Life And Poetry Of James Clifford
a story behind the legend
It has always appeared fascinating to the author, how some people can be forsaken in their homeland and known only to people of other countries wither they had never been, whose language they didn’t speak, whose admiration they would’ve never tasted. Such was James Clifford, an English poet who was only famous in the Soviet Union, which to the author appeared as a meritorious mystery. While in England only a handful of people including his friends read his poems, in the USSR—and now in many post-Soviet countries—Clifford’s works were translated, read and quoted, and they still are. James Clifford doesn’t even have an English Wikipedia page, only a short note in Russian. Nevertheless, he never knew he was famous in the other part of the world and knew no fame in his homeland. He began writing shortly before The Second World War tore Europe apart, and, sadly, he never saw any of his poems published. In 1940, Clifford was conscripted and then did his duty protecting his country in an anti-aircraft battalion near Dover, England, before being transferred to mainland Europe in 1944 where he was killed fighting off a German tank attack in France. All the scarce information the world knows about James Clifford is from his unfinished autobiographical novella and his friends’ memories.
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