Pranuza Pauliuk (Pavel Kuzmich, pseudonyms Pauliuk Dabrusha, P. Paliavy, P. Payliukou, Pavel Pranuzau, Pauliuk Pranuzau; born 18.03.1918, Vyleva village, Dobrush district, Gomel region) poet, translator. The member of Belarusian Writer’s Union since 1974.
Background
He was born in the family of a worker. His father Kuzmich Ivanavich (1883 – 1973)
worked in Dobrush Paper Mill and his mother Tatiana Yakimavna (1885 – 1962)
worked in kolkhoz. P. Pranuza attended primary school in the village Vyleva and
from the fifth to the tenth class he studied in the secondary school in
Dobrush.
Education
From 1937 to 1941 he was a student of the Faculty of Philology of
Gomel Pedagogical Institute.
Career
During the Second World War he served in anti-aircraft artillery, he was a deputy commander of guns.
While being in the army composed of Bryansk, Central and First Byelorussian Front participated in
the battles of Kursk, in the liberation of Belarus, Poland and seizure of
Berlin. Being on the front he was in correspondence with Belarusian poet M.
Surnachou whom he knew from his student years (for two years they had lived in
the same dormitory in Gomel). After demobilization he was a teacher of
Belarusian language and literature in pedagogical college in Nyasvizh named
after J. Kolas (1945 – 56), in the secondary school number 3 in Nyasvizh (1956
– 78). Since 1978 he has been on a creative work. He was decorated with the
Order of Glory of the third degree, the Order of the Patriotic War of the
second degree, medals, and the honorable diploma of the Supreme Soviet of the
BSSR.
His works were first published in 1936 in the local newspaper “Stalinets”, then in
“Gomelskaya Prauda” where his poem “the Sun Fell above the Roof” was published
in 1936 under the pseudonym Pauliuk Pranuzau. During the Great Patriotic War
the poems of Pranuza had been published in front and army periodicals, in the
satirical newspaper-poster “Crush the Nazi Vermin”. The author of 16
collections of poetry – “Angered Earth”, “Good morning”, “In a Remote Area”,
“My compatriots”, “When you Believe”, “Uniqueness”, “The hands of a soldier”
and others. He published a book of selected works “Native place”, “Durability”,
“Meetings”, “My autograph”. In poet’s poems is the biography of the generation
of front-line, the youth of which underwent many trials and became more
courageous on the roads of war. They are marked by personal verification,
correlation with the author’s own destiny. Everyday life of the country after
the war, constructive labor of the Belarusian people, glorification of its
heroic feat, loyalty to civic duty, the strength of the moral and ethical
ideals, history and present are the leading motifs of Pranuza’s lyrics. Sincere
confidence lines are addressed to children in his collections “A Good Rain”, “I
Draw Spring”, “Where the Beginning of Spring”, “Spring Telegrams”, “Colors of
Autumn”, “Streamlet Rings”. He translated into Belarusian some works of
Russian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Bulgarian poets. Pranuza’s
poems are set to music by the composer D. Kaminsky and others.