Literary and historical notes of a young technician. Features from the life of D.N.

Mamin - Sibiryak Dmitry Narkisovich

(6.11.1852-15.11.1912)

There is a small town in the Urals called Visim. He was lost among the mountains and forests, valleys and rivers. Many years ago

On November 6, 1852, in the Visimo-Shaitansky plant, Verkhoturye district, Perm province, not far from Nizhny Tagil, a boy Mitya was born - Russian writer Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin - Sibiryak. He was the second child in the family.

His parents were simple, kind, honest people. His father Narkis Matveevich Mamin was a poor factory priest. In addition, he taught children in a parochial school and helped sick and poor people in any way he could. The writer spoke about his mother as the ideal of a Russian woman.

Anna Semyonovna day after day recorded observations of the life and development of her children. Along with people, pets were also full owners in the house: a wonderful Siberian husky dog ​​with a fluffy tail, a red cat with green eyes; a cheerful canary was jumping in a cage, and a smart talking parrot was sitting on a perch. The children took care of them touchingly.

In the evening after working day, the whole family gathered together. My father read aloud poems and stories by Pushkin and Lermontov, Gogol and Nekrasov, Aksakov; magazines that were ordered from the capital. The most honorable place in the house was occupied by a bookcase. In it, children found books about travel. With the heroes of these books, they sailed through stormy seas, overcame the rapids of fast-moving rivers, and discovered new lands. And when the parents left, the grandmother told fairy tales to the children.

Until the age of 14, Mitya stayed at home and studied at the school where his father taught. Mitya grew up lively, although he was physically weaker than his brother, an inquisitive, diligent student. Dmitry participated in the games of factory children - these were the children of industrial workers, miners, peasants, of course, he knew well how his friends lived. The father of his friend Kostya Ryabov had a library where they spent a lot of time. And they also loved to walk in their native places, mountains and forests; they knew all the paths, often stayed overnight in the forest with hunters, and listened to their fascinating stories.

Mitya retained his attachment to the Urals throughout his life. When he had to leave him as an adult, he remembered the lands dear to his heart. “When I feel sad, my thoughts are carried away to my native green mountains, it begins to seem to me that the sky there is higher and clearer, and the people are so kind, and I myself am becoming better...” he will write many years later.

At the age of 14 (1866), Mitya Mamin began studying at religious school In Ekaterinburg. “Bursa” was distinguished by the wild morals of its students, constant cramming and cruelty of teachers. Two years of Bursa studies flew by, and Mitya returned home to his native Urals, happy. Dmitry Narkisovich considered these years of his life to be lost, since he did not read a single book.

At the age of 16 (1868), Dmitry Narkisovich entered the Perm Theological Seminary, gradually he realized that he wanted to be a doctor, not a priest.

At the age of 20 (1872) he applied to leave the seminary. That same summer he left for St. Petersburg and entered the veterinary department of the Medical-Surgical Academy. Here he finds himself in a revolutionary student environment. Attends various clubs, reads forbidden books. Ideas about life and need ordinary people expanded. Life turned out to be very difficult; I had to save on everything: on an apartment, on dinner, on clothes, on books, on lighting. But still, Dmitry Narkisovich reads a lot and writes a lot. One day, when things were really bad and everything was falling out of hand, there was a knock on the door and offered Dmitry Narkisovich to become a reporter for the Russkiy Mir newspaper. From that time on, he could publish and not die of hunger.

At the age of 22 (1874), he transferred to the Faculty of Law, believing that it was better for him as a writer to gain broader knowledge public life. But a lung disease forced him to leave his studies and go to his homeland, the Urals. He was happy because he constantly missed the Urals.

Life in the Urals 1877-1891

In the spring of 1877 (25 years old), Mamin returned to the Urals, to Verkhnyaya Salda, where the family had moved. In January 1878, the family suffered great grief; Narkis Matveevich died, and from that time on Dmitry Narkisovich. I had to take on all the worries about the family to help my mother, 2 brothers and a sister.

Soon they move to Yekaterinburg.

Dmitry Narkisovich, in order to somehow live, begins to engage in private lessons and soon becomes the most famous tutor in Yekaterinburg. “For five years I gave private lessons twelve hours a day,” the writer recalled. He wrote for popular literary and journalistic St. Petersburg and Moscow magazines.

In 1882, the second period of Mamin’s literary activity began. Mamin considered himself a “Siberian”, since he was born in the Visimo-Shaitansky factory village, located in the Verkhoturye district, and Verkhoturye at the beginning of the eighteenth century was part of the Siberian province. Therefore, the writer chooses a pseudonym for himself - “Sibiryak”. Having attached a pseudonym to his name, the writer quickly gained popularity, and the signature Mamin-Sibiryak remained with him forever. Having stayed in his native places for 14 years, he actively travels to his native places, studies the lives of people, their way of life, economics native land and writes, writes, writes.

At the age of 38 (1890), Dmitry Narkisovich married the artist Maria Maritsevna Abramova, her beauty and artistry impressed the writer.

At the age of 39 (1891) they arrived in St. Petersburg. However, their happiness was short-lived. On March 21, 1892, Maria Maritsevna died from childbirth, leaving her loved one with a sickly, fragile girl, Elena (affectionately called Alyonushka).

Love for his daughter revealed to him the soul of a child and revealed to the world the creator of immortal works of children's literature.

From 1892 to 1912 D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak created more than one hundred and fifty works for children, after the birth of my daughter. In them he transferred everything cherished that had accumulated in his soul: all the unchanging love for nature, for its fabulous beauty, love for all living things that surround a person and live their special life next to him.

"Alenushka's Tales" ( 1896), which became recognized classic children's literature is a book that love itself wrote and therefore it will outlive everything else. Mamin-Sibiryak began to write fairy tales and stories for children in last years life, considering this work “more important than everything else.” In addition to the funny, joyful “Alyonushka’s Tales,” the writer also has other works for children, in which he does not hide the harsh truth of life. How much cruelty and injustice there is in the world, little readers think “The Gray Neck”, “Winter Hut on the Cold”, “Emeli the Hunter”, “Stories and Fairy Tales for Young Children” (1895), “Zarnitsy” (1897), “Stories and Fairy Tales” (1898), “Across the Urals” ( 1899) etc. these books are impossible to read and listen to calmly; they evoke a feeling of compassion for the characters. Some critics compare Mamin's fairy tales with Andersen's.

In 1894, he wrote a biographical novel. "Characters from the life of Pepko" (a brilliant novel - a memory of his St. Petersburg youth).

Dmitry Narkisovich died on November 15, 1912. Nowadays, the works of Mamin-Sibiryak have become accessible to all people; every person knows them at a very early age.

Tales of Mamin-Sibiryak

Mamin-Sibiryak wrote many stories, fairy tales, novellas for adults and children. The works were published in various children's collections and magazines, and published as separate books. Mamin-Sibiryak’s tales are interesting and informative to read, he is truthful, strong word talks about hard life, describes the native Ural nature. For the author, children's literature meant a child's connection with the adult world, which is why he took it very seriously.

Mamin-Sibiryak wrote fairy tales with the goal of raising fair, honest children. A sincere book works wonders, the writer often said. Wise words thrown on fertile soil will sprout, because children are our future. Mamin-Sibiryak's tales are varied, designed for children of any age, because the writer tried to reach every child's soul. The author did not embellish life, did not justify or make excuses, he found warm words that convey the kindness and moral strength of the poor. Describing people's lives and nature, he subtly and easily conveyed and taught how to take care of them.

Mamin-Sibiryak worked a lot and hard on himself, on his skills, before he began to create literary masterpieces. Tales of Mamin-Sibiryak are loved by adults and children; they are included in school curriculum, staging children's matinees in gardens. The author's witty and sometimes unusual stories are written in the style of a conversation with young readers.

Mom's Siberian Alyonushka's fairy tales

They start reading Mamin-Sibiryak with kindergarten or younger school classes. Alyonushka's collection of Mamin-Sibiryak's tales is the most famous of them. These small tales from several chapters they speak to us through the mouths of animals and birds, plants, fish, insects and even toys. The nicknames of the main characters touch adults and amuse children: Komar Komarovich - long nose, Ruff Ershovich, Brave Hare - long ears and others. Mamin-Sibiryak Alyonushkina’s fairy tales were written not only for entertainment; the author skillfully combined useful information with exciting adventures.

The qualities that Mamin-Sibiryak’s tales develop (in his own opinion):

• Modesty;
• Hard work;
• Sense of humor;
• Responsibility for the common cause;
• Selfless strong friendship.

Alyonushka's tales. Reading order

1. Saying;
2. A tale about a brave Hare - long ears, slanting eyes, short tail;
3. The Tale of Kozyavochka;
4. A fairy tale about Komar Komarovich - a long nose and about shaggy Misha - a short tail;
5. Vanka's name day;
6. A fairy tale about Sparrow Vorobeich, Ruff Ershovich and the cheerful chimney sweep Yasha;
7. The tale of how the last Fly lived;
8. A fairy tale about the little black little crow and the yellow bird Canary;
9. Smarter than everyone else;
10. The tale of Milk, oatmeal Porridge and the gray cat Murka;
11. It's time to sleep.

Mamin-Sibiryak. Childhood and youth

Russian writer Mamin-Sibiryak was born in 1852 in the village of Visim in the Urals. His place of birth largely determined him easy character, hot kind heart, love for work. The father and mother of the future Russian writer raised four children, working hard for many hours to earn their bread. From childhood, little Dmitry not only saw poverty, but lived in it.

Childhood curiosity led the child to completely different places, discovering pictures of arrested workers, arousing sympathy and at the same time interest. The boy loved to talk for a long time with his father, asking him about everything he saw that day. Like his father, Mamin-Sibiryak began to acutely feel and understand what honor, justice, and lack of equality are. Over the years, the writer has repeatedly described harsh life common people from his childhood.

When Dmitry felt sad and anxious, his thoughts flew to his native Ural mountains, memories flowed in a continuous stream and he began to write. For a long time, at night, pouring out my thoughts on paper. Mamin-Sibiryak described his feelings this way: “It seemed to me that in my native Urals even the sky was cleaner and higher, and the people were sincere, with a broad soul, it was as if I myself was becoming different, better, kinder, more confident.” The most good fairy tales Mamin-Sibiryak wrote precisely at such moments.

The love of literature was instilled in the boy by his adored father. In the evenings, the family read books out loud, replenished the home library and were very proud of it. Mitya grew up thoughtful and enthusiastic... Several years passed and Mamin-Sibiryak turned 12 years old. It was then that his wanderings and hardships began. His father sent him to study in Yekaterinburg at the Bursa school. There, all issues were resolved by force, the elders humiliated the younger ones, they fed poorly, and Mitya soon fell ill. His father, of course, immediately took him home, but after several years he was forced to send his son to study at the same bursa, since there was not enough money for a decent gymnasium. Studying at the bursa left an indelible mark on the heart of what was then just a child. Dmitry Narkisovich said that it later took him many years to expel terrible memories and all the accumulated anger from his heart.

After graduating from the bursa, Mamin-Sibiryak entered the theological seminary, but left it, as he himself explained, that he did not want to become a priest and deceive people. Having moved to St. Petersburg, Dmitry entered the veterinary department of the Medical-Surgical Academy, then transferred to the Faculty of Law and never graduated.

Mamin-Sibiryak. First work

Mamin-Sibiryak was an excellent student, did not miss classes, but was an enthusiastic person, which for a long time prevented him from finding himself. Dreaming of becoming a writer, he identified two things for himself that needed to be done. The first is working on your own language style, the second is understanding people’s lives, their psychology.

Having written his first novel, Dmitry took it to one of the editorial offices under the pseudonym Tomsky. It is interesting that the editor of the publication at that time was Saltykov-Shchedrin, who gave, to put it mildly, a low assessment of Mamin-Sibiryak’s work. The young man was so depressed that he left everything and returned to his family in the Urals.

Then troubles fell one after another: the illness and death of his beloved father, numerous moves, unsuccessful attempts to get an education... Mamin-Sibiryak passed through all the tests with honor and already in the early 80s the first rays of glory fell on him. The collection " Ural stories".

Finally, about the tales of Mamin-Sibiryak

Mamin-Sibiryak began writing fairy tales when he was already an adult. Many novels and stories were written before them. A talented, warm-hearted writer, Mamin-Sibiryak enlivened the pages of children’s books, penetrating young hearts with his kind words. You need to read Alyonushka’s tales of Mamin-Sibiryak especially thoughtfully, where the author laid out an easy and informative deep meaning, the strength of his Ural character and nobility of thought.

Russian prose writer, playwright D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak ( real name Mamin) was born on October 25 (November 6), 1852 in the Visimo-Shaitansky factory village of the Verkhoturye district of the Perm province, 140 km from Nizhny Tagil. This village, located in the depths of the Ural Mountains, was founded by Peter I, and the rich merchant Demidov built an iron factory here. The father of the future writer was the factory priest Narkis Matveevich Mamin (1827-1878). The family had four children. They lived modestly: my father received a small salary, little more than a factory worker. For many years he taught children for free at a factory school. “I never saw my father or mother without work. Their day was always full of work,” recalled Dmitry Narkisovich.

Since childhood, the writer fell in love with the magnificent Ural nature and always remembered it with love: “When I feel sad, my thoughts are carried away to my native green mountains, it begins to seem to me that the sky there is higher and clearer, and the people are so kind, and I myself become better". This is what Mamin-Sibiryak wrote many years later, being far from his native Visim. It was then, in his early childhood years, that Mamin-Sibiryak’s love for Russian literature arose and grew stronger. "In our house the book played main role“,” the writer recalled, “and my father took advantage of every free minute to read.” The entire Mamin family took care of the small home library.

From 1860 to 1864, Mitya studied at the Visim village primary school for children of workers, located in a large hut. When the boy was 12 years old, his father took him and his older brother Nikolai to Yekaterinburg and sent them to a religious school. True, the wild bursat morals had such an effect on the impressionable child that he fell ill, and his father took him away from school. WITH great joy Mitya returned home and for two years felt completely happy: reading alternated with wanderings in the mountains, spending the night in the forest and in the houses of mine workers. Two years flew by quickly. The father did not have the means to send his son to the gymnasium, and he was again taken to the same bursa.

In the book of memoirs “From the Distant Past” D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak described his impressions of studying at the bursa. He talked about senseless cramming, corporal punishment, ignorance of teachers and rudeness of students. The school did not give real knowledge, and students were forced to memorize entire pages from the Bible, sing prayers and psalms. Reading books was considered unworthy of a “real” student. In Bursa, only brute strength was valued. The older students bullied the younger ones and cruelly mocked the “newbies.” Mamin-Sibiryak considered the years spent at the school not only lost, but also harmful. He wrote: “It took many years, a lot of terrible work, to eradicate all the evil that I carried out of the bursa, and for those seeds to sprout that were abandoned a long time ago by my own family.”

After graduating from the bursa in 1868, Mamin-Sibiryak entered the Perm Seminary, a religious institution that provided secondary education. The seminary was not much different from the bursa. The same rudeness of morals and poor teaching. The Holy Scriptures, theological sciences, ancient languages ​​- Greek and Latin - this is what seminarians mainly had to study. However, the best of them strived for scientific knowledge.

In the Perm Theological Seminary in the early 1860s there was a secret revolutionary circle. Teachers and seminarians - members of the circle - distributed revolutionary literature at Ural factories and openly called for action against the owners. At the time when Mamin entered the seminary, the circle was destroyed, many seminarians were arrested and expelled, but they managed to save the underground library. It contained Herzen's forbidden works, works, and Chernyshevsky's novel "What is to be done?" and books on natural science (Ch. Darwin, I.M. Sechenov, K.A. Timiryazev). Despite all the persecution, the spirit of freethinking remained at the Perm Seminary, and students protested against hypocrisy and hypocrisy. In an effort to gain knowledge to benefit the people, Dmitry Mamin left the seminary after the 4th grade without graduating: he no longer wanted to be a priest. But it was during his stay at the Perm Theological Seminary that his first creative attempts dated back.

In the spring of 1871, Mamin left for St. Petersburg, and in August 1872 he entered the veterinary department of the Medical-Surgical Academy. He was fascinated by the stormy social movement of the 1870s, attended revolutionary student circles, read the works of Marx, and participated in political disputes. Soon the police put him under surveillance. Life was difficult for him. I had to save on everything: on an apartment, on lunch, on clothes, on books. Together with a friend, Dmitry rented a cold, uncomfortable room in big house, where students and the urban poor lived. D.N. Mamin was sympathetic to the populist propagandist movement, but chose a different path for himself - writing.

In 1875, he began reporting work for the newspapers Russkiy Mir and Novosti, which, in his words, gave him knowledge of the “ins and outs” of life, “the ability to recognize people and a passion for plunging into the thick of everyday life.” In the magazines "Son of the Fatherland" and "Krugozor" he published action-packed stories, not without, in the spirit of P.I. Melnikov-Pechersky, ethnographic observation, stories about robbers, Ural Old Believers, mysterious people and incidents ("The Elders", 1875; "The Old Man", "In the Mountains", "Little Red Hat", "Mermaids", all - 1876; "Secrets of the Green forests", 1877; novel "In the Whirlpool of Passions", author's title "The Guilty", 1876, etc.).

Student Mamin studied seriously, read a lot, listened to lectures, and visited museums. But, having decided to become a writer, in the fall of 1876, without completing the course at the Medical-Surgical Academy, he transferred to the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, believing that he needed to study social Sciences that will help you better understand the life around you. In his future books, he wanted to open the Urals to people, talk about the hard work of factory workers, about the life of gold miners and peasants. Dmitry Mamin rereads the works of his favorite writers, writes a lot, works hard on his language and style. He becomes a newspaper reporter and writes short articles on assignments from various newspapers. Soon the first stories and essays of the young writer began to appear in St. Petersburg magazines.

Leading the life of a literary bohemia, Mamin was engaged in reporting and writing stories. His first work of fiction, “Secrets of the Green Forest,” was published without a signature in the magazine “Krugozor” in 1877 and is dedicated to the Urals. The beginnings of talent, familiarity with nature and the life of the region are noticeable in this work. He wants to live for everyone, to experience everything and feel everything. Continuing to study at the Faculty of Law, Mamin writes a long novel “In the Whirlpool of Passions” under the pseudonym E. Tomsky, the novel is pretentious and very weak in all respects. He took the manuscript of the novel to the journal Otechestvennye zapiski, which was edited by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. A big blow for the aspiring writer was the negative assessment of this novel given by Saltykov-Shchedrin. But Mamin correctly understood that he lacked not only literary skill, but, above all, knowledge of life. As a result, his first novel was published only in one little-known magazine.

And this time Mamin failed to complete his studies. He studied at the Faculty of Law for about a year. Excessive work, poor nutrition, lack of rest broke the young body. He developed consumption (tuberculosis). In addition, due to financial difficulties and his father’s illness, Mamin was unable to pay the tuition fee and was soon expelled from the university. In the spring of 1877, the writer left St. Petersburg. The young man reached out to the Urals with all his heart. There he recovered from his illness and found strength for new works.

Once in his native place, Dmitry Narkisovich collects material for a new novel from Ural life. Trips around the Urals and the Urals expanded and deepened his knowledge folk life. But the new novel, conceived in St. Petersburg, had to be postponed. My father fell ill and died in January 1878. Dmitry remained the sole breadwinner of a large family. In search of work, as well as to educate his brothers and sister, the family moved to Yekaterinburg in April 1878. But even in a large industrial city, the dropout student failed to get a job. Dmitry began giving lessons to lagging schoolchildren. The tedious work was poorly paid, but Mamin turned out to be a good teacher, and he soon gained fame as the best tutor in the city. He did not leave his literary work in the new place; When there was not enough time during the day, I wrote at night. Despite financial difficulties, he ordered books from St. Petersburg.

In the early 1880s, stories, essays and novellas began to be published in magazines in St. Petersburg and Moscow. famous writer D. Sibiryak. Soon, in 1882, the first collection of travel essays, “From the Urals to Moscow” (“Ural Stories”), was published. The essays were published in the Moscow newspaper "Russkie Vedomosti", and then in the magazine "Delo" his essays "In the Stones" and short stories ("At the Border of Asia", "In Thin Souls", etc.) were published. The heroes of the stories were factory workers, Ural prospectors, Chusovsky barge haulers; the Ural nature came to life in the essays. These works attracted readers. The collection quickly sold out. This is how the writer D.N. entered literature. Mamin-Sibiryak. His works became closer to the requirements of the democratic journal Otechestvennye zapiski, and Saltykov-Shchedrin already willingly published them. Thus, in 1882, the second period of Mamin’s literary activity began. His Ural stories and essays regularly appear in “Foundations”, “Deed”, “Bulletin of Europe”, “Russian Thought”, “Otechestvennye Zapiski”. In these stories one can already sense an original depicter of the life and morals of the Urals, a free artist who knows how to give an idea of ​​gigantic human labor and depict all sorts of contrasts. On the one hand, marvelous nature, majestic, full of harmony, on the other hand, human turmoil, a difficult struggle for existence. Having attached a pseudonym to his name, the writer quickly gained popularity, and the signature Mamin-Sibiryak remained with him forever.

The writer's first major work was the novel "Privalov's Millions" (1883), which was published for a year in the magazine "Delo". This novel, begun in 1872, is the most popular of his works today, but was completely unnoticed by critics at the time of its appearance. The hero of the novel, a young idealist, is trying to get an inheritance under his guardianship in order to pay off the people for the cruel family sin of oppression and exploitation, but the lack of will of the hero (a consequence of genetic degradation), the utopian nature of the social project dooms the enterprise to failure. Vivid episodes of everyday life, schismatic legends, pictures of the morals of “society”, images of officials, lawyers, gold miners, commoners, relief and accuracy of writing, abundant folk sayings and proverbs, authenticity in the reproduction of various aspects of Ural life made this work, along with other “Ural” novels by Mamin-Sibiryak, a large-scale realistic epic, an impressive example of domestic social-analytical prose.

In 1884, the next novel of the “Ural” cycle, “Mountain Nest,” appeared in the magazine “Otechestvennye zapiski,” which established Mamin-Sibiryak’s reputation as an outstanding realist writer. The second novel also depicts the mining Urals from all sides. This is a magnificent page from the history of the accumulation of capitalism, a sharply satirical work about the failure of the “magnates” of the Ural mining plants as organizers of industry. The novel talentedly depicts the mountain king Laptev, a complete degenerate, “a remarkable type of all that have ever been encountered in our literature,” according to Skabichevsky, who highly rated the novel “Mountain Nest” and found that “Laptev can safely be placed on a par with such eternal types like Tartuffe, Harpagon, Judushka Golovlev, Oblomov."

In the novel “On the Street” (1886; original title “Stormy Stream”), conceived as a continuation of “The Mountain Nest,” Mamin-Sibiryak transfers his “Ural” heroes to St. Petersburg, and, telling about the rise and collapse of a certain newspaper enterprise, emphasizes the negative the nature of social selection in a “market” society, where the best (the most “moral”) are doomed to poverty and death. The problem of searching for the meaning of life by a conscientious intellectual is raised by Mamin-Sibiryak in the novel “The Birthday Boy” (1888), which tells about the suicide of a zemstvo figure. At the same time, Mamin-Sibiryak clearly gravitates toward populist literature, striving to write in the style of G.I., whom he revered. Uspensky and N.N. Zlatovratsky - in a “fictional-journalistic” form, according to his definition. In 1885 D.N. Mamin wrote the play "Gold Miners" ("On the Golden Bottom"), which had no great success. In 1886 he was accepted as a member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. The attention of the literary community was attracted by Mamin-Sibiryak’s collection “Ural Stories” (vols. 1-2; 1888-1889), in which the fusion of ethnographic and cognitive elements (as later in P.P. Bazhov) was perceived in the aspect of the originality of the writer’s artistic style, it was noted his skill as a landscape painter.

14 years of the writer’s life (1877-1891) pass in Yekaterinburg. He marries Maria Yakimovna Alekseeva, who became not only a wife and friend, but also an excellent adviser on literary issues. During these years, he makes many trips around the Urals, studies literature on history, economics, ethnography of the Urals, immerses himself in folk life, communicates with “simpletons” who have extensive life experience, and is even elected as a member of the Yekaterinburg City Duma. Two long trips to the capital (1881-1882, 1885-1886) strengthened literary connections writer: he meets Korolenko, Zlatovratsky, Goltsev and others. During these years he writes and publishes a lot short stories, essays.

But in 1890, Mamin-Sibiryak divorced his first wife, and in January 1891 he married a talented artist from the Yekaterinburg drama theater Maria Moritsovna Abramova and moves with her to St. Petersburg, where the last stage of his life takes place. Here he soon became close to the populist writers - N. Mikhailovsky, G. Uspensky and others, and later, at the turn of the century, with the greatest writers of the new generation - A. Chekhov, A. Kuprin, M. Gorky, I. Bunin, highly who appreciated his works. A year later (March 22, 1892), his dearly beloved wife Maria Moritsevna Abramova dies, leaving her sick daughter Alyonushka in the arms of her father, shocked by this death.

Over the years, Mamin has become increasingly occupied with the processes of people's life; he gravitates toward novels in which the main character is not an exceptional person, but an entire working environment. The novels of D.N. became very famous. Mamin-Sibiryak “Three Ends” (1890), dedicated to the complex processes in the Urals after the Peasant Reform of 1861, “Gold” (1892), describing the gold mining season in harsh naturalistic detail, and “Bread” (1895) about the famine in the Ural village in 1891 -1892. The writer worked for a long time on each work, collecting enormous historical and modern material. A deep knowledge of people's life helped the author to clearly and truthfully show the difficult situation of workers and peasants and indignantly expose the rich factory owners who appropriated the natural resources of the region and exploited the people. The gloomy drama, the abundance of suicides and disasters in the works of Mamin-Sibiryak, the “Russian Zola”, recognized as one of the creators of the Russian sociological novel, revealed one of the important facets of the public mentality of Russia at the end of the century: the feeling of a person’s complete dependence on socio-economic circumstances that fulfill modern conditions function of unpredictable and inexorable ancient rock.

Colorful language major key Mamin-Sibiryak's historical stories "The Gordeev Brothers" (1891; about Demidov's serfs who studied in France) and "Okhonin's Eyebrows" (1892; about the uprising of the Ural factory population in the era of Pugachev), as well as legends from the life of the Bashkirs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz ( "Swan Khantygal", "Maya", etc.). “Stumpy”, “strong and brave”, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, a typical “Ural man”, Mamin-Sibiryak since 1892, after the bitter loss of his beloved wife, who died at the birth of their daughter Alyonushka, has also been nominated as an excellent writer about children and for children . His collections "Children's Shadows" and "Alenushka's Tales" (1894-1896) were very successful and became Russian children's classics. Mamin-Sibiryak’s works for children “Winter quarters on Studenoy” (1892), “Grey Neck” (1893), “Zarnitsy” (1897), “Across the Urals” (1899) and others became widely known. They reveal the high simplicity, noble naturalness of feelings and love of life of their author, who inspires with the poetic skill of domestic animals, birds, flowers, and insects. Some critics compare Mamin's fairy tales with Andersen's.

Mamin-Sibiryak took children's literature very seriously. He called a children's book a "living thread" that takes the child out of the children's room and connects him with the wider world of life. Addressing writers, his contemporaries, Mamin-Sibiryak urged them to truthfully tell children about the life and work of the people. He often said that only an honest and sincere book is beneficial: “A children’s book is a spring Sunbeam, which awakens the dormant powers of a child’s soul and causes the seeds thrown onto this fertile soil to grow.”

Children's works are very diverse and intended for children of different ages. The younger children know Alyonushka's Tales well. Animals, birds, fish, insects, plants and toys live and talk happily in them. For example: Komar Komarovich - long nose, Shaggy Misha - short tail, Brave Hare - long ears - slanting eyes - short tail, Sparrow Vorobeich and Ruff Ershovich. Talking about the funny adventures of animals and toys, the author skillfully combines fascinating content with useful information, kids learn to observe life, they develop feelings of camaraderie and friendship, modesty and hard work. Mamin-Sibiryak’s works for older children tell about the life and work of workers and peasants in the Urals and Siberia, about the fate of children working in factories, industries and mines, about young travelers along the picturesque slopes of the Ural Mountains. A wide and diverse world, the life of man and nature, is revealed to young readers in these works. Mamin-Sibiryak’s story “Emelya the Hunter,” which was awarded an international prize in 1884, was highly appreciated by readers.

One of best books Mamin-Sibiryak is an autobiographical novel-memory of his St. Petersburg youth, “Characters from the Life of Pepko” (1894), which tells about Mamin’s first steps in literature, about attacks of acute need and moments of deep despair. He clearly outlined the writer’s worldview, the dogmas of his faith, views, ideas that formed the basis of his best works: deep altruism, aversion to brute force, love of life and, at the same time, longing for its imperfections, for “a sea of ​​​​sadness and tears ", where there is so much horror, cruelty, and untruth. “Can you really be satisfied with your life alone? No, living a thousand lives, suffering and rejoicing in a thousand hearts - that’s where life and real happiness are!” - says Mamin in “Characters from the life of Pepko”. The writer's last major works were the novel "Shooting Stars" (1899) and the story "Mumma" (1907).

The last years of his life the writer was seriously ill. On October 26, 1912, his fortieth anniversary was celebrated in St. Petersburg creative activity, but Mamin already had a bad reaction to those who came to congratulate him - a week later, on November 2 (15), 1912, he died. Many newspapers carried obituaries. The Bolshevik newspaper Pravda dedicated a special article to Mamin-Sibiryak, in which it noted the great revolutionary significance of his works: “A bright, talented, warm-hearted writer has died, under whose pen the pages of the past of the Urals came to life, an entire era of the march of capital, predatory, greedy, who knew no restraint. not with anything". “Pravda” highly appreciated the writer’s achievements in children’s literature: “He was attracted a pure soul child, and in this area he gave a number of excellent essays and stories."

D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak was buried at the Nikolskoye cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra; two years later, the suddenly deceased daughter of the writer “Alyonushka”, Elena Dmitrievna Mamina (1892-1914), was buried nearby. In 1915, a granite monument with a bronze bas-relief was erected on the grave (sk. I.Ya. Ginzburg). And in 1956, the ashes and monument of the writer, his daughter and wife, M.M. Abramova, were moved to the Literatorskie bridge of the Volkovsky cemetery. On the grave monument of Mamin-Sibiryak the words are carved: “To live a thousand lives, to suffer and rejoice in a thousand hearts - that’s where real life and true happiness."

“The native land has a lot to thank you for, our friend and teacher... Your books helped us understand and love the Russian people, the Russian language...” - this is what D.N. wrote. Mamin-Sibiryak A.M. Bitter.

AT 12 YEARS OLD, THEIR FATHER TOOK MITYA AND ELDER BROTHER NICOLAY TO KATERINBURG AND SENT THEM TO STUDY IN THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL - BURSA. TERRIBLE MORALITY REIGNED HERE, TEACHERS ABUSED CHILDREN, ELDERERS Mocked THE YOUNGER. MITHA GOT SERIOUSLY ILL AND HIS FATHER TOOK HIM BACK HOME. HE LIVED AT HOME FOR YEARS. THESE WERE THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF HIS LIFE. HE TRAVELED A LOT IN HIS HOMELAND, MEETING ORDINARY PEOPLE WHO BECAME THE HEROES OF HIS FUTURE BOOKS.

IN 1866 WAS ESTABLISHED IN THE KATERINBURG THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL. THEN STUDYED AT THE PERM THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY FOR 4 YEARS. THEN THE FUTURE WRITER STUDYED TO BE A VETERINARIAN AT THE PETERSBURG MEDICAL AND SURGICAL ACADEMY, THEN AT THE FACULTY OF LAW OF THE PETERSBURG UNIVERSITY. BUT, AFTER STUDYING FOR A YEAR, I WAS FORCED TO LEAVE DUE TO FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES AND A SHARP DECLINED HEALTH (TUBERCULOSIS STARTED). Perm Theological Seminary

URAL AGAIN! In 1876, Dmitry Mamin returned to his native land. He again traveled through the Urals. Dmitry met with the heroes of his future works. A year later, my father died, he had to feed his family, Mamin went to Yekaterinburg to look for work. He became a tutor. In his free time he continued to write.

Mamin-Sibiryak took children's literature very seriously. He called a children's book a "living thread" that takes the child out of the children's room and connects him with the wider world of life.

A bunny was born in the forest and was afraid of everything. A twig will crack somewhere, a bird will fly up, a lump of snow will fall from a tree - the bunny is in his heels. The bunny was afraid of the day. I was afraid for a week, afraid for a year; and then he grew up big and suddenly he got tired of being afraid."

The boastful hare jumped up like a ball, and out of fear fell straight onto the wide wolf’s forehead, rolled head over heels along the wolf’s back, turned over again in the air and then gave such a kick that it seemed like he was ready to jump out of his own skin. "The Tale of the Brave Hare - Long Ears, Slanting Eyes, Short Tail"

No matter how long or how short Misha fought with the mosquitoes, there was just a lot of noise. A bear's roar could be heard in the distance. And how many trees he tore out, how many stones he tore up!.. He all wanted to catch the first Komar Komarovich, - after all, right here, just above his ear, the bear was hovering, and the bear would grab it with his paw, and again nothing, he just scratched his whole face into blood. “A fairy tale about Komar Komarovich - a long nose and about furry Misha - a short tail”

The porridge was covered with a clay lid on top, and it grumbled in its pan like an old woman. And when she started to get angry, a bubble would float to the top, burst and say: “But I’m still an oatmeal porridge... pum!” Milk thought this boasting was terribly offensive. The milk began to get hot, foamed up and tried to get out of its pot. “The Parable of Milk, Oatmeal Porridge and the Gray Cat Murka

November 2012 marks 160 years since his birth and 100 years since his death.
Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak (November 6, 1852 - November 15, 1912)

Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak(real name Mamin; October 25 (November 6), 1852, Visimo-Shaitansky plant, Perm province, now the village of Visim Sverdlovsk region- November 2 (15), 1912, St. Petersburg - Russian prose writer and playwright.

It’s worth saying “Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak”, as I remember famous photograph, where he looks happy with life, a respectable man, wearing a rich fur coat and an astrakhan fur hat. According to the recollections of friends, he was the life of the party, cheerful person, an excellent storyteller. Like everyone good man children, old people and animals loved him.
But in fact, Mamin-Sibiryak’s life was very difficult; only early childhood and fifteen months of a happy marriage were prosperous. He did not have the literary success he deserved. Not everything was published. At the end of his life, he wrote to publishers that his works “will amount to 100 volumes, but only 36 have been published.”

Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin was born on November 6, 1852 in the village of Visim (Visimo-Shaitansky plant, owned by the Demidovs) 40 km from Nizhny Tagil in the family of a village priest. The family is large (four children), friendly, hard-working (“I never saw my father or mother without work”), reading (the family had its own library, they read aloud to the children). We didn't live well. My father often said: “Fed, dressed, warm - the rest is a whim.” He devoted a lot of time to his own and other people’s children, teaching village children for free.
About yours early childhood and the writer said about his parents: “There was not a single bitter memory, not a single childhood reproach.”
From 1860 to 1864, Mitya studied at the Visim village primary school for children of workers, located in a large hut.

But the time has come to study seriously. Narkis Mamin did not have money for a gymnasium for his sons. When the boy was 12 years old, his father took him and his older brother Nikolai to Yekaterinburg and sent them to a religious school. where I once studied. It was a difficult time for Dmitry. The wild bursat customs had such an effect on the impressionable child that he fell ill, and his father took him away from school. Mitya returned home with great joy and for two years he felt completely happy: reading alternated with wanderings in the mountains, spending the night in the forest and in the houses of mine workers. Two years flew by quickly. The father did not have the means to send his son to the gymnasium, and he was again taken to the same bursa.
In the book of memoirs “From the Distant Past” D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak described his impressions of studying at the bursa. He talked about senseless cramming, corporal punishment, ignorance of teachers and rudeness of students. The school did not give real knowledge, and students were forced to memorize entire pages from the Bible, sing prayers and psalms. Reading books was considered unworthy of a “real” student. In Bursa, only brute strength was valued. The older students bullied the younger ones and cruelly mocked the “newbies.” Mamin-Sibiryak considered the years spent at the school not only lost, but also harmful. He wrote: “It took many years, a lot of terrible work, to eradicate all the evil that I carried out of the bursa, and for those seeds to sprout that were abandoned a long time ago by my own family.”

After graduating from the bursa in 1868, Mamin-Sibiryak entered the Perm Seminary, a religious institution that provided secondary education. The seminary was not much different from the bursa. The same rudeness of morals and poor teaching. The Holy Scriptures, theological sciences, ancient languages ​​- Greek and Latin - this is what seminarians mainly had to study. However, the best of them strived for scientific knowledge.
In the Perm Theological Seminary in the early 1860s there was a secret revolutionary circle. Teachers and seminarians - members of the circle - distributed revolutionary literature at Ural factories and openly called for action against the owners. At the time when Mamin entered the seminary, the circle was destroyed, many seminarians were arrested and expelled, but they managed to save the underground library. It contained the forbidden works of Herzen, the works of Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky’s novel “What is to be done?” and books on natural science (Ch. Darwin, I.M. Sechenov, K.A. Timiryazev). Despite all the persecution, the spirit of freethinking remained at the Perm Seminary, and students protested against hypocrisy and hypocrisy. In an effort to gain knowledge to benefit the people, Dmitry Mamin left the seminary after the 4th grade without graduating: he no longer wanted to be a priest. But it was during his stay at the Perm Theological Seminary that his first creative attempts dated back.

In the spring of 1871, Mamin left for St. Petersburg, and in August 1872 he entered the veterinary department of the Medical-Surgical Academy. He was fascinated by the stormy social movement of the 1870s, attended revolutionary student circles, read the works of Marx, and participated in political disputes. Soon the police put him under surveillance. Life was difficult for him. I had to save on everything: on an apartment, on lunch, on clothes, on books. Together with a friend, Dmitry rented a cold, uncomfortable room in a large house where students and the urban poor lived. D.N. Mamin was sympathetic to the populist propagandist movement, but chose a different path for himself - writing.
Since 1874, to earn money, he wrote reports on meetings of scientific societies for newspapers. In 1875, he began reporting work for the newspapers Russkiy Mir and Novosti, which, in his words, gave him knowledge of the “ins and outs” of life, “the ability to recognize people and a passion for plunging into the thick of everyday life.” In the magazines "Son of the Fatherland" and "Krugozor" he published action-packed stories, not without, in the spirit of P.I. Melnikov-Pechersky, ethnographic observation, stories about robbers, Ural Old Believers, mysterious people and incidents ("The Elders", 1875; "The Old Man", "In the Mountains", "Little Red Hat", "Mermaids", all - 1876, etc. .).

Leading a bohemian lifestyle, student Mamin studied seriously, read a lot, listened to lectures, and visited museums. But, having decided to become a writer, in the fall of 1876, without completing the course at the Medical-Surgical Academy, he transferred to the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University, believing that he needed to study social sciences, which would help him better understand the life around him.

His first work of fiction" Secrets of the green forest"Printed without a signature in the magazine "Krugozor" in 1877 and dedicated to the Urals. The beginnings of talent, acquaintance with the nature and life of the region are noticeable in this work. He wants to live for everyone, to experience everything and feel everything. Continuing to study at the Faculty of Law, Mamin writes a large novel “In the Whirlpool of Passions” under the pseudonym E. Tomsky, the novel is pretentious and very weak in all respects. He took the manuscript of the novel to the magazine “Otechestvennye Zapiski”, which was edited by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. negative assessment of this novel given by Saltykov-Shchedrin. But Mamin correctly understood that he lacked not only literary skill, but, above all, knowledge of life. As a result, his first novel was published only in one little-known magazine.
And this time Mamin failed to complete his studies. He studied at the Faculty of Law for about a year. Excessive work, poor nutrition, lack of rest broke the young body. He developed pleurisy. In addition, due to financial difficulties and his father’s illness, Mamin was unable to pay the tuition fee and was soon expelled from the university. In the spring of 1877, the writer left St. Petersburg. The young man reached out to the Urals with all his heart. There he recovered from his illness and found strength for new works.

Once in his native place, Dmitry Narkisovich collects material for a new novel from Ural life. Trips around the Urals and the Urals expanded and deepened his knowledge of folk life. But the new novel, conceived in St. Petersburg, had to be postponed. My father fell ill and died in January 1878. Dmitry remained the sole breadwinner of a large family. In search of work, as well as to educate his brothers and sister, the family moved to Yekaterinburg in April 1878. But even in a large industrial city, the dropout student failed to get a job. Dmitry began giving lessons to lagging schoolchildren. The tedious work was poorly paid, but Mamin turned out to be a good teacher, and he soon gained fame as the best tutor in the city. He did not leave his literary work in the new place; When there was not enough time during the day, I wrote at night. Despite financial difficulties, he ordered books from St. Petersburg.

In the early 1880s, magazines in St. Petersburg and Moscow began to publish stories, essays and novellas by the hitherto unknown writer D. Sibiryak. Soon, in 1882, the first collection of travel essays, “From the Urals to Moscow” (“Ural Stories”), was published. The essays were published in the Moscow newspaper "Russkie Vedomosti", and then in the magazine "Delo" his essays "In the Stones" and short stories ("At the Border of Asia", "In Thin Souls", etc.) were published. The heroes of the stories were factory workers, Ural prospectors, Chusovsky barge haulers; the Ural nature came to life in the essays. These works attracted readers. The collection quickly sold out. This is how the writer D.N. entered literature. Mamin-Sibiryak. His works became closer to the requirements of the democratic journal Otechestvennye zapiski, and Saltykov-Shchedrin already willingly published them. Thus, in 1882, the second period of Mamin’s literary activity began. His Ural stories and essays regularly appear in “Foundations”, “Deed”, “Bulletin of Europe”, “Russian Thought”, “Otechestvennye Zapiski”. In these stories one can already sense an original depicter of the life and morals of the Urals, a free artist who knows how to give an idea of ​​gigantic human labor and depict all sorts of contrasts. On the one hand, marvelous nature, majestic, full of harmony, on the other hand, human turmoil, a difficult struggle for existence. Having attached a pseudonym to his name, the writer quickly gained popularity, and the signature Mamin-Sibiryak remained with him forever.

The writer's first major work was the novel " Privalov's millions" (1883), which was published for a year in the magazine "Delo". This novel, begun back in 1872, is the most popular of his works today, and was completely unnoticed by critics at the time of its appearance. The hero of the novel, a young idealist, tries to obtain an inheritance under trusteeship in order to pay back the people for the cruel family sin of oppression and exploitation, but the lack of will of the hero (a consequence of genetic degradation) and the utopian nature of the social project itself doom the enterprise to failure. Vivid episodes of everyday life, schismatic legends, pictures of morals. “society”, images of officials, lawyers, gold miners, commoners, relief and accuracy of writing, replete with folk sayings and proverbs, authenticity in the reproduction of various aspects of Ural life made this work, along with other “Ural” novels by Mamin-Sibiryak, a large-scale realistic epic, an impressive example of Russian social-analytical prose.

In 1884, the next novel of the “Ural” cycle appeared in the magazine “Otechestvennye zapiski” - “ mountain nest", which secured Mamin-Sibiryak's reputation as an outstanding realist writer. The second novel also depicts the mining Urals from all sides. This is a magnificent page from the history of the accumulation of capitalism, a sharply satirical work about the failure of the "magnates" of the Ural mining factories as organizers of industry. The novel contains talent depicts the mountain king Laptev, a complete degenerate, “a remarkable type of all that have ever been encountered in our literature,” according to Skabichevsky, who highly valued the novel “Mountain Nest” and found that “Laptev can safely be placed on a par with such age-old types as Tartuffe, Harpagon, Judushka Golovlev, Oblomov."
In the novel conceived as a continuation of "Mountain Nest" On the street"(1886; original title "Stormy Flow") Mamin-Sibiryak transfers his "Ural" heroes to St. Petersburg, and, talking about the rise and collapse of a certain newspaper enterprise, emphasizes the negative nature of social selection in a "market" society, where the best ( the most “moral” ones) are doomed to poverty and death. The problem of finding the meaning of life by a conscientious intellectual is raised by Mamin-Sibiryak in the novel " Birthday boy"(1888), telling about the suicide of a zemstvo figure. At the same time, Mamin-Sibiryak clearly gravitates towards populist literature, striving to write in the style of G.I. Uspensky and N.N. Zlatovratsky, whom he revered - in “fiction-journalistic”, according to its definition, form. In 1885, D.N. Mamin wrote the play "Gold Miners" (" On a golden day"), which did not have much success. In 1886, he was accepted as a member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. The attention of the literary community was attracted by the collection of Mamin-Sibiryak" Ural stories"(vols. 1-2; 1888-1889), in which the fusion of ethnographic and cognitive elements (as later with P.P. Bazhov) was perceived in the aspect of the originality of the writer’s artistic style, his skill as a landscape painter was noted.

Dmitry Narkisovich (center) and his fellow Duma members.

14 years of the writer’s life (1877-1891) pass in Yekaterinburg. He's marrying Maria Yakimovna Alekseeva, who became not only a wife and friend, but also an excellent adviser on literary issues. She was from Nizhny Tagil, and her father was
a major factory employee in the Demidov household. She herself could be considered one of the most educated, intelligent and very courageous women of the mining and processing Urals. Despite the complex Kerzhak way of life of her father’s family and the traditional priestly way of life of the Mamin family, she and her three children left her legal husband and entrusted her fate to the then young aspiring writer. She helped him become a real writer.
They lived in an illegal, civil marriage for 12 years. And in 1890, one of the writer’s largest novels, “Three Ends,” about his small homeland- Visime. It is dedicated to Maria Yakimovna.

During these years, he makes many trips around the Urals, studies literature on the history, economics, ethnography of the Urals, immerses himself in folk life, communicates with “simple people” who have extensive life experience. Two long trips to the capital (1881-1882, 1885-1886) strengthened the writer’s literary connections: he met Korolenko, Zlatovratsky, Goltsev and others. During these years he writes and publishes many short stories and essays. Despite the tense literary work, finds time for social and government activities: member of the Yekaterinburg City Duma, juror of the Yekaterinburg District Court, organizer and organizer of the famous Siberian-Ural scientific and industrial exhibition...

Mamin-Sibiryak was approaching his fortieth birthday. The publication of novels gave him the opportunity to buy a house in Yekaterinburg for his mother and relatives.

Literary and memorial house-museum of D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak. Photo from 1999. Located in the writer’s former home. Address: Ekaterinburg, st. Pushkina, 27.

He is married. It would seem that there is everything for happy life. But spiritual discord began. His work was not noticed by the capital's critics, and there was little response from readers. The writer writes to a friend: “I gave them a whole region with people, nature and all the riches, but they don’t even look at my gift.” The marriage was not very successful either. There were no children. I was tormented by dissatisfaction with myself. It seemed like life was ending.

But for the new theater season, a beautiful young actress Maria Moritsevna Geinrich arrived from St. Petersburg

Maria Moritsovna Abramova(1865-1892). Russian actress and entrepreneur was born in Perm. Her father was a Hungarian who settled in Russia
Moritz Heinrich Rotoni. They say that he was of an old noble family, took part in the Magyar uprising in 1848 and was wounded; A large reward was offered for his capture.
At first he lived in Orenburg for a long time, married a Siberian woman, changing his last name to Heinrich. Later he moved to Perm, where he opened a photo studio. He had a big family. Maria Moritsovna was the eldest, then ten boys and, finally, the last one - the girl Lisa (1882) - my mother.
In 1880, young V. G. Korolenko was exiled to Perm to live. In his free time he studied pedagogical activity, was a teacher in the large Heinrich family.
After a quarrel with her father, Maria Moritsovna leaves Perm and moves to Kazan. There she attended paramedic courses for some time. Then she enters the theater as an actress and marries the actor Abramov. However, their life together did not last long and ended in divorce.
She played in the provinces (Orenburg, Samara, Rybinsk, Saratov, Minsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Taganrog, Mariupol).
Tour life it's hard for her. “Even though your head is in a whirlwind, the life that you have to lead, involuntarily, is so vulgar, dirty, ugly, a cesspool. And the people who live this life, there’s nothing to say about them. When I was five years old, I had never heard a good human word. And off stage it’s the same. Who meets actresses? First-row men, all kinds of womanizers who look at the actress as if she were a cocotte of the highest order,” she writes to V. G. Korolenko.
In 1889, having received a rich inheritance, Abramova rented the Shelaputin Theater in Moscow and organized her own, called the Abramova Theater. In this theater, in addition to Abramova herself, the following played: N. N. Solovtsov, N. P. Roshchin-Insarov, I. P. Kiselevsky, V. V. Charsky, N. A. Michurin-Samoilov, M. M. Glebova and etc. The theater staged: “Woe from Wit”, “The Inspector General”, “Dead Souls”, “Simplicity is Enough for Every Wise Man”.
Along with these performances, spectacular melodramas were also staged. “Newspapers glorify Abramova’s theater,” the poet Pleshcheev wrote to Chekhov, and he agreed that yes, they say, “Abramova’s business is going well.”
With the production of “The Leshy” (1889), Abramova’s theater began the stage history of Chekhov’s plays. The premiere took place on December 27, 1889, and it was a complete failure. “Chekhov fled from Moscow, he was not at home for several days, even to his close friends,” recalled one of these friends, the writer Lazarev-Gruzinsky.
Inept management of financial affairs soon brought Abramova's theater to the brink of bankruptcy. The transition of the theater from December 1889 to the position of the “Partnership”, headed by Kiselevsky and Charsky, did not help either. In 1890 the theater closed.
Trouble, as we know, does not come alone: ​​it was at this time that Abramova’s mother died, and the young woman, who had a five-year-old sister (Kuprin’s future wife) in her arms, was forced to sign a contract and go to the Urals not as the owner of the theater, but as an actress. In 1890-1891, Abramova played in the Yekaterinburg troupe of P. M. Medvedev. Best roles: Medea (“Medea” by A. S. Suvorin and V. P. Burenin), Vasilisa Melentyeva (“Vasilisa Melentyeva” by Ostrovsky and S. A. Gedeonov), Margarita Gautier (“The Lady with Camellias” by A. Dumas the Son), Adrienne Lecouvreur (“Adrienne Lecouvreur” by E. Scribe and E. Legouve). “Beautiful Medea, Dalila, Vasilisa Melentyeva, Katerina, she made a strong impression on the public,” wrote B. D. Udintsev in his memoirs.
In Yekaterinburg, Maria Abramova meets the writer Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak. She later recalled: “I said on the first day of my arrival that I would like to meet him, they told him, and so he paid me a visit - and I really liked him, so nice and simple.”

They met and fell in love. She is 25 years old, he is 39 years old.

Mamin-Sibiryak writes about the first impression that Abramova made on him: “The first impression from Maria Moritsovna was not at all what I was prepared for. She didn’t seem beautiful to me, and then there was nothing about her that is assigned by the state even to small celebrities: she doesn’t break down, doesn’t represent anything, but simply the way she really is. There are such special people who, when you first meet, give the impression that you have known them well for a long time.”

An affair begins between the actress and the writer. The passionate love of Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak and Maria Moritsovna Abramova “caused a lot of talk.” A contemporary recalls: “Before my eyes, Mamin’s rebirth into another person took place... Where did his bilious, mocking appearance, the sad look in his eyes and the manner of muttering words through his teeth go when he wanted to express his disdain for his interlocutor. The eyes sparkled, reflecting the fullness of inner life, the mouth smiled welcomingly. He became younger before my eyes. When Abramova appeared on stage, he turned entirely into hearing and sight, not noticing anything around him. In strong parts of her role, Abramova turned to him, their eyes met, and Mamin somehow leaned forward, lighting up with inner fire, and even a blush appeared on his face.” Mamin did not miss a single performance with her participation.

However, everything turned out very difficult; Maria’s husband did not give a divorce. There was gossip and gossip in the city. The lovers had no choice but to flee to St. Petersburg. On March 21, 1891 they left ( more Mamin-Sibiryak did not live in the Urals).

There they, in the words of one memoirist, forged “their cozy nest on Millionnaya Street, where one felt so much sincere warmth and where the gaze lovingly rested on this beautiful couple from the literary and artistic world, before whom such a wide, bright road of life seemed to unfold.”

Here he soon became close to the populist writers - N. Mikhailovsky, G. Uspensky and others, and later, at the turn of the century, with the greatest writers of the new generation - A. Chekhov, A. Kuprin, M. Gorky, I. Bunin, highly who appreciated his works.

Chekhov A.P., Mamin-Sibiryak D.N., Potapenko I.N. (1894-1896)

A.M. Gorky, D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak, N.D. Teleshov, I.A. Bunin. Yalta, 1902

Writers are frequent visitors to Chekhov's house in Yalta. From left to right: I.A. Bunin, D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak, M. Gorky, N.D. Teleshov

The artist I. Repin wrote sketches of the Cossacks from it for his famous painting. D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak said: “The most interesting thing is my acquaintance with Repin, who had me in his workshop, and he drew from me for his future painting“Cossacks” for two whole hours - he needed to borrow my eyes for one, and for another an eyelid for an eye, and for a third Cossack to fix his nose.”

The happiness was short-lived new family In Petersburg. Maria gave birth to a daughter and died the next day (March 21, 1892). Dmitry Narkisovich almost committed suicide out of grief. From a letter to his mother: “happiness flashed like a bright comet, leaving a heavy and bitter aftertaste. Sad, heavy, lonely. Our girl, Elena, remained in my arms - all my happiness.”
Mamin-Sibiryak was left with two children: newborn Alyonushka and ten-year-old Liza, Marusya’s sister. On April 10, 1892, he wrote to Moritz Heinrich, the girl’s father, my grandfather, who by this time had become very depressed: “I still have your daughter Lisa in my arms, you write that you will arrange her with your older brother. The fact is that I, too, would like, in memory of Maria Moritsovna, to give Liza a good education, which is not available in the provinces. I will place her either in an institute or in a girls’ gymnasium.”
After some time, Dmitry Narkisovich informed Lisa’s father that after the death of Maria Moritsovna, he gave Lisa a job good family- to A. A. Davydova, the widow of Karl Yulievich Davydov, director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory (K. Yu. Davydov was also a composer and an excellent cellist). Davydova herself was known as a beauty and a smart girl. She was the publisher of the literary magazine God's World. Alexandra Arkadyevna had an only daughter, Lydia Karlovna, who married M.I. Tugan-Baranovsky, a famous economist. The family also had an adopted daughter, Maria Karlovna, Kuprin’s future first wife, who inherited the magazine “God’s World” after the death of Alexandra Arkadyevna and Lydia Karlovna. The Davydovs' house was visited by interesting and talented people St. Petersburg.
A. A. Davydova reacted with great sympathy to the grief of Dmitry Narkisovich.
She sheltered Alyonushka and Lisa, and when Mamin settled in Tsarskoye Selo, Davydova recommended to him the former governess Maria Karlovna, who lived with them Olga Frantsevna Guvale to run his house and look after his children.
Mamin-Sibiryak will grieve for a long time. On October 25, 1892, he writes to his mother: “Dear dear mother, today I have finally turned forty years old... A fateful day... I consider it death, even though I died six months earlier... From then on, every year will be a kind of bonus. This is how we will live.
Yes, forty years.
Looking back and summing up, I must admit that, strictly speaking, it was not worth living, despite external success and name... Happiness flashed by like a bright comet, leaving a heavy bitter aftertaste. I thank the name of the one who brought this happiness, short, fleeting, but real.
My future is in the grave next to her.
May my daughter Alyonushka forgive me these cowardly words: when she herself becomes a mother, she will understand their meaning. Sad, hard, lonely.
Autumn has come too early. I’m still strong and maybe I’ll live a long time, but what kind of life is this: a shadow, a ghost.”
The marriage with Maria Moritsovna was not officially registered, since Abramov did not agree to a divorce, and only in 1902 Mamin was able to adopt Alyonushka. Little by little, Olga Frantsevna firmly took the reins of power in Mamin’s small family into her hands. She didn't like Lisa. My mother often told me about her difficult childhood. Out of pride, she did not complain to Dmitry Narkisovich. Constantly, even in small things, Olga Frantsevna made her feel that in fact she was a stranger and lived out of mercy. There were so many grievances that Lisa ran away several times. The first time was to the editorial office of God's World, the second time was to the circus, where she decided to go. Mamin-Sibiryak brought her back.
Dmitry Narkisovich was madly in love with Alyonushka. She was a sickly, fragile, very nervous girl. To calm her down, he told her stories before bed. Thus were born the lovely " Alyonushka's tales».
Gradually, all the portraits of Maria Moritsovna disappeared from Mamin-Sibiryak’s office. Strict order, pedantry, prudence bordering on stinginess - all this was deeply alien to Mamin. Scandals often broke out.
Yet he was completely under the influence of Guvale, who a few years later became his wife.
Jealousy for the deceased never left her. Even after Mamin’s death, she told Fyodor Fedorovich Fidler that Mamin lived with Marusya for only a year and a half, but this time was a real hell for him, which he recalled with horror - the character of the deceased was so unbearable: “steep, wayward, evil and revengeful". All this clearly contradicts Mamin’s letters and memoirs. He always continued to love Marusya and nurtured this love in Alyonushka.
Maria Karlovna often visited her former governess. She treated Lisa like an older, highly educated girl treated a little unloved orphan.
Little by little, Lisa turned into a lovely girl with a rare smile. It was very small, with miniature legs and arms, and proportional, like a Tanagra figurine. The face is pale, matte, chiseled, with large, serious brown eyes and very dark hair. She was often told that she looked like her sister Maria Moritsovna.

Elizaveta Moritsovna Heinrich (Kuprina)

Gossip began to spread that Mom was not indifferent to Lisa. It became even harder for her, as Olga Frantsevna began to be jealous for no reason. Lisa decided to finally leave Mamin’s house and entered the Evgenievsk community of sisters of mercy.
Fiedler recalls this event in October 1902: “Mom celebrated his name day in Tsarskoe Selo on new apartment(Malaya st., 33), illuminated by electric light. There were many guests, but the hero of the occasion drank almost nothing and had an unusually gloomy appearance, probably depressed by Lisa’s decisive statement that she would not leave the community of sisters of mercy.”
Caring for the sick and saving people from death turned out to be Lisa’s real calling, the essence of her entire being. She dreamed of self-sacrifice.
Mamin went to the community several times and begged Lisa to return, but this time her decision was irrevocable. Started Russo-Japanese War. Lisa, as a sister of mercy in February 1904, voluntarily asked to Far East. Mamin-Sibiryak was terribly worried about her, did everything to prevent her from leaving, begged in vain to stay, and even took to drinking out of grief.
The farewell to those leaving for the front was solemn: flags and music. Dmitry Narkisovich came to see Lisa off at the Nikolaevsky station. After leaving, he spoke about her with Fiedler with purely fatherly love and touching concern.
By short notes My mother knows that the trip to the front turned out to be very difficult: the trains were crowded, the trains were overloaded. And then, in the Irkutsk tunnel, the train in which Liza was traveling crashed: the first difficult impressions, the first dead and wounded.
In Irkutsk, my mother met one of her brothers, the rest left, some to the Far East, some to Harbin, some to China. Then she had a long road ahead of her along Lake Baikal, then Harbin, Mukden (Port Arthur had already been commissioned). The soldiers suffered from typhoid, dysentery, and even the plague. Trains were fired upon.
Lisa behaved selflessly and was awarded several medals.
Soon she returned to Irkutsk, where she met her first love - a young doctor, Georgian. They got engaged. All her life Lisa had strong ideas about honesty, kindness, and honor. The collapse of faith in her loved one seemed all the more terrible to her. She accidentally saw her fiancé brutally beating a defenseless soldier and immediately broke up with him, but was so shocked that she almost committed suicide. In order not to meet with him again, Lisa took a vacation and returned to St. Petersburg to Mom’s, where the atmosphere did not become easier for her.

Elena-Alyonushka was born a sick child. The doctors said "I'm not going to live." Alyonushka's frailty caused constant concern, and, indeed, later doctors discovered incurable disease nervous system- St. Vitus’s dance: the girl’s face twitched all the time, and convulsions occurred. This misfortune increased the father's concern even more. But the father, the father’s friends, the nanny-teacher - “Aunt Olya” pulled Alyonushka out of the “other world”. While Alyonushka was little, her father sat by her crib for days and hours. No wonder they called her “father’s daughter.”

When the girl began to understand, her father began to tell her fairy tales, first those he knew, then he began to compose his own fairy tales, began to write them down, and collect them.

In 1897, Alyonushka's Tales were published separate publication. Mamin-Sibiryak wrote: “The publication is very nice. This is my favorite book - it was written by love itself, and therefore it will outlive all the others.” These words turned out to be prophetic. His "Alenushka's Tales" are published annually and translated into other languages. Much has been written about them; they are associated with folklore traditions and the writer’s ability to present moral lessons in an entertaining way. Kuprin wrote about them: “These tales are prose poems, more artistic than Turgenev’s.”
During these years, Mamin-Sibiryak wrote to the editor: “If I were rich, I would devote myself to children’s literature. After all, it is happiness to write for children.”

When Alyonushka grew up, due to illness she could not go to school, she was taught at home. The father paid a lot of attention to his daughter’s development, took her to museums, and read to her. Alyonushka drew well, wrote poetry, and took music lessons. Dmitry Narkisovich dreamed of going to his native place and showing the Urals to his daughter. But doctors forbade Alyonushka to travel long distances.

In 1900, Dmitry Narkisovich officially married Alyonushka’s teacher Olga Frantsevna Guvala, to whom the girl became very attached. During this period of life (the second Tsarskoye Selo - 1902-1908), Mom’s mother paid great attention to the fragile child turning into a girl.

When Lisa returned from the war, the Kuprins were absent. Their daughter Lyulusha, left as a nanny, fell ill with diphtheria. Liza, who passionately loved children, was on duty at Lyulusha’s bedside day and night and became very attached to her. Returning to St. Petersburg, Maria Karlovna was delighted with her daughter’s affection for Lisa and invited the latter to go with them to Danilovskoye, the estate of Fyodor Dmitrievich Batyushkov. Lisa agreed, because at that time she felt restless and did not know what to do with herself.

For the first time, Kuprin drew attention to the strict beauty of Liza at the name day of N.K. Mikhailovsky. This is evidenced by a short note from my mother, which does not indicate the date of this meeting. She only remembers that the youth sang with a guitar, that among the guests was the still young Kachalov.
In Danilovsky, Kuprin had already truly fallen in love with Lisa. I think that she had that real purity, that exceptional kindness, which Alexander Ivanovich really needed at that time. Once during a thunderstorm he explained to her. Lisa's first feeling was panic. She was too honest, she was not at all prone to coquetry. Destroying the family, depriving Lyulusha of her father seemed completely unthinkable to her, although she, too, had the birth of that big, selfless love, to which she subsequently devoted her entire life.
Lisa fled again. Having hidden her address from everyone, she was admitted to some distant hospital, to the department of infectious patients, in order to be completely cut off from the world.
At the beginning of 1907, it became clear to the Kuprins’ friends that the couple were unhappy and that a breakup was inevitable.
Kuprin was alien to secular insincerity, coquetry, and adherence to the rules of salon etiquette. I remember how he kicked out some unfortunate young man from our house only because, as it seemed to him, he looked at me with “dirty eyes.” He always watched me jealously when I danced.
It’s easy to imagine his furious reaction when Maria Karlovna gave him hints about who was courting her and how. At the same time, Kuprin could not constantly be under the same roof with her. Judging by the memoirs of Maria Karlovna herself, it seems that her father could not work at home at all. It’s strange to think that, living in the same city with his wife and child, he rented a room in a hotel or went to the Lavra, Danilovskoye or Gatchina to write.
In February 1907, Kuprin left home; he settled in the St. Petersburg Palais Royal hotel and began to drink heavily. Fyodor Dmitrievich Batyushkov, seeing how Alexander Ivanovich was ruining his iron health and his talent, undertook to find Lisa. He found her and began to persuade her, citing just such arguments that could only sway Lisa. He told her that the break with Maria Karlovna was final anyway, that Kuprin was ruining himself and that he needed a person like her next to him. It was Lisa’s calling to save, and she agreed, but set the condition that Alexander Ivanovich stop drinking and go to Helsingfors for treatment. On March 19, Alexander Ivanovich and Lisa leave for Finland, and on the 31st, the break with Maria Karlovna becomes official.

At this time, Maria Karlovna and her former governess Olga Frantsevna turned against our family Lyubov Alekseevna, Kuprin’s mother, older sister Sofya Ivanovna Mozharova, as well as Mamin-Sibiryak, who fell completely under the influence of his wife.
At one time, Mamin was particularly ill-disposed against Kuprin, but later realized that he had been unfair.
In the literary memoirs “Excerpts Out Loud,” the following statement by Mamin-Sibiryak is given: “But here is Kuprin. Why is he a great writer? Yes, because it's alive. He is alive, alive in every detail. He has one little touch and he’s done: he’s all here, Ivan Ivanovich. And why? Because Kuprin was also a reporter. I saw and sniffed out people as they were. By the way, you know, he has a habit of sniffing people in a real way, like a dog. Many people, especially ladies, are offended. The Lord is with them if Kuprin needs it...” F. F. Fidler writes about Mamin-Sibiryak’s attitude towards Liza at that time: “When Liza married Kuprin, the doors of Mamin’s house were closed for her forever. Mamin himself continued to love her as before (he raised her from 10 to 18 years of age), but “Aunt Olya” could not forgive her for the fact that she was the reason for Kuprin’s divorce from his first wife, Maria Karlovna Davydova, her former pupil ; besides, it set a bad example for Alyonushka.
This is how Olga Frantsevna herself complained to me... Months passed, Lisa continued to love Mamin, her second father, and tried to see him. The date did not work out, despite the fact that I offered my apartment for this purpose. Mamin readily agreed to my proposal, but thanks to his intimidation (“what if Aunt Olya finds out?”) the conversation ended in nothing. “Recently, Lisa was extremely careless: in a registered envelope, she sent me a card on which she was photographed with her baby. I had to put the portrait in another envelope and return it to Lisa without a single word of postscript.” “Why did you show it to your wife?” - “She opened it without me.”
Mamin sometimes met Kuprin in a restaurant. But he died without seeing the one to whom he was tenderly attached as a father and who, although vaguely, reminded him of “Marusya.”
Despite her exceptional kindness, my mother did not forgive Olga Frantsevna for her bitter childhood and the fact that she could not say goodbye to the man who loved her like a father. Alyonushka, a nervous, poetic girl, came to Gatchina and more than once tried to reconcile Lisa and Aunt Olya. But this turned out to be impossible.

from the book by Kuprina K.A. "Kuprin is my father"

Over the years, Mamin has become increasingly occupied with the processes of people's life; he gravitates toward novels in which the main character is not an exceptional person, but an entire working environment. The novels of D.N. became very famous. Mamin-Sibiryak " Three ends"(1890), dedicated to the complex processes in the Urals after the Peasant Reform of 1861," Gold" (1892), describing in gritty naturalistic detail the gold mining season and " Bread"(1895) about the famine in the Ural village in 1891-1892. The writer worked for a long time on each work, collecting enormous historical and modern material. Deep knowledge of people's life helped the author to clearly and truthfully show the plight of workers and peasants and indignantly denounce rich factory owners and factory owners who appropriated the natural resources of the region and exploited the people. The gloomy drama, the abundance of suicides and disasters in the works of Mamin-Sibiryak, the “Russian Zola”, recognized as one of the creators of the Russian sociological novel, revealed one of the important facets of the social mentality of Russia at the end of the century: the feeling. complete dependence of a person on socio-economic circumstances, which in modern conditions perform the function of unpredictable and inexorable ancient fate.
The historical stories of Mamin-Sibiryak “The Gordeev Brothers” (1891; about Demidov’s serfs who studied in France) and “Okhonin’s Eyebrows” (1892; about the uprising of the Ural factory population in the era of Pugachev), as well as legends from the life of the Bashkirs, are distinguished by their colorful language and major key. , Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs (“Swan Khantygal”, “Maya”, etc.). “Stumpy”, “strong and brave”, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, a typical “Ural man”, Mamin-Sibiryak since 1892,

One of the best books by Mamin-Sibiryak - an autobiographical novel-memory of his St. Petersburg youth " Traits from Pepko's life"(1894), which tells about Mamin's first steps in literature, about attacks of acute need and moments of deep despair. He clearly outlined the writer's worldview, the dogmas of his faith, views, ideas that formed the basis of his best works: deep altruism, disgust to brute force, love for life and, at the same time, longing for its imperfections, for the “sea of ​​sadness and tears”, where there is so much horror, cruelty, untruth “Can you really be satisfied with your life alone? No, to live a thousand lives, to suffer and rejoice in a thousand hearts - that’s where life and real happiness are!” says Mamin in “Characters from the Life of Pepko.” The writer’s last major works are the novel “ Falling stars" (1899) and the story "Mumma" (1907).

D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak. Portrait-caricature by V. Carrick

Mamin-Sibiryak's last years were especially difficult. Diseases. Fear for the fate of my daughter. Friends pass away: Chekhov, Gleb Uspensky, Stanyukovich, Garin-Mikhailovsky. They almost stopped printing it. March 21 (fateful day for Mamin-Sibiryak) 1910 Dmitry Narkisovich’s mother dies. It was a huge loss for him. In 1911, the writer was “smitten” with paralysis. Shortly before his departure, he wrote to a friend: “ - the end is coming soon - I have nothing to regret in literature, she has always been a stepmother for me - Well, to hell with her, especially since for me personally she was intertwined with bitter need, oh which they don’t tell even their closest friends.”
But the anniversary was approaching: 60 years since the birth of Mamin-Sibiryak and 40 years of his writing. They remembered him and came to congratulate him. And Mamin-Sibiryak was in such a state that he could no longer hear anything. At 60 years old, he seemed like a decrepit, gray-haired old man with dull eyes. The anniversary was like a funeral service. They said good words: “The pride of Russian literature..”, “Artist of words”, and presented a luxurious album with congratulations.
But it was already too late. Dmitry Narkisovich died six days later (November 1912), and after his death there were still telegrams with congratulations and wishes.
The capital's press did not notice the departure of Mamin-Sibiryak. Only in Yekaterinburg did friends gather for a funeral evening. Mamin-Sibiryak was buried next to his wife in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg.