Who is Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak? Marshak short biography

Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak (1887-1964) - Russian Soviet poet, playwright, translator, literary critic.

Winner of the Lenin Prize (1963) and four Stalin Prizes (1942, 1946, 1949, 1951).

Marshak. Biography

Samuel Marshak born on October 22 (November 3), 1887 in Voronezh, into a Jewish family, his father, Yakov Mironovich (1855-1924), worked as a foreman at a soap factory. Mother - Evgenia Borisovna Gitelson - was a housewife. The surname “Marshak” is an abbreviation (Hebrew: מהרש‎) meaning “Our teacher Rabbi Aharon Shmuel Kaydanover” and belongs to the descendants of this famous rabbi and Talmudist (1624-1676).

Samuel spent his early childhood and school years in the town of Ostrogozhsk near Voronezh. He studied in 1898-1906 at the Ostrogozh, 3rd St. Petersburg and Yalta gymnasiums. At the gymnasium, the literature teacher instilled a love for classical poetry, encouraged the future poet’s first literary experiments, and considered him a child prodigy.

One of Marshak’s poetic notebooks fell into the hands of V.V. Stasov, a famous Russian critic and art critic, who took an active part in the fate of the young man. With the help of Stasov, Samuil moves to St. Petersburg and studies at one of the best gymnasiums. He spends whole days in the public library where Stasov worked.

In 1904, at Stasov’s house, Marshak met Maxim Gorky, who showed great interest in him and invited him to his dacha in Yalta, where Marshak lived in 1904-1906. He began publishing in 1907, publishing the collection “The Zionids,” dedicated to Jewish themes; one of the poems was written on the death of Theodor Herzl. At the same time, he translated several poems by Chaim Bialik from Yiddish and Hebrew.

When Gorky's family was forced to leave Crimea due to repressions by the tsarist government after the 1905 revolution, Marshak returned to St. Petersburg, where his father, who worked at a factory behind the Nevskaya Zastava, had by that time moved.

In 1911, Samuel Marshak, together with his friend, the poet Yakov Godin, and a group of Jewish youth made a long journey through the Middle East: from Odessa they sailed by ship, heading to the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean - Turkey, Greece, Syria and Palestine. Marshak went there as a correspondent for the St. Petersburg General Newspaper and the Blue Journal. The lyrical poems inspired by this trip are among the most successful in the work of the young Marshak (“We lived in a camp in a tent…” and others).

On this trip, Marshak met his future wife, Sofya Mikhailovna Milvidskaya (1889-1953), and soon after their return they got married. At the end of September 1912, the newlyweds went to England. There Marshak studied first at the Polytechnic, then at the University of London (1912-1914). During the holidays, he traveled a lot on foot around England, listening to English folk songs. Even then he began working on translations of English ballads, which later made him famous.

In 1914, Marshak returned to his homeland, worked in the provinces, and published his translations in the journals “Northern Notes” and “Russian Thought”. During the war years he was involved in helping refugee children.

In 1915, Dr. lived with his family in Finland in a natural sanatorium. Lübeck.

In 1920, while living in Yekaterinodar, Marshak organized a complex of cultural institutions for children there, in particular, he created one of the first children's theaters in Russia and wrote plays for it. In 1923, he published his first poetic children's books ("The House That Jack Built", "Children in a Cage", "The Tale of the Stupid Mouse"). He is the founder and first head of the English Department of the Kuban Polytechnic Institute (now Kuban State Technological University).

In 1922, Marshak moved to Petrograd, together with folklorist Olga Kapitsa, he headed the studio of children's writers at the Institute of Preschool Education of the People's Commissariat for Education, organized (1923) the children's magazine "Sparrow" (in 1924-1925 - "New Robinson"), where among Others published were such masters of literature as B. S. Zhitkov, V. V. Bianki, E. L. Schwartz. For several years, Marshak also headed the Leningrad edition of Detgiz, Lengosizdat, and the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house. He was associated with the magazine “Chizh”. He led the “Literary Circle” (at the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers). In 1934, at the First Congress of Soviet Writers, S. Ya. Marshak made a report on children's literature and was elected a member of the board of the USSR Writers' Union. In 1939-1947 he was a deputy of the Moscow City Council of Workers' Deputies.

In 1937, the children's publishing house created by Marshak in Leningrad was destroyed, its best students were repressed - A. I. Vvedensky, N. M. Oleinikov, N. A. Zabolotsky, T. G. Gabbe, (later Kharms), etc., many fired. In 1938, Marshak moved to Moscow.

During the Great Patriotic War, the writer actively worked in the genre of satire, publishing poems in Pravda and creating posters in collaboration with the Kukryniksy.

Marshak donated large sums of money for boarding schools and a kindergarten created in Lithuania for Jewish orphans whose parents died during the Holocaust. At the end of 1945 and at the beginning of 1946, when the secret transfer of these children through Königsberg to Poland, and from there to Palestine, began, Marshak sent a large sum of money for these purposes.

In 1960, Marshak published the autobiographical story “At the Beginning of Life,” and in 1961, “Education with Words” (a collection of articles and notes on poetic craft).

Almost throughout his literary career (more than 50 years), Marshak continued to write both poetic feuilletons and serious, “adult” lyrics. In 1962, he published the collection “Selected Lyrics”; He also owns a separately selected cycle “Lyrical Epigrams”.

Marshak is the author of translations of sonnets by William Shakespeare, songs and ballads by Robert Burns, poems by William Blake, W. Wordsworth, J. Keats, R. Kipling, E. Lear, A. A. Milne. As well as works by Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Armenian and other poets. He also translated poems by Mao Zedong.

Marshak's books have been translated into many languages of the world. For his translations from Robert Burns, Marshak was awarded the title of honorary citizen of Scotland.

Marshak stood up for Brodsky and Solzhenitsyn several times. For the first, he demanded to “quickly get translations of texts on Lenfilm”; for the second, he stood up for Tvardovsky, demanding that his works be published in the Novy Mir magazine. He always stood up for the disgraced writers of that time.

His last literary secretary was Vladimir Pozner

Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak died on July 4, 1964 in Moscow. He was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery (site No. 2).

Samuel Yakovlevich Marshak was born October 22 (November 3), 1887 in Voronezh in the family of a technician at chemical plants. He spent his early childhood and school years in the town of Ostrogozhsk near Voronezh. At the gymnasium, the literature teacher instilled a love for classical poetry and encouraged the future poet’s first literary experiments

He began writing poetry at an early age. In 1902 A notebook of poems by S. Marshak fell into the hands of V.V. Stasov, who took an active part in the fate of the young poet; later M. Gorky drew attention to him. With Stasov's help, he moved to St. Petersburg, studied at one of the best gymnasiums, and spent whole days in the public library where Stasov worked. In 1904-1906. Marshak lived with the Gorky family in Yalta. When Gorky's family was forced to leave Crimea due to repressions after the 1905 revolution, Marshak returned to St. Petersburg, where his father, who worked at a factory behind the Nevskaya Zastava, had by that time moved.

Working youth began: attending classes, collaborating in magazines and almanacs. Started publishing since 1907 in literary almanacs, later in Satyricon, etc. In 1912 Marshak left to continue his education in England; listened to lectures at the University of London ( 1913-1914). In 1915-1917 The first translations of Marshak (poems by William Blake, Wordsworth, English and Scottish folk ballads) were published in the journals “Northern Notes” and “Russian Thought”.

Marshak's literary activity is very diverse: lyrics, satire, translations, drama. Marshak's poems for children have become especially popular. During the First World War, Marshak participated in organizing assistance to young orphans and refugees. This work brought him closer to the children. In 1920 he organized and headed the "Children's Town" in Krasnodar - a complex of children's institutions (school, library, children's clubs), which included one of the first theaters for children. For the “Children's Town” theater, Marshak and the poetess E. Vasilyeva wrote fairy tale plays, from which the collection “Theater for Children” was subsequently compiled ( 1922 ).

In 1923 Marshak's first books of poetry for the little ones were published - the English children's folk song “The House That Jack Built”, “Children in a Cage”, “The Tale of the Stupid Mouse”. From this time on, Marshak began his fruitful career as a children's poet, editor and organizer of children's literature. In 1924-1925. he headed the New Robinson magazine, which played an important role in the history of Soviet literature for children. B. Zhitkov, M. Ilyin, E. Schwartz, V. Bianki and others first began to publish in it. Since 1924 For a number of years, Marshak headed the OGIZ department.

Marshak’s poems for children, his songs, riddles, fairy tales and sayings, and plays for children’s theater over time made up an extensive collection “Fairy Tales, Songs, Riddles,” which was reprinted several times and translated into many languages. In his very first poems (“Mail”, “Fire”, later “Lomaster”, “War with the Dnieper”, etc.), Marshak, without any didactics, instilled in children love and respect for the power of the mind, for work and working people. In the satirical pamphlet "Mr. Twister" ( 1933 ) he spoke to young readers about racial strife; in the romantic poem "The Tale of an Unknown Hero" ( 1938 ) described the feat of a fearless young man - one of the many humble heroes of our days. Marshak's children's poems are written simply, captivatingly, understandably, they are distinguished by their completeness, clear rhythm, and rigor of composition. And at the same time, they have the whimsicality, mischief of a folk song, counting rhyme, teasing. The verse acquires utmost clarity and is remembered like a proverb.

In Marshak's works, written during the war and post-war years, the lyrical principle is enhanced. In the poetry books “Military Post” ( 1944 ), "Colorful Book" ( 1947 ), "All year round" ( 1948 ), "Fairy tale" ( 1947 ) or the poetic encyclopedia “A Fun Journey from A to Z” ( 1953 ) Marshak expands his visual means, turning to landscape lyrics, to an in-depth depiction of the hero’s emotional experiences. This coincided with the beginning of S. Marshak’s work on the “Lyrical Notebook”, on translations of sonnets by W. Shakespeare and songs by R. Burns, whom Marshak began translating back in the 30s.

Marshak translated W. Blake, W. Wordsworth, J. Keats, R. Kipling, E. Lear into Russian; Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Armenian and other poets. His translations have always been perceived as original poems.

During the Great Patriotic War, the talent of S. Marshak as a satirist developed. In collaboration with artists Kukryniksy and others, he created many combat posters. Among Marshak’s dramatic works, the most popular are the fairy tale plays “Twelve Months”, “They are Afraid of Grief - No Happiness to Be Seen”, “Smart Things”, “Cat’s House”, staged on the stages of many theaters. In 1960. The autobiographical story “At the Beginning of Life” was published. In 1961 A collection of articles on literary skill, notes and memoirs, “Memories in Words,” was published - the result of the writer’s extensive creative experience.

Marshak Samuil Yakovlevich (1887-1964)

Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak born November 3 (October 22 – Old Style) 1887 in the city of Voronezh. His father, Yakov Mironovich, a master chemist by profession, was a man of versatile abilities, loved literature very much and knew several foreign languages. He managed to instill in his children from an early age the desire for knowledge, respect for human work, for any skill.

Marshak's early childhood and school years were spent in the town of Ostrogozhsk near Voronezh, in a workers' village near the plant. The future poet fell in love with poetry early. At the age of four he was already trying to compose lines of poetry himself. And at the age of eleven, when he began studying at the gymnasium, Samuel was already translating the ancient Roman poet Horace.

When Marshak was 15 years old, his fate suddenly changed. One of Marshak’s poetic notebooks fell into the hands of Vladimir Vasilyevich Stasov, a famous Russian critic and art critic, who took an active part in the fate of the young man. Marshak found himself in the northern capital, in a large house where the most famous artists, musicians, and writers of that time visited. He saw magnificent St. Petersburg museums, attended exhibitions, theaters and concerts, and studied at the best metropolitan gymnasium. In the St. Petersburg Public Library, where Stasov worked, young Marshak spent whole days looking at old books and engravings.

A few years later, to complete his education, Marshak went to study in England. In order to better study the language and hear the people's speech, he made a long journey on foot throughout the English province. While living in England, he learned and fell in love with English poetry and began translating English poets and folk ballads and songs.

Summer 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Marshak returned to Russia. During the war and during the revolution, Samuil Yakovlevich lived in the south of Russia - in Voronezh and Krasnodar. Here then there were many refugee children from those regions that were occupied by the Germans, many street children. Marshak did a lot of work to organize help for children. In Krasnodar, he organized an entire “Children’s Town” - a complex of children’s institutions with a school, kindergartens, a library, amateur art groups and a theater for children. Together with the poetess E.I. Vasilyeva Marshak wrote plays for children “The Tale of a Goat”, “The Cat’s House” and others. Marshak’s work in children’s literature began with them.

In 1922 Marshak returned to Petrograd, here he created his first original fairy tales in verse. In the 20s, his books were published: “Children in a Cage”, “Fire”, “The Tale of a Stupid Mouse”, “Luggage”, “Mail”, “The Story of an Unknown Hero”, “Mr. Twister”, “The House That Jack built" and many other books of poetry, which later became classics of children's reading.

But Samuil Yakovlevich not only wrote children's books. He was an outstanding editor and organizer of children's literature. He united around himself such talented children's writers and poets as Agnia Barto, Sergei Mikhalkov, Boris Zhitkov, Arkady Gaidar, Leonid Panteleev and many others and helped create the world's first children's book publishing house.

Marshak's poetic gift is versatile and varied. During the Great Patriotic War S.Ya. Marshak published satirical epigrams, parodies, and pamphlets in newspapers that ridiculed and denounced the enemy.

Throughout his life, Marshak translated a lot. Entire volumes in his collected works are taken up by adaptations from English and Scottish poets, starting with a complete translation of Shakespeare's sonnets and ending with samples of children's poetry. His translations, as a rule, remain either unsurpassed or among the best today.

The result of the writer’s extensive creative experience was the collection of articles “Education with Words,” published in 1961. In the same year, his autobiographical story “At the Beginning of Life” was published.

The writer’s last book, “Selected Lyrics,” was published in 1963. The poems included in this book were created over many years.

Marshak died on July 4, 1964 in Moscow. Until his last day, he worked in the hospital as a proofreader, taking care to honor his every word.

One of the last poems by S.Ya. Marshak was it (1963) :

The world will disappear at that very hour,

When I disappear

How it faded away for your eyes,

Gone friends.

There will be no sun and moon,

All the flowers will fade.

There won't even be silence

There will be no darkness...

No, the world will exist

And even if I’m not in it,

But I managed to hug the whole world,

All millions of years.

I thought, I felt, I lived

And I realized everything I could,

And with this he has earned the right

For your immortal moment.

The writer lived a long life, wrote many poems, plays, fairy tales, and literary articles. Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky, welcoming Marshak at one of the anniversaries, said that in his person he was greeting five Marshaks at once: a children's poet, playwright, lyric poet, translator and satirist. And literary critic S. Sivokon added five more to these five: prose writer, critic, editor, teacher, theorist of children's literature. “Ten Marshaks,” writes S. Sivokon, “embodied in one, are not ten heads of a fairy-tale snake arguing among themselves and preventing him from living. No, these are ten sides of a multifaceted, but surprisingly integral personality, whose name is Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak.”

Samuil Marshak is still one of the main children's writers in Russia , it is his poems that become the very first in life for many children. Years pass, eras and generations change, but his works are always modern and invariably enjoy great popularity among young readers.

Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak. Born October 22 (November 3), 1887 in Voronezh - died July 4, 1964 in Moscow. Russian Soviet poet, playwright, translator, literary critic, screenwriter. Winner of the Lenin Prize (1963) and 4 Stalin Prizes (1942, 1946, 1949, 1951).

Samuel Marshak was born on October 22 (November 3), 1887 in Voronezh in the Chizhovka settlement into a Jewish family.

Father - Yakov Mironovich Marshak (1855-1924), a native of Koidanov, worked as a foreman at the Mikhailov brothers soap factory.

Mother - Evgenia Borisovna Gitelson (1867-1917), a native of Vitebsk, was a housewife.

Sister - Leah (pseudonym Elena Ilyina) (1901-1964), writer.

Brother - Ilya (pseudonym M. Ilyin; 1896-1953), writer, one of the founders of Soviet popular science literature.

He also had sisters Yudith Yakovlevna Marshak (married Fainberg, 1893-?), the author of memoirs about his brother, and Susanna Yakovlevna Marshak (married Schwartz, 1889-?), brother Moses Yakovlevich Marshak (1885-1944), an economist.

The surname "Marshak" is an abbreviation (Hebrew: מהרש"ק‏‎) meaning "Our teacher Rabbi Aharon Shmuel Kaydanover" and belongs to the descendants of this famous rabbi and Talmudist (1624-1676).

In 1893, the Marshak family moved to Vitebsk, in 1894 to Pokrov, in 1895 to Bakhmut, in 1896 to Maidan near Ostrogozhsk and, finally, in 1900 to Ostrogozhsk.

Samuel spent his early childhood and school years in the town of Ostrogozhsk near Voronezh, where his uncle lived, the dentist of the Ostrogozhsk men's gymnasium, Mikhail Borisovich Gitelson (1875-1939). He studied in 1899-1906 at the Ostrogozh, 3rd St. Petersburg and Yalta gymnasiums. At the gymnasium, the literature teacher instilled a love for classical poetry, encouraged the future poet’s first literary experiments and considered him a child prodigy.

One of Marshak’s poetry notebooks fell into the hands of V.V. Stasov, a famous Russian critic and art critic, who took an active part in the fate of the young man. With the help of Stasov, Samuil moves to St. Petersburg and studies at one of the best gymnasiums. He spends whole days in the public library where Stasov worked.

In 1904, at Stasov’s house, Marshak met, who treated him with great interest and invited him to his dacha in Yalta, where Marshak lived in 1904-1906. He began publishing in 1907, publishing the collection “The Zionids,” dedicated to Jewish themes. One of the poems (“Over the Open Grave”) was written on the death of the “father of Zionism” Theodor Herzl. At the same time, he translated several poems by Chaim Nachman Bialik from Yiddish and Hebrew.

When Gorky's family was forced to leave Crimea due to repression by the tsarist government after the 1905 revolution, Marshak returned to St. Petersburg, where his father, who worked at a factory behind the Nevskaya Zastava, had by that time moved.

In 1911, Samuel Marshak, together with his friend, the poet Yakov Godin, and a group of Jewish youth made a long journey through the Middle East: from Odessa they sailed by ship, heading to the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean - Turkey, Greece, Syria and Palestine. Marshak went there as a correspondent for the St. Petersburg General Newspaper and the Blue Journal. Influenced by what he saw, he created a cycle of poems under the general title “Palestine”. The lyrical poems inspired by this trip are among the most successful in the work of the young Marshak (“We lived in a camp in a tent...” and others). He lived in Jerusalem for some time.

On this trip, Marshak met Sofia Mikhailovna Milvidskaya (1889-1953), with whom they married soon after their return. At the end of September 1912, the newlyweds went to England. There Marshak studied first at the Polytechnic, then at the University of London (1912-1914). During the holidays, he traveled a lot on foot around England, listening to English folk songs. Even then he began working on translations of English ballads, which later made him famous.

In 1915, he lived with his family in Finland in the natural sanatorium of Dr. Lübeck. In the fall of 1915, he again settled in Voronezh in the house of his uncle, dentist Yakov Borisovich Gitelson, on Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, where he spent a year and a half, and in January 1917 he moved with his family to Petrograd.

In 1918, he lived in Petrozavodsk, worked in the Olonets provincial department of public education, then fled to the South - to Yekaterinodar, where he collaborated in the newspaper “Morning of the South” under the pseudonym “Doctor Fricken”. He published poems and anti-Bolshevik feuilletons there.

In 1919 he published (under the pseudonym “Doctor Fricken”) the first collection “Satires and Epigrams”.

In 1923, he published his first poetic children's books ("The House That Jack Built", "Children in a Cage", "The Tale of the Stupid Mouse"). He is the founder and first head of the English Department of the Kuban Polytechnic Institute (now Kuban State Technological University).

For several years, Marshak also headed the Leningrad edition of Detgiz, Lengosizdat, and the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house. He was associated with the magazine “Chizh”. He led the “Literary Circle” (at the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers).

In 1934, at the First Congress of Soviet Writers, S. Ya. Marshak made a report on children's literature and was elected a member of the board of the USSR Writers' Union.

In 1939-1947 he was a deputy of the Moscow City Council of Workers' Deputies.

In 1937, the children's publishing house created by Marshak in Leningrad was destroyed. His best students were repressed at different times: in 1941 - A. I. Vvedensky, in 1937 - N. M. Oleinikov, in 1938 - N. A. Zabolotsky, in 1937 T. G. Gabbe was arrested, in 1941 Kharms was arrested. Many have been fired.

In 1938, Marshak moved to Moscow.

During the Soviet-Finnish War (1939-1940) he wrote for the newspaper “On Guard of the Motherland.”

During the Great Patriotic War, the writer actively worked in the genre of satire, publishing poems in Pravda and creating posters in collaboration with the Kukryniksy. Actively contributed to fundraising for the Defense Fund.

In 1960, Marshak published the autobiographical story “At the Beginning of Life,” and in 1961, “Education with Words” (a collection of articles and notes on poetic craft).

Almost throughout his literary career (more than 50 years), Marshak continued to write both poetic feuilletons and serious, “adult” lyrics. In 1962, he published the collection “Selected Lyrics”. He also owns a separately selected cycle “Lyrical Epigrams”.

In addition, Marshak is the author of classic translations of sonnets by William Shakespeare, songs and ballads of Robert Burns, poems by William Blake, W. Wordsworth, J. Keats, R. Kipling, E. Lear, A. A. Milne, J. Austin, Hovhannes Tumanyan, as well as works of Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Armenian and other poets. He also translated poems by Mao Zedong.

Marshak's books have been translated into many languages of the world. For translations from Robert Burns in 1960, S. Ya. Marshak was awarded the title of honorary president of the World Robert Burns Federation in Scotland.

Marshak stood up for and several times. From the first he demanded “to quickly get translations of texts on Lenfilm”; for the second he stood up for Tvardovsky, demanding that his works be published in the magazine “New World”. His last literary secretary was.

Samuel Marshak. Documentary

Personal life of Samuil Marshak:

Wife - Sofya Mikhailovna Milvidskaya (1889-1953).

In 1915, in Ostrogozhsk, their daughter Nathanael died from burns after knocking over a samovar with boiling water. She was born in 1914 in England.

The eldest son is Immanuel (1917-1977), a Soviet physicist, winner of the Stalin Prize of the third degree (1947) for developing a method of aerial photography, as well as a translator (in particular, he owns the Russian translation of Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice”). Grandson - Yakov Immanuelevich Marshak (born 1946), narcologist.

The youngest son, Yakov (1925-1946), died of tuberculosis.

Bibliography of Samuil Marshak:

Children's fairy tales:

"Twelve Months" (play, 1943)
“To be afraid of grief is not to see happiness”
"Rainbow-arc"
"Smart Things" (1964)
“Cat House” (first version 1922)
"Teremok" (1940)
"The Miller, the Boy and the Donkey"
"The Tale of the Stupid Mouse"
"The Tale of the King and the Soldier"
"About two neighbors"
"Horses, Hamsters and Chickens"
"The Tale of a Smart Mouse"
“Why was the cat called a cat?”
"Jafar's Ring"
“Old woman, close the door!”
"Poodle"
"Baggage"
"A good day"
“Why doesn’t the month have a dress?”
“Where did the sparrow have lunch?”
"Volga and Vazuza"
"Furrier Cat"
"Moonlit Evening"
"Mustachioed - Striped"
"The Braves"
"Ugomon"
"Talk"
"Visiting the Queen"
"What I saw"
"The Tale of the Goat"
"Doctor Faustus"

Didactic works:

"Fire"
"Mail"
"War with the Dnieper"

Criticism and satire:

Pamphlet "Mr. Twister"
That's how absent-minded

Poems:

"The Tale of an Unknown Hero"

Works on military and political themes:

"Military Post"
"Fairy tale"
"All year round"
"Guardian of the World"

The name of Marshak Samuil Yakovlevich is known all over the world. More than one generation has grown up on the wonderful work of the writer. Basically everyone knows Marshak as a children's writer, but Samuil Yakovlevich was also a poet, translator and playwright. Let's get acquainted with what works Marshak wrote during his creative life.

The writer's earlier work

What works did Marshak write in childhood? These were poems that the boy began to compose at the age of 4. The first works were written in Hebrew, since Marshak was born into a Jewish family. Little Samuel grew up in the city of Ostrogozhsk, not far from Voronezh. The boy's father was an educated man and encouraged his interests. In search of better work, the family often changed their place of residence. In 1902, the poet's father found a permanent job in St. Petersburg and moved his entire family there. Marshak's first works for children appeared when he was only 12 years old.

After moving to St. Petersburg, Samuil Yakovlevich meets the critic Vladimir Stasov, who favorably accepts the poet’s work. During this period, Marshak created his first serious creations of a political nature. The writer meets Gorky and lives with his family in Yalta for two years. The first collection of Samuil Yakovlevich “Sionids” is published.

Marshak S. Ya. Poems for children

In 1912, the writer went to study in London, where he discovered new talents - translating poetry. Marshak began translating poems by famous writers such as Byron, Milne, Kipling. It is to Samuil Yakovlevich that we are grateful for the poem “The House That Jack Built.” The writer's first book is named after this poem and also contains English songs. The collection was published in 1923.

Returning to the city, he organizes a “Children’s Town”, which includes a theater and libraries. Marshak begins to stage plays based on his creations. This marks the beginning of a new stage in the poet’s work - poems and plays for children. What works did Marshak write for the little ones? These are still popular today: “Children in a Cage”, “Circus”, “Yesterday and Today”, “Poodle”, “So Absent-Minded” and many others. The writer’s fairy tales became especially famous: “Smart Things”, “Cat’s House” and “Twelve Months”.

Lyrics and satire in the writer’s works

What works did Marshak write, besides children's poems? creations that the writer published since 1907 in almanacs and magazines. In the forties, Samuil published the collection “Poems 1941-1946,” which includes 17 poems “From a lyric notebook.” Over the course of his life, new works were added to this cycle. For the collection “Selected Lyrics” Marshak received the Lenin Prize in 1963.

Another style in which the writer worked was satire. Collections of satiristic poems were published in 1959 and 1964. Marshak also published his feuilletons, epigrams and parodies in newspapers and magazines.

The writer's poems, plays and other works have been translated into many languages and are popular all over the world. Marshak's fairy tale "The Twelve Months" is included in the school curriculum. Some of the writer’s works were filmed and fell in love with young viewers.