Khodasevich, Vladislav Felitsianovich
KHODASEVICH, VLADISLAV FELITSIANOVICH
KHODASEVICH, VLADISLAV FELITSIANOVICH (1886–1939), Russian poet, son of a Russified Pole and of the daughter of J. *Brafman. Khodasevich began to publish verse in 1905, and his first anthology appeared in 1908. Born in Moscow, he emigrated from the U.S.S.R. in 1922 and settled in Paris, where he lived destitute and in poor health. A highly gifted lyric poet in his own right, Khodasevich is also remembered as a translator of Polish, Armenian, and modern Hebrew verse. His appreciation of *Bialik (1934) is probably the best brief essay on the Hebrew poet ever written in Russian. Khodasevich translated many Hebrew poets, most notably Saul *Tchernichowsky, and he published a volume of these translations, Iz yevreyskikh poetov (1921, 19232). He was also coeditor, with L.B. Jaffe, of Yevreyskaya antologiya, an anthology of Hebrew writing brought out in Russia in 1918 by the Safrut publishing house. The foremost Russian émigré poet, Khodasevich remained unknown in the U.S.S.R., where none of his books or translations was allowed to appear or to circulate in the U.S.S.R. after his departure for the West. Literaturnye stati i vospominaniya, a volume of essays and recollections, appeared in New York in 1954, and a modern edition of his poetry in 1961.
bibliography:
N.N. Berberova, The Italics Are Mine (1969); idem, in: Russian Review, 11:2 (1952), 78–85; V.V. Veidle, Poeziya Khodasevicha (1928).
[Maurice Friedberg]