Pozner, Vladimir

Autor: Pozner, Vladimir
Rok: 1905-1992

Biogr./Hist. údaje: Francouzský prozaik ruského původu, scénárista, literární kritik.
Zdroj: Autoritní databáze Národní knihovny ČR

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Pozner (Russian, Влади́мир Соломо́нович По́знер, January 5, 1905 in Paris – February 19, 1992 in ibidem) was a French writer and translator of Russian-Jewish descent. His family fled the pogroms to take up residence in France. Pozner expanded on his inherited cultural socialism to associate both in writing and politics with anti-fascist and communist groups in the inter-war period. His writing was important because he made friends with internationally renowned exponents of hardline communism, while rejecting Soviet oppression.Born in Paris to Russian-Jewish parents, who fled the pogroms. His father, was an historian, and an active emancipationist. Solomon Pozner, a comrade of Rosa Luxemburg's group, encouraged participation of Jews in Russian society, where possible. He joined the Society for Artisan Labour, and the Society for the Spread of the Enlightenment. His mother was Esther Siderski, who also joined, was equally motivated to throw off the "spiritual slavery" of assimilation. Many of the intelligentsia, such as Sliozberg and Horace Ginzberg considered themselves Russian citizens, and saw no inconsistency of approach in faithfulness to Judaism with Russian-ness of the "russkie evrei". Ironic the spread of the diaspora becuae it encouraged ideas of emigration and freedom. Jews were called on by socialist writer Hamlakah to "be a man on the streets."A brother, George was born in 1908, later a Professor of Egyptology. The following year an amnesty allowed the family to return to St Petersburg, which in their absence was renamed Petrograd. Pozner studied in Leningrad when he started working as a translator and journalist. On the outbreak of the Great War, Russia's borders were closed, the Jews trapped inside the pale of settlement. Little progress had been made by the Duma on civil and political rights for Jews in the early part of 20th century. The October revolution passed by his windows as a student, as he watched the streets below. A literary group known as 'The Brothers of Serapion' would foregather in his parents apartment in the city to read and discuss poetry. A frequent visitor, Victor Chklovski, Alexandre Blok, Maiakovski, and Akhmtova, the youngest of a famous conclave.In 1921 the westernised Pozner returned to Paris, and began studies at the Sorbonne from 1922, where he met Irene Nemirovsky. He began the first translations of Tolstoy, and Dostoievski, into French; in addition a variety of young Soviet writers too including Isaac Babel, Vsevolod Ivanov, Lev Luntz, Alexei Tolstoi were contemporaries. On graduating he made a perilous journey to Berlin in search of his Russian friends, Maxim Gorki, Chklovski, Maiakovski. Germany remained the only country in Europe that would accept a Soviet passport. He got to know the novels of Boris Pasternak from Elsa Triolet.He married Elisabeth Makovska, a painter and photographer in 1925. They had a daughter Anne-Marie, known as Kissa, born in 1927. A career in journalism was started writing for left wing papers, Regards, Vendredi, Marianne, Messidor, and for the literary review publications, Bifur, Europe, and NRF. One friend he regularly visited was painter and interior-designer, Francis Jourdain, an older man whose work he admired. He published a first collection at Paris in Russian in 1928 Poemes de Circonstances, those being of a Russian-Jew in voluntary exile. The following year he worked on submissions for Trianon, and published a Panorama of Russian Literature. Two years appeared "Doistoievski et romans aventures". He travelled to Italy to visit the exiled communist and critic of Soviet Russia to stay with him on the coast at Sorrento. He became editor and secretary of Commune published by the Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists, run by Paul Vaillant-Couturier, and got to collaborate with Aragon, Nizan, Malraux, Soupault, Andre Gide, Giono, Cartier-Bresson... Pozner worked amongst the majority of these men. He actively engaged in the struggle to rescue refugees fleeing the Nazis, meeting the composer Hanns Eisler, and anti-fascist refugge, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. The writers Anna Seghers, and Ida Liebmann, German-Russian Jewish refugees from the Nazis.He remained an adherent of the Communist party largely on Gorki's advice. He became French director of the Anti-fascist printing press, run by Alex Rado. All at the time when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. In 1934 he set up the first Congress of Soviet writers in Moscow. This marked the last occasion he would see Gorki. He was numbered amongst the French delegation with Aragon, Jean-Richard Bloch, Malraux, Nizan and others. The following year he published his most well-known novel, Tolstoy is Dead which was converted for theatre. Joining others in the cause at the International Congress of Writers in defence of clulture at Paris, with amongst others, Mikhail Koltsov, a severe critic of the soviet bureaucratic state, for which he was executed by Stalin. Shortly after Gorki's death he went travelled to the United States, to which he would return frequently in later life, to research for polemic The Disunited States, published three years later.The Pozner family fled Soviet Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, and Vladimir Pozner became a Communist sympathizer while living in Europe. In 1943 he headed the Russian Section of the film department of the U.S. War Department. Pozner was a frequent contact of Louise Bransten. Vladimir Pozner’s cover name as identified in the Venona project by NSA/FBI analysts is «Platon» («Plato»). Pozner and his family moved to East Berlin and later to Moscow in the early 1950s.A second trip to the United States commenced with Ida in 1938, The Disunited States had been a huge success, received with critical acclaim: a new point of view labelled as a major piece of French literature, later made into a film. After Franco triumphed in Spain, he continued to work for the release of republican prisoners detained without trial, turning his own memoirs into a novel in 1965, L'Espagne mon pemier amour. As Nazi panzers rolled into Paris, June 1940, he left the army, and Paris behind to join his family in Correze. He statyed with Arlette and Renaud de Jouvenel, his best friends. There they met Aragon, the Prevert brothers, Marcel Duhamel, and many other refugees, particularly Spanish republicans. Arriving in Paris, the Gestapo had found his apartment empty. A notorious anti-fascist, militant Jewish communist, he sought asylum in the United States. Leaving for New York, where his wife and family were waiting, he wrote regularly to Gorki, who was his literary agent. Moving to California he stayed at first in Berkeley with Barbara and Haakon Chevalier. Charpentier, the Hollywood director shot "Liberty Ships" at Richmond in the bay of San Francisco. He worked on several films with Berthold Brecht, Jons Ivens, George Sklar, Saika Viertel (starring Greta Garbo), with whom he remained friends. He was nominated for Oscars, most original screenplay, in The Dark Mirror, won by Robert Siodmak. Several novels, Deuil en 24 heures, was about the mass exodus from France in 1940. Leaving for France at the liberation in 1945 his book was released in French and English was immediately acclaimed by Dashiell Hammett, Erskine Caldwell, and Heinrich Mann. From his home in Paris, he began work on Les Gens du Pays, an adaptation of his novel with Marc Allegret. He would not renounce his communist affiliations without receiving an explanation, nor did he return in bad grace. Installed in the family apartment 52 Rue Mazarin, 6th Arondissement, where he lived, until deciding to travel around the world. He made several trips to the United States. On one occasion at least, with Ida, he welcomed his friends who were victims of MacCarthyism: Joe Losey, John Berry, Michael Wilson, he bent his mind to an energetic defence in the press of the Hollywood Hall of Fame, who enlisted other American screen writers onto a black list. he began a long collaboration with Brecht, Eisler, Ivens, Lillian Hellman, and Claude Roy. He submitted the screenplay for Point du Jour to Louis Daquin in 1949. After several years in Hollywood, Pozner wanted to see filming done on location: and he went down into the northern coal mines. Cited as witness for the prosecution in the trial of Kravchenko, he excelled himself as a translator of French and Russian. He travelled a lot during this period, making films in Italy, Germany and Austria in 1950 alone. On his return he published Qui a tue H O Burrell?, a satire upon Pozner's own experiences of the Cold War, and the glacial foreign relations of the United States. Reunited with old friend Roger Vailland, they took the short stories of Guy de Maupassant. Several films followed to critical acclaim under studio supervision. From 1955 he worked for Brecht on Maitre Puntila et son valet, set up by Alberto Cavalcanti. In 1957 the great Russian novelist, Maxim Gorky was celebrated, who since his death in 1936, had been all but forgotten, he had coached Vladimir's precocious talents. Le Lieu du Supplice was a chronicle of the Algerian wars. The book was banned the French military s a security risk. Lever du Rideau was an intimate novel about young love. A friend of Picasso declared "Now! That's a book!" And his editor, Rene Juillard, recalled "Dear friend, you have written a minor classic". He travelled to the Soviet Union for the first time since 1934, to go in search of his Russian friends. His outspoken writing against the war in Algeria, and several other articles, earned him a bomb at his home from OAS. On the same day, 7 Feb 1962, several attempts, including one at Malraux's address, where a four-year-old girl was wounded. There were riots and protests in Paris. On the Metro at Charonne, the Prefect of Police was discharged with 9 deaths. For a long time in a deep coma, Pozner remained on a respirator. He vowed to write voraciously in search of the truth. In 1967 he published Mille et un Jours in the footsteps of a long journey through the Soviet Union, Europe and Asia. Some of his novels were books based on war activity and French Resistance, his works also show his opinions against fascism and nuclear weapons. He made friends with Brecht, Buñuel, Chagall, Oppenheimer and Picasso, and he wrote about the World War II, Spanish Civil War or Algerian War. A capable raconteur, in 1972 Vladimir Pozner se Souvient retold to his friends that included Buñuel, Chaplin, Oppenheimer, and Picasso, his mother acting as hostess, many stories over dinner. This was followed by a strange science-fiction novel, Mal de Lune. Pozner dedicated it to his granddaughter "for her to take care." He released a volume in 1977 comprising five novels, with an important preface by Pierre-Jean Remy. In collaboration with Jean Aurenche he released the film La Dame aux camellias starring Isabelle Huppert.In August, 2014, Seven Stories Press published Disunited States, a collection of Pozner's writing from his travels through the United States in the 1930s. Pozner’s son, Vladimir Vladimirovich Pozner, spoke internationally on behalf of Soviet agencies, and, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, came to be treated in the U.S., under the name Vladimir Posner (having Anglicized the surname), as an independent journalist.