Genrikh Sapgir(1928-1999)

Genrikh Veniaminovich Sapgir is Russian Soviet writer and poet, screenwriter, translator. An outstanding heir and successor to the work of the brilliant creators of the Russian poetic language - from Vasiliy Tredyakovskiy to Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velemir Khlebnikov. The author of many books. Poet of the rarest proteic talent: throughout his career he changed his style and looked for new forms of expression. In the early (1950s-1960s) texts more often leaned towards social satire, which often took on elegant playful forms. Later in his poetry you can also find landscape lyrics and civic poetry. Perfectly mastering the traditional methods of versification (for example, sonnet), at the same time he was developing new, experimental forms. In the late period, Sapgir's work organically combines laconicism and a variety of expressive means, a penchant for experimenting, a love for exact details, a game, grotesque, irony, pathos, an ecstatic state of mind. Critics spoke of him as a classic of modern Russian avant-garde. In the Soviet years, Sapgir was published a lot as a children's writer (he owns the scripts for the animated films Parovozik iz Romashkova (1967), Sladkaya skazka (1970), Nasha nyanya (1975) and others), the translation of the text of the song "The Green Carriage". In his "New Primer" Sapgir adheres to the traditional methodology of word-for-word reading instruction. In the columns of words he created, the letters and sounds in the words overlap diagonally, vertically and horizontally, creating sound and graphic correspondences. He also acted as a translator.