39 Facts About Alexander Vampilov

Alexander Valentinovich Vampilov was a Soviet playwright.

Alexander Vampilov was executive secretary of an Irkutsk newspaper from 1962 to 1964, and later formed an acquaintance with popular dramatist Aleksei Arbuzov.

Alexander Vampilov married in the early 1970s, and drowned in 1972, while fishing on Lake Baikal.

Aleksandr Valentinovich Alexander Vampilov was born in Cheremkhovo in the Irkutsk Oblast of eastern Siberia on 19 August 1937.

Alexander Vampilov's father, Valentin Nikitich Vampilov, born in 1898, was a Buryat from the nearby village of Alar.

Alexander Vampilov managed at the same time to graduate from the gymnasium and go on to study in the historical-philological department of Irkutsk State University.

Aleksandr Alexander Vampilov never knew his father, because on 17 January 1938, Valentin was arrested on fabricated charges.

Alexander Vampilov was the youngest in the family of three sons and one daughter.

Alexander Vampilov spent his childhood and adolescent years in the town of Kutulik, where the family lived in a room of the teachers' barracks, a log house that in earlier days had been a "forwarding point", the last place that prisoners would spend the night on their way to labor camps.

Alexander Vampilov started school in 1944 and was a good student, but not outstanding.

Alexander Vampilov had a good ear and taught himself to play the guitar and mandolin.

Alexander Vampilov took part both in the school orchestra and, in the university, in an ensemble of folk instruments.

In 1954 Alexander Vampilov graduated from the gymnasium and took the entrance exams for the Department of Historical Philology at the Irkutsk State University.

In 1955 Alexander Vampilov moved to Irkutsk and enrolled in the university.

In 1958, while still a student, Alexander Vampilov published ten stories in several newspapers under the pseudonym Sanin.

Alexander Vampilov was hired by the newspaper Soviet Youth in 1959 and when he graduated from the university a year later, he went to work for the newspaper full-time.

Alexander Vampilov wrote most of these stories while still at the university.

Alexander Vampilov attended advanced courses at the Gorky Literary Institute from 1965 to 1967 and made the rounds of all the theaters of Moscow with a copy of the first version of Farewell in June that initially bore the title The Fair.

Alexander Vampilov was accepted into the Union in February 1966, the year he completed The Elder Son, first titled The Suburb and published Farewell in June.

Alexander Vampilov reached the height of his popularity in the seventies and the first half of the eighties, but the process had begun already in his own lifetime.

Reviews of productions repeatedly note that directors do not quite know how to handle Alexander Vampilov's plays, for they misunderstand the style and content of the works.

In 1970 Alexander Vampilov participated in a seminar for young playwrights in Dubulti and a seminar for young writers in Yalta.

Alexander Vampilov finished the play that same year but never saw it in print, because it was withdrawn from the literary almanac, Siberia in the spring of 1972.

Alexander Vampilov was in Moscow from January until May 1972, working with Tovstonogov on the staging of Farewell in June at the Stanislavsky Theater, and taking part in rehearsals of The Elder Son at the Ermolov Theater.

Alexander Vampilov busied himself with a multitude of petty tasks that he had long postponed, but most importantly, he made arrangements for the first collection of his plays to be published.

Alexander Vampilov decided to treat his invited guests invited to ukha, a soup made with fresh fish.

The picture they paint of Alexander Vampilov is one of a shy, taciturn and thoughtful individual, yet with a sense of irony as well as of fun.

The author and fellow Siberian Dmitri Sergeev states that Alexander Vampilov had the wisdom of a mature person, yet the ingenuousness and inquisitiveness of a child.

Rasputin comments on Alexander Vampilov's expressing himself in a way that compelled others to listen to him and on his enriching conversations by taking a non-standard approach to the subject at hand.

Alexander Vampilov was a cultured person in the best, most respected sense of this word.

Alexander Vampilov was able to listen and he was able to speak precisely, interestingly and dependent on no one, which compelled everyone to listen to him.

Dmitri Sergeev states that Alexander Vampilov looked younger than his years and stood out in any gathering.

Alexander Vampilov's mother writes that he was carried away by music, sports, and the drama circle in school and that he played the guitar and sang.

Biographers note that Alexander Vampilov never parted from his guitar, and Simukov says that Alexander Vampilov played the guitar "strikingly"; others state that he sang excellently.

Alexander Vampilov loved classical music, especially Mozart, but Beethoven and Glinka.

Alexander Vampilov leaned towards the classics as well in his literary tastes.

Alexander Vampilov's mother writes that he read a lot, and she lists Pushkin, Lermontov, Chekhov, Esenin, and Tolstoy among his reading matter.

Dmitri Sergeev tells us that Alexander Vampilov was familiar with a wide range of drama, both Russian and international, and contemporary and historical; and likewise had a broad knowledge of poetry, with a particular fondness for the verses of Tyutchev.

Alexander Vampilov took elements from many sources and combined them with his own, original features to create a memorable body of plays and stories.