Benjamin Aisenshtadt (1921-1999) chose the pen name Benjamin Blazhennyi, "Benjamin the Blessed." In Russian the word blazhennyi can mean a freak, a jester, or a saint. The Soviet authorities treated the poet as a fool, a freak, an utterly unpractical person. Needless to say, none of Aizenshtadt’s poems was published until late 1980s. After the war, the poet was not allowed to finish his education because he was not a member of the Communist Party. Moreover, for his anti-social behavior he was from time to time put in a mental institution. Otherwise he worked in a facility for the disabled and took care of his wife, a disabled veteran of WWII. For the last 20 years of his life, he barely left his apartment in Minsk, Belarus. Beginning in the late 1980s, his poems started to appear in periodicals and immediately startled the critics who did not know how to classify them: Blazhennyi did not fit into any school or trend. It was well after the time of so-called perestroika when poets, critics, and publishers frequented his tiny apartment, taking interviews and asking for poems. This activity led to his books being published in Belarus, Russia, and Israel under the pen-name of Benjamin Blazhennyi (the Blessed).
It is notable that St. Augustine is called "Augustine the Blessed" in Russian. Therefore "the blessed" is a saint, the one who communicates with the Divine spirit. Blazhennyi's poetry is full of powerful images: it is both pious and iconoclastic, sacred and profane, tranquil and full of fury.
Benjamin Aisenshtadt was born in 1921 to a Jewish family in the small Byelorussian shtetl Kopys’. His father Michail was an unpractical man as well. As the poet wrote:
My father Michail Aisenshtadt was the biggest fool in town:
He claimed that wolf and lamb had soul.
He claimed that a mosquito and a fly had soul as well
He wore worn-out trousers and never learned to sell.
When a Jew was sorry for a wounded nestling of a jackdaw,
He did not need a store. Why would he need a store?
Before World War II, Benjamin finished one year of a pedagogical college, majoring in history. Since he had poor health, he was not drafted into the army. His family managed to escape to a small village in Gorky oblast (now Nizny Novgorod) where he taught history at a school. He discovered a rich library there untouched by Bolshevik purges, and began copying books into his notebooks. After the war, he visited his favorite poets, Boris Pasternak and Arseny Tarkovsky, in Moscow. Pasternak was reluctant to meet with young emerging poets, perhaps fearing the ungifted who had the nerve to get a reference to publishers from famous authors. After reading Blazhennyi’s poems, however, Pasternak not only welcomed him, but initiated a lifelong friendship and correspondence. Blazhennyi eventually wrote essays and memoirs about Pasternak.
- Ian Probstein
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