Shvarts Evgeny Lvovich: a short biography, creativity

Shvarts Evgeny Lvovich is an outstanding Russian Soviet playwright, storyteller, screenwriter and prose writer who created 25 plays. However, not all of his works were published during his lifetime. He owns such famous plays as "Dragon", "Ordinary Miracle", "Shadow", etc.

Completely giving all himself - this was how Schwartz Eugene Lvovich worked. A short biography for children will be interesting because, thanks to his scripts, there appeared such masterpieces of cinema as "Cinderella", "Don Quixote", "First Class" and many others. He sharply turned his professional destiny from a lawyer to a playwright and writer, and did not regret it ever, but more on that later.

Shvarts Evgeny Lvovich: Biography

The future writer was born in Kazan on October 21, 1896 in the family of the Orthodox Jew Lev Borisovich Schwartz and Maria Fyodorovna Shchelkova, they were both medical workers. Lev Borisovich graduated from Kazan Medical University, where he met his future wife Maria Feodorovna, who was attending midwifery courses at the time. In 1895 they were married. In the same year, Lev Borisovich became an Orthodox Christian in the Kazan Mihailo-Arkhangelsk church.

Soon they had a small Schwarz Eugene Lvovich. The biography further indicates that his family moved from Kazan to Armavir.

Arrests and references of the father

Although there was Lev Schwartz from among the "unreliable" students, however, he finished his studies at the university well and in 1898 went to the city of Dmitrov. And in the same year he was arrested for suspicion of anti-government propaganda. His family was deported to Armavir, then to Akhtyr and Maikop. However, this was not the only episode of the proceedings with the authorities, there will still be arrests and exile.

But on his little son, events related to the political pride of his father, almost no effect. Eugene also baptized in the Orthodox Church, and so he always considered himself to be Russian. Orthodoxy for him was equal to belonging to Russian nationality, and he did not separate himself from it.

Childhood

It was in Maikop that he spent his childhood and youth Schwartz Eugene Lvovich. A brief biography of the writer testifies that he remembered about that time with special warmth and tenderness.

In 1914 he entered the University. Shanyavsky in Moscow to the Faculty of Law. But after a couple of years I realized that this is not his vocation and decided to devote himself to literature and theater.

Revolution and civil war

When in 1917 Schwartz went to military service, immediately there was a revolution, and Eugene got into the volunteer army. In the battle for Yekaterinodar he received a severe concussion, and he was demobilized. This wound did not pass for the writer without a trace, then his whole life was accompanied by a tremor of hands.

After the demobilization, Shvarts Evgeny Lvovich (whose brief biography is given to your attention) does not for a moment forget about his dream. He became a student at Rostov University. Working in the "Theater Workshop", he meets Nikolai Oleinikov, who later becomes his best friend and co-author.

Theatrical work

In 1921, Schwartz Eugene Lvovich with his theater, in which he worked, came to Petrograd on tour. Critics have noted his excellent acting talents. But he decided to leave it and became the secretary of the children's writer Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky, whom he helped with numerous literary questions.

And then, in 1923-1924, Schwartz Eugene Lvovich worked on feuilletons for printed publications of the city of Donetsk under the pseudonym Ded Saray.

After, in 1924, he again returned to Leningrad, to the editorial office of Gosizdat, where he helped young authors to find their ways in the writers' art. Schwartz also participated in the creation of children's humorous magazines "Hedgehog" and "Chizh". He wrote poems and stories there, communicated with the groups OBERIU.

Literary Creativity

The first work that brought success to Evgeny Schwartz was the play Underwood, written in 1929. In 1934, after being persuaded by N. Akimov, he created the first satirical play "The Coming of Hohenstaufen."

In 1940, the drama "Shadow" was written, which was a political satire, but she did not stay long on the stage - she was simply removed from the repertoire. During this performance, the laughter was incredible, but then in the minds of the spectators there were bitter meditations.

After that, Eugene Schwartz worked on several realistic, on contemporary themes, works. During the Second World War in evacuation he lived in Kirov and Stalinabad. There he created his masterpiece "Dragon", which fell into the classification of a harmful fairy tale and, like other dramatic works, did not have a long century on the stage.

After a series of such failures, the playwright joked with friends that, perhaps, he should write a play about Ivan the Terrible and call it "Uncle Vanya"?

Only after Stalin's death, thanks to the efforts of Olga Berggolts, who highly appreciated Schwartz's work, the light saw his first collection of works.

Shvarts Evgeny Lvovich: interesting facts

The writer was distinguished from childhood by wit and imagination. Numerous photos of Schwartz Eugene Lvovich show us a solid and serious expression, but almost always with a very sweet and childishly naive smile.

One of his contemporaries recalled that at the time when the writer worked in the magazines "Chizh" and "Hedgehog", the premises of the sixth floor of the State Publishing House on Nevsky 28 were shaking with laughter daily. This Schwartz and Oleynikov cheered their colleagues with their jokes. They needed an audience, and they found it.

The first book of poems for the children of the famous writer was published in 1925 - "The Story of the Old Violin." Then the plays The Treasure, The Adventures of Hohenstaufen, the transcriptions and reworkings of the Perro and Andersen plots were published: The Naked King, The Swineherd (1934), The Little Red Riding Hood (1937), The Snow Queen (1938) Shadow "(1940)," Ordinary Miracle "(1954).

freedom

With the onset of the present freedom of his play, tales began to be set abroad - in Germany, Israel, the USA, Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. Our contemporary director Mark Zakharov created the magnificent film "Ordinary Miracle".

Spectators and readers do not get tired of admiring the writer's bold flight of thought and his looseness, and once it was "Aesop's language". Schwartz admired and even envied Picasso, who was independent in views, internally free and therefore did everything he wanted.

After the death of the master, his "Phone Book" was published, where he recorded his memories of people in alphabetical order. These memoirs are unusually interesting, because in them the epoch of the 1920s-1950s is captured, this is his "trampled field" of life.

In them, Schwartz does not appear as a forgiving kind, in his memoirs he is extremely sincere and free. Here there is a certain ruthlessness and sophistication, taunts and ridicule are pouring one after another. His main principle was to look at the facts straight in the face and not leave them.

Favorite Women

In his youth, he took care of Gayane Khalajeva, the future wife, for a long time, but she did not yield, because he was fabulously poor, although he promised her gold mountains as a real storyteller. The second wife was Ekaterina Ivanovna. Before his death, and he was dying very hard, he tried to deceive fate and even subscribed to the complete works of Charles Dickens, but died long before the release of the last volume.

He died on January 15, 1958. He was buried at the Bogoslovsky Cemetery in Leningrad. A few biographical documentary films were shot about the talented writer.