Soviet writer Marietta Shaginyan is considered one of the first Russian science fiction writers of her time. Journalist and writer, poetess and publicist, this woman had the gift of a writer and an enviable skill. It was Marietta Shaginyan, whose poems were very popular during her lifetime, who, according to critics, made her outstanding contribution to Russian-Soviet poetry of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Awareness of oneself as a writer and artist comes to a person from nature. And when talent and a thirst for life, a craving for knowledge and an amazing capacity for work are wonderfully combined in one person, then this person occupies a special place in history. That's exactly what Marietta Shahinyan was like.
Biography
The future writer was born in Moscow, in a family of Armenian intellectuals on March 21, 1888. Her father, Sergei Davydovich, was a privateassistant professor at Moscow State University. Marietta Shaginyan received a full education. At first she studied at a private boarding school, and later at the Rzhev gymnasium. Since 1906, she began to publish. In 1912, Marietta graduated from the Faculty of History and Philosophy at the Higher Women's Courses of V. I. Guerrier. She goes to St. Petersburg. It is here, in the city on the Neva, that the future writer and publicist meets and later becomes close to such luminaries as Z. N. Gippius and D. S. Merezhkovsky.
From 1912 to 1914, the girl studied philosophy as a science at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. The poetry of Goethe had a very strong influence on the formation of her work. In 1913, the first collection was published, the author of which was Shaginyan Marietta Sergeevna, who was then unknown to anyone. Poems Orientalia, in fact, made her famous.
From 1915 to 1919 Marietta Shaginyan lives in Rostov-on-Don. Here she works as a correspondent for several newspapers at once, such as Trudovaya Rech, Priazovsky Krai, Craft Voice, Black Sea Coast, etc. At the same time, the writer teaches aesthetics and art history at the Rostov Conservatory.
After 1918
Marietta Shaginyan enthusiastically embraced the revolution. She later said that for her this was an event that had a "Christian-mystical character." In 1919, she worked as an instructor for Donnarbraz, and then she was appointed director of the weaving school. In 1920, Shaginyan moved to Petrograd, where for three years he collaborated with the newspaper Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet, until 1948 sheis a special correspondent for the newspapers Pravda and Izvestia. In 1927, Marietta Shaginyan moved to her historical homeland - Armenia, but returned to Moscow in 1931.
In the thirties she graduated from the Planning Academy of the State Planning Commission. Shaginyan spends the war years in the Urals. From here she writes articles for the Pravda newspaper. In 1934, the First Congress of Soviet Writers was held, where Marietta Shaginyan was elected a member of the board.
Creativity
Literary interests of this talented woman covered a variety of areas of life. In her work, a special place is occupied by scientific monographs dedicated to Goethe, Taras Shevchenko, Joseph Myslivechek. It is Shaginyan who is the author of the very first detective Soviet novel "Mess Mend". She was also an outstanding Soviet journalist. Many problematic articles and essays belong to her pen. At the same time, Shaginyan perceived journalism not so much and not only as a means to earn money, but as an opportunity to directly study life.
In her book en titled "Journey to Weimar", for the first time, the peculiarities of her prose style were clearly manifested. Critics believe that it is in this work that one can see the author's amazing ability to reveal the personality of a person and his connection with time through the reality of everyday details. "Journey to Weimar" is the first work of this writer in the form of travel essays - in a genre that Marietta Shaginyan will be faithful to all her life.
Books
She is her first big novelstarted in 1915 and finished in 1918. "Own destiny" is a philosophical book. Shaginyan was both a connoisseur of music and a literary critic; she can safely be called both a novelist and a traveler-explorer. But first of all, Shaginyan was a writer and publicist. She left behind many literary works, such as "Hydrocentral", "Diary of a Moscow Council Deputy", "Urals on the defensive", "Journey through Armenia", etc.
She also wrote four collections of poems, some of which were even included in the school curriculum. For many years, Marietta Sergeevna Shaginyan created literary portraits of those people with whom she was closely acquainted - N. Tikhonov, Khodasevich, Rachmaninov, and also described the life and work of authors dear to her - T. Shevchenko, I. Krylov, Goethe.
Family
Marieta Shaginyan's husband was a philologist and translator from Armenian Yakov Samsonovich Khachatryan. They had a daughter, Mirelle. The girl did not want to follow in the footsteps of her parents. She was more interested in painting. Mirel Yakovlevna was a member of the Union of Artists. Shaginyan left behind a grandson and granddaughter.
Marietta Sergeevna died in 1982 in Moscow. She was ninety-four years old. At the end of her life, she did not leave her small two-room apartment, located on the ground floor of a completely ordinary Moscow residential building. The once popular writer did without luxury and frills. In her apartment there was a standard Soviet set of furniture, ordinary household items. The only luxury in her house was an old out of orderpiano.
Interesting facts
The long life that Marietta Sergeevna Shaginyan lived was filled with small and large historical events, about which the writer always spoke with interest and fervor. A special place in her vast work is occupied by the Leninist theme. Her chronicle novels "The Ulyanov Family", "The First All-Russian" were not always perceived unambiguously. Marietta Shaginyan has been collecting biographical materials about the leader of the proletariat and his relatives for many years.
The first edition of the chronicle book "The Ulyanov Family" was published in 1935 and immediately aroused Stalin's sharp displeasure. The anger of the "father of all peoples" was caused by Shaginyan's publication of the facts that there was Kalmyk blood in Lenin's veins. Moreover, the novel was called a mistake and discussed twice at the presidium of the Union of Writers of the USSR, where it was criticized for showing the leader's family as bourgeois.
