Childhood, Adolescence, and Youth in David Samoylov’s Memoiristic Poetry and Prose

David Samoilov grew up in a pre-war Soviet reality of 1920-30s; memories of this time have been coming back to him throughout his whole life and were depicted in his poetry and prosaic memoir. However, a significant number of Samoilov’s memoir texts was not published by him until his decease in 1990. Only then readers were given the access to his retrospective piece. The present study attempts to analyze the dynamics of Samoilov’s representation of childhood, adolescence, and youth in his poetry and memoir prose. By comparing a vast number of poems created under various circumstances of poet’s life with the prose about pre-war period written predominantly in 1970-80s, we are aiming to show how the representation of three stages of growing up has been evolving in Samoilov’s texts throughout his life. Interestingly, regardless of different means of representation of each stage in poetry and prose, despite the chronological gaps between memoir texts, all dissociated elements of Samoilov’s memoir “narrative” about pre-war life compound a story of him becoming a poet.