Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky. Curriculum Vitae

Chukovsky Korney Ivanovich(Nikolai Emmanuilovich Korneychukov)

(31.03.1882 — 28.10.1969)

Chukovsky's parents were completely different people social status. Nikolai's mother was a peasant woman from the Poltava province, Ekaterina Osipovna Korneychukova. Nikolai's father, Emmanuel Solomonovich Levenson, lived in a well-to-do family, in whose house, in St. Petersburg, Ekaterina Osipovna worked as a maid. Nikolai was the second child born in this extramarital relationship, following his three-year-old sister Maria. After the birth of Nikolai, his father left them, marrying “a woman of his own circle.” Nikolai’s mother had no choice but to leave their home and move to Odessa, where long years the family lived in poverty.

In Odessa, Chukovsky entered a gymnasium, from where he was expelled in the fifth grade due to his low origin. Later, Chukovsky outlined the events he experienced in childhood and related to the social inequality of those times in his autobiographical story entitled “Silver Coat of Arms.”

In 1901, Chukovsky began his writing career in the newspaper Odessa News. In 1903, as a correspondent for the same publication, Chukovsky was sent to live and work in London, where he happily began studying English language and literature. Subsequently, Chukovsky published several books with translations of poems by the American poet Walt Whitman, whose works he liked. A little later, in 1907, he completed work on a translation of Rudyard Kipling's fairy tales. In the pre-revolutionary years, Chukovsky actively published critical articles in various publications, where he was not afraid to express his own opinion about modern literary works.

Korney Chukovsky began writing children's fairy tales with the fairy tale “Crocodile” in 1916.

Later in 1928, “About the Crocodile” by Chukovsky”, a critical article by Nadezhda Krupskaya would be published in the publication “Pravda”, which essentially imposed a ban on the continuation of this type of activity. In 1929, Chukovsky publicly renounced writing fairy tales. Despite his difficult experiences in this regard, he actually will not write another fairy tale.

In the post-revolutionary years, Chukovsky devoted a lot of time to translations of works by English authors: stories by O. Henry, Mark Twain, Chesterton and others. In addition to the translations themselves, Korney Chukovsky compiled a theoretical manual devoted to literary translation (“High Art”).

Chukovsky, being carried away by the creative activity of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, devoted a lot of effort to working on his works, studying his creative activity, which was embodied in his books about Nekrasov (“Stories about Nekrasov” (1930) and “The Mastery of Nekrasov” (1952)). Thanks to Chukovsky’s efforts, many excerpts from the author’s works were found that were not published at one time due to censorship bans.

Being in close communication with the writers of his time, in particular Repin, Korolenko, Gorky and many others, Chukovsky collected his memories of them in the book “Contemporaries”. A huge number of notes can also be found in his “Diary” (published posthumously based on the diary of Korney Chukovsky, which he kept throughout his life), as well as his almanac “Chukokkala” with many quotes, jokes and autographs of writers and artists.

Despite the versatility of his creative activity, we primarily associate with the name of Korney Chukovsky many children's fairy tales that the poet gave us. Many generations of children have grown up reading Chukovsky’s fairy tales and continue to read them with great pleasure. Among the most popular fairy tales Chukovsky can highlight his fairy tales “Aibolit”, “Cockroach”, “Fly-Tsokotukha”, “Moidodyr”, “Telephone”, “Fedorino’s grief” and many others.

Korney Chukovsky loved the company of children so much that he put his observations of them in his book “From Two to Five.”

Many books have been written about Korney Chukovsky, many articles have been published not only in Russia, but also abroad. Translations of his works can be found in various languages ​​of the world.

Great ones about poetry:

Poetry is like painting: some works will captivate you more if you look at them closely, and others if you move further away.

Small cutesy poems irritate the nerves more than the creaking of unoiled wheels.

The most valuable thing in life and in poetry is what has gone wrong.

Marina Tsvetaeva

Of all the arts, poetry is the most susceptible to the temptation to replace its own peculiar beauty with stolen splendors.

Humboldt V.

Poems are successful if they are created with spiritual clarity.

The writing of poetry is closer to worship than is usually believed.

If only you knew from what rubbish poems grow without shame... Like a dandelion on a fence, like burdocks and quinoa.

A. A. Akhmatova

Poetry is not only in verses: it is poured out everywhere, it is all around us. Look at these trees, at this sky - beauty and life emanate from everywhere, and where there is beauty and life, there is poetry.

I. S. Turgenev

For many people, writing poetry is a growing pain of the mind.

G. Lichtenberg

A beautiful verse is like a bow drawn through the sonorous fibers of our being. The poet makes our thoughts sing within us, not our own. By telling us about the woman he loves, he delightfully awakens in our souls our love and our sorrow. He's a magician. By understanding him, we become poets like him.

Where graceful poetry flows, there is no room for vanity.

Murasaki Shikibu

I turn to Russian versification. I think that over time we will turn to blank verse. There are too few rhymes in the Russian language. One calls the other. The flame inevitably drags the stone behind it. It is through feeling that art certainly emerges. Who is not tired of love and blood, difficult and wonderful, faithful and hypocritical, and so on.

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin

-...Are your poems good, tell me yourself?
- Monstrous! – Ivan suddenly said boldly and frankly.
- Do not write anymore! – the newcomer asked pleadingly.
- I promise and swear! - Ivan said solemnly...

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov. "Master and Margarita"

We all write poetry; poets differ from others only in that they write in their words.

John Fowles. "The French Lieutenant's Mistress"

Every poem is a veil stretched over the edges of a few words. These words shine like stars, and because of them the poem exists.

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok

Ancient poets, unlike modern ones, rarely wrote more than a dozen poems during their long lives. This is understandable: they were all excellent magicians and did not like to waste themselves on trifles. Therefore, behind each poetic work of those times, a whole Universe was certainly hidden, filled with miracles - often dangerous for those who carelessly awaken the dozing lines.

Max Fry. "Chatty Dead"

I gave one of my clumsy hippopotamuses this heavenly tail:...

Mayakovsky! Your poems do not warm, do not excite, do not infect!
- My poems are not a stove, not a sea, and not a plague!

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky

Poems are our inner music, clothed in words, permeated with thin strings of meanings and dreams, and therefore, drive away the critics. They are just pathetic sippers of poetry. What can a critic say about the depths of your soul? Don't let his vulgar groping hands in there. Let poetry seem to him like an absurd moo, a chaotic pile-up of words. For us, this is a song of freedom from a boring mind, a glorious song sounding on the snow-white slopes of our amazing soul.

Boris Krieger. "A Thousand Lives"

Poems are the thrill of the heart, the excitement of the soul and tears. And tears are nothing more than pure poetry that has rejected the word.

Works of Chukovsky, famous to a wide circle readers - these are, first of all, poems and rhymed fairy tales for children. Not everyone knows that in addition to these creations, the writer has global works about his famous colleagues and other works. After reading them, you can understand which works of Chukovsky will become your favorite.

Origin

It is interesting that Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky is literary pseudonym. The real literary figure's name was Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov. He was born in St. Petersburg on March 19, 1882. His mother Ekaterina Osipovna, a peasant from the Poltava province, worked as a maid in the city of St. Petersburg. She was the illegitimate wife of Emmanuel Solomonovich Levinson. The couple first had a daughter, Maria, and three years later, a son, Nikolai, was born. But at that time they were not welcome, so in the end Levinson married a wealthy woman, and Ekaterina Osipovna and her children moved to Odessa.

Nikolai went to kindergarten, then to the gymnasium. But he couldn't finish it due to low

Prose for adults

The writer's literary activity began in 1901, when his articles were published in Odessa News. Chukovsky studied English language, therefore, the editors of this publication were sent to London. Returning to Odessa, he took whatever part he could in the 1905 revolution.

In 1907, Chukovsky translated the works of Walt Whitman. He translated books by Twain, Kipling, and Wilde into Russian. These works by Chukovsky were very popular.

He wrote books about Akhmatova, Mayakovsky, Blok. Since 1917, Chukovsky has been working on a monograph about Nekrasov. This is a long-term work that was published only in 1952.

Poems by a children's poet

It will help you find out what works by Chukovsky are for children, a list. These are short poems that kids learn in the first years of their lives and in elementary school:

• "Glutton";
• "Piglet";
• "The elephant is reading";
• "Hedgehogs laugh";
• "Zakalyaka";
• "Sandwich";
• "Fedotka";
• "Pigs";
• "Garden";
• "Turtle";
• "Song of Poor Boots";
• "Tadpoles";
• "Bebeka";
• "Camel";
• "Joy";
• "Great-great-great-grandchildren";
• "Christmas tree";
• "Fly in the Bath";
• "Chicken".

The list presented above will help you recognize Chukovsky’s short poetic works for children. If the reader wants to familiarize himself with the title, years of writing and summary fairy tales of a literary figure, then a list of them is below.

Works by Chukovsky for children - “Crocodile”, “Cockroach”, “Moidodyr”

In 1916, Korney Ivanovich wrote the fairy tale “Crocodile”; this poem was met with ambiguity. Thus, V. Lenin’s wife N. Krupskaya spoke critically of this work. Literary critic and writer Yuri Tynyanov, on the contrary, said that children's poetry has finally opened up. N. Btsky, writing a note in a Siberian pedagogical magazine, noted in it that children enthusiastically accept “Crocodile”. They constantly applaud these lines and listen with great delight. You can see how sorry they are to part with this book and its characters.

Chukovsky's works for children include, of course, The Cockroach. The fairy tale was written by the author in 1921. At the same time, Korney Ivanovich came up with “Moidodyr”. As he himself said, he composed these tales in literally 2-3 days, but he had nowhere to print them. Then he proposed to found a periodical children's publication and call it “Rainbow”. These two were published there famous works Chukovsky.

"Miracle Tree"

In 1924, Korney Ivanovich wrote “The Miracle Tree”. At that time, many lived poorly; the desire to dress beautifully was only a dream. Chukovsky embodied them in his work. The miracle tree does not grow leaves or flowers, but shoes, boots, slippers, and stockings. In those days, children did not yet have tights, so they wore cotton stockings, which were attached to special pendants.

In this poem, as in some others, the writer talks about Murochka. This was his beloved daughter, she died at the age of 11, contracting tuberculosis. In this poem, he writes that small blue knitted shoes with pom-poms were picked for Murochka, and describes what exactly their parents took from the tree for the children.

Now there really is such a tree. But they don’t tear things off him, they hang him. It was decorated through the efforts of fans of the beloved writer and is located near his house-museum. In memory of a fairy tale famous writer tree decorated various items clothes, shoes, ribbons.

“The Tsokotuha Fly” is a fairy tale that the writer created, rejoicing and dancing

The year 1924 was marked by the creation of the “Tsokotukha Fly”. In his memoirs, the author shares interesting moments that occurred during the writing of this masterpiece. On a clear, hot day on August 29, 1923, Chukovsky was overcome with immense joy; he felt with all his heart how beautiful the world was and how good it was to live in it. The lines began to appear on their own. He took a pencil and a piece of paper and quickly began scribbling lines.

Describing the wedding of a fly, the author felt like a groom at this event. Once before he tried to describe this fragment, but he could not write more than two lines. On this day inspiration came. When he couldn't find any more paper, he simply tore off a piece of wallpaper in the hallway and quickly wrote on it. When the author began to talk in poetry about the wedding dance of a fly, he began to write and dance at the same time. Korney Ivanovich says that if anyone had seen a 42-year-old man running around in a shamanic dance, shouting out words, and immediately writing them down on a dusty strip of wallpaper, he would have suspected something was wrong. With the same ease, he completed the work. As soon as it was finished, the poet turned into a tired and hungry man who had recently arrived in the city from his dacha.

Other works of the poet for young audiences

Chukovsky says that when creating for children, it is necessary, at least for a while, to turn into these little people to whom the lines are addressed. Then comes a passionate elation and inspiration.

Other works by Korney Chukovsky were created in the same way - “Confusion” (1926) and “Barmaley” (1926). At these moments, the poet experienced a “heartbeat of childish joy” and happily wrote down the rhymed lines that quickly appeared in his head on paper.

Other works did not come so easily to Chukovsky. As he himself admitted, they arose precisely at the moments when his subconscious returned to childhood, but they were created as a result of hard and long work.

Thus he wrote “Fedorino’s Mountain” (1926), “Telephone” (1926). The first fairy tale teaches children to be neat and shows what laziness and unwillingness to keep your home clean lead to. Excerpts from “Telephone” are easy to remember. Even a three-year-old child can easily repeat them after their parents. Here are some useful and interesting works Chukovsky, the list can be continued with fairy tales “The Stolen Sun”, “Aibolit” and other works of the author.

“Stolen Sun”, stories about Aibolit and other heroes

“The Stolen Sun” Korney Ivanovich wrote in 1927. The plot tells that the crocodile swallowed the sun and therefore everything around was plunged into darkness. Because of this, various incidents began to occur. The animals were afraid of the crocodile and did not know how to take the sun from him. For this, a bear was called, who showed miracles of fearlessness and, together with other animals, was able to return the luminary to its place.

“Aibolit”, created by Korney Ivanovich in 1929, also talks about a brave hero - a doctor who was not afraid to go to Africa to help animals. Less known are other children's works by Chukovsky, which were written in subsequent years - these are “English Folk Songs”, “Aibolit and the Sparrow”, “Toptygin and the Fox”.

In 1942, Korney Ivanovich composed the fairy tale “Let’s Defeat Barmaley!” With this work the author ends his stories about the robber. In 1945-46, the author created “The Adventure of Bibigon”. The writer glorifies again brave hero, he is not afraid to fight with evil characters, which are several times larger than it.

The works of Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky teach children kindness, fearlessness, and accuracy. They celebrate friendship and kind heart heroes.

Literature was his bread and air, his only normal environment, his human and political refuge. He blossomed at the slightest mention of his favorite author and, on the contrary, felt the deepest despondency in the company of people who read exclusively newspapers and talked exclusively about fashion or waters... He tolerated loneliness more easily than proximity to ignoramuses and mediocrities. Tomorrow, March 31, we celebrate the 130th anniversary of the birth of Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky.

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (real name Nikolai Ivanovich Korneychukov) was born in 1882 in St. Petersburg. He lived a long, but far from cloudless life, although he was both a famous children's writer and a major literary critic; his services to Russian culture, in the end, were appreciated both at home (Doctor of Philology, Lenin Prize laureate) and abroad (honorary doctor of Oxford University).

Chukovsky’s mother, Ekaterina Osipovna Korneychukova, a Ukrainian peasant woman from the Poltava province, worked as a servant in the house of Chukovsky’s father, St. Petersburg student Emmanuel Solomonovich Levenson, the son of the owner of printing houses located in several cities. The marriage of Chukovsky’s parents was not formally registered, since the Jew Levenson would have to be baptized first, and he did not intend to do this.

What would have happened to him if not for his literary abilities? The chances of an illegitimate person making his way into the people before the revolution were very small. To top off all the troubles, Nikolai had an awkward appearance: too tall and thin, with prohibitively large arms, legs and nose... Modern doctors suggest that Chukovsky had Marfan syndrome - a special hormonal imbalance leading to gigantism of the body and giftedness of the mind.

The writer himself on his topic Jewish origin rarely spoke out. There is only one reliable source - his “Diary”, to which he trusted the most intimate: ““I, as an illegitimate, without even a nationality (who am I? Jew? Russian? Ukrainian?) was the most incomplete, difficult person on earth... It seemed to me that I am the only one - illegal, that everyone is whispering behind my back and that when I show someone (the janitor, the doorman) my documents, everyone internally begins to spit on me... When the children talked about their fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, I only blushed, hesitated, lied, confused..."

After that family drama, which Korney Ivanovich experienced in childhood, it could well have happened that he would have become a Judeophobe: at least out of love for his mother, at least in revenge for his crippled childhood. This did not happen: the opposite happened - he was drawn to the Jews. After reading, for example, the biography of Yuri Tynyanov, Korney Ivanovich wrote in his diary: “The book does not say anywhere that Yuri Nikolaevich was a Jew. Meanwhile, the subtle intelligence that reigns in his “Wazir Mukhtar” is most often characteristic of the Jewish mind.”

Kolya Korneychukov studied in the same gymnasium with Vladimir (Zeev) Jabotinsky, a future brilliant journalist and one of the most prominent representatives of the Zionist movement. The relationship between them was friendly: they were even expelled from the gymnasium together - for writing a sharp pamphlet on the director.

Little information has been preserved (for obvious reasons) about the relationship between these people when both left Odessa. In Chukovsky’s “Diary” the name of Zhabotinsky appears only in 1964: “Vlad. Jabotinsky (later a Zionist) said about me in 1902:

Chukovsky Korney
Talent vaunted
2 times longer
Telephone pole.

Chukovsky recognizes the enormous influence that Jabotinsky’s personality had on the formation of his worldview. Undoubtedly, Vladimir Evgenievich managed to distract Korney Ivanovich from his “self-criticism” regarding illegitimacy and convince him of his own talent. The journalistic debut of nineteen-year-old Chukovsky took place in the newspaper “Odessa News”, where Zhabotinsky brought him, who developed in him a love of language and recognized the talent of a critic.

In 1903, Korney Ivanovich married a twenty-three-year-old Odessa woman, the daughter of an accountant of a private company, Maria Borisovna Goldfeld, my own sister Jabotinsky's wife. Her father, an accountant, dreamed of marrying his daughter to a respectable Jew with capital, and not at all to a semi-impoverished infidel-bastard, who was also two years younger than her. The girl had to run away from home.

The marriage was unique and happy. Of the four children born in their family (Nikolai, Lydia, Boris and Maria) long life Only the two eldest survived - Nikolai and Lydia, who themselves later became writers. The youngest daughter Masha died in childhood from tuberculosis. Son Boris died in 1941 at the front; another son, Nikolai, also fought and took part in the defense of Leningrad. Lydia Chukovskaya (born in 1907) lived a long and difficult life, was subjected to repression, survived the execution of her husband, the outstanding physicist Matvey Bronstein.

After the revolution, Chukovsky wisely abandoned journalism, as too dangerous an occupation, and focused on children's fairy tales in poetry and prose. Once Chukovsky wrote to Marshak: “You and I could have died, but, fortunately, we have powerful friends in the world, whose name is children!”

By the way, during the war, Korney Ivanovich and Samuil Yakovlevich seriously quarreled, did not communicate for almost 15 years and began to compete in literally everything: who has more government awards, who is easier for children to remember by heart, who looks younger, about whose eccentricities there are more jokes.

The question of the sources of the image of Doctor Aibolit is very interesting and is still discussed by literary scholars. For a long time it was believed that the prototype of Doctor Aibolit was Doctor Dolittle, the hero of the book of the same name by the American children's writer Hugh Lofting. But here is a letter from the writer himself, dedicated to what helped him create such a charming image:

“I wrote this fairy tale a long, long time ago. And I decided to write it even before October revolution, because I met Dr. Aibolit, who lived in Vilna. His name was Doctor Tsemakh Shabad. It was the most a kind person like I've only known in my life. He treated poor children for free. Sometimes a thin girl would come to him, and he would say to her:

Do you want me to write you a prescription? No, milk will help you, come to me every morning and you will get two glasses of milk.

And in the mornings, I noticed, a whole line lined up to see him. The children not only came to him themselves, but also brought sick animals. So I thought how wonderful it would be to write a fairy tale about such a good doctor.”

Probably the most difficult years for the writer were the 30s. In addition to criticism of his own creativity, he had to endure difficult personal losses. His daughter Maria (Murochka) died of illness, and his son-in-law, physicist Matvey Bronstein, was shot in 1938. Chukovsky spent several years knocking around the authorities to find out about his fate. Work saved me from depression. He worked on translations of Kipling, Mark Twain, O. Henry, Shakespeare, and Conan Doyle. For younger children school age Chukovsky retold ancient greek myth about Perseus, translated English folk songs (“Robin-Bobin Barabek”, “Jenny”, “Kotausi and Mausi”, etc.). In Chukovsky’s retelling, Soviet children became acquainted with “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” by E. Raspe, “Robinson Crusoe” by D. Defoe, and “The Little Rag” by the little-known J. Greenwood. Children in Chukovsky's life truly became a source of strength and inspiration.

In the 1960s, Korney Ivanovich started retelling the Bible for children. He recruited several up-and-coming children's writers for this project and carefully edited their work. The project, due to the anti-religious position of the authorities, progressed with great difficulty. Thus, the editors set a condition that the word “Jews” should not be mentioned in the book. A book called " Tower of Babel and other ancient legends" was published by the publishing house "Children's Literature" in 1968, but the entire circulation was destroyed by the authorities and did not go on sale. The first reprint, available to the general reader, took place in 1990.

IN last years life Chukovsky is a popular favorite, a laureate of many awards and a holder of various orders. At the same time, he maintained contacts with Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky and other dissidents; his daughter Lydia was a prominent human rights activist. At the dacha in Peredelkino, where the writer constantly lived in recent years, he organized meetings with local children, talked with them, read poetry, invited them to meetings famous people, famous pilots, artists, writers, poets. Former Peredelkino children still remember those gatherings at Chukovsky’s dacha.

One day, a teenager visiting Peredelkino asked:
- Korney Ivanovich, they say you are terribly rich. This is true?
“You see,” Chukovsky answered seriously, “there are two kinds of rich people.” Some people think about money and make it - these become wealthy. But a real rich man doesn’t think about money at all.

Don't miss the most interesting things!

Chukovsky’s paradoxical advice to aspiring writers is also very interesting: “My friends, work selflessly. They pay better for it."

Shortly before his death, Chukovsky read someone’s memoirs about Marshak, who had died several years earlier, and drew attention to the following thing: it turns out that Samuil Yakovlevich defined his psychological age as five years. Korney Ivanovich became sad: “And I myself am no younger than six. It's a pity. After all, what younger child, the more talented he is..."

Korney Chukovsky, who gained fame as a children's poet for a long time was one of the most underrated writers silver age. Contrary to popular belief, the creator's genius was manifested not only in poems and fairy tales, but also in critical articles.

Due to the unostentatious specificity of his creativity, the state throughout the writer’s life tried to discredit his works in the eyes of the public. Numerous research papers allowed us to look at the famous artist “with different eyes.” Now the works of the publicist are read by both people of the “old school” and young people.

Childhood and youth

Nikolai Korneychukov (the poet’s real name) was born on March 31, 1882 in the northern capital of Russia - the city of St. Petersburg. Mother Ekaterina Osipovna, being a servant in the house of the eminent doctor Solomon Levenson, entered into vicious relationship with his son Emmanuel. In 1799, the woman gave birth to a daughter, Maria, and three years later gave birth to common-law husband heir to Nicholas.

Despite the fact that the relationship between the scion of a noble family and a peasant woman looked like a blatant misalliance in the eyes of society at that time, they lived together for seven years. The poet’s grandfather, who did not want to become related to a commoner, in 1885, without explaining the reason, put his daughter-in-law out into the street with two babies in her arms. Since Catherine could not afford separate housing, she and her son and daughter went to stay with relatives in Odessa. Much later, in the autobiographical story “The Silver Coat of Arms,” the poet admits that the southern city never became his home.

The writer's childhood years were spent in an atmosphere of devastation and poverty. The publicist's mother worked in shifts either as a seamstress or as a laundress, but there was a catastrophic lack of money. In 1887, the world saw the “Circular about Cook’s Children.” In it, the Minister of Education I.D. Delyanov recommended that the directors of the gymnasiums accept into the ranks of students only those children whose origin did not raise questions. Due to the fact that Chukovsky did not fit this “definition”, in the 5th grade he was expelled from the privileged educational institution.

In order not to idle around and benefit the family, the young man took on any job. Among the roles that Kolya tried on himself were a newspaper delivery man, a roof cleaner, and a poster paster. During that period, the young man began to be interested in literature. He read adventure novels, studied works, and in the evenings he recited poetry to the sound of the surf.

Among other things, his phenomenal memory allowed the young man to learn English in such a way that he translated texts from a sheet of paper without stuttering even once. At that time, Chukovsky did not yet know that Ohlendorf’s tutorial was missing pages on which the principle was described in detail correct pronunciation. Therefore, when Nicholas visited England years later, the fact was that local residents they practically did not understand him, the publicist was incredibly surprised.

Journalism

In 1901, inspired by the works of his favorite authors, Korney wrote a philosophical opus. The poet’s friend Vladimir Zhabotinsky, having read the work from cover to cover, took it to the Odessa News newspaper, thereby marking the beginning of a 70-year literary career Chukovsky. For the first publication, the poet received 7 rubles. Using considerable money for those times, the young man bought himself presentable-looking pants and a shirt.

After two years of working at the newspaper, Nikolai was sent to London as a correspondent for Odessa News. For a year he wrote articles, studied foreign literature and even copied catalogs in the museum. During the trip, eighty-nine works by Chukovsky were published.

The writer fell in love with British aestheticism so much that many, many years later he translated Whitman’s works into Russian, and also became the editor of the first four-volume work, which instantly acquired the status of a reference book in all literature-loving families.

In March 1905, the writer moved from sunny Odessa to rainy St. Petersburg. There, the young journalist quickly finds a job: he gets a job as a correspondent for the newspaper " Theater Russia", where in each issue his reports on the performances he watched and the books he read are published.

A subsidy from singer Leonid Sobinov helped Chukovsky publish the Signal magazine. The publication published exclusively political satire, and among the authors were even Teffi. Chukovsky was arrested for his ambiguous cartoons and anti-government works. The eminent lawyer Gruzenberg managed to achieve an acquittal and, nine days later, free the writer from prison.

Next, the publicist collaborated with the magazines “Scales” and “Niva”, as well as with the newspaper “Rech”, where Nikolai published critical essays about modern writers. Later, these works were scattered in books: “Faces and Masks” (1914), “Futurists” (1922), “From to the Present Day” (1908).

In the autumn of 1906, the writer’s place of residence became a dacha in Kuokkala (the shore of the Gulf of Finland). There the writer was lucky enough to meet an artist, poets and... Chukovsky later spoke about cultural figures in his memoirs “Repin. . Mayakovsky. . Memories" (1940).

The humorous handwritten almanac “Chukokkala”, published in 1979, was also collected here, where they left their creative autographs, and. At the invitation of the government in 1916, Chukovsky, as part of a delegation of Russian journalists, again went on a business trip to England.

Literature

In 1917, Nikolai returned to St. Petersburg, where, accepting the offer of Maxim Gorky, he took over the post of head of the children's department of the Parus publishing house. Chukovsky tried on the role of a storyteller while working on the anthology “Firebird”. Then he revealed to the world a new facet of his literary genius, having written "Chicken Little", "Kingdom of the Dogs" and "Doctors".

Gorky saw enormous potential in his colleague’s fairy tales and suggested that Korney “try his luck” and create another work for the children’s supplement of the Niva magazine. The writer was worried that he would not be able to release an effective product, but inspiration found the creator itself. This was on the eve of the revolution.

Then the publicist was returning from his dacha to St. Petersburg with his sick son Kolya. In order to distract his beloved child from attacks of illness, the poet began to invent a fairy tale on the fly. There was no time to develop the characters and plot.

The whole bet was on the quickest alternation of images and events, so that the boy would not have time to moan or cry. This is how the work “Crocodile”, published in 1917, was born.

After the October Revolution, Chukovsky traveled around the country giving lectures and collaborating with all sorts of publishing houses. In the 20-30s, Korney wrote the works “Moidodyr” and “Cockroach”, and also adapted texts folk songs For children's reading, releasing the collections “Red and Red” and “Skok-skok”. The poet published ten poetic fairy tales one after another: “Fly-Tsokotukha”, “Miracle Tree”, “Confusion”, “What Mura Did”, “Barmaley”, “Telephone”, “Fedorino’s Grief”, “Aibolit”, “The Stolen Sun”, “Toptygin and the Fox”.

Korney ran around the publishing houses, never leaving his proofs for a second, and followed every line printed. Chukovsky’s works were published in the magazines “New Robinson”, “Hedgehog”, “Koster”, “Chizh” and “Sparrow”. For the classic, everything worked out in such a way that at some point the writer himself believed that fairy tales were his calling.

Everything changed after critical article, in which a revolutionary woman who had no children called the creator’s works “bourgeois dregs” and argued that Chukovsky’s works concealed not only an anti-political message, but also false ideals.

After that secret meaning were seen in all the works of the writer: in “Mukha-Tsokotukha” the author popularized Komarik’s individualism and Mukha’s frivolity, in the fairy tale “Fedorino’s Grief” he glorified petty-bourgeois values, in “Moidodyr” he purposefully did not voice the importance of the leadership role communist party, and in the main character of “Cockroach” the censors even saw a caricature image.

The persecution brought Chukovsky to extreme despair. Korney himself began to believe that no one needed his fairy tales. In December 1929, the Literaturnaya Gazeta published a letter from the poet, in which he, renouncing his old works, promised to change the direction of his work by writing a collection of poems, “The Cheerful Collective Farm.” However, the work never came from his pen.

The wartime tale “Let’s Defeat Barmaley” (1943) was included in an anthology of Soviet poetry, and then crossed out from there by Stalin personally. Chukovsky wrote another work, “The Adventures of Bibigon” (1945). The story was published in Murzilka, recited on the radio, and then, calling it “ideologically harmful,” it was banned from reading.

Tired of fighting with critics and censors, the writer returned to journalism. In 1962, he wrote the book “Alive as Life,” in which he described the “diseases” that affected the Russian language. We should not forget that the publicist who studied creativity published full meeting works of Nikolai Alekseevich.

Chukovsky was a storyteller not only in literature, but also in life. He repeatedly committed actions that his contemporaries, due to their cowardice, were not capable of. In 1961, the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” fell into his hands. Having become its first reviewer, Chukovsky and Tvardovsky convinced him to publish this work. When Alexander Isaevich became persona non grata, it was Korney who hid him from the authorities at his second dacha in Peredelkino.

In 1964, the trial began. Korney, together with, are one of the few who were not afraid to write a letter to the Central Committee asking for the release of the poet. Literary heritage The writer has been preserved not only in books, but also in cartoons.

Personal life

From the first and only wife Chukovsky met at the age of 18. Maria Borisovna was the daughter of accountant Aron-Ber Ruvimovich Goldfeld and housewife Tuba (Tauba). The noble family never approved of Korney Ivanovich. At one time, the lovers even planned to escape from Odessa, which they both hated, to the Caucasus. Despite the fact that the escape never took place, the couple got married in May 1903.

Many Odessa journalists came to the wedding with flowers. True, Chukovsky did not need bouquets, but money. After the ceremony, the resourceful guy took off his hat and began to walk around the guests. Immediately after the celebration, the newlyweds left for England. Unlike Korney, Maria stayed there for a couple of months. Having learned that his wife was pregnant, the writer immediately sent her to her homeland.

On June 2, 1904, Chukovsky received a telegram that his wife had safely given birth to a son. That day, the feuilletonist gave himself a holiday and went to the circus. Upon returning to St. Petersburg, the wealth of knowledge and life experiences accumulated in London allowed Chukovsky to very quickly become a leading critic of St. Petersburg. Sasha Cherny, not without malice, called him Korney Belinsky. Just two years later, yesterday’s provincial journalist was on friendly terms with the entire literary and artistic elite.

While the artist traveled around the country giving lectures, his wife raised their children: Lydia, Nikolai and Boris. In 1920, Chukovsky became a father again. Daughter Maria, whom everyone called Murochka, became the heroine of many of the writer’s works. The girl died in 1931 from tuberculosis. 10 years later he died in the war younger son Boris, and 14 years later, the publicist’s wife, Maria Chukovskaya, also passed away.

Death

Korney Ivanovich passed away at the age of 87 (October 28, 1969). Cause of death - viral hepatitis. The dacha in Peredelkino, where the poet lived in recent years, was turned into Chukovsky’s house-museum.

To this day, lovers of the writer’s work can see with their own eyes the place where the eminent artist created his masterpieces.

Bibliography

• “Sunny” (story, 1933);
• “Silver Coat of Arms” (story, 1933);
• “Chicken” (fairy tale, 1913);
• “Aibolit” (fairy tale, 1917);
• “Barmaley” (fairy tale, 1925);
• “Moidodyr” (fairy tale, 1923);
• “The Tsokotukha Fly” (fairy tale, 1924);
• “Let’s Defeat Barmaley” (fairy tale, 1943);
• “The Adventures of Bibigon” (fairy tale, 1945);
• “Confusion” (fairy tale, 1914);
• “The Kingdom of Dogs” (fairy tale, 1912);
• “Cockroach” (fairy tale, 1921);
• “Telephone” (fairy tale, 1924);
• “Toptygin and the Fox” (fairy tale, 1934);