March 31 marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of the Russian writer and translator Korney Chukovsky.

Russian and Soviet poet, writer, critic, literary critic, translator Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (real name Nikolai Ivanovich Korneichukov) was born on March 31 (19 old style) March 1882 in St. Petersburg. Chukovsky's father, St. Petersburg student Emmanuel Levenson, in whose family Chukovsky's mother, a peasant Ekaterina Korneichukova, was a servant, left her three years after the birth of his son. Together with her son and eldest daughter, she was forced to leave for Odessa.

Nikolai studied at the Odessa gymnasium, but in 1898 he was expelled from the fifth grade, when, according to a special decree (a decree on cook's children), educational institutions were exempted from children of low birth.

From his youth, Chukovsky led a working life, read a lot, independently studied English and French.

In 1901, Chukovsky began to publish in the newspaper "Odessa News", where he was brought by his senior friend at the gymnasium, later a politician, ideologist of the Zionist movement, Vladimir Zhabotinsky.

In 1903-1904 Chukovsky was sent to London as a correspondent for "Odessa News". Almost daily he visited the free reading room of the British Museum Library, where he read English writers, historians, philosophers, and publicists. This helped the writer later develop his own style, which was later called paradoxical and witty.

Since August 1905, Chukovsky lived in St. Petersburg, collaborated with many St. Petersburg magazines, organized (with a subsidy from the singer Leonid Sobinov) a weekly political satire magazine "Signal". The magazine published Fyodor Sologub, Teffi, Alexander Kuprin. For bold cartoons and anti-government poems in four published issues, Chukovsky was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison.

In 1906 he became a regular contributor to Valery Bryusov's magazine "Libra". Since that year, Chukovsky also collaborated with the Niva magazine, the Rech newspaper, where he published critical essays on contemporary writers, later collected in the books From Chekhov to the Present Day (1908), Critical Stories (1911), Faces and masks "(1914)," Futurists "(1922).

Since the fall of 1906, Chukovsky settled in Kuokkale (now the village of Repino), where he became close with the artist Ilya Repin and lawyer Anatoly Koni, met Vladimir Korolenko, Alexander Kuprin, Fedor Shalyapin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Leonid Andreev, Alexei Tolstoy. Later, Chukovsky told about many cultural figures in his memoirs - "Repin. Gorky. Mayakovsky. Bryusov. Memories" (1940), "From memoirs" (1959), "Contemporaries" (1962).

In Kuokkala, the poet translated Leaves of Grass by the American poet Walt Whitman (published in 1922), wrote articles on children's literature (Save the Children and God and the Child, 1909) and the first tales (The Firebird almanac, 1911 ). An almanac of autographs and drawings was also collected here, reflecting the creative life of several generations of art workers - "Chukokkala", the name of which was invented by Repin.

This humorous handwritten almanac, where Alexander Blok, Zinaida Gippius, Nikolai Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Ilya Repin, as well as writers Arthur Conan Doyle and HG Wells left creative autographs, was first published in 1979 in a cut-down version.

In February-March 1916, Chukovsky made a second trip to England as part of a delegation of Russian journalists at the invitation of the British government. In the same year, Maxim Gorky invited him to head the children's department of the Parus publishing house. The result of the joint work was the almanac "Elka", published in 1918.

In the fall of 1917, Korney Chukovsky returned to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), where he lived until 1938.

In 1918-1924 he was a member of the management of the publishing house "World Literature".

In 1919 he took part in the creation of the "House of Arts" and directed its literary department.

In 1921, Chukovsky organized a dacha-colony for Petrograd writers and artists in Kholomki (Pskov province), where he "saved his family and himself from hunger," and took part in the creation of the children's department of the Epoch publishing house (1924).

In 1924-1925 he worked in the magazine "Russian Contemporary", where his books "Alexander Blok as a Man and a Poet", "Two Souls of Maxim Gorky" were published.

In Leningrad, Chukovsky published books for children "Crocodile" (published in 1917 under the title "Vanya and the Crocodile"), "Moidodyr" (1923), "Cockroach" (1923), "Fly-tsokotukha" (1924, under the name "Mukhina wedding ")," Barmaley "(1925)," Aibolit "(1929, entitled" The Adventures of Aibolit ") and the book" From two to five ", which was first published in 1928 under the name" Little Children ".

Children's stories became the reason for the persecution of Chukovsky, which began in the 1930s, the so-called struggle against "Chukovsky", initiated by Nadezhda Krupskaya, the wife of Vladimir Lenin. On February 1, 1928, her article "On the Crocodile" of K. Chukovsky "was published in the newspaper" Pravda ". On March 14, in defense of Chukovsky, Maxim Gorky appeared on the pages of Pravda with his Letter to the Editor. In December 1929, in the Literaturnaya Gazeta Korney Chukovsky publicly renounced his fairy tales and promised to create a collection called Veselaya Kolkhozia. He was depressed by the event he had experienced and after that he could not write for a long time. By his own admission, since that time he has turned from an author into an editor. The campaign of persecuting Chukovsky because of fairy tales was renewed in 1944 and 1946 - critical articles were published against "We Defeat Barmaley" (1943) and "Bibigon" (1945).

From 1938 until the end of his life, Korney Chukovsky lived in Moscow and at his dacha in Peredelkino near Moscow. He left the capital only during the Great Patriotic War, from October 1941 to 1943 he was evacuated to Tashkent.

In Moscow, Chukovsky published children's fairy tales "The Stolen Sun" (1945), "Bibigon" (1945), "Thanks to Aibolit" (1955), "The Fly in the Bath" (1969). For children of primary school age, Chukovsky retold the ancient Greek myth of Perseus, translated English folk songs ("Barabek", "Jenny", "Kotausi and Mousei" and others). In Chukovsky's retelling, the children got to know "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" by Erich Raspe, "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe, "Little Ragged Man" by James Greenwood. Chukovsky translated the tales of Kipling, the works of Mark Twain ("Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn"), Gilbert Chesterton, O. Henry ("Kings and Cabbage", short stories).

Spending a lot of time on literary translation, Chukovsky wrote the research work "The Art of Translation" (1936), later reworked into "High Art" (1941), expanded editions of which were published in 1964 and 1968.

Fascinated by English-language literature, Chukovsky explored the detective genre, which was gaining momentum in the first half of the 20th century. He read a lot of detective stories, wrote out especially successful passages from them, "collected" methods of murder. He was the first in Russia to speak about the emerging phenomenon of mass culture, citing the detective genre in literature and cinema as an example in his article "Nat Pinkerton and Contemporary Literature" (1908).

Korney Chukovsky was a historian and researcher of the poet Nikolai Nekrasov. He owns the books "Stories about Nekrasov" (1930) and "Mastery of Nekrasov" (1952), published dozens of articles about the Russian poet, found hundreds of Nekrasov lines banned by the censorship. The epoch of Nekrasov is devoted to articles about Vasily Sleptsov, Nikolai Uspensky, Avdotya Panaeva, Alexander Druzhinin.

Regarding language as a living being, Chukovsky in 1962 wrote a book "Living as Life" about the Russian language, in which he described several problems of modern speech, the main disease of which he called "bureaucratic" - a word invented by Chukovsky that denotes the pollution of language with bureaucratic cliches.

The well-known and recognized writer Korney Chukovsky, as a thinking person, did not accept many things in Soviet society. In 1958, Chukovsky was the only Soviet writer to congratulate Boris Pasternak on being awarded the Nobel Prize. He was one of the first to discover Solzhenitsyn, the first in the world to write an admiring review of "One Day in Ivan Denisovich", gave the writer shelter when he was in disgrace. In 1964, Chukovsky fought in defense of the poet Joseph Brodsky, who was put on trial for "parasitism".

In 1957, Korney Chukovsky was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philology, in 1962 - the honorary title of Doctor of Literature at Oxford University.

Chukovsky was awarded the Order of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor and medals. In 1962 he was awarded the Lenin Prize for the book "Nekrasov's Mastery".

Korney Chukovsky died in Moscow on October 28, 1969. The writer is buried at the Peredelkino cemetery.

On May 25, 1903, Chukovsky married Maria Borisovna Goldfeld (1880-1955). The Chukovskys had four children - Nikolai, Lydia, Boris and Maria. Eleven-year-old Maria died in 1931 from tuberculosis, Boris died in 1942 near Moscow during the Great Patriotic War.

Chukovsky's eldest son Nikolai (1904-1965) was also a writer. He is the author of biographical stories about James Cook, Jean La Perouse, Ivan Krusenstern, the novel "Baltic Sky" about the defenders of besieged Leningrad, psychological stories and stories, translations.

Daughter Lydia (1907-1996) - writer and human rights activist, author of the story "Sofya Petrovna" (1939-1940, published in 1988), which is a contemporary testimony of the tragic events of 1937, works about Russian writers, memories of Anna Akhmatova, and also works on the theory and practice of editorial art.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources.

March 31 marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of the Russian writer and translator Korney Chukovsky.

Russian and Soviet poet, writer, critic, literary critic, translator Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (real name Nikolai Ivanovich Korneichukov) was born on March 31 (19 old style) March 1882 in St. Petersburg. Chukovsky's father, St. Petersburg student Emmanuel Levenson, in whose family Chukovsky's mother, a peasant Ekaterina Korneichukova, was a servant, left her three years after the birth of his son. Together with her son and eldest daughter, she was forced to leave for Odessa.

Nikolai studied at the Odessa gymnasium, but in 1898 he was expelled from the fifth grade, when, according to a special decree (a decree on cook's children), educational institutions were exempted from children of low birth.

From his youth, Chukovsky led a working life, read a lot, independently studied English and French.

In 1901, Chukovsky began to publish in the newspaper "Odessa News", where he was brought by his senior friend at the gymnasium, later a politician, ideologist of the Zionist movement, Vladimir Zhabotinsky.

In 1903-1904 Chukovsky was sent to London as a correspondent for "Odessa News". Almost daily he visited the free reading room of the British Museum Library, where he read English writers, historians, philosophers, and publicists. This helped the writer later develop his own style, which was later called paradoxical and witty.

Since August 1905, Chukovsky lived in St. Petersburg, collaborated with many St. Petersburg magazines, organized (with a subsidy from the singer Leonid Sobinov) a weekly political satire magazine "Signal". The magazine published Fyodor Sologub, Teffi, Alexander Kuprin. For bold cartoons and anti-government poems in four published issues, Chukovsky was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison.

In 1906 he became a regular contributor to Valery Bryusov's magazine "Libra". Since that year, Chukovsky also collaborated with the Niva magazine, the Rech newspaper, where he published critical essays on contemporary writers, later collected in the books From Chekhov to the Present Day (1908), Critical Stories (1911), Faces and masks "(1914)," Futurists "(1922).

Since the fall of 1906, Chukovsky settled in Kuokkale (now the village of Repino), where he became close with the artist Ilya Repin and lawyer Anatoly Koni, met Vladimir Korolenko, Alexander Kuprin, Fedor Shalyapin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Leonid Andreev, Alexei Tolstoy. Later, Chukovsky told about many cultural figures in his memoirs - "Repin. Gorky. Mayakovsky. Bryusov. Memories" (1940), "From memoirs" (1959), "Contemporaries" (1962).

In Kuokkala, the poet translated Leaves of Grass by the American poet Walt Whitman (published in 1922), wrote articles on children's literature (Save the Children and God and the Child, 1909) and the first tales (The Firebird almanac, 1911 ). An almanac of autographs and drawings was also collected here, reflecting the creative life of several generations of art workers - "Chukokkala", the name of which was invented by Repin.

This humorous handwritten almanac, where Alexander Blok, Zinaida Gippius, Nikolai Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Ilya Repin, as well as writers Arthur Conan Doyle and HG Wells left creative autographs, was first published in 1979 in a cut-down version.

In February-March 1916, Chukovsky made a second trip to England as part of a delegation of Russian journalists at the invitation of the British government. In the same year, Maxim Gorky invited him to head the children's department of the Parus publishing house. The result of the joint work was the almanac "Elka", published in 1918.

In the fall of 1917, Korney Chukovsky returned to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), where he lived until 1938.

In 1918-1924 he was a member of the management of the publishing house "World Literature".

In 1919 he took part in the creation of the "House of Arts" and directed its literary department.

In 1921, Chukovsky organized a dacha-colony for Petrograd writers and artists in Kholomki (Pskov province), where he "saved his family and himself from hunger," and took part in the creation of the children's department of the Epoch publishing house (1924).

In 1924-1925 he worked in the magazine "Russian Contemporary", where his books "Alexander Blok as a Man and a Poet", "Two Souls of Maxim Gorky" were published.

In Leningrad, Chukovsky published books for children "Crocodile" (published in 1917 under the title "Vanya and the Crocodile"), "Moidodyr" (1923), "Cockroach" (1923), "Fly-tsokotukha" (1924, under the name "Mukhina wedding ")," Barmaley "(1925)," Aibolit "(1929, entitled" The Adventures of Aibolit ") and the book" From two to five ", which was first published in 1928 under the name" Little Children ".

Children's stories became the reason for the persecution of Chukovsky, which began in the 1930s, the so-called struggle against "Chukovsky", initiated by Nadezhda Krupskaya, the wife of Vladimir Lenin. On February 1, 1928, her article "On the Crocodile" of K. Chukovsky "was published in the newspaper" Pravda ". On March 14, in defense of Chukovsky, Maxim Gorky appeared on the pages of Pravda with his Letter to the Editor. In December 1929, in the Literaturnaya Gazeta Korney Chukovsky publicly renounced his fairy tales and promised to create a collection called Veselaya Kolkhozia. He was depressed by the event he had experienced and after that he could not write for a long time. By his own admission, since that time he has turned from an author into an editor. The campaign of persecuting Chukovsky because of fairy tales was renewed in 1944 and 1946 - critical articles were published against "We Defeat Barmaley" (1943) and "Bibigon" (1945).

From 1938 until the end of his life, Korney Chukovsky lived in Moscow and at his dacha in Peredelkino near Moscow. He left the capital only during the Great Patriotic War, from October 1941 to 1943 he was evacuated to Tashkent.

In Moscow, Chukovsky published children's fairy tales "The Stolen Sun" (1945), "Bibigon" (1945), "Thanks to Aibolit" (1955), "The Fly in the Bath" (1969). For children of primary school age, Chukovsky retold the ancient Greek myth of Perseus, translated English folk songs ("Barabek", "Jenny", "Kotausi and Mousei" and others). In Chukovsky's retelling, the children got to know "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" by Erich Raspe, "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe, "Little Ragged Man" by James Greenwood. Chukovsky translated the tales of Kipling, the works of Mark Twain ("Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn"), Gilbert Chesterton, O. Henry ("Kings and Cabbage", short stories).

Spending a lot of time on literary translation, Chukovsky wrote the research work "The Art of Translation" (1936), later reworked into "High Art" (1941), expanded editions of which were published in 1964 and 1968.

Fascinated by English-language literature, Chukovsky explored the detective genre, which was gaining momentum in the first half of the 20th century. He read a lot of detective stories, wrote out especially successful passages from them, "collected" methods of murder. He was the first in Russia to speak about the emerging phenomenon of mass culture, citing the detective genre in literature and cinema as an example in his article "Nat Pinkerton and Contemporary Literature" (1908).

Korney Chukovsky was a historian and researcher of the poet Nikolai Nekrasov. He owns the books "Stories about Nekrasov" (1930) and "Mastery of Nekrasov" (1952), published dozens of articles about the Russian poet, found hundreds of Nekrasov lines banned by the censorship. The epoch of Nekrasov is devoted to articles about Vasily Sleptsov, Nikolai Uspensky, Avdotya Panaeva, Alexander Druzhinin.

Regarding language as a living being, Chukovsky in 1962 wrote a book "Living as Life" about the Russian language, in which he described several problems of modern speech, the main disease of which he called "bureaucratic" - a word invented by Chukovsky that denotes the pollution of language with bureaucratic cliches.

The well-known and recognized writer Korney Chukovsky, as a thinking person, did not accept many things in Soviet society. In 1958, Chukovsky was the only Soviet writer to congratulate Boris Pasternak on being awarded the Nobel Prize. He was one of the first to discover Solzhenitsyn, the first in the world to write an admiring review of "One Day in Ivan Denisovich", gave the writer shelter when he was in disgrace. In 1964, Chukovsky fought in defense of the poet Joseph Brodsky, who was put on trial for "parasitism".

In 1957, Korney Chukovsky was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philology, in 1962 - the honorary title of Doctor of Literature at Oxford University.

Chukovsky was awarded the Order of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor and medals. In 1962 he was awarded the Lenin Prize for the book "Nekrasov's Mastery".

Korney Chukovsky died in Moscow on October 28, 1969. The writer is buried at the Peredelkino cemetery.

On May 25, 1903, Chukovsky married Maria Borisovna Goldfeld (1880-1955). The Chukovskys had four children - Nikolai, Lydia, Boris and Maria. Eleven-year-old Maria died in 1931 from tuberculosis, Boris died in 1942 near Moscow during the Great Patriotic War.

Chukovsky's eldest son Nikolai (1904-1965) was also a writer. He is the author of biographical stories about James Cook, Jean La Perouse, Ivan Krusenstern, the novel "Baltic Sky" about the defenders of besieged Leningrad, psychological stories and stories, translations.

Daughter Lydia (1907-1996) - writer and human rights activist, author of the story "Sofya Petrovna" (1939-1940, published in 1988), which is a contemporary testimony of the tragic events of 1937, works about Russian writers, memories of Anna Akhmatova, and also works on the theory and practice of editorial art.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources.

The mother of the future writer is a simple peasant woman from the Poltava province Ekaterina Osipovna Korneichukova, who gave birth to a then student Emmanuil Solomonovich Levenson. Korney Ivanovich's childhood passed in the city of Odessa, where his mother was forced to move. The reason for this decision was that the writer's father left her as a woman “not of her own circle”.

The first publications of Korney Ivanovich were published in the newspaper "Odessa News", which was promoted by his friend Zhabotinsky. Then the works - articles, essays, stories and others - simply “flowed like a river”, and already in 1917 the writer began a great work about the work of Nekrasov.

Then Korney Ivanovich took many other literary figures as a subject of study, and already in 1960 the writer began to work on one of the main works of his life - a retelling of the Bible specially.

The main museum of the writer is currently working in Peredelkino near Moscow, where Kornei Ivanovich ended his life on October 28, 1969 as a result of viral hepatitis. In Peredelkino, Chukovsky's dacha is located not far from the place where Pasternak lived.

Chukovsky's work

For the younger generation, Korney Ivanovich wrote a large number of interesting and entertaining fairy tales, the most famous of which are such works - "Crocodile", "Cockroach", "Moidodyr", "Fly-tsokotukha", "Barmaley", "Fedorino grief", "Stolen goods sun ”,“ Aibolit ”,“ Toptygin and the moon ”,“ Confusion ”,“ telephone ”and“ The Adventures of Bibigon ”.

The most famous children's poems by Chukovsky are considered the following "Glutton", "The elephant reads", "Zakalyaka", "Piglet", "Hedgehogs are laughing", "Sandwich", "Fedotka", "Turtle", "Pigs", "Garden", " Camel "and many others. It is remarkable that almost all of them have not lost their relevance and liveliness at the present time, therefore they are often included in almost all collections-books intended for the younger generation.

Korney Ivanovich also wrote several stories. For example, "Solar" and "Silver coat of arms".

The writer was keenly interested in the issues and problems of child education. It is to him that readers owe the emergence of an interesting work on preschool education "From two to five".

The following articles by Korney Ivanovich are also interesting for literary critics - "The history of Aibolit", "How the Fly-Tsokotukha was written", "About Sherlock Holmes", "Confessions of an old storyteller", "Page of Chukokkala" and others.

Soviet literature

Kornei Ivanovich Chukovsky

Biography

Chukovsky Kornei Ivanovich

Russian writer, literary critic, professor of philological sciences. Real name and surname Nikolai Vasilievich Korneichukov. Works for children in verse and prose ("Moidodyr", "Cockroach", "Aybolit", etc.) are built 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, Russian, about child psychology and speech ("From Two to Five", 1928). Criticism, translations, artistic memoirs. Diaries.

Biography

Born March 19 (31 NS) in St. Petersburg. When he was three years old, his parents divorced, 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 a special decree, educational institutions "freed" from children of "low" origin.

From his youth he led a working life, read a lot, studied English and French on his own. In 1901 he began publishing in the newspaper "Odessa News", as a correspondent for which he was sent to London in 1903. For a whole year he lived in England, studied English literature, wrote about it in the Russian press. After his return he settled in St. Petersburg, took up literary criticism, collaborated in the magazine "Libra".

In 1905, Chukovsky organized the weekly satirical magazine Signal (funded by the Bolshoi Theater singer L. Sobinov), which featured anti-government cartoons and poems. The magazine was repressed 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, and were later 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 made friends with I. Repin, Korolenko, Andreev, A. Tolstoy, V. Mayakovsky and others.

Later he will write memoir books about these people. The versatility of Chukovsky's interests was expressed in his literary activity: he published translations from W. Whitman, studied literature for children, children's verbal creativity, worked on the legacy of N. Nekrasov, his favorite poet. Published the book "Nekrasov as an artist" (1922), a collection of articles "Nekrasov" (1926), the book "Mastery of Nekrasov" (1952).

In 1916, at the invitation of Gorky, Chukovsky became the head of the children's department of the Parus publishing house and begins to write for children: poetic fairy tales "Crocodile" (1916), "Moidodyr" (1923), "Fly-Tsokotukha" (1924), "Barmaley" (1925) ), "Aibolit" (1929), etc.

Chukovsky owns a whole series of books on the skill 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 essay articles 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.

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky was born on March 31, 1882 in St. Petersburg. Real name Nikolai Vasilievich Korneichukov. Parents soon divorced, 3-year-old Kolya stayed with his mother. They moved to Odessa, lived in poverty. He studied at the gymnasium until grade 5, but was expelled - children of "low" origin became undesirable.

An inquisitive young man read a lot, studied languages, leading a working life. In 1901 Chukovsky became a correspondent for "Odessa News". After 2 years he was sent to London, where he wrote about local literature for the Russian press. Returning from England, he settled in St. Petersburg and took up literary criticism.

Since 1905, the satirical magazine Signal, founded by Chukovsky, has been published. Poems and caricatures of those in power lead to repression, the publisher is sentenced to six months in prison. But after the first revolution, many publications published Chukovsky's essays. Later they were collected in the books From Chekhov to the Present Day, Critical Stories, and Faces and Masks.

In 1912 the writer moved to Finland, to the town of Kuokkola. There he met Repin, Mayakovsky, Korolenko, Andreev, A. Tolstoy. Memoirs and fiction books tell about friendship with outstanding contemporaries. The favorite poet of the writer was Nekrasov, to whom he devoted many works.

Chukovsky's literary activity is multifaceted, but he paid special attention to children's creativity. In 1916, he was appointed head of the children's department at Sails. He begins to write for a special category of readers. "Crocodile" "Moidodyr", "Fly-tsokotukha", "Barmaley", "Aibolit" - this is not a complete list of famous works.

Fluent in languages, Chukovsky makes literary translations. A whole series of books is devoted to this skill: "Principles of Literary Translation", "High Art", "The Art of Translation", and in 1967 a book dedicated to A. Chekhov was published. Korney Chukovsky lived a long bright life, died on October 28, 1968. He was buried in Peredelkino, where he lived and worked for many years.

(19 (31) March 1882, St. Petersburg - October 28, 1969, Kuntsevo, at that time already within the city of Moscow)

ru.wikipedia.org

Biography

Origin

Nikolai Korneichukov was born on March 31, 1882 in St. Petersburg. The frequently occurring date of his birth on April 1 appeared due to an error in the transition to a new style (13 days were added, not 12, as it should be for the 19th century).

The writer suffered from being "illegitimate" for many years. His father was Emmanuil Solomonovich Levenson, in whose family Korney Chukovsky's mother, a Poltava peasant woman, Ekaterina Osipovna Korneichuk, 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 his literary activity, Korneichukov, who for a long time was burdened by his illegitimacy (as can be seen from his diary of the 1920s), used the pseudonym "Korney Chukovsky", which was later joined by a fictitious patronymic - "Ivanovich". After the revolution, the combination "Roots 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 Chukovskys' surname and patronymic Korneevich / Korneevna. [Source not specified 303 days] Portrait of Korney Chukovsky by Ilya Repin, 1910

Journalism before the revolution

Since 1901, Chukovsky begins to write articles in the "Odessa News". Chukovsky was introduced to literature by his close friend at the gymnasium, journalist Vladimir Zhabotinsky, who later became an outstanding political figure of the Zionist movement. Zhabotinsky was also the groom's surety at the wedding of Chukovsky and Maria Borisovna Goldfeld.

Then in 1903 Chukovsky was sent as a correspondent to London, where he thoroughly familiarized himself with English literature.

Returning to Russia during the 1905 revolution, Chukovsky was captured by revolutionary events, visited the battleship Potemkin, and began publishing the satirical magazine Signal in St. Petersburg. Among the authors of the magazine were such famous writers as Kuprin, Fedor Sologub and Teffi. After the fourth issue, he was arrested for "insult to majesty." Fortunately for Korney Ivanovich, he was defended by the famous lawyer Gruzenberg, who obtained an acquittal.

In 1906, Korney Ivanovich came to the Finnish town of Kuokkala (now Repino, Leningrad Region), where he made a close acquaintance with the artist Ilya Repin and the writer Korolenko. It was Chukovsky who persuaded Repin to take his writing seriously and prepare a book of memoirs, "The Distant Close." Chukovsky lived in Kuokkala for about 10 years. From the combination of the words Chukovsky and Kuokkala, "Chukokkala" (invented by Repin) was formed - the name of a handwritten humorous almanac that Korney Ivanovich kept until the last days of his life.

In 1907, Chukovsky published Walt Whitman's translations. The book became popular, which increased Chukovsky's fame in the literary environment. Chukovsky becomes an influential critic, smashes tabloid literature (articles about Anastasia Verbitskaya, Lydia Charskaya, Nat Pinkerton, etc.), wittily defends futurists - both in articles and in public lectures - from attacks of traditional criticism (he met Mayakovsky in Kuokkale and later became friends with him), although the futurists themselves are not always grateful to him for this; develops his own recognizable manner (reconstruction of the psychological appearance of the writer based on numerous quotes from him).

The unique photograph of 1914, presented here, deserves a few separate words. It has its own separate history, full of 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 a lot of 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 picture was taken in the early days of the 1914 war.

“One of these days, knowing that mobilized men would walk along Nevsky Prospect, Korney Chukovsky and I decided to go to this main street. There, quite by chance, Osip Mandelstam met and joined us ... When the mobilized men, not yet in military uniform, with bales on their shoulders, began to pass by, then suddenly the poet Benedict Livshits came out of their ranks, also with a bale, 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 arms 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 remained outside of his story. And above all, the unknown photographer was "himself" Karl Bulla, from whose workshop this photograph was later disseminated.

Of the four bright creative persons presented in the picture, only two died a natural death in the late 60s, early 70s, having lived to a ripe old age: this is Korney Chukovsky, the only one who remained in the USSR and Annenkov himself, who survived in emigration. Osip Mandelstam and Benedikt Livshits were brutally killed by their fellow citizens during the Stalinist repressions. Osip Mandelstam, in the later words of Academician Shklovsky, "this strange ... difficult ... touching ... and brilliant person", is 23 years old in the photograph. Just a year ago, the St. Petersburg publishing house "Akme" published his collection of poetry "Stone". Since the first publication in 1907 in the magazine of the Tenishevsky Commercial School, a long way has been passed: studying French literature at St. Petersburg University, acquaintance with Vyacheslav Ivanov and Innokenty Annensky, new literary communication - the poets of the circle of the magazine Apollo ... A little older than Mandelstam - entered literature since a group of futurists, the poet and translator Benedikt Livshits, who in the picture sits already shaved and with a deliberately made gallant 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's Cross ... Just like Mandelstam, Benedict Livshits was illegally repressed in the 30s and died in the camps in 1939.

In 1916, Chukovsky again visited England with a delegation from the State Duma. In 1917, Patterson's book "With the Jewish detachment in 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 two of his 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 in the ground, which he later regretted.

Literary criticism

Since 1917, Chukovsky sat down for many years of work about Nekrasov, his favorite poet. Through his efforts, the first Soviet collection of Nekrasov's poems was published. Chukovsky finished work on it only in 1926, having revised a lot of manuscripts and provided the texts with scientific comments.

In addition to Nekrasov, Chukovsky was engaged in the biography and work of a number of other writers of the 19th century (Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Sleptsov), participated in the preparation of the text and editing of many publications. Chukovsky considered Chekhov to be his closest writer in spirit.

Children's poems

The fascination with 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, The Crocodile.

In 1923 his famous fairy tales "Moidodyr" and "Cockroach" were published.

In the life of Chukovsky there was another hobby - the study of the psyche of children and how they master speech. He wrote down his observations of children and their verbal creativity in the book "From two to five" in 1933.

"All my other works are so overshadowed by my children's fairy tales that in the minds of many readers I, except for Moidodyrs and Mukh-Tsokotukh, did not write anything at all."

Persecution of Chukovsky in the 1930s

Chukovsky's poems for children were severely persecuted in the Stalinist era, although it is known that Stalin himself repeatedly quoted “Cockroach.” [Source not specified 303 days] The persecution was initiated by N.K. Among the party editors' critics, even the term “Chukovshchyna” arose. Chukovsky undertook to write an orthodox Soviet work for children, "Merry Collective Farm", but did not. The 1930s were marked by two personal tragedies of 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 is much engaged in the theory of literary translation (The Art of Translation was republished in 1936 before the outbreak of the war, in 1941, under the title “High Art”) and in translation itself into Russian (M. Twain, O. Wilde, R. Kipling, etc. , including in the form of "retellings" for children).

Begins to write memoirs, on which he worked until the end of his life ("Contemporaries" in the series "ZhZL").

Chukovsky and the Bible for children

In the 1960s, K. Chukovsky started a retelling of the Bible for children. For this project, he attracted writers and literary men and carefully edited their work. The project itself was very difficult due to the anti-religious position of the Soviet government. The book entitled "The Tower of Babel and Other Ancient Legends" was published by the publishing house "Children's Literature" in 1968. However, the entire print run was destroyed by the authorities. The first book edition available to the reader took place in 1990. In 2001, the publishing houses "Rosman" and "Dragonfly" began to publish the book under the title "The Tower of Babel and Other Biblical Legends."

Last years

In recent years, Chukovsky is a popular favorite, a laureate of a number of state awards and orders, at the same time he maintained contacts with dissidents (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Brodsky, the Litvinovs; his daughter Lydia was also a prominent human rights activist). At the dacha in Peredelkino, where he constantly lived in recent years, he arranged meetings with the surrounding children, talked with them, read poetry, invited famous people, famous pilots, artists, writers, and poets to meetings. The Peredelkino children, who have become adults long ago, still remember these children's 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 of his life, his museum is now operating.
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. Vasiliev 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 are in darkness. In addition to uniforms, there are many "boys" in civilian clothes, with sullen, contemptuous faces. The boys began by cordoning off the chairs in the hall, not allowing anyone to stay, to 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. It got to a scandal. Civil funeral service. Stuttering S. Mikhalkov utters lofty words that do not fit in any way with his indifferent, some 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 of Children's Literature ...”, “From the Ministry education and the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences ... ”All this is pronounced with a stupid significance, with which, probably, the porters of the last century, when the guests were traveling, called the carriage of Count So-and-so and Prince So-and-so. Who do we bury, finally? An official boss or a cheerful and mocking clever Korney? Drummed her "lesson" A. Barto. Cassil performed a complex verbal pirouette so that the audience understood how personally he was close to the deceased. And only L. Panteleev, breaking the blockade of officialdom, clumsily and sadly said a few words about Chukovsky's civil image. The relatives of Korney Ivanovich asked L. Kabo to speak, but when she sat down at the table in a crowded room 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 will not allow her to perform ..

He was buried there, at the cemetery in Peredelkino.

A family

Wife (from May 26, 1903) - Maria Borisovna Chukovskaya (née Maria Aron-Berovna Goldfeld, 1880-1955). Daughter of the accountant Aron-Ber Ruvimovich Goldfeld and the housewife of Tuba (Tauba) Oizerovna Goldfeld.
Son - poet, writer and translator Nikolai Korneevich Chukovsky (1904-1965). His wife is a translator Marina Nikolaevna Chukovskaya (1905-1993).
The daughter is the writer Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya (1907-1996). Her first husband was the literary critic and literary historian Caesar Samoilovich Volpe (1904-1941), the second was the physicist and popularizer of science Matvey Petrovich Bronstein (1906-1938).
Granddaughter - literary critic, chemist Elena Tsezarevna Chukovskaya (born 1931).
Daughter - Maria Korneevna Chukovskaya (1920-1931), the heroine of children's poems and stories of her father.
Grandson - cameraman Yevgeny 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, and 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)
Defeat Barmaley (1944)
The Adventures of Bibigon
Confusion
Kingdom of the Dogs (1912)
Cockroach (1921)
Telephone (1926)
Toptygin and Lisa
Toptygin and the Moon
Fedorino grief (1926)
Chick
What did Mura do when she was read the fairy tale "The Miracle Tree"
Miracle tree
Adventures of a white mouse

Poems for children

Glutton
The elephant reads
Zakalyaka
Piglet
Hedgehogs laugh
Sandwich
Fedotka
Turtle
Pigs
Garden
Poor Boots Song
Camel
Tadpoles
Bebek
Joy
Great-great-great-grandchildren
Christmas tree
Fly in the bath

Stories

Sunny
Silver coat of arms

Translation work

Principles of Literary Translation (1919, 1920)
The Art of Translation (1930, 1936)
High art (1941, 1964, 1966)

Preschool education

Two to five

Memories

Memories of Repin
Yuri Tynyanov
Boris Zhitkov
Irakly Andronikov

Articles

Alive as life
To the eternal youthful question
The history of my "Aibolit"
How "Fly-Tsokotukha" was written
Confessions of an Old Storyteller
Chukokkala page
About Sherlock Holmes
Hospital number 11

Memory! The greatest gift of God, and it is the greatest punishment of God, if the memories are not in tune with the conscience. But the usual flour of nostalgia is sweet, but still flour. Who among us has not suffered for the forever lost days of a sunny (for some reason, certainly sunny!) Childhood? In search of a unique sense of the novelty of the world, we return to our big and small "Mecca" - to touch, fall, purify, be reborn ...

But there are places of pilgrimage of a special kind. We were not born here, did not grow up, were not baptized. But once we touched something incredibly real here, almost the Truth, and since then we include these places in the Selected, erect there temples visible only to us, chapels or temples, finally ... We surround them with our spiritual field, decoys - signs - that, like antennas, connect us. They connect how far and for how long we would not be apart - both in time and in space. And places of pilgrimage in response surround us with their fields, include in their egregor. This is enough for a while. But the moment comes when it is necessary to appear personally (since “the mountain does not go to Mohammed”) - with the whole being - both spiritual and physical. Appear to feed each other with energy unknown to our physicists, which is undoubtedly akin to the energy of high love.

From my childhood, from the Ural village of Pisanskoe, where my brothers and I were excitedly carried away by the literary game, the bridges stretched to Moscow, to the well-known to many writers' nest - Peredelkino. The fact that writers in Moscow write, and here, in their dachas, remake their works, has become a common literary joke.

Here I first visited at the very beginning of the sixty-fifth. We started a correspondence with the 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 were silverless, selflessly looking for young talents. “Pioneer” then published our selection and - lo and behold! - the editorial office of the magazine invited my brothers and me 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 only one inherent smell of the subway. Taxi, ice cream parlor, elevator in a multi-storey hotel! Fluorescent lamps! Wooden beds, finally! It doesn’t matter that I was not admitted to Sovremennik because of my youth, to The Naked King with Evstigneev in the title role. But I already knew where at the Ploschad Revolutsii station you could go to the bronze statue of a sailor and pull the Mauser. The huge Mauser was stirring! And at the studio "Filmstrip" we were completely accepted as respected authors, and in the showroom they showed a completely fresh tape - a film based on our poems. Miracles continued! During the show, the actress Rina Zelyonaya, who knew us in absentia, appeared, called us by our first names, and said which of our poems she liked the most. But we were waiting for the main event - a trip to Peredelkino. Fortunately, 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 car there are new inscriptions for us: "Do not lean, the doors open automatically!" Unknown clever people scratched some letters. We got quite funny slogans, where we were asked not to 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) - photo of 1964

It gets dark early, outside the windows - a buzzing blue darkness. We imperceptibly enter another, fabulous, unknown world for us. The approaching Peredelkino, not yet familiar, seems to us something like a magical Berendeevsky forest. And, of course, there is the main wizard there. This is the person who invited us to his country house. This is indeed a storyteller, the most famous children's writer Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky.

Unfortunately, I was not fortunate enough to be "at the stake" at Chukovsky's during his lifetime. But I communicated with him to my heart's content! And many years later I saw one of the last bonfires burning in memory of the Storyteller. There were children's writers, famous actors and musicians near that fire. Some read poems, 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 rose up in the middle of the clearing.

Autograph (Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky) of the poet and writer, quoted in the essay of Oleg Pavlov

I can imagine how Korney Ivanovich appeared here one day before the guests - tall, tall, with a big kind nose, in a long headdress of an Indian leader made of beautiful feathers. The guys - and then many played Indians - probably greeted Chukovsky with an admirable deafening cry. 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 everyone joined hands and danced around the fire, like real Indians. And then each - and Chukovsky too - threw a bump into the fire as a tribute to the fiery spirit.

I first saw this Indian headdress in the 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 heels - cap of the leader of the Redskins ...

Semi-lighted snow paths brought us to the house where Korney Ivanovich lived. There, next to it, was the building of his library. He presented it to the children, and the children with gratitude walked and drove here - both from Peredelkino itself and from Moscow.

Chukovsky was not at the dacha - he left for a short while to his friends - to a rest home 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 it much better!"

Then he suddenly raised his finger to his lips and exclaimed conspiratorially:

Handwritten anthology by Korney Chukovsky "(Russkiy Put Publishing House, Moscow, 2006)

“Do you see that funny man who chops wood outside the fence? This is Valentin Petrovich Kataev! Watch and remember. "

We approached the dacha already talking easily, like old acquaintances.

And there waited tea with four - to choose from - types of jam (our tastes unexpectedly coincided - we chose blueberry with Kornem Ivanovich), talks about literature, reading poetry. That evening I first learned that the children's writer Chukovsky writes for adults as well. He not only listened, but read himself - it seems, translations. I read and was interested in our opinion.

When my turn came, I read the beginning of one of the not very successful poems (but, I'm sorry, I was only ten!):

Wooden house
I lay down on a log house,
Who lives without a mom
I found shelter in it.
But one kitten -
Funtik name -
Didn't find it in that house
Shelter for myself.
Musya regretted -
Funtika took
And, pray tell,
She took into the family ...

- Good girl Musya, - noted Chukovsky, - took pity on the kitten ...

Imagine his surprise that Musya was not a girl at all, but also a cat, a citizen of a kitty republic fictitious by us, brothers, headed for some reason by the tsar. Further more. We surprised the storyteller with our fabulous countries - the Kitty, the United Country of Animals, the free city of Pavlograd ...

Korney Ivanovich accepted the countries we had invented with interest, asked to tell about them in more detail, and then suddenly told his story. In his youth, while relaxing in the Finnish resort of Kuokkala with friends, he proposed a game in a kind of fictional republic. Friends supported the game, the country was named Chukokkala, and the instigator himself was declared president. Parting, they gave Korney Ivanovich a knife with an engraving - "President of the country Alexander Peliander". On the Russian border, the knife caught the eye of the customs officers, and the word "president" and the suspiciously Greek name made Chukovsky talk for a long time with imperial officials who did not understand humor.

- So, - the narrator summed up the moral, - be careful with fictitious countries. This is a dangerous business! - and he laughs.

At the end of the evening, the owner presented us with a book of his fairy tales, supplying it with an inscription that only a person who knows how to subtly ironic (and above himself above all) is capable of - “To the Pavlov family of poetry from their humble colleague. With deep respect, Korney Chukovsky. "

I have lost a lot in my life. Postcards from Chukovsky have not survived, there is not a single copy of our filmstrip. But that book is still on my shelf today. And my children, and now my grandchildren, treat her with deep respect ...

On other, later visits to Peredelkino, I more than once happened to silently stand over the graves of Korney Ivanovich and Boris Leonidovich. I found their mounds along the noticeable three pines from afar. However, then there were only two of them left. And trees are not eternal ... About the great Pasternak, of course, I have no personal impressions - 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, Pasternak -
in a coffin,
as in a wooden prism ...
In the collective farm field of realism
he was the most wonderful weed.
Susceptible to bullying and weeding
he resisted in his native land -
and, addressed to descendants,
a candle burned on the table.
The candle burned - he worked -
And, opening the curtains of darkness,
Shakespeare with Pasternak's poems
spoke with all of Russia.
And through words, words, words
silent snowy peak
the question arose, unsolvable
majority vote.
The candle has not burned down
when her over dark blood
from the orphaned table
transferred to the headboard.
Immortal, like the poet himself,
she burns with a Sunday willow,
without poetic hyperbole
to all limits
sowing light.

Once, together with a friend, Timofei Vetoshkin, we visited here, in Peredelkino, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky. I was like an older brother to Timothy, both in literature and in life. He came to the literary association of Zlatoust as a seventeen-year-old lipped boy, lisp and with a fuse reciting Mayakovsky. He brought kilometer-long cosmic-philosophical verses.

Then, after the army, he went to a duel with Moscow. The fight dragged on for the rest of his life. In one of its crisis periods, I found myself passing through the capital and decided to shake Tim with a trip to Peredelkino, to Tarkovsky. Arseny Alexandrovich was his favorite poet.

“We don’t know each other,” Timofey insisted timidly, but soon gave up with obvious curiosity.

The poet came down to us from the steps of the Writers' Rest House, but it seemed as if from heavenly heights, leaning on one crutch. Smiling like old acquaintances, 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 secret disgrace. Arseny Aleksandrovich asked the guests to smoke - apparently, due to illness, they tried to separate him from tobacco and, apparently, unsuccessfully. Tarkovsky himself invited us to read poetry. I listened very attentively, 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 simply tears were so close to him, as are only children and old people.

After parting with Tarkovsky, we walked for a long time in the Peredelkino environs, had a picnic on the side of the ravine. A part of a human skull fell into the eye inappropriately - apparently, the ravine was washing away the ancient cemetery.

However, why is it inappropriate? I immediately remembered the scandalous from Yuri Kuznetsov: "I drank from my father's skull ..."

Four years later, I again visited Peredelkino. Not far from the three pines, a fresh grave was blackened - the last refuge of the "lesser 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. Axes are probably knocking, like in Chekhov's Cherry Orchard. Some old author looks at the cheerful construction with the eyes of Firs.

Will I ever be able to visit Peredelkino, take a walk under its pines? Do not know. So far, many of us are in the category of price hostages - we are not allowed to travel abroad at the behest of the market.

But this magical place for me - Pe-re-del-ki-no - is always with me. It is in my dreams, dreams, in poetry and prose. The heroes of my story "The Poem of the Black Currant" live there. Chukovsky is still alive and well there, listening to our boyish poem about the kitty republic and treating me to delicious blueberry jam.

Hey, Peredelkino! You wait. Your pilgrim is on the 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, of course, not all the brilliant ballads for children belonging to Chukovsky are included in the poetic selection of KCh, entitled by a line of one of the epigrams of the poet and writer. I would like to see that uncle or that aunt who does not remember by heart either "Telephone" or "Stolen Sun" or "Mukhu-Tsokotukha" ... What is "Chukokkala"?

This word is made up of the initial syllable of my surname - CHUK and the last syllables of the Finnish word KUOKKALA - that was the name of the village in which I then lived.

The word "Chukokkala" was invented by Repin. The artist actively participated in my almanac and under his very first drawing (dated July 20, 1914) he signed: “I. Repin. Chukokkala ".

To this date, to the very beginning of the First World War, the birth of "Chukokkala" belongs.

It is not easy to say what "Chukokkala" is. Sometimes it’s a handwritten almanac that responds to hot topics, sometimes it’s just the most ordinary album for autographs.

In the beginning "Chukokkala" was a skinny notebook, hastily stitched from several random sheets, now it is a voluminous volume of 632 pages with four branches dating back to the later time.

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, Andrey Bely, Al. Block, Yves. Bunin, Max Voloshin, Sergei Gorodetsky, Gorky, Gumilyov, Dobuzhinsky, you. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Evreinov, Zoshchenko, Arkady Averchenko, Alexander Amfitheatrov, Yuri Annenkov, Al. Benois, Vyacheslav Ivanov, A. Koni, A. Kuprin, Osip Mandelstam, Fedor Sologub and others. And also the younger generation - Margarita Aliger, Irakly 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, Victor Shklovsky and others

The main feature of "Chukokkala" is humor. People wrote and drew in "Chukokkala" most often at such moments when they were inclined to laugh, in a 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". In many cases, its participants appear to us in a different way and play a role that would seem to be completely alien to 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, "Chukokkala" also has things of a different tonality, of 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 English have a wonderful word for hobby. It means a person's favorite pastime, not related to his main profession. Chukokkala was such a hobby for me. She has 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 work.

That is why this book did not become a mirror of those terrible times when it happened to exist. Only small and random reflections were reflected in it 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 attempt to capture on its often frivolous and playful pages planetary grandiose events that shook the entire universe.

The most serious in Chukokkala are 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 my questionnaire. 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 which his work was directed to perceive the poetry of Nekrasov.

All these reviews are written seriously, without a smile. However, no, and humor invaded here. I am talking about the answers of V. Mayakovsky, written mischievously and derisively. The mockery 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 mentioned, in 1914, but now, while printing it, I (albeit very rarely) included in it such drawings and texts that belong to an earlier time. These are the recordings of Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov, a caricature of Troyansky, a poem by Potemkin, which came down 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, on a visit or at some meeting, I happened to meet such a person whose participation in the almanac seemed to me valuable, I offered him the first random sheet I came across and, returning home, pasted this sheet in the almanac. This was the case, for example, with Chaliapin's drawings, whom I unexpectedly met at Gorky's; with drawings by M.V. Dobuzhinsky, N.E. Radlova, V.A. Milashevsky, performed in 1921 in Kholomki, where we were fleeing from the Petrograd famine. Alexander Blok himself brought me a poem "No, I swear, that's enough Rose ...", composed by him on the way home from "World Literature", materials related to the Second All-Union Congress of Writers, I collected in a small notebook, which became, so to speak, the first branch of Chukokkala. There are several such branches.

Such, for example, are the drawings by 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 performed (Anna Akhmatova, Mikh. Slonimsky, Ev. Petrov, Mikh. Zoshchenko and others) were preserved by his daughter OM. 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 both to him and to my other friends, thanks to whom portraits of Marshak, Nikolai Oleinikov, Evgeny could appear in Chukokkala. Schwartz, Paolo Yashvili and others.

In 1965, I presented Chukokkala to my granddaughter Elena Chukovskaya, who did a great job of preparing the almanac for publication. The work was difficult and challenging. It was necessary to concentrate drawings and texts around a particular topic ("World Literature", the House of Arts, the First Congress of Writers, etc.) and, most importantly, write down my comments on almost every page of "Chukokkala".

In those cases when one or another page of "Chukokkala" could be commented on with the help of 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. Finishing a short story about "Chukokkala", I invite readers to get acquainted with the exhibits of this museum.

Korney Chukovsky

April 1966

Biography

Kornei Ivanovich Chukovsky (1882-1969)

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (Nikolai Ivanovich Korneichukov) was born in St. Petersburg in 1882 into a poor family. He spent his childhood in Odessa and Nikolaev. In 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 washerwoman, 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, having received a certificate of maturity.

Chukovsky began to take an interest in poetry from an early age: he wrote poems and even poems. And in 1901 his first article appeared in the newspaper "Odessa News". He wrote articles on a variety of topics - from philosophy to feuilletons. In addition, the future children's poet kept a diary, which was his friend throughout his life.

In 1903, Kornei Ivanovich went to St. Petersburg with the firm intention of becoming a writer. He went to the editorial offices of magazines 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 found a job for himself - he became a correspondent for the newspaper "Odessa News", 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 and met famous writers, including Arthur Conan Doyle and HG 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 political satire magazine "Signal". He was even arrested for bold cartoons and anti-government poems. And in 1906 he became a permanent employee of the "Vesy" magazine. By this time he was already familiar with A. Blok, L. Andreev A. Kuprin and other figures of literature and art. Later, Chukovsky revived the vivid traits of many cultural figures in his memoirs (Repin. Gorky. Mayakovsky. Bryusov. Memories, 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 contemporary writers "From Chekhov to the Present Day", 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 strokes of young children and write them down. He kept such records for the rest of his life. They gave birth to the famous book "From two to five", which was first published in 1928 under the title "Little children. Children's language. Ekikiki. Stupid absurdities" and only in the third edition was the book entitled "From two to five" ... The book was reprinted 21 times and was replenished with each new edition.

Once Chukovsky had to compose an almanac "The Firebird". It was an ordinary editorial job, but it was she who was the reason for the birth of a children's writer. Having written his first children's fairy tales "Chicken", "Doctor" and "Dogs 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 it before. But chance helped. Returning on the train to St. Petersburg with his sick son, under the sound of wheels he told him a story about a crocodile. The child listened very carefully. Several days passed, Korney Ivanovich had already forgotten about that episode, and the son remembered everything that his father had 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, strict rhythm made his poems quickly memorable. Behind the "Crocodile" more and more poems began to appear: "Moidodyr" (1923), "Cockroach" (1923), "Fly-tsokotukha" (1924 under the name "Mukhina's wedding"), "Barmaley" ( 1925), "Felorino grief" (1926), "Telephone" (1926), "Aibolit" (1929, under the name "The Adventures of Aibolit"). And he dedicated the wonderful 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 his own compositions, he began to translate for children the best works of world literature: Kipling, Defoe, Raspe Whitman, etc., as well as biblical stories and Greek myths. Chukovsky's books were illustrated by the best artists of the time, which made them even more attractive.

In the postwar years, Chukovsky often met with children in Peredelkino, where he built a country house. There he gathered around him up to one and a half thousand children and arranged for them "Hello, summer!" and "Goodbye Summer!"

In 1969, the writer died.

K. I. CHUKOVSKY IN KUOKKALA

Boris Kazankov

A remarkable Soviet writer, critic, children's poet, literary critic, translator Kornei Ivanovich Chukovsky (1882-1969) lived for about ten years in the village of Kuokkala (Repino). Here, visiting IE Repin in "Penates", he got to know many of the most prominent figures of Russian culture. The artist was visited by A. M. Gorky, V. G. Korolenko, L. N. Andreev, V. V. Mayakovsky, F. I. Shalyapin, L. V. Sobinov, V. A. Serov, A. I. Kuindzhi , A. I. Korovin, V. V. Stasov, A. K. Glazunov, A. F. Koni, academicians I. P. Pavlov, V. M. Bekhterev and many others.

Initially, Chukovsky settled near the railway station, in a house with an "awkward turret", after he was persecuted by the tsarist authorities for publishing the anti-government satirical magazine "Signal".

"When in 1907 or 1908 I arrived in Kuokkala," wrote K. I. Chukovsky, "I was told in a whisper that the Bolsheviks were hiding at the Vaza dacha."

At the same time, an acquaintance with Repin took place. 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 that KI Chukovsky is next door ..." he informs AF Koni. "His phenomenal love for literature, his deepest respect for manuscripts infects all of us."

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, farther from the sea." Therefore, at first Chukovsky, rented a dacha near the railway station, later - closer to the sea. At one time Chukovsky rented the dacha of PS Annenkov, a former People's Will. At the same time, Chukovsky made friends with his son Yuri, who soon proved to be a talented artist. After a while, Chukovsky has the opportunity to move to a more convenient premises with the assistance of Repin: ... "He bought in my name the dacha in which I lived then (obliquely from Penaty), rebuilt it all from the base to the roof, and he himself came to observe how the carpenters work, and he himself supervised their work. when buying me a dacha, he did not expect 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, We Were": 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 wooden house stood for many decades. 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, it was not possible to save the building ... His 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 "Twelve" Yuri Annenkov. Previous acquaintances with Chukovsky, Leonid Andreev, Alexander Kuprin, Sergey Sergeev-Tsensky, 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 together with the summer residents, echoes of the literary, artistic and social life of the capital were transferred here. Until 1912, Nikolai Fyodorovich Annensky, a populist public figure in statistics, brother of the outstanding lyric poet Innokenty Annensky, lived at his dacha in Kuokkala. Nikolai Fyodorovich's closest friend, the writer V.G. Korolenko, stayed with the historian E.V. Tarle and the staff of the literary-political and scientific journal "Russian wealth" (edited by N. Annensky and V. Korolenko).

In 1909, Chukovsky persuaded the writer SN Sergeev-Tsensky to spend the winter in Kuokkala and rented a dacha "Casino" for him, where he himself had lived before. Writers and artists who lived in Kuokkala visited Chukovsky, but his house became especially lively on 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 Petersburg came, disputes about symbolism, about revolution, about Blok, about Chekhov were boiling over.” Chukovsky himself later recounted how “violent, young, often naive disputes began around the tea table: about Pushkin, about Dostoevsky, about magazine news, and also about the famous writers of that pre-war era that worried us - Kuprin, Leonid Andreev, Valeria Bryusov, Blok. poems or excerpts from newly published books were read. " We read aloud not only modern, but also classical Russian and foreign literature: Don Quixote, The Bronze Horseman, Kalevala ...

The writers Alexei Tolstoy and Arkady Averchenko, poets Osip Mandelstam, Velemir Khlebnikov, David Burliuk, A.E. Kruchenykh, artists Yu.P. Annenkov, Re-Mi (N.V. Remizov), S. Yu Sudeikin, B. Grigoriev ...

Probably, the influx of guests caused Chukovsky to think about 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: "Shevchenko's heir and accomplice, Here you remove 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" fell in love with the guests. The artist A. Arnshtam, who once collaborated in "Signal", painted a cover for her, depicting Chukovsky on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, along which writers, poets, and artists float, hurrying to leave their autographs in "Chukokkala".

In the spring of the following year, 1914, I. Ye. Repin made his first contribution to this collection, passing on to Chukovsky a drawing depicting him and three other people during the harvesting of a fallen pine tree on the Penat path. These "Barge Haulers in Penates" opened the "Chukokkala" collection. The main feature of "Chukokkala" is humor, - later noted its collector.

Korney Ivanovich led this collection until the last days of his life, when it reached 700 pages. In addition to the autographs of Russian writers, there are drawings by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Boris Grigoriev, Sergei Chekhonin in Chukokkala. 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 taking out Kaiser Wilhelm in a wheelbarrow (1914). The other depicts the guests of Korney Ivanovich - "The State Council in Chuokkala". For many years, the unique almanac was replenished, and in 1979, after the death of the writer, it was published by the Iskusstvo publishing house with facsimile reproduction of autographs and vivid comments - Chukovsky's memoirs.

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 did not have enough money for food. Later, in his autobiography "I myself," the poet writes; "I have established seven dinner acquaintances. On Sunday I eat Chukovsky, on Monday I eat Evreinov, etc. On Thursday it was worse — I eat Repin herbs. For a futurist a fathom is not the case." In the house of Korney Ivanovich, Mayakovsky read his poems, including new ones, written on the same day or the day before. "These readings happened so often that even a seven-year-old daughter remembered something by heart," Chukovsky writes.

In June 1915, I found such a poetry reading on the terrace of Repin's house. He liked the poetry, and then he invited the poet to "Penates" to paint his portrait. True, Repin did not paint a portrait, but only a sketch-drawing. Mayakovsky did not remain in debt: he made several portraits of Repin himself in a caricatured form, including in the house of Chukovsky. On one of them, he portrayed Repin along with Chukovsky, leaning towards each other during a conversation that was exciting for both of them. “In those years, he painted endlessly, freely and easily - at lunch, at dinner, three, four drawings - and immediately distributed them to those around him,” KI 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 - BK) usually painted something. One in the corner, the other in the other." ...

Mayakovsky's drawings aroused the approval of Repin: “The most seasoned realist. In the evenings, Repin stopped by Chukovsky and together with Mayakovsky they all left in the direction of Ollila, to the nearest seaside grove. At this time, Mayakovsky continued to work on the poem "A Cloud in Pants". He usually composed the text of the poem while walking along the coast of the Gulf of Finland. According to Chukovsky, the impetuous walk along the shore, during which the poet muttered poetry, sometimes stopping to write a rhyme (most often on a cigarette box), lasted for several hours. “His soles were worn away by stones,” wrote Chukovsky, “his nanke bluish suit from the sea wind and the sun has long since turned blue, but he still did not stop his crazy walk.”

Sometimes Mayakovsky walked 12-15 versts, throwing summer residents into confusion. "The summer residents looked at him with apprehension," Chukovsky said. "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 enormous figure of Mayakovsky passes through all of Chukovsky's literary work: 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) one can read the following confession: "Blok, Komissarzhevskaya, Viach. Ivanov, Leonid Andreev, Fedor Sologub, young Mayakovsky - 0 my sleepless crazy youth, my Petersburg nights and days !. . All these for me are not quotes, but living reality ... ".

The poet and aviator Vasily Kamensky visited Chukovsky. He was remembered by the inhabitants of the house for his decorative work: he pasted a dozen fantastic dragons, cut from orange and crimson paper, interspersed with purple stars on a huge green cardboard. It turned out to be a wonderful, cheerful ornament. Hanging this papercraft on the wall makes the room fun. In this spirit, Kamensky decorated the empty room in the house, where the children were put in a corner. The first poem for children, written by Korney Chukovsky in 1916 - "Crocodile", was in a certain way connected with the fantastic drawings of Kamensky.

Once on the train (Chukovsky often had to travel to Petrograd on publishing and editorial affairs), entertaining his sick son, he began to compose a fairy tale aloud, and in the morning the boy remembered what he had heard from the first to the last word. In the fall of 1916, the tale was finished and soon, according to Yuri Tynyanov, it aroused "noise, interest, surprise, as it happens with a new phenomenon of literature." So another side of Chukovsky's multifaceted talent was revealed: he became a children's poet. The fairy tale, like a knife in butter, entered the children's environment and, having appeared in print ("Crocodile" was published in the 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 the then children's literature, 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, it is impossible to fully understand either himself or his literary interests. This is attachment to children, both in youth and in old age. Chukovsky showed interest in new and new acquaintances among children. On the Kuokkala coast of the Gulf of Finland, he built fortresses with children, started exciting games. He conquered the children with genuine enthusiasm, rich imagination. The son of Leonid Andreev, who experienced the charm of Chukovsky's personality in childhood, wrote later: "We all immediately reacted to him with confidence, as our own, as a person in our children's world." The Kuokkal children also remember the merry 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 Rest House). Musicians invited by Chukovsky performed children's compositions by Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Grechaninov. The children themselves, including the children of Chukovsky, played a play directed by the artists Re-Mi and Puni. And Korney Ivanovich read the recently written fairy tale "Crocodile". The collected money was donated to the Kuokkal public children's library.

The years of his 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", "A Book about Contemporary Writers". The circle of interests of Chukovsky as a literary critic covered at this time the work of the democratic poets Shevchenko, Nekrasov, Walt Whitman. Therefore, it is no coincidence that Boris Sadovsky called Korney Ivanovich "Shevchenko's heir and like-minded person." On July 19, 1923, he wrote to Chukovsky: “Yesterday, passing Ollila, I looked sadly at your darkened house, at the overgrown roads and courtyard, recalled how many ebb and flow there were of all types of young literature! .. And I saw a lot of brochures in torn apart on the floor, with traces of all dirty soles, felt boots, among the tattered luxurious sofas, where we spent so interesting and cozy time listening to interesting reports and hot speeches of talented literature, blazing with the red fire of freedom. a library of 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 my most interesting friend." And in another letter: "I remember your tall, cheerful figure ... Fiery man, God bless you." And Chukovsky lacked Repin, near whom he lived for 10 years. And of course, he yearned for Kuokkala itself. As well as for Repin, Kuokkala became for him "penates", his home. That is 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. The last time he saw Repin, talked to him, a 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 the luminaries of Russian culture, but by evil bourgeoisie and cheap mystics. Korney Ivanovich persuaded Repin to publish his memoirs "Distant Close" in Soviet Russia, but he did not achieve success (they were published with the participation of Chukovsky after the death of the author). On the day of Repin's death, September 29, 1930, KI Chukovsky was in the Crimea with Sergeev-Tsensky. “It so happened that the two of us seemed to sit all that day at the deathbed of the one whom we loved so much during his lifetime!” Sergeev-Tsensky will say later.

A quarter of a century has passed. At the end of the 50s, Kornei Ivanovich wrote an extensive volume of his memoirs "Contemporaries", in which he recalled his old acquaintances - guests of the house in Kuokkala. During these years, the staff of the Penaty Museum asked him to indicate in the 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". Compiled by K. V. Tyunikov. SPb., 1998. - S. 39-44.