N. Rubtsov and V. Rasputin

Nikolai Mikhailovich Rubtsov (1936–1971) was born in the settlement of Yemetsk in the Arkhangelsk region. In his poem «Детство» he wrote about finding himself in an orphanage during the war. He wrote poems from the age of six and dreamed of the sea from childhood, but after the seven-year school the fifteen-year-old was not accepted into a naval school and entered a forestry technical school. In 1954, on holiday, he was in Tashkent and became friends with Sayyor: the Uzbek poet liked the melodious, heartfelt poems of the northerner very much and offered to print them in a local newspaper. They later met again in Moscow, at the Literary Institute. He served in the Northern Fleet, finished a school for working youth in Leningrad and worked in a factory. He loved Pushkin, Tyutchev and Yesenin, felt a tender love for his native land; returning to the north, he wrote nearly forty poems in a month and a half. Contemporaries were struck by the melodiousness of his verse and its tone of reflection. Main motifs: homeland, nature, soul; favourite images: light, star, little light. His best poems are in the collection «Звезда полей». «Звезда полей» (1964): in the frozen mist the star of the fields stops and looks into an ice-hole; it is midnight, sleep wraps the homeland. In hard moments the poet remembers how quietly the star burns beyond the hill over the autumn gold and the winter silver. It burns for all the people of the earth, touching distant cities, but here it rises brighter and fuller. The poet is happy as long as it burns. Devices: epithets («заледенелая мгла», «золото осеннее», «серебро зимнее»), personification (the star looks, stops), repetition («горит, горит»). “Quiet lyric” is poetry that does not shout, that expresses love of nature and homeland in simple words.