Benedikt Livshits

Benedikt Konstantinovich Livshits (Russian: Бенеди́кт Константи́нович Ли́вшиц, 24 December 1886 (Old Style)/6 January 1887 (New Style) – 21 September 1938) was a poet and writer of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry, a French–Russian poetry translator.

Portrait of Benedikt Livshits by David Burliuk

Life and career
Livshits (second from right) with friends: Osip Mandelstam, Korney Chukovsky, and Yury Annenkov. Photo 1914

Livshits was born to an assimilated Jewish family in Odessa. He studied law at Novorossia University and then moved to Kiev University, where he graduated in 1912. He was conscripted to the Russian army and served in the 88th Infantry Regiment. In 1914, he was conscripted again and served in the infantry during World War I, being awarded the Cross of St. George.

In 1908, "The Exhibition of Modern Art" was staged in Kublin.[1] This exhibition, which included the works of Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, and other European postimpressionist painters, made a profound impression on the young Livshits.[1] His first poetry was published in the Anthology of Modern Poetry (Kiev) a year later. In 1910 he worked for Sergei Makovsky's symbolist art magazine Apollon.

Together with Wladimir Burliuk, David Burliuk, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Vasily Kamensky he was a member and co-founder of the major Russian Futurist group Hylaea (Russian Gilea). It is said to have been established after Livshits and the Burliuk brothers vacationed at the estate of Count Mordvinov in Chernianka.[2] David Burliuk, Kamensky, and Livshits would form the nucleus of Cubo-Futurism, which became the most influential subdivision of Futurism.[3]

In 1933 he published a book of memoirs, The One and a Half-Eyed Archer, which is considered one of the best histories of Russian Futurism. This work also detailed the cultural discomfort of a fully assimilated Jewish artist in Russia.[4] In 1934, he published a large book of translations from French poetry, From Romantics to Surrealism. An analysis of his translation works noted his tendency to uphold the structure of the material being translated as a whole and to maintain close proximity to the original.[5]

In 1937, Livshits also became a victim of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.[6] He was arrested and summarily executed on 21 September 1938 as an "enemy of the people". His dossier was falsified to state that he died of heart failure on 15 May 1939.[7]

Literary works
  • The Flute of Marsias (1911, printing was destroyed by government censorship).
  • Sun of wolves (Volch'e solntse), 1914
  • The One and a Half-eyed Archer (Polutoraglazyj strelets), 1933[8] - memoirs about the Futurist movement.

Notes
  1. Markov, Vladimir (1968). Russian Futurism: A History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. p. 38.
  2. Berghaus, Günter (2016). 2016. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. p. 251. ISBN 978-3-11-046253-1.
  3. Rann, James (2020). The Unlikely Futurist: Pushkin and the Invention of Originality in Russian Modernism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-299-32810-8.
  4. Livak, Leonid (2010). The Jewish Persona in the European Imagination: A Case of Russian Literature. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. p. 419. ISBN 978-0-8047-7562-5.
  5. Baer, Brian James; Olshanskaya, Natalia (2014). Russian Writers on Translation: An Anthology. Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-64002-8.
  6. Riasanovsky, Nicholas V.; Eekman, Thomas; Struve, Gleb (2021). California Slavic Studies, Volume VIII. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-520-31556-3.
  7. Dich, Z. L. (1994). Распятые: Писатели – жертвы политических репрессий (in Russian). St. Petersburg: Severo-Zapad.
  8. (Harvard Biographies (I-L)) at www.people.fas.harvard.edu
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