Maksim Bahdanovič

While working at Minsk, he fell ill with tuberculosis. In February 1917, he left for the Black Sea resort city, Yalta, situated in the Crimean peninsula, to receive treatment.

After three months of unsuccessful treatment, he died in Yalta on May 25, 1917, at the age of 25.

A complete volume of his entire poems was released in Belarus, during 1991-95.

Maksim Bahdanovic was born on December 9, 1891, in Minsk, Russian Empire (now Belarus), to school-teacher parents Adam Bahdanovic and Maryja Miakota. His father was a renowned Belarusian ethnographer and folklorist.

Soon after his birth, the family relocated to Hrodna in 1892. However, tragedy struck the family when his mother contracted tuberculosis and died in 1896. He was just five.

His father move to Nizhny Novgorod, where the young Maksim found the history of Belarus very interesting, which became his inspiration for poetry. He started writing poems as a child in Belarusian language.

He got involved with the Revolution of 1905 in the Russian Empire and participated in the strikes staged by his commilitodes.

He started contributing stories to ‘Nasha Niva’ (Our Soil), the first legal Belarusian newspaper launched by the government, in 1906.

He published his first prose piece ‘Muzyka’ (Musician), composed in a folk legend style, in 1907, in Nasha Niva.

Despite the rule followed by Nasha Niva to publish work under a pseudonym, he insisted on using his own name and became the first contributor to do so.

Gradually, he ventured into poetry, writing in both Russian and Belarusian, and getting them published in Nasha Niva in late 1907.

He is considered to be the first poet to launch new forms of lyrical pieces in Belarusian literature.

Before he introduced his style of artistic expression of love for art, Belarusian poetry was a mere representation of literature and rhymed poems on socialist themes and contemporary settings.