Word: simonov
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...will talk," said Konstantine Simonov, "but first let me tell you something about myself. Then each of you can tell me something about yourself." Speaking through an interpreter, the Soviet novelist talked of his years as a war correspondent, his career as a writer and editor and of his home and family in Moscow. Placing his hands on his knees, he then turned to one student after another and listened intently as each spoke of his plans, studies and family background...
These introductions, which immediately relaxed the atmosphere and made it almost intimate, are typical of Simonov's continual interest in other people, an honest concern which lies behind the force of his personal charm as well as the strength of much of his writing. One of the most versatile writers in the Soviet Union, an experienced critic and journalist, a poet, novelist and playwright, K. M. Simonov is best known in this country for his great war novel, Days and Nights, and for such lyrical poems as "Wait for Me" and "Do You Remember." During his brief visit...
Although he knows almost no English, Simonov has read a good deal of American literature in translation. While his reading seems to have centered around the more socially conscious novelists of the twenties and thirties--John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis--his favorite contemporary author is Ernest Hemingway. "Hemingway writes about many of the same things I'm concerned with. He shows how war is a tragedy, something terrible and unnatural, and yet something which can bring out what is good and noble in people...
When the conversation turned to Soviet films, Simonov became more animate. Asked how he liked The Cranes Are Flying, Simonov replied that, although he had no argument with it "in principal," he thought it was overdone. "Their suffering was a little too beautiful. It was not real...
Accompanying Simonov were Yokena , a literary scholar in modern American writing: Vera Panova, whose poetry and prose won Stalin Prizes; and Eduardas B. a Lithuanian writer of and children's books...