Semyon Lipkin

Semyon Izrailovich Lipkin
Lipkin and his widow, the poet, Inna Lisnianskaya.
Born	(1911-09-06)September 6, 1911 Odessa, Russian Empire
Died	March 31, 2003(2003-03-31) (aged 91) Peredelkina, USSR
Occupation	poet, translator, soldier
Nationality	Russian
Period	1911-2003
Subject	World War II, History, Philosophy, Peoples Diverse Destinies, Jewish Heritage, The Bible
Notable works	Life and Fate

Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin , (6th September (19th New Style) 1911 – 31 March 2003) has come to be seen by Russians as one of their literary treasures. Until his seventh decade, he was renowned as a literary translator, often working from the regional languages Stalin tried to obliterate. It was Lipkin, also, who hid a typescript of his friend Vasily Grossman's magnum opus from the KGB and initiated the process that brought it to the West. As Martin Amis remarks, ‘If it were for nothing else than the part he played in bringing 'Life and Fate' to publication Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin would deserve to be remembered." He was born in Odessa to Israel and Rosalia Lipkin. His father had a tailoring business.

Lipkin's importance as a poet in his own right was recognised once his work could be obtained by the general reading public after the collapse of the Soviet Union, though he was sustained throughout by the support of close friends such as Anna Akhmatova, who acknowledged his genius and always championed his poetry. Lipkin’s verse is concerned with history and philosophical exploration, and above all it shows a keen sense of peoples' diverse destinies. His poems are rich with references to his Jewish heritage and to the Bible. They draw on a first-hand awareness of the tragedies of World War II.

Education

Lipkin's early education was disrupted by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and by the 1918-20 Civil War. While the Volga basin suffered famine from 1921-1922, Stalin enforced collectivisation, closed Kalmyk Buddhists monasteries and burned religious texts. Lipkin spent a lot of time reading and educating himself at home. Then he left Odessa to study engineering and economics and graduated from the Moscow Economics Engineering Institute in 1937. While studying there he had begun to teach himself Farsi followed by the other languages of the oriental regions which were dissapearing as a result of Russification, including Dagestani, Kalmyk, Kirgiz, Tatar, Tadjik, Uzbek, Karbardin, Yiddish and Moldavian, together with their histories and cultures.

Military Career

All that is known about Lipkin's military career is that he was in the Red Army from 1941-1945 and fought at Stalingrad.

Literary Career

Lipkin published his first poem when he was aged 15 and Eduard Bagritskii recognised its merit. He was to wait until he entered his sixth decade until the regime enabled him to publish his own work. Again but despite that Anna Akhmatova and Joseph Brodsky, the nobel laureate amongst others in his immediate circle recognised the greatness of his poems. His generous oeuvre of translation won many accolades. Works  

Works

Poetry

• Ochevidets [Eyewitness: poems of various years]. Elista: Kalmyk Book Publishers, 1967; 2nd Edition, 1974
• Vechnyi Den’ [Eternal Day]. Moscow: Sovetskii Pisatel, 1975
• Volia [Free Will]; selected by Joseph Brodsky. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1981; Moscow: O.G.I., 2003.
• Kochevoi Ogon’ [A Nomadic Flame]. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1984
• Kartiny i golosa [Pictures and Voices]. London: Overseas Publications Interchange, 1986
• Lira. Stikhi Raznyh Let [Lyre. Verses of Various Years]. Moscow: Pravda, 1989
• Lunnyi Svet. Stikhotvoreniya i Poemy [Moonlight. Verses and Poems]. Moscow: Sovremennik, 1991
• Pis’mena. Stikhotvoreniya i Poemy [Letters. Verses and Poems]. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1991
• Pered Zakhodom Solntsa. Stikhi i Perevody [Before the Sunset. Verses and Translations] Paris-Moscow-New York: Tretya Volna, 1995
• Posokh [Shepherd’s Crook]. Moscow: CheRo, 1997
• Sobranie sochinenia v 4-kh tomakh [Collected works in 4 volumes]. Moscow: Vagrius, 1998
• Sem’ desiatiletii [Seven Decades]. Moscow: Vozvrashchenie, 2000
• Vmeste. Stikhi [Together, Verses. (Together with Inna Lisnyanskaya)]. Moscow: Grail, Russkiy put’, 2000
• Ochevidets [Eyewitness: selected poems]; compiled by Inna Lisnianskaya. Moscow: Vremia, 2008

Prose

• The Stalingrad Ship, stories 1943
• Decade, 1983
• Ten-Day Period, 1983
• Stalingrad of Vasily Grossman. 1984
• Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman. Farewell (With Anna Berzer), 1990
• The Flaming Coal. Sketches and Discourses, 1991
• The Characters, 1991
• The Notes of a Lodger, 1992
• The Second Road, 1995
• Blazing Fire, 1995
• Quadriga, 1997

Translations by Semyon Lipkin

Abkhaz

• Bagrat Shikuba, Moi zemlyaki [My Compatriots, a poem]; transl. from Abkhaz by S. Lipkin and Ya. Kozlovsky. Moscow, 1967.

Akkadian

• Gilgamesh; verse adaptation by Semyon Lipkin; afterword by Vyacheslav V. Ivanov.
• St. Petersburg: Pushkin Fund, 2001.

Buryat

• Geser [Geser, Buryat Heroic Epos]; Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1968
• Derzhava rannikh zhavoronkov. Povest po motivam buryatskogo eposa [The State of Early Skylarks. A novella on the Motives of Buryat Epos]; a children’s version by S. Lipkin. Moscow: Detgiz, 1968.

Dagestani

• Dagestanskie liriki [Dagestani Lyric Poets]; translations by S.I. Lipkin and others. Leningrad: Sovetsky pisatelʹ, 1961.

Kabardian

• Shogentsukov, Ali. Poemy [Poems]; translated from Kabardian by Semyon Lipkin. Moscow: Sovetskii Pisatel’, 1949.
• Narty [Narts, Kabardian Epos]; translated by Semyon Lipkin. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1951.
• Kabardinskaia epicheskaya poezia [Kabardian Epic Poetry]; selected translations. Nal’chik, 1956.
• Debet Zlatolikii i ego druzia: Balkaro-Karachaev nartskii epos [Debet Goldenface and his friends: Karachai-Balkar Nart epic]; translated by S. Lipkin. Nal’chik: Elbrus, 1973.

Kalmyk

• Prikliyucheniya bogatyrya Samshura, prozvannogo Lotosom [Adventures of Hero Shamshur, Nicknamed Lotus], a children’s adaptation of the Kalmyk epic story by Semyon Lipkin. Moscow: Detgiz, 1958.
• Dzhangar: Kalmytski narodny epos [Djangar: Kalmyk national epic]; translated by Semyon Lipkin. Elista: Kalmyk Book Publishers, 1971, repr. 1977.
• Dzhangar: Kalmytski narodny epos; novye pesni [Djangar: Kalmyk national epic; new songs]; poetic translations realised by V.N. Eremenko, S.I. Lipkin, Yu. M. Neiman. Elista: Kalmyk Book Publishers, 1990.

Kirghiz

• Kirgizskii narodnyi epos “Manas” [Kirghiz Folk Epos Manas], transl. Semyon Lipkin and Mark Tarlovsky. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1941.
• Poety Kirgizii: Stikhi 1941-1944 [Kirghiz Poets: Verses 1941-1944]; translated under the editorship of S. Lipkin. Moscow: Sovetskiy Pisatel’, 1946.
• Manas Velikodushny: povest [Manas the Magnanimous: a novella]; [version by S. Lipkin]. Leningrad, 1947.
• Manas: epizody iz kirgizskogo narodnogo eposa [Manas: episodes from the Kirghiz national epic]; translated by S. Lipkin and L. Penkovski. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1960.
• Manas Velikodushny. Povest’ o drevnikh kirghizskikh geroyakh [Manas the Magnanimous: a
• Story about Ancient Kirghiz Heroes; Riga: Polaris, 1995.

Sanskrit

• Mahabharata (Indian epic). In: series Biblioteka vsemirnoi literatury, vol. 2, translated from Sanskrit by S. Lipkin. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1969.

Tatar

• Poety Tatarii, 1941-1944 [Poets of Tataria, 1941-1944]; edited by A. Erikeeva and S. Lipkin. Moscow: Sovetskii Pisatel’, 1945.
• Poeziya Sovetskoi Tatarii: Sbornik sostavlen Soiuzom Sovetskikh Pisatelei Tatarskoi ASSR [Poetry of Soviet Tataria: Collection compiled by the Union of Soviet Tatar Writers]; editor S.I. Lipkin [translations by various hands]. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1955.
• Idegei: tatarskii narodnyi epos [Idegei: Tatar national epic]; translated by Semyon Lipkin.
• Kazan’: Tatar Book Publishers, 1990.

Tadjik-Farsi

• Firdawsi. Skazanie o Bakhrame Chubine [Epos about Bakhram Chubin], a fragment from poem Shāhnāmah translated from Tadjik-Farsi by S. Lipkin. Stalinabad [Dushanbe]: Tadzhikgosizdat, 1952.
• Izbrannoe [Selections]; translated from Tadjik-Farsi by V. Levik and S. Lipkin. Moscow,1957.
• Firdawsi. Poėmy iz Shakh-namė [Poems from Shāhnāmah]; in translation by S. Lipkin. Stalinabad [Dushanbe]: Tadzhikgosizdat, 1959.
• Stranitsy Tadzhikskoy Poezii [Pages of Tadjik Poetry], ed. S. Lipkin, Stalinabad [Dushanbe]: Tadzikgosizdat, 1961.
• Rudaki, stikhi [Rudaki, verses], transl. S. Lipkin and V. Levik, ed. I. Braginsky. Moscow: Nauka, 1964.
• Tetrad’ bytiia [Book of Life]; Poetry in Tadjik dialect with Russian by Semyon Lipkin. Lipkin. Dushanbe: Irfon, 1977.

Uzbek

• Khamid Alimdzhan. Oigul i Bakhtiyor [Oigul i Bakhtiyor]; Tashkent: Goslitizdat UzSSR,1948.
• Lutfi. Gul I Navruz [Gul and Navruz, a poem]; transl. S.Lipkin. Tashkent: Goslitizdat UzSSR, 1959.
• Navoi, Leili i Medzhnun [Leili and Medjnun]; poem translated from Uzbek by Semyon Lipkin. Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1945; Moscow: Detgiz, 1948; Tashkent: Khudozhestvennaia
• Literatura, 1957; (In: A. Navoi. Poemy [Poems].), Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1972.
• Navoi, Sem’ Planet [Seven Planets]; poem translated from Uzbek by Semyon Lipkin. Tashkent, 1948; Moscow, 1954; (In: A. Navoi. Poemy [Poems].), Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1972.
• Golosa Shesti Stoletii [Voices of Six Centuries]; selected translations from Uzbek. Tashkent, 1960.
• Tsarevna iz goroda T’my [Princess from the City of Darkness]; children’s story by S. Lipkin based on Uzbek tales. Moscow: Detgiz, 1961.
• Slovo i Kamen [Word and Stone], selected translations from Uzbek poetry by S. Lipkin, Tashkent: Gafur Gulyam Publ., 1977.

Other various languages

• Stroki Mudrykh [Lines of the Wise Ones], coll. translations by S. Lipkin, Moscow: Sovetskiy

Pisatel’, 1961.

• O bogatyriakh, umeltsakh i volshebnikhakh [On Heroes, Craftsmen and Wizards]; 3 novellas on Caucasian folklore motives, children’s adaptation by S. Lipkin. Moscow: Detgiz, 1963.
• Zolotaya zep’ [The Golden Chain: Eastern Poems]; translated from Abkhaz, Tadzhik-Farsi, old-Uzbek, etc. Moscow: Detgiz, 1970.

• Dalekie i Blizkie: Stikhi zarubezhnykh poetov v perevode [Far and Near: Verses by foreign poets in translation]; translators: Vera Markova, Semyon Lipkin, Aleksandr Gitovich. Moscow: Progress, 1978.

English translations of Semyon Lipkin’s work

• Four poems translated by Albert C. Todd, in Twentieth Century Russian Poetry, selected with an introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, edited by Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward, with Daniel Weissbort. New York: Doubleday; London: Fourth Estate, 1993.

• The Assay, Yvonne Green?

WHERE DOES THIS PART GO? Bibliography of other works referred to:

Life and Fate - Vasily Grossman - 1960

Vintage Platonov – The Foundation Pit - 1996

The Return - Andrey Platonov – 1999

Koba the Dread – Martin Amis - 2002

Happy Moscow - Andrey Platonov tr. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, London: Harvill, 2001

A Writer at War - Vasily Grossman ed. Beever and Vinogradova London: Pimlico, 2006

Soul and Other Stories - Andrey Platonov tr. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler et al. New York: NYRB Classics, 2007

The Foundation Pit - Andrey Platonov tr. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson, London: Vintage Classics, 2010

The Road Vasily - Grossman tr. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, London: Maclehose Press, 2010

Friendship with Vasily Grossman

In 1969 Lipkin's friend, Vasily Grossman's manuscript for the novel, "Life and Fate", was banned by the Soviet authorities. Semyon Lipkin saved a copy of his friend's typescript in a bag hanging under some coats on a peg at his dasha at Peredyelkina and later moved it to Lena Makarov and Sergei Makarov's attic in Moscow for safe keeping, until 1975 when he asked the writer Vladimir Voinovich to help get "Life and Fate" published in the West, which eventually happened in 1980.

Historical events that Lipkin lived through and which informed his writing

• In 1931 Stalin ordered enforced collectivization and closed the Kalmyk, Buddhist monasteries closed, and burnt religious texts.
• In 1932 Mayakovsky committed suicide the independent literary groups were closed, and the Union of Soviet Writers was formed. In 1932-34 between three and five million peasants died in the Terror Famine in the  Ukraine.
• In 1936 Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was denounced by the authorities and approximately half the members of the Soviet political, military and intellectual elite were imprisoned or shot, as were around 250,000 members of the various national minorities who's cultures Lipkin translated from or about which he wrote poems. This period was known as the Great Terror or Yezhovshchina - after the Soviet secret police, the N.K.V.D.'s head Nikolay Yezhov.
• In 1937 Lipkin graduated from the Moscow Economics Engineering Institute. While studying engineering he had begun studying Farsi, followed by the other oriental languages including Dagestani, Kalmyk, Kirgiz, Tatar, Tadjik, Uzbek, Kabardin, Yiddish and Moldavian.
• In 1939 the Molotov--Ribbentrop Pact was signed, the Second World War began and 70,000 mentally handicapped Germans were euthanased by their government.  
• In 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union and from 1941 until 1945
• Lipkin fought in the Red Army, including at Stalingrad.
• In December 1942 the Soviets reconquered the Kalmyk ASSR and went on to win a decisive victory at the Battle of Kursk in August 1943 after which Stalin declared all Kalmyks to be Nazi collaborators and deported the entire population of the Kalmyk ASSR, including communists, to prison camps in Siberia and Central Asia in December 1943.
• Between 1941 and 1942 two million Jews were shot in western areas of the Soviet Union and between 1941 and 1944 two and a half Polish Jews were gassed at Chelmno, Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz.
• On January 27th 1944 the Siege of Stalingrad was lifted, between April and June 436,000 Hungarian Jews were gassed at Auschwitz in fifty-six days, between August and October the Warsaw up rising occurred.
• On January 27th 1945 Auschwitz was liberated, on May 9th Germany surrendered.
• The Nuremberg trials were held in 1946 and while the Nazi leadership were judged Andrey Zhdanov tightened control over the arts in the USSR. Vasily Grossman's play, "If You Believe the Pythagoreans" was severely criticised.  
• In 1948, Mikhoels, the  head of Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was murdered in January, in November the Committee was dissolved.
• In 1953 an article was placed in Pravda about the Jewish "Killer Doctors" and a purge of Soviet Jews is being prepared. On March 5th Stalin died and on 4th April there' Official acknowledgment that the case against the "Killer Doctors" was fabricated.
• In February 1956 the period known as "The Thaw" peaked, in February Khrushchev made his Secret Speech to the Communist Party, denouncing the forcible exile of the Kalmyks, Karachai, Chechen, Ingush, and Balkhars Kabardins. Millions of prisoners were released from the camps. But from October to November the Hungarian insurrection was supressed.  
• In 1957 some Kalmyks were allowed to return.
• In July 1958, the former Kalmyk ASSR reconstituted, Doctor Zhivago was published abroad, Pasternak declined the novel prize under pressure from the authorities.
• In 1961 Lipkin's friend, Vasily Grossman’s novel Life and Fate submitted for publication; the KGB raided Grossman’s home and destroyed all the copies they could. Lipkin kept one copy at Peredelkina and later hid it in Lena and Sergei Makarov's attic in Moscow (Lena Markarova was the Lipkin's step- daughter, the daughter of his widow the poet Inna Lisnianskaya. Sergei Makarov is Lena's husband.  Also Lena Makarova documents the history of all the art, music, lectures, which the inmates of Terezein produced before they went to their deaths)
• In November 1962 Solzhenitsyn’s "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" was published in the Soviet Union.
• In 1964 Khrushchev fell and Vasily Grossman died believing "Life and Fate" would never be published. Sinyavski and Daniel were tried in 1966.
• In 1967 Lipkin received the Rudaki State Prize of the Tadzhik SSR and his first collection of poetry "Ochevidets", ("Eyewitness") was published. His poem 'Conjunction' was read as coded support for Israel.
• In August 1968 the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia took place.
• In 1968 Lipkin was made the People’s Poet of the Kalmyk ASSR.
• In 1970 the first issue of the Jewish samizdat journal "Exodus" was published as was Lipkin’s second collection, "A Notebook of Being".
• In 1971 Jewish emigration began to be permitted. In 1974 Solzehenitsyn was deported after "The Gulag Archipelago" was published in Paris in 1973.
• In 1975 Andrey Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Lipkin’s "Vechn Den" ("Eternal Day") was published and he asked the writer Vladimir Voinovitch to help him get microfilm of "Life and Fate" to the West.
• In 1979 Lipkin and Inna Lisnyanskaya submitted their poetry to the anthology "Metropol", which was rejected by the Soviet authorities.
• In 1980 Lipkin resigned from the Union of Writers. Sakharov was Internally Exiled by the authorities. Grossman’s "Life and Fate" was finally published in Switzerland, from pages preserved by Lipkin and microfilmed by Sakharov. In 1981 "Metropol" was published in the United States. Lipkin's "Volya" (variously called "Will", "Free Will", and "Freedom") was published in the U.S. on the initiative of Joseph Brodsky.
• In 1982 Brezhnev died and in 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and perestroika began.
• In (1984)Andropov died and Lipkin’s "Kochevoi Ogon" ("A Nomadic Flame") was published in the U.S.
• In 1985 Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
• In 1986 Lipkin's "Kartiny i golosa" ("Pictures and Voices") was published in London and Lipkin was reinstated into the Writers’ Union.
• In 1988 Gorbachev became president. Pasternak’s "Doctor Zhivago" and Grossman’s "Life and Fate" were published in the Soviet Union.
• In November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. In 1991 the USSR collapsed, Lipkin was awarded Tukai Prize, his "Lunnyi Svet" ("Moonlight") and "Pis΄mena" ("Letters") were published.
• In 1992 civil war broke out in Tajikistan.
• In 1993 Yeltsin suppressed armed rising by Supreme Soviet.
• In 1995 Lipkin was awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament, and the Pushkin Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, in Germany.
• In 1997 "Posokh" (Shepherd’s Crook") was published.
• In 2000 Putin was elected president and Lipkin’s "Sem΄ desiatiletii" (Seven Decades) was published.
• In May 2003 Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin died at Peredelkina.

Yvonne Green

Yvonne Green has worked since 2006, using literal translations, to create 'versions' - poems 'after Lipkin that bring to English some of this fascinating writer's most characteristic verse.

References

• After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin: 1911-2003 by Semyon Lipkin, Yvonne Green (ISBN 978-1-906613-38-9)

External links

• After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin 1911-2003, Yvonne Green