Andrey Bitov: biography and works of the writer

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:55

Andrey Bitov - writer of the sixties, one of the founders of postmodernism in Russian literature. Among his works, the most famous novel is Pushkin's House. The article describes the history of writing this book, as well as the biography of Andrei Bitov.

Early years

Andrey Georgievich Bitov was born in 1937 in Leningrad. His father was an architect. Mother is a lawyer. Andrei Bitov began writing at the age of nineteen. In 1954, the future prose writer graduated from a secondary school. It was located on the Fontanka. It was the first school in the northern capital where most of the subjects were taught in English.

After receiving a matriculation certificate, Bitov entered the Mining Institute. As a student, he participated in a literary association led by Gleb Semyonov. In 1957, Bitov was drafted into the army and served in the North. And then he was restored at the institute and graduated in 1962. Andrey Bitov began his career by writing poems. The first prose works were created under the influence of the writer Viktor Golyavkin. Bitov's early storieswere published only in the early nineties. In numerous interviews, Bitov has repeatedly emphasized that he is not a professional writer and does not claim this title.

Artworks

Before perestroika, Andrey Bitov published about ten books and collections of short stories. In 1965 he was admitted to the Writers' Union. "Pushkin House" by Andrey Bitov was published for the first time in the USA. Being one of the brightest representatives of the sixties, the writer raised the most topical issues of his time in his works. His characters were often dissidents or people seeking dissent.

The above novel is of considerable importance in the biography of Andrei Bitov. After this work was published abroad, other books by the author were forbidden to be printed in the Soviet Union. This ban was in effect until 1986. With perestroika, a lot has changed in his life. He finally became a visiting.

Abroad, the writer gave lectures, participated in symposiums. Bitov is known not only as an author of prose works, but also as a human rights activist. He is also one of the founders of the Russian pen club. Since 1991, Andrei Bitov has been the president of this non-governmental human rights organization. Around the same time, the informal association "BaGaZh" was created.

Andrey Bitov's works: "Big Ball", "Armenian Lessons", "Lifestyle", "Travel Book", "Life in windy weather","Announced", "Doctor's Funeral", "Justified Jealousy". It is worth talking about the most famous book by Andrey Bitov.

"Pushkin House": history of creation

The writer began work on the novel in 1964. It went on for over seven years. Andrey Bitov was inspired to write this work by the high-profile case of those years. The era of the so-called thaw, a time of relative calm and freedom of speech, was coming to an end. But this freedom, as it turned out, was illusory. In November 1963, an article appeared in the main Leningrad newspaper under the title "Near-Literary Drone". The author of this article smashed the works of the young poet to smithereens. The parasitic lifestyle of the young writer was emphasized.

In those days, such articles did not appear in the press just like that, especially in "Vecherniy Leningrad". After that, as a rule, arrest followed. And so it happened. The poet was soon arrested, and then sent to a psychiatric hospital, and then into exile. This poet's name was Joseph Brodsky. It was he who inspired Bitov to write a novel that glorified him far beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. But Pushkin's House is not a book about Brodsky. This is a novel about difficult times, when only the strongest managed to live in harmony with their own conscience.

Reviews

Andrey Bitov claimed that Dostoevsky, Proust and Nabokov influenced his work. As for the prototype of the protagonistfrom the novel "Pushkin House", then they can be called Yuri Dombrovsky (Russian poet and prose writer), as well as Mikhail Bakhtin, a scientist whose name is known, perhaps, to every first-year student of the Faculty of Philology.

Critics put the novel "Pushkin's House" on a par with such works as "School for Fools", "Moscow - Petushki", "Walks with Pushkin", written by the brightest representatives of Russian postmodernism. According to critics, the book is one of the most important consequences of the thaw. Andrey Bitov is a laureate of several state awards. He continues to write today, including poetry.

Summary

The main character is a young scientist Lev Odoevtsev. He is a third generation philologist. Once upon a time, back in the thirties, the grandfather of the protagonist was imprisoned under a political article. Many years passed, the repressions began. A neighbor of the Odoevtsevs returned from the camp. And soon the parents remembered their grandfather, who spent many years in prison. The protagonist of the novel will have to get acquainted with his relative, he will understand what he did not even know before. Including learns that his father once abandoned his own father.

The novel is called "Pushkin's House", because after graduating from the Faculty of Philology and defending his dissertation, Odoevtsev gets a job at the Institute of Russian Literature. Here the main events of the work take place.

After the publication of "Pushkin House" in the creative career of Bitov, there was a pause. And it's not at all that he was already morenothing to write about. This book turned out to be so significant that it overshadowed the created stories and novels in the early and late period.