Georgy Adamovich

Georgy Viktorovich Adamovich (; – 21 February 1972) was a Russian poet of the acmeist school, and a literary critic, translator and memoirist. He also lectured on Russian literature at universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. Georgy spent the first nine years of his life in Moscow. "We were a military family; two of my brothers were army officers. My dad said of me, if the family legend is to be believed: "This boy's got nothing officer-like in him- let him be a civilian. And so it was to be," Adamovich later remembered. After his father's death the family moved to Saint Petersburg where Georgy joined the First Gymnasium. His second book of poetry, Purgatory (Чистилище, 1922) began with a tribute to Gumilyov whom the young poet now regarded as his mentor. Gumilyov's fellow Acmeist, Anna Akhmatova frequently visited Adamovich's sister Tanya at their home. Adamovich often met Akhmatova at the Saint Petersburg nightclub "The Stray Dog" (Бродячая Собака), a place where artists and writers would gather to discuss art and literature, socialize, or listen to the recitation of new poems by Akhmatova and other poets including Konstantin Balmont, Sergei Yesenin, and Igor Severyanin. Adamovich graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology at Saint Petersburg State University in 1917.

After the 1917 Revolution Adamovich worked for The World Literature publishing house (founded by Maxim Gorky in 1919), translating the works of Charles Baudelaire, Voltaire, José-Maria de Heredia, Lord Byron and Thomas Moore. In 1921-22 he attended the literary gatherings and poetry meetings held at The House of Art (Дом искусств), formerly the mansion of a wealthy Saint Petersburg merchant. In the thirties Adamovich was widely regarded as 'the leading Russian literary critic abroad', working for such magazines as Tchisla (Numbers) and Vstrechi (Meetings), of which he was the editor for a time. He almost stopped writing poetry and yet is credited as a major force behind the Paris Note (Парижская Нота), a school of Russian poetry in exile holding for its main principles "total sincerity in depicting the anguish of the human soul" and "demonstrating the naked truth". Georgy Fedotov called Adamovich, with his 'truth-seeking' paradigm, an 'ascetic wanderer'.

Later life The Autumn of 1939 saw Adamovich fighting the Nazis as a volunteer in the French army. He was interned after the army's defeat.

Adamovich continued to translate French literature into Russian including the works of Jean Cocteau, Saint-John Perse and Albert Camus (The Stranger). He lectured on Russian literature at the University of Manchester from 1950 to 1960, and for one semester (1960–61) at the University of Oxford. In 1971 he travelled to the United States, lecturing at Harvard University, Yale University, and New York University. In 1967 his last book of poetry Unity (Единство) was published. It coincided with the release of Comments (Комментарии), a vast collection of critical essays. Georgy Adamovich died on February 21, 1972, in Nice, France.

Career as a critic Adamovich was one of the most important emigre critics. His main critical stance centered on simplicity. He rejected experimental poetry and recommended eschatological subject matter such as truth, loneliness, suffering, and death. He admired the works of Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Alexander Blok, and Leo Tolstoy (although he did not like Tolstoy's moral preaching). He disliked Afanasy Fet and Anton Chekhov (especially his plays), whose portrayals of the dullness and mediocrity of everyday life obscured, in Adamovich's opinion, the questions of eternal significance.

Adamovich saw Fyodor Dostoyevsky as a dangerous metaphysical writer, and disapproved of Marina Tsvetaeva's "loudness" and her experimentation in rhythm, meter, and rhyme. He severely criticised Boris Pasternak's poems from Doctor Zhivago. His sceptical views of poetry and writing resembled those of his fellow critic Mark Aldanov. Adamovich was highly appreciative of the musical qualities of Blok's poems and those of Georgy Ivanov. He expressed these views in his meetings with younger poets, and in his critical essays.

English translations Poems and "The Impossibility of Poetry" (essay), from A Russian Cultural Revival, University of Tennessee Press, 1981.