Years of life of Chukovsky. Honorary titles and awards
(March 19 (31), 1882, St. Petersburg - October 28, 1969, Kuntsevo, at that time already within Moscow)
en.wikipedia.org
Biography
Origin
Nikolai Korneychukov was born on March 31, 1882 in St. Petersburg. The frequently occurring date of his birth, April 1, appeared due to an error when switching to a new style(13 days added, not 12, as it should have been for the 19th century).
Writer long years suffered from being “illegitimate.” His father was Emmanuel Solomonovich Levenson, in whose family Korney Chukovsky’s mother, Poltava peasant Ekaterina Osipovna Korneychuk, lived as a servant.
The father left them, and the mother moved to Odessa. There the boy was sent to a gymnasium, but in the fifth grade he was expelled due to his low origin. He described these events in his autobiographical story “The Silver Coat of Arms.”
The patronymic “Ivanovich” was given to Nikolai by his godfather. From the beginning of Korneychukov’s literary activity, for a long time burdened by his illegitimacy (as can be seen from his diary of the 1920s), he used the pseudonym “Korney Chukovsky,” which was later joined by a fictitious patronymic, “Ivanovich.” After the revolution, the combination “Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky” became his real name, patronymic and surname. [source not specified 303 days]
His children - Nikolai, Lydia, Boris and Maria (Murochka), who died in childhood, to whom many of their father's children's poems are dedicated - bore (at least after the revolution) the surname Chukovsky and the patronymic Korneevich / Korneevna. [source not specified 303 days] Portrait of Korney Chukovsky brushes by Ilya Repin, 1910
Journalistic activity before the revolution
Since 1901, Chukovsky began writing articles in Odessa News. Chukovsky was introduced to literature by his close friend at school, journalist Vladimir Jabotinsky, who later became an outstanding political figure in the Zionist movement. Jabotinsky was also the groom's guarantor at the wedding of Chukovsky and Maria Borisovna Goldfeld.
Then in 1903 Chukovsky was sent as a correspondent to London, where he became thoroughly acquainted with English literature.
Returning to Russia during the 1905 revolution, Chukovsky was captivated by revolutionary events, visited the battleship Potemkin, and began publishing the satirical magazine Signal in St. Petersburg. Among the magazine's authors were such famous writers as Kuprin, Fyodor Sologub and Teffi. After the fourth issue, he was arrested for lese majeste. Fortunately for Korney Ivanovich, he was defended by the famous lawyer Gruzenberg, who achieved an acquittal.
In 1906, Korney Ivanovich arrived in the Finnish town of Kuokkala (now Repino, Leningrad region), where he became close acquaintances with the artist Ilya Repin and the writer Korolenko. It was Chukovsky who convinced Repin to take his writing seriously and prepare a book of memoirs, “Distant Close.” Chukovsky lived in Kuokkala for about 10 years. From the combination of the words Chukovsky and Kuokkala, “Chukokkala” (invented by Repin) is formed - the name of the handwritten humorous almanac that Korney Ivanovich led to last days own life.
In 1907, Chukovsky published translations of Walt Whitman. The book became popular, which increased Chukovsky's fame in the literary community. Chukovsky becomes an influential critic, trashes tabloid literature (articles about Anastasia Verbitskaya, Lydia Charskaya, “Nat Pinkerton”, etc.), wittily defends futurists - both in articles and in public lectures - from the attacks of traditional criticism (he met Mayakovsky in Kuokkala and later became friends with him), although the futurists themselves are not always grateful to him for this; develops his own recognizable style (reconstruction of the psychological appearance of the writer based on numerous quotes from him).
The unique photograph presented here from 1914 deserves a few special words. It has its own separate history, rich famous names and coincidences...
Yuri Annenkov, a famous book illustrator and portrait painter, a man who seemed to know everyone and everything in the literary and artistic world of pre-revolutionary Petrograd, left many living testimonies about the people of this era. Remembering, in 1965, during a lecture at Oxford University, about his last meeting with Anna Akhmatova, Yuri Annenkov told the story of this photograph, which she gave him. The photo was taken in the first days of the 1914 war.
“One of these days, knowing that mobilized people would be walking along Nevsky Prospekt, Korney Chukovsky and I decided to go to this main street. There, quite by chance, Osip Mandelstam met and joined us... When the mobilized began to pass through, not yet in military uniform, with bundles on his shoulders, then suddenly the poet Benedikt Livshits came out from their ranks, also with a bundle, and ran up to us. We began to hug him, shake his hands, when an unfamiliar photographer approached us and asked permission to photograph us. We took each other's hands and were photographed like that..."
- St. Petersburg. Capital of the Russian Empire. Faces of Russia. St. Petersburg 1993.
Annenkov's story coincides with the photograph down to the smallest details... However, something remains beyond the scope of his story. And first of all, the unknown photographer turned out to be Karl Bulla “himself”, from whose workshop this photograph subsequently became widespread.
Of the four bright creative people presented in the picture, only two died of natural causes in the late 60s and early 70s, having lived to a ripe old age: Korney Chukovsky, the only one who remained in the USSR, and Annenkov himself, who survived in exile. Osip Mandelstam and Benedikt Livshits were brutally murdered by their fellow citizens during Stalin's repressions. Osip Mandelstam, in the later words of Academician Shklovsky, “this strange... difficult... touching... and brilliant man,” is 23 years old in the photograph. Just a year ago, the St. Petersburg publishing house "Akme" published it poetry collection"Stone". Since the first publication in 1907 in the journal of the Tenishevsky Commercial School, a long way has been passed: classes French literature at the University of St. Petersburg, acquaintance with Vyacheslav Ivanov and Innokenty Annensky, new literary communication - poets of the Apollo magazine circle... A little older than Mandelstam - the poet and translator Benedikt Livshits, who entered literature with a group of futurists, who in the photo is already sitting baldly shaved and with a deliberately made a brave face, a man leaving for the front. He still does not know whether he will survive after the First World War, where he will be wounded and receive the St. George Cross... Just like Mandelstam, Benedict Livshits was illegally repressed in the 30s and died in the camps in 1939.
In 1916, Chukovsky and a delegation from the State Duma visited England again. In 1917, Patterson’s book “With the Jewish Detachment at Gallipoli” (about the Jewish Legion in the British Army) was published, edited and with a foreword by Chukovsky.
After the revolution, Chukovsky continued to engage in criticism, publishing his two most famous books about the work of his contemporaries - “The Book about Alexander Blok” (“Alexander Blok as a Man and Poet”) and “Akhmatova and Mayakovsky.” The circumstances of the Soviet era turned out to be ungrateful for critical activity, and Chukovsky had to “bury” this talent of his, which he later regretted.
Literary criticism
Since 1917, Chukovsky sat down to work for many years on Nekrasov, his favorite poet. Through his efforts, the first Soviet collection of Nekrasov’s poems was published. Chukovsky completed work on it only in 1926, having revised a lot of manuscripts and provided the texts with scientific comments.
In addition to Nekrasov, Chukovsky studied the biography and work of a number of other writers of the 19th century (Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Sleptsov), and participated in the preparation of text and editing of many publications. Chukovsky considered Chekhov to be the writer closest to himself in spirit.
Children's poems
The passion for children's literature, which made Chukovsky famous, began relatively late, when he was already a famous critic. In 1916, Chukovsky compiled the collection “Yolka” and wrote his first fairy tale “Crocodile”.
In 1923 his famous fairy tales “Moidodyr” and “Cockroach” were published.
Chukovsky had another passion in his life - studying the psyche of children and how they master speech. He recorded his observations of children and their verbal creativity in the book “From Two to Five” in 1933.
“All my other works are overshadowed to such an extent by my children’s fairy tales that in the minds of many readers, except for “Moidodyrs” and “Mukh-Tsokotukh”, I wrote nothing at all.”
The persecution of Chukovsky in the 1930s
Chukovsky's children's poems were subjected to severe persecution during the Stalinist era, although it is known that Stalin himself repeatedly quoted “The Cockroach.”[source not specified 303 days] The initiator of the persecution was N.K. Krupskaya, and inadequate criticism also came from Agnia Barto. Among the party critics of the editors, even the term “Chukovism” arose. Chukovsky took it upon himself to write an orthodox Soviet work for children, “Merry Collective Farm,” but did not do it. The 1930s were marked by two personal tragedies for Chukovsky: in 1931, his daughter Murochka died after a serious illness, and in 1938, the husband of his daughter Lydia, physicist Matvey Bronstein, was shot (the writer learned about the death of his son-in-law only after two years of trouble in the authorities).
Other works
In the 1930s Chukovsky deals a lot with the theory of literary translation (The Art of Translation, 1936, was republished before the start of the war, in 1941, under the title High art") and actual translations into Russian (M. Twain, O. Wilde, R. Kipling, etc., including in the form of “retellings” for children).
He begins to write memoirs, which he worked on until the end of his life (“Contemporaries” in the “ZhZL” series).
Chukovsky and the Bible for children
In the 1960s, K. Chukovsky started retelling the Bible for children. He attracted writers and literary figures to this project and carefully edited their work. The project itself was very difficult due to the anti-religious position Soviet power. A book called " Tower of Babel and other ancient legends" was published by the publishing house "Children's Literature" in 1968. However, the entire circulation was destroyed by the authorities. The first book publication available to the reader took place in 1990. In 2001, the publishing houses “Rosman” and “Dragonfly” began publishing the book under the title “The Tower of Babel and Other Biblical Legends.”
Last years
IN last years Chukovsky was a popular favorite, a laureate of a number of state prizes and orders, but at the same time maintained contacts with dissidents (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Brodsky, the Litvinovs; his daughter Lydia was also a prominent human rights activist). At his dacha in Peredelkino, where he lived permanently in recent years, he organized meetings with local children, talked with them, read poetry, and invited famous people, famous pilots, artists, writers, and poets to meetings. Peredelkino children, who have long since become adults, still remember these childhood gatherings at Chukovsky’s dacha.
Korney Ivanovich died on October 28, 1969 from viral hepatitis. At the dacha in Peredelkino, where the writer lived most life, his museum now operates.
From the memoirs of Yu. G. Oksman:
Lidia Korneevna Chukovskaya submitted in advance to the Board of the Moscow branch of the Writers' Union a list of those whom her father asked not to invite to the funeral. This is probably why Ark is not visible. Vasilyev and other Black Hundreds from literature. Very few Muscovites came to say goodbye: there was not a single line in the newspapers about the upcoming funeral service. There are few people, but, as at the funeral of Ehrenburg, Paustovsky, the police - darkness. In addition to uniforms, there are many “boys” in civilian clothes, with gloomy, contemptuous faces. The boys began by cordoning off the chairs in the hall, not allowing anyone to linger or sit down. A seriously ill Shostakovich came. In the lobby he was not allowed to take off his coat. It was forbidden to sit in a chair in the hall. There was a scandal. Civil funeral service. The stuttering S. Mikhalkov utters pompous words that do not fit in with his indifferent, even devil-may-care intonation: “From the Union of Writers of the USSR...”, “From the Union of Writers of the RSFSR...”, “From the publishing house Children’s Literature...”, “From the Ministry education and academy pedagogical sciences..." All this is pronounced with stupid significance, with which, probably, the doormen of the last century, during the departure of guests, called for the carriage of Count such-and-such and Prince such-and-such. Who are we burying, finally? The official bonzu or the cheerful and mocking clever Korney? A. Barto rattled off her “lesson.” Cassil performed a complex verbal pirouette to make his listeners understand how personally close he was to the deceased. And only L. Panteleev, breaking the blockade of officialdom, clumsily and sadly said a few words about the civilian face of Chukovsky. Relatives of Korney Ivanovich asked L. Kabo to speak, but when in a crowded room she sat down at the table to sketch out the text of her speech, KGB General Ilyin (in the world - secretary for organizational issues of the Moscow Writers' Organization) approached her and correctly but firmly told her, that she won’t be allowed to perform..
He was buried there, in the cemetery in Peredelkino.
Family
Wife (since May 26, 1903) - Maria Borisovna Chukovskaya (nee Maria Aron-Berovna Goldfeld, 1880-1955). Daughter of accountant Aron-Ber Ruvimovich Goldfeld and housewife Tuba (Tauba) Oizerovna Goldfeld.
The son is a poet, writer and translator Nikolai Korneevich Chukovsky (1904-1965). His wife is translator Marina Nikolaevna Chukovskaya (1905-1993).
Daughter - writer Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya (1907-1996). Her first husband was the literary critic and literary historian Caesar Samoilovich Volpe (1904-1941), her second was the physicist and popularizer of science Matvey Petrovich Bronstein (1906-1938).
Granddaughter - literary critic, chemist Elena Tsesarevna Chukovskaya (born 1931).
Daughter - Maria Korneevna Chukovskaya (1920-1931), the heroine of children's poems and father's stories.
Grandson - cinematographer Evgeny Borisovich Chukovsky (born 1937).
Nephew - mathematician Vladimir Abramovich Rokhlin (1919-1984).
Awards
Chukovsky was awarded the Order of Lenin (1957), three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor, as well as medals. In 1962, he was awarded the Lenin Prize in the USSR, and in Great Britain he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Literature Honoris causa from the University of Oxford.
List of works
Fairy tales
Aibolit (1929)
English folk songs
Barmaley (1925)
Stolen sun
Crocodile (1916)
Moidodyr (1923)
Fly-Tsokotukha (1924)
Let's defeat Barmaley (1944)
The Adventures of Bibigon
Confusion
Kingdom of Dogs (1912)
Cockroach (1921)
Telephone (1926)
Toptygin and Lisa
Toptygin and Luna
Fedorino grief (1926)
Chick
What did Mura do when they read the fairy tale “The Miracle Tree” to her?
Miracle tree
Adventures of a white mouse
Poems for children
Glutton
Elephant reads
Zakalyaka
Piglet
Hedgehogs laugh
Sandwich
Fedotka
Turtle
Pigs
Garden
Song about poor boots
camel
Tadpoles
Bebeka
Joy
Great-great-great-grandchildren
Christmas tree
Fly in the bath
Stories
Solar
Silver coat of arms
Works on translation
Principles of Literary Translation (1919, 1920)
The Art of Translation (1930, 1936)
High Art (1941, 1964, 1966)
Preschool education
From two to five
Memories
Memories of Repin
Yuri Tynyanov
Boris Zhitkov
Irakli Andronikov
Articles
Alive as life
To the eternally youthful question
The story of my "Aibolit"
How was “Tsokotukha Fly” written?
Confessions of an old storyteller
Chukokkala page
About Sherlock Holmes
Hospital No. 11
Memory! The greatest gift of God, and she is also the greatest punishment from God, if memories are not in harmony with conscience. But the usual torment of nostalgia is sweet, but still torment. Who among us has not suffered from the forever lost days of a sunny (for some reason certainly sunny!) childhood? In search of a unique feeling of the newness of the world, we return to our large and small “meccas” - to touch, to fall, to be cleansed, to be reborn...
But there are places of pilgrimage special kind. We were not born here, did not grow up, were not baptized. But once we touched here something incredibly real, almost the Truth, and since then we have included these places in the Chosen, erecting temples there, visible only to us, chapels or temples, finally... We surround them with our spiritual field, leave our decoys - signs - that, like antennas, connect us. They unite us, no matter how far and how long we would be separated - both in time and in space. And the places of pilgrimage, in response, surround us with their fields and include us in their egregor. This is enough for a while. But the moment comes when it is necessary to appear in person (if “the mountain does not come to Mohammed”) - with all your being - both spiritual and physical. To appear to feed each other with energy unknown to our physicists, which is without a doubt akin to the energy of high love.
From my childhood, from the Ural village of Pisanskoye, where my brothers and I were enthusiastically carried away by the literary game, bridges stretched to Moscow, to the well-known writer's nest - Peredelkino. It has become a common literary joke that writers write in Moscow and then rework their works here in their dachas.
I visited here for the first time at the very beginning of sixty-five. We began a correspondence with Pioneer magazine. Then it was headed by Lydia Ilyina, the sister of Samuil Marshak. She gathered in the magazine not only creative, but also pedagogically gifted people who, without silver, selflessly searched for young talents. “Pioneer” then published our selection and - lo and behold! – the editors of the magazine invited my brothers and I to the capital, organizing a wonderful creative vacation for the little guests.
There were incredibly many impressions.
Moscow itself is fiery, flowing like lava. Moscow – with its unique metro smell. Taxi, ice cream parlour, elevator in a multi-story hotel! Fluorescent lamps! Wooden beds at last! It doesn’t matter that due to my youth I was not allowed into Sovremennik - to see “The Naked King” with Evstigneev in leading role. But I already knew where at the Ploshchad Revolyutsii station I could go up to the bronze statue of a sailor and pull the Mauser. The huge Mauser was moving! And at the Diafilm studio we were completely received as respected authors, and in the showroom they showed a completely new film - a film based on our poems. The miracles continued! During the show, actress Rina Zelyonaya, who knew us in absentia, appeared, called us by name, and said which of our poems she liked best. But we were waiting for the main event - a trip to Peredelkino. Luckily, no one was going to deprive me of it.
And now we are going to Peredelkino. The train - fabulously fast, as it seemed to me then - crosses the fields near Moscow. On the doors of the carriage there are new inscriptions for us: “Don’t lean, the doors open automatically!” Unknown clever people scratched some letters. We got some pretty funny slogans, where we were asked to “don’t loiter”, otherwise, they say, “the doors open automatically”...
“walkers” to grandfather Korney - the Pavlov brothers: Alexander (15 years old), Vladimir (12 years old), Oleg (10 years old) - photograph from 1964
It gets dark early, there is a buzzing blue darkness outside the windows. We, unnoticed by ourselves, enter another, fabulous world unknown to us. The approaching Peredelkino, not yet familiar, seems to us something like the magical Berendeyevsky forest. And of course there is chief wizard. This is the man who invited us to visit his dacha. This is truly a storyteller, the most famous children's writer Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky.
Unfortunately, I was not lucky enough to visit Chukovsky at the stake during his lifetime. But I talked to him to my heart’s content! And many years later I saw one of the last bonfires burning in memory of the Storyteller. Near that fire there were children's writers, there were famous actors and musicians. Some read poetry, others sang songs with the children, but, of course, Korney Ivanovich invisibly remained the main character and host of the holiday. The entrance to the fire was a pine cone - as a result, a huge mountain of cones stood in the middle of the clearing.
Autograph (Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky) of the poet and writer, quoted in Oleg Pavlov's essay
I can imagine how Korney Ivanovich appeared here one day in front of the guests - tall, tall, with a big kind nose, wearing a long headdress Indian chief from beautiful feathers. The guys - and then many played Indians - probably greeted Chukovsky with a deafening scream of admiration. And Korney Ivanovich must have stood in front of the fire, raised his hands to the sky - and everyone did the same. Then he took the hands of the nearest boys, and they all joined hands and danced around the fire, like real Indians. And then everyone - and Chukovsky too - threw a cone into the fire, as a tribute to the fiery spirit.
I first saw this Indian headdress in a photo in Pionerskaya Pravda. This is how the Americans thanked our storyteller during his trip to the States. Then I saw him with my own eyes - Korney Ivanovich was not too lazy to retire to the next room and suddenly appear in front of his guests in this stunning, multi-colored feather, long - almost to the toes - hat of the leader of the Redskins...
Half-lit snowy paths led us to the house where Korney Ivanovich lived. There, nearby, stood the building of his library. He gave it to the children, and the children gratefully came and went here - both from Peredelkino itself and from Moscow.
Chukovsky was not at the dacha - he went to see friends for a while - to a rest house for writers. We went to meet him and found him already dressed in the lobby. Seeing us, Korney Ivanovich immediately said goodbye to his interlocutor and began to get to know us. He was witty and organic, and shone with cordiality.
He twirled the cane in his hand and kept repeating: “When I was young, when I was only eighty, I did this much better!”
Then he suddenly raised his finger to his lips and exclaimed conspiratorially:
Handwritten almanac by Korney Chukovsky" (Russian Way Publishing House, Moscow, 2006)
"You see that one funny man What's chopping wood behind the fence? This is Valentin Petrovich Kataev! Watch and remember."
We approached the dacha easily talking, like old acquaintances.
And there was tea with a choice of four types of jam (our tastes unexpectedly coincided - Korn Ivanovich and I chose blueberry), conversations about literature, reading poetry. That evening I learned for the first time that the children's writer Chukovsky also writes for adults. He not only listened, but also read himself—translations, it seems. I read and was interested in our opinion.
When it was my turn, I read the beginning of one of the not so successful poems (but, I beg your pardon, I was only ten!):
Wooden house
The log house lay on the log house,
Who lives without a mother,
I found shelter in it.
But one kitten -
They call it Funtik -
Didn't find it in that house
A haven for yourself.
Musya regretted -
Funtika took it,
And, pray tell,
Accepted into the family...
“The good girl Musya,” noted Chukovsky, “felt sorry for the kitten...
Imagine his surprise that Musya was not a girl at all, but also a cat, a citizen of a kitten republic imagined by us, brothers, headed by a tsar for some reason. Further more. We surprised the storyteller with our fairy-tale countries– Kotyatskaya, United Country of Animals, free city of Pavlograd...
Korney Ivanovich accepted the countries we had invented with interest, asked to tell us more about them, and then suddenly told his story. In his youth, while vacationing in the Finnish resort of Kuokkala with friends, he suggested a game of a certain fictional republic. Friends supported the game, the country was named Chukokkala, and the instigator himself was declared president. When they parted, they gave Korney Ivanovich a knife with an engraving - “To the President of the country Alexander Peliander.” On the Russian border, the knife caught the eye of customs officers, and the word “president” and the suspiciously Greek name forced Chukovsky to have a long explanation with imperial officials who did not understand humor.
“So,” the narrator summed up the moral, “be careful with imaginary countries.” This is a dangerous business! - and he laughs.
At the end of the evening, the host gave us a book of his fairy tales, providing it with an inscription that only a person who knows how to subtly ironize (and at himself first of all) is capable of - “To the poetic family of the Pavlovs from their humble colleague. With deep respect, Korney Chukovsky."
I have lost a lot in life. No postcards from Chukovsky have survived, and there is not a single copy of our filmstrip. But that book still stands on my shelf today. And my children, and now grandchildren, treat her with deep respect...
On other, later visits to Peredelkino, I more than once had the opportunity to stand silently over the graves of Korney Ivanovich and Boris Leonidovich. I found their mounds by the three pine trees that were noticeable from afar. However, then there were only two of them left. And trees do not last forever... Of course, I have no personal impressions about the great Pasternak - he died long before our pioneer visit to Peredelkino. But there are these lines:
Landmark three pines
at the Peredelkino cemetery -
their golden rhizomes
intertwine your dreams...
There, under the pine tree, Parsnip -
in a coffin,
like a wooden prism...
In the collective farm field of realism
he was a most wonderful weed.
Subject to bullying and weeding,
he stood in his native land -
and addressed to descendants,
the candle was burning on the table.
The candle burned - he created -
And, opening the curtains of darkness,
Shakespeare with poems by Pasternak
I spoke to all over Russia.
And through words, words, words
silent snowy peak
a question arose that was unsolvable
by majority vote.
The candle didn't burn down,
when it's over dark blood
from an orphaned table
carried to the head.
Immortal, like the poet himself,
it burns with Sunday willow,
no poetic hyperbole
to all limits
sowing light.
Once, together with a friend, Timofey Vetoshkin, we visited the poet Arseny Tarkovsky here in Peredelkino. I was like an older brother to Timofey - both in literature and in life. He came to the literary association of Chrysostom as a seventeen-year-old big-lipped boy, reciting Mayakovsky with a burr and with passion. He brought kilometer-long cosmic-philosophical poems.
Then, after the army, he went to a duel with Moscow. The fight dragged on for the rest of my life. During one of his periods of crisis, I found myself passing through the capital and decided to shake Tim up with a trip to Peredelkino, to see Tarkovsky. Arseny Alexandrovich was his favorite poet.
“We don’t know each other,” Timofey timidly insisted, but soon gave in with obvious curiosity.
The poet came down to us from the steps of the Writers' Rest House, and it seemed as if from heavenly heights, leaning on one crutch. Smiling as if he were an old acquaintance, he sat down on the bench. He looked very sick and tired. It was a difficult time for the poet - his son lived abroad and was in unspoken disgrace. Arseny Aleksandrovich asked the guests for a smoke - apparently, due to illness, they tried to separate him from tobacco and, apparently, without success. Tarkovsky himself invited us to read poetry. He listened very carefully, and when Timofey read, he suddenly burst into tears and kissed him. Tim did not understand then what this meant - whether the old poet, whom Tsvetaeva herself once loved, was really touched by youthful lines, or whether his tears were simply so close, as only children and old people have.
After parting with Tarkovsky, we walked for a long time around the Peredelkino outskirts and had a picnic on the side of the ravine. Inappropriately, a part of a human skull caught my eye - apparently, the ravine was washing away an ancient cemetery.
However, why is it inopportune? I immediately remembered the scandalous one from Yuri Kuznetsov: “I drank from my father’s skull...”
Four years later I visited Peredelkino again. Not far from the three pines there was a blackened fresh grave - the last refuge of the “minor branch of Russia” - Arseny Tarkovsky...
It's probably noisy in Peredelkino now. And it did not escape the fate of the Great Redistribution, when the iceberg of Russian literature split into two Unions. The axes are probably knocking, like in Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” Some old author looks at the vigorous construction through the eyes of Firs.
Will I ever be able to visit Peredelkino again, take a walk under its pines? Don't know. So far, many of us are price hostages - we are not allowed to travel abroad by the will of the market.
But this magical place for me - Pere-del-ki-no - is always with me. It is in my dreams, dreams, poetry and prose. The heroes of my story “Poem about black currant" Chukovsky is still alive and well there, listening to our boyish poem about the kitten republic and treating me to delicious blueberry jam.
Hey, Peredelkino! Just wait. Your pilgrim is on his way...
Oleg Pavlov
From the editor. It is interesting to note that the almanac “45th Parallel” publishes memories of the great man in the year of the 125th anniversary of his birth. And in the poetic selection of KCH, entitled with a line from one of the poet and writer’s epigrams, not all of the brilliant ballads for children written by Chukovsky are included, of course. I would like to see that uncle or that auntie who does not remember by heart either “Telephone”, or “The Stolen Sun”, or “Tsokotukha the Fly”... What is “Chukokkala”?
This word is made up of the initial syllable of my last name - CHUK and the last syllables of the Finnish word KUOKKALA - that was the name of the village in which I lived then.
The word "Chukokkala" was coined by Repin. The artist actively participated in my almanac and under his first drawing (dated July 20, 1914) signed: “I. Repin. Chukokkala."
The birth of “Chukokkala” dates back to this date, to the very beginning of the First World War.
It’s not easy to say what “Chukokkala” is. Sometimes it is a handwritten almanac responding to topical topics, sometimes it is just an ordinary autograph album.
At first, “Chukokkala” was a skinny notebook, hastily stitched together from several random sheets of paper; now it is a voluminous volume of 632 pages with four branches dating back to later times.
Thus, in 1964 it was exactly half a century since its birth. The list of its employees is huge. Among them are Leonid Andreev, Anna Akhmatova, Andrei Bely, Al. Blok, Iv. Bunin, Max Voloshin, Sergei Gorodetsky, Gorky, Gumilev, Dobuzhinsky, Vas. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Evreinov, Zoshchenko, Arkady Averchenko, Alexander Amfiteatrov, Yuri Annenkov, Al. Benois, Vyacheslav Ivanov, A. Koni, A. Kuprin, Osip Mandelstam, Fyodor Sologub and others. And also the younger generation - Margarita Aliger, Irakli Andronikov, A. Arkhangelsky, E. Evtushenko, Valentin Kataev, Kaverin, Mikhail Koltsov, E. Kazakevich, I. Babel, Meyerhold, V. Mayakovsky, S. Marshak, S. Mikhalkov, Nikolay Oleinikov, M. Prishvin, Mikh. Slonimsky, A. Solzhenitsyn, K. Paustovsky, Al. Tolstoy, K. Fedin, S. Shchipachev, Vyacheslav Shishkov, Viktor Shklovsky and others
main feature“Chukokkala” – humor. People wrote and drew in “Chukokkala” most often at such moments when they were inclined to laugh, in cheerful company, during a short rest, often after hard work. That is why there are so many smiles and jokes on these pages - sometimes, it would seem, too frivolous.
And another feature of “Chukokkala”. Its participants in many cases appear to us not in their usual role and act in a role that would seem completely unusual for them.
Chaliapin does not sing here, but draws, Sobinov writes poetry. The tragic lyricist Blok writes a humorous comedy. And the singer Mikhail Isakovsky appears before us as a master of funny burlesque. The prose writer Kuprin becomes a poet here.
Of course, there are also things in “Chukokkala” of a different tone, a different – not at all comic – style. These are, first of all, autographs of poems by Anna Akhmatova, Bunin, Mandelstam, Valentin Kataev, Khodasevich, Kuzmin and others.
The British have a wonderful word “hobby”. It means a person’s favorite activity that is not related to his main profession. “Chukokkala” was such a hobby for me. She always remained on the periphery of my personal and literary interests. It was just as peripheral for most of its participants. They almost never wrote down on its pages what constituted the very essence of their spiritual biography, their creativity.
That is why this book did not become a mirror of those terrible times in which it happened to exist. Only small and random reflections reflected the two world wars. And is it possible to look for reflections of the majestic October days in it? It would be wild and senseless to try to capture on its often frivolous and playful pages planetary grandiose events that shook the entire universe.
Most serious in Chukokkala short sketches about the personality and poetry of Nekrasov, written at my request by Gorky, Blok, Mayakovsky, Tikhonov, Maximilian Voloshin, Fyodor Sologub, Vyacheslav Ivanov and others in the form of answers to a questionnaire compiled by me. Preparing to study the life and work of my beloved poet, I naturally found it necessary to turn to my contemporaries in order to find out how the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the generation to whom his work was addressed perceive Nekrasov’s poetry.
All these reviews are written seriously, without a smile. However, no, and humor intruded here. I'm talking about V. Mayakovsky's answers, written mischievously and mockingly. The ridicule is directed against the questionnaire, which, unfortunately, was not understood by the critics who attacked Mayakovsky for his disrespectful attitude towards Nekrasov.
Although “Chukokkala” was founded, as already said, in 1914, but now, when printing it, I (albeit very rarely) attached to it such drawings and texts that date back to an earlier time. These are the notes of Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov, a caricature by Troyansky, a poem by Potemkin, which came to me after the creation of “Chukokkala”.
Most of the drawings and notes included in “Chukokkala” were made at my table, in my house. If, while visiting or at some meeting, I happened to meet a person whose participation in the almanac seemed valuable to me, I offered him the first random piece of paper I came across and, returning home, pasted this piece of paper into the almanac. This was the case, for example, with the drawings of Chaliapin, whom I unexpectedly met at Gorky; with drawings by M.V. Dobuzhinsky, N.E. Radlova, V.A. Milashevsky, performed in 1921 in Kholomki, where we were fleeing the Petrograd famine. Alexander Blok himself brought me the poem “No, I swear, enough Rose...”, composed by him on the way home from “World Literature”; I collected materials relating to the Second All-Union Congress of Writers in a small notebook, which became, so to speak, the first branch of "Chukokkala". There are several such branches.
These are, for example, the drawings of Yuri Annenkov, borrowed from his wonderful book “Portraits” (1922), as well as photographs taken by the photographer-artist M.S. Nappelbaum, author of the book “From Craft to Art,” which contains the most valuable of his talented works. The originals of some of the portraits he painted (Anna Akhmatova, Mikh. Slonimsky, Evg. Petrov, Mikh. Zoshchenko and others) were preserved by his daughter O.M. Grudtsova, who kindly provided them for Chukokkala, for which I hasten to express my gratitude to her. Evgeny Borisovich Pasternak gave me a little-known portrait of his father. I am very grateful to him and my other friends, thanks to whom portraits of Marshak, Nikolai Oleinikov, Evg. Schwartz, Paolo Yashvili and others.
In 1965, I gave “Chukokkala” to my granddaughter Elena Chukovskaya, who made great job on preparing the almanac for printing. The work was difficult and complex. It was necessary to concentrate drawings and texts around one or another specific topic (World Literature, House of Arts, First Congress of Writers, etc.) and, most importantly, write down my comments on almost every page of Chukokkala.
In cases where one or another page of “Chukokkala” could be commented on using short excerpts from my memoirs, the reader is offered these excerpts in a slightly modified form.
Marshak in one of his poems aptly called “Chukokkala” a museum. Concluding this short story about “Chukokkala”, I invite readers to get acquainted with the exhibits of this museum.
Korney Chukovsky
April 1966
Biography
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (1882-1969)
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (Nikolai Ivanovich Korneychukov) was born in St. Petersburg in 1882 into a poor family. He spent his childhood in Odessa and Nikolaev. At the Odessa gymnasium, he met and became friends with Boris Zhitkov, in the future also a famous children's writer. Chukovsky often went to Zhitkov’s house, where he used the rich library, collected by parents Boris.
But the future poet was expelled from the gymnasium due to his “low” origin, since Chukovsky’s mother was a laundress, and his father was no longer there. The mother's earnings were so meager that they were barely enough to somehow make ends meet. But the young man did not give up, he studied independently and passed the exams, receiving a matriculation certificate.
Chukovsky began to be interested in poetry from an early age: he wrote poems and even poems. And in 1901 his first article appeared in the Odessa News newspaper. He wrote articles on the most different topics- from philosophy to feuilletons. In addition, the future children's poet kept a diary, which was his friend throughout his life.
In 1903, Korney Ivanovich went to St. Petersburg with the firm intention of becoming a writer. He visited magazine editorial offices and offered his works, but was refused everywhere. This did not stop Chukovsky. He met many writers, got used to life in St. Petersburg and finally found a job - he became a correspondent for the Odessa News newspaper, where he sent his materials from St. Petersburg. Finally, life rewarded him for his inexhaustible optimism and faith in his abilities. He was sent by Odessa News to London, where he improved his English language and met famous writers, including Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells.
In 1904, Chukovsky returned to Russia and became a literary critic, publishing his articles in St. Petersburg magazines and newspapers. At the end of 1905, he organized (with a subsidy from L.V. Sobinov) a weekly magazine of political satire, Signal. He was even arrested for his bold cartoons and anti-government poems. And in 1906 he became a permanent contributor to the magazine "Scales". By this time he was already familiar with A. Blok, L. Andreev, A. Kuprin and other figures of literature and art. Later, Chukovsky resurrected the living features of many cultural figures in his memoirs (Repin. Gorky. Mayakovsky. Bryusov. Memoirs, 1940; From Memoirs, 1959; Contemporaries, 1962). And nothing seemed to foreshadow that Chukovsky would become a children's writer. In 1908, he published essays on modern writers, “From Chekhov to the Present Day,” and in 1914, “Faces and Masks.”
In 1916, Chukovsky became a war correspondent for the Rech newspaper in Great Britain, France, and Belgium. Returning to Petrograd in 1917, Chukovsky received an offer from M. Gorky to become the head of the children's department of the Parus publishing house. Then he began to pay attention to the speech and speech of small children and record them. He kept such records until the end of his life. Of them was born famous book“From Two to Five,” which first appeared in print in 1928 under the title “Little Children. Children's language. Ekikiki. Silly absurdities" and only in the 3rd edition the book received the name "From two to five." The book was reprinted 21 times and was replenished with each new edition.
One day Chukovsky had to compile the almanac "Firebird". It was an ordinary editorial job, but it was precisely this that was the reason for the birth of a children's writer. Having written his first children's fairy tales "Chicken", "Doctor" and "Dog Kingdom" for the almanac, Chukovsky appeared in a completely new light. His work did not go unnoticed. A.M. Gorky decided to publish collections of children's works and asked Chukovsky to write a poem for children for the first collection. At first Chukovsky was very worried that he would not be able to write, since he had never done this before. But chance helped. Returning on the train to St. Petersburg with his sick son, he told him a fairy tale about a crocodile while the wheels clattered. The child listened very carefully. Several days passed, Korney Ivanovich had already forgotten about that episode, and the son remembered everything his father said then by heart. Thus was born the fairy tale "Crocodile", published in 1917. Since then, Chukovsky has become a favorite children's writer.
Bright, unusual images, clear rhyme, and strict rhythm made his poems quickly memorable. After "Crocodile" more and more new poems began to appear: "Moidodyr" (1923), "Cockroach" (1923), "Tsokotukha Fly" (1924 under the title "Fly's Wedding"), "Barmaley" ( 1925), "Felorino's grief" (1926), "Telephone" (1926), "Aibolit" (1929, called "The Adventures of Aibolit"). And he dedicated the wonderful fairy tale “The Miracle Tree,” written in 1924, to his little daughter Mura, who died early from tuberculosis.
But Chukovsky did not limit himself only to own writings, he began to translate for children best works world literature: Kipling, Defoe, Raspe Whitman, etc., as well as biblical stories and Greek myths. Chukovsky's books were illustrated best artists of that time, which made them even more attractive.
In the post-war years, Chukovsky often met with children in Peredelkino, where he built a country house. There he gathered up to one and a half thousand children around him and arranged for them the holidays “Hello, summer!” and "Goodbye summer!"
In 1969, the writer passed away.
K.I. CHUKOVSKY IN KUOKKALA
Boris Kazankov
The remarkable Soviet writer, critic, children's poet, literary critic, translator Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (1882-1969) lived for about ten years in the village of Kuokkala (Repino). Here, while visiting I.E. Repin in “Penates”, he recognized many of the most prominent figures of Russian culture. A. M. Gorky, V. G. Korolenko, L. N. Andreev, V. V. Mayakovsky, F. I. Shalyapin, L. V. Sobinov, V. A. Serov, A. I. Kuindzhi came to the artist , A.I. Korovin, V.V. Stasov, A.K. Glazunov, A.F. Koni, academicians I.P. Pavlov, V.M. Bekhterev and many others.
Chukovsky initially settled near the railway station, in a house with an “awkward turret”, after being persecuted royal authorities for publishing the anti-government satirical magazine Signal.
“When I arrived in Kuokkala in 1907 or 1908,” wrote K.I. Chukovsky, “they told me in a whisper that the Bolsheviks were hiding at the Vaza dacha.”
At the same time, I met Repin. Ilya Efimovich was almost forty years older than Chukovsky, but he treated him with sympathy and interest, which quickly grew into sincere affection. “I am so glad to have K.I. Chukovsky as a neighbor...,” he tells A.F. Koni. “His phenomenal love for literature, the deepest respect for manuscripts infects us all.”
Like Repin, Chukovsky lived with his family in Kuokkala all year round. A guidebook of that time reported that in Kuokkala “the best dachas on the seashore... are quite expensive; the cheaper ones are located behind the railway, further from the sea.” Therefore, at first Chukovsky rented a dacha near the railway station, and later closer to the sea. At one time, Chukovsky rented the dacha of P. S. Annenkov, a former member of the People’s Will. At the same time, Chukovsky became friends with his son Yuri, who soon proved himself to be a talented artist. After some time, Chukovsky has the opportunity to move to more convenient premises with the assistance of Repin: ... “He bought in my name the dacha in which I lived then (diagonally from Penaty), rebuilt it all from the foundation to the roof, and he himself came watch how the carpenters worked, and he himself supervised their work. Already from the amazement with which he greeted me in later years, whenever I came to repay his debt (and I paid my debt in installments), one could see that "When he bought me a dacha, he did not expect a return on the money spent."
Viktor Shklovsky, who visited Chukovsky’s house more than once in the pre-revolutionary years, describes it in the book “Once Upon a Time”: “The dacha faces the sea with a narrow and unpainted fence. Further from the sea, the plot expands. The dacha stands on the bank of a small river. It is two-story, with some echoes of an English cottage. Korney Ivanovich has an office on the top floor of the dacha. Writers come to him even in winter."
This one stood for many decades wooden house. In recent years, it belonged to the Dacha Trust, and was not even taken under state protection as a historical and cultural monument. In the summer of 1986, a fire broke out in the house, the building could not be saved... Its address was: Solnechnoye, Pogranichnaya St., 3.
In addition to Ilya Efimovich Repin, the guests of this house were residents of the same Kuokkala: theater director and art critic N. Evreinov, artist and first illustrator of Blok’s “The Twelve” Yuri Annenkov. Leonid Andreev, Alexander Kuprin, and Sergei Sergeev-Tsensky, who were previously acquainted with Chukovsky, also came. Chukovsky himself in his memoirs recalls Alexei Tolstoy, Sergei Gorodetsky, Arkady Averchenko, Sasha Cherny, Boris Sadovsky, singer Leonid Sobinov.
Every summer Kuokkala came to life, and along with the summer residents, echoes of the literary, artistic and social life of the capital were transferred here. Until 1912, Nikolai Fedorovich Annensky, a populist public figure according to statistics, the brother of the outstanding lyric poet Innokenty Annensky, lived at his dacha in Kuokkala. His closest friend, the writer V. G. Korolenko, lived with Nikolai Fedorovich, the historian E. V. Tarle, employees of the literary, political and scientific journal“Russian Wealth” (edited by N. Annensky and V. Korolenko).
In 1909, Chukovsky persuaded the writer S.N. Sergeev-Tsensky to spend the winter in Kuokkala and rented for him the “Kazinochka” dacha, where he himself had lived before. Writers and artists who lived in Kuokkala visited Chukovsky, but his house became especially lively in Sundays. “In the evening,” recalls one of his contemporaries, “when the sunset lit the black pines with a cool fire, the house came to life. Guests, neighbors, or from St. Petersburg appeared, debates began to boil over symbolism, about the revolution, about Blok, about Chekhov.” Chukovsky himself later told how “around tea table stormy, young, often naive debates began: about Pushkin, about Dostoevsky, about magazine news, also about what worried us famous writers of that pre-war era - Kuprin, Leonid Andreev, Valery Bryusov, Blok. Poems or excerpts from recently published books were often read." They read aloud not only modern, but also classical Russian and foreign literature: "Don Quixote", " Bronze Horseman", "Kalevala"...
Participants in these literary “resurrections” were writers Alexei Tolstoy and Arkady Averchenko, poets Osip Mandelstam, Velemir Khlebnikov, David Burlyuk, A. E. Kruchenykh, artists Yu. P. Annenkov, Re-Mi (N. V. Remizov), S. Yu. Sudeikin, B. Grigoriev...
It was probably the influx of guests that gave Chukovsky the idea of collecting autographs. But he solved this problem differently than Kuprin, who left his guests to sign on the table. In the fall of 1913, Chukovsky, on the advice of the artist I. Brodsky, made a homemade album, on the title page of which Boris Sadovsky wrote: “Heir and accomplice of Shevchenko, Here you skim off the foam from art...” Repin immediately came up with the name of the handwritten almanac: “Chukokkala ". He also christened the house of Korney Ivanovich.
Soon, drawings, cartoons, poetic impromptu, sayings began to appear on the pages of the almanac... - “Chukokkala” was loved by the guests. The artist A. Arnstam, who once collaborated with Signal, drew a cover for it, depicting Chukovsky on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, along which writers, poets, and artists sail, rushing to leave their autographs in Chukokkala.
The following spring, 1914, I. E. Repin made his first contribution to this collection, giving Chukovsky a drawing depicting him and three other people while cleaning up a fallen pine tree on the Penat path. These "Barge Haulers in Penates" opened the "Chukokkala" collection. The main feature of “Chukokkala” is humor, its collector later noted.
Korney Ivanovich led this collection until the last days of his life, when it reached a volume of 700 pages. In addition to autographs of Russian writers, “Chukokkala” contains drawings by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Boris Grigoriev, Sergei Chekhonin. Theater figures are also represented in this collection; Chaliapin, Sobinov, Evreinov, Kachalov. There are English writers in "Chukokkala" - Oscar Wilde, Herbert Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle. Poems, cartoons, documents (newspaper clippings, advertisements), paper boats that Gorky folded, Mayakovsky’s “Chukrost window.”
In the pre-revolutionary years, "Chukokkala" consisted of several dozen pages. Repin is represented in it by several drawings. One depicts a German worker carrying Kaiser Wilhelm out in a wheelbarrow (1914). The other depicts the guests of Korney Ivanovich - “State Council in Chuokkala”. For many years, the unique almanac was replenished, and in 1979, after the death of the writer, it was released by the publishing house "Iskusstvo" with facsimile reproductions of autographs and vivid comments - memories of Chukovsky.
In the summer of 1915, Vladimir Mayakovsky often visited Chukovsky. Having won 65 rubles in the lottery, he rented a room in Kuokkala. But he didn’t have enough money for food. Later, in his autobiography “I Myself,” the poet writes; “I made seven dinner acquaintances. On Sunday I “eat” Chukovsky, on Monday - Evreinov, etc. On Thursday it was worse - I eat Repin’s herbs. For a futurist a fathom tall, this is not a thing.” In the house of Korney Ivanovich, Mayakovsky read his poems, including new ones written on the same day or the day before. “These readings took place so often that even my seven-year-old daughter remembered something by heart,” writes Chukovsky.
In June 1915, Repin found such a reading of poetry on the terrace of his house. He liked the poems, and then he invited the poet to Penates to paint his portrait. True, Repin did not paint a portrait, but only a sketch. Mayakovsky did not remain in debt: he made several portraits of Repin himself in a cartoon form, including in Chukovsky’s house. On one of them, he depicted Repin together with Chukovsky, leaning towards each other during a conversation that was exciting for both of them. “In those years, he drew endlessly, freely and easily - at lunch, at dinner, three or four drawings - and immediately distributed them to those around him,” K. I. Chukovsky writes about Mayakovsky in his memoirs. His son Nikolai adds: “Sitting in my father’s office, in a large company, and listening to someone, they (Repin and Mayakovsky - B.K.) usually drew something. One in the corner, the other in the other.” .
Mayakovsky’s drawings evoked Repin’s approval: “The most seasoned realist. Not a step from nature and the character was damn well captured.” In the evenings, Repin visited Chukovsky and, together with Mayakovsky, everyone went towards Ollila, to the nearest seaside grove. At this time, Mayakovsky continued to work on the poem "Cloud in Pants." He usually composed the text of the poem while walking along the shore of the Gulf of Finland. According to Chukovsky, the rapid walk along the shore, during which the poet muttered poetry, sometimes stopping to write down a rhyme (most often on a cigarette box), lasted several hours. “His soles were worn away by the stones,” wrote Chukovsky, “his bluish nankeen suit had long since turned blue from the sea wind and sun, but he still did not stop his crazy walking.”
Sometimes Mayakovsky walked 12-15 miles, throwing summer residents into confusion. “The summer residents looked at him with caution,” said Chukovsky. “When he wanted to light a cigarette and rushed with an extinguished cigarette butt to some gentleman standing on the shore, he ran away from him in panic.”
The huge figure of Mayakovsky passes through everything literary creativity Chukovsky: first in his reviews and articles, then in his memoirs, always in correspondence and, since 1920, in his diary. In one of Chukovsky’s letters (60s) you can read the following confession: “Blok, Komissarzhevskaya, Vyach. Ivanov, Leonid Andreev, Fyodor Sologub, young Mayakovsky - 0 my sleepless crazy youth, my St. Petersburg nights and days! All this is not a quote for me, but a living reality...”
The poet and aviator Vasily Kamensky visited Chukovsky. He was remembered by the inhabitants of the house for his decorative works: he pasted a dozen fantastic dragons cut out of orange and crimson paper, interspersed with purple stars, onto a huge green cardboard. The result was a wonderful, cheerful ornament. When you hang this paper improvisation on the wall, the room becomes fun. In this spirit, Kamensky decorated an empty room in the house, where children were placed in a corner. The first poem for children, written by Korney Chukovsky in 1916, “Crocodile,” was in a certain way connected with fantastic drawings Kamensky.
Once on the train (Chukovsky often had to travel to Petrograd on publishing and editorial business), entertaining his sick son, he began to compose a fairy tale out loud, and in the morning the boy remembered what he had heard from the first to the last word. In the fall of 1916, the fairy tale was completed and soon, according to Yuri Tynyanov, aroused “noise, interest, surprise, as happens with a new phenomenon in literature.” Thus, another side of Chukovsky’s multifaceted talent was revealed: he became a children’s poet. The fairy tale, like a knife through butter, entered the children's environment and, having appeared in print ("Crocodile" was published as a supplement to "Niva" in the summer of 1917), to the horror of its author, immediately and forever eclipsed the fame and popularity of Chukovsky the critic.
During this period, Chukovsky, as a critic, fought against the vulgarity and lisp that dominated children's literature of that time, in which he was supported by A. M. Gorky, with whom K. I. Chukovsky visited I. E. Repin in 1916.
Chukovsky had a trait, underestimating which, one cannot fully understand either himself or his literary interests. This is attachment to children, both in youth and in advanced years. Chukovsky showed interest in new and new acquaintances among children. On the Kuokkala shore of the Gulf of Finland, he built fortresses with children and started exciting games. He captivated the children with his genuine enthusiasm and rich imagination. The son of Leonid Andreev, who experienced the charm of Chukovsky’s personality in childhood, wrote later: “We all immediately treated him with trust, as one of our own, as a person in our childhood world.” Kuokkala children also remember the cheerful holidays organized by Korney Chukovsky. One of them took place in the summer of 1917 at the Summer Theater (located on the territory of the current park of the A. M. Gorky Holiday House). Musicians invited by Chukovsky performed children's works by Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Grechaninov. The children themselves, including Chukovsky’s children, performed a play staged by artists Re-Mi and Puni. And Korney Ivanovich read the recently written fairy tale “Crocodile”. The money collected was donated to the Kuokkala public children's library.
The years of life in Kuokkala were fruitful for Korney Ivanovich: during this time he wrote several dozen critical articles that made up the books “From Chekhov to the Present Day,” “ Critical stories", "Faces and Masks", "Book about modern writers". The range of interests of Chukovsky the literary critic at that time covered the work of the democratic poets Shevchenko, Nekrasov, Walt Whitman. Therefore, it was no coincidence that Boris Sadovsky called Korney Ivanovich "the heir and like-minded person of Shevchenko." On July 19, 1923, he wrote to Chukovsky: “Yesterday, passing by Ollila, I looked sadly at your darkened house, at the overgrown roads and courtyard, and remembered how many ebbs and flows there were of all types of young literature!.. And I saw many many brochures in in torn form on the floor, with traces of all the dirty soles, felt boots, among the tattered luxurious sofas, where we so interestingly and comfortably spent time listening interesting reports and fiery speeches of talented literature, flaring up with the red fire of freedom. Yes, a whole platform was formed on the floor of the library from expensive rare publications and manuscripts..."
Repin was very upset by the unexpected separation from Korney Ivanovich. “Oh, here in Kuokkala,” he wrote to him in Petrograd, “you were the most interesting friend to me.” And in another letter: “I remember your tall, cheerful figure... Fire man, God bless you.” And Chukovsky missed Repin, near whom he lived for 10 years. And of course, he also missed Kuokkala itself. Like Repin, Kuokkala became his “penates”, his home. That's why he once wrote to the artist: "Kuokkala is my homeland, my childhood..."
At the beginning of 1925, Chukovsky came to Kuokkala, which was then part of Finland. IN last time He saw Repin, spoke with him, the visit to Repin made a painful impression on him: “I remember him as one of the most painful failures in my life.” Repin was no longer surrounded by luminaries of Russian culture, but by evil philistines and cheap mystics. Korney Ivanovich persuaded Repin to publish his memoirs “Distant Close” in Soviet Russia, but did not achieve success (they were published with the participation of Chukovsky after the author’s death). On the day of Repin’s death, September 29, 1930, K.I. Chukovsky was in Crimea together with Sergeev-Tsensky. “It so happened that the two of us seemed to sit all that day at the deathbed of the one we loved so much during life!” Sergeev-Tsensky would later say.
A quarter of a century has passed. At the end of the 50s, Korney Ivanovich wrote an extensive volume of memoirs, “Contemporaries,” in which he recalled his old acquaintances - guests of the house in Kuokkala. During these years, employees of the Penates Museum asked him to indicate in photographs of the surviving buildings of the village the house where he once lived. The writer complied with this request. But he never came to Repino.
"Terijoki - Zelenogorsk 1548-1998". Comp. K. V. Tyunikov. St. Petersburg, 1998. – pp. 39-44.
Alexandrova Anastasia
Municipal educational institution
“Secondary school No. 8 in Volkhov, Leningrad region”
Topic: Life and work of Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky
Performed:
Alexandrova Anastasia
student 2 "A" class
Volkhov
Leningrad region2010
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky is a pseudonym, and his real name is Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov. He was born in St. Petersburg in 1882 into a poor family. He spent his childhood in Odessa and Nikolaev. At the Odessa gymnasium, he met and became friends with Boris Zhitkov, in the future also a famous children's writer. Chukovsky often went to Zhitkov’s house, where he used the rich library collected by Boris’s parents.
But the future poet was expelled from the gymnasium due to his “low” origin, since Chukovsky’s mother was a laundress, and his father was no longer there. The mother's earnings were so meager that they were barely enough to somehow make ends meet. I had to take a gymnasium course and learn English on my own. Then the young man passed the exams and received a certificate of maturity.
He began writing poetry and poems early, and in 1901 the first article appeared in the Odessa News newspaper, signed under the pseudonym Korney Chukovsky. In this newspaper he published many articles on a variety of topics - about painting exhibitions, philosophy, art, and wrote reviews of new books and feuilletons. At the same time, Chukovsky began writing a diary, which he then kept throughout his life.
In 1903, Korney Ivanovich went to St. Petersburg with the firm intention of becoming a writer. There he met many writers and found a job - he became a correspondent for the Odessa News newspaper. That same year, he was sent to London, where he improved his English and met famous writers, including Arthur Conan Doyle and H. G. Wells.
In 1904, Chukovsky returned to Russia and became a literary critic. He published his articles in St. Petersburg magazines and newspapers.
In 1916, Chukovsky became a war correspondent for the newspaper Rech. Returning to Petrograd in 1917, Chukovsky received an offer from M. Gorky to become the head of the children's department of the Parus publishing house. Then he began to pay attention to the speech and phrases of small children and write them down. He kept such records until the end of his life. From them the famous book “From Two to Five” was born. The book was reprinted 21 times and was replenished with each new edition.
Actually, Korney Ivanovich was a critic, literary critic, and he became a storyteller completely by accident. “Crocodile” appeared first. The little son of Korney Ivanovich fell ill. His father was taking him home on the night train, and in order to at least slightly ease the boy’s suffering, he began to tell a fairy tale to the sound of the wheels clattering:
“Once upon a time there was a crocodile,
He walked the streets
I smoked cigarettes
He spoke in Turkish -
Crocodile, Crocodile, Crocodilovich...
The boy listened very carefully. The next morning, when he woke up, he asked his dad to tell yesterday’s tale again. It turned out that the boy remembered it all by heart.
And the second case. Korney Ivanovich heard how his little daughter did not want to wash herself. He took the girl in his arms and, quite unexpectedly for himself, said to her:
“We must, we must wash ourselves.
In the mornings and evenings.
And the unclean chimney sweeps
Shame and disgrace! Shame and disgrace!"
This is how “Moidodyr” appeared. His poems are easy to read and remember. “They roll off the tongue,” as the kids say. Since then, new poems began to appear: “Tsokotukha Fly”, “Barmaley”, “Fedorino’s Mountain”, “Telephone”, “Aibolit”. And he dedicated the wonderful fairy tale “The Miracle Tree” to his little daughter Mura.
Except own fairy tales for children, he retold the best works of world literature for them: novels by D. Defoe about Robinson Crusoe, Mark Twain about the adventures of Tom Sawyer. He translated them from English into Russian, and did it superbly.
Not far from Moscow, in the village of Peredelkino, he built a country house, where he settled with his family. He lived there for many years. He was known not only by all the children of the village, but also by the small residents of Moscow, and the entire Soviet country, and beyond its borders.
Korney Ivanovich was tall, Long hands with large hands, large facial features, a large curious nose, a brush of mustaches,
an unruly strand of hair hanging over his forehead, laughing light eyes and a surprisingly light gait.
In Peredelkino he had a very important job. He built a children's library near his house. Children's writers and publishing houses sent books to this library at the request of Korney Ivanovich. The library is very cozy and bright. There is a reading room where you can sit at tables and read, there is a room for kids where you can play on the carpet and draw with a pencil and paints at small folding tables. Every summer the writer held cheerful “Hello Summer!” holidays for his children and grandchildren, as well as for all the surrounding children, who numbered up to one and a half thousand. and “Goodbye summer!”
In 1969, the writer passed away. Chukovsky's house in Peredelkino has long become a museum.
Bibliography:
1. I explore the world: Russian literature.- M: ACT Publishing House LLC: LLC
Astrel Publishing House, 2004.
2. Chukovsky K.I.
The Miracle Tree and Other Tales. - M.: Children's literature, 1975.
3.Who is who in the world?: encyclopedia.
Chukovsky. Biography
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky(birth name - Nikolai Emmanuilovich Korneychukov). Children's poet, writer, memoirist, critic, linguist, translator and literary critic.
Russian writer, literary critic, specialist in philological sciences. Real name and surname Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov. Works for children in verse and prose ("Moidodyr", "Cockroach", "Aibolit", etc.) are constructed in the form of a comic, action-packed "game" with an edifying purpose. Books: "The Mastery of Nekrasov" (1952, Lenin Prize, 1962), about A.P. Chekhov, W. Whitman, the Art of Translation, the Russian language, about child psychology and speech ("From Two to Five", 1928). Criticism, translations, literary memoirs. Diaries.
Chukovsky born March 19 (31 n.s.) in St. Petersburg. When he was three years old, his parents divorced, and he stayed with his mother. They lived in the south, in poverty. He studied at the Odessa gymnasium, from the fifth grade of which he was expelled when, by special decree, educational institutions were “liberated” from children of “low” origin.
From his youth he led working life, read a lot, studied English on my own and French languages. In 1901 he began publishing in the newspaper Odessa News, for which he was sent to London in 1903 as a correspondent. Whole year lived in England, studied English literature, wrote about her in the Russian press. After returning, he settled in St. Petersburg and started literary criticism, collaborated in the magazine "Libra".
In 1905, Chukovsky organized the weekly satirical magazine Signal (financed by the singer Bolshoi Theater L. Sobinov), where cartoons and poems with anti-government content were posted. The magazine was subjected to repression for “defaming the existing order”; the publisher was sentenced to six months in prison.
After the revolution of 1905 - 1907, Chukovsky's critical essays appeared in various publications; later they were collected in the books “From Chekhov to the Present Day” (1908), “Critical Stories” (1911), “Faces and Masks” (1914), etc.
In 1912, Chukovsky settled in the Finnish town of Kuokkola, where he became friends with I. Repin, Korolenko, Andreev, A. Tolstoy, V. Mayakovsky and others.
Later he would write memoirs and fiction books about these people. The versatility of Chukovsky’s interests was expressed in his literary activities: he published translations from W. Whitman, studied literature for children, children’s literary creativity, and worked on the legacy of N. Nekrasov, his favorite poet. He published the book “Nekrasov as an Artist” (1922), a collection of articles “Nekrasov” (1926), and the book “The Mastery of Nekrasov” (1952).
In 1916, at the invitation of Gorky, Chukovsky began to head the children's department of the Parus publishing house and began writing for children: poetic fairy tales "Crocodile" (1916), "Moidodyr" (1923), "Tsokotukha Fly" (1924), "Barmaley" (1925 ), "Aibolit" (1929), etc.
Chukovsky owns a whole series of books on the craft of translation: “Principles of Literary Translation” (1919), “The Art of Translation” (1930, 1936), “High Art” (1941, 1968). In 1967 the book "About Chekhov" was published.
In the last years of his life, he published essays about Zoshchenko, Zhitkov, Akhmatova, Pasternak and many others.
At the age of 87, K. Chukovsky died on October 28, 1968. He was buried in Peredelkino near Moscow, where he lived for many years.
Chukovsky Korney Ivanovich (1882-1969) - Russian poet and children's writer, journalist and literary critic, translator and literary critic.
Childhood and adolescence
Korney Chukovsky is the pseudonym of the poet, his real name is Korneychukov Nikolai Vasilievich. He was born in St. Petersburg on March 19, 1882. His mother, a Poltava peasant woman Ekaterina Osipovna Korneychukova, worked as a servant in the family of a wealthy doctor Levenson, who came to St. Petersburg from Odessa.
The maid Katerina lived for three years in an illegal marriage with the owner’s son, student Emmanuel Solomonovich, and gave birth to two children from him - the eldest daughter Marusya and the boy Nikolai.
However, Emmanuel’s father opposed his son’s relationship with the peasant woman. The Levensons were the owners of several printing houses in different cities, and such an unequal marriage could never become legal. Soon after the future poet was born, Emmanuel Solomonovich left Catherine and married a woman of his circle.
The mother of Korney Chukovsky and her two small children were forced to leave for Odessa. Here on Novorybnaya Street they settled in a small outbuilding. Little Nikolai spent his entire childhood in Nikolaev and Odessa. As the poet recalls his early years: “Mother raised us democratically – through need”. For many years, Ekaterina Osipovna kept and often looked at a photograph of a bearded man with glasses and said to the children: "Don't be angry with your dad, he good man» . Emmanuel Solomonovich sometimes helped Katerina with money.
However, little Kolya was very ashamed of his illegitimacy and suffered from it. It seemed to him that he was the most incomplete person on earth, that he was the only one on the planet born outside the law. When other children talked about their fathers and grandparents, Kolya blushed, began to invent something, lie and get confused, and then it seemed to him that everyone was whispering behind his back about his illegal origin. He was never able to forgive his father for his unhappy childhood, poverty and the stigma of “fatherlessness.”
Korney Ivanovich loved his mother very much and always remembered her with warmth and tenderness. From early morning until late evening, she washed and ironed for other people in order to earn money and feed her children, while still managing to run the house and cook delicious food. Their room in the outbuilding was always cozy and clean, even elegant, because there were many flowers and curtains and towels embroidered with patterns hung everywhere. Everything always sparkled, my mother was incredibly tidy and poured her broad Ukrainian soul into their small home. She was an illiterate peasant woman, but made every effort to ensure that her children received an education.
At the age of five, his mother gave Kolya to kindergarten Madame Bekhteeva. He remembered well how they drew pictures and marched to music. Then the boy went to study at the second Odessa gymnasium, but after the fifth grade he was expelled due to his low origin. Then he began to educate himself, studied English and read a lot of books. Literature invaded his life and completely captured the boy’s heart. Every free minute he ran to the library and read voraciously indiscriminately.
Nikolai had a lot of friends with whom he went fishing or flew a kite, climbed through attics or, hiding in large garbage bins, dreamed of traveling to distant lands. He recounted to the boys the books he had read by Jules Verne and the novels of Aimard.
To help his mother, Nikolai went to work: he repaired fishing nets, put up theater posters, painted fences. However, the older he got, the less he liked the philistine Odessa, he dreamed of leaving here for Australia, for which he taught foreign language.
Journalistic activity
Having become a young man and having grown a mustache, Nikolai tried to take up tutoring, but he just couldn’t seem to assume the proper respectability. He entered into arguments and conversations with the children he taught about tarantulas and methods of making arrows from reeds, and taught them to play robbers and pirates. He didn’t turn out to be a teacher, but then a friend came to the rescue - journalist Volodya Zhabotinsky, with whom they had been “inseparable” since kindergarten. He helped Nikolai get a job at the popular newspaper Odessa News as a reporter.
When Nikolai came to the editorial office for the first time, there was a huge hole in his leaky pants, which he covered with a large and thick book, taken with him precisely for this purpose. But very soon his publications became so popular and beloved among the newspaper’s readers that he began to earn 25-30 rubles per month. At that time it was quite decent money. Immediately under his first articles, the young author began to sign with a pseudonym - Korney Chukovsky, and later added a fictitious patronymic - Ivanovich.
Business trip to England
When it turned out that in the entire editorial office only one Korney knew English, the management invited him to go on a business trip to London as a correspondent. The young man had just recently gotten married, the family needed to get on its feet, and he was tempted by the proposed salary - 100 rubles a month. Together with his wife, Chukovsky went to England.
His English articles were published by the publishing houses “Odessa News”, “Southern Review” and several Kyiv newspapers. Over time, fees from Russia began to arrive in London in the name of Chukovsky irregularly, and then stopped altogether. His wife was pregnant, but due to a lack of funds, Korney sent her to her parents in Odessa, while he remained in London, looking for part-time work.
Chukovsky liked England very much. True, at first no one understood his language, which he learned on his own. But for Korney this was not a problem; he improved it, studying from morning to evening in the library of the British Museum. Here he found a part-time job copying catalogues, and at the same time read Thackeray and Dickens in the original.
Creative literary path
By the revolution of 1905, Chukovsky returned to Russia and completely immersed himself in the events taking place. He visited the rebel battleship Potemkin twice. Then he went to St. Petersburg and started publishing the satirical magazine Signal there. He was arrested for lese majeste and spent 9 days in custody, but soon his lawyer achieved an acquittal.
Upon his release, Korney published a magazine underground for some time, but soon realized that publishing was not for him. He dedicated his life to writing.
At first he was more involved in criticism. From his pen came essays about Blok and Balmont, Kuprin and Chekhov, Gorky and Bryusov, Merezhkovsky and Sergeev-Tsensky. From 1917 to 1926, Chukovsky worked on a work about his favorite poet Nekrasov; in 1962 he received for it Lenin Prize.
And when he was already satisfied famous critic, Korney developed a passion for children's creativity:
- In 1916, his first collection of children's poems “Yolka” and the fairy tale “Crocodile” were published.
- In 1923, “Cockroach” and “Moidodyr” were written.
- In 1924, Barmaley was published.
For the first time, a new intonation was heard in children's works - no one lectured the kids. The author humorously, but at the same time always sincerely rejoiced, together with his little readers, in the beauty of the world around him.
At the end of the 1920s, Korney Ivanovich developed a new hobby - studying the psyche of children and observing how they mastered speech. In 1933, this resulted in the creative verbal work “From Two to Five.”
Soviet children grew up reading his poems and fairy tales, then read them to their children and grandchildren. Many of us still remember by heart:
- “Fedorino’s grief” and “Mukhu-tsokotuhu”;
- "Stolen Sun" and "Confusion";
- "Telephone" and "Aibolit".
Almost all of Korney Chukovsky's fairy tales have been filmed cartoons.
Korney Ivanovich, together with his eldest son, did a lot of translation work. Thanks to their work, the Soviet Union was able to read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, “Robinson Crusoe” and “Baron Munchausen”, “The Prince and the Pauper”, fairy tales by Wilde and Kipling.
For his creative achievements, Chukovsky received awards: three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor, the Order of Lenin, numerous medals and a doctorate from Oxford University.
Personal life
First and only love came to Korney Ivanovich at a very young age. In Odessa, the Jewish Goldfeld family lived on a nearby street. The head of the family, accountant Aron-Ber Ruvimovich, and his wife, housewife Tuba Oizerovna, had a daughter, Maria, growing up. Chukovsky really liked the black-eyed and plump girl.
When it turned out that Masha was not indifferent to him, Korney proposed to her. However, the girl's parents were against this marriage. Desperate Maria ran away from home, and in 1903 the lovers got married. This was the first, only and happy marriage for both.
Four children were born into the family, three of whom were survived by their father, Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky.
In 1904, their first-born son Kolya was born. Like his father, he was engaged in literary activities all his life, becoming famous Soviet writer Nikolai Korneevich Chukovsky. During Patriotic War participated in the defense of Leningrad, remained in the besieged city. In 1965, he died suddenly in his sleep. The death of his son was a severe blow for 83-year-old Korney Ivanovich.
In 1907, a daughter, Lydia, was born into the Chukovsky family, who also became a writer. Her most famous works are the stories “Sofya Petrovna” and “Descent Under Water,” as well as the significant work “Notes about Anna Akhmatova.”
In 1910, son Boris was born. At the age of 31, he died near the Borodino field, returning from reconnaissance. This happened almost immediately after the start of World War II, in the fall of 1941.
The youngest daughter Maria in the Chukovsky family was born in 1920. The late child was madly loved by everyone, she was affectionately called Murochka, and it was she who became the heroine of most of her father’s children’s stories and poems. But when she was 10 years old, the girl fell ill and had incurable bone tuberculosis. The baby became blind, stopped walking and cried a lot in pain. In 1930, her parents took Murochka to the Alupka sanatorium for children with tuberculosis.
For two years, Korney Ivanovich lived as if in a dream, went to see his sick daughter, and wrote children’s poems and fairy tales with her. But in November 1930, the girl died in her father’s arms; he personally made a coffin for her from an old chest. Murochka was buried there, in Crimea.
It was after her death that he transferred his love for his daughter to all the children of the Soviet Union and became everyone’s favorite - Grandfather Korney.
His wife Maria died in 1955, 14 years before her husband. Every day Korney Ivanovich went to her grave and remembered happy moments their lives. He clearly remembered her velvet blouse, even the smell, their dates until dawn, all the joys and troubles that they had to experience together.
Two granddaughters and three grandsons continued the family line of the famous children's poet, and Korney Ivanovich has many great-grandchildren. Some of them connected their lives with creativity, like their grandfather, but there are other professions in the Chukovsky family tree - Doctor of Medical Sciences, producer of the directorate of NTV-Plus sports channels, communications engineer, chemist, cameraman, historian-archivist, resuscitation doctor.
In the last years of his life, Korney Ivanovich lived in Peredelkino at the dacha. He often gathered children at his place and invited famous people to such meetings - artists, pilots, poets and writers. The kids loved these gatherings with tea at Grandfather Korney’s dacha.
On October 28, 1969, Korney Ivanovich died from viral hepatitis. He was buried in the cemetery in Peredelkino.
At this dacha there is now a functioning museum of the writer and poet Grandfather Korney.
Korney Chukovsky, who gained fame as a children's poet, was for a long time one of the most underrated writers of the Silver Age. Contrary to popular belief, the creator's genius was manifested not only in poems and fairy tales, but also in critical articles.
Due to the unostentatious specificity of his creativity, the state throughout the writer’s life tried to discredit his works in the eyes of the public. Numerous research papers allowed us to look at the famous artist “with different eyes.” Now the works of the publicist are read by both people of the “old school” and young people.
Childhood and youth
Nikolai Korneychukov (the poet’s real name) was born on March 31, 1882 in the northern capital of Russia - the city of St. Petersburg. Mother Ekaterina Osipovna, being a servant in the house of the eminent doctor Solomon Levenson, entered into a vicious relationship with his son Emmanuel. In 1799, the woman gave birth to a daughter, Maria, and three years later gave birth to common-law husband heir to Nicholas.
Despite the fact that the relationship between the scion of a noble family and a peasant woman looked like a blatant misalliance in the eyes of society at that time, they lived together for seven years. The poet’s grandfather, who did not want to become related to a commoner, in 1885, without explaining the reason, put his daughter-in-law out into the street with two babies in her arms. Since Catherine could not afford separate housing, she and her son and daughter went to stay with relatives in Odessa. Much later, in the autobiographical story “The Silver Coat of Arms,” the poet admits that the southern city never became his home.
The writer's childhood years were spent in an atmosphere of devastation and poverty. The publicist's mother worked in shifts either as a seamstress or as a laundress, but there was a catastrophic lack of money. In 1887, the world saw the “Circular about Cook’s Children.” In it, the Minister of Education I.D. Delyanov recommended that the directors of the gymnasiums accept into the ranks of students only those children whose origin did not raise questions. Due to the fact that Chukovsky did not fit this “definition”, in the 5th grade he was expelled from a privileged educational institution.
In order not to idle around and benefit the family, the young man took on any job. Among the roles that Kolya tried on himself were a newspaper delivery man, a roof cleaner, and a poster paster. During that period, the young man began to be interested in literature. He read adventure novels, studied works, and in the evenings he recited poetry to the sound of the surf.
Among other things, his phenomenal memory allowed the young man to learn English in such a way that he translated texts from a sheet of paper without stuttering even once. At that time, Chukovsky did not yet know that Ohlendorf’s tutorial was missing pages on which the principle was described in detail correct pronunciation. Therefore, when Nikolai visited England years later, the fact that the local residents practically did not understand him incredibly surprised the publicist.
Journalism
In 1901, inspired by the works of his favorite authors, Korney wrote a philosophical opus. The poet’s friend Vladimir Zhabotinsky, having read the work from cover to cover, took it to the Odessa News newspaper, thereby marking the beginning of Chukovsky’s 70-year literary career. For the first publication, the poet received 7 rubles. Using considerable money for those times, the young man bought himself presentable-looking pants and a shirt.
After two years of working at the newspaper, Nikolai was sent to London as a correspondent for Odessa News. For a year he wrote articles, studied foreign literature and even copied catalogs in the museum. During the trip, eighty-nine works by Chukovsky were published.
The writer fell in love with British aestheticism so much that after many, many years he translated Whitman’s works into Russian, and also became the editor of the first four-volume work, which in the blink of an eye acquired the status reference book in all literature-loving families.
In March 1905, the writer moved from sunny Odessa to rainy St. Petersburg. There, the young journalist quickly finds a job: he gets a job as a correspondent for the newspaper " Theater Russia", where in each issue his reports on the performances he watched and the books he read are published.
A subsidy from singer Leonid Sobinov helped Chukovsky publish the Signal magazine. The publication published exclusively political satire, and among the authors were even Teffi. Chukovsky was arrested for his ambiguous cartoons and anti-government works. The eminent lawyer Gruzenberg managed to achieve an acquittal and, nine days later, free the writer from prison.
Further, the publicist collaborated with the magazines “Scales” and “Niva”, as well as with the newspaper “Rech”, where Nikolai published critical essays about modern writers. Later, these works were scattered in books: “Faces and Masks” (1914), “Futurists” (1922), “From to the Present Day” (1908).
In the autumn of 1906, the writer’s place of residence became a dacha in Kuokkala (the shore of the Gulf of Finland). There the writer was lucky enough to meet an artist, poets and... Chukovsky later spoke about cultural figures in his memoirs “Repin. . Mayakovsky. . Memories" (1940).
The humorous handwritten almanac “Chukokkala”, published in 1979, was also collected here, where they left their creative autographs, and. At the invitation of the government in 1916, Chukovsky, as part of a delegation of Russian journalists, again went on a business trip to England.
Literature
In 1917, Nikolai returned to St. Petersburg, where, accepting the offer of Maxim Gorky, he took over the post of head of the children's department of the Parus publishing house. Chukovsky tried on the role of a storyteller while working on the anthology “Firebird”. Then he revealed to the world a new facet of his literary genius by writing “Chicken Little,” “The Kingdom of Dogs,” and “Doctors.”
Gorky saw enormous potential in his colleague’s fairy tales and suggested that Korney “try his luck” and create another work for the children’s supplement of the Niva magazine. The writer was worried that he would not be able to release an effective product, but inspiration found the creator itself. This was on the eve of the revolution.
Then the publicist was returning from his dacha to St. Petersburg with his sick son Kolya. In order to distract his beloved child from attacks of illness, the poet began to invent a fairy tale on the fly. There was no time to develop the characters and plot.
The whole bet was on the quickest alternation of images and events, so that the boy would not have time to moan or cry. This is how the work “Crocodile”, published in 1917, was born.
After October revolution Chukovsky travels around the country giving lectures and collaborates with various publishing houses. In the 20-30s, Korney wrote the works “Moidodyr” and “Cockroach”, and also adapted the texts of folk songs for children’s reading, publishing the collections “Red and Red” and “Skok-skok”. The poet published ten poetic fairy tales one after another: “Fly-Tsokotukha”, “Miracle Tree”, “Confusion”, “What Mura Did”, “Barmaley”, “Telephone”, “Fedorino’s Grief”, “Aibolit”, “The Stolen Sun”, “Toptygin and the Fox”.
Korney Chukovsky with a drawing for "Aibolit" Korney ran around the publishing houses, never leaving his proofs for a second, and followed every line printed. Chukovsky’s works were published in the magazines “New Robinson”, “Hedgehog”, “Koster”, “Chizh” and “Sparrow”. For the classic, everything worked out in such a way that at some point the writer himself believed that fairy tales were his calling.
Everything changed after critical article, in which a revolutionary woman who had no children called the creator’s works “bourgeois dregs” and argued that Chukovsky’s works concealed not only an anti-political message, but also false ideals.
After that secret meaning seen in all the works of the writer: in “Mukha-Tsokotukha” the author popularized Komarik’s individualism and Mukha’s frivolity, in the fairy tale “Fedorino’s Grief” he glorified petty-bourgeois values, in “Moidodyr” he purposefully did not voice the importance of the leadership role of the Communist Party, and in the main character of “Cockroach” The censors even saw the caricatured image.
The persecution brought Chukovsky to extreme despair. Korney himself began to believe that no one needed his fairy tales. In December 1929, the Literaturnaya Gazeta published a letter from the poet, in which he, renouncing his old works, promised to change the direction of his work by writing a collection of poems, “The Cheerful Collective Farm.” However, the work never came from his pen.
The wartime tale “Let’s Defeat Barmaley” (1943) was included in an anthology of Soviet poetry, and then crossed out from there by Stalin personally. Chukovsky wrote another work, “The Adventures of Bibigon” (1945). The story was published in Murzilka, recited on the radio, and then, calling it “ideologically harmful,” it was banned from reading.
Tired of fighting with critics and censors, the writer returned to journalism. In 1962, he wrote the book “Alive as Life,” in which he described the “diseases” that affected the Russian language. We should not forget that the publicist who studied creativity published full meeting works of Nikolai Alekseevich.
Chukovsky was a storyteller not only in literature, but also in life. He repeatedly committed actions that his contemporaries, due to their cowardice, were not capable of. In 1961, the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” fell into his hands. Having become its first reviewer, Chukovsky and Tvardovsky convinced him to publish this work. When Alexander Isaevich became persona non grata, it was Korney who hid him from the authorities at his second dacha in Peredelkino.
In 1964, the trial began. Korney, together with, are one of the few who were not afraid to write a letter to the Central Committee asking for the release of the poet. Literary heritage The writer has been preserved not only in books, but also in cartoons.
Personal life
Chukovsky met his first and only wife at the age of 18. Maria Borisovna was the daughter of accountant Aron-Ber Ruvimovich Goldfeld and housewife Tuba (Tauba). The noble family never approved of Korney Ivanovich. At one time, the lovers even planned to escape from Odessa, which they both hated, to the Caucasus. Despite the fact that the escape never took place, the couple got married in May 1903.
Many Odessa journalists came to the wedding with flowers. True, Chukovsky did not need bouquets, but money. After the ceremony, the resourceful guy took off his hat and began to walk around the guests. Immediately after the celebration, the newlyweds left for England. Unlike Korney, Maria stayed there for a couple of months. Having learned that his wife was pregnant, the writer immediately sent her to her homeland.
On June 2, 1904, Chukovsky received a telegram that his wife had safely given birth to a son. That day, the feuilletonist gave himself a holiday and went to the circus. Upon returning to St. Petersburg, the wealth of knowledge and life experiences accumulated in London allowed Chukovsky to very quickly become a leading critic of St. Petersburg. Sasha Cherny, not without malice, called him Korney Belinsky. Just two years later, yesterday’s provincial journalist was on short leg with all the literary and artistic elite.
While the artist traveled around the country giving lectures, his wife raised their children: Lydia, Nikolai and Boris. In 1920, Chukovsky became a father again. Daughter Maria, whom everyone called Murochka, became the heroine of many of the writer’s works. The girl died in 1931 from tuberculosis. 10 years later he died in the war younger son Boris, and 14 years later, the publicist’s wife, Maria Chukovskaya, also passed away.
Death
Korney Ivanovich passed away at the age of 87 (October 28, 1969). The cause of death was viral hepatitis. The dacha in Peredelkino, where the poet lived in recent years, was turned into Chukovsky’s house-museum.
To this day, lovers of the writer’s work can see with their own eyes the place where the eminent artist created his masterpieces.
Bibliography
- “Sunny” (story, 1933);
- “Silver Coat of Arms” (story, 1933);
- “Chicken” (fairy tale, 1913);
- “Aibolit” (fairy tale, 1917);
- “Barmaley” (fairy tale, 1925);
- “Moidodyr” (fairy tale, 1923);
- “The Tsokotukha Fly” (fairy tale, 1924);
- “Let’s Defeat Barmaley” (fairy tale, 1943);
- “The Adventures of Bibigon” (fairy tale, 1945);
- “Confusion” (fairy tale, 1914);
- “The Kingdom of Dogs” (fairy tale, 1912);
- “Cockroach” (fairy tale, 1921);
- “Telephone” (fairy tale, 1924);
- “Toptygin and the Fox” (fairy tale, 1934);