth - "Seaside" - in 1955 ... But I will not list all my books here - after all, among them there are unsuccessful. Instead, I will list books that include both relatively recent poems and selected poems of bygone days. Here they are: "Personal Eternity" 1984, "Years and Moments" 1986, "In this Century" 1987 "Architecture of Fire" 1997.

And the first place in terms of the number of poems is occupied by volume 1 of my four-volume Collected Works, published in 1991. It includes selected poems for half a century - from 1938 to 1988.

My first prose-story “Clouds over the Road” was published in Leningrad in 1957. Looking from today, I confess that the story is not very successful. And my second book, Now, Forever and Never, does not please me today. But my third book - "The Happy Loser", which was published in 1965, I consider successful. The story-tale “The Girl at the Cliff” included in it was then reprinted more than once, and in 1991 the Moscow publishing house “Knowledge” gave her a circulation of 500,000 copies.

I consider the story “The Sister of Sorrow” to be my strongest prose work, it was published in 1970. This is a sad story about the Leningrad blockade, about love. I still get good responses to this story. I am not offended by myself and for my fantastic novel The Debtor's Shack. This is a very boring novel. This novel is stylistically adjoined by my Tales for the Smart, published as a separate book. I have already mentioned my autobiographical story “A Name for a Bird”, and now I will say that in 1995 my other autobiographical story, “Velvet Way”, was published in the Zvezda magazine.

January 12, 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the birthVadim Shefner (12.01.1915-5.01.2002).

Haven't heard this name?

Believe that a meeting with him will not disappoint either lovers of poetry, or lovers of fantasy, or ...

However, do not waste time on long introductions.

« I was born in Petrograd on January 12, 1915. My mother - Evgenia Vladimirovna Shefner - daughter of Vice Admiral Vladimir Vladimirovich von Lindeström, my father - Sergey Alekseevich Shefner - infantry lieutenant colonel; his father Alexei Karlovich Shefner was a military sailor. He left a good memory of himself in Russia: in Vladivostok there is a street of Captain Shefner, and near the Far Eastern port of Nakhodka - Cape Shefner.(Grandfather's name – Captain-Lieutenant Alexei Karlovich Shefner – immortalized in Vladivostok because on July 2 (June 20, old style), 1860, the transport of the Siberian flotilla "Manjur" under his command delivered a military unit to the Golden Horn Bay to establish a military post, which laid the foundation for this city).

“Mother read a lot. Not only prose, but also poetry. Her memory was excellent, she remembered many of the poems of Fet and Tyutchev, and Pushkin knew almost everything. One must think that it was from her that I inherited my love for poetry, but at first this love was somehow frivolous. I composed poems - teasers, hooligan ditties, and in the sixth grade I even wrote an obscene song. But serious poems did not work out ” .

Vadim lost his father early and therefore, after finishing seven classes, he entered the factory apprenticeship school (FZU), and then went to work as a porcelain fireman at the Proletary Leningrad factory. In 1933, his first poem "The Ballad of the Stoker" was published in the factory newspaper "Cutter".

In 1935, our hero entered the workers' faculty of Leningrad University. Since that time, he has changed several jobs and professions in a short time: he worked as a driller at an electrical equipment plant, a molder in a foundry, brought bricks at a construction site, was a physical education instructor, a draftsman-archivist at an optical-mechanical plant, a librarian.

In the mid-1930s, Vadim began to work in a literary association at the editorial office of the Smena newspaper. Such masters as A. A. Akhmatova, N. A. Zabolotsky, M. M. Zoshchenko and others were involved in working with young poets.

Since 1934 he began to publish poems in newspapers, since 1936 – in literary magazines. Shefner's first poetry collection – "Light Coast" – was published in 1940, and his first story was published the same year.

Don't dance today, don't sing.

In the late afternoon thoughtful hour

Silently stand at the windows,

Remember those who died for us.

There, in the crowd, among loved ones, lovers,

Among the cheerful and strong guys,

Someone's shadows in green caps

Silently rush to the outskirts.

They can't linger, stay -

This day takes them forever

On the way to marshalling yards

The trains sound their separation.

Calling them and calling them is in vain,

They won't say a word in response

But with a sad and clear smile

Look closely after them.

1961

Many years after the war, Vadim Sergeevich wrote: “ Now, at the end of my days, I am inclined to think that the Great Patriotic War introduced me to prose. Before her, I did not serve in the army, I was a white ticket because of my bad left eye[he injured his eye as a child. - A.K.]. But I saw well with the right and now it finally came in handy as a military unit. At first he was a private in the BAO (airfield service battalion) not far from St. Petersburg, and in January 1942 he was transferred to the editorial office of the army newspaper of the Lenfront "Victory Banner". There I became not only a military poet, but also a prose writer-journalist. Along with poems, he wrote essays and notes about specific people, about frontline fighters - after trips and hiking in the unit. And he also wrote about Leningraders. He returned from the war with the rank of senior lieutenant, was awarded three military orders, medals ... But the highest award to my soul is the memory of those people whom I happened to meet during the war years. (V. Shefner. Introduction to the profession)

News

Reading in the silence of the night

A letter from an unforgettable friend

who was killed in the war.

I read dry as gunpowder,

everyday words,

Rough lines that

To this day, hope lives on.

And everything hasty, evil

Silences, subsides in me.

The past rises to the soul,

As in a sad sublime dream.

This whole world, eternal and new,

I see - as if from a mountain,

And again the triangle is postal

I put it in the box for the time being.

1969

war dreams

We dream not what we want, -

We dream what we want to dream.

We still have war dreams

Like machine guns, aimed.

And dreams of fires for those who are blind

And the well-fed dreams of blockade bread.

And those from whom we do not expect news,

In a dream, they easily enter our house.

Friends of the pre-war years enter,

Not knowing that they don't exist.

And the projectile, from which the case saved,

A fragment in a dream overtakes us.

And, shuddering, we lie in the darkness for a long time, -

Between reality and sleep, in no man's land,

And it's hard to breathe, and the night is long...

A stone on the heart lies the war.

1966

The war gave him one very important meeting. In 1942, Vadim Shefner met his future wife Ekaterina, with whom he lived all his life (she died in 2000, he passed away a year and a half later).

I will grow with gray moss on a stone,

Hood. Willem Haenraets

Where will you go. I will wait in the garden

And apple trees with rose petals

I will quietly fall on your shoulders.

I'm a maple branch in white lightning

I'll knock on the window. At noon on the corner

I will remind you of myself in silence

And I'll run into the sun like a cloud.

But if it becomes unbearable sad,

Not a stone of grief I will lie on my chest -

I will touch your eyes with resinous smoke:

Cry a little more - and forget ...

1944

After the war, along with poetry, Shefner also took on poetic translations (from Chinese, from Georgian, Belarusian, Latvian, etc.).

Since 1940, he published prose in magazines, and his first collection, Clouds over the Road, was published in 1957.

In the 1960s Vadim Shefner, unexpectedly for many, turned to the genre of science fiction, although for him this step was absolutely logical.

« What prompted me to write fiction? Obviously, a feeling of strangeness, fantastic life, its fabulousness. Or maybe poetry. All my life I have been writing poetry, and fantasy goes somewhere next to poetry. They are not antipodes, they are sisters. Fantasy for me is, to paraphrase Clausewitz, the continuation of poetry by other means. If you think about it, the same forces and the same laws operate in poetry and fantasy - only in fantasy they are superimposed on broader spatial and temporal categories.».

The writer, defining his works of this trend as "semi-probable stories" and "fairy tales for the smart," admitted that he was most attracted to him as a science fiction writer.

«… As far as science fiction novels are concerned, where they are only about discoveries and inventions, they are not interesting for me. For me, the fantastic-technical-scientific surroundings are not so important, but the over-fantastic task that the writer sets himself. That's why I love Wells so much. His "Time Machine" will never become obsolete, because, in fact, each of us travels in this car.».

« In him, against any fantastic background and in any fantastic, sometimes terrible, situation, ordinary, not at all fantastic people with all their advantages and disadvantages act. There are stupid and smart, heroes and cowards, good and evil, but everything is within human norms and limits. And so the author pushes these people into fantastic events and sees what comes of it. And it turns out that: people remain people. In essence, this is a very human writer.».

Here, for example, the hero of the story "Heavenly Foundling, or Confession of a Cowardly Brave" Serafim Pyatizaytsev, who passionately dreams of living in silence and loneliness at least for a short time, ends up on the planet Themis, where this very loneliness is guaranteed to him. Not only is there not a single mirror, but even in the books brought by Seraphim, all images of living beings have disappeared. And not just from books...

« From a stack of books he took out a hard cover from a common notebook, which contained a glass-enclosed photograph of his wife in a metal frame. He always took this photograph (12 x 18) with him when he left for a rest home. Now he will see Nastya again. Smiling at him with smile No. 19 ("The joy of walking together"), she stands under a tree in the Summer Garden ... It's good that Nastya exists in the world! ..

With such thoughts, Seraphim took out a photograph from the notebook cover - and was stunned. The pattern of the garden fence was still visible on it, the tree was still standing, but now that part of its trunk appeared, which Nastya had recently obscured with her figure. Nastya disappeared from the picture.

- This is some kind of cosmic rudeness! my hero was outraged. - This, Mr. caretaker, you will not go in vain! “And then he suddenly realized that he had no one to complain about this censor. In every earthly rest home, in every hotel, in the poorest institution, there is at least some kind of director - but here? No one here will accept a written or oral complaint. And these caregivers do what they're programmed to do. They take care of him, Seraphim, in their own way, plunging him into loneliness. But how quiet it is here! he whispered ».

The images of the heroes of Shefner's fantastic works are also far from the standard. After all, we are used to the fact that these are fearless conquerors of "spaces and worlds." We also have to watch the adventures ... eccentrics and losers. Yes Yes! However, let's not rush to judgments. After all, failure is not always a bad thing! Nobody is immune from such a situation. The main thing is how you treat her. Sometimes what we consider failure becomes a stepping stone to happiness.

Let's open the story with a strange at first glance title "The Happy Loser" (1965). It begins with these words: There are people who complain that they are unlucky in life. They perceive every minor failure as a cruel sentence of fate, which is not subject to appeal. They begin to consider themselves losers, lose heart. So I want to give them courage and, to the best of my ability, prove that failures often lead to success, for the Arab sage is right, who said: "Spikes of joy grow from the grains of sadness"».

An equally striking example is Stefan, the hero of the story The Man with Five Nos, or Confessions of an Innocent Man (1966).

«… About me, my father once said that I am a MAN WITH FIVE "NOTs". And then he took a piece of paper and explained in writing that I

not - clumsy

not smart

not - outstanding

not - lucky

not beautiful.

The saddest thing is that all these five "not" really applied to me, and I understood that I did not expect great successes and achievements in life. …»

But his older brother was the complete opposite.

« For example, when a mother told us: “Guys, chop some wood!” Victor answered like this: “Polygamous anthropomorphism and epidemic geocentrism at the level of today give rise to thermodynamic demonism and electrostatic dualism in me, which makes it impossible to split firewood”.

My father and mother looked at each other proudly, rejoicing at Victor's scientific savvy, and sent me alone to chop wood. ».

In 1999, the writer, who celebrated his 85th birthday, was awarded the special nomination "Paladin of Science Fiction" by the Russian literary award "Wanderer". This nomination is traditionally awarded to a person who "dedicated his life to fantastic literature."

The work of our hero is always a lively heart-to-heart conversation, in which there is a place for both lyrics and humor. Therefore, it leaves readers with a feeling of light and joy.

Vadim Shefner in his works gives us very important life advice, but he does it easily and unobtrusively, like a good and wise friend.

Imitation of the Oriental

I don't put the bad guys on a pedestal

But the world would be much worse without them.

That's what bad people are for

So that we know who we should not be.

1985

Arrow

I wanted death not an eagle,

Not predators of the thicket -

I fired an arrow at my friend

Unjust malice.

I missed... Lucky

Maybe both of us?

But the evil I sent

Flies, flies over the field.

Flies through the forest trunks,

Through the city walls

From ocean waves

Tears off shreds of foam.

Piercing the downpour and blizzard,

Cathedrals and fences

And, like a devil's drill,

drilling through the mountains,

An arrow flies with my guilt

Flying into my valley

And circles around the globe

To stab me in the back.

1973

No need, my friend, to be offended,

No need to get angry

For peers and household members,

On old unfaithful friends.

Let's marvel at life better

And believe in good deeds

Look at familiar faces

Like holiday mirrors.

All grievances are such a trifle,

Grievances are insignificant hundredfold

Before those eternal ages

That everyone will be separated forever.

1977

Pride

Hanging crookedly over the void,

Clinging roots to the cracks of stones,

There is a pine tree at the very edge,

Not knowing that she would not stand for long.

Its roots have long been tired of holding,

Not knowing rest and sleep;

But every year is steeper and more stubborn

Up - obliquely - it all stretches.

Already the proud beast eschews,

Goes around, mortal sensing fear,

Already prudent birds

Left the nest in its branches.

She stands, not understanding the troubles,

On a gloomy, weather-beaten rock...

It seems to her - she is one straight,

And everything else is crooked on the ground.

1954

Moment

Get used to miracles

Marvel at them, marvel!

Don't get used to heaven

Reach for them with your eyes.

Take a look at the clouds

Listen to the birds

Apply to the springs -

Nothing will happen again.

Moment by moment, step by step

Fall into amazement.

Everything will be so - and everything will not be so

In one moment.

1964

Nature has considered and weighed everything.

You frivolous shooters,

Don't disturb the balance

And in vain do not pull the triggers.

Here is a hawk circling. Seems to be harmful.

But let it fly, unharmed:

Harmful to someone, but to nature it

Useful and essential.

You built a cozy paradise for yourself,

But you can't live without worries.

Kill sadness - but with the same shot

And joy, maybe you'll kill .

be smart

Know how, know how to order yourself

Drill yourself, don't coax yourself.

Vadim Sergeevich Shefner was an outstanding Soviet writer. He knew how to write everything - poetry, classical prose, science fiction, went the way of a front-line journalist. Through the work of Shefner, a native of St. Petersburg, the image of the city in which he was born, defended during the war years and died runs like a red thread.

Childhood and youth

Vadim Shefner was born on January 12, 1915. The biography began in a sleigh, on the way from Kronstadt to Petrograd - the mother was taken to the maternity hospital, but did not have time. Vadim Sergeevich's grandfather, Aleksey Karlovich Shefner, was an admiral of the fleet and the founder of the port of Vladivostok, a Far Eastern cape and a street in Vladivostok were named after him.

Sergei Alekseevich Shefner, father, was an infantryman, a graduate of the Corps of Pages, then an officer in the tsarist army. When the revolution broke out in the country, Sergei Shefner became a military specialist in the Red Army. Maternal grandfather, Evgenia Vladimirovna von Lindstrom, was a vice admiral. Shefner's mother was a Lutheran, his father was Orthodox, the boy was also baptized in the Orthodox Church.

Vadim spent his childhood on the Sixth Line of Vasilyevsky Island, one of the most beautiful streets in the city. When food shortages began in Petrograd after the revolution, Evgenia Vladimirovna took her son to a nanny, in a village in the Tver province. The poet remembered almost nothing about this time - only the Russian stove and the comfort of the hut.

In 1921, mother and son left for Staraya Russa, where Shefner's father served. When Sergei Alekseevich died of tuberculosis, the boy lived for some time in an orphanage - his mother got a job there as a teacher. In Petrograd, which had already become Leningrad by that time, the family returned only in 1924.

Vadim's mother devoted a lot of time to reading, she knew a huge number of poems by heart. The poet, by his own admission, inherited his love for the artistic word from her. Although in childhood he did not succeed in serious poetry - instead, Vadim wrote hooligan rhymes, and in the 6th grade he even wrote a song of obscene content.

After leaving school, Shefner did not dare to enter a university - he lacked knowledge in mathematics, for which the future poet did not have any abilities. Therefore, the young man decided to get an education according to the FZU system, factory apprenticeship. Such students were jokingly called “fabzaites”.

After graduating from the ceramic group of the plant. , Vadim got a job at the Proletary factory as a porcelain firing stoker and then began to write his first serious poems. The poet reached higher education only in 1935, when he entered the Leningrad University at the workers' faculty. Before the war, the young man managed to change many jobs: he taught physical education, worked in a foundry, brought bricks at a construction site, and gave out books in the library.

Poetry

The first publication of Vadim Shefner took place in 1933 - one of his poems was published in the factory large-circulation periodicals. While studying at the university, the young man attended a literary group at the newspaper "Change", was a member of the "Young Association" of the Writers' Union in Leningrad.

Regular publications began in 1936 - first in newspapers, then in reputable magazines. After being admitted to the Writers' Union in 1940, Vadim Shefner's first independent collection of poems, The Bright Coast, was published.

When the war began, for a long time the poet had no time for poetry. He served in the unit defending the besieged Leningrad, although before the war he had a "white ticket" due to blindness in one eye.

Since the service in providing the airfield did not imply direct combat interaction, the food ration was cut: in November, Private Shefner received 300 g of bread per day according to the blockade norm. When taking into account the frosts of the first blockade winter, this led to serious exhaustion. Later, his friend Viktor Fedotov will mention this in a half-joking manner in the collection Poems from Lakhta:

“Sponsored by the command of the Muse,

Overcoming myself in my soul,

Lyric poet Shefner

He cooked a sparrow in a dugout.

The inspiration returned to the poet himself only after the hospital, in 1942, when Vadim Sergeevich was appointed an employee of the army newspaper Znamya Pobedy. Work with the word gave impetus to poetic creativity, and as a result, the second book, "Protection", was published in Leningrad in 1943, at the height of the blockade.

Mikhail Morozov reads poems by Vadim Shefner

After the end of the war, Shefner published a lot, books were published regularly. His work included both poetry and prose. Vadim Sergeevich's poetry was very diverse - from short lyrical sketches like "Mid-March" to idealistic philosophy - the poem "Words" is a vivid example of this style.

“A word can kill, a word can save,

In a word, you can lead the shelves behind you.

In a word, you can sell, and betray, and buy,

The word can be poured into smashing lead.

These lines, written in 1956, are primarily similar to the poet's manifesto, a declaration of his own attitude to the word in any of its manifestations.

Despite the militant atheism of the USSR, Shefner was not afraid to raise biblical topics in verse - this is clearly illustrated by the poem "Lilith", dedicated to the figure of the first wife.

In addition to classical prose, in the late works of Vadim Sergeevich there was a place for fantasy. Among the most successful works in this genre are the humanistic story "The Debtor's Shack" and the collection of short stories "Tales for the Smart". In 2018, the director filmed a mini-series based on The Debtor's Shack.

Personal life

The poet met his wife Ekaterina Grigorieva during the war, in 1942, and in 1946 his son Dmitry was born. The couple lived together until the woman's death in 2000.

In the late 1940s, difficult times came in the life of the poet. During the period of the struggle against cosmopolitanism, critics attacked the poet, mistaking a German surname for a Jewish one. Vadim Sergeevich was accused of decadence, decadence, a false reflection of Soviet realities. The support of friends, family and the resilience brought up by war and blockade helped to cope with the pressure.

Like many people of the Soviet era, Shefner did not have many photographs. One of the most famous, where the poet is depicted against the backdrop of bookshelves in a patterned sweater, was taken at his home. Initially, the photo was planned to be taken during an interview with the newspaper, but the photographer was late, and in the end I had to go home to Vadim Sergeevich. This is how this shot turned out: not either official, or from personal life.

For his work, Vadim Shefner was repeatedly awarded. On his account, the State Prize of the USSR. Gorky, the Pushkin Prize and two "fantastic" - "Wanderer" and "Aelita".

Death

Towards the end of his life, Vadim Sergeevich practically lost his sight and rarely left the house. Shefner died on January 5, 2002 in St. Petersburg at the age of 87, the press did not name the cause of death. The funeral service was not held - the poet insisted on this even during his lifetime.

Vadim Shefner was buried in the Leningrad region, at the Kuzmolovsky cemetery, next to his wife.

Bibliography

• 1940 - "Bright Coast"
• 1943 - "Protection"
• 1946 - "Suburb"
• 1958 - "An Unexpected Day"
• 1967 - "Poems about Leningrad"
• 1979 - Departure Party
• 1991 - Night Swallow
• 1994 - Debtor's Shack
• 1995 - "Tales for the smart"
• 1997 - "Architecture of Fire"
• 1999 - "Velvet Way"
• 2002 - "The Girl on the Cliff"