Information about the author:
Valentin A. Kogonia
Valentin A. Kogonia, DSc in Philology, Professor, Academician at the Academy of Sciences of Abkhazia, Head of the Folklore Department, Abkhazian Institute for Humanities Research named after D.I. Gulia under the Academy of Sciences of Abkhazia, Aidgulara 44, 384900 Sukhumi, Republic of Abkhazia.
E-mail:
Abstract:
This article was written in connection with the 85th anniversary of the People’s Poet of Abkhazia M.T. Lasuria in January 2023. Using memoirs, documents and works of art, the author reproduces a broad panorama of the creative ties and personal contacts of M.T. Lasuria with such contemporary writers as Stanislav Kunyaev, Anatoly Peredreev, Vadim Kozhinov, Yuri Kuznetsov, Alexander Mezhirov, Rimma Kazakova, Alexander Bobrov and others. The outstanding merits of M.T. Lasuria in strengthening the cultural, historical and literary ties of representatives of the creative intelligentsia of Russia and Abkhazia are noted. An example of the long-term and fruitful friendship of the two poets is the relationship between M.T. Lasuria and S.Yu. Kunyaev, to which much attention is rightly paid in the article. Merits of M.T. Lasuria, as one of the best domestic poet-translators and promoter of Russian culture in Abkhazia, was awarded such a state award of the Russian Federation as the Pushkin Medal (2010), the Anton Delvig Literary Prize (2015), and also — for the translation of the full text of the New Testament — the Patriarchal Literary Prize named after Saints Cyril and Methodius (2021).
