The biography of Chukovsky Korney Ivanovich is replete with interesting events. Nikolai Korneichukov on March 19 (31 according to the new style) March 1882 in St. Petersburg. His mother, a peasant woman, Ekaterina Osipovna Korneichukova, met the future father of her children (Nikolai also had a sister, Marusya), when she got a job as a servant in the house of her future roommate. Emmanuel Solomonovich Levenson - the father of Nikolai and Marusya - bore the title of hereditary honorary citizen and the peasant woman could not make him a worthy party.

Together they lived for at least three years, gave birth to two children who, as illegitimate children, did not have a patronymic, therefore, in the documents before the 1917 revolution, the patronymics of the children were written differently. Nikolai has Vasilyevich, his sister Maria has Emmanuilovna. Subsequently, their father married a woman of his circle and moved to live in Baku, and Ekaterina Osipovna - in Odessa.

Nikolai spent all his childhood in Ukraine - in the Odessa and Nikolaev regions.

When Nikolai was five years old, he was sent to the kindergarten of Madame Bekhteeva, about which he later wrote that the children there marched to the music and drew pictures. In kindergarten, he met Vladimir Zhabotinsky, the future hero of Israel. In elementary school, Nikolai became friends with Boris Zhitkov, a future children's writer and traveler. At school, however, Chukovsky studied only up to grade 5. Then he was expelled from the educational institution due to "low origin".

The beginning of creative activity

At first, Chukovsky worked as a journalist, from 1901 he wrote articles for Odessa News. Having learned English on his own, Nikolai got a job as a correspondent in London - he wrote for Odessa News.

For two years he lived in London with his wife, Maria Borisovna Goldfeld, then returned to Odessa.

And yet, Chukovsky's biography as a writer began much later, when he moved from Odessa to the Finnish town of Kuokkala, where he met the artist Ilya Repin, who convinced Chukovsky to seriously engage in literature.

While still in London, Chukovsky became seriously interested in English literature - he read Thackeray, Dickens, Bronte in the original. Subsequently, the literary translations of W. Whitman helped Chukovsky to win a name for himself and achieve recognition in the literary environment.

After the revolution, the pseudonym Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky becomes the real name of the writer. Korney Ivanovich writes a book of memoirs "Far Close" and begins to publish his own almanac "Chukokkala" - a kind of mixture of the name of the place Kuokkala and the surname Chukovsky. Chukovsky published this almanac until the end of his life.

Children's literature

But the most important thing in the creative destiny of the writer is not translations and not literary criticism, but children's literature. Chukovsky started writing for children quite late, already when he was a famous literary critic and critic. In 1916 - he published the first collection for young readers called "Yolka".

Later, in 1923, “Moydodyr” and “Cockroach” were born from his pen, with a summary of which, probably, all children in the post-Soviet space are familiar. Chukovsky's work is also studied in the modern school - in the 2nd grade, and now it is even difficult to imagine that at one time Aibolit, Mukha-Tsokotukha and Moidodyr were severely criticized and mercilessly ridiculed. Critics considered the works tasteless and lacking the correct Soviet ideology. But now they will not write about this either in the preface to the writer's books, or in a short biography of Chukovsky for children, these accusations made by critics against the children's author now seem so absurd.

Chukovsky translated into Russian for children the works of R. Kipling and M. Twain, retold the “Bible for Children”.

Other biography options

• Interestingly, Chukovsky founded an entire literary dynasty. His son Nikolai Korneevich Chukovsky and daughter Lidia Korneevna Chukovskaya also became famous writers. Nikolay wrote briefly literary memoirs about the poets and writers of the Silver Age, who were admitted to his father's house, and Lydia became a dissident writer.
• The second son of the writer - Boris Korneevich - died at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War at the front.
• It is known that Chukovsky was friendly with

Korney Ivanovich did not refuse and soon came to visit me in an old-fashioned hood from the times of the First World War, in a sheepskin, almost a coachman's coat and felt boots. In his hands he had a cardboard box, inside of which was his grandchildren's English toy - a small battery-powered locomotive that conscientiously emits black smoke from the chimney. Chukovsky retired with Petya to a separate room, and about an hour later he appeared and affectionately asked:

“Petya, tell dad why you haven’t talked for so long?”

Petya looked down and squeezed out, to my astonishment:

Because I was shy...

After the death of Korney Ivanovich, leafing through the two volumes of his diaries, I suddenly found this:

“I lay sick in Peredelkino and was very homesick, not seeing a single child. And suddenly dear Yevtushenko came and brought his Petya to me in a carriage. And when he left, I concocted these verses:

Are in the world

Good kids,

Best of the day

But they are unlikely to be found on our planet

Those who would be prettier than Petya,

Funny, big-eyed, sweet Petya.

I, a miserable fragment of past centuries,

Knowing death's cruel nets,

Already in the chilling Lethe floundered,

When the crazy and joyful wind

He broke into my house and told about Petya,

Who, arriving in a gilded carriage,

He suddenly announced to me that there are children in the world,

Immortally cheerful, bright children.

And so I strained the old man's strength

And broke away from the hateful grave ... ".

What is left behind these mysterious brackets, huh?

Chukovsky valued childish, seemingly naive spontaneity above seeming experience and divided the world, as children do, into good and bad uncles and aunts, but this is how it is. Each of us has a moral or immoral dominant. There is no complete balance of evil and good even in the most confused person - something inexorably outweighs. Relying on childish instinctive wisdom, Chukovsky gradually explained the meaning of existence as a struggle not for life, but for death of Aibolites with Barmaley and Van Vasilchikov with crocodiles, even if the latter repent and pretend that they have become more humane, more Christian. A daring thought is elegantly packaged in supposedly innocent verses “Hedgehogs laugh”: barmaley and crocodile, of course, are terrible, but goatiness is more terrible, because it is more numerous. It is no coincidence that his "Crocodile", published in 1917 in the magazine "For Children", under the new government provoked attacks by Krupskaya, who accused Chukovsky of "anti-Soviet tendencies."

Korney Ivanovich barely fought back, and even then, in 1928, his daughter Lidia Chukovskaya stood up for her father - this was the baptism of the future famous dissident. However, he himself was not afraid to be the first to congratulate Boris Pasternak on the Nobel Prize and give shelter to the persecuted Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Recently, Alexander Kushner demonstrated in the poem "Contemporaries" the coincidence of intonational-rhythmic moves in "Crocodile" by Korney Chukovsky and "The Twelve" by Alexander Blok. I was taken aback by their obviousness. Judge for yourself.

The wind is blowing, the snow is falling.

Twelve people are coming.

Chukovsky:

Through swamps and sands

Animal regiments are coming...

Where is Katya? - Dead, dead!

Shot head!

Chukovsky:

But where is Lala? Lyali no!

There was no trace of the girl.

As for the chronological priority, Chukovsky undoubtedly has it. Plagiarism? Of course not! The system of communicating vessels. It also exists in poetry, confirming in this case the remarkable poetic talent of Chukovsky, for he gave even Blok the grace of free transfusion of one rhythm into another. Once I gasped, realizing that I had accidentally spoofed Chukovsky's signature rhythm: "Bamm-Bamm!" - // for masters, / slaves, // and all new Godunovs, // all murderers - / in the teeth!” ("Under the skin of the Statue of Liberty"). Who is next?

Korney Chukovsky is a unique figure in our literature, for it is not easy to imagine a writer other than Pushkin, who in Russia would be read by literally everyone. Written in the best traditions of polyphonic, playfully rhyming folklore, his poems are remembered so easily, as if they were not born now, but along with the Russian language. I would say that no one freed Russian verse like that, either stretching it, then shortening it, then turning it into a tap-dancing counting rhyme, then enjoying the very gymnastics of the language, like two all-Russian grandfathers - Ivan Andreevich Krylov and Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky. Without any didactic pseudo-pedagogy, which Chukovsky so despised, in everything he wrote and translated, there is a secret pedagogy, dressed in cheerful flowery clothes of fairy tales and parables. This is an entertaining teaching of anti-evil, anti-indifference, anti-laziness, anti-washing.

We all grew up on his poems - both good and bad: the last three presidents, Chekists and dissidents, astronauts and taxi drivers, oligarchs and brothers, world-renowned scientists and nugget workers who drink too much from non-recognition, wonderful poets and pop divas, generals and homeless people, great musicians and DJs, lifeguard doctors and hitmen, selfless teachers and their students who sell drugs in school latrines. And what happened to us did not depend on Korney Ivanovich alone. He was a sower of conscience. But some souls are like stony soil that rejects the seeds of goodness.

It is curious that Chukovsky's old poems suddenly began to sound sharply modern at scary moments in our history, such as the fairy tale "Cockroach", written in 1922, when the name of Stalin was not yet on everyone's lips. Evgenia Ginzburg, in her book The Steep Route, recalls how she read this tale aloud to her adopted daughter in the barracks for exiles in early 1953, when many were waiting with hope for Stalin's death: “We were all struck by the second meaning of the verse: “The beasts submitted to the mustachioed. (For him to fail, the damned one!) And Lev Kopelev testified: “In the Marfin special prison, my friend Gumer Izmailov argued that Chukovsky was hounded and almost imprisoned for the fairy tale “Cockroach”, because it is a satire on Stalin - he is also red and mustachioed.

In recent years, Chukovsky was waiting for world recognition. A rare case when an Oxford mantle was received by a self-taught person without any intelligible education, who honored with his visits only the Odessa gymnasium, from where he was also expelled.

He prudently changed the common surname Korneychukov to the pseudonym Korney Chukovsky, in which there was an unobtrusive overtone of Polish aristocracy. He already had the hunting stance of a Doberman Pinscher even then, as soon as he heard some delicious-smelling line. Everyone was struck by a long, quivering nose, moving its nostrils with pleasure when it liked something. True, that same nose could also wrinkle so disgustedly when something was not to its liking that it was impossible to hide it, and it did not even try. They were afraid of his causticity and believed that it was better not to mess with him. He retained this invaluable quality until the end of his life, although for self-defense he pretended to be a sort of kind grandfather Aibolit.

As a young man, he got a business trip from Odessa News to London, spent days and nights in libraries, studying English literature, and wrote about it for the Russian press. Returning to Russia, he tried to publish the satirical magazine "Signal" in St. Petersburg, ended up in prison for "insulting the royal house", but even there he was overlaid with books, and began to translate Walt Whitman. From edition to edition he improved these translations, and they are still the best.

During the years of Stalin's terror, the little readers who always surrounded Chukovsky shielded him from the eyes of the Chekists, who looked out from the "funnel" predatory rushing around Moscow. He had enough energy to prepare Nekrasov's publications, and for high-quality translations, and for retellings of world classics for children, and for literary criticism, and for memories of his contemporaries, and for the struggle for living speech, and for organizing a library for children in Peredelkino, and on my son Petya... And he supported me himself for the poems “Tanks are moving through Prague…” and for the idea of ​​this anthology.

He was a great book peddler who dragged on the ridge a box similar to Noah's Ark with his own and translated books, and from the box protruded the shaggy chest of Noah himself, in whose wet wool fluttering fish got entangled - Korney Chukovsky retold the Bible for Soviet children, but so and can't wait for this book to come out. And protruding from the crowded box, like a golden pereskip, were the curious emerald-eyed head of the Fly-Tsokotukha, and Bibigon's sword, always ready for battle, and the gray-haired Niagara of Walt Whitman's beard, and the sly face of Huckleberry Finn. Chukovsky was not only created by literature, but he himself created it. He was an incarnate firework of love of life and love of books.

His youth passed in the Silver Age, which seemed to many the beginning of the Renaissance of the Golden Age. But the Renaissance never came. The “clerk”, so unloved by Korney Ivanovich, took root not only in the language, but also in human relations.

The last years of Chukovsky are not famous for great books, but for dissident trials and constant scandals with “refuseniks”.

He was a Renaissance man during the Degradation.

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

en.wikipedia.org

Biography

Origin

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

The writer for many years suffered from the fact that he was "illegitimate". His father was Emmanuil Solomonovich Levenson, in whose family the mother of Korney Chukovsky, Poltava peasant woman Ekaterina Osipovna Korneichuk, lived as a servant.

The father left them, and the mother moved to Odessa. There the boy was sent to the gymnasium, but in the fifth grade he was expelled due to low birth. He described these events in his autobiographical story "Silver Coat of Arms".

The patronymic "Ivanovich" was given to Nikolai by the godfather. From the beginning of his literary activity, Korneichukov, who for a long time was burdened by his illegitimacy (as can be seen from his diary of the 1920s), used the pseudonym "Korney Chukovsky", which was later joined by a fictitious patronymic - "Ivanovich". After the revolution, the combination "Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky" became his real name, patronymic and surname. [Source not specified 303 days]

His children - Nikolai, Lydia, Boris and Maria (Murochka), who died in childhood, to whom many of her father's children's poems are dedicated - bore (at least after the revolution) the surname Chukovsky and patronymic Korneevich / Korneevna. [source not specified 303 days] Portrait of Korney Chukovsky by Ilya Repin, 1910

Journalistic activity before the revolution

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

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

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

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

In 1907, Chukovsky published Walt Whitman's translations. The book became popular, which increased Chukovsky's fame in the literary environment. Chukovsky becomes an influential critic, smashes tabloid literature (articles about Anastasia Verbitskaya, Lydia Charskaya, Nat Pinkerton, etc.), witty defends the futurists - both in articles and in public lectures - from the attacks of traditional criticism (he met Mayakovsky in Kuokkala and later became friends with him), although the Futurists themselves are far from always grateful to him for this; develops his own recognizable style (reconstruction of the psychological appearance of the writer on the basis of numerous quotations from him).

The unique photograph of 1914 presented here deserves a few separate words. It has its own separate history, full of famous names and coincidences…

Yuri Annenkov, a well-known book illustrator and portrait painter, a man who seemed to know everyone and everything in the literary and artistic world of pre-revolutionary Petrograd, left a lot of living testimonies about the people of this era. Remembering, in 1965, during a lecture at Oxford University, about his last meeting with Anna Akhmatova, Yuri Annenkov told the story of this photograph, which she gave him. The picture was taken in the early days of the 1914 war.

“On one of these days, knowing that mobilized people would be walking along Nevsky Prospekt, Korney Chukovsky and I decided to go to this main street. In the same place, quite by chance, Osip Mandelstam met and joined us ... When the mobilized, not yet in military uniform, with bales on their shoulders, suddenly walked out of their ranks, also with a bale, and the poet Benedict Livshits ran up to us. We began to hug him, shake his hands, when an unfamiliar photographer approached us and asked permission to take a picture of us. We took each other by the arms and so we were photographed ... "
- St. Petersburg. Capital of the Russian Empire. Faces of Russia. St. Petersburg 1993.

Annenkov's story coincides with the photograph down to the smallest details... However, something remains outside of his story. And above all, the unknown photographer turned out to be "himself" Karl Bulla, from whose studio this photograph subsequently became widespread.

Of the four bright creative people shown in the picture, only two died a natural death in the late 60s and early 70s, having lived to a ripe old age: these are Korney Chukovsky, the only one left in the USSR and Annenkov himself, who survived in emigration. Osip Mandelstam and Benedikt Livshits were brutally murdered by their fellow citizens during the Stalinist repressions. Osip Mandelstam, according to the later words of Academician Shklovsky, "this strange ... difficult ... touching ... and a man of genius", in the photo is 23 years old. Just a year ago, the St. Petersburg publishing house "Akme" published his poetry collection "Stone". Since the first publication in 1907 in the journal of the Tenishevsky Commercial School, a long way has been covered: classes in French literature at St. a group of futurists, the poet and translator Benedikt Livshits, who in the picture is already shaved and with a purposely made brave face, a man leaving for the front. He still does not know if he will survive after the First World War, where he will be wounded and receive the St. George Cross ... Just like Mandelstam, Benedict Livshits was illegally repressed in the 30s and died in camps in 1939.

In 1916, Chukovsky again visited England with a delegation from the State Duma. In 1917, Patterson's book "With the Jewish Detachment at Gallipoli" (about the Jewish Legion in the British Army) was published, edited and with a foreword by Chukovsky.

After the revolution, Chukovsky continued to engage in criticism, publishing two of his most famous books on the work of his contemporaries - The Book of Alexander Blok (Alexander Blok as a Man and a Poet) and Akhmatova and Mayakovsky. The circumstances of the Soviet era turned out to be ungrateful for critical activity, and Chukovsky had to “bury this talent in the ground”, which he later regretted.

literary criticism

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

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

Children's poems

Passion for children's literature, glorified Chukovsky, began relatively late, when he was already a famous critic. In 1916, Chukovsky compiled the Yolka collection and wrote his first fairy tale, Crocodile.

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

In the life of Chukovsky there was another hobby - the study of the psyche of children and how they master speech. He recorded his observations of children, their verbal creativity in the book "From Two to Five" in 1933.

“All my other writings are so obscured by my children's fairy tales that in the minds of many readers, I wrote nothing at all, except for “Moydodirs” and “Flies-Tsokotuh.”

Persecution of Chukovsky in the 1930s

Chukovsky's children's poems were subjected to cruel persecution in the Stalin era, although it is known that Stalin himself repeatedly quoted The Cockroach. [Source not specified 303 days] N.K. Among the party critics of the editors, even the term "Chukovshchina" arose. Chukovsky undertook to write an orthodox-Soviet work for children, The Merry Collective Farm, but did not do so. The 1930s were marked by two personal tragedies of Chukovsky: in 1931, his daughter Murochka died after a serious illness, and in 1938, the husband of his daughter Lydia, physicist Matvey Bronstein, was shot (the writer found out about the death of his son-in-law only after two years of trouble in the authorities).

Other works

In the 1930s Chukovsky is much engaged in the theory of literary translation (“The Art of Translation” of 1936 was republished before the start of the war, in 1941, under the title “High Art”) and the actual translations into Russian (M. Twain, O. Wilde, R. Kipling and others. , including in the form of "retelling" for children).

He begins to write memoirs, on which he worked until the end of his life (“Contemporaries” in the ZhZL series).

Chukovsky and the Bible for children

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

Last years

In recent years, Chukovsky has been a popular favorite, winner of a number of state awards and orders, at the same time he maintained contacts with dissidents (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Brodsky, the Litvinovs, his daughter Lydia was also a prominent human rights activist). At the dacha in Peredelkino, where he lived constantly in recent years, he arranged meetings with the surrounding children, talked with them, read poetry, invited famous people, famous pilots, artists, writers, poets to meetings. Peredelkino children, who have long since become adults, still remember those children's gatherings at Chukovsky's dacha.

Korney Ivanovich died on October 28, 1969 from viral hepatitis. At the dacha in Peredelkino, where the writer lived most of his life, his museum now operates.
From the memoirs of Yu. G. Oksman:

Lidia Korneevna Chukovskaya in advance handed over to the Board of the Moscow branch of the Writers' Union a list of those whom her father asked not to be invited to the funeral. This is probably why Ark is not visible. Vasiliev and other Black Hundreds from literature. Very few Muscovites came to say goodbye: there was not a single line in the newspapers about the upcoming memorial service. There are few people, but, as at the funeral of Ehrenburg, Paustovsky, the police are dark. In addition to uniforms, many "boys" in civilian clothes, with gloomy, contemptuous faces. The boys began by cordoning off the chairs in the hall, not letting anyone linger, sit down. The seriously ill Shostakovich came. In the lobby, he was not allowed to take off his coat. It was forbidden to sit in a chair in the hall. It came to a scandal. Civil service. The stuttering S. Mikhalkov pronounces lofty words that do not fit in with his indifferent, even disregarding intonation: “From the Union of Writers of the USSR ...”, “From the Union of Writers of the RSFSR ...”, “From the Children's Literature Publishing House ...”, “From the Ministry education and the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences…” All this is pronounced with the stupid significance with which, probably, doormen of the last century, during the departure of guests, called for the carriage of Count So-and-so and Prince So-and-so. But who are we burying, finally? A bureaucratic boss or a cheerful and mocking clever Korney? A. Barto drummed her "lesson". Kassil performed a complex verbal pirouette in order for the listeners to understand how close he personally was to the deceased. And only L. Panteleev, having interrupted the blockade of officialdom, clumsily and sadly said a few words about the civilian face of Chukovsky. Relatives of Korney Ivanovich asked L. Kabo to speak, but when she sat down at the table in a crowded room to sketch out the text of her speech, KGB General Ilyin (in the world - Secretary for Organizational Affairs of the Moscow Writers' Organization) approached her and correctly, but firmly told her, that won't let her perform.

He was buried in the same place, at the cemetery in Peredelkino.

Family

Wife (since May 26, 1903) - Maria Borisovna Chukovskaya (nee Maria Aron-Berovna Goldfeld, 1880-1955). Daughter of accountant Aron-Ber Ruvimovich Goldfeld and housewife Tuba (Tauba) Oizerovna Goldfeld.
Son - poet, writer and translator Nikolai Korneevich Chukovsky (1904-1965). His wife is the translator Marina Nikolaevna Chukovskaya (1905-1993).
Daughter - writer Lidia Korneevna Chukovskaya (1907-1996). Her first husband was a literary critic and literary historian Tsezar Samoylovich Volpe (1904-1941), the second - a physicist and popularizer of science Matvey Petrovich Bronstein (1906-1938).
Granddaughter - literary critic, chemist Elena Tsezarevna Chukovskaya (born 1931).
Daughter - Maria Korneevna Chukovskaya (1920-1931), the heroine of children's poems and stories of her father.
Grandson - cameraman Evgeny Borisovich Chukovsky (born 1937).
Nephew - mathematician Vladimir Abramovich Rokhlin (1919-1984).

Awards

Chukovsky was awarded the Order of Lenin (1957), three orders of the Red Banner of Labor, as well as medals. In 1962, he was awarded the Lenin Prize in the USSR, and in the UK he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Literature Honoris causa from Oxford University.

List of works

Fairy tales

Aibolit (1929)
English folk songs
Barmaley (1925)
stolen sun
Crocodile (1916)
Moidodyr (1923)
Fly-Tsokotuha (1924)
Let's Defeat Barmaley (1944)
The Adventures of Bibigon
Confusion
Dog Kingdom (1912)
Cockroach (1921)
Telephone (1926)
Toptygin and Lisa
Toptygin and Luna
Fedorino grief (1926)
Chick
What did Mura do when she was read the fairy tale "Wonder Tree"
wonder tree
The adventures of the white mouse

Poems for children

Glutton
Elephant reads
Zakaliaka
Piglet
hedgehogs laugh
Sandwich
Fedotka
Turtle
pigs
Garden
Song of poor boots
Camel
tadpoles
Bebek
Joy
Great-great-great-grandchildren
Christmas tree
Fly in the bath

Tale

Solar
Silver coat of arms

Translation works

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

preschool education

two to five

Memories

Memories of Repin
Yuri Tynyanov
Boris Zhitkov
Irakli Andronikov

Articles

Live like life
To the eternally youthful question
The story of my "Aibolit"
How "Fly-Tsokotuha" was written
Confessions of an old storyteller
Chukokkala page
About Sherlock Holmes
Hospital No. 11

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

But there are places of pilgrimage of a special kind. We were not born here, we did not grow up, we were not baptized. But once we touched here something incredibly real, almost the Truth, and since then we have included these places in the Favorites, erected there temples, chapels or temples visible only to us, finally ... We surround them with our spiritual field, leave our own decoys - signs - that, like antennas, connect us. They connect how far and for a long time we would not be separated - both in time and in space. And the places of pilgrimage, in response, surround us with their fields, include us in their egregor. For a while, this is enough. But there comes a moment when it is necessary to appear in person (since "the mountain does not go to Mohammed") - with the whole being - both spiritual and physical. Appear in order to feed each other with an energy unknown to our physicists so far, which, without a doubt, is akin to the energy of high love.

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

I first visited here at the very beginning of the sixty-fifth. We started a correspondence with Pioneer magazine. Then it was headed by Lydia Ilyina, the sister of Samuil Marshak. She brought together in the magazine not only creative, but also pedagogically gifted people who searched for young talents without silver, selflessly. "Pioneer" then published our selection and - lo and behold! – the editors of the magazine invited my brothers and me to the capital, organizing a wonderful creative vacation for our little guests.

There were a lot of impressions.

Moscow itself is fiery, flowing like lava. Moscow - with only one inherent smell of the subway. Taxi, ice cream parlor, elevator in a multi-storey hotel! Daylight lamps! Wooden beds, finally! It doesn't matter that, due to my youth, they didn't let me go to Sovremennik - to the Naked King with Yevstigneev in the title role. But I already knew where at the station "Revolution Square" you can go up to the bronze statue of a sailor and pull the Mauser. The huge Mauser moved! And at the “Filmstrip” studio, we were completely accepted as respected authors, and in the showroom they showed a completely fresh tape - a film based on our poems. Miracles continued! During the show, the actress Rina Zelenaya, who knows us in absentia, appeared, called us by name, and said which of our poems she liked the most. But we were waiting for the main event - a trip to Peredelkino. Fortunately, no one was going to deprive me of it.

And here we are going to Peredelkino. The train - fabulously fast, as it seemed to me then - crosses the fields near Moscow. On the doors of the car there are inscriptions new for us: “Do not lean, the doors open automatically!”. Unknown smart people scratched some of the letters. Quite funny slogans turned out, where we were asked to “don’t hang around”, otherwise, they say, “doors come off automatically” ...

"Walkers" to Grandfather Korney - the Pavlov brothers: Alexander (15 years old), Vladimir (12 years old), Oleg (10 years old) - a photograph from 1964

It gets dark early, outside the windows - buzzing blue darkness. We imperceptibly enter into another, fabulous, unknown world for us. Approaching Peredelkino, not yet familiar, seems to us something like a magical Berendey forest. And, of course, there is the main wizard. This is the man who invited us to visit him at his dacha. This is indeed a storyteller, the famous children's writer Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky.

Unfortunately, I was not lucky enough to visit Chukovsky's "at the stake" during his lifetime. But with him naoobschalsya plenty! And many years later I saw one of the last bonfires burning in memory of the Storyteller. Near that fire there were children's writers, there were famous actors and musicians. Some read poems, others sang songs with the children, but, of course, Korney Ivanovich invisibly remained the main character and host of the holiday. The entrance to the fire is a pine cone - as a result, a huge mountain of cones stood up in the middle of the clearing.

Autograph (Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky) of a poet and writer quoted in an essay by Oleg Pavlov

I can imagine how Korney Ivanovich appeared here one day in front of the guests - tall, tall, with a big kind nose, in a long headdress of an Indian leader made of beautiful feathers. The guys - and then many played Indians - probably met Chukovsky with a delighted deafening cry. And Korney Ivanovich must have stood in front of the fire, raised his hands to the sky - and everyone did the same. Then he took the hands of the nearest boys, and they all joined hands and danced around the fire like real Indians. And then everyone - and Chukovsky too - threw a bump into the fire, as a tribute to the fiery spirit.

I first saw this Indian headdress in a photo in Pionerskaya Pravda. This is how the Americans thanked our storyteller during his trip to the States. Then I saw him with my own eyes - Korney Ivanovich was not too lazy to retire to the next room and suddenly appear in front of his guests in this stunning, multi-colored feather, long - almost to the toe - hat of the leader of the Redskins ...

Half-lit snow paths brought us to the house where Korney Ivanovich lived. In the same place, nearby, stood the building of his library. He gave it to the children, and the children gratefully walked and drove here - both from Peredelkino itself and from Moscow.

Chukovsky was not at the dacha - he went away for a short time to his friends - to the writers' rest house. We went to meet him, and found him already dressed in the lobby. Seeing us, Korney Ivanovich immediately said goodbye to the interlocutor, and began to get to know us. He was witty and organic, and shone with cordiality.

He twirled the cane in his hand and kept repeating: “When I was young, when I was only eighty, I did it much better!”

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

Korney Chukovsky's handwritten almanac" (publishing house "Russian Way", Moscow, 2006)

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

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

And there was waiting for tea with four - to choose from - types of jam (our tastes unexpectedly coincided - Korn Ivanovich and I chose blueberry), talking about literature, reading poetry. That evening I learned for the first time that the children's writer Chukovsky also writes for adults. He not only listened, but also read - it seems, translations. Read and ask for our opinion.

When it was my turn, I read the beginning of one of the less successful poems (but, I beg your pardon, I was only ten!):

wooden house
The log cabin lay down on the log cabin,
Who lives without a mother
I found shelter in it.
But one kitten
Funnik is called -
Not found in that house
Shelter for myself.
Musya regretted -
Funtika took
And, pray tell,
Adopted into the family...

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

What was his surprise that Musya was not a girl at all, but also a cat, a citizen of a fictional kitten republic, which we, brothers, headed by the king for some reason. Further more. We surprised the storyteller with our fabulous countries - Kotyatskaya, the United Land of Animals, the free city of Pavlograd ...

Korney Ivanovich accepted the countries we invented with interest, asked to tell about them in more detail, and then suddenly told his story. In his youth, while relaxing in the Finnish resort of Kuokkala with his friends, he offered to play in some fictitious republic. Friends supported the game, the country was named Chukokkala, and the instigator himself was declared president. Parting, they gave Korney Ivanovich a knife with an engraving - "President of the country Alexander Peliander." At the Russian border, the knife caught the eye of the customs officers, and the word "president" and a suspiciously Greek name forced Chukovsky to have a long explanation with humorless imperial officials.

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

At the end of the evening, the host presented us with a book of his fairy tales, providing it with an inscription, which only a person who knows how to subtly ironize (and above himself in the first place) is capable of - “To the Pavlov poetic family from their humble colleague. With deep respect, Korney Chukovsky.

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

On other, later visits to Peredelkino, I more than once happened to stand silently over the graves of Korney Ivanovich and Boris Leonidovich. I found their mounds along three pines, noticeable from afar. However, only two remained. And trees do not last forever... Of course, I have no personal impressions of the great Pasternak - he died long before our pioneer visit to Peredelkino. But there are these lines:

Landmark three pines
at the Peredelkino cemetery -
their golden roots
intertwine your dreams...

There, under the pine tree, Pasternak -
in a coffin,
like a wooden prism...
In the collective farm field of realism
he was a wonderful weed.
Subject to harassment and weeding,
he stood in his native land -
and addressed to posterity,
a candle burned on the table.
The candle burned - he created -
And, opening the curtains of darkness,
Shakespeare with poems by Pasternak
spoke with all Russia.
And through the words, words, words
silent snowy peak
the question arose, unresolvable
majority vote.
The candle didn't burn out
when it is over swarthy blood
from an orphaned table
carried to the head.
Immortal, like the poet himself,
she burns with Sunday willow,
no poetic hyperbole
to all limits
sowing light.

Once, together with a friend, Timofey Vetoshkin, we visited here, in Peredelkino, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky. I was like an older brother to Timothy, both in literature and in life. He came to the literary association of Chrysostom as a seventeen-year-old, big-mouthed boy, reciting Mayakovsky with a burr and enthusiasm. He brought kilometer-long space-philosophical verses.

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

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

The poet came down to us from the steps of the Writers' Rest House, but it seemed as if from heavenly heights, leaning on one crutch. Smiling like old acquaintances, he sat down on a bench. He looked very sick and tired. It was a difficult time for the poet - his son lived abroad and was in unspoken disgrace. Arseny Alexandrovich asked the guests to smoke - apparently, due to illness, they tried to separate him from tobacco and, apparently, without success. Tarkovsky himself invited us to read poetry. He listened very attentively, and when Timothy was reading, he suddenly shed tears and kissed him. Tim did not understand then - what this meant - whether the old poet, whom Tsvetaeva herself once loved, was really touched by youthful lines, or simply his tears were as close as only children and old people have.

After parting with Tarkovsky, we walked around the Peredelkino neighborhood for a long time and had a picnic on the side of a ravine. Inopportunely, a part of a human skull fell into my eyes - it can be seen that the ravine washed away the ancient cemetery.

However, why not? I immediately remembered the scandalous from Yuri Kuznetsov: “I drank from my father’s skull ...”

Four years later I visited Peredelkino again. Not far from the three pines, a fresh grave blackened - the last shelter of the "lesser branch of Russia" - Arseny Tarkovsky ...

It's probably noisy in Peredelkino now. And it did not escape the fate of the Great Redistribution, when the iceberg of Russian literature split into two Unions. Probably, axes are knocking, as in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. Some old author, through the eyes of Firs, looks at a jaunty building.

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

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

Hey, Peredelkino! You wait. Your pilgrim is on the way...
Oleg Pavlov

From the editor. It is interesting to note that the almanac "45th Parallel" publishes memories of a great man in the year of the 125th anniversary of his birth. And in the poetic selection of KCh, headed by a line from one of the poet's and writer's epigrams, of course, far from all the brilliant ballads for children written by Chukovsky are included. I would like to see that uncle or that aunt who does not remember by heart neither "Telephone", nor "The Stolen Sun", nor "Fly-Tsokotukha" ... What is "Chukokkala"?

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

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

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

What is "Chukokkala" is not easy to say. Sometimes it's a handwritten almanac that responds to topical issues, sometimes it's just the most ordinary album for autographs.

At first, Chukokkala was a skinny notebook, hastily stitched together from a few random sheets, now it is a voluminous volume of 632 pages with four branches dating back to a later time.

Thus, in 1964 it was exactly half a century since its birth. The list of its employees is huge. Among them are Leonid Andreev, Anna Akhmatova, Andrey Bely, Al. Block, Iv. Bunin, Max Voloshin, Sergey Gorodetsky, Gorky, Gumilyov, Dobuzhinsky, Vas. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Evreinov, Zoshchenko, Arkady Averchenko, Alexander Amfiteatrov, Yuri Annenkov, Al. Benois, Vyacheslav Ivanov, A. Koni, A. Kuprin, Osip Mandelstam, Fedor Sologub and others. And also the younger generation - Margarita Aliger, Irakli Andronikov, A. Arkhangelsky, E. Evtushenko, Valentin Kataev, Kaverin, Mikhail Koltsov, E. Kazakevich, I. Babel, Meyerhold, V. Mayakovsky, S. Marshak, S. Mikhalkov, Nikolay Oleinikov, M. Prishvin, Mikh. Slonimsky, A. Solzhenitsyn, K. Paustovsky, Al. Tolstoy, K. Fedin, S. Shchipachev, Vyacheslav Shishkov, Viktor Shklovsky and others

The main feature of Chukokkala is humor. People wrote and drew in "Chukokkala" most often at such moments when they were disposed to laugh, in a cheerful company, during a short rest, often after hard work. That is why there are so many smiles and jokes on these pages - sometimes, it would seem, too frivolous.

And another feature of Chukokkala. Its participants in many cases appear to us not in their usual role and act in a role that, it would seem, is completely unusual for them.

Chaliapin does not sing here, but draws, Sobinov writes poetry. The tragic lyricist Blok writes a playful comedy. And the singer Mikhail Isakovsky appears before us as a master of funny burlesque. The prose writer Kuprin becomes a poet here.

Of course, in Chukokkala there are also things of a different tonality, of a different - not at all comic - style. First of all, these are autographs of poems by Anna Akhmatova, Bunin, Mandelstam, Valentin Kataev, Khodasevich, Kuzmin and others.

The British have a beautiful word "hobby". It means a person's favorite pastime, not related to his main profession. Chukokkala was such a hobby for me. She has always remained on the periphery of my personal and literary interests. It was just as peripheral for most of its participants. They almost never wrote on its pages what constituted the very essence of their spiritual biography, their creativity.

That is why this book did not become a mirror of those terrible times when it happened to exist. Only small and random reflections reflected in it two world wars. And is it possible to look for reflections of the majestic October days in it? It would be wild and senseless to attempt to capture on its often frivolous and playful pages the planetary grandiose events that shook the entire universe.

The most serious in Chukokkala are short sketches about the personality and poetry of Nekrasov, written at my request by Gorky, Blok, Mayakovsky, Tikhonov, Maximilian Voloshin, Fyodor Sologub, Vyacheslav Ivanov and others in the form of answers to a questionnaire I compiled. Preparing to study the life and work of my beloved poet, I, naturally, found it necessary to turn to my contemporaries in order to find out how the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the generation to which his work was directed perceive Nekrasov's poetry.

All these reviews are written in earnest, without a smile. However, no, and humor invaded here. I'm talking about the answers of V. Mayakovsky, written mischievously and mockingly. The mockery is directed against the questionnaire, which, unfortunately, was not understood by the critics who attacked Mayakovsky for his disrespectful attitude towards Nekrasov.

Although "Chukokkala" was founded, as already mentioned, in 1914, but now, when printing it, I (albeit very rarely) attached to it such drawings and texts that belong to an earlier time. These are notes by Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov, a cartoon by Troyansky, a poem by Potemkin, which came down to me after the creation of Chukokkala.

Most of the drawings and notes included in Chukokkala were made at my desk, in my house. If, on a visit or at some meeting, I happened to meet such a person whose participation in the almanac seemed valuable to me, I offered him the first random sheet that came across and, returning home, pasted this sheet into the almanac. So it was, for example, with the drawings of Chaliapin, whom I unexpectedly met at Gorky's; with drawings by M.V. Dobuzhinsky, N.E. Radlova, V.A. Milashevsky, performed in 1921 in Kholomki, where we were fleeing the Petrograd famine. Alexander Blok himself brought me the poem “No, I swear, quite a Rose ...”, composed by him on the way home from “World Literature”, I collected materials related to the Second All-Union Congress of Writers in a small notebook, which became, so to speak, the first branch of Chukokkala. There are several such branches.

Such, for example, are the drawings by Yuri Annenkov, borrowed from his wonderful book Portraits (1922), as well as photographs taken by the photographer-artist M.S. Nappelbaum, author of the book "From Craft to Art", which contains the most valuable of his talented works. The originals of some of the portraits he made (Anna Akhmatova, Mikh. Slonimsky, Evg. Petrov, Mikh. Zoshchenko and others) were preserved by his daughter O.M. Grudtsova, who kindly provided them for Chukokkala, for which I hasten to express my gratitude to her. Yevgeny Borisovich Pasternak gave me a little-known portrait of his father. I am very grateful to him and my other friends, thanks to whom portraits of Marshak, Nikolai Oleinikov, Evg. Schwartz, Paolo Yashvili and others.

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

In cases where one or another page of Chukokkala could be commented on with the help of brief excerpts from my memoirs, the reader is offered these excerpts in a slightly modified form.

Marshak in one of his poems aptly called "Chukokkala" a museum. Finishing a brief story about Chukokkala, I invite readers to get acquainted with the exhibits of this museum.

Korney Chukovsky

April 1966

Biography

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (1882-1969)

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (Nikolai Ivanovich Korneichukov) was born in St. Petersburg in 1882 into a poor family. He spent his childhood in Odessa and Nikolaev. In the Odessa gymnasium, he met and became friends with Boris Zhitkov, in the future also a famous children's writer. Chukovsky often went to Zhitkov's house, where he used the rich library collected by Boris's parents.

But the future poet was expelled from the gymnasium due to his "low" origin, since Chukovsky's mother was a laundress, and his father was gone. The mother's earnings were so meager that they were barely enough to somehow make ends meet. But the young man did not give up, he studied on his own and passed the exams, receiving a matriculation certificate.

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

In 1903, Korney Ivanovich went to St. Petersburg with the firm intention of becoming a writer. He traveled to the editorial offices of magazines and offered his works, but was refused everywhere. This did not stop Chukovsky. He met many writers, got used to life in St. Petersburg and finally found a job for himself - he became a correspondent for the Odessa News newspaper, where he sent his materials from St. Petersburg. Finally, life rewarded him for his inexhaustible optimism and faith in his abilities. He was sent by Odessa News to London, where he improved his English and met famous writers, including Arthur Conan Doyle and Herbert Wells.

In 1904 Chukovsky returned to Russia and became a literary critic, publishing his articles in St. Petersburg magazines and newspapers. At the end of 1905, he organized (with a subsidy from L. V. Sobinov) a weekly journal of political satire, Signal. For bold caricatures and anti-government poetry, he was even arrested. And in 1906 he became a permanent contributor to the magazine "Scales". By this time he was already familiar with A. Blok, L. Andreev A. Kuprin and other figures of literature and art. Later, Chukovsky resurrected the living features of many cultural figures in his memoirs (Repin. Gorky. Mayakovsky. Bryusov. Memoirs, 1940; From Memoirs, 1959; Contemporaries, 1962). And nothing seemed to foretell that Chukovsky would become a children's writer. In 1908, he published essays on modern writers "From Chekhov to the present day", in 1914 - "Faces and Masks".

In 1916, Chukovsky became a war correspondent for the Rech newspaper in Great Britain, France, and Belgium. Returning to Petrograd in 1917, Chukovsky received an offer from M. Gorky to become the head of the children's department of the Parus publishing house. Then he began to pay attention to the speech and struggles of young children and write them down. He kept such records for the rest of his life. Of these, the famous book "From Two to Five" was born, which was first published in 1928 under the title "Little Children. Children's Language. Ekikiki. Stupid Nonsense" and only in the 3rd edition the book was called "From Two to Five" . The book has been reprinted 21 times and replenished with each new edition.

Once Chukovsky had to compile the almanac "Firebird". It was an ordinary editorial job, but it was she who was the reason for the birth of a children's writer. Having written his first children's tales "Chicken", "Doctor" and "Dog Kingdom" for the almanac, Chukovsky appeared in a completely new light. His work has not gone unnoticed. A.M. Gorky decided to publish collections of children's works and asked Chukovsky to write a poem for children for the first collection. Chukovsky was at first very worried that he would not be able to write, since he had never done this before. But chance helped. Returning by train to St. Petersburg with his sick son, he told him a story about a crocodile to the sound of wheels. The child listened very carefully. Several days passed, Korney Ivanovich had already forgotten about that episode, and the son remembered everything that his father said then by heart. Thus was born the fairy tale "Crocodile", published in 1917. Since then, Chukovsky has become a favorite children's writer.

Bright, unusual images, clear rhyme, strict rhythm made his poems quickly memorable. More and more new poems began to appear behind the "Crocodile": "Moydodyr" (1923), "Cockroach" (1923), "Fly-Sokotukha" (1924 under the name "Mukhina's Wedding"), "Barmaley" ( 1925), "Felorino grief" (1926), "Telephone" (1926), "Aibolit" (1929, under the title "Adventures of Aibolit"). And the wonderful fairy tale "Wonder Tree", written in 1924, he dedicated to his little daughter Mura, who died early from tuberculosis.

But Chukovsky did not limit himself only to his own writings, he began to translate for children the best works of world literature: Kipling, Defoe, Raspe Whitman, and others, as well as biblical stories and Greek myths. Chukovsky's books were illustrated by the best artists of the time, which made them even more attractive.

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

In 1969, the writer died.

K. I. CHUKOVSKY IN KUOKKALE

Boris Kazankov

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

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

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

At the same time, an acquaintance with Repin took place. Ilya Efimovich was almost forty years older than Chukovsky, but he treated him with sympathy and interest, which quickly grew into sincere affection. "I am so glad to be near K. I. Chukovsky ... - he tells A. F. Koni. - His phenomenal love for literature, the deepest respect for manuscripts infects all of us."

Like Repin, Chukovsky lived with his family in Kuokkala all year round. A travel guide of the time reported that in Kuokkale "the best dachas on the seashore ... are quite expensive; the cheaper ones are located behind the railway, further from the sea." Therefore, at first, Chukovsky rented a dacha near the railway station, later - closer to the sea. At one time, Chukovsky rented the dacha of P. S. Annenkov, a former Narodnaya Volya member. At the same time, Chukovsky became friends with his son Yuri, who soon proved to be a talented artist. After some time, Chukovsky has the opportunity to move to a more convenient room with the assistance of Repin: ... "He bought in my name the cottage in which I lived then (diagonally from the Penates), rebuilt it all from the base to the roof, and he himself came to watch how the carpenters work, and he himself supervised their work.Already from the amazement with which he met me in later years, whenever I came to repay his debt (and I paid my debt in installments), it was possible to see that when buying me a dacha, he did not expect the return of the money spent.

Viktor Shklovsky, who visited Chukovsky’s house more than once in the pre-revolutionary years, describes it in the book “Once Upon a Time”: “The dacha goes out to the sea with a narrow and unpainted fence. Further from the sea, the plot expands. with some echoes of an English cottage. Korney Ivanovich has an office on the top floor of the dacha. Writers come to him even in winter."

This wooden house stood for many decades. In recent years, it belonged to the Dachny Trust, and was not even taken under state protection as a historical and cultural monument. In the summer of 1986, a fire broke out in the house, it was not possible to save the building ... Its address was: Solnechnoye, Border Street, 3.

In addition to Ilya Efimovich Repin, the guests of this house were residents of the same Kuokkala: theater director and art critic N. Evreinov, artist and first illustrator of Blok's "The Twelve" Yuri Annenkov. Leonid Andreev, Alexander Kuprin, Sergey Sergeev-Tsensky, who were previously familiar with Chukovsky, also came. Chukovsky himself in his memoirs recalls Alexei Tolstoy, Sergei Gorodetsky, Arkady Averchenko, Sasha Cherny, Boris Sadovsky, singer Leonid Sobinov.

Every summer, Kuokkala came to life, and together with summer residents, echoes of the literary, artistic and social life of the capital were transferred here. Until 1912, Nikolai Fedorovich Annensky, a populist public figure according to statistics, the brother of the outstanding lyric poet Innokenty Annensky, lived in a dacha in Kuokkala. Nikolai Fedorovich was visited by his closest friend, the writer V. G. Korolenko, the historian E. V. Tarle, and the staff of the literary, political and scientific journal Russkoye Bogatstvo (edited by N. Annensky and V. Korolenko).

In 1909, Chukovsky persuaded the writer S. N. Sergeev-Tsensky to spend the winter in Kuokkala and rented the Kazinochka dacha for him, where he himself had lived before. Writers and artists who lived in Kuokkala visited Chukovsky, but his house became especially lively on Sundays. “By evening,” recalls one of his contemporaries, “when the sunset lit the black pines with a cool fire, the house came to life. Guests came, neighbors or from St. Petersburg, disputes about symbolism, about revolution, about Blok, about Chekhov boiled.” Chukovsky himself later told how "stormy, young, often naive disputes were started around the tea table: about Pushkin, about Dostoevsky, about magazine novelties, and also about the famous writers of that pre-war era that worried us - Kuprin, Leonid Andreev, Valery Bryusov, Blok. Often poems or excerpts from newly published books were read. They read aloud not only modern, but also classical Russian and foreign literature: Don Quixote, The Bronze Horseman, Kalevala...

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

It was probably the arrival of guests that made Chukovsky think about collecting autographs. But he solved this problem differently than Kuprin, who left his guests to sign on the table. In the autumn of 1913, Chukovsky, on the advice of the artist I. Brodsky, made a home-made album, on the title page of which Boris Sadovsky wrote: "Heir and accomplice of Shevchenko, Here you remove foam from art ..." Repin immediately came up with the name of the handwritten almanac: "Chukokkala ". He also christened the house of Korney Ivanovich.

Soon drawings, caricatures, poetic impromptu, sayings began to appear on the pages of the almanac ... - "Chukokkala" fell in love with the guests. The artist A. Arnshtam, who once collaborated with "Signal", drew a cover for it, depicting Chukovsky on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, along which writers, poets, and artists are swimming, hurrying to leave their autographs in Chukokkala.

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

Korney Ivanovich led this collection until the last days of his life, when it reached the volume of 700 pages. In addition to the autographs of Russian writers, there are drawings by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Boris Grigoriev, Sergei Chekhonin in Chukokkala. Theater figures are also represented in this collection; Chaliapin, Sobinov, Evreinov, Kachalov. There are English writers in Chukokkala - Oscar Wilde, Herbert Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle. Poems, cartoons, documents (newspaper clippings, advertisements), paper boats that Gorky folded, Mayakovsky's "Chukrost window".

In the pre-revolutionary years, "Chukokkala" consisted of several dozen pages. Repin is represented by several drawings. One depicts a German worker taking Kaiser Wilhelm out in a wheelbarrow (1914). The other shows the guests of Korney Ivanovich - "The State Council in Chuokkala". For many years, the unique almanac was replenished, and in 1979, after the death of the writer, it was published by the Art publishing house with a facsimile reproduction of autographs and vivid comments - Chukovsky's memoirs.

In the summer of 1915, Vladimir Mayakovsky often visited Chukovsky. Having won 65 rubles in the lottery, he rented a room in Kuokkala. But he did not have enough money for food. Later, in the autobiography "I myself" the poet writes; "I made seven dinner acquaintances. On Sunday I "eat" Chukovsky, on Monday - Evreinov, etc. On Thursday it was worse - I eat Repin's herbs. For a futurist as tall as a sazhen, this is not the case." In the house of Korney Ivanovich Mayakovsky read his poems, including new ones written on the same day or the day before. "These readings happened so often that even a seven-year-old daughter remembered something by heart," writes Chukovsky.

In June 1915, Repin found such a reading of poetry on the terrace of the house. He liked the poems, and then he invited the poet to Penates to paint his portrait. True, Repin did not write a portrait, but only a sketch-drawing. Mayakovsky did not remain in debt: he made several portraits of Repin himself in caricature, including in Chukovsky's house. On one of them, he depicted Repin together with Chukovsky, leaning towards each other during an exciting conversation for both of them. "In those years, he drew endlessly, freely and easily - at lunch, at dinner, three, four drawings - and immediately distributed them to those around him," K. I. Chukovsky writes about Mayakovsky in his memoirs. His son Nikolai adds: "Sitting in my father's office, in a large society, and listening to someone, they (Repin and Mayakovsky. - B.K.) usually drew something. One in the corner, the other in the other" .

Mayakovsky's drawings evoked the approval of Repin: "The most seasoned realist. From nature, not a single step and the character is devilishly captured." In the evenings, Repin went to Chukovsky and, together with Mayakovsky, everyone left in the direction of Ollila, to the nearest seaside grove. At this time, Mayakovsky continued to work on the poem "A Cloud in Pants". He usually composed the text of the poem while walking along the coast of the Gulf of Finland. According to Chukovsky, the rapid walking along the shore, during which the poet muttered poetry, sometimes stopping to write down a rhyme (most often on a cigarette box), lasted for several hours. “His soles were worn out from stones,” Chukovsky wrote, “the bluish nanke suit had long since become blue from the sea wind and sun, but he still did not stop his crazy walk.”

Sometimes Mayakovsky walked 12-15 miles, plunging summer residents into confusion. “The summer residents looked at him with apprehension,” Chukovsky said. “When he wanted to light a cigarette and rushed with an extinct cigarette to some gentleman standing on the shore, he ran away from him in a panic.”

The huge figure of Mayakovsky runs through all of Chukovsky's literary work: first in his reviews and articles, then in his memoirs, always in correspondence, and since 1920 in his diary. In one of Chukovsky's letters (60s) one can read the following confession: "Blok, Komissarzhevskaya, Vyach. Ivanov, Leonid Andreev, Fyodor Sologub, young Mayakovsky - 0 my sleepless crazy youth, my St. Petersburg nights and days!. . All this for me is not a quote, but a living reality ... ".

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

Once on the train (Chukovsky often had to travel to Petrograd on publishing and editorial business), entertaining his sick son, he began to compose a fairy tale aloud, and in the morning the boy remembered what he had heard from the first to the last word. In the autumn of 1916, the tale was finished and soon, according to Yuri Tynyanov, aroused "noise, interest, surprise, as happens with a new phenomenon of literature." Thus, another side of Chukovsky's multifaceted talent was revealed: he became a children's poet. The tale, like a knife through butter, entered the children's environment and, appearing in print ("Crocodile" was published in the supplement to "Niva" in the summer of 1917), to the horror of its author, immediately and forever eclipsed the glory and popularity of Chukovsky the critic.

During this period, Chukovsky, as a critic, fought against the vulgarity and lisping that prevailed in the then children's literature, in which he was supported by A. M. Gorky, with whom K. I. Chukovsky visited I. E. Repin in 1916.

Chukovsky had a trait, underestimating which, one cannot fully understand either himself or his literary interests. This is affection for children, both in youth and in old age. Chukovsky showed interest in new and new acquaintances among the children. On the Kuokkala coast of the Gulf of Finland, he built fortresses with his children, started exciting games. He conquered the children with genuine enthusiasm, a rich imagination. The son of Leonid Andreev, who experienced the charm of Chukovsky's personality in childhood, wrote later: "We all immediately treated him with confidence, as our own, as a person of our children's world." The Kuokkal children also remembered the merry holidays organized by Korney Chukovsky. One of them took place in the summer of 1917 at the Summer Theater (located on the territory of the current park of the Gorky Rest House). The musicians invited by Chukovsky performed children's works by Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Grechaninov. The children themselves, including the children of Chukovsky, played a play staged by the artists Re-Mi and Puni. And Korney Ivanovich read the recently written fairy tale "Crocodile". The collected money was donated to the Kuokkala Public Children's Library.

The years of life in Kuokkala were fruitful for Korney Ivanovich: during this time he wrote several dozen critical articles that made up the books From Chekhov to the Present Day, Critical Stories, Faces and Masks, and The Book of Modern Writers. The circle of interests of Chukovsky as a literary critic at that time covered the work of the democratic poets Shevchenko, Nekrasov, Walt Whitman. That is why it is no coincidence that Boris Sadovsky called Korney Ivanovich "the heir and like-minded person of Shevchenko." On July 19, 1923, he wrote to Chukovsky: “Yesterday, as I passed Ollil, I looked sadly at your darkened house, at the overgrown roads and yard, and remembered how many ebb and flow of all types of young literature had been there!.. And I saw a lot of brochures in torn to pieces on the floor, with traces of all the dirty soles, felt boots, among the tattered luxurious sofas, where we spent such an interesting and comfortable time listening to interesting reports and heated speeches of talented literature that flared up with the red fire of freedom Yes, a whole platform was formed on the floor in library of expensive rare editions and manuscripts..."

Repin was very upset by the unexpected separation from Korney Ivanovich. "Oh, here in Kuokkala," he wrote to him in Petrograd, "you were my most interesting friend." And in another letter: "I remember your tall, cheerful figure ... Fireman, God bless you." And Chukovsky missed Repin, near whom he lived for 10 years. And of course, he yearned for Kuokkala itself. As for Repin, Kuokkala became for him "penates", his home. That is why he once wrote to the artist: "Kuokkala is my homeland, my childhood..."

At the beginning of 1925, Chukovsky came to Kuokkala, which was then part of Finland. The last time he saw Repin, talked to him, the visit to Repin made a painful impression on him: "I remember him as one of the most painful failures in my life." Repin was no longer surrounded by the luminaries of Russian culture, but by vicious philistines and cheap mystics. Korney Ivanovich persuaded Repin to publish his memoirs "Far Close" in Soviet Russia, but did not achieve success (they were published with the participation of Chukovsky after the death of the author). On the day of Repin's death, September 29, 1930, K. I. Chukovsky was in the Crimea together with Sergeev-Tsensky. “It so happened that the two of us, as it were, sat all that day at the deathbed of the one we loved so much during his lifetime!” Sergeyev-Tsensky will say later.

A quarter of a century has passed. In the late 50s, Korney Ivanovich wrote an extensive volume of memoirs "Contemporaries", where he recalled his old acquaintances - guests of the house in Kuokkala. During these years, the employees of the museum "Penates" asked him to indicate in the photographs of the surviving buildings of the village, the house where he once lived. The writer complied with this request. But he never came to Repino.

"Terijoki - Zelenogorsk 1548-1998". Comp. K. V. Tyunikov. SPb., 1998. - S. 39-44.

Chukovsky Korney Ivanovich (1882-1969) - Russian poet and children's writer, journalist and literary critic, translator and literary critic.

Childhood and youth

Korney Chukovsky is the pseudonym of the poet, his real name is Korneychukov Nikolai Vasilyevich. He was born in St. Petersburg on March 19, 1882. His mother, Poltava peasant Ekaterina Osipovna Korneychukova, worked as a servant in the family of a wealthy doctor Levenson, who came to St. Petersburg from Odessa.

The maid Katerina lived in an illegal marriage for three years with the master's son, a student Emmanuil Solomonovich, gave birth to two children from him - the eldest daughter Marusya and the boy Nikolai.

However, the relationship of his son with a peasant woman was opposed by the father of Emmanuel. The Levensons owned several printing houses in different cities, and such an unequal marriage could never become legal. Shortly after the future poet was born, Emmanuil Solomonovich left Catherine and married a woman of his circle.

The mother of Korney Chukovsky with two small children was forced to leave for Odessa. Here on Novorybnaya Street they settled in a small outbuilding. All the childhood of little Nikolai was spent in Nikolaev and Odessa. As the poet recalls his early years: "Mother brought us up democratically - need". For many years, Ekaterina Osipovna kept and often looked at a photograph of a bearded man with glasses and sentenced the children: "Don't be angry with your folder, he is a good person". Emmanuil Solomonovich sometimes helped Katerina with money.

However, little Kolya was very shy of his illegitimacy and suffered from it. It seemed to him that he was the most incomplete little man on earth, that he was the only one on the planet born outside the law. When other children talked about their fathers, grandparents, Kolya blushed, began to invent something, lie and get confused, and then it seemed to him that everyone was whispering about his illegal origin behind his back. He was never able to forgive his father for his joyless childhood, poverty and the stigma of "fatherlessness".

Korney Ivanovich loved his mother very much and always remembered her with warmth and tenderness. From early morning until late at night, she washed and ironed for other people in order to earn money and feed her children, while managing to manage the house and cook delicious food. In their little room in the wing it was always cozy and clean, even smart, because there were many flowers and curtains and towels embroidered with patterns hung everywhere. Everything always sparkled, my mother was an unusually clean person and put her wide Ukrainian soul into their small home. She was an illiterate peasant woman, but she made every effort to ensure that her children received an education.

At the age of five, his mother sent Kolya to Madame Bekhteeva's kindergarten. He remembered well how they drew pictures and marched to the music. Then the boy went to study at the second Odessa gymnasium, but after the fifth grade he was expelled due to his low birth. Then he took up self-education, studied English and read a lot of books. Literature invaded his life and completely took possession of the boyish heart. Every free minute he ran to the library and read voraciously indiscriminately.

Nikolai had a lot of friends with whom he went fishing or flying a kite, climbed through attics or, hiding in large dustbins, dreamed of traveling to distant lands. He retold the books he had read by Jules Verne and the novels of Aimard to the boys.

To help his mother, Nikolai went to work: he repaired fishing nets, put up theater posters, and painted fences. However, the older he got, the less he liked the bourgeois Odessa, he dreamed of leaving here for Australia, for which he learned a foreign language.

Journalistic activity

Having become a young man and having grown a mustache, Nikolai tried to take up tutoring, but he could not manage to put on proper solidity. With the children he taught, he entered into disputes and conversations about tarantulas and how to make arrows from reeds, taught them to play robbers and pirates. He didn’t turn out to be a teacher, but then a friend came to the rescue ─ journalist Volodya Zhabotinsky, with whom they were “inseparable” from the very kindergarten. He helped Nikolai get a job at the popular Odessa News newspaper as a reporter.

When Nikolai came to the editorial office for the first time, there was a huge hole in his leaky trousers, which he covered with a large and thick book, taken with him for this very purpose. But very soon his publications became so popular and beloved among the readers of the newspaper that he began to earn 25-30 rubles per month. At that time it was quite decent money. Immediately under his first articles, the young author began to sign a pseudonym - Korney Chukovsky, later added a fictitious patronymic - Ivanovich.

Business trip to England

When it turned out that only one Korney knew English in the entire editorial office, the management offered him to go on a business trip to London as a correspondent. The young man had recently married, the family needed to get on its feet, and he was seduced by the proposed salary - 100 rubles a month. Together with his wife, Chukovsky went to England.

His English articles were published by the Odessa News, Southern Review and several Kiev newspapers. Over time, fees from Russia began to come to London in the name of Chukovsky irregularly, and then completely stopped. The wife was pregnant, but due to lack of funds, Korney sent her to her parents in Odessa, while he himself remained in London, looking for a part-time job.

Chukovsky liked England very much. True, at first no one understood his language, studied independently. But for Korney this was not a problem, he improved it, studying from morning to evening in the library of the British Museum. Here he found a part-time job copying catalogs, and at the same time reading Thackeray and Dickens in the original.

creative literary path

By the revolution of 1905, Chukovsky returned to Russia and completely plunged into the ongoing events. Twice he visited the rebellious battleship Potemkin. Then he left for St. Petersburg and started publishing the satirical magazine "Signal" there. He was arrested for "lèse majesty", spent 9 days under arrest, but soon his lawyer secured an acquittal.

After being released, Korney published the magazine underground for some time, but soon realized that publishing was not suitable for him. He dedicated his life to writing.

At first he was more involved in criticism. From his pen came essays on Blok and Balmont, Kuprin and Chekhov, Gorky and Bryusov, Merezhkovsky and Sergeev-Tsensky. From 1917 to 1926, Chukovsky worked on a work about his favorite poet Nekrasov, in 1962 he received the Lenin Prize for it.

And when he was already a fairly well-known critic, a passion for children's creativity came to Korney:

• In 1916, his first collection of children's poems "Yolka" and the fairy tale "Crocodile" were published.
• In 1923, "Cockroach" and "Moydodyr" were written.
• In 1924 "Barmaley" was published.

For the first time in children's works, a new intonation sounded - no one taught the kids. The author jokingly, but at the same time always sincerely rejoiced, together with young readers, at the beauty of the world around him.

In the late 1920s, Korney Ivanovich had a new hobby - studying the psyche of children and observing how they master speech. In 1933, this resulted in the verbal creative work "From two to five."

Soviet children grew up on his poems and fairy tales, then read them to their children and grandchildren. Until now, many of us remember by heart:

• "Fedorino grief" and "Fly-sokotuhu";
• "The Stolen Sun" and "Confusion";
• "Phone" and "Aibolit".

Almost all the fairy tales of Korney Chukovsky have been made into animated films.
Korney Ivanovich, together with his eldest son, did a lot of translation work. Thanks to their work, the Soviet Union was able to read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "Robinson Crusoe" and "Baron Munchausen", "The Prince and the Pauper", the fairy tales of Wilde and Kipling.

For his creative achievements, Chukovsky received awards: three orders of the Red Banner of Labor, the Order of Lenin, numerous medals and a doctorate from Oxford University.

Personal life

The first and only love came to Korney Ivanovich at a very young age. In Odessa, the Goldfeld Jewish family lived on a nearby street. The head of the family of the accountant Aron-Ber Ruvimovich and his wife, the housewife Tuba Oizerovna, had a daughter, Maria. The black-eyed and plump girl really liked Chukovsky.

When it turned out that Masha was not indifferent to him either, Korney proposed to her. However, the girl's parents were against this marriage. Desperate Maria ran away from home, and in 1903 the lovers got married. It was the first, only and happy marriage for both.

Four children were born in the family, father Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky survived three of them.

In 1904, their first-born son, Kolya, was born. Like his father, he was engaged in literary activity all his life, becoming the famous Soviet writer Nikolai Korneevich Chukovsky. During the Patriotic War, he participated in the defense of Leningrad, remained in the besieged city. In 1965, he died suddenly in his sleep. The death of his son was a severe blow for 83-year-old Korney Ivanovich.

In 1907, a daughter, Lydia, was born in the Chukovsky family, who also became a writer. Her most famous works are the stories "Sofya Petrovna" and "Descent under the Water", as well as the significant work "Notes on Anna Akhmatova".

In 1910, the son Boris was born. At the age of 31, he died near the Borodino field, returning from reconnaissance. This happened almost immediately after the outbreak of World War II, in the autumn of 1941.

The youngest daughter Maria in the Chukovsky family was born in 1920. The late child was madly loved by everyone, she was affectionately called Murochka, it was she who became the heroine of most of her father's children's stories and poems. But closer to the age of 10, the girl fell ill, she had incurable bone tuberculosis. The baby became blind, stopped walking and cried a lot from the pain. In 1930, the parents took Murochka to the Alupka sanatorium for children with tuberculosis.

For two years, Korney Ivanovich lived as if in a dream, went to his sick daughter, and together with her composed children's poems and fairy tales. But in November 1930, the girl died in her father's arms, he personally made a coffin for her from an old chest. Murochka was buried there, in the Crimea.

It was after her death that he transferred his love for his daughter to all the children of the Soviet Union and became a universal favorite - grandfather Korney.

His wife Maria died in 1955, 14 years earlier than her husband. Every day, Korney Ivanovich went to her grave and recalled the happy moments of their lives. He clearly remembered her velvet blouse, even the smell, their dates until dawn, all the joys and troubles that they had to endure together.

Two granddaughters and three grandchildren continued the family of the famous children's poet, Korney Ivanovich has a lot of great-grandchildren. Some of them connected their lives with creativity, like a grandfather, but there are other professions in the Chukovsky family tree - a doctor of medical sciences, a producer of the directorate of NTV-Plus sports channels, a communications engineer, a chemist, a cameraman, a historian-archivist, resuscitator.

In the last years of his life, Korney Ivanovich lived in Peredelkino in the country. Often he gathered kids at his place, invited famous people to such meetings - artists, pilots, poets and writers. The kids loved these gatherings with tea at the dacha of Grandfather Korney.

On October 28, 1969, Korney Ivanovich died of viral hepatitis. He was buried at the cemetery in Peredelkino.

This dacha is now a functioning museum of the writer and poet grandfather Korney.

The origin of the writer burdened him all his life - an illegitimate son from a servant, abandoned by his father. In part, this influenced the later decision to write under a pseudonym.

The real name of the boy, who was born on March 31, 1882 in St. Petersburg, was Nikolai Korneichukov, and he received the middle name Vasilievich thanks to his godfather. His mother, a peasant woman from Poltava, later moved with her son to Odessa, where she sent him to study at a gymnasium. But after 4 years of study, he was expelled just because of his low class. Poverty left no choice and, thanks to self-education, the young man learned English and French. He got the opportunity to read a lot in the family of his school friend and future writer Boris Zhitkov, who has a huge library at home.

Since 1901, a talented young man began working in Odessa News and after 2 years he was sent by the newspaper as a journalist to London, where he researched and comprehended the intricacies of English literature for a year. There he met G. Wells and A. Conan Doyle. Upon his return, the writer goes to St. Petersburg, stays there and writes critical articles and essays.

In 1905, Korney Ivanovich organized the satire magazine "Signal", the content of which, the government considered revolutionary dangerous for the tsarist regime. The magazine is subjected to repressions, and the publisher Chukovsky is arrested for 6 months, the protection of the famous lawyer Gruzenberg becomes the salvation and he is acquitted.

From 1906 to 1916 he lived and worked in the Finnish town of Kuokkala. During these years, Chukovsky became friends with many artists: the artist Repin, the writers Korolenko, V. Mayakovsky, Andreev, Alexei Tolstoy.

In 1916 he worked as a war correspondent abroad. Having visited Belgium, France, England, he returns to his homeland at the height of the revolution. He becomes quite an influential critic in literary circles, but strict censorship not only dictates what to write, but becomes dangerous for free-thinking people.

M. Gorky in 1917 invites him to the Parus publishing house to head the department of children's literature. During the editorial work, by chance, he had to write several poems to fill the almanac.

Despite the excitement, he does an excellent job and, a little later, Gorky decides to release a collection for children and asks Korney to come up with a poem for him. His first poem "Crocodile" was invented as an evening fairy tale for a sick son, but all the children liked it so much that from that moment Chukovsky became the country's favorite children's writer. For the next decade, the writer has been working on his famous works for children “Fly-Tsokotuha”, “Moydodyr”, “Barmaley”, “Aibolit”, “Cockroach”, “Fedorino Woe”.

But to consider the author exclusively a children's writer is a mistake. All the versatility of his interests can be understood by analyzing all of Chukovsky's work. Among his works: translations of W. Whitman, R. Kipling, W. Defoe, several books on the intricacies of translation, editions of critical essays, three books on the study of the work of his favorite poet N. Nekrasov, biographies of Chekhov and Dostoevsky, many memoirs, the study of children's literature and literature for children, articles, feuilletons, editorial work, lectures. From a young age until the end of his life, he did not stop keeping a personal diary.

The writer was married to Maria Goldfeld and had four children. The youngest daughter died in childhood from tuberculosis. Observing the development and speech of children, the writer constantly made notes, from which the book “From Two to Five” was later compiled. In recent years, he loved to gather children in his house in Peredelkino in the summer and arrange holidays for them. He was awarded the Lenin Prize for many years of work on Nekrasov, and since 1962 he was a doctor of literature at Oxford University.

Biography by dates and interesting facts. The most important thing.

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