The hidden life of Korney Chukovsky. Korney Chukovsky - biography, information, personal life Short works by Chukovsky

Great ones about poetry:

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

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

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

Marina Tsvetaeva

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

Humboldt V.

Poems are successful if they are created with spiritual clarity.

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

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

A. A. Akhmatova

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

I. S. Turgenev

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

G. Lichtenberg

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

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

Murasaki Shikibu

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

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin

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

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov. "Master and Margarita"

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

John Fowles. "The French Lieutenant's Mistress"

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

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok

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

Max Fry. "Chatty Dead"

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

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

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky

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

Boris Krieger. "A Thousand Lives"

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

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

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

Childhood and youth

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

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

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

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

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

Journalism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Literature

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Personal life

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

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

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

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

Death

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

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

Bibliography

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

Chukovsky Korney Ivanovich(Nikolai Emmanuilovich Korneychukov)

(31.03.1882 — 28.10.1969)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (real name - Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov, March 19, 1882, St. Petersburg, - October 28, 1969, Moscow) - Russian Soviet poet, publicist, literary critic, translator and literary critic, children's writer, journalist. Father of writers Nikolai Korneevich Chukovsky and Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya. As of 2015, he was the most published author of children's literature in Russia: 132 books and brochures were published during the year with a circulation of 2.4105 million copies.

Childhood

Nikolai Korneychukov, who later took literary pseudonym“Korney Chukovsky”, was born in St. Petersburg on March 19 (31), 1882 to a peasant woman, Ekaterina Osipovna Korneychukova; his father was hereditary honorable Sir Emmanuil Solomonovich Levenson (1851-?), in whose family Korney Chukovsky’s mother lived as a servant. Their marriage was not formally registered, since this required the baptism of the father, but they lived together for at least three years. Born before Nicholas eldest daughter Maria (Marusya). Soon after Nikolai’s birth, his father left his illegitimate family, married “a woman of his circle” and moved to Baku, where he opened the “First Printing Partnership”; Chukovsky's mother was forced to move to Odessa.

Nikolai Korneychukov spent his childhood in Odessa and Nikolaev. In Odessa, the family settled in an outbuilding, in the Makri house on Novorybnaya Street, No. 6. In 1887, the Korneychukovs changed their apartment, moving to the address: Barshman's house, Kanatny Lane, No. 3. Five-year-old Nikolai was sent to kindergarten Madame Bekhteeva, about his stay in which he left the following memories: “We marched to the music, drew pictures. The oldest among us was a curly-haired boy with black lips, whose name was Volodya Zhabotinsky. That's when I met the future national hero Israel - in 1888 or 1889!!!" For some time future writer studied at the second Odessa gymnasium (later became the fifth). His classmate at that time was Boris Zhitkov (in the future also a writer and traveler), with whom young Korney began a friendly relationship. Chukovsky never managed to graduate from high school: he was expelled from the fifth grade, according to his own statements, due to his low origin. He described these events in his autobiographical story “The Silver Coat of Arms.”

According to the metric, Nikolai and his sister Maria, as illegitimates, did not have a middle name; in other documents of the pre-revolutionary period, his patronymic name was indicated in different ways - “Vasilievich” (in the marriage and baptism certificate of his son Nikolai, it was subsequently fixed in most later biographies as part of the "real name"; given by godfather), “Stepanovich”, “Emmanuilovich”, “Manuilovich”, “Emelyanovich”, sister Marusya bore the patronymic “Emmanuilovna” or “Manuilovna”. At first literary activity Korneychukov 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.

According to the memoirs of K. Chukovsky, he “never had such luxury as a father or even a grandfather,” which in his youth and youth served as a constant source of shame and mental suffering for him.
His children - Nikolai, Lydia, Boris and Maria (Murochka), who died in childhood, to whom many of their father's children's poems are dedicated - wore (by at least, after the revolution) surname Chukovsky and patronymic Korneevich/Korneevna.

Journalistic activity before the October Revolution

Since 1901, Chukovsky began writing articles in Odessa News. Chukovsky was introduced to literature by his close gymnasium friend, journalist V. E. Zhabotinsky. Jabotinsky was also the groom's guarantor at the wedding of Chukovsky and Maria Borisovna Goldfeld.
Then, in 1903, Chukovsky, as the only newspaper correspondent who knew English (which he learned independently from Ohlendorf’s “Self-Teacher of the English Language”), and tempted by a high salary for those times - the publisher promised 100 rubles monthly - went to London as a correspondent for Odessa News. where he went with his young wife. In addition to Odessa News, Chukovsky’s English articles were published in Southern Review and some Kyiv newspapers. But fees from Russia arrived irregularly, and then stopped altogether. The pregnant wife had to be sent back to Odessa. Chukovsky earned money by copying catalogs in British Museum. But in London, Chukovsky became thoroughly acquainted with English literature- I read Dickens and Thackeray in the original.

Returning to Odessa at the end of 1904, Chukovsky settled with his family on Bazarnaya Street No. 2 and plunged into the events of the 1905 revolution. Chukovsky was captured by the revolution. He visited the mutinous battleship Potemkin twice, among other things, accepting letters to loved ones from the mutinous sailors. In St. Petersburg he began publishing the satirical magazine “Signal”. Among the authors of the magazine were: famous writers like Kuprin, Fyodor Sologub and Teffi. After the fourth issue, he was arrested for lese majeste. He was defended by the famous lawyer Gruzenberg, who achieved an acquittal. Chukovsky was under arrest for 9 days.

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

In 1907, Chukovsky published translations of Walt Whitman. The book became popular, which increased Chukovsky's fame in the literary community. Chukovsky became an influential critic, mockingly speaking about works of mass literature that were popular at that time: the books of Lydia Charskaya and Anastasia Verbitskaya, “Pinkertonism” and others, and wittily defended the futurists - both in articles and in public lectures - from the attacks of traditional criticism (he met in Kuokkale continued to be friends with Mayakovsky), although the futurists themselves were not always grateful to him for this; developed his own recognizable style (reconstruction psychological appearance writer based on numerous quotes from him).

In 1916, Chukovsky with a delegation State Duma visited England again. 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 his two most famous books about the work of his contemporaries - “The Book about Alexander Blok” (“Alexander Blok as a Man and Poet”) and “Akhmatova and Mayakovsky.” The circumstances of the Soviet era were ungrateful for critical activity, and Chukovsky had to “bury” this talent of his, which he later regretted.

Literary criticism

In 1908, his critical essays about the writers Chekhov, Balmont, Blok, Sergeev-Tsensky, Kuprin, Gorky, Artsybashev, Merezhkovsky, Bryusov and others were published, forming the collection “From Chekhov to the Present Day,” which went through three editions within a year.
Since 1917, Chukovsky began many years of work on Nekrasov, his favorite poet. Through his efforts, the first Soviet collection of Nekrasov’s poems was published. Chukovsky finished work on it only in 1926, having revised a lot of manuscripts and provided the texts with scientific comments. The monograph “Nekrasov’s Mastery,” published in 1952, was reprinted many times, and in 1962 Chukovsky was awarded the Lenin Prize for it. After 1917, it was possible to publish a significant part of Nekrasov’s poems, which were either previously prohibited by tsarist censorship or were “vetoed” by copyright holders. About a quarter of Nekrasov’s currently known poetic lines were put into circulation by Korney Chukovsky. In addition, in the 1920s, he discovered and published manuscripts of Nekrasov’s prose works (“The Life and Adventures of Tikhon Trosnikov,” “ Thin Man"and others).

In addition to Nekrasov, Chukovsky was engaged in the biography and work of a number of others writers of the 19th century century (Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Sleptsov), to which his book “People and Books of the Sixties” is dedicated, in particular, participated in the preparation of the text and editing of many publications. Chukovsky considered Chekhov to be the writer closest to himself in spirit.

Children's poems and fairy tales

The passion for children's literature, which made Chukovsky famous, began relatively late, when he was already a famous critic. In 1916, Chukovsky compiled the collection “Yolka” and wrote his first fairy tale “Crocodile”. In 1923 it was published famous fairy tales“Moidodyr” and “Cockroach”, in 1924 “Barmaley”.
Despite the fact that fairy tales were printed in large quantities and went through many editions, they did not fully meet the tasks of Soviet pedagogy. In February 1928, Pravda published an article by Deputy People’s Commissar of Education of the RSFSR N.K. Krupskaya “About Chukovsky’s Crocodile”: “Such chatter is disrespect for the child. First, he is lured with carrots - cheerful, innocent rhymes and comical images, and along the way they are given some kind of dregs to swallow, which will not pass without a trace for him. I think there is no need to give “Krokodil” to our guys...”

At this time, the term “Chukovism” soon appeared among party critics and editors. Having accepted the criticism, in December 1929 Chukovsky published a letter in Literaturnaya Gazeta in which he “renounced” old fairy tales and declared his intentions to change the direction of his work by writing a collection of poems “Merry Collective Farm”, but he did not keep his promise. The collection will never come out from his pen, but next tale will be written only after 13 years.
Despite criticism of the “Chukovism”, it was during this period that in a number of cities Soviet Union are installed sculptural compositions based on Chukovsky's fairy tales. The most famous fountain is “Barmaley” (“Children’s round dance”, “Children and a crocodile”), the work of a prominent Soviet sculptor R. R. Iodko, installed in 1930 according to a standard design in Stalingrad and other cities of Russia and Ukraine. The composition is an illustration of fairy tale of the same name Chukovsky. The Stalingrad fountain will become famous as one of the few structures that survived the Battle of Stalingrad.

By the early 1930s, another hobby had appeared in Chukovsky’s life - studying the psyche of children and how they master speech. He recorded his observations of the children, their verbal creativity in the book “From Two to Five” (1933).

Other works

In the 1930s, Chukovsky worked a lot on the theory of literary translation (“The Art of Translation” of 1936, republished before the start of the war, in 1941, under the title “High Art”) and translations into Russian themselves (M. Twain, O. Wilde, R. Kipling and others, including in the form of “retellings” for children).
He begins to write memoirs, which he worked on until the end of his life (“Contemporaries” in the “ZhZL” series). Diaries 1901-1969 were published posthumously.
During the war he was evacuated to Tashkent. Younger son Boris died at the front.

As the NKGB reported to the Central Committee, during the war years Chukovsky spoke out: “...With all my soul I wish the death of Hitler and the collapse of his delusional ideas. With the fall of Nazi despotism, the world of democracy will come face to face with Soviet despotism. Will wait".
On March 1, 1944, the Pravda newspaper published an article by P. Yudin “The vulgar and harmful concoction of K. Chukovsky,” in which an analysis of Chukovsky’s book “Let’s Defeat Barmaley” published in 1943 in Tashkent was arranged (Aibolitiya is waging a war with Ferocity and its king Barmaley), and this book was recognized in the article as harmful:
K. Chukovsky's fairy tale is a harmful concoction that can distort modern reality in children's perceptions.

“A War Tale” by K. Chukovsky characterizes the author as a person who does not understand the duty of a writer in Patriotic War, or deliberately trivializing the great tasks of raising children in the spirit of socialist patriotism.

Chukovsky and the Bible for children

In the 1960s, K. Chukovsky conceived a retelling of the Bible for children. He attracted writers and literary figures to this project and carefully edited their work. The project itself was very difficult due to the anti-religious position Soviet power. In particular, Chukovsky was demanded that the words “God” and “Jews” not be mentioned in the book; Through the efforts of writers, the pseudonym “Magician Yahweh” was invented for God. A book called " 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 circumstances of the ban on the publication were later described by Valentin Berestov, one of the authors of the book: “It was in the midst of the great cultural revolution in China. The Red Guards, noticing the publication, loudly demanded that the head of the old revisionist Chukovsky, who was clogging the minds of Soviet children with religious nonsense, be smashed. The West responded with the headline “New discovery of the Red Guards,” and our authorities reacted in the usual way.” The book was published in 1990.

Last years

In recent years, Chukovsky was a popular favorite, a laureate of a number of state awards and a holder of orders, but at the same time maintained contacts with dissidents (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 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 organized meetings with local children, talked with them, read poetry, invited them to meetings famous people, famous pilots, artists, writers, poets. Peredelkino children, who have long since become adults, still remember these childhood gatherings at Chukovsky’s dacha.

In 1966, he signed a letter from 25 cultural and scientific figures to the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee L.I. Brezhnev against the rehabilitation of Stalin.
Korney Ivanovich died on October 28, 1969 from viral hepatitis. At the dacha in Peredelkino, where the writer lived most life, his museum now operates.

From the memoirs of Yu. G. Oksman:
“Lidiya Korneevna Chukovskaya submitted in advance to the Board of the Moscow branch of the Writers' Union a list of those whom her father asked not to invite to the funeral. This is probably why Arkady Vasiliev and other Black Hundreds are not visible from literature. Very few Muscovites came to say goodbye: there was not a single line in the newspapers about the upcoming funeral service. There are few people, but, as at the funeral of Ehrenburg, Paustovsky, the police - darkness. In addition to uniforms, there are many “boys” in civilian clothes, with gloomy, contemptuous faces. The boys began by cordoning off the chairs in the hall, not allowing anyone to linger or sit down. A seriously ill Shostakovich came. In the lobby he was not allowed to take off his coat. It was forbidden to sit in a chair in the hall. There was a scandal.

Civil funeral service. The stuttering S. Mikhalkov utters pompous words that do not fit in with his indifferent, even devil-may-care intonation: “From the Union of Writers of the USSR...”, “From the Union of Writers of the RSFSR...”, “From the publishing house “Children’s Literature”...”, “ From the Ministry of Education and the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences...” All this is pronounced with the stupid significance with which, probably, the doormen of the last century, during the departure of guests, called for the carriage of Count such-and-such and Prince such-and-such. Who are we burying, finally? The official bonzu or the cheerful and mocking clever Korney? A. Barto rattled off her “lesson.” Cassil performed a complex verbal pirouette to make his listeners understand how personally close he was to the deceased. And only L. Panteleev, breaking 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 in a crowded room she sat down at the table to sketch out the text of her speech, KGB General Ilyin (in the world - secretary for organizational issues of the Moscow Writers' Organization) approached her and correctly but firmly told her, that she won’t be allowed to perform.”

He was buried in the cemetery in Peredelkino.

The name of the beautiful children's writer Korney Chukovsky is familiar to every adult in the vastness former USSR. More than one generation has grown up on bright, good fairy tales and poems by Chukovsky, which our grandparents, fathers and mothers told us, and then we began to reread them ourselves.

From the early age Chukovsky's fairy tales are interesting and instructive to read; children always look forward to new meetings with the characters. In kindergartens and lower grades of school, Chukovsky’s poems are loved and recited almost more often than others, and there is a simple explanation for this. Characters, themes, situations in Korney Ivanovich’s stories are always relevant and connected with real life, at the same time interesting for kids, regardless of their temperament and character.

Collections of Chukovsky's works are a kind of initial encyclopedia of behavior, a “teacher” who helps the child figure out what is good and what is bad. For example, the well-known “good doctor Aibolit” will teach children love for animals, mercy, and that adults should still be obeyed. Thanks to the fascinating poems from “Moidodyr”, the well-known motto “cleanliness is the key to health” will be explained to the baby in an accessible form, and the basic concepts of hygiene will be instilled. And, at first glance, a simple poem-story “Cockroach” will teach you not to be afraid appearance, and deal with problems, even if you yourself are not distinguished by outstanding physical characteristics.

And these are just the three most famous works master, and he has much more of them, and everything can be read online for free on our resource right now. So if you are thinking about what to choose to read for children, you can safely switch to Chukovsky’s fairy tales and poems. Believe me, in this section there will be a lot of new and useful things for them, and, most likely, the children will ask to return to the moments they especially liked more than once.