ZhZL: Zabolotskii - Mikhailov V.F.

His first book "The Columns" (1929) Nikolai Szabolotsky once and for all approved his name in Russian poetry. Recognized verse theorist and literary critic Y.N.Tynyanov gave the young poet his book with the inscription: "The First Poet of Our Days." But "Pillars" became the only book that N. zabolotskiy managed to compose himself. The poet's pioneering experiments were subjected to harsh ideological criticism. In the future, he published three more collections of poems, heavily curtailed by censorship. Having experienced an unusually dramatic fate (eight years of imprisonment in the Gulag), Nikolai Szabolotsky after a long, forced silence managed to return to poetry and created in the 1940s-1950s - already in the classical manner - dozens of lyrical masterpieces. Connoisseurs of literature during his lifetime put zabolotsky on a par with Tyutchev, Boratinsky. And one of our contemporaries thus defined his place in Russian literature: "Boratynsky - became the greatest poet of the 19th century in the 20th century, zabolotsky - will become the greatest poet of the 20th century in the 21st century."
Valery Mikhailov's book is the first biography in the series "YSL" dedicated to the great Russian poet, the wonderful translator Nikolai Alekseevich zabolotskiy.