In these children’s poems — humorous, mischievous, sometimes a little moralizing — the world appears joyful, full of play and harmless confusion, inhabited by unknown animals. The artist Anna Florenskaya, who illustrated the book, is from St. Petersburg, just like the author himself.
In these children’s poems — humorous, mischievous, sometimes a little moralizing — the world appears joyful, full of play and harmless confusion, inhabited by unknown animals. The artist Anna Florenskaya, who illustrated the book, is from St. Petersburg, just like the author himself. Her unique style borders on naive art, as if imitating a child’s drawing, which is probably why her illustrations are no less close and consonant with children than the poet’s poems. Leonid Aronzon (1939–1970) did not publish during his lifetime and died very young. Today, critics call him one of the most significant unofficial poets of the 1960s. A collection of children’s poems is an unexpectedly bright addition to his tragic adult work. “The material of my literature will be the image of paradise,” the poet once wrote; perhaps it was in children’s poems that he most fully approached this goal?
OGI, 72 p.
Daria Rybina