Stepan Shchipachev - almost forgotten poet

Few people today remember the name of the poet Stepan Petrovich Shchipachev. However, for the generation of Soviet citizens of the 1940s and 1950s, he was as well known as A. Tvardovsky or K. Simonov. His poems were read, learned by heart, copied into notebooks. The life and work of the almost forgotten poet will be this story.

Biography

Stepan Shchipachev was born in 1899 in the family of a poor peasant from the village of Shchipachi in the Yekaterinburg province. He was the youngest child in the family. When his father died, Stepan was barely four years old. Together with his grandmother, he went to the neighboring yards to collect alms. Becoming older, went to work: he employed a farm laborer for seasonal work, he served in the mines and in the shop of ironmongery.

In 1917, Shchipachev joined the ranks of the Red Army. In 1921 he graduated from military school, after which he briefly taught the military social science. In parallel, he became interested in literary work, served as editor of the magazine "Red Army man", wrote poetry, which from a young age had a great inclination.

In the early 1930s, Stepan Shchipachev received a literary education. And since then he was engaged exclusively in literary activity.

Way to literature

Stepan Shchipachev, whose biography was atypical for poets and writers of the early XX century, later admitted that he loved poetry as early as childhood, when he attended church parish school. He told me how one day the teacher read a poem by M. Yu. Lermontov "Borodino" at the lesson. This work so excited the soul of the child that he was impressed for several days. Then Stepan decided that he would write poetry.

In subsequent years, he worked hard on versification, honed his style, and sought his own rhymes. In 1923, Stepan Shchipachev published his debut collection of poems, which was called "On the Mounds of Ages". A small book of only 15 pages with early, still inept verses became for the author the first step on the way to great literature.

Books

Over his life, Shchipachev published more than 20 authors' collections, published a lot in newspapers and magazines.

After graduating from the institute, Stepan Shchipachev began to gravitate towards lyrical themes in his work. In this period, the books "Lyrics" and "Under the Sky of My Motherland" were written.

During the Second World War, Shchipachev again put on military uniforms. He took part in the operation to liberate the western regions of Ukraine, later was involved in the creation of front-line newspapers and leaflets. During this period his poems acquired bright patriotic intonations and at the same time intimate lyric ones. Two major collections of this time - "Front verses" (1942) and "Lines of Love" (1945).

The most fruitful for the author were the 60s. During this period he wrote a story of an autobiographical character "Birch Juice", a poem "The Heir", a collection of "Song of Moscow" and many other works.

"Lines of Love"

Stepan Shchipachev, whose poems are usually attributed to the section of civil poetry, was nevertheless a master in the field of love lyrics. His collection with a modest title "Lines of Love" appeared on sale in May 1945. 45 poems about the feeling, understandable and familiar to everyone, instantly glorified the author. His lines were recognized in love by guys and girls of the 50s, so they were simple and sincere.

The work on this collection Shpipachev Stepan Petrovich continued his whole life, as a result of which the book increased almost fourfold. In the last edition, the collection included 175 poems.

In Soviet literature, a special type of hero was cultivated, hardworking, skilful, patriotic. Thanks to the poems of Shchipachev, this hero became more alive and humane. It became clear that a Soviet citizen knows how to feel, can fall in love, rejoice and mourn, hope and seek his happiness.