Poet Nikolay Mayorov: biography, creativity

They belonged to the fortieth generation and went down in history as novice poets whose talents were destroyed by a ruthless war: Mikhail Kulchitsky, Pavel Kogan, Vsevolod Bagritsky, Boris Bogatkov ... He did not live for several months until the age of 23 and Nikolai Petrovich Mayorov, the author of a famous poem on behalf of Of the whole generation - "We".

Beginning of biography

Their fathers are people born at the turn of two epochs: the stagnant tsarism and the last crucible of the First World War, the revolution and the Civil War. They believed in a better future and this faith was passed on to the children. Nikolai Mayorov, whose biography is inseparable from the history of the country, was born into a working class family in May 1919. His homeland is a small village of Durovka in Simbirsk province. There, the family was on their way to Vladimir province, father's homeland. But at the age of ten years, together with his parents and older brothers, he moved to Ivanovo, where Peter Maximovitch built a house on the 1st Aviation Street.

While studying at school No. 33, Nikolai Petrovich attended a literary circle and was known as the best school poet. In one of his manuscript notebooks are preserved illustrations of Nikolai Sheberstov, in the future became a famous artist. It was his friends who later collected the poems of the poet and rebuilt the biography pages because they believed in his undeniable talent.

School poems

According to the memoirs of friends, during school years Nikolai Mayorov was embarrassed when he was ranked among the poets. And those, on the contrary, joked about this and, entering the whole book in the bookstore, asked the seller if he was not interested in the book of poems of the famous poet Nikolai Mayorov. To understand his purpose, the young man sent his first poetic experience to Moscow, to a solid publishing house. "Fiction" gave him a rebuke, analyzing the material sent in the most detailed way. Today no one does such analysis, but then it was mandatory.

In response, he was reproached for the poverty of vocabulary and well-worn epithets. I wonder if the editor knew what the thirteen-year-old boy was responding to, not the adult person? In 1960, the first three handwritten notebooks of Mayorov will be published by the sister of Mikhail Kulchytsky, where the school's poetry is presented to the readers. This is a collection of "Uhaba", where a sad prophecy slides to itself, mini-poems and fairy tales already talking about genre diversity, and lyrics related to the poet's first love for a girl from the "Moscow street".

Education

The third notebook belongs to the Moscow period, when Nikolay Mayorov became a student of the Moscow State University. He entered in 1937 at the Faculty of History, while others studied well-known in youth circles Boris Slutsky, Mikhail Lukonin, David Samoilov, who formed the first literary circle. The student of the Eastfaka who wrote a bitterly embarrassed was soon recognized as their own and more often invited to read poems before the student audience, who loved him immediately and unconditionally.

Success inspired the author, and in 1939 parallel he began to study at the Literary Institute, visiting the poetic seminar of Pavel Antokolsky, a famous Soviet poet. Studied with him, his peer Mikhail Kulchitsky will leave memories, where he will call his friend "cob," the landmark that everyone wanted to reach. The first verses will be printed by the MSU multiparty, and remaining the only publication that published Majoror's works during his lifetime.

The Finnish War

The elder brother of Nikolai Mayorov Alexey served in aviation. And in 1938 he himself witnessed the death of pilots on the outskirts of Ivanov. They were buried with honors, laying on the grave instead of the tombstone the screw of the crashed airplane. Nicholas called it "a memory of their height", writing wonderful poems in which, along with the pathos of citizenship and the poetics of war, a note of early soldier's death appeared.

His friend in Ivanovo, Vladimir Zhukov, will get to the Karelian Isthmus, becoming a participant in the Finnish war. The second world war has already begun and showed its true meaning, carrying death and suffering. Zhukov was seriously injured, and after the hospital, friends thought about what it was like, to aim fire at the enemy, to experience fear in battle and survive the wound, permanently disabled. Even then, Nikolay Mayorov, whose verses about the premonition of an early death had seen the light, understood that he would not pass a machine-gun company in the future.

Love

The poet's muse was his classmate Irina Ptashnikova, whose passion for archeology did not allow lovers to connect their lives. After the first year they dreamed of getting married, but Irina went to an archaeological expedition to Khorezm. It was difficult to understand this creative nature, and Nikolai Mayorov will write touching poems "To You", in which he will also put Irina in second place after poetry. Irina will not forgive the youthful maximalism of her lover, and they will begin to distance themselves from each other.

Classmates understand that it is difficult to build relationships with two strong personalities who defend their independence. But they will remain friends till the last, and from the front Nikolai will write her letters, and at the evening of his memory the woman will recite a great number of his poems by heart, many of which were devoted to her.

The Great Patriotic War

From the first days of the war, the expectation of which was felt at the beginning of the fortieth, student Moscow was directed to dig anti-tank ditches near Yelnya. The whole literary circle seeks to the front, and already in September Nikolai Mayorov, whose biography will later differ little from the biography of his friends, will travel to Ivanovo for arrival at the military enlistment office. After passing formalities in October, he will be drafted into the Red Army.

Appointed as an assistant political instructor, he will be part of the machine-gun company of the rifle division No. 331, participating in battles on Smolensk land.

The death of the poet

About Rzhev-Vyazma operation in the winter of 1942 for a long time tried not to mention. The offensive tactics of the Red Army did not lead to success and the blood of thousands of soldiers and officers who nicknamed the place near Rzhev "the valley of death" drowned in the blood. In forty-degree frost during the months the infantry regiment, in which Nikolai Petrovich Mayorov served, kept the village of Barantsevo in the Smolensk region. Here on February 8, the assistant political instructor fell, whose grave could not be found for a long time.

Irina Ptashnikova unsuccessfully searched for the remains of her friend, buried, as it turned out, in a mass grave, along with seven fighting comrades. Later, participants in the battles in the notorious Karmanovskiy protrude were reburied in Karmanovo, where they created a memorial memorial.

Heritage

Nikolai Mayorov is one of the poets, whose poems were not known to the general public during his lifetime, but he became the heralds of a whole generation. His friend Vladimir Zhukov published a part of his poems in local newspapers, and in 1962 published a collection called "We", gathering together the memories of friends and colleagues. Nikolay Mayorov, whose work has not been fully studied until now, handed over his suitcases with manuscripts to one of his friends. Unfortunately, they are not found until now. Already in 2013, the early works were found in the archive (RGALI), but this is only a small part of the author's written. His poems "Sculptor" and "Family" were preserved only in fragments.

Nikolai Mayorov's poems about the war, or rather, about her presentiment on behalf of the "we-generation" are among the best works along with the works of Konstantin Simonov and Alexander Tvardovsky, Anna Akhmatova and Olga Berggolts. He became a posthumous member of the Writers' Union, which in itself is a fact unique. His name is the street in Ivanovo, and on the 70th anniversary of the Victory the Karman school also got the right to bear the name of an outstanding poet. Nikolay Mayorov, as P. Antokolsky said, will remain forever in the memory of the young man, like his lines:

"We were tall, fair-haired.
You read in books like a myth,
About the people who left, did not share,
Not having finished the last cigarettes. "