Antokolskii, Pavel

Born June 19 (July 1), 1896, in St. Petersburg. Soviet Russian poet. Member of the CPSU since 1943.

Antokol’skii was born into a lawyer’s family and studied at the law department of Moscow University. Beginning in 1915 he worked in E. B. Vakhtangov’s dramatic studio, and he began publishing in 1921. Antokol’skii’s works of the 1920’s are characterized by an interest in crucial historical events (the Great French Revolution of 1848, the Paris Commune) and also by a romantic tone. During the 1930’s, images of Soviet reality began to predominate in Antokol’skii’s poetry. During the Great Patriotic War he wrote patriotic poems and ballads. His narrative poem Son (1943; State Prize of the USSR, 1946) is dedicated to the poet’s son, who was killed at the front. This poem is marked by a taut lyricism and a sincerity in conveying feelings typical of many Soviet people during the war years. The narrative poem In the Alley Behind Arbat Street (1954) encompasses the history of a generation which lived through World War I and became the builder of a new socialist society.

In 1958, Antokol’skii published the collection of verse Workshop and in 1960 the collection The Strength of Vietnam: A Travel Journal. In 1962 the collection High Tension appeared; in 1964, the collection Fourth Dimension. In the poems of recent years he deals with the theme of time’s power over man as well as man’s power over time. In the collection On Pushkin (1960), poems and ballads on Push-kinian themes alternate with “notes in the margins” and with an attempt to analyze individual works (for example, The Bronze Horseman). Antokol’skii published a collection of articles entitled Paths of the Poets (1965), and he translates works by French, Bulgarian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani poets. He has been awarded four orders and several medals.