Reading memories of Chukovsky. Literary navigator. Memories of Korney Chukovsky

K.I. Chukovsky in an Indian headdress

Some mystically minded researchers of Chukovsky’s work attribute to the poet almost the gift of a seer, and claim that in his famous “Cockroach” he allegedly predicted the coming cruel Stalinist era. One can treat such statements as one likes, but hardly anyone would argue with the fact that Korney Ivanovich, who was called “the children’s Shakespeare,” was indeed an extraordinary personality, an amazing person and a most talented poet. This is evidenced, first of all, by his works, and also by people who knew him closely: relatives, friends, colleagues in writing... It was from their memoirs that the Nikeya publishing house compiled a collection called “Memories of Chukovsky,” which became one one of the most striking publications released for the one hundred and thirty anniversary of the poet’s birth.
It is simply impossible to pass by the book without noticing it; it literally attracts you: one of the rare photographs of the young Chukovsky is placed on the cover. Close-up - the face is thoughtful, serious... And in the half-lowered gaze - a laugh! This portrait, perhaps, ideally illustrates the contrasts in the extraordinary nature of Korney Ivanovich, which the authors of the book of memoirs talk about.
It begins with “Memory of Childhood” - lyrical and bright memories of the poet’s daughter, Lydia Chukovskaya. From the first lines you can feel how pleasant it is for her to write about her father, about the time she spent next to him in the Finnish village of Kuokkola not far from St. Petersburg. She speaks with trepidation about every little thing - seemingly very insignificant, but in fact - precious, capable of telling about the inner world of a genius much more than any fact of the official biography. For example, about how subtly Chukovsky understood and felt children. Growing up, a person loses the ability to perceive the world through the eyes of a child and, no matter how hard he tries, cannot return the sensations of childhood. Chukovsky could. Until the end of his life, an adult and a child organically coexisted in him, looking with delight at the huge, wonderful world.
Perhaps this is why Evgeny Schwartz, in his two essays written at different times, speaks so differently about Chukovsky. His “Non-Room Man” and “White Wolf” seemed to be written about two different people... Yuri Koval’s Chukovsky also turned out to be ambiguous: one minute he draws a funny face in the snow with a ski pole, and the next moment he speaks skeptically and even sarcasticly about the poems with which a then-novice writer came to him...
But, probably, this is what a genius should be like, who managed to get permission to work on the Bible for children in Soviet times! And these “Memories of Chukovsky” are valuable because they give the opportunity to see him from different sides.

I met Boris Zhitkov in childhood, that is, back in the nineteenth century. We were the same age, studied in the same class of the same Odessa Second Secondary Gymnasium, but he did not pay any attention to me for a long time, and this caused me pain.

I belonged to that gang of boys who seethed on the back benches and were called “Kamchatka”. He sat far in front, silent, very straight, motionless, as if walled off from everyone else. He seemed arrogant to us. But I liked everything about him, even this arrogance. I liked that he lived in the port, right above the sea, among ships and sailors; that all his uncles - every single one! - were admirals; that he has his own boat, it seems, even under sail, and not only a boat, but also a telescope on three legs, and a violin, and cast-iron gymnastics balls, and a trained dog.

I knew about all this from the lucky ones who managed to visit Zhitkov, and I saw the trained (very shaggy) dog with my own eyes: he often accompanied his master to the gates of our school, carrying his violin in his teeth.

It used to be that, having arrived early, I stood for a long time at this gate just to watch how Zhitkov - with a motionless and very serious face - would bend over the learned dog, take his violin from her, tell her (as if in secret!) some quiet word , and she will immediately rush without looking back along Pushkinskaya - obviously, to the harbor, to the ships and sailors.

Perhaps because I had neither uncles who were admirals, nor a boat, nor a telescope, nor a scientific dog, Zhitkov seemed to me the most wonderful creature in the whole world, and I was drawn to him like a magnet. I was impressed by his importance, silence and restraint, for I myself was very fidgety and talkative and there was not a shadow of solidity in me. It happened that for a whole day he would not utter a single word, and I remember how painfully I envied those whom he occasionally honored with his conversation. There were only a few of them: the Russified Italian Brambilla, and Misha Kobetsky, and Ilyusha Mechnikov, the scientist’s nephew, and two or three more, no more. I am ashamed to remember how many boyishly inept attempts I made to penetrate this vicious circle, to attract the attention of Boris Zhitkov with some desperate trick. But he didn't even look in my direction.

Things went on like this for two or three months, perhaps more. Zhitkov stubbornly avoided any communication with me. But then one incident happened that unexpectedly brought us closer together. The incident was minor, and I would have forgotten about it if it had not been connected with Zhitkov.

It started with the fact that our director, Andrei Vasilyevich Jungmeister, who taught us the Russian language, once started talking about various outdated words and mentioned, among other things, the word “by no means”, which, according to him, had already become obsolete and in the coming years should was inevitable to perish, I sincerely regretted the dying word and decided to take the most energetic measures to prevent its death and pour into it, so to speak, new life: I begged the entire “Kamchatka”, about a dozen comrades, to use it as often as possible in their conversations , notebooks and in lessons, at the blackboard. Therefore, when the Jungmeister asked us, for example, if we knew the singular number of the word “scissors,” we answered in unison:

Do words like “coat” or “coffee” decline?

There was no mischief or insolence here - we just wanted to save, as far as possible, the innocently dying Russian word. But the Jungmeister saw a malicious conspiracy here and, since I shouted louder than anyone else, he called me into his office and asked if I intended to stop this “senseless rebellion.” When, out of inertia, I answered “not at all,” he became furious and, threatening me with cruel punishments, ordered me to stay for two hours without lunch.

After sitting for these two hours on the windowsill of the classroom, I, hungry and angry, wandered home to my place, on Novorybnaya Street, suffering in advance from the troubles that this story could cause my mother.

Having walked quite far from the gymnasium, somewhere in the Bazarnaya area, I was surprised to see that next to me was Zhitkov. He had a violin in his hand. “I must have been late with the music teacher,” I thought, infinitely happy. Zhitkov was reserved and silent, as always, but in his very silence I felt friendliness. There must have been something about the stupid episode I just told him about that made him like it. He didn't express it in a single word. I get approval, but already. I felt that he was walking next to me as an expression of sympathy.

At the corner of Kanatnaya he suddenly asked:

Can you row?

Not at all... That is, no, I can’t. ..

What about steering?

I do not know how.

Do you collect a herbarium?

I didn’t even know what a herbarium was.

What kind of wind is blowing now? North? Or West? Or ost?

I didn't know that either. I didn't know anything about anything. And I was sure that as soon as he saw how ignorant I was, he would turn away from me and leave right away. But he just whistled quietly and continued to walk silently next to me. He was short, narrow-shouldered, but, as I could later see, very strong, with iron muscles. He walked in a military style - chest forward. And in general there was something military in his whole bearing. He silently led me to Novorybnaya, all the way to the house, and the next day, Sunday, he came to me in the morning with a tattered French astronomical atlas and began to show on its soot-black pages all kinds of constellations, stars, nebulae and got me so interested in them and my sister, that we began to impatiently wait for the darkness to see in the sky the same stars that he showed us on paper, as if we had never seen them before.

From then on, my strange friendship with Zhitkov began, which, I think, is explained by the fact that we were both so different. Zhitkov’s character was proactive and domineering, and since he, a third-grader, was already literally bursting with a multitude of knowledge, skills and information that filled him to the brim, he, a teacher by nature, longed to teach, instruct, explain, and explain. Precisely because I knew nothing and knew nothing, I at that time turned out to be a precious object for the application of his pedagogical talents, especially since I immediately humbly and meekly recognized his unlimited right to dispose of my mental life.

He taught me everything: electroplating, French (which he knew excellently), tying sea knots, recognizing insects and birds, predicting the weather, swimming, catching tarantulas... Under his close guidance, I read two books by Timiryazev and a book by Flammarion about the structure of the universe. From him I learned to pick out old tin plaques from bindyugs (that is, long carts drawn by oxen) using a hammer and chisel and melt them in a cast-iron pot over a fire.

My mother, listening to us talk about the stars, was fascinated by him from the very first day. Other high school students who occasionally came to see me were in her eyes fighters, foul-mouthed people, braggarts, and smokers. Zhitkov, so serious, impressive, explaining to me about celestial mechanics, immediately won her heart, and soon they started their own special affairs and conversations. She loved flowers very much, and Zhitkov began to help her in her floriculture, replanted her lemons and ficuses with her, obtained for her from a German gardener friend finely sifted black, greasy soil, which he brought to her on his back from Alexander Park in a homemade backpack . I also remember (but, it seems, this was much later) that he brought her some patterns and even helped her cut calico blouses for my older sister using a new method he invented.

In general, he got along with adults more readily than with children, perhaps because he himself was characterized by a sedate “adultness” of speech and actions. The vast majority of his adult friends belonged to the so-called social “lower classes”: stokers, bookbinders, binders, retired soldiers, factory workers, and even some lame pyrotechnician who made fireworks for “public festivities.” At that time, not a single celebration on Lakzheron and the Small Fountain was complete without fireworks. They were manufactured by Kurtz and Co. The lame pyrotechnician worked in the workshop of this company. With each of his adult friends, Zhitkov had, as they would say today, a business contact that was incomprehensible to me: to one he brought some kind of intricate nut, to another he told someone’s address, from a third he took tow and resin for puttying a boat, with a fourth I went to the pawnshop for something. They all treated him with respect and called him, thirteen years old, Boris Stepanych; He visited each one briefly, spoke to each one in a laconic, businesslike and serious manner, in a dull, barely audible voice.

In general, he was stingy with words. He had an excellent ability to remain silent. Among unfamiliar people, he usually sat to the side, on the fly, and even somehow defiantly remained silent, peering at everyone around him with calm, slightly narrowed eyes.

I will never forget how in early spring he began to teach me rowing - not in the port, but on Lanzheron, near the deserted coast, having borrowed a scow from a Greek friend for this purpose. The oars were splintered, heavy, long, the scow was clumsy and at the same time treacherously nimble. My hands were numb from the fierce wind (I already knew that this wind was called “north”), the side waves became angrier every minute, but I felt a burning delight from the fact that Zhitkov was sitting at the stern and abruptly commanded me:

Rake the left one, rake the right one! Throw it further away. No, even further. .. Like this! And pull it right away, right away, you know, right away - like that! One-two!

His demands knew no bounds. When my oar fell off, he looked at me with such immense disgust that I felt like a scoundrel. He demanded uninterrupted, skilled, precise rowing, but at first I wielded the heavy oars so chaotically and feebly that he kept shouting indignantly:

It's a shame in front of the shore!

And although there was not a single person on the shore in such cold weather, it seemed to me that the entire coast, from the harbor to the Small Fountain, was dotted with hundreds of spectators, who then came to mock my ineptitude. Only thanks to Zhitkov’s pedagogical talent, his relentless persistence, within a month I became a more or less tolerable rower, and he considered it possible to take me to him, to “his” harbor, and make a ceremonial voyage with me in a new, dapper, freshly varnished boat - to the lighthouse and back. He himself rowed artistically, like a professional sailor, throwing his oars far back and subordinating his every movement to the strictest rhythm. The bot was a stranger, but its owner went somewhere and lent it to Zhitkov for a while; from someone else (I forget who) Zhitkov received two pairs of wonderful oars - made of palm wood, with lead in the handles, flexible, fine workmanship. These oars were kept at the bottom of a very high barge moored to the pier, and Zhitkov usually sent me to get them. Since in all our maritime enterprises it was immediately established that I was a cabin boy and he was a captain, I did not dare disobey his orders, although I had to run up to this barge along a narrow, shaky and long plank, which I was mortally afraid of. It was especially scary to go down it with two pairs of oars. Having learned about my fear, Zhitkov told me that he himself once experienced a “fear of heights,” but overcame this fear with training, and as proof, he ran up the board with such speed that the board shook under him, and I closed my eyes from scared.

Soon I became so comfortable with rowing that Zhitkov considered it possible to leave the harbor with me into the open sea, where my tiny boat was immediately attacked by wild, very cheerful waves.

Before meeting Zhitkov, I had no idea that such fun existed in the world. As soon as the fresh wind of the Black Sea expanse hit us in the face, I could not help but shout at the top of my voice wide, sweeping lines, as if created for this moment:

You are great swell! You are a swell of the sea!

Whose holiday are you celebrating like this?

Zhitkov immediately continued the quote. He knew and loved poetry, especially those that depicted nature. I remember how he admired Pushkin’s poems about the surface of the sea, which

Crushed a black whirlwind on the fly.

Just think,” he said, “to say about water that it is crumpled like paper, like a rag!” And this epithet: “black whirlwind”! And this wonderful word: “on the fly”!..

A steamer appeared on the horizon. Greek? French? Italian - Zhitkov immediately recognized him by the outline of his body and long before his approach, he unmistakably called him by name.

At sea, Zhitkov became complacent, talkative, sociable and completely shed his “adulthood” and isolation. We happened to be at sea for seven, eight hours, sometimes more; We landed at the Big Fountain, lit a fire on the pebbles, cooked fish soup in a tin, competed in throwing stones with a ricochet, and Zhitkov managed to ensure that the stone appeared above the surface of the sea twelve times before disappearing into the water. By the end of summer we were tanned like blacks. My mother, who until then had never dared to let me go to the sea, now no longer objected to my long excursions - the name “Zhitkov” had such a magical effect on her.

Only once during the whole summer did we have an accident, which we often remembered later, several decades later. One day before evening, when we were returning home, a strong wind suddenly blew up and drove us straight onto the breakwater, and the wild waves that were rampant seemed to have the express purpose of slamming us with all their might against the granite of the breakwater and smashing our little boat into pieces. We rowed with all our strength; We saw our only salvation in getting to the harbor before we were hit by the rocks. This turned out to be impossible, and so we were lifted so high that for a moment we saw the sea on the other side of the pier, then it was thrown down, as if from a five-story building, then it was doused with a huge waterfall, then with furious force it began to hit our boat against the pier, now with its stern, now obliquely, then sideways. I tried to push myself away from the breakwater with an oar, but it immediately broke. I became numb with despair and suddenly noticed, or rather felt, that Zhitkov was no longer behind me. There was a moment when I was sure that he had drowned. But then I heard his voice. It turned out that at that moment when we were lifted up, Zhitkov, with amazing presence of mind, jumped from the boat onto the pier, onto its sloping, wet, slippery wall, and climbed to its very crest. From there he shouted to me:

The end is like a nautical rope. Zhitkov demanded that I throw him the end of the rope that lay coiled in a ring on the bow, but since I was still very unsteady in the maritime vocabulary, I understood the word “end” in its general meaning and screamed in death-bed anguish.

Fortunately, the lighthouse keeper saw the disaster and rushed to my aid. With terrible curses, which even the howling of the storm could not drown out, with his face distorted with anger, he threw me the end of the rope and, together with Zhitkov, dragged me, trembling, but inexpressibly joyful, onto the wet stones of the pier and immediately took care of our boat: he hooked it with a long hook and ordered the assistant to bring her into the harbor, after which he attacked me and Zhitkov with a new assortment of curses, demanding that we follow him to the lighthouse. I expected extraordinary ferocity, but he, without ceasing to scold, gave us a glass of pepper, ordered us to take off our wet clothes and run naked along the breakwater to quickly warm up. Then he put us on a bed in his kennel, covered us with a blanket and, sitting down behind an overturned box, took a pen to draw up a report on what happened. But when, after the very first questions, I learned that one of us, Zhitkov, the son of “Stepan Vasilich,” put down his pen, pushed away the paper and again treated us to pepper.

To jump out of a boat during a storm and jump onto the pier required the agility of an athlete, not to mention desperate courage. Here, in this quarter of an hour, the whole of Zhitkov was revealed to me: a great “skillsman,” a hero, a faithful and reliable comrade.

Only later, about a quarter of a century later, did I learn from Zhitkov that many of those adult, bearded people with whom he hung out as a child, including the lame pyrotechnician, worked in the revolutionary underground and that he, thirteen-year-old Zhitkov, already in those early years provided them with all possible assistance. For example, to a pyrotechnician who lived far from the city, on the road to Maly Fontan, he regularly brought in his school backpack some kind of pasty, pinkish-purple, odorous and sticky mass, supposedly needed for making fireworks. In fact, as I later found out, it was a hectograph - a special composition for propagating illegal leaflets, made by Zhitkov according to his sister’s recipe. The pyrotechnician printed leaflets, and one of their distributors on the port territory was (as it later turned out) the same Zhitkov, as if created for such secret work. This conspiracy was greatly facilitated by his imaginary, purely external lordship. An ardent democrat, who from childhood constantly mixed with porters, tramps, and sailors, for a long time he did not arouse any suspicion among the police swarming in the port precisely thanks to his smart suit (which he himself, with his own hands, cleaned, ironed, and darned) and of his feigned, supposedly lordly arrogance.

At that time, he often complained that he did not have enough wax to catch tarantulas. As I understand now, he needed wax mainly for making hectographs; in order to replenish his meager wax reserves, both of us, without much difficulty, stole cinders from all the surrounding churches and chapels, mainly in the Ilyinsky courtyard on Athos, right there on Pushkinskaya Street. His hectographs were excellent, and the demand for them was very great,

By that time, I began to visit his house and met his entire family.

The warmth of the family amazed me. It was expressed not in some sugary greetings, but in generous and inexhaustible hospitality. Some shabby, silent, smelling of shag, obviously hungry people came to Stepan Vasilyevich, and without any questioning they were seated with their family at a long, oilcloth-covered table and fed the same thing that the family ate (and their food was simple, without gourmet whims: porridge, fried mackerel, boiled beef), and spent a long time drinking tea, for which both guests and hosts had a great penchant. Usually they dined in silence and even seemed sullenly, but at tea they became more sociable, and then heated arguments arose between them about some article by Mikhailovsky, about Leo Tolstoy, about populism.

In addition to literature, the Zhitkov family loved mathematics, astronomy, and physics. I vaguely remember some electrical appliances in Stepan Vasilyevich’s office. I remember the mathematics textbooks he compiled; they lay in a pile in his office - obviously, author's copies sent to him by a St. Petersburg publisher.

I was very surprised by the relationship that existed between Stepan Vasilyevich and his son Boris: it was a relationship between two adults, equal people. Boris was given complete freedom, he did whatever he wanted - so great was the conviction of his parents that he would not use their trust for evil. And indeed, he himself told me that he never lied to them about anything. I had never seen such a family before, and only then, several years later, did I become convinced that, in essence, it was a very typical Russian intelligentsia working family of that time, of which there were many in capitals and big cities - in Saratov, Kiev, Nizhny , in Kazan, - scrupulously honest, alien to any falsehood, strict towards any untruth. There was not a shadow of what was then called philistinism in her, and in this she was unlike all the other families that I happened to know at that time. I vividly remember with what admiration I, a thirteen-year-old boy, absorbed its atmosphere.

He, like his son Boris, had something stern in his character. He held a relatively minor position in the port, but, as I soon noticed, he was very popular among sailors, especially the lower rank. The captains and owners of the ships could not stand him, but the sailors, stokers and, in general, all the “sea workers” treated him with the greatest confidence. His moral authority in their eyes was enormous. In case of any conflict with their superiors, they went to Stepan Vasilyevich, either to the office where he worked, or, most often, to his apartment, and he patiently listened to them and, after a long silence, passed a verdict, which always tended to protect the victims. Boris was very similar to him - not in appearance, but in his mental makeup. Stepan Vasilyevich’s appearance was very impressive, although he was not tall: a beard in the style of the seventies, long hair, stern eyes, without a smile. This is how I imagined - from the portraits - Saltykov-Shchedrin.

The service apparently did not satisfy him; He often returned from work irritated and gloomy and walked gloomily around his office, and then everyone said: “He is not in a good mood,” and did not dare speak to him.

Zhitkov's mother was a pianist. A small, thin woman devoted to music to the point of passion. Almost always, approaching the house where the Zhitkovs lived, from afar I heard the very loud sounds of her exercises, filling the whole house.

In the spring of 1897, when Boris and I were fifteen years old, he came to me and in his conspiratorial whisper suggested that we get ready for Kyiv.

Yes. On foot. This is the route. - And he showed me the card that he got from Stepan Vasilyevich.

I had three rubles, he had seven or eight rubles, we got two bottles for water (there was a flask, but it leaked), we bought two large rolls of bread from Boniface’s bakery, my mother gave us a pillowcase with crackers and boiled eggs, Zhitkov’s mother supplied us with pies and cheese, and the next day, at dawn, we. set off.

A paper was previously drawn up that defined our mutual relations during the entire journey. We had to not separate on the road under any circumstances, divide all food in half, etc., etc., etc. And there was one more point that soon turned out to be fatal for me: in all difficult cases I must unquestioningly obey Zhitkov as my commander. If this rule is broken twice during the journey, our friendship is over forever and ever.

I willingly signed this paper, not foreseeing what consequences it would entail.

And so, under the morning stars, we walk briskly along the dusty outskirts of Odessa and at sunrise we emerge onto the Nikolaevsky Way. The sun is burning mercilessly. Each of us has a bag on our backs, a bottle of water on our belts, and a gnarled stick in our hand. At the very first stop, the time of which strictly corresponded to Boris’s schedule, I ate my entire portion of feta cheese at breakfast - a terribly salty sheep’s cheese. I’m painfully thirsty, but I’m afraid to ask Zhitkov’s permission to take a sip from the bottle, because he has a schedule for that too. The bottle is poorly fitted, it hits me on the thigh and prevents me from walking, but I don’t dare stop to tie it in any other way.

Along the entire road, right up to the horizon, there are iron telegraph poles, already hot from the sun in the morning. The ground is all cracked from the heat. The only living creatures we come across along the way are dung beetles, rolling their magnificent geometrically shaped balls under our feet with extraordinary zeal. Zhitkov walks clearly, in a military manner, and I, feeling that he will never forgive me if I reveal even the slightest flabbiness of my soul, try to keep up with him a single step. In the heat of the day - again according to Zhitkov's schedule - we found a deep ravine not far from the road, where we lay down to rest. But not even an hour had passed before we were awakened by thunder.

Thunder rumbled a thousand times louder than usual, lightning flashed one after another continuously, and the downpour turned the entire road into a continuous river. There was nowhere to hide from the rain. Zhitkov commanded:

Take off your shoes and go barefoot!

I took off my boots and, following Zhitkov’s example, put them on a stick and walked through the liquid black soil with bare feet almost knee-deep in mud. Less than an hour had passed before the clouds fled to the horizon, and the hot sun warped the wet shoes so much that it was impossible to put them on. She, as they put it in the south, “gotten crazy.”

Early in the morning, in soiled, wrinkled clothes, which the day before had been a completely neat school uniform, hungry, barefoot, exhausted, with ugly, dirty shoes dangling behind me, I, together with Boris, approached Bug and saw a little shop where the fire was glowing. I rushed to her to buy bread, but Zhitkov didn’t allow it and instead of bread, to my chagrin, I bought soap to wash our trousers, completely covered with black mud, in the river. The purchase of bread, according to Zhitkov’s schedule, should have happened much later.

By curbing my impulses, Boris, as he himself said, taught me to “strengthen my will.” At that time, “willpowering” fascinated him extremely.

We washed our dirty trousers for a long time, standing waist-deep in the water, and, laying them out on the shore, waited a long time for them to dry at least a little, but there was fog over the river, and we put them on wet.

When we entered Nikolaev and walked along its idyllic streets, we (especially me) looked so suspicious that passers-by stood aside with hostility, apparently mistaking us for swindlers.

It is unknown what would have happened to us if a miracle had not rescued us. When we, trying to stay away from the center, approached a large ancient cemetery, a pockmarked Malanya, who once lived in our yard, in the apartment of Major Statsenko, for whom she was a cook, was sitting on a rubble at the cemetery gate. About a year ago the major was transferred to Nikolaev, and his wife took the pockmarked Malanya with her. Now Malanya was sitting on the rubble with the cemetery watchman and, seeing us, exclaimed in amazement:

Oh, these are panics from our yard! The watchman objected to her with Ukrainian irony:

Why are you panicking?

But she gasped, fussed and rushed towards us with such joy, as if we were her closest relatives. Zhitkov tried to evade her too warm greetings, but not even a minute had passed before we appeared before the major’s wife, who lived two steps away, near the cemetery itself.

The major's name was Olga Ivanovna, and I will always remember with the greatest gratitude her Ukrainian borscht, coffee with cream and that soft, wide bed that she ordered to be laid out for us in the cool gazebo. There we both slept for thirteen hours, and then got up, had dinner, wandered around the city and fell asleep again for the whole night. There are such kind people in the world! While we were sleeping, pockmarked Malanka cleaned and ironed our clothes, and Olga Ivanovna wrote lengthy letters to my mother and Zhitkov’s mother so that they would not worry about their sons. She was childless and was bored. All day she was just busy thinking about what else she could treat us with, how to make us happy, what to give us. She offered us some silk belts with tassels, some kind of mother-of-pearl knife, and even her major’s boots. I wanted to accept her gifts, but Zhitkov, “strengthening his will,” flatly refused them; Following his example, I also refused. Both pockmarked Malanka and Olga Ivanovna tried to persuade us to stay with them, but Zhitkov answered all requests:

We need to get to Kherson as soon as possible, we have already violated our schedule.

And here we are again on the dusty road, in the steppe, walking past telegraph poles. The shoes are back on our feet, they have become more spacious, since Zhitkov immediately, as soon as we arrived at the hospitable major’s wife, got dry peas from Malanka, filled our shoes to the top with them and filled them with cold water. The peas swelled and the skin straightened. The boots fit just right. The bags are again filled with food: they contain poppy seed cakes, dry ram, and boiled eggs, which the pockmarked Malanka gave us. In addition, Zhitkov and I, out of habit, took with us about a dozen cinders from the cemetery church.

We have already walked thirty miles or more. Our last stop was very recently - about an hour ago. But the heat was terrible, and I desperately wanted to sit down and rest. The heat was such that mirages constantly appeared in front of us - until then I had read about them only in Jancin’s “Geography”: shady, curly trees bent over some beautiful, wide, transparent pond like the sky - and it seemed that in an hour or two we would certainly be in these heavenly places. But a minute passed, the vision disappeared and melted. According to Zhitkov’s schedule, our next vacation was not coming soon. Seeing that, contrary to the schedule, I lay down in a roadside ditch, Zhitkov, in a deadly calm and polite voice, invited me to continue the journey. Otherwise, he said, he would have to apply to me that paragraph of the agreement I signed, according to which our friendship must end.

How I subsequently cursed my cowardice! It was precisely cowardice, because all I had to do was pull myself together and I could overcome this weakness. But an absurd stubbornness came over me, and with an exaggerated expression of fatigue I continued to lie in the same position and, as if in order to finally push my strict friend away from me, I leisurely untied my bag and began chewing crackers with demonstrative appetite, washing them down with muddy water. from a bottle. This was the second violation of our agreement with Zhitkov, since food and drink were also scheduled for a later time.

Zhitkov stood over me, then turned on his heel in military style and, without saying a word, walked along the road. I looked after him with longing. I realized that I was deeply guilty before him, that I needed to jump up and catch up with him and repent of my wild act. I would have had enough physical strength for this, since although I was exhausted from the heat, I repeat, I did not experience excessive fatigue. But minutes passed after minutes, and I continued, as if numb, to lie at the post and drink with disgust the warm, thirst-quenching, dirty water. After lying like this for about an hour, I suddenly broke down and, almost crying from irreparable grief, rushed after Boris. But he went far away and was not visible, as the road made a sharp turn. Suddenly I noticed a piece of paper lying white on a telegraph pole; I rushed to it and saw that it was glued with a candle, one of those that he got in Nikolaev. On the piece of paper was written in large, clear block letters:

WE DO NOT KNOW YOU ANYMORE

And below, in ordinary cursive, Zhitkov told me the address of his sister, who lived in Kherson, the now living Vera Stepanovna Arnold.

Feeling deeply unhappy, I walked along the disgusting road. Vaguely, as in a dream, I remember that about ten miles later I had fellow travelers - a whole flock of barefoot village girls who were also “wandering” to Kherson. I tried to talk to them, but none of them wanted to respond. Such was farm etiquette back then. At some ravine they turned off the road and went straight through the steppe, taking a shortcut. I followed them and therefore found myself in Kherson much earlier than Zhitkov, found Vera Stepanovna somewhere not far from Potemkin Boulevard, delighted her with the message that her brother would soon come, and immediately, after a brief wash, was seated at the table with the samovar. When I was telling her and her young husband our travel adventures, a tired, dusty Boris appeared at the door. He spoke to me as if nothing had happened, very friendly, without a hint of resentment, and soon we were both sent to bed. But as soon as we found ourselves alone and I decided to continue the conversation, suddenly, to my horror, I heard from Boris:

I’m only talking to you there, at the table, because I don’t want to humiliate you in front of Vera Stepanovna, but in general - I’ve already told you this - we no longer know each other.

A day or two later, on some crappy steamboat, I, emaciated and sad, returned to my parents’ house.

This is how my childhood friendship with Boris Zhitkov ended. Of course, I was all to blame, and yet the punishment he imposed on me was, it seems to me, too severe.

But this was Zhitkov’s character: he was a principled, tough person, who did not know any compromises, and was demanding of himself and others. I understood his anger: after all, he gave me so much of his soul, guided my thoughts, my behavior, even though I, like a bad student, failed the first exam, where he tested my discipline, my will to overcome obstacles. It taught me a lot and I am very grateful for the lesson.

It’s not that our relationship stopped completely, but from inseparable and bosom friends, we became distant acquaintances for a long time - and that’s all. Occasionally he came to my mother, brought her some packages that she hid in the cellar; under the wing where we lived then, right under our apartment, there was a cellar, and there in 1903-1904 Zhitkov, as he later told me, hid propaganda leaflets and appeals, printed by him on the same hectographs. Little by little we started to get closer again. I remember a boat trip on a yacht with him and Sergei Utochkin, a future pilot, legendarily fearless, whom we both loved. I remember a Ukrainian underground fighter who fled from Siberia, whom Zhitkov sheltered with me for two nights. I remember our meetings in the bookstore of our mutual friend Monik Feldman (on Troitskaya Street), who generously supplied us with illegal books, starting with Herzen’s “The Bell” and ending with Kautsky’s latest pamphlets.

Our childhood quarrel was gradually forgotten, but our paths soon diverged. I went to London, then to St. Petersburg, became a writer, started a family - and was very happy when I came to Kirochnaya in 1923, in late autumn, that is, more than thirty years later. after our disagreement, suddenly he himself, the idol of my childhood, Zhitkov, came. But what an emaciated, worn-out look he had! Yellow, sunken cheeks, saggy, frayed, thin clothes, and immeasurable fatigue in the eyes. Now, after so many years, I can no longer clearly remember what happened to him at that time. It seems that he was robbed and, among other things, the documents that he needed to enter the service were stolen. In addition, he had been debilitatingly ill for a long time and, it seems, spent almost a month in the hospital. In any case, he was in extreme need: according to him, even a tram ticket had become an almost unaffordable luxury for him. He stayed with me the whole day. By evening, his gloominess gradually dissipated, he started talking with my children and, sitting down among them on the sofa, began to tell them about various sea adventures. They listened to him enchanted and, when he finished one of his stories, shouted despotically: “More!” I listened to his stories in fits and starts: some people came, the phone was constantly ringing. But I saw how captivated the children were by his stories, and when he was about to leave, I said:

Listen, Boris, why don’t you become a writer? Try to describe the adventures you just talked about, and, really, a good book will come out!

He responded somewhat sluggishly, as if trying to hush up the conversation, but I continued to insist and at the same time said:

You write what you write, and I will read and correct it.

A few days later, much earlier than I expected, he brought me a school notebook, in which some kind of maritime story was written in neat handwriting - it seems, one of those that he told to children. Each page was folded in half, the text occupied only one half, the other remained free, precisely so that I, as a “professional writer,” had the greatest scope for making the necessary amendments to the manuscript of a literary “novice,” “dilettante.”

I sat down at the table, took a pencil and prepared to edit the notebook that lay in front of me, but soon I was surprised to realize that the editor’s pencil had absolutely nothing to do here, that the one whom I considered an amateur was an experienced writer, a complete master, with a sophisticated style of writing, with an unmistakable sense of style, with enormous linguistic resources. There was no doubt that he, this “beginning" author, who had not yet published a single line, had gone through a long and very serious literary school. My joy was boundless: young Soviet literature for children and teenagers, for whose prosperity at that time we fought so passionately, acquired in the person of this forty-year-old sailor, shipbuilder, mathematician, and physicist fresh, reliable strength * In a letter to Igor Arnold, his nephew, Zhitkov wrote a few months later: “Experienced people say that I went into action too soon! But this was facilitated by K. Chukovsky, my childhood friend, for whom I retained a feeling, despite many years and bad weather...” (Ed.) .

Less than a year had passed - the name Zhitkov had become familiar to the entire mass of children's readers, and there was no longer any doubt that literary creativity was his blood, natural, main profession.

But here begins that period of Zhitkov’s biography that is memorable not only to me. Others will say much more about this period. I considered it my duty to tell mainly about the writer’s childhood years, years that few people remember, since almost all of us, his peers, are already extinct. Meanwhile, without knowing his childhood, it is impossible to understand why his books retain their charm for each new generation of Soviet children. The main reason, I repeat, is that in his entire mental make-up Zhitkov even then, in that distant time, more than half a century ago, showed himself, so to speak, the prototype of a typical Soviet child. Now there are millions of such guys, but then he was a rarity, an unprecedented miracle. From the age of ten, he experienced, for example, an irresistible attraction to mechanics and technology, while the vast majority of children of that time were terribly far from it. And what kind of technology could we be tempted by then? There were no cars, no telephones, no trams, no planes, no motorcycles, no radio, not to mention televisions or cinema. You go out onto a dusty, deserted cobblestone street and see slow, tired oxen, barely moving their legs, dragging binders behind them. This was our main transport - clumsy carts and even a horse-drawn horse drawn by nags. And it was precisely at such a time and in such an environment that Zhitkov made technology the center of his interests, and with this alone his childhood echoes the childhood of modern children.

Physical education, without which childhood is now simply unthinkable, also did not exist then and in its infancy. They didn’t even know the words. To be addicted to sports at that time, to rowing, to swimming, to long hikes, meant being ahead of your era. And Boris Zhitkov’s love for self-discipline, for “hardening the will,” for heroic masculinity also made him a distant forerunner of the Soviet people. That is why he, an elderly man, found himself in such harmony with the new era of construction, technical daring and experimentation. His whole childhood seemed to be deliberately arranged so that half a century later he would become a close comrade, friend and peer of the current generation of children.

The memories presented in the collection recreate in their totality a living and truthful portrait of K. I. Chukovsky. They were written in different keys - next to detailed psychological sketches based on many years of observations (K. Lozovskaya, M. Chukovskaya, N. Ilyina), small story short stories (L. Panteleev, Olga Berggolts, A. Raskin, E. Polonskaya), next to the poetic dedications of S. Marshak and Evg. Yevtushenko and the poetic image created in the essay by A. Voznesensky, strict descriptions of business meetings and joint work in the field of literary criticism, linguistics, translation, as well as on radio.
Children's writer, literary critic and critic, journalist, translator and language researcher - all these aspects of K. I. Chukovsky's diverse activities are presented in the memoirs of his contemporaries. The memoirs reflect the writer's relationships with people - famous and unknown, close to him and strangers, adults and children - and, most importantly, his attitude towards literary work.
Among the memoirists, the reader will meet the names of famous writers, artists, and actors.

Compiled by: K. I. Lozovskaya, Z. S. Paperny, E. Ts. Chukovskaya

CONTENT
Lev Kassil. From infancy to forever
Isaac Brodsky. In "Penates"
S. Sergeev-Tsensky. [From memories]
I. A. Brodsky. "Uncle Obley"
S. Bogdanovich. In those fabulous years
A. Deitch. First meeting
Alexandra Brushtein. Enviable life
Yu. Tynyanov. Korney Chukovsky
Const. Fedin. Literary studio
Olga Berggolts. Start
E. Polonskaya. My essay
Mich. Slonimsky. For many years
L. Panteleev. The story of one autograph
V. Smirnova. In Leningrad, in Moscow, in Peredelkino
B. Berestov. Quite recently there was Korney Ivanovich
Elena Blaginina. He was the whole country
Marina Chukovskaya. In life and in work
Ya Dolinina. Fairytale man
L. Libedinskaya. “You have to love literature!..”
Ya. Kuzmin. Long ago and recently
S. Marshak. Message…
Vera Panova. Simplicity and artistry
V. Levik. And one man did it all
Klara Lozovskaya. Secretary's Notes
Margarita Aliger. Long walks
A. Raskin. Train fortune telling
I. Petrova. Enchanted Soul
Olga Grudtsova. He was like no one else
N. Chernyshevskaya. Meeting of two centuries
Er. Hanpira. One year out of eight
Leonid Utesov. Looking at the photos
Z. Paperny. Invitation to Joy
V. Kaverin. I am a good lion
Andrey Voznesensky. The man with the tree name
Miron. Petrovsky. Reader
Natalia Ilyina. That's how I remember him
S Mashinsky. In a doctor's robe
Yuri Galperin. "Literary evenings"
V. Nepomnyashchy. Teacher
Evg. Yevtushenko. Sail
Sergey Obraztsov. In memory of a friend
Irakli Andronikov. He pushed the boundaries of literature

The wife of K.I.’s son remembers Chukovsky Nikolai:

“He worked hard, diligently, furiously, not sparing himself. He got up early and sat down at the table when everyone in the house was still asleep. In old, old, torn brown trousers, with a worn jacket on his shoulders, he worked in the mornings. Otherwise, he will put on an old coat without buttons, raising the collar to cover his bare neck. He felt comfortable in worn clothes.
All the household got up silently so as not to disturb Korney Ivanovich. The noise while working infuriated him.
- Bastards! - he yelled, jumping out of the office and wrapping his coat. - Don't you understand that I'm working?
Are you making noise?
And he slammed the door behind him, shaking his fist. But he moved away quickly, did not harbor any grudges, and, having finished working, did not remember his explosion.
But it should have been even quieter when he went to bed. You couldn't cough. You can't squeak the door. You can't walk hard. You can't rattle dishes. You can't talk even in a low voice, you can't laugh. It’s impossible... It’s impossible... Life in the house froze. They moved on tiptoes and spoke in whispers. And it never occurred to anyone to grumble. All his life, Korney Ivanovich suffered from insomnia, and it was very difficult to put him to sleep. Having barely learned to read, the children patiently read to him for hours before bed. (Kolya, as far as I remember, didn’t read it.) While they were reading, everyone at home was tormented, talking in whispers. If the office door opened silently and the reader came out rejoicing, it meant he had fallen asleep. And if he appeared with a dejected look, everyone understood: he was not sleeping, he could not “read out”. And the whole house was plunged into despondency.
I remember that Kolya wrote poems about this reading:
Korney Ivanovich says:

Read to me, Boba, for the night.
- Boba is also an old man, He doesn’t read without glasses.

His literary output was enormous. It was impossible for one person to cope. He always had assistants. They ran to the library for materials, checked texts, tinkered with proofs, and dealt with letters from readers. Often I had to carry out some household errands. And in order to put Korney Ivanovich to sleep after a sleepless night, it was often necessary to read to him during the day. His huge personality seemed to absorb his assistant - completely. Not everyone could stand it. And they changed often.

He always tried to involve growing children in his work. Gradually he tried to captivate them, talked about his plans, about the search for materials, about discoveries, and consulted with them. “My friend,” he said insinuatingly and melodiously, unexpectedly holding out the book, “I think this will be interesting for you.” Please read. Everything was thought out in advance: a book was found that could interest the child. And in the book - what he, Korney Ivanovich, needs for his work. […]

He was young, impetuous, greedily absorbed the impressions of the life around him, rushed here and there with irrepressible interest, made friends with many, but did not have a single real friend. He was interested in children, watched them, looked after women. Smart, cunning eyes looked slightly from under their brows, black, already gray hair fell boyishly onto his forehead. He was huge in everything. Starting with growth. The interest in life was enormous and comprehensive. Great insatiable curiosity and efficiency. All his gestures, all his actions were enormous - trifles did not interest him. If he gave money, he never settled for small change. True, it also happened like this: in the heat of the moment, succumbing to the first impulse, he will give, and then begins to grumble: “Oh, why did you give it?” I helped a person get a job - he did it to the best of his ability. He praised - unrestrainedly, scolded - without mercy. He got carried away passionately and ardently, but cooled off completely. Pettiness was not part of his nature. He never counted money: either he has money or he doesn’t. I remember how angry Maria Borisovna was that money kept flying out of all the pockets of his trousers and jacket when his suit was being cleaned. And at the same time, he carefully tore off a blank piece of paper from the letter he received, carefully extinguishing the light that someone had forgotten. But, perhaps, it was rather a sign of scrupulous accuracy - or a bright contrast with other manifestations of his nature.

All my life I kept a diary, sharing my impressions and thoughts with a notebook like no one else. He greedily attacked every new person, spent a lot of time with him until he saw him through. And often later he mercilessly threw it away from himself. It seemed that he had finally found a friend! Unity of mind - complete! And suddenly the new acquaintance, imperceptibly for himself, makes an unforgivable mistake: either in a conversation about literature, Korney Ivanovich’s absolute ear caught some false note, or, intoxicated by friendship, the new friend behaved somewhat familiarly with Korney Ivanovich. That's all. Friend expelled. And forever. And there was a new acquaintance, and everything started all over again. Of course, the duration of the friendship depended on how interesting the nature of the new acquaintance was to him. It was impossible to grab Korney Ivanovich and spin him around. He slipped away immediately. He hated all despotism. You could only get used to him, trying hard to guess his feelings, his moods. Oh no, he was not a saint - not at all! True, as I got older I became more tolerant.

But there was no greater joy for him than to discover a new talent, especially literary. He ran around with it for a long time, noisily, making every effort to get it moving. And sincerely, with all my heart, I rejoiced at the success. In general, he valued talent in people above all else. But he didn’t let anyone into his soul, into his world fenced off from everyone. He did not even suspect how a person close to the end could ease the mental burden. He carried his burden alone all his life. And how many other people’s sorrows, joys, doubts, hopes were contained in his soul! And there was enough space for everyone. […]

He loved, but he was harsh. In the family, kindred tenderness was not recognized at all. No kissing. A nod of the head, a handshake - that's all. And Korney Ivanovich hugged and kissed strangers recklessly, especially women. Children's birthdays were not celebrated, except for the birthday of the youngest, Murochka. Only April 1 was celebrated - Korney Ivanovich’s birthday, and like a child he waited for it and rejoiced at the gifts. The entire structure of the house was subordinated to the work of the owner and, most importantly, to his sleep. (In old age, this way of life changed somewhat: guests flooded the house. But sleep was still protected.) He came to the aid of the children only in very difficult times. Fight life yourself, with its circumstances! No pampering. But looking back, I am grateful to him for such a harsh attitude. He taught us all to face life fearlessly. The three eldest adored their father. Murochka was still small.

I had the opportunity to live in communication with him for forty-five years. But the feeling of his “omnipotence” never left me. When real trouble happened, there was always a consciousness in the depths of my soul: there is Korney Ivanovich. This is who will protect you from trouble with his big, soft hands. When Korney Ivanovich realized that Kolya and I decided to get married, he wrote a letter to his son. There was such a tradition in the family: the father never spoke to the children about important, exciting things, but always wrote letters. It was probably easier for him to express his thoughts on paper without getting excited. In the letter, he expressed to his son those wishes that life did not allow him to fulfill. “[...] You need to read, travel, increase your curiosity about people, countries, cultures, things. You need this right now, because only at your age is a person determined and created. That's why I say: for the sake of your future, for the sake of Marina, for the sake of your poems - leave before the fall, alone, wander, stagger, see new people [...] Once you get married, you will immediately be forced to think about boring things, about pennies and rags - and then goodbye poet N. Chukovsky (Nikolai Korneevich began as a poet. – Note by I.L. Vikentyev). I am firmly convinced of this. I am sure that if I had not been captured by pennies and rags so early, I, of course, would have turned out to be a very good writer: I studied philosophy a lot, studied greedily, and became a feuilletonist, a pennies per line [...] If this year you become vulgar, narrow, and impoverish your soul, you will never, never make up for what you have lost. 20-21 years are decisive in a person’s life[...] My destiny stands before me all the time: with the greatest difficulty, self-taught, from a beggarly family, I escaped to London - where there are so many books, things, museums, people, and I missed everything, didn’t notice anything, since she was with me beloved woman [...] I don’t see anything unnatural in the fact that the bride and groom, preparing for a long life together, separate for 3-4 months in order to stock up on spiritual capital [...] get married, with all my heart I wish you happiness , but remember, dear, about the danger that I am writing to you in this letter: about the danger of the unnoticed moldiness of the soul...”

Chukovskaya M.N., in Collection: Memoirs of Korney Chukovsky / Compiled by: K.I. Lozovskaya et al., M., “Soviet Writer”, 1983, p. 197-203.

Chukovsky Korney

Memories of Korney Chukovsky

The memories presented in the collection recreate in their totality a living and truthful portrait of K. I. Chukovsky. They were written in different keys - next to detailed psychological sketches based on many years of observations (K. Lozovskaya, M. Chukovskaya, N. Ilyina), small story short stories (L. Panteleev, Olga Berggolts, A. Raskin, E. Polonskaya), next to the poetic dedications of S. Marshak and Evg. Yevtushenko and the poetic image created in the essay by A. Voznesensky, strict descriptions of business meetings and joint work in the field of literary criticism, linguistics, translation, as well as on radio.

Children's writer, literary critic and critic, journalist, translator and language researcher - all these aspects of K. I. Chukovsky's diverse activities are presented in the memoirs of his contemporaries. The memoirs reflect the writer's relationships with people - famous and unknown, close to him and strangers, adults and children - and, most importantly, his attitude towards literary work.

Among the memoirists, the reader will meet the names of famous writers, artists, and actors.

Compiled by: K. I. Lozovskaya, Z. S. Paperny, E. Ts. Chukovskaya

Lev Kassil. From infancy to forever

Isaac Brodsky. In "Penates"

S. Sergeev-Tsensky. [From memories]

I. A. Brodsky. "Uncle Obley"

S. Bogdanovich. In those fabulous years

A. Deitch. First meeting

Alexandra Brushtein. Enviable life

Yu. Tynyanov. Korney Chukovsky

Const. Fedin. Literary studio

Olga Berggolts. Start

E. Polonskaya. My essay

Mich. Slonimsky. For many years

L. Panteleev. The story of one autograph

V. Smirnova. In Leningrad, in Moscow, in Peredelkino

B. Berestov. Quite recently there was Korney Ivanovich

Elena Blaginina. He was the whole country

Marina Chukovskaya. In life and in work

Ya Dolinina. Fairytale man

L. Libedinskaya. "You have to love literature!.."

Ya. Kuzmin. Long ago and recently

S. Marshak. Message...

Vera Panova. Simplicity and artistry

V. Levik. And one man did it all

Klara Lozovskaya. Secretary's Notes

Margarita Aliger. Long walks

A. Raskin. Train fortune telling

I. Petrova. Enchanted Soul

Olga Grudtsova. He was like no one else

N. Chernyshevskaya. Meeting of two centuries

Er. Hanpira. One year out of eight

Leonid Utesov. Looking at the photos

Z. Paperny. Invitation to Joy

V. Kaverin. I am a good lion

Andrey Voznesensky. The man with the tree name

Miron. Petrovsky. Reader

Natalia Ilyina. That's how I remember him

S Mashinsky. In a doctor's robe

Yuri Galperin. "Literary evenings"

V. Nepomnyashchy. Teacher

Evg. Yevtushenko. Sail

Sergey Obraztsov. In memory of a friend

Irakli Andronikov. He pushed the boundaries of literature

Lev Kassil

FROM INFANTRY AND FOREVER

For me, for everyone who was happy and proud of their friendship with him, and for everyone who read or heard him, Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky will forever remain framed in elegant, colorful books, alive, moving, just ringing, like a necklace from colorful pebbles, and suddenly a group of children immediately quiet, immediately constrained by greedy attention, enthusiastically listening to people of all ages in our country, and in many other countries, well-known poems about “how the Crocodile lived and lived, he walked the streets,” about the doctor "Aibolit", about the main clean man in the world, the head of all washbasins - Moidodyr, about the Tsokotukha Fly with a gilded belly, about the terrible African villain Barmaley and about much more...

Chukovsky is the childhood of my younger contemporaries. These are my own children's childhood years. This is almost the first babble of my granddaughter, who, from my words, perhaps not understanding everything, repeated after me: “The tsekatuha fly...” This is also my own adolescence, because as a high school boy I already knew poems about a crocodile by heart walking along Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg. This is my and my peers’ youth in literature, because all of us, now representing the older generation of writers writing for children, started with Chukovsky, Mayakovsky, Marshak...

Chukovsky is our long-term affection, which usually seemed to us the joyful, endless happiness of being a work comrade and an inner, heartfelt kinship of one of the most amazing and famous people of our country, of our century.