Returned from the Sky

January 14, 2008 11:28 AM

By the time Russian folksinger Venya Drkin (Веня Д’ркин) died of cancer in 1999, he had written over three hundred songs. Love songs, happy songs, angry songs, sad songs. He also sketched pictures: strange, lonely, menacing, redemptive. And wrote folktales. He was only 29.
posted by nasreddin (3 comments total)

Wow. How sad, to die so young.
posted by misha at 12:08 PM on January 14, 2008

Great post, thanks!

In case anyone's thinking that Drkin (Д’ркин) is a mighty strange-looking Russian name, that's because it isn't a Russian name—his real name was Aleksandr Litvinov, but he took the pseudonym at a festival for a joke, and I guess it stuck.
posted by languagehat at 2:41 PM on January 14, 2008

I don't like them all (then again, I don't know that I could say that about many artists really) but some of those drawings are just fantastic, with diverse styles and subjects. Worth the price of admission - now I shall check out the other linkies. Taa nasreddin.
posted by peacay at 7:28 PM on January 14, 2008