Thaindian News

London, April 11 (IANS) Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who became the first human to fly into space 50 years ago, was a “mentally and physically disciplined” man with a passion for poetry, his daughter has revealed.

The cosmonaut was so disciplined that he would take naps of exactly 40 minutes and wake up “on the dot” without an alarm clock, Elena Gagarina told Andrea Rose from the British Council.

“Very often, as he was working hard during the day and came back late at night, he would gather up some friends and they’d go to play hockey in the nearby stadium. They’d play through the night, and sometimes ended up sleeping only about three to four hours. But it didn’t affect his health: he was always extremely physically fit,” she said.

“He didn’t even really understand what it meant to have any internal pain. He would say to us that he couldn’t actually imagine what it must feel like to have something wrong inside.”

“And then, he was also phenomenally calm, and mentally disciplined. For example, if he came home during the day and said he was tired, he would say ‘I have 40 minutes to sleep, I am very tired.’ He then slept for 40 minutes and woke up on the dot, without needing an alarm clock or anyone to wake him.”

Gagarin had a passion for literature, his daughter said in the interview reproduced in The Guardian.

“He liked to talk to us about books and literature, and he liked to recite poetry to us. He knew a lot of poetry by heart, and he liked to teach us to recite it too.”

“He knew Pushkin very well, and Tvardovsky and Ivakovsky - poetry connected with the war. He liked a great deal of literature - Lermontov, and Saint-Exupery, for example. He liked to read to us in a very loud voice. It was too difficult for us to understand at the time, but he still liked doing it.”

“He was curious and interested in everything,” remembers his daughter. “He was part of a generation that had had so few opportunities open to them and then, after the war, they were avid for everything.”

Before boarding the Vostok 1 flight April 12, 1961, for the journey that would propel him into history, Gagarin lied to his wife so that she would not be worried.

“She knew what he wanted to do, and when he was leaving for Baikonur he told her what he was doing,” Gagarina said.

“But he didn’t tell her the actual date. He told her the flight would take place a few days after the real date, so she wouldn’t be worried.”

Gagarin himself was not under any illusion about his mission.

“He wrote a letter for my mother saying that it was likely he wouldn’t return, because the flight was extremely dangerous, and that he wanted her not to remain on her own in that case. But he didn’t give her the letter. She found it by chance among his things when he came back. He hadn’t wanted her to find it, and told her that she should throw it away. But of course, she kept it.”