Anatoly Borisovich Mariengof (June 24, 1897, Nizhny Novgorod — April 24, 1962, Leningrad) was a Russian Imagist poet, playwright, prose writer, and memoirist. He was born and spent the first sixteen years of his life in Nizhny Novgorod, where his family occupied an apartment in the Chesnokov house on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street. He is widely known as the closest friend of Sergey Yesenin and one of the founders of literary Imagism.[2]

Nizhny Novgorod Years

Mariengof was born into the family of an office employee; his parents had been actors in their youth, performing in the provinces, and a passion for theater and literature reigned in the home from his childhood. In Nizhny Novgorod he first attended a private boarding school, and in 1908 he was transferred to the prestigious Nizhny Novgorod Nobility Institute named after Emperor Alexander II. He began writing poetry around the age of twelve; at that time he loved Blok more than other poets.[3] Mariengof later wrote warmly of his native city: "My city is dear and sweet to me just as it was when we parted: the tall-grassed banks, the soft wooden bridge across the Volga, the cobblestone descents, fringed in spring and autumn with foamy streams. A city not tall, not noisy, with cab drivers on pneumatic tires and little cheerful trams."[2]

In 1913, after the death of his mother, Mariengof's father moved to Penza with their two children (Anatoly had a younger sister, Rufina).[2] The house on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya where the family lived was long considered lost. In 2013, Dmitry Larionov, a student at Lobachevsky University, using archival documents and a letter from the poet's sister Rufina, which Yuri Izumrudov, an associate professor in the Department of Russian Literature at the university, had kept for ten years, established the exact address: the Chesnokov house at the back of a courtyard, now listed as number 10V on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya. The wooden two-story house that stood beside it was demolished in the 1980s; the surviving building had, as of 2013, neither a memorial plaque nor a monument to the poet. Larionov published an article about the discovery in Novaya Gazeta; the publication's editor, Zakhar Prilepin, supported the idea of installing a memorial, and the documents were sent to the Department of Culture.[1]

Literary Career

In 1916, Mariengof graduated from the gymnasium in Penza, enrolled in the law faculty of Moscow University, and went into military service — in the 14th Engineering and Construction Detachment of the Western Front. After the revolution he returned to Penza, founded a poetry circle, and in 1918 published his first book of poems, Vitrina serdtsa ("Display Case of the Heart"). After moving to Moscow, he met Yesenin, Vadim Shershenevich, and Rurik Ivnev; in January 1919 the four published the Imagists' "Declaration" in the Voronezh journal Sirena.[3]

In autumn 1919, Mariengof and Yesenin moved in together and for several years were almost inseparable: they traveled together to Petrograd, Kharkov, and the Caucasus, and published letters to each other in the press. In 1919–1922, seven collections of Mariengof's poetry were published by the Imazhinisty publishing house, and in 1922–1924 he was published in the journal Gostinitsa dlya puteshestvuyushchikh v prekrasnom ("Hotel for Travelers in the Beautiful"). In 1924–1925 he headed the screenplay department of Proletkino and began writing film scripts — about ten in all.[2]

In 1928, the Berlin publishing house Petropolis released the novel "The Cynics," and in 1930 "The Shaven Man"; publication abroad led to a campaign of persecution, and on November 1, 1929, Mariengof sent a letter to the board of the Moscow branch of the All-Russian Union of Soviet Writers acknowledging that publishing works abroad without permission in the USSR was inadmissible. In that same year, 1928, the family moved to Leningrad after his wife, who had transferred to the Bolshoi Drama Theater.[2]

In June 1941, Mariengof wrote a ballad-sketch every day for Leningrad Radio. He was evacuated together with the Bolshoi Drama Theater to Kirov, where he lived for about three years. In 1947 the collections "Five Ballads" and "Poems of the War" were published there — the poet's last books published in his lifetime. In 1953 he began work on an autobiographical book, "My Century, My Youth, My Friends and Girlfriends"; an abridged version titled "A Novel with Friends" was published posthumously, in 1964.[2] Mariengof died on April 24, 1962 — on his birthday — in Leningrad.[2]

Sources

  1. NNTV — 10V Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street — this address is not known to every Nizhny Novgorod resident — the Nizhny Novgorod State Regional Television and Radio Company NNTV
  2. ngounb.ru — Literary Map of Nizhny Novgorod Region
  3. esenin-lit.ru — Yesenin S.A.: Anatoly Borisovich Mariengof (1897–1962)
  4. web.archive.org — Author: Mariengof Anatoly Borisovich — new releases of 2020 — Labirint online bookstore (archive)