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.
James Clifford was born in 1913 to a family of a bank clerk. James never knew his father—when he was only one year old, John Clifford was conscripted to fight in the First World War, and, in 1916 met his tragic death at Verdun, France. Soon after that, his mother Joanna died of tuberculosis, and young Clifford was fostered by his maternal grandfather, Richard Douglas, a former mechanic in the London dockyard repair shops. The grandfather became the most prominent figure in Clifford’s life and poetry and one of the most mentioned people in the novella. James lovingly recreated the image of that old English craftsman, a man of generous spirit, wit, and joviality, stocky and bearded, having those mellow wrinkles in the corners of the eyes, and often wearing a melancholic smile. Grandfather Rick wasn’t only his whole family but also one of the main sources of artistic inspiration. He, according to the poet, knew many English and Scottish folk songs and shanties, the influence of which is evident in some, especially early, Clifford’s poems. As a teenager, Clifford found himself interested in painting and after high school, he studied for two semesters in a private art college, after which his interest in art disappeared as suddenly as it appeared. However, as it often happens, his time at the college was not a total waste. There Clifford first plunged into the hitherto unknown to him world of artistic bohemia, in an atmosphere of passionate debate, often moving from the field of art to politics. Later, he worked as a draftsman in a construction company in Brighton before he was conscripted in 1940 to meet, just like his father, his tragic fate. Only years after that, his life continued in his poetry, once Vladimir Lifschitz, a Soviet poet, started translating his work.