Maksim Bogdanovich

Born Nov. 27 (Dec. 9), 1891, in Minsk; died May 25, 1917, in Yalta. Byelorussian poet. Born into a family of a teacher and ethnographer.

In 1896, Bogdanovich’s parents moved to Nizhny Novgorod, where the poet’s father became friendly with A. M. Gorky, who had a great influence on the future poet. From 1908 to 1916, Bogdanovich lived in Yaroslavl, where he graduated from a juridical lycée. From 1916 he worked in Minsk. Bogdanovich began to publish in 1907, and his collection of poems The Garland came out in 1913. Motifs of sadness and loneliness, which the poet persistently overcomes, resound in Bogdanovich’s early poems that appeared during years of reaction. Bogdanovich’s lyricism, closely bound up with folk poetry, is pervaded by revolutionary and national liberation ideas and warmed by a love for the working people. Among his best works are From the Songs of a Byelorussian Peasant (1909), Boundaries (1914), Song of an Emigrant (1914), The Weavers of Slutsk (1912), In the Village (1909–12), and Rain in the Field and Cold (1909). Some of his poems, such as “The Gentleman and the Peasant” (1912) and “Let’s Move More Quickly, Brothers!” (1910), sound an angry protest against the world of violence and social injustice. In these poems the poet seeks an answer to critical social problems and expects radical social transformations. Bogdanovich created beautiful landscapes of his native Byelorussia, and he made a great contribution to the development of poetic culture of the Byelorussian people. He did translations from Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Serbian, and other languages, as well as wrote critical works and journalistic articles, which were published in the Byelorussian newspaper Nasha niva, in the Yaroslavl Golos, in the journal Ukrainskaia zhizn’, and other publications.