Yevgeny Schwartz. The Fate of the Storyteller in the Age of the Dragon

I write about Yevgeny Schwartz because he spoke about us. About a world where the Dragon is not terrifying, but the habit of living next to him; about a fear that penetrates the soul and becomes the norm; and about an inner freedom that can be preserved even within unfreedom.

Natalia Gromova

Yevgeny Schwartz wrote fairy tales that were far more realistic than Soviet novels. In "The Shadow" and especially in "The Dragon", he prophetically revealed the nature of slavery, that which would later be called "the banality of evil" - the everyday habit of living next to a tyrant. In an era of ruptures and losses, he restored to people their sense of loss, friendship, love, hope, and spoke of them in such a way that it became easier to breathe. In his plays, Schwartz laughed at his deathly frightened contemporaries, while at the same time pitying them, mourning their souls.


Who was he really? A jester or a sage behind the mask of a fool, who, by turning everyday words and meanings upside down, saw the world clearer than anyone. Schwartz belongs to those few artists who managed to carry an inner light through the darkness of their time - and to give people hope for healing.