Lev Kvitko. In love with life An excerpt characterizing Kvitko, Lev Moiseevich

a lion (Leib) Moiseevich Kvitko(Yiddish; October 15, 1890 - August 12, 1952) - Soviet Jewish (Yiddish) poet.

Biography

He was born in the town of Goloskov, Podolsk province (now the village of Goloskov, Khmelnitsky region of Ukraine), according to documents - November 11, 1890, but did not know the exact date of his birth and supposedly called 1893 or 1895. He was orphaned early, was raised by his grandmother, studied for some time in cheder, and was forced to work from childhood. He began writing poetry at the age of 12 (or perhaps earlier due to confusion with his date of birth). The first publication was in May 1917 in the socialist newspaper Dos Freie Wort (Free Word). The first collection is “Lidelekh” (“Songs”, Kyiv, 1917).

From mid-1921 he lived and published in Berlin, then in Hamburg, where he worked at the Soviet trade mission and published in both Soviet and Western periodicals. Here he joined the Communist Party and conducted communist agitation among the workers. In 1925, fearing arrest, he moved to the USSR. He published many books for children (17 books were published in 1928 alone).

For caustic satirical poems published in the magazine “Di Roite Welt” (“Red World”), he was accused of “right-wing deviation” and expelled from the editorial board of the magazine. In 1931 he became a worker at the Kharkov Tractor Plant. Then he continued his professional literary activity. Lev Kvitko considered the autobiographical novel in verse “Yunge Jorn” (“Young Years”) to be his life’s work, on which he worked for thirteen years (1928-1941, first publication: Kaunas, 1941, published in Russian only in 1968).

Since 1936 he lived in Moscow on the street. Maroseyka, 13, apt. 9. In 1939 he joined the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

During the war years he was a member of the presidium of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) and the editorial board of the JAC newspaper “Einikait” (“Unity”), in 1947-1948 - the literary and artistic almanac “Heimland” (“Motherland”). In the spring of 1944, on instructions from the JAC, he was sent to Crimea.

Arrested among the leading figures of the JAC on January 23, 1949. On July 18, 1952, he was accused by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR of treason, sentenced to capital punishment, and executed by firing squad on August 12, 1952. Burial place - Moscow, Donskoye Cemetery. Posthumously rehabilitated by the USSR All-Russian Military Commission on November 22, 1955.

Translations

The second part of Moses Weinberg’s Sixth Symphony was written based on the text of L. Kvitko’s poem “The Violin” (translated by M. Svetlov).

Awards

• Order of the Red Banner of Labor (01/31/1939)

Editions in Russian

• For a visit. M.-L., Detizdat, 1937
• When I grow up. M., Detizdat, 1937
• In the forest. M., Detizdat, 1937
• Letter to Voroshilov. M., 1937 Fig. V. Konashevich
• Letter to Voroshilov. M., 1937. Fig. M. Rodionova
• Poetry. M.-L., Detizdat, 1937
• Swing. M., Detizdat, 1938
• Red Army. M., Detizdat, 1938
• Horse. M., Detizdat, 1938
• Lam and Petrik. M.-L., Detizdat, 1938
• Poetry. M.-L., Detizdat, 1938
• Poetry. M., Pravda, 1938
• For a visit. M., Detizdat, 1939
• Lullaby. M., 1939. Fig. M. Gorshman
• Lullaby. M., 1939. Fig. V. Konashevich
• Letter to Voroshilov. Pyatigorsk, 1939
• Letter to Voroshilov. Voroshilovsk, 1939
• Letter to Voroshilov. M., 1939
• Mihasik. M., Detizdat, 1939
• Talk. M.-L., Detizdat, 1940
• Ahaha. M., Detizdat, 1940
• Conversations with loved ones. M., Goslitizdat, 1940
• Red Army. M.-L., Detizdat, 1941
• Hello. M., 1941
• War game. Alma-Ata, 1942
• Letter to Voroshilov. Chelyabinsk, 1942
• For a visit. M., Detgiz, 1944
• Horse. M., Detgiz, 1944
• Sledging. Chelyabinsk, 1944
• Spring. M.-L., Detgiz, 1946
• Lullaby. M., 1946
• Horse. M., Detgiz, 1947
• A story about a horse and me. L., 1948
• Horse. Stavropol, 1948
• Violin. M.-L., Detgiz, 1948
• To the sun. M., Der Emes, 1948
• To my friends. M., Detgiz, 1948
• Poetry. M., Soviet writer, 1948.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Lev Moiseevich Kvitko was born in the village of Goloskovo, Podolsk province. The family was in poverty, hunger, poverty. All the children scattered at an early age to earn money. Leo also started working at the age of 10. I learned to read and write self-taught. He began to compose poetry even before he learned to write. Later he moved to Kyiv, where he began publishing. In 1921, on a ticket from the Kyiv publishing house, I went with a group of other Yiddish writers to Germany to study. In Berlin, Kvitko had difficulty getting by, but two collections of his poems were published there. In search of work, he moved to Hamburg, where he began working as a port worker.

Returning to Ukraine, he continued to write poetry. It was translated into Ukrainian by Pavlo Tychyna, Maxim Rylsky, Vladimir Sosyura. Kvitko’s poems are known in Russian in translations by Akhmatova, Marshak, Chukovsky, Helemsky, Svetlov, Slutsky, Mikhalkov, Naydenova, Blaginina, Ushakov. These translations themselves became a phenomenon in Russian poetry. At the beginning of the war, Kvitko was not accepted into the active army due to his age. He was summoned to Kuibyshev to work in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC). It was a tragic accident, because Kvitko was far from politics. The JAC, which had collected colossal funds from wealthy American Jews to arm the Red Army, turned out to be unnecessary for Stalin after the war and was declared a reactionary Zionist body.

However, Kvitko left the JAC in 1946 and devoted himself entirely to poetic creativity. But he was reminded of his work at the JAC during his arrest. He was charged that in 1946 he established a personal relationship with the American resident Goldberg, whom he informed about the state of affairs in the Union of Soviet Writers. They were also accused that in his youth he went to study in Germany in order to leave the USSR forever, and in the port of Hamburg he sent weapons under the guise of dishes for Chai Kang Shi. Arrested on January 22, 1949. He spent 2.5 years in solitary confinement. At the trial, Kvitko was forced to admit his mistake in that he wrote poetry in the Jewish language Yiddish, and this was a brake on the assimilation of Jews. They say he used the Yiddish language, which has become obsolete and which separates Jews from the friendly family of peoples of the USSR. And in general, Yiddish is a manifestation of bourgeois nationalism. After going through interrogations and torture, he was shot on August 12, 1952.

Stalin died soon after, and after his death the first group of Soviet writers went on a trip to the United States. Among them was Boris Polevoy, the author of “The Tale of a Real Man”, the future editor of the magazine “Youth”. In America, the communist writer Howard Fast asked him: where did Lev Kvitko, with whom I became friends in Moscow and then corresponded, go? Why did he stop answering letters? Ominous rumors are spreading here. “Don't believe the rumors, Howard,” said Field. - Lev Kvitko is alive and well. I live on the same site as him in the writers’ house and saw him last week.”

Place of residence: Moscow, st. Maroseyka, 13, apt. 9.

a lion (Leib) Moiseevich Kvitko(לייב קוויטקאָ) - Jewish (Yiddish) poet.

Biography

He was born in the town of Goloskov, Podolsk province (now the village of Goloskov, Khmelnitsky region of Ukraine), according to documents - November 11, 1890, but did not know the exact date of his birth and supposedly called 1893 or 1895. He was orphaned early, was raised by his grandmother, studied for some time in cheder, and was forced to work from childhood. He began writing poetry at the age of 12 (or perhaps earlier due to confusion with his date of birth). The first publication was in May 1917 in the socialist newspaper Dos Frae Wort (Free Word). The first collection is “Lidelekh” (“Songs”, Kyiv, 1917).

From mid-1921 he lived and published in Berlin, then in Hamburg, where he worked at the Soviet trade mission and published in both Soviet and Western periodicals. Here he joined the Communist Party and conducted communist agitation among the workers. In 1925, fearing arrest, he moved to the USSR. He published many books for children (17 books were published in 1928 alone).

For caustic satirical poems published in the magazine “Di Roite Welt” (“Red World”), he was accused of “right-wing deviation” and expelled from the editorial board of the magazine. In 1931 he became a worker at the Kharkov Tractor Plant. Then he continued his professional literary activity. Lev Kvitko considered the autobiographical novel in verse “Junge Jorn” (“Young Years”) to be his life’s work, on which he worked for thirteen years (1928-1941, first publication: Kaunas, 1941, published in Russian only in 1968).

Since 1936 he lived in Moscow on the street. Maroseyka, 13, apt. 9. In 1939 he joined the CPSU (b).

During the war years he was a member of the presidium of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) and the editorial board of the JAC newspaper "Einikait" (Unity), and in 1947-1948 - the literary and artistic almanac "Heimland" ("Motherland"). In the spring of 1944, on instructions from the JAC, he was sent to Crimea.

Arrested among the leading figures of the JAC on January 23, 1949. On July 18, 1952, he was accused by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR of treason, sentenced to the highest measure of social protection, and executed by firing squad on August 12, 1952. Burial place - Moscow, Donskoye Cemetery. Posthumously rehabilitated by the USSR All-Russian Military Commission on November 22, 1955.

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NOTES ABOUT L.M. KVITKO

Having become a sage, he remained a child...

Lev Ozerov

“I was born in the village of Goloskovo, Podolsk province... My father was a bookbinder and a teacher. The family was poor, and all the children at an early age were forced to go to work. One brother became a dyer, another a loader, two sisters became dressmakers, and the third became a teacher.” So wrote the Jewish poet Lev Moiseevich Kvitko in his autobiography in October 1943.

Hunger, poverty, tuberculosis - this merciless scourge of the inhabitants of the Pale of Settlement fell to the lot of the Kvitko family. “Father and mother, sisters and brothers died early from tuberculosis... From the age of ten he began to earn money for himself... he was a dyer, painter, porter, cutter, preparer... He never studied at school... He learned to read and write self-taught.” But his difficult childhood not only did not make him angry, but also made him wiser and kinder. “There are people who emit light,” Russian writer L. Panteleev wrote about Kvitko. Everyone who knew Lev Moiseevich said that goodwill and love of life emanated from him. It seemed to everyone who met him that he would live forever. “He will certainly live to be a hundred years old,” argued K. Chukovsky. “It was even strange to imagine that he could ever get sick.”

On May 15, 1952, at the trial, exhausted by interrogations and torture, he will say about himself: “Before the revolution, I lived the life of a beaten stray dog, this life was worthless. Since the Great October Revolution, I have lived thirty years of a wonderful, inspired working life.” And then, shortly after this phrase: “The end of my life is here in front of you!”

By his own admission, Lev Kvitko began composing poetry at a time when he did not yet know how to write. What he came up with in childhood remained in his memory and later “poured out” onto paper and was included in the first collection of his poems for children, which appeared in 1917. This book was called “Lidelah” (“Songs”). How old was the young author then? “I don’t know the exact date of my birth - 1890 or 1893″...

Like many other recent inhabitants of the Pale of Settlement, Lev Kvitko greeted the October Revolution with delight. His early poems convey a certain anxiety, but true to the tradition of the revolutionary romantic poet Osher Schwartzman, he glorifies revolution. His poem “Roiter Shturm” (“Red Storm”) became the first work in Yiddish about the revolution called the Great. It so happened that the publication of his first book coincided with the revolution. “The revolution tore me out of hopelessness, like many millions of people, and put me on my feet. They began to publish me in newspapers and collections, and my first poems dedicated to the revolution were published in the then Bolshevik newspaper “Komfon” in Kyiv.”

He writes about this in his poems:

We didn't see childhood in our childhood years,

We, children of misfortune, wandered around the world.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And now we hear a priceless word:

Come, whose childhood was stolen by enemies,

Who was destitute, forgotten, robbed,

Life repays your debts with interest.

One of Kvitko's best poems, written during the same period, contains eternal Jewish sadness:

You rushed off early in the morning,

And only in chestnut foliage

Swift running trembles.

He rushed off, leaving little behind:

Only dust of smoke at the threshold,

Abandoned forever.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And the evening rushes towards us.

Where do you slow down?

On whose doors the rider will knock,

And who will give him a place to sleep?

Does he know how much they miss him -

Me, my home!

Translation by T. Spendiarova

Recalling the first post-revolutionary years, Lev Moiseevich admitted that he perceived the revolution more intuitively than consciously, but it changed a lot in his life. In 1921, he, like some other Jewish writers (A. Bergelson, D. Gofshtein, P. Markish), was invited by the Kiev publishing house to go abroad, to Germany, to study and get an education. This was Kvitko's long-time dream, and, of course, he agreed.

The Jesuits from Lubyanka, many years later, extracted a completely different confession from Kvitko on this matter: they forced him to recognize his departure to Germany as a flight from the country, since “the national question regarding the Jews was resolved incorrectly by the Soviet government. Jews were not recognized as a nation, which, in my opinion, led to the deprivation of any independence and infringed on legal rights in comparison with other nationalities.”

Life abroad turned out to be far from easy. “In Berlin I could hardly get by”... Nevertheless, there, in Berlin, two of his collections of poems were published - “Green Grass” and “1919”. The second was dedicated to the memory of those who died in pogroms in Ukraine before and after the revolution.

“At the beginning of 1923, I moved to Hamburg and began working in the port salting and sorting South American leather for the Soviet Union,” he wrote in his autobiography. “There, in Hamburg, I was entrusted with responsible Soviet work, which I carried out until my return to my homeland in 1925.”

We are talking about the propaganda work that he carried out among German workers as a member of the German Communist Party. He left there, most likely because of the threat of arrest.

L. Kvitko and I. Fisherman. Berlin, 1922

At his trial in 1952, Kvitko will tell how weapons were sent from the port of Hamburg under the guise of dishes to China for Chiang Kai-shek.

The poet joined the Communist Party, the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), for the second time in 1940. But this is a different game and a different, completely different story...

Returning to his homeland, Lev Kvitko took up literary work. In the late 20s - early 30s, his best works were created, not only poetic, but also in prose, in particular the story “Lam and Petrik”.

By that time he had already become not only a beloved poet, but also a generally recognized one. It was translated into Ukrainian by poets Pavlo Tychyna, Maxim Rylsky, Vladimir Sosyura. Over the years, it was translated into Russian by A. Akhmatova, S. Marshak, K. Chukovsky, Y. Helemsky, M. Svetlov, B. Slutsky, S. Mikhalkov, N. Naydenova, E. Blaginina, N. Ushakov. They translated it in such a way that his poems became a phenomenon of Russian poetry.

In 1936, S. Marshak wrote to K. Chukovsky about L. Kvitko: “It would be good if you, Korney Ivanovich, translated something (for example, “Anna-Vanna ...”).” It was translated some time later by S. Mikhalkov, and thanks to him this poem was included in the anthology of world children's literature.

Here it is appropriate to recall that on July 2, 1952, a few days before his sentencing, Lev Moiseevich Kvitko appealed to the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR with a request to invite to the trial as witnesses who could tell the true truth about him, K.I. Chukovsky, K.F. Piskunov, P.G. Tychin, S.V. Mikhalkova. The court rejected the petition and, of course, did not bring it to the attention of Kvitko’s friends, in whose support he believed until the last minute.

Recently, in a telephone conversation with me, Sergei Vladimirovich Mikhalkov said that he knew nothing about this. “But he could still live today,” he added. - He was a smart and good poet. With imagination, fun, and invention, he involved not only children, but also adults in his poetry. I often remember him, think about him.”

...From Germany, Lev Kvitko returned to Ukraine, and later, in 1937, moved to Moscow. They say that Ukrainian poets, especially Pavlo Grigorievich Tychyna, persuaded Kvitko not to leave. In the year of his arrival in Moscow, the poet’s poetry collection “Selected Works” was published, which was an example of socialist realism. The collection, of course, also contained wonderful lyrical children’s poems, but “a tribute to the times” (remember, the year was 1937) found a “worthy reflection” in it.

Around the same time, Kvitko wrote his famous poem “Pushkin and Heine.” An excerpt from it, translated by S. Mikhalkov, is given below:

And I see a young tribe

And a daring flight of thoughts.

My poem lives on like never before.

Blessed is this time

And you, my free people!..

Freedom cannot rot in dungeons,

Don't turn the people into slaves!

The fight is calling me home!

I'm leaving, the fate of the people is

The fate of the folk singer!

Shortly before the Patriotic War, Kvitko finished the novel in verse “Young Years”; at the beginning of the war he was evacuated to Alma-Ata. In his autobiography it is written: “I left Kukryniksy. We went to Alma-Ata with the goal of creating a new book there that would correspond to that time. Nothing worked there... I went to the mobilization point, they examined me and left me to wait..."

L. Kvitko with his wife and daughter. Berlin, 1924

One of the interesting pages of memories about L. Kvitko’s stay in Chistopol during the war was left in her diaries by Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya:

“Kvitko comes to me... I know Kvitko closer than the rest of the local Muscovites: he is a friend of my father. Korney Ivanovich was one of the first to notice and fall in love with Kvitko’s poems for children, and got them translated from Yiddish into Russian... Now he spent two or three days in Chistopol: his wife and daughter are here. He came to me on the eve of departure to ask in more detail what he would tell my father from me if they met somewhere...

She started talking about Tsvetaeva, about the disgrace being created by the literary fund. After all, she’s not an exile, but an evacuee like the rest of us, why isn’t she allowed to live where she wants…”

Today we know about the bullying and ordeals that Marina Ivanovna had to endure in Chistopol, about the humiliations that befell her, about the shameful, unforgivable indifference to Tsvetaeva’s fate on the part of the “writer’s leaders” - about everything that led Marina Ivanovna to suicide enough. None of the writers, except Lev Kvitko, dared or dared to stand up for Tsvetaeva. After Lydia Chukovskaya contacted him, he went to Nikolai Aseev. He promised to contact the rest of the “writer’s functionaries” and assured with his characteristic optimism: “Everything will be fine. Now the most important thing is that every person must specifically remember: everything ends well.” This is what this kind, sympathetic man said in the most difficult times. He consoled and helped everyone who turned to him.

Another evidence of this is the memoirs of the poetess Elena Blaginina: “The war scattered everyone in different directions... My husband, Yegor Nikolaevich, lived in Kuibyshev, suffering considerable disasters. They met occasionally, and, according to my husband, Lev Moiseevich helped him, sometimes giving him work, or even just sharing a piece of bread...”

And again to the topic “Tsvetaeva-Kvitko”.

According to Lydia Borisovna Libedinskaya, the only prominent writer who was then in Chistopol worried about the fate of Marina Tsvetaeva was Kvitko. And his efforts were not empty, although Aseev did not even come to the meeting of the commission that was considering Tsvetaeva’s request to hire her as a dishwasher in the writers’ canteen. Aseev “fell ill”, Trenev (author of the well-known play “Lyubov Yarovaya”) was categorically against it. I admit that Lev Moiseevich heard the name Tsvetaeva for the first time from Lydia Chukovskaya, but the desire to help, to protect a person, was his organic quality.

…So, “there is a people’s war going on.” Life became completely different and the poems - different, unlike those that he wrote Kvitko in peacetime, and yet - about children who became victims of fascism:

From the forests, from where in the bushes

They walk with their hungry lips closed,

Children from Uman...

The faces are a shade of yellowness.

Hands are bones and sinews.

Six-seven year olds elders,

Escaped from the grave.

Translation by L. Ozerov

Kvitko, as was said, was not accepted into the active army; he was summoned to Kuibyshev to work in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Apparently it was a tragic accident. Unlike Itzik Fefer, Peretz Markish, and Mikhoels, Kvitko was far from politics. “I, thank God, do not write plays, and God himself protected me from connection with the theater and Mikhoels,” he will say at the trial. And during interrogation, talking about the work of the JAC: “Mikhoels drank the most. In practice, the work was carried out by Epstein and Fefer, although the latter was not a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.” And then he will give a strikingly accurate definition of the essence of I. Fefer: “he is the kind of person that even if he is appointed as a courier, . . will actually become the owner... Fefer put for discussion by the presidium only those issues that were beneficial to him..."

Kvitko’s speeches at JAC meetings are well known; one of them, at the III Plenum, contains the following words: “The day of the death of fascism will be a holiday for all freedom-loving humanity.” But in this speech, the main idea is about children: “Unheard of torture and extermination of our children - these are the methods of education developed at German headquarters. Infanticide as an everyday, everyday phenomenon - such is the savage plan that the Germans carried out on the Soviet territory they temporarily captured... The Germans exterminate every single Jewish child...” Kvitko is concerned about the fate of Jewish, Russian, Ukrainian children: “Returning all children to their childhood is a huge feat being accomplished The Red Army."

L. Kvitko speaks at the III plenum of the JAC

And yet, working at the JAC and engaging in politics is not the destiny of the poet Lev Kvitko. He returned to writing. In 1946, Kvitko was elected chairman of the trade union committee of youth and children's writers. Everyone who came into contact with him at that time remembers with what desire and enthusiasm he helped writers who returned from the war and the families of writers who died in this war. He dreamed of publishing children's books, and with the money received from their publication, building a house for writers who found themselves homeless due to the war.

About Kvitko of that time, Korney Ivanovich writes: “In these post-war years, we met often. He had a talent for selfless poetic friendship. He was always surrounded by a tightly knit cohort of friends, and I proudly remember that he included me in this cohort.”

Already gray-haired, aged, but still clear-eyed and kind, Kvitko returned to his favorite themes and in new poems began to glorify spring showers and the morning chirps of birds as before.

It should be emphasized that neither a bleak, beggarly childhood, nor a youth full of anxiety and difficulties, nor the tragic years of war could destroy the delightful attitude towards life, the optimism sent down from Heaven to Kvitko. But Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky was right when he said: “Sometimes Kvitko himself realized that his childhood love for the world around him was taking him too far from the painful and cruel reality, and tried to curb his praises and odes with good-natured irony over them, to present them in in a humorous way."

If one can talk about Kvitko’s optimism, even argue, then the feeling of patriotism, that true, not feigned, not false, but high patriotism, was not only inherent in him, but to a large extent was the essence of the poet and man Kvitko. These words do not need confirmation, and yet it seems appropriate to give the full text of the poem “With My Country” written by him in 1946, a wonderful translation of which was made by Anna Andreevna Akhmatova:

Who dares to separate my people from the country,

There is no blood in that one - it was replaced with water.

Who separates my verse from the country,

He will be full and the shell will be empty.

With you, country, great people.

Everyone rejoices - both mother and children,

And without you, the people are in darkness,

Everyone is crying - both mother and children.

The people working for the happiness of the country,

Gives my poems a frame.

My verse is a weapon, my verse is a servant of the country,

And it belongs only to her by right.

Without a homeland my poem will die,

Alien to both mother and children.

With you, country, my verse endures,

And the mother reads it to the children.

The year 1947, as well as 1946, seemed to promise nothing bad for the Jews of the USSR. New performances were staged at GOSET, and although the number of spectators was decreasing, the theater existed, and a newspaper was published in Yiddish. Then, in 1947, few Jews believed (or were afraid to believe) in the possibility of the revival of the State of Israel. Others continued to fantasize that the future of the Jews lay in the creation of Jewish autonomy in Crimea, without realizing or imagining what tragedy was already swirling around this idea...

Lev Kvitko was a true poet, and it is no coincidence that his friend and translator Elena Blaginina said about him: “He lives in a magical world of magical transformations. Lev Kvitko is a poet-child.” Only such a naive person could write a few weeks before his arrest:

How not to work with these

When your palms itch, they burn.

Like a strong stream

carries away the stone

The wave of work will carry away

like a trumpeting waterfall!

blessed by labor,

How good it is to work for you!

Translation by B. Slutsky

On November 20, 1948, a Resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was issued, approving the decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, according to which the USSR MGB was instructed: “Without delay to dissolve the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, since this Committee is the center of anti-Soviet propaganda and regularly supplies anti-Soviet information to foreign intelligence agencies.” . There is an instruction in this resolution: “Do not arrest anyone yet.” But by that time there were already arrests. Among them is the poet David Gofshtein. In December of the same year, Itzik Fefer was arrested, and a few days later, the seriously ill Veniamin Zuskin was brought from the Botkin hospital to Lubyanka. This was the situation on New Year's Eve, 1949.

Valentin Dmitrievich read Chukovsky’s poems from memory, warning that he cannot vouch for the accuracy, but the essence is preserved:

How rich I would be

If only Detizdat paid the money.

I would send it to friends

A million telegrams

But now I'm completely broke -

Children's publishing only brings losses,

And it has to, dear Kvitki,

Send you congratulations in a postcard.

Whatever the mood, in January 1949, as Elena Blaginina writes in her memoirs, Kvitko’s 60th birthday was celebrated at the Central House of Writers. Why is there a 60th anniversary in 1949? Let us remember that Lev Moiseevich himself did not know the exact year of his birth. “The guests gathered in the Oak Hall of the Writers' Club. A lot of people came, the hero of the day was greeted warmly, but he seemed (not seemed, but was) preoccupied and sad,” writes Elena Blaginina. The evening was chaired by Valentin Kataev.

Few of those who were at that evening are alive today. But I was lucky - I met Semyon Grigorievich Simkin. At that time he was a student at the theater technical school at GOSET. This is what he said: “The oak hall of the Central House of Writers was overcrowded. The entire literary elite of that time - Fadeev, Marshak, Simonov, Kataev - not only honored the hero of the day with their greetings, but also spoke the warmest words about him. What I remember most was the performance of Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky. Not only did he speak about Kvitko as one of the best poets of our time, but he also read several of Kvitko’s poems in the original, that is, in Yiddish, among them “Anna-Vanna.”

L. Kvitko. Moscow, 1944

On January 22, Kvitko was arrested. “They're coming. Really?.. /This is a mistake. /But, alas, does not save from arrest/ Confidence in innocence,/ And purity of thoughts and actions/ Not an argument in an era of lawlessness./ Innocence along with wisdom/ Unconvincing neither for the investigator,/ nor for the executioner” (Lev Ozerov). If on this day, the afternoon of January 22, it was possible to finish the biography of the poet Lev Kvitko, what happiness it would be both for him and for me, writing these lines. But from this day the most tragic part of the poet’s life begins, and it lasted almost 1300 days.

In the dungeons of Lubyanka

(The chapter is almost documentary)

From the protocol of a closed court session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR.

The court secretary, senior lieutenant M. Afanasyev, said that all the accused were brought to the court hearing under escort.

The presiding officer, Lieutenant General of Justice A. Cheptsov, verifies the identity of the defendants, and each of them tells about himself.

From Kvitko’s testimony: “I, Kvitko Leib Moiseevich, born in 1890, a native of the village of Goloskovo, Odessa region, Jewish by nationality, have been a member of the party since 1941, before that I was not a member of any parties before (as is known, Kvitko was a member before that in the German Communist Party - M.G.). Profession - poet, marital status - married, have an adult daughter, educated at home. I have awards: the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and the medal “For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.” Arrested on January 25, 1949 (in most sources on January 22.- M.G.). I received a copy of the indictment on May 3, 1952.”

After the announcement of the indictment presiding officer finds out whether each of the defendants understands his guilt. The answer “I understand” was answered by everyone. Some pleaded guilty (Fefer, Teumin), others completely rejected the accusation (Lozovsky, Markish, Shimeliovich. Doctor Shimeliovich will exclaim: “I never admitted it and never admit it!”). There were those who admitted their guilt partially. Among them is Kvitko.

Presiding [presiding]: Defendant Kvitko, what do you plead guilty to?

Kvitko: I admit myself guilty before the party and before the Soviet people that I worked in the Committee, which brought a lot of evil to the Motherland. I also plead guilty to the fact that, for some time after the war, being the executive secretary or head of the Jewish section of the Union of Soviet Writers, I did not raise the question of closing this section, did not raise the question of helping to accelerate the process of assimilation of Jews.

Chairman: Do you deny the guilt that you carried out nationalist activities in the past?

Kvitko: Yes. I deny it. I don't feel this guilt. I feel that with all my soul and with all my thoughts I wished happiness to the land on which I was born, which I consider my homeland, despite all these case materials and testimonies about me... My motives must be heard, since I will confirm them with facts .

Chairman: We have already heard here that your literary activity was devoted entirely to the party.

Kvitko: If only I were given the opportunity to calmly reflect on all the facts that took place in my life and which justify me. I am sure that if there was a person here who could read thoughts and feelings well, he would tell the truth about me. All my life I considered myself a Soviet person, moreover, even if it sounds immodest, but it is true - I have always been in love with the party.

Chairman: All this is at odds with your testimony at the investigation. You consider yourself to be in love with the party, but why then are you telling lies? You consider yourself an honest writer, but your mood was far from what you say.

Kvitko: I say that the party does not need my lies, and I show only what can be confirmed by facts. During the investigation, all my testimony was distorted, and everything was shown the other way around. This also applies to my trip abroad, as if it was for a harmful purpose, and this equally applies to the fact that I infiltrated the party. Take my poems from 1920-1921. These poems are collected in a folder with the investigator. They are talking about something completely different. My works, published in 1919-1921, were published in a communist newspaper. When I told the investigator about this, he answered me: “We don’t need this.”

Chairman: In short, you deny this testimony. Why did you lie?

Kvitko: It was very difficult for me to fight with the investigator...

Chairman: Why did you sign the protocol?

Kvitko: Because it was difficult not to sign him.

Defendant B.A. Shimeliovich, the former chief physician of the Botkin Hospital, stated: “The protocol... was signed by me... with unclear consciousness. This condition of mine is the result of a methodical beating for a month, every day and night...”

It is obvious that not only Shimeliovich was tortured at Lubyanka.

But let's get back to the interrogation. Kvitko in that day:

Presiding [presiding]: So you deny your testimony?

Kvitko: I absolutely deny...

How can one not recall the words of Anna Akhmatova here? “Whoever did not live in the era of terror will never understand this”...

The presiding officer returns to the reasons for Kvitko’s “flight” abroad.

Chairman: Show the motives for fleeing.

Kvitko: I don’t know how to tell you to believe me. If a religious criminal stands before a court and considers himself wrongly convicted or wrongly guilty, he thinks: okay, they don’t believe me, I’m convicted, but at least God knows the truth. Of course, I don’t have a God, and I’ve never believed in God. I have only one god - the power of the Bolsheviks, this is my god. And before this faith I say that in my childhood and youth I did the hardest work. What kind of job? I don't want to say what I did as a 12-year-old. But the hardest job is being in front of the court. I will tell you about the escape, about the reasons, but give me the opportunity to tell you.

I have been sitting alone in a cell for two years, this is of my own free will, and I have a reason for this. I don’t have a living soul to consult with anyone, there is no more experienced person in judicial matters. I am alone, thinking and worrying with myself...

A little later, Kvitko will continue his testimony on the issue of “escape”:

I admit that you don’t believe me, but the actual state of affairs refutes the above-mentioned nationalist motive for leaving. At that time, many Jewish schools, orphanages, choirs, institutions, newspapers, publications and the entire institution were created in the Soviet Union.” Kultur-League” was abundantly supplied materially by the Soviet government. New centers of culture were established. Why did I need to leave? And I didn’t go to Poland, where intense Jewish nationalism was then flourishing, and not to America, where many Jews live, but I went to Germany, where there were no Jewish schools, no newspapers, and nothing else. So this motive is devoid of any meaning... If I were running away from my native Soviet land, could I then write “In a Foreign Land” - poems that curse the stormy stagnation of life, poems of deep longing for my homeland, for its stars and for its deeds? If I were not a Soviet person, would I have had the strength to fight sabotage at work in the port of Hamburg, to be mocked and scolded by “honest uncles” who masked themselves with complacency and morality, covering up predators? If I were not dedicated to the Party's cause, could I voluntarily take on a secret workload involving danger and persecution? No reward, after a hard time underpaid every day of work I carried out tasks needed by the Soviet people. This is only part of the facts, part of the material evidence of my activities from the first years of the revolution until 1925, i.e. until I returned to the USSR.

The presiding officer repeatedly returned to the question anti-assimilation activities of the JAC. (“Blood is accused” - Alexander Mikhailovich Borshchagovsky will title his outstanding book about this process and, perhaps, will give the most accurate definition of everything that happened at this trial.) Regarding assimilation and anti-assimilation Kvitko testifies:

What am I blaming myself for? What do I feel guilty about? The first is that I did not see and did not understand that the Committee, through its activities, was causing great harm to the Soviet state, and that I also worked in this Committee. The second thing I consider myself guilty of is hanging over me, and I feel like it's my accusation. Considering Soviet Jewish literature ideologically healthy, Soviet, we, Jewish writers, including myself (maybe I am more to blame for them), at the same time did not raise the question of promoting the process of assimilation. I'm talking about the assimilation of the Jewish masses. By continuing to write in Hebrew, we unwittingly became a brake on the process of assimilation of the Jewish population. In recent years, the Hebrew language has ceased to serve the masses, since they - the masses - abandoned this language, and it became a hindrance. As the head of the Jewish section of the Union of Soviet Writers, I did not raise the question of closing the section. It's my fault. To use a language that the masses have abandoned, which has outlived its time, which separates us not only from the entire great life of the Soviet Union, but also from the bulk of Jews who have already assimilated, to use such a language, in my opinion, is a kind of manifestation of nationalism.

Otherwise I don't feel guilty.

Chairman: That's it?

Kvitko: Everything.

From the indictment:

Defendant Kvitko, returning to the USSR in 1925 after fleeing abroad, joined the mountains. Kharkov to the nationalist Jewish literary group “Boy”, led by Trotskyists.

Being the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Committee at the beginning of the organization of the JAC, he entered into a criminal conspiracy with nationalists Mikhoels, Epstein and Fefer, assisting them in collecting materials about the economy of the USSR for sending them to the USA.

In 1944, following the criminal instructions of the JAC leadership, he traveled to Crimea to collect information about the economic situation of the region and the situation of the Jewish population. He was one of the initiators of raising the issue with government agencies about alleged discrimination against the Jewish population in Crimea.

He repeatedly spoke at meetings of the JAC Presidium demanding the expansion of the Committee’s nationalist activities.

In 1946, he established a personal connection with the American intelligence officer Goldberg, whom he informed about the state of affairs in the Union of Soviet Writers, and gave him consent to publish a Soviet-American literary yearbook.

From Kvitko's last words:

Citizen Chairman, citizens judges!

For decades, I performed in front of the most joyful audience with pioneer ties and sang the happiness of being a Soviet person. I end my life by speaking before the Supreme Court of the Soviet people. Accused of the most serious crimes.

This fictitious accusation has fallen upon me and is causing me terrible torment.

Why is every word I say here in court saturated with tears?

Because the terrible accusation of treason is unbearable for me, a Soviet person. I declare to the court that I am not guilty of anything - neither espionage nor nationalism.

While my mind is not yet completely darkened, I believe that in order to be charged with treason, one must commit some kind of act of treason.

I ask the court to take into account that the charges contain no documentary evidence of my allegedly hostile activities against the CPSU(b) and the Soviet government and no evidence of my criminal connection with Mikhoels and Fefer. I have not betrayed my Motherland and I do not admit any of the 5 charges brought against me...

It is easier for me to be in prison on Soviet soil than to be “free” in any capitalist country.

I am a citizen of the Soviet Union, my homeland is the homeland of the geniuses of the party and humanity, Lenin and Stalin, and I believe that I cannot be accused of serious crimes without evidence.

I hope that my arguments will be accepted by the court as they should be.

I ask the court to return me to the honest work of the great Soviet people.

The verdict is known. Kvitko, like the rest of the defendants, except academician Lina Stern, was sentenced to capital punishment. The court decides to deprive Kvitko of all government awards he previously received. The sentence is carried out, but for some reason in violation of the traditions existing in Lubyanka: it was pronounced on July 18, and carried out on August 12. This is another of the unsolved mysteries of this monstrous farce.

I cannot and do not want to end this article about the poet Kvitko with these words. I will take the reader back to the best days and years of his life.

L. Kvitko. Moscow, 1948

Chukovsky-Kvitko-Marshak

It is unlikely that anyone will dispute the idea that the Jewish poet Lev Kvitko would have received recognition not only in the Soviet Union (his poems have been translated into Russian and 34 other languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR), but throughout the world, if he had not had brilliant translators of his poems . Kvitko was “discovered” for Russian readers by Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky.

There is a lot of evidence of how highly Chukovsky valued Kvitko’s poetry. In his book “Contemporaries (portraits and sketches)” Korney Ivanovich, along with portraits of such outstanding writers as Gorky, Kuprin, Leonid Andreev, Mayakovsky, Blok, placed a portrait of Lev Kvitko: “In general, in those distant years when I met him, he simply did not know how to be unhappy: the world around him was unusually cozy and blissful... This fascination with the world around him made him a children's writer: in the name of a child, under the guise of a child, through the mouths of five-, six-, seven-year-old children, it was easiest for him to pour out his his own overflowing love of life, his own simple-hearted belief that life was created for endless joy... Another writer, when writing poetry for children, tries to restore his long-forgotten childhood feelings with a fading memory. Lev Kvitko did not need such a restoration: there was no barrier of time between him and his childhood. On a whim, at any moment he could turn into a little boy, overwhelmed with boyish reckless excitement and happiness...”

Chukovsky's ascent to the Hebrew language was curious. It took place thanks to Kvitko. Having received the poet’s poems in Yiddish, Korney Ivanovich was unable to overcome the desire to read them in the original. Deductively, spelling out the name of the author and the captions under the pictures, he soon “started reading the titles of individual poems, and then the poems themselves”... Chukovsky informed the author about this. “When I sent you my book,” Kvitko wrote in response, “I had a double feeling: the desire to be read and understood by you and the annoyance that the book would remain closed and inaccessible to you. And suddenly you, in such a miraculous way, overturned my expectations and turned my annoyance into joy.”

Korey Ivanovich, of course, understood that to introduce Kvitko into great literature is possible only by organizing a good translation of his poems into Russian. A recognized master among translators in that pre-war period was S.Ya. Marshak. Chukovsky turned to Samuil Yakovlevich with Kvitko’s poems not only as a good translator, but also as a person who knew Yiddish. “I did everything I could so that through my translations the reader who does not know the original would recognize and love Kvitko’s poems,” Marshak wrote to Chukovsky on August 28, 1936.

Lev Kvitko, of course, knew the “price” of Marshak’s translations. “I hope to see you soon in Kyiv. You should definitely come. You will make us happy, you will help us a lot in the fight for quality, for the flourishing of children's literature. We love you,” L. Kvitko wrote to Marshak on January 4, 1937.

Kvitko’s poem “Letter to Voroshilov,” translated by Marshak, became super popular.

In three years (1936-1939), the poem was translated from Russian into more than 15 languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR, and was published in dozens of publications. “Dear Samuil Yakovlevich! With your light hand, “Letter to Voroshilov” in your masterful translation went around the whole country...”, wrote Lev Kvitko on June 30, 1937.

The history of this translation is as follows.

In his diary, Korney Ivanovich wrote on January 11, 1936 that Kvitko and the poet-translator M.A. were with him that day. Froman. Chukovsky thought that no one would translate “Letter to Voroshilov” better than Froman. But something else happened. On February 14, 1936, Marshak called Chukovsky. Korney Ivanovich reports about this: “It turns out that it was not without reason that he stole two Kvitko books from me in Moscow - for half an hour. He took these books to Crimea and translated them there - including “Comrade. Voroshilov”, although I asked him not to do this, because Froman has been working on this work for a month now - and for Froman to translate this poem is life and death, but for Marshak it is just a laurel out of a thousand. My hands are still shaking from excitement.”

At that time, Lev Moiseevich and Samuil Yakovlevich were connected mainly by creative friendship. They, of course, met at meetings on children's literature and at children's book festivals. But the main thing that Marshak did was that with his translations he introduced the Russian reader to Kvitko’s poetry.

Kvitko dreamed of collaborating with Marshak not only in the field of poetry. Even before the war, he approached him with a proposal: “Dear Samuil Yakovlevich, I am collecting a collection of Jewish folk tales; I already have quite a few. If you haven't changed your mind, we can start work in the fall. Waiting for your reply". I did not find an answer to this letter in Marshak’s archives. It is only known that Kvitko’s plan remained unfulfilled.

Letters from Samuil Yakovlevich to L.M. Kvitko, filled with respect and love for the Jewish poet, have been preserved.

Marshak translated only six poems by Kvitko. Their true friendship, human and creative, began to take shape in the post-war period. Kvitko ended his congratulations on Marshak’s 60th birthday with owls: “I wish you (Emphasis added.- M.G.) many years of health, creative strength for the joy of all of us.” Marshak allowed very few people to address him on a first-name basis.

And also about Marshak’s attitude to the memory of Kvitko: “Of course, I will do everything in my power to ensure that the publishing house and press pay tribute to such a wonderful poet as the unforgettable Lev Moiseevich... Kvitko’s poems will live on for a long time and delight true connoisseurs of poetry... I hope that I will be able to... ensure that Lev Kvitko’s books occupy a worthy place...” This is from a letter from Samuil Yakovlevich to the poet’s widow Bertha Solomonovna.

In October 1960, an evening in memory of L. Kvitko took place at the House of Writers. Marshak was not present at the evening due to health reasons. Before that, he sent a letter to Kvitko’s widow: “I really want to be at an evening dedicated to the memory of my dear friend and beloved poet... And when I get better (I’m very weak now), I will certainly write at least a few pages about the great man who was a poet and in poetry and in life." Marshak, alas, did not have time to do this...

There is nothing accidental in the fact that Chukovsky “gifted” Kvitko to Marshak. One can, of course, believe that sooner or later Marshak himself would have paid attention to Kvitko’s poems and probably would have translated them. The success of the “Marshak-Kvitko” duet was also determined by the fact that both of them were in love with children; This is probably why Marshak’s translations from Kvitko were so successful. However, it is unfair to talk only about the “duet”: Chukovsky managed to create a trio of children’s poets.

L. Kvitko and S. Marshak. Moscow, 1938

“Somehow in the thirties,” K. Chukovsky wrote in his memoirs about Kvitko, “walking with him along the distant outskirts of Kiev, we unexpectedly fell into the rain and saw a wide puddle, to which boys were running from everywhere, as if it was not a puddle, and a treat. They splashed their bare feet in the puddle so eagerly, as if they were deliberately trying to get themselves dirty right up to their ears.

Kvitko looked at them with envy.

Every child, he said, believes that the puddles are created especially for his pleasure.

And I thought that, in essence, he was talking about himself.”

Then, apparently, the poems were born:

How much mud there is in spring,

Deep, good puddles!

How fun it is to spank here

In shoes and galoshes!

Every morning it gets closer

Spring is approaching us.

Every day it gets stronger

The sun sparkles in the puddles.

I threw the stick into the puddle -

In the water window;

Like golden glass

Suddenly the sun split!

The great Jewish literature in Yiddish, which originated in Russia, literature dating back to Mendele-Moikher Sforim, Sholom Aleichem and culminating in the names of David Bergelson, Peretz Markish, Lev Kvitko, died on August 12, 1952.

Prophetic words were spoken by the Jewish poet Nachman Bialik: “Language is a crystallized spirit”... Literature in Yiddish perished, but did not sink into the abyss - its echo, its eternal echo will live as long as Jews are alive on earth.

POETRY WITHOUT COMMENTS

In conclusion, we will give the floor to L. Kvitko’s poetry itself, presenting the poet’s work in its “pure form,” without commentary.

In the translations of the best Russian poets, it has become an integral part of Russian poetry. The wonderful writer Reuben Fraerman accurately said about the Jewish poet: “Kvitko was one of our best poets, the pride and adornment of Soviet literature.”

It is obvious that Kvitko was extremely lucky with his translators. The selection offered to the attention of readers includes poems by the poet translated by S. Marshak, M. Svetlov, S. Mikhalkov and N. Naydenova. The first two poets knew Yiddish, but Sergei Mikhalkov and Nina Naydenova created a miracle: without knowing the poet’s native language, they were able to convey not only the content of his poems, but also the author’s intonations.

So, poetry.

HORSE

Didn't hear at night

Behind the door of the wheels,

Didn't know that dad

Brought a horse

Black horse

Under the red saddle.

Four horseshoes

Shiny silver.

Silently through the rooms

Dad passed

Black horse

I put it on the table.

Burning on the table

Lonely fire

And looks at the crib

Saddled horse.

But behind the windows

It has become brighter

And the boy woke up

In his crib.

Woke up, got up,

Leaning on your palm,

And he sees: it’s worth

A wonderful horse.

Elegant and new,

Under the red saddle.

Four horseshoes

Shiny silver.

When and where

Did he come here?

And how did you manage

Climb onto the table?

Tiptoe boy

Comes to the table

And now there's a horse

Standing on the floor.

He strokes her mane

And back and chest,

And sits on the floor -

Look at the legs.

Takes by the bridle -

And the horse runs.

Lays her on her side -

The horse is lying down.

Looking at the horse

And he thinks:

“I must have fallen asleep

And I have a dream.

Where is the horse from?

Did you come to me?

Probably a horse

I see in a dream...

I'll go and mom

I'll wake mine up.

And if he wakes up,

I’ll show you the horse.”

He fits

Pushes the bed

But mom is tired -

She wants to sleep.

“I’ll go to my neighbor’s

Peter Kuzmich,

I'll go to my neighbor's

And I’ll knock on the door!”

Open the doors for me

Let me in!

I'll show you

Black horse!

The neighbor answers:

I saw him,

I've seen it a long time ago

Your horse.

You must have seen

Another horse.

You weren't with us

Since yesterday!

The neighbor answers:

I saw him:

Four legs

By your horse.

But you didn't see

Neighbor, his legs,

But you didn't see

And I couldn’t see!

The neighbor answers:

I saw him:

Two eyes and a tail

By your horse.

But you didn't see

No eyes, no tail -

He's standing outside the door

And the door is locked!..

Yawns lazily

Neighbor behind the door -

And not another word

Not a sound in response.

BUG

Rain over the city

All night long.

There are rivers in the streets,

Ponds are at the gate.

The trees are shaking

Under frequent rain.

The dogs got wet

And they ask to come into the house.

But through the puddles,

Spinning like a top

Clumsy crawls

Horned bug.

Here he falls backwards,

Trying to get up.

Kicked my legs

And he stood up again.

To a dry place

Hastens to crawl

But again and again

Water is on the way.

He is swimming in a puddle,

Not knowing where.

Carries him, spins him around

And the water is rushing.

Heavy drops

They hit the shell,

And they whip and they knock down,

And they don’t let you swim.

It's about to choke -

Gul-gul! - and the end...

But he plays boldly

With death swimmer!

Would be lost forever

Horned bug,

But then it turned up

Oak knot.

From a distant grove

He sailed here -

I brought it

Rainwater.

And having done it on the spot

Sharp turn

To the bug for help

He's walking fast.

Hastens to grab hold

Swimmer for him

Now he's not afraid

Nothing bug.

He floats in oak

Your shuttle

Along the stormy, deep,

Wide river.

But they're getting closer

House and fence.

Bug through the crack

I made my way into the yard.

And she lived in the house

Small family.

This family is dad

Both mom and me.

I caught a bug

Put it in a box

And listened to how it rubs

A bug on the walls.

But the rain stopped

The clouds have gone.

And into the garden on the path

I took the beetle.

Kvitko translated by Mikhail Svetlov.

VIOLIN

I broke the box

Plywood chest.

Quite similar

violin

Barrel boxes.

I attached it to a branch

Four hairs -

No one has ever seen

A similar bow.

Glued, adjusted,

Worked day after day...

This is how the violin came out -

There is nothing like it in the world!

Obedient in my hands,

Plays and sings...

And the chicken thought

And he doesn’t bite the grains.

Play, play

violin!

Tri-la, tri-la, tri-li!

Music sounds in the garden,

Lost in the distance.

And the sparrows are chirping,

They shout vying with each other:

What a pleasure

From such music!

The kitten raised its head

The horses are racing.

Where is he from? Where is he from,

Unseen violinist?

Tri-la! She fell silent

violin...

Fourteen chickens

Horses and sparrows

They thank me.

Didn't break, didn't get dirty,

I carry it carefully

A little violin

I'll hide it in the forest.

On a high tree,

Among the branches

The music is quietly dormant

In my violin.

WHEN I GROW UP

Those horses are crazy

With wet eyes,

With necks like arcs,

With strong teeth

Those horses are light

What stand obediently

At your feeder

In a bright stable,

Those horses are sensitive

How alarming:

As soon as a fly lands -

The skin trembles.

Those horses are fast

With light feet,

Just open the door -

They gallop in herds,

They jump and run away

Unbridled agility...

Those light horses

I can't forget!

Quiet horses

They chewed their oats,

But, seeing the groom,

They laughed joyfully.

Grooms, grooms,

With a stiff mustache

In cotton jackets,

With warm hands!

Grooms, grooms

With a stern expression

Give oats to friends

Four-legged.

The horses are trampling,

Cheerful and well-fed...

Not at all for the grooms

Hooves are not scary.

They walk - they are not afraid,

Everything is not dangerous for them...

These same grooms

I love it terribly!

And when I grow up, -

In long trousers, important

I'll come to the grooms

And I will say boldly:

We have five children

Everyone wants to work:

There is a poet brother,

I have a sister who is a pilot,

There is one weaver

There is one student...

I am the youngest -

I will be a racing rider!

Well, funny guy!

Where? From afar?

And what muscles!

And what shoulders!

Are you from the Komsomol?

Are you from the pioneers?

Choose your horse

Join the cavalry!

Here I am rushing like the wind...

Past - pine trees, maples...

Who is that coming towards you?

Marshal Budyonny!

If I'm an excellent student,

This is what I will tell him:

“Tell me to the cavalry

Can I be enrolled?”

Marshall smiles

Speaks with confidence:

“When you grow up a little -

Let’s enlist in the cavalry!”

“Ah, Comrade Marshal!

How long should I wait?

time!..” -

“Are you shooting? you kick

Can you reach the stirrup?”

I'm jumping back home -

The wind won't stop!

I'm learning, growing big,

I want to be with Budyonny:

I will be a Budenovite!

Kvitko translated by Sergei Mikhalkov.

FUNNY BEETLE

He is cheerful and happy

From the toes to the top -

He succeeded

Run away from the frog.

She didn't have time

Grab the sides

And eat under a bush

Golden beetle.

He runs through the thicket,

twirls his mustache,

He's running now

And meets acquaintances

And the little caterpillars

Does not notice.

green stems,

Like pine trees in the forest,

On his wings

They sprinkle dew.

He would like a bigger one

Catch it for lunch!

From little caterpillars

There is no satiety.

He's little caterpillars

He won’t touch you with his paw,

He is honor and solidity

He won't drop his own.

Him after all

Sorrows and troubles

Most of all prey

Needed for lunch.

And finally

He meets one

And he runs up to her,

Rejoicing with happiness.

Fatter and better

He can't find it.

But this is scary

Come alone.

He's spinning

Blocking her way,

Beetles passing

Calling for help.

Fight for loot

It wasn't easy:

She was divided

Four beetles.

TALK

Oak said:

I'm old, I'm wise

I'm strong, I'm beautiful!

Oak of oaks -

I'm full of fresh energy.

But I'm still jealous

the horse who

Rushing along the highway

trot spore.

The horse said:

I'm fast, I'm young

clever and hot!

Horse of horses -

I love to gallop.

But I'm still jealous

flying bird -

Orlu or even

little tit.

Eagle said:

My world is high

the winds are under my control,

My nest

on a terrible slope.

But what compares

with the power of a man,

Free and

wise from the ages!

Kvitko translated by Nina Naydenova.

LEMELE IS THE BOSS

Mom is leaving

Hurries to the store.

Lemele, you

You are left alone.

Mom said:

Serve me:

my plates,

Put your sister to bed.

Chop firewood

Don't forget, my son,

Catch the rooster

And lock it up.

Sister, plates,

Rooster and firewood...

Lemele only

One head!

He grabbed his sister

And locked him in a barn.

He said to his sister:

Play here!

Firewood he diligently

Washed with boiling water

Four plates

Broke it with a hammer.

But it took a long time

Fight with a rooster -

He didn't want to

Go to bed.

CAPABLE BOY

Lemele once

I ran home.

“Oh,” said mom, “What’s wrong with you?”

You're bleeding

Scratched forehead!

You with your fights

You'll drive mom into a coffin!

Lemele answers,

Tugging at your hat:

This is me by accident

I bit myself.

What a capable boy!

The mother was surprised. -

How are you teeth

Did you manage to get the forehead?

Well, as you can see, I got it,” Lemele replied. -

For such a case

Get on the stool!

a lion (Leib) Moiseevich Kvitko(Yiddish ‏לייב קוויטקאָ‎ ‏‎; October 15 - August 12) - Soviet Jewish (Yiddish) poet.

Biography

He was born in the town of Goloskov, Podolsk province (now the village of Goloskov, Khmelnitsky region of Ukraine), according to documents - November 11, 1890, but did not know the exact date of his birth and supposedly called 1893 or 1895. He was orphaned early, was raised by his grandmother, studied for some time in a cheder, and was forced to work from childhood. He began writing poetry at the age of 12 (or perhaps earlier due to confusion with his date of birth). The first publication was in May 1917 in the socialist newspaper Dos Freie Wort (Free Word). The first collection is “Lidelekh” (“Songs”, Kyiv, 1917).

From mid-1921 he lived and published in Berlin, then in Hamburg, where he worked at the Soviet trade mission and published in both Soviet and Western periodicals. Here he joined the Communist Party and conducted communist agitation among the workers. In 1925, fearing arrest, he moved to the USSR. He published many books for children (17 books were published in 1928 alone).

Translations

Lev Kvitko is the author of a number of translations into Yiddish from Ukrainian, Belarusian and other languages. Kvitko’s own poems were translated into Russian by A. Akhmatova, S. Marshak, S. Mikhalkov, E. Blaginina, M. Svetlov and others.

The second part of Moses Weinberg’s Sixth Symphony was written based on the text of L. Kvitko’s poem “The Violin” (translated by M. Svetlov).

Editions in Russian

• For a visit. M.-L., Detizdat, 1937
• When I grow up. M., Detizdat, 1937
• In the forest. M., Detizdat, 1937
• Letter to Voroshilov. M., 1937 Fig. V. Konashevich
• Letter to Voroshilov. M., 1937. Fig. M. Rodionova
• Poetry. M.-L., Detizdat, 1937
• Swing. M., Detizdat, 1938
• Red Army. M., Detizdat, 1938
• Horse. M., Detizdat, 1938
• Lam and Petrik. M.-L., Detizdat, 1938
• Poetry. M.-L., Detizdat, 1938
• Poetry. M., Pravda, 1938
• For a visit. M., Detizdat, 1939
• Lullaby. M., 1939. Fig. M. Gorshman
• Lullaby. M., 1939. Fig. V. Konashevich
• Letter to Voroshilov. Pyatigorsk, 1939
• Letter to Voroshilov. Voroshilovsk, 1939
• Letter to Voroshilov. M., 1939
• Mihasik. M., Detizdat, 1939
• Talk. M.-L., Detizdat, 1940
• Ahaha. M., Detizdat, 1940
• Conversations with loved ones. M., Goslitizdat, 1940
• Red Army. M.-L., Detizdat, 1941
• Hello. M., 1941
• War game. Alma-Ata, 1942
• Letter to Voroshilov. Chelyabinsk, 1942
• For a visit. M., Detgiz, 1944
• Horse. M., Detgiz, 1944
• Sledging. Chelyabinsk, 1944
• Spring. M.-L., Detgiz, 1946
• Lullaby. M., 1946
• Horse. M., Detgiz, 1947
• A story about a horse and me. L., 1948
• Horse. Stavropol, 1948
• Violin. M.-L., Detgiz, 1948
• To the sun. M., Der Emes, 1948
• To my friends. M., Detgiz, 1948
• Poetry. M., Soviet writer, 1948.

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An excerpt characterizing Kvitko, Lev Moiseevich

One evening, when the old countess, sighing and groaning, in a nightcap and blouse, without false curls, and with one poor tuft of hair protruding from under a white calico cap, was making prostrations for evening prayer on the rug, her door creaked, and Natasha ran in, shoes on her bare feet, also in a blouse and curlers. The Countess looked around and frowned. She finished reading her last prayer: “Will this coffin be my bed?” Her prayerful mood was destroyed. Natasha, red and animated, seeing her mother at prayer, suddenly stopped in her run, sat down and involuntarily stuck out her tongue, threatening herself. Noticing that her mother continued her prayer, she ran on tiptoe to the bed, quickly sliding one small foot over the other, kicked off her shoes and jumped onto the bed for which the countess was afraid that it might not be her coffin. This bed was tall, made of feather beds, with five ever-decreasing pillows. Natasha jumped up, sank into the feather bed, rolled over to the wall and began fiddling around under the blanket, laying down, bending her knees to her chin, kicking her legs and laughing barely audibly, now covering her head, now looking at her mother. The Countess finished her prayer and approached the bed with a stern face; but, seeing that Natasha had her head covered, she smiled her kind, weak smile.
“Well, well, well,” said the mother.
- Mom, we can talk, right? - Natasha said. - Well, once in a while, well, it will happen again. “And she grabbed her mother’s neck and kissed her under the chin. In her treatment of her mother, Natasha showed an outward rudeness of manner, but she was so sensitive and dexterous that no matter how she clasped her mother in her arms, she always knew how to do it in such a way that her mother would not feel pain, discomfort, or embarrassment.