Bolesław Leśmian’s Russian poems

have attracted much attention from Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian philologists—representatives of the three languages in which the poet was fluent—ever since he was rediscovered by his compatriots in the mid-1950s. Born in Warsaw to a family of Polonized Jews, the Lesmans (the spelling of their last name before the poet changed it) relocated to Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, two years after their son’s birth. Kyiv thus became the place where the poet would spend the next twenty-two years of his life, and Russian would become the language in which he would receive his education, first at the city’s oldest gymnasium (1886–1896) and later at the law faculty of St. Vladimir University (1896–1901).

The poet’s Russian works span three

3485 words

Citation: Severina, Yelena. "Russian Poetry". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 July 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=38940, accessed 23 November 2024.]