1. William Shakespeare was born and died on the same day (but, fortunately, on different years) - On April 23, 1564, he was born and, 52 years later, died on the same day.
2. Another one died on the same day as Shakespeare. great writer- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. The author of Don Quixote died on April 23, 1616.
3. Contemporaries claimed that Shakespeare was fond of poaching - he hunted deer in the domain of Sir Thomas Lucy, without any permission from this very Lucy.
4. The great poet Byron was lame, prone to obesity and extremely loving - in a year in Venice, according to some reports, he made 250 ladies happy with himself, lame and fat.
5. Byron had an amazing personal collection - strands of hair cut from the pubes of his beloved women. The locks (or perhaps curls) were kept in envelopes on which the names of the hostesses were romantically inscribed. Some researchers argue that it was possible to admire (if this word is appropriate here) the poet’s collection back in the 1980s, after which traces of vegetation were lost.
6. And also great poet Byron loved spending time with boys, including, alas, minors. We don’t even comment on this! 250 ladies wasn’t enough for the scoundrel!
7. Well, a little more about Byron - he really loved animals. Fortunately, not in the sense that you may have put into this phrase after reading about Byron a little higher. The romantic poet adored animals platonically and even kept a menagerie in which a badger, monkeys, horses, a parrot, a crocodile and many other animals lived.
8. Charles Dickens had a very difficult childhood. When his dad went to debtor's prison, little Charlie was sent to work... no, not in a chocolate factory, but in a blacking factory, where he stuck labels on jars from morning to evening. Not dusty, you say? But stick them from morning to evening instead of playing football with the boys, and you will understand why Dickens’ images of unfortunate orphans turned out to be so convincing.
9. In 1857, Hans Christian Andersen came to visit Dickens. This is not a Kharms joke, this is life itself! Andersen and Dickens met back in 1847, were completely delighted with each other, and now, 10 years later, the Dane decided to take advantage of the invitation given to him. The trouble is that over the years in Dickens’s life everything has changed a lot and become more complicated - he was not ready to accept Andersen, and he lived with him for almost five weeks! “He doesn’t speak any languages except his Danish, although there are suspicions that he doesn’t know that either,” Dickens told his friends about his guest in this way. Poor Andersen became the target of ridicule from the numerous descendants of the author of Little Dorrit, and when he left, Dad Dickens left a note in his room: “Hans Andersen slept in this room for five weeks, which seemed like years to our family.” And you also ask why Andersen wrote such sad fairy tales?
10. Dickens was also fond of hypnosis, or, as they said then, mesmerism.
11. One of Dickens’ favorite pastimes was going to the Paris morgue, where unidentified bodies were exhibited. Truly a dear person!
12. Oscar Wilde did not take Dickens's writings seriously and mocked them for any reason. In general, contemporary critics of Charles Dickens endlessly hinted that he would never be included in the list of the best British writers. And we’ll get to Oscar Wilde later.
13. But Dickens was devotedly loved by ordinary readers - in 1841, in the port of New York, where the continuation of the final chapters of “The Antiquities Shop” was to be brought, 6 thousand people gathered, and everyone shouted to the passengers of the mooring ship: “Will little Nell die?”
14. Dickens could not work if the tables and chairs in his office were not arranged as they should. Only he knew how to do it - and each time he began work by rearranging the furniture.
15. Charles Dickens disliked monuments so much that in his will he strictly forbade him from erecting them. The only bronze statue of Dickens is in Philadelphia. By the way, the statue was initially rejected by the writer’s family.
16. American writer O. Henry began his writing career in prison, where he was sentenced for embezzlement. And things went so well for him that everyone soon forgot about prison.
17. Ernest Hemingway was not only an alcoholic and a suicide, as everyone knows. He also had peiraphobia (fear of public speaking), in addition, he never believed the praise of even his most sincere readers and admirers. I didn’t even believe my friends, and that’s all!
18. Hemingway survived five wars, four automobile and two air crashes. As a child, his mother also forced him to attend dance school. And over time he himself began to call himself Pope.
19. The same Hemingway often and willingly talked about the fact that the FBI was watching him. The interlocutors smiled wryly, but in the end it turned out that the Pope was right - declassified documents confirmed that this was indeed surveillance, and not paranoia.
20. The first person in history to use the word “gay” in literature was Gertrude Stein, a lesbian writer who hated punctuation and gave the world the term “lost generation.”
21. Oscar Wilde - like Ernest Hemingway - was dressed up in girls' dresses for a long time as a child. In both cases, we note, it ended badly.
23. Honore de Balzac loved coffee - he drank about 50 cups of strong Turkish coffee a day. If it was not possible to make coffee, the writer simply ground a handful of beans and chewed them with great pleasure.
24. Balzac believed that ejaculation is a waste of creative energy, since semen is a brain substance. Once, talking with a friend after a successful conversation, the writer exclaimed bitterly: “This morning I lost my novel!”
25. Edgar Allan Poe was afraid of the dark all his life. Perhaps one of the reasons for this fear was that as a child the future writer studied... in a cemetery. The school where the boy went was so poor that it was impossible to buy textbooks for the children. A resourceful math teacher taught classes in a nearby cemetery, among the graves. Each student chose tombstone and calculated how many years the deceased had lived by subtracting the date of birth from the date of death. It is not surprising that Poe grew up to become what he became - the founder of world horror literature.
26. The most psychedelic writer of all time should be recognized as Lewis Carroll, a shy British mathematician who wrote fairy tales about Alice. His writings were inspired by the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, Tim Burton and others.
27. Lewis Carroll's real name is Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He had the church rank of deacon, and also in personal diaries Carroll constantly repented of some sin. However, these pages were destroyed by the writer’s family so as not to discredit his image. Some researchers seriously believe that it was Carroll who was Jack the Ripper, who, as we know, was never found.
28. Carroll suffered from swamp fever, cystitis, lumbago, eczema, furunculosis, arthritis, pleurisy, rheumatism, insomnia and a whole bunch of other diseases. In addition, he had an almost constant - and very severe - headache.
29. The author of “Alice” was a passionate admirer of technological progress, and he himself personally invented a tricycle, a mnemonic system for remembering names and dates, an electric pen, and it was he who came up with the idea of writing the title of a book on the spine and created the prototype of everyone’s favorite game Scrabble.
30. Franz Kafka was the grandson of a kosher butcher and a strict vegetarian.
31. Great American poet Walt Whitman had a very specific sexual orientation. He admired, however, first of all Abraham Lincoln, whom he praised in the poem “Oh, Captain! My captain!". And once Whitman met another gay icon - the sarcastic Irishman Oscar Wilde, who so disliked Charles Dickens (who, in turn, did not like Andersen, see above). Wilde told Whitman that he adored Leaves of Grass, which his mother often read to him as a child, after which Whitman kissed the “excellent, large and handsome young man” right on the lips. “I can still feel Whitman’s kiss on my lips,” the author of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” shared with friends. Brr!
32. Mark Twain - literary pseudonym a man named Samuel Langhorne Clemens. In addition, Twain also had the pseudonyms Tramp, Josh, Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, Sergeant Fathom and W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab. By the way, “Mark Twain,” a concept from the field of navigation, means “measure two” fathoms: this is how the minimum depth suitable for navigation was noted.
33. Mark Twain was friends with one of the most mysterious people of his time - the inventor Nikola Tesla. The writer himself patented several inventions, such as self-adjusting suspenders and a scrapbook with adhesive pages.
34. Twain also adored cats and hated children (he even wanted to erect a monument to King Herod). A great writer once said: “If it were possible to cross a person with a cat, the human race would only benefit from this, but the cat breed would clearly worsen.”
35. Twain was a heavy smoker (he is the author of the phrase that is now attributed to everyone: “There is nothing easier than quitting smoking. I know, I’ve done it a thousand times”). He started smoking when he was eight years old and smoked 20 to 40 cigars daily until his death. The writer chose the smelliest and cheapest cigars.
36. The author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, J. R. R. Tolkien, was an extremely bad driver, snored so much that he had to spend the night in the bathroom so as not to disturb his wife’s sleep, and was also a terrible Francophobe - he hated the French since William the Conqueror.
37. On his first wedding night with Sophia Bers, 34-year-old Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy forced his 18-year-old newly married wife to read those pages in his diary, which described in detail the amorous adventures of the writer with different women, among others - with serf peasant women. Tolstoy wanted there to be no secrets between him and his wife.
38. Agatha Christie suffered from dysgraphia, that is, she practically could not write by hand. All of her famous novels were dictated.
39. Chekhov was a big fan of going to a brothel - and, finding himself in a foreign city, the first thing he did was study it from this side.
40. James Joyce was afraid of dogs and thunderstorms more than anything else, hated monuments and was a masochist.
41. When Tolstoy left home in old age, most of the reporters rushed after him, and only one, the most shrewd fellow, came to Yasnaya Polyana to find out how Sofya Andreevna was doing. Soon the editor received a telegram: “The Countess, with a changed face, is running to the pond.” This is how the reporter described Sofia Andreevna’s intention to drown herself. Subsequently, the phrase was picked up by two completely different writers - Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, presenting it to their brilliant hero Ostap Bender.
42. William Faulkner worked as a postman for several years until it was discovered that he often threw undelivered letters into the trash.
43. Jack London was a socialist, and also the first American writer in history to earn a million dollars with his work.
44. Arthur Conan Doyle, who invented Sherlock Holmes, was an occultist and believed in the existence of small winged fairies.
45. Jean-Paul Sartre experimented with mind-expanding substances and strongly supported terrorists. Perhaps the first was somehow connected with the second.
There are many interesting facts associated with Russian poets and writers that shed light on this or that event. It seems to us that we know everything, or almost everything, about the lives of great writers, but there are pages unexplored!
So, for example, we learned that Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was the initiator of the fatal duel and did everything possible to make it happen - it was a matter of honor for the poet... And Leo Tolstoy, due to his passion for gambling lost his house. And we also know how the great Anton Pavlovich loved to call his wife in correspondence - “the crocodile of my soul”... Read about these and other facts of Russian geniuses in our selection of “the most interesting facts from the life of Russian poets and writers.”
Russian writers came up with many new words: substance, thermometer ( Lomonosov), industry ( Karamzin), bungling ( Saltykov-Shchedrin), fade away ( Dostoevsky), mediocrity ( Northerner), exhausted ( Khlebnikov).
Pushkin was not handsome, unlike his wife Natalya Goncharova, who, in addition to everything, was 10 cm taller than her husband. For this reason, when attending balls, Pushkin tried to stay away from his wife, so as not to once again draw the attention of others to this contrast.
During the period of courtship with his future wife Natalya, Pushkin told his friends a lot about her and at the same time usually said: “I am delighted, I am fascinated, In short, I am enchanted!”
Korney Chukovsky- it is a nickname. Real name (according to available documents) of the most published in Russia children's writer- Nikolai Vasilievich Korneychukov. He was born in 1882 in Odessa out of wedlock, was recorded under his mother’s surname, and published his first article in 1901 under the pseudonym Korney Chukovsky.
Lev Tolstoy. In his youth, the future genius of Russian literature was quite passionate. Once upon a time in card game with his neighbor, the landowner Gorokhov, Leo Tolstoy lost the main building of the inherited estate - the Yasnaya Polyana estate. The neighbor dismantled the house and took it 35 miles away as a trophy. It is worth noting that this was not just a building - it was here that the writer was born and spent his childhood years, it was this house that he remembered warmly all his life and even wanted to buy it back, but for one reason or another he did not.
Famous Soviet writer and public figure burr, that is, did not pronounce the letters “r” and “l”. This happened in childhood when, while playing, he accidentally cut his tongue with a razor, and it became difficult for him to pronounce his name: Kirill. In 1934 he took the pseudonym Konstantin.
Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov were natives of Odessa, but met only in Moscow immediately before starting work on their first novel. Subsequently, the duo worked together so well that even Ilf’s daughter Alexandra, who is involved in popularizing the writers’ heritage, called herself the daughter of “Ilf and Petrov.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn communicated more than once with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. For example, Yeltsin asked his opinion about the Kuril Islands (Solzhenitsyn advised giving them to Japan). And in the mid-1990s, after Alexander Isaevich returned from emigration and restored his Russian citizenship, by order of Yeltsin, he was given the Sosnovka-2 state dacha in the Moscow region.
Chekhov sat down to write, dressed in full dress. Kuprin, on the contrary, he loved working completely naked.
When a Russian satirist-writer Arkady Averchenko during the First World War, he brought a story to one of the editors military theme, the censor deleted the phrase from it: “The sky was blue.” It turns out that from these words, enemy spies could guess that what was happening in the south.
The real name of the satirical writer Grigory Gorin There was Ofstein. When asked about the reason for choosing the pseudonym, Gorin replied that it was an abbreviation: “Grisha Ofshtein decided to change his nationality.”
Initially at the grave Gogol in the monastery cemetery lay a stone nicknamed Golgotha because of its similarity to Mount Jerusalem. When they decided to destroy the cemetery, during reburial in another place they decided to install a bust of Gogol on the grave. And that same stone was subsequently placed on Bulgakov’s grave by his wife. In this regard, the phrase is noteworthy Bulgakov, which he repeatedly addressed to Gogol during his lifetime: “Teacher, cover me with your overcoat.”
After the outbreak of World War II Marina Tsvetaeva They were sent for evacuation to the city of Elabuga, in Tatarstan. Boris Pasternak helped her pack her things. He brought a rope to tie up the suitcase, and, assuring of its strength, joked: “The rope will withstand everything, even if you hang yourself.” Subsequently, he was told that it was on her that Tsvetaeva hanged herself in Yelabuga.
The famous phrase “We all came out of Gogol’s overcoat,” which is used to express the humanistic traditions of Russian literature. The authorship of this expression is often attributed to Dostoevsky, but in fact the first person to say it was French critic Eugene Vogüet, who discussed the origins of Dostoevsky’s work. Fyodor Mikhailovich himself cited this quote in a conversation with another French writer, who understood it as the writer’s own words and published them in this light in his work.
As a remedy for a “big belly” A.P. Chekhov prescribed a milk diet to his obese patients. For a week, the unfortunate people had to eat nothing and extinguish attacks of hunger with hundred-gram doses of regular milk. Indeed, due to the fact that milk is quickly and well absorbed, a glass of the drink taken in the morning reduces appetite. So, without feeling hungry, you can hold out until lunch. This property of milk was used by Anton Pavlovich in his medical practice...
Dostoevsky made extensive use of the real topography of St. Petersburg in describing the places in his novel Crime and Punishment. As the writer admitted, he drew up the description of the courtyard in which Raskolnikov hides the things he stole from the pawnbroker’s apartment from personal experience - when one day, while walking around the city, Dostoevsky turned into a deserted courtyard to relieve himself.
Do you know what Pushkin received as a dowry for N.N. Goncharova bronze statue? Not the most convenient dowry! But back in the middle of the 18th century, Afanasy Abramovich Goncharov was one of the richest people in Russia. The sailing fabric produced at his Linen Factory was purchased for the British Navy, and the paper was considered the best in Russia. The best society came to the Linen Factory for feasts, hunts, and performances, and in 1775 Catherine herself visited here.
In memory of this event, the Goncharovs bought bronze statue Empress, cast in Berlin. The order was delivered already under Paul, when it was dangerous to honor Catherine. And then there was no longer enough money to install the monument - Afanasy Nikolaevich Goncharov, Natalia Nikolaevna’s grandfather, who inherited a huge fortune, left his grandchildren debts and a disorganized household. He came up with the idea of giving the statue to his granddaughter as a dowry.
The poet's ordeal with this statue is reflected in his letters. Pushkin calls her “copper grandmother” and tries to sell her to the State Mint for melting down (scrap non-ferrous metals!). In the end, the statue was sold to the foundry of Franz Bard, apparently after the poet's death.
The bard sold the long-suffering statue to the Ekaterinoslav nobility, who erected a monument to the founder of their city on Cathedral Square Ekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk). But when she finally got to the city named after her, the “copper grandmother” continued to travel, changing 3 pedestals, and after the fascist occupation she disappeared completely. Has “grandmother” found peace, or continues her movements around the world?
Main plot immortal work N.V. Gogol’s “The Inspector General” was suggested to the author by A.S. Pushkin. These great classics were good friends. Once Alexander Sergeevich told Nikolai Vasilyevich interesting fact from the life of the city of Ustyuzhna, Novgorod province. It was this incident that formed the basis of the work of Nikolai Gogol.
Throughout the time he was writing The Inspector General, Gogol often wrote to Pushkin about his work, told him what stage it was in, and also repeatedly announced that he wanted to quit it. However, Pushkin forbade him to do this, so “The Inspector General” was still completed.
By the way, Pushkin, who was present at the first reading of the play, was completely delighted with it.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov In correspondence with his wife Olga Leonardovna, Knipper, in addition to standard compliments and affectionate words, used very unusual ones for her: “actress”, “dog”, “snake” and - feel the lyricism of the moment - “the crocodile of my soul”.
Alexander Griboyedov was not only a poet, but also a diplomat. In 1829, he died in Persia along with the entire diplomatic mission at the hands of religious fanatics. To atone for their guilt, the Persian delegation arrived in St. Petersburg with rich gifts, among which was the famous Shah diamond weighing 88.7 carats. Another purpose of the embassy's visit was to mitigate the indemnity imposed on Persia under the terms of the Turkmanchay Peace Treaty. Emperor Nicholas I went to meet the Persians halfway and said: “I consign the ill-fated Tehran incident to eternal oblivion!”
Lev Tolstoy was skeptical about his novels, including War and Peace. In 1871, he sent Fet a letter: “How happy I am... that I will never write verbose rubbish like “War” again.” An entry in his diary in 1908 reads: “People love me for those trifles - “War and Peace”, etc., which seem very important to them.”
The duel, in which Pushkin was mortally wounded, was not initiated by the poet. Pushkin sent a challenge to Dantes in November 1836, the impetus for which was the spread of anonymous lampoons exposing him as a cuckold. However, that duel was canceled thanks to the efforts of the poet’s friends and the proposal made by Dantes to Natalya Goncharova’s sister. But the conflict was not settled, the spread of jokes about Pushkin and his family continued, and then the poet sent Dantes’ adoptive father Heckern an extremely offensive letter in February 1837, knowing that this would entail a challenge from Dantes. And so it happened, and this duel became Pushkin’s last. By the way, Dantes was a relative of Pushkin. At the time of the duel he was married to my own sister Pushkin's wife - Ekaterina Goncharova.
Having fallen ill, Chekhov sent a messenger to the pharmacy for castor oil capsules. The pharmacist sent him two large capsules, which Chekhov returned with the inscription “I am not a horse!” Having received the writer’s autograph, the pharmacist happily replaced them with normal capsules.
Passion Ivan Krylov there was food. Before dinner at a party, Krylov read two or three fables. After the praise, he waited for lunch. With the ease of a young man, despite all his obesity, he went to the dining room as soon as it was announced: “Dinner is served.” The Kyrgyz footman Emelyan tied a napkin under Krylov’s chin, spread the second one on his knees and stood behind the chair.
Krylov ate a huge plate of pies, three plates of fish soup, huge veal chops - a couple of plates, a fried turkey, which he called “Firebird”, and also a pickle: Nezhin cucumbers, lingonberries, cloudberries, plums, eating Antonov apples, like plums, finally began to eat Strasbourg pate, freshly prepared from the freshest butter, truffles and goose livers. After eating several plates, Krylov drank kvass, after which he washed down his food with two glasses of coffee with cream, into which you stick a spoon - it stands.
Writer V.V. Veresaev recalled that all the pleasure, all the bliss of life for Krylov lay in food. At one time he received invitations to small dinners with the Empress, about which he later spoke very unflatteringly because of the meager portions of the dishes served to the table. At one of these dinners, Krylov sat down at the table and, without greeting the hostess, began to eat. The poet who was present Zhukovsky exclaimed in surprise: “Stop it, let the queen at least treat you.” “What if he doesn’t serve you?” answered Krylov, without looking up from his plate. On dinner parties he usually ate a dish of pies, three or four plates of fish soup, several chops, a roast turkey, and a few "trifles." Arriving home, I ate it all with a bowl of sauerkraut and black bread.
By the way, everyone believed that the fabulist Krylov died of volvulus due to overeating. In fact, he died from double pneumonia.
Gogol had a passion for handicrafts. I knitted scarves, cut dresses for my sisters, wove belts, and sewed neckerchiefs for the summer.
Did you know that the typical Russian name Svetlana is only 200 years old? Before it was invented in 1802 by A.Kh. Vostokov, such a name did not exist. It first appeared in his romance “Svetlana and Mstislav”. Then it was fashionable to call literary heroes pseudo-Russian names. This is how Dobrada, Priyata, Miloslava appeared - purely literary, not listed in the calendar. That’s why they didn’t call children that.
Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky took the name for the heroine of his ballad from Vostokov’s romance. "Svetlana" has become very popular work. In the 60s and 70s of the 19th century, “Svetlana” stepped into the people from the pages of books. But there was no such name in the church books! Therefore, girls were baptized as Photinia, Faina, or Lukerya, from Greek and Latin words meaning light. It is interesting that this name is very common in other languages: Italian Chiara, German and French Clara and Claire, Italian Lucia, Celtic Fiona, Tajik Ravshana, ancient Greek Faina - all mean: light, bright. Poets simply filled a linguistic niche!
After October revolution a wave of new names swept over Russia. Svetlana was perceived as a patriotic, modern and understandable name. Even Stalin named his daughter that. And in 1943, this name finally made it into the calendar.
Another interesting fact: this name also had a masculine form - Svetlana and Svet. Demyan Poor Light named his son.
How many monuments to the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin are there in the world? The answer to this question is contained in the book of the Voronezh postcard collector Valery Kononov. All over the world there are them - 270 . No literary figure has ever been awarded so many monuments. The book contains illustrations of one hundred best monuments to the poet. Among them are monuments from the era of Tsarist Russia and Soviet times, and monuments erected abroad. Pushkin himself was never abroad, but there are monuments to him in Cuba, India, Finland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Spain, China, Chile and Norway. There are two monuments each in Hungary and Germany (in Weimar and Dusseldorf). In the USA, one was staged in 1941 in Jackson, New Jersey, the other in 1970 in Monroe, New York. V. Kononov drew one pattern: monuments to Pushkin are usually erected not in large squares, but in parks and squares.
I.A. Krylov in everyday life he was very unkempt. His disheveled, unkempt hair, stained, wrinkled shirts and other signs of sloppiness caused ridicule from his acquaintances. One day the fabulist was invited to a masquerade. - How should I dress to remain unrecognized? - he asked a lady he knew. “Wash yourself, comb your hair, and no one will recognize you,” she answered.
Seven years before death Gogol in his will he warned: “I bequeath my body not to be buried until obvious signs of decomposition appear.” They did not listen to the writer, and when the remains were reburied in 1931, a skeleton with a skull turned to one side was found in the coffin. According to other data, the skull was completely absent.
The duels were quite diverse both in weapons and in form. For example, few people know that there was such an interesting form as the “quadruple duel”. In this type of duel, their seconds fired after the opponents.
By the way, the most famous quadruple duel was over the ballerina Avdotya Istomina: the opponents Zavadovsky and Sheremetev had to shoot first, and the seconds Griboyedov and Yakubovich - second. That time, Yakubovich shot Griboyedov in the palm of his left hand. It was from this wound that it was later possible to identify the corpse of Griboyedov, who was killed by religious fanatics during the destruction of the Russian embassy in Tehran.
An example of the wit of a fabulist Krylova serves as a famous incident in the Summer Garden, where he loved to stroll. Once he met a group of young people there. One of this company decided to make fun of the writer’s physique: “Look what a cloud is coming!” Krylov heard, but was not embarrassed. He looked at the sky and added sarcastically: “It’s really going to rain. That’s why the frogs started croaking.”
Nikolay Karamzin belongs to a brief description of public life in Russia. When, during his trip to Europe, Russian emigrants asked Karamzin what was happening in his homeland, the writer answered with one word: “they are stealing.”
The handwriting of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy the handwriting was terrible. Only his wife could understand everything that was written, who, according to literary researchers, rewrote his “War and Peace” several times. Perhaps Lev Nikolaevich simply wrote so quickly? The hypothesis is quite realistic, given the volume of his works.
Manuscripts Alexandra Pushkina always looked very beautiful. So beautiful that it is almost impossible to read the text. Vladimir Nabokov also had the most terrible handwriting, sketches and famous cards which only his wife could read.
Sergei Yesenin had the most legible handwriting, for which his publishers thanked him more than once.
The source of the expression “No brainer” is a poem Mayakovsky(“It’s clear even to a no brainer - / This Petya was a bourgeois”). It became widespread first in the Strugatskys’ story “The Country of Crimson Clouds”, and then in Soviet boarding schools for gifted children. They recruited teenagers who had two years left to study (classes A, B, C, D, E) or one year (classes E, F, I). Students of the one-year stream were called “hedgehogs”. When they came to the boarding school, the two-year students were already ahead of them in the non-standard program, so at the beginning school year The expression “no brainer” was very relevant.
Determination of Agnia Barto. She was always determined: she saw the goal - and forward, without swaying or retreating. This trait of hers appeared everywhere, in every little detail. Once in Spain, torn by the Civil War, where Barto went in 1937 to the International Congress for the Defense of Culture, where she saw firsthand what fascism was (congress meetings were held in the besieged, burning Madrid), and just before the bombing she went to buy castanets. The sky howls, the walls of the store bounce, and the writer makes a purchase! But the castanets are real, Spanish - for Agnia, who danced beautifully, this was an important souvenir. Alexei Tolstoy later asked Barto sarcastically: had she bought a fan in that store to fan herself during the next raids?..
One day Fyodor Chaliapin introduced his friend to the guests - Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin.“Meet, friends, Alexander Kuprin - the most sensitive nose in Russia.” Contemporaries even joked that Kuprin had something “of a big beast.” For example, many ladies were very offended by the writer when he actually sniffed them like a dog.
And once, a certain French perfumer, having heard from Kuprin a clear layout of the components of his new fragrance, exclaimed: “Such a rare gift and you are just a writer!” Kuprin often delighted his colleagues in the workshop with incredibly precise definitions. For example, in an argument with Bunin and Chekhov, he won with one phrase: “Young girls smell like watermelon and fresh milk. And the old women, here in the south, use wormwood, chamomile, dry cornflowers and incense.”
Anna Akhmatova I composed my first poem at the age of 11. After re-reading it “with a fresh mind,” the girl realized that she needed to improve her art of versification. Which is what I began to actively do.
However, Anna's father did not appreciate her efforts and considered it a waste of time. That is why he forbade using his real last name - Gorenko. Anna decided to choose her great-grandmother’s maiden name, Akhmatova, as her pseudonym.
Russian poets and writers came up with many new words: substance, thermometer (Lomonosov),
industry (Karamzin),
bungling (Saltykov-Shchedrin),
to fade away (Dostoevsky),
mediocrity (Northerner),
exhausted (Khlebnikov).
Pushkin has more than 70 epigraphs, Gogol has no less than 20,
Turgenev has almost the same amount.
Korney Chukovsky's real name was Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov.
Voltaire ridiculed Duke Rohan for his arrogance.
The Duke ordered his servants to beat Voltaire, which was done. Voltaire challenged the Duke to a duel, but the Duke refused because Voltaire was not a nobleman.
When starting to work on a new work, Balzac locked himself in a room for one or two months and closed the shutters tightly so that light would not penetrate through them. He wrote by candlelight, dressed in a robe, for 18 hours every day.
Mark Twain was born in 1835, when Halley's Comet flew close to the Earth. He predicted that he would die the next time she appeared. This is what happened in 1910.
Alexandre Dumas once took part in a duel where the participants drew lots, and the loser had to shoot himself. The lot went to Dumas, who retired to the next room. A shot rang out, and then Dumas returned to the participants with the words: “I shot, but missed.”
The writer Charles Dickens always slept with his head facing north. He also sat facing north when writing his great works.
French writer Guy de Maupassant was one of those who were annoyed by the Eiffel Tower. Nevertheless, he dined at her restaurant every day, explaining that this was the only place in Paris from which the tower could not be seen.
Beaumarchais, after performing his play The Marriage of Figaro, was arrested and imprisoned. Louis XVI, playing cards, wrote an arrest order on the seven of spades.
Jules Verne spent many hours a day studying scientific literature, writing down the facts that interest him on special cards. The card index he compiled could be the envy of the scientific community: it contained more than 20 thousand cards.
Hans Christian Andersen got angry when he was called a children's storyteller and said that he wrote fairy tales for both adults and adults. For the same reason, he ordered that there should not be a single child on his monument, where the storyteller was originally supposed to be surrounded by children.
In 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Bernard Shaw, who called the event "a token of gratitude for the relief he has given the world by not publishing anything this year."
American writer Emily Dickenson (1830-1886) wrote more than 900 poems during her life, only four of which were published during her lifetime.
Some biographies of Erich Maria Remarque indicate that he real name— Kramer (Remarque in reverse). In fact, this is an invention of the Nazis, who, after his emigration from Germany, also spread the rumor that Remarque is the descendants of French Jews.
L.N. Tolstoy was anathematized. Once a year in all churches anathema was solemnly proclaimed to three persons: Mazepa, Grishka Otrepiev and Tolstoy.
The Belarusian poet Adam Mickiewicz was also a science fiction writer. In the novel “The History of the Future,” he wrote about acoustic devices with the help of which, sitting by the fireplace, you can listen to concerts from the city, as well as about mechanisms that allow the inhabitants of the Earth to maintain contact with creatures inhabiting other planets.
Jules Verne never visited Russia, but, nevertheless, the action of 9 of his novels takes place in Russia (in whole or in part).
The American extravagant writer Timothy Dexter wrote a book in 1802 with very peculiar language and the absence of any punctuation. In response to reader outcry, in the second edition of the book he added a special page with punctuation marks, asking readers to arrange them in the text to their liking.
Lord Byron had four pet geese that followed him everywhere, even to social gatherings. Despite being overweight and having a rather severe clubfoot, Byron was considered one of the most energetic and attractive people of his time.
Alexandre Dumas, when writing his works, used the services of many assistants - the so-called “ literary blacks" Among them, the most famous is Auguste Macquet, who invented the plot of “The Count of Monte Cristo” and made a significant contribution to “ Three Musketeers».
The author of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, was sentenced to prison (in 1703) for a satirical article. He spent the day tied to pillory on the square. Those passing by were obliged to spit at him. Defoe was then forty-two years old.
Creator famous novel"The Gadfly" Ethel Lilian Voynich was a composer and considered her musical works even more significant than literary ones.
The famous Soviet writer and public figure Konstantin Simonov lisped, that is, he could not pronounce the letters “r” and “l.” This happened in childhood when, while playing, he accidentally cut his tongue with a razor, and it became difficult for him to pronounce his name: Kirill. In 1934 he took the pseudonym Konstantin.
The expression “Balzac age” arose after the publication of Balzac’s novel “A Thirty-Year-Old Woman” and is acceptable for women no older than 40 years.
Ilf and Petrov are very in an original way they avoided cliché thoughts - they discarded ideas that came to both of their minds at once.
One of the most prolific writers of all times was the Spaniard Lope de Vega. In addition to “Dog in the Manger,” he wrote another thousand eight hundred plays, all of them in verse.
He never worked on a single play for more than three days. At the same time, his work was well paid, so Lope de Vega was practically a multimillionaire, which is extremely rare among writers.
The famous fabulist Aesop was so poor that he sold himself into slavery to pay off his debts. At that moment he was thirty years old.
Robinson Crusoe has a sequel. In it, Robinson again suffers a shipwreck and is forced to get to Europe through all of Russia. He waits out the winter in Tobolsk for eight months. The novel has not been published in Russia since 1935.
Of the American writers, the works of Edgar Allan Poe have been filmed the most - 114 times.
Once upon a time official reception Khrushchev called the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn Ivan Denisovich.
Chekhov sat down to write, dressed in full dress.
Kuprin, on the contrary, loved to work completely naked.
Spanish playwright Antonio Silva was burned at the stake on October 19, 1739. On the same day, his play “The Death of Phaeton” was performed at the theater.
Writer Ernest Vincent Wright has a novel called Gadsby, which is over 50,000 words long. There is not a single letter E (the most common letter in the English language) in the entire novel.
Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem wrote a collection of short stories called Absolute Emptiness. All the stories are united by the fact that they are reviews of non-existent books written by fictitious authors.
Brian Aldiss, an acquaintance of Agatha Christie, once spoke about her methods - “she finished the book before last chapter, then she chose the most unlikely of the suspects and, returning to the beginning, redid some points in order to frame him.”
Lewis Carroll loved to communicate and be friends with little girls, but was not a pedophile, as many of his biographers claim. Often his girlfriends underestimated their age, or he himself called older ladies girls. The reason was that the morality of that era in England strictly condemned communication with a young woman alone, and girls under 14 were considered asexual, and friendship with them was completely innocent.
When the writer Arkady Averchenko brought a story on a military theme to one of the editorial offices during the First World War, the censor deleted the phrase from it: “The sky was blue.” It turns out that from these words, enemy spies could guess that what was happening in the south.
The real name of the satirist writer Grigory Gorin was Ofshtein. When asked about the reason for choosing the pseudonym, Gorin replied that it was an abbreviation: “Grisha Ofshtein decided to change his nationality.”
If you read the works of writer Stephen King, you will notice that most of his stories take place in Maine. Paradoxically, this state has the lowest crime rate in the United States.
James Barrie created the character of Peter Pan - the boy who will never grow up - for a reason. This hero became a dedication to the author’s older brother, who died the day before he turned 14 years old, and forever remained young in the memory of his mother.
Initially, on Gogol’s grave in the monastery cemetery there was a stone nicknamed Golgotha because of its resemblance to Mount Jerusalem. When they decided to destroy the cemetery, during reburial in another place they decided to install a bust of Gogol on the grave. And that same stone was subsequently placed on Bulgakov’s grave by his wife.
In this regard, Bulgakov’s phrase, which he repeatedly addressed to Gogol during his lifetime, is noteworthy: “Teacher, cover me with your overcoat.”
After the outbreak of World War II, Marina Tsvetaeva was sent for evacuation to the city of Elabuga, in Tatarstan. Boris Pasternak helped her pack her things. He brought a rope to tie up the suitcase, and, assuring of its strength, joked: “The rope will withstand everything, even if you hang yourself.” Subsequently, he was told that it was on her that Tsvetaeva hanged herself in Yelabuga.
Daria Dontsova, whose father was the Soviet writer Arkady Vasiliev, grew up surrounded by the creative intelligentsia.
Once at school she was asked to write an essay on the topic: “What was Valentin Petrovich Kataev thinking about when he wrote the story “The Lonely Sail Is White”?”, and Dontsova asked Kataev himself to help her. As a result, Daria received a bad mark, and the literature teacher wrote in her notebook: “Kataev didn’t think about this at all!”
Today I will tell you 20 facts about writers and poets that you did not know. Or maybe they knew, of course. I can’t guarantee you that all this is true, and no one can. It’s your choice to believe it or not.
20 facts about writers and poets that you didn't know
Fact No. 1.Alexander Pushkin was blond!
True, only up to 19 years old. In Memories little Pushkin called a "frisky blond boy", he was blond as a child. Pushkin lost his blond locks due to illness. At the age of 19, he was struck down by fever, and the poet was shaved bald. For a long time, Alexander Sergeevich wore a red skull cap, and then the cap was replaced by dark brown hair. And he began to look the way we are used to.
Fact No. 2. Alexandre Dumas is Pushkin
There is a version according to which our beloved Pushkin did not die at all, but faked his death and left for France, since he spoke French perfectly. There is a whole lot of evidence. One of them is that until Pushkin died, Dumas could not write anything, but after 1837 he began to write brilliant novels one after another. “The Count of Monte Cristo”, “The Three Musketeers”, “Twenty Years Later”, “Queen Margot”...
Fact No. 3. Conan Doyle believed in winged fairies
Yes, the man who invented Sherlock Holmes believed in the existence of fairies. He wrote the book “The Coming of Fairies”, in which he published photographs of winged fairies and examinations proving the authenticity of the photographs. The writer, who believed in the existence of the little people, spent more than a million dollars on this research.
Fact No. 4. Chekhov's pet was a mongoose
The writer brought this strange animal from a trip to the island of Ceylon. Chekhov himself called the mongoose “a cute and independent little animal,” and his family nicknamed him “Bastard.” By the way, Chekhov later exchanged Bastard for a free ticket to the Moscow Zoo.
Fact No. 5.Nikolai Gogol invented the first attraction
The writer converted a windmill into a Ferris wheel and gave peasant children rides on it. But the problem is that Gogol didn’t think about reliable insurance. Then everything is like in the book: “The auditor is coming to us!” In general, the amusement park closed it down.
Fact No. 6. A St. Petersburg journalist received royalties for The Master and Margarita
Dying, Bulgakov bequeathed to give part of the royalties for the book to the one who, after the publication of “The Master and Margarita,” would bring flowers to the writer’s grave, and not just some day, but on the day when he burned the first version of the novel’s manuscript. This person was Vladimir Nevelsky, a journalist from Leningrad. It was to him that Bulgakov’s wife gave a check for a decent amount of royalties.
Fact No. 7.Lewis Carroll invented the tricycle
The author of "Alice in Wonderland" was a mathematician, poet and great inventor. He invented a tricycle, a mnemonic system for remembering names and dates, an electric pen (by the way, what is that?!), a dust jacket, a prototype of everyone’s favorite game Scrabble, which in its Russian counterpart is called “Erudite”.
Fact No. 8.Edgar Poe studied in a cemetery
And, by the way, he was terribly afraid of the dark. The school where little Edgar studied was very poor, and the children did not have textbooks. And a resourceful mathematics teacher took schoolchildren to the cemetery, where they counted the graves and calculated the years of life of the dead.
Fact No. 9. Hans Andersen had Pushkin’s autograph
The Danish storyteller received it from the wife of the owner of the “Kapnist Notebook”, into which Pushkin rewrote the poems he had selected in his own hand. The wife tore out one sheet from the notebook and sent it to Andersen, who was immensely happy. By the way, this leaflet is now kept in the Copenhagen Royal Library.
Fact No. 10. Nikolai Gogol was an excellent knitter.
Gogol had a passion for cooking and handicrafts. He treated his friends to personally prepared dumplings and dumplings, knitted and sewed scarves for himself. But he flatly refused to be photographed - he either covered his face with a top hat, or made faces in every possible way. Therefore, he was rarely invited to social events.
Fact No. 11. The army of Chekhov fans were nicknamed “Antonovkas”
When Anton Chekhov moved to Yalta, his enthusiastic fans also moved to Crimea. They ran after him all over the city, studied his gait and costume, and tried to attract attention. In January 1902, the newspaper “News of the Day” wrote: “In Yalta, a whole army of stupid and unbearably ardent fans of his artistic talent, called here “Antonovkas,” was formed.
Fact No. 12.Mark Twain invented suspenders
He was no worse an inventor than Carroll. He holds patents for self-adjusting suspenders and a scrapbook with adhesive pages. Mark Twain also invented a notepad with tear-off leaves, a closet with sliding shelves, but his most ingenious invention was a tie-tying machine. Apparently it didn't get widespread...
Fact No. 13.Lewis Carroll - Jack the Ripper
Journalist Richard Wallis, author of Jack the Ripper, the Fickle Friend, claims that Jack the Ripper, who brutally murdered London prostitutes, is Lewis Carroll. And Carroll himself constantly repented of some sin in his diaries. But no one knew which one, because Carroll’s relatives destroyed all his diaries. Out of harm's way.
Fact No. 14. Boxing gloves helped Vladimir Nabokov emigrate
Nabokov became interested in boxing while in the army. When he emigrated to America in 1940, three customs officers at the border began to meticulously examine his luggage. But when they saw boxing gloves in the suitcase, they immediately put them on and began jokingly boxing with each other. In general, America and Nabokov liked each other.
Fact No. 15. Jack London is a millionaire
Jack London became the first American writer to earn a million dollars from his work. London only lived for 41 years, but he started working at the age of 9, selling newspapers. After becoming a writer, London worked 15-17 hours a day and wrote about 40 books in his short life.
Fact No. 16. John Tolkien snored terribly
His snoring was so loud that he slept in the bathroom so as not to disturb his wife's sleep. And the author of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy bequeathed never, ever to make films based on his books. But, apparently, the thirst for money prevailed over the wills of the brilliant father, and Tolkien’s children agreed to the film adaptation. Well, we all know what came of it.
Fact No. 17. Vladimir Mayakovsky - Puppy
Mayakovsky was terribly fond of various “cats and dogs,” as he called them. One day, while walking with Lilya Brik, they picked up a stray red puppy. They took him home and named him Puppy. Later, Lilya began to call Mayakovsky Puppy. And from then on he signed his letters and telegrams “Puppy” and always drew a puppy at the bottom.
Fact No. 18. Balzac drank 50 cups of coffee a day
And he wrote exclusively at night. He sat down to work at midnight, dressed in a white robe, he wrote for 15 hours straight, drinking up to 20 cups of strong Turkish coffee only at night or simply chewing coffee beans. So at night he wrote his 100 novels of the literary epic “The Human Comedy”.
Fact No. 19. The first kebab shop in France was opened by Alexandre Dumas
Yes, it was he who introduced kebab to France. Dumas first tried shish kebab while traveling through the Caucasus. He liked the dish so much that he included it in his “Big Cookbook.” Yes, Dumas had one like that. Rumor has it that the writer even cooked crow kebab for the French. They praised.
Well, if you believe fact No. 2, then Alexander Pushkin was such an ardent lover fried meat on skewers...
Fact No. 20. Dickens slept with only his head to the north
And he sat down to write only when his face was turned to the north. And he couldn’t work at all if the chair and table in the office weren’t positioned the way he wanted. Therefore, before starting to write, he always rearranged the furniture.
Illustrations by Katerina Karpenko
(except for the illustration to the fact about Vladimir Mayakovsky)
23 October 2012, 05:14
The phrase “We all came out of Gogol’s overcoat” is well known, which is used to express the humanistic traditions of Russian literature. The authorship of this expression is often attributed to Dostoevsky, but in fact the first person to say it was the French critic Eugene Vogüe, who discussed the origins of Dostoevsky’s work. Fyodor Mikhailovich himself cited this quote in a conversation with another French writer, who understood it as the writer’s own words and published them in this light in his work. The first manuscript " Strange story Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" Stevenson was burned by his wife. Biographers have two versions of why she did this: some say that she considered such a plot unworthy of a writer, others say that she was unhappy with the incomplete disclosure of the topic of split personality. Nevertheless, Stevenson, suffering from tuberculosis, re-wrote this novella in three days, which became one of his most commercially successful works and allowed his family to get out of debt. 
The French writer Stendhal, after a visit to Florence in 1817, wrote: “When I left the Church of the Holy Cross, my heart began to beat, it seemed to me that the source of life had dried up, I walked, afraid of collapsing to the ground...” The masterpieces of art that excite the writer can have a similar effect on other people, causing rapid heartbeat and dizziness - this psychosomatic disorder is called Stendhal syndrome. The person who has “picked up” it experiences extremely heightened emotions from contemplating the paintings, as if transported into the space of the image. Often the feelings are so strong that people try to destroy works of art. In more in a broad sense Stendhal syndrome can be caused by any observed beauty - for example, nature or women. There is a widely known legend about the medieval Swiss archer William Tell, who, for disobedience to the German governor, was forced to shoot at the apple on the head of his own son, and Tell did not miss. Inspired by this story, the American writer William Burroughs wanted to surprise the guests at one of the parties. He put a glass on the head of his wife Joan Vollmer and fired a pistol - the wife died from a hit in the head. 
JK Rowling finished her first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, in 1995. The literary agent who agreed to represent her sent the manuscript to 12 publishing houses, but it was rejected by all of them. Only a year later the manuscript was accepted by the small London publishing house Bloomsbury, although it Chief Editor Even after the book was approved, he was sure that Rowling would not make much money from children's books, and advised her to find a permanent job. IN last years During his life, Ernest Hemingway became depressed and irritable, telling family and friends that FBI agents were following him everywhere. Several times the writer was treated in a psychiatric clinic, from where he also called friends, saying that there were bugs in the ward and their conversation was being listened to. Under the influence of electric shock, he lost the ability to write and formulate his thoughts as he could before. Finally, on July 2, 1961, Hemingway shot himself with a gun in his home. Several decades later, an official request was made to the FBI about the writer’s case, to which the answer came: surveillance and wiretapping took place, including in that mental hospital, since the authorities seemed suspicious of his activity in Cuba. 
The source of the plot for Gogol's play "The Inspector General" was real case in the city of Ustyuzhna, Novgorod province, and Pushkin told the author about this incident. It was Pushkin who advised Gogol to continue writing the work when he more than once wanted to give up this work. One day, Francois Rabelais did not have the money to get from Lyon to Paris. Then he prepared three bags with the inscriptions “Poison for the King”, “Poison for the Queen” and “Poison for the Dauphin” and left them in hotel room on a prominent place. Upon learning of this, the hotel owner immediately reported to the authorities. Rabelais was captured and convoyed to the capital directly to King Francis I so that he could decide the writer’s fate. It turned out that the packages contained sugar, which Rabelais immediately drank with a glass of water, and then told the king, with whom they were friends, how he solved his problem. 
Daria Dontsova, whose father was the Soviet writer Arkady Vasiliev, grew up surrounded by the creative intelligentsia. Once at school she was asked to write an essay on the topic: “What was Valentin Petrovich Kataev thinking about when he wrote the story “The Lonely Sail Whitens”?”, and Dontsova asked Kataev himself to help her. As a result, Daria received a bad grade, and the literature teacher wrote in her notebook: “Kataev was not thinking about this at all!” 
The fairy tale “The Wise Man of Oz” by the American writer Frank Baum was not published in Russian until 1991. At the end of the 30s, Alexander Volkov, who was a mathematician by training and taught this science at one of the Moscow institutes, began to study English language and for practice I decided to translate this book in order to retell it to my children. They really liked it, they began to demand a continuation, and Volkov, in addition to the translation, began to come up with something of his own. This was the beginning of his literary journey, the result of which was “The Wizard of the Emerald City” and many other tales about the Magic Land. 
Alexandre Dumas, when writing his works, used the services of many assistants - the so-called “literary blacks”. Among them, the most famous is Auguste Macquet, who, according to the writer's most famous biographer, Claude Schoppe, conceived the basis of the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo and made a significant contribution to The Three Musketeers. Although it should be noted that it was thanks to Dumas’ talent that his novels, even if they grew from the rough notes of his assistants, were saturated with vivid details and lively dialogues. Alexandre Dumas once took part in a duel where the participants drew lots, and the loser had to shoot himself. The lot went to Dumas, who retired to the next room. A shot rang out, and then Dumas returned to the participants with the words: “I shot, but missed.” 
Some biographies of Erich Maria Remarque indicate that his real name is Kramer (Remarque backwards). In fact, this is an invention of the Nazis, who, after his emigration from Germany, also spread the rumor that Remarque is the descendants of French Jews. 
Dostoevsky made extensive use of the real topography of St. Petersburg in describing the places in his novel Crime and Punishment. As the writer admitted, he drew up the description of the courtyard in which Raskolnikov hides the things he stole from the pawnbroker’s apartment from personal experience - when one day, while walking around the city, Dostoevsky turned into a deserted courtyard to relieve himself. 
In 1976, progressive income tax Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren was 102%. The satirical article she wrote caused fierce controversy, which is believed to be the reason why members of the Swedish Social Democratic Party did not enter the government after the next elections for the first time in 40 years. 
After the outbreak of World War II, Marina Tsvetaeva was sent for evacuation to the city of Elabuga, in Tatarstan. Boris Pasternak helped her pack her things. He brought a rope to tie up the suitcase, and, assuring of its strength, joked: “The rope will withstand everything, even if you hang yourself.” Subsequently, he was told that it was on her that Tsvetaeva hanged herself in Yelabuga. 
The famous formula “Twice two equals five,” which George Orwell repeatedly emphasized in his dystopian novel “1984,” came to his mind when he heard the Soviet slogan “Five-Year Plan in Four Years!” The term “robot” was coined by the Czech writer Karel Capek. Although at first in his play he called humanoid mechanisms “laboratories” (from the Latin labor - work), he did not like this word. Then, on the advice of his brother Josef, he renamed them robots. By the way, in Czech, the word robota, the original word for this neologism, means not just work, but hard work or hard labor. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, in correspondence with his wife Olga Leonardovna Knipper, used to her, in addition to standard compliments and affectionate words, very unusual ones: “actress”, “dog”, “snake” and - feel the lyricism of the moment - “the crocodile of my soul”. Having fallen ill, Chekhov sent a messenger to the pharmacy for castor oil capsules. The pharmacist sent him two large capsules, which Chekhov returned with the inscription “I am not a horse!” Having received the writer’s autograph, the pharmacist happily replaced them with normal capsules. 
When Alexandre Dumas wrote “The Three Musketeers” in serial format in one of the newspapers, the contract with the publisher stipulated line-by-line payment for the manuscript. To increase the fee, Dumas invented a servant of Athos named Grimaud, who spoke and answered all questions exclusively in monosyllables, in most cases “yes” or “no.” The continuation of the book, entitled “Twenty Years Later,” was paid by the word, and Grimaud became a little more talkative. Initially, on Gogol’s grave in the monastery cemetery there was a stone nicknamed Golgotha because of its resemblance to Mount Jerusalem. When they decided to destroy the cemetery, during reburial in another place they decided to install a bust of Gogol on the grave. And that same stone was subsequently placed on Bulgakov’s grave by his wife. In this regard, Bulgakov’s phrase, which he repeatedly addressed to Gogol during his lifetime, is noteworthy: “Teacher, cover me with your overcoat.” 
Alexander Griboyedov was not only a poet, but also a diplomat. In 1829, he died in Persia along with the entire diplomatic mission at the hands of religious fanatics. To atone for their guilt, the Persian delegation arrived in St. Petersburg with rich gifts, among which was the famous Shah diamond weighing 88.7 carats. 
James Barrie created the image of Peter Pan - the boy who will never grow up - for a reason. This hero became a dedication to the author’s older brother, who died the day before he turned 14 years old, and forever remained young in the memory of his mother. 
In 1835, Halley's comet flew near the Earth, and two weeks after its perihelion, Mark Twain was born. In 1909 he wrote: “I came into this world with a comet and I will leave with it too when it arrives next year.” And so it happened: Twain died on April 21, 1910, the day after the comet’s next perihelion. 
The term “bata-kusai” (translated as “smelling of oil”) is not milk drinkers The Japanese call everything foreign and pro-Western. Elderly Japanese used the same expression to describe the writer Haruki Murakami for his adherence to the Western way of life. 
Lewis Carroll loved to communicate and be friends with little girls, but was not a pedophile, as many of his biographers claim. Often his girlfriends underestimated their age, or he himself called older ladies girls. The reason was that the morality of that era in England strictly condemned communication with a young woman alone, and girls under 14 were considered asexual, and friendship with them was completely innocent. The French writer and humorist Alphonse Allais, a quarter of a century before Kazimir Malevich, painted a black square - a painting called “The Battle of Negroes in a Cave in the Dead of Night.” He also anticipated John Cage's minimalist musical piece of only silence "4'33" by almost seventy years with his similar work "Funeral March for the Funeral of the Great Deaf Man." 
Leo Tolstoy was skeptical about his novels, including War and Peace. In 1871, he sent Fet a letter: “How happy I am... that I will never write verbose rubbish like “War” again.” An entry in his diary in 1908 reads: “People love me for those trifles - “War and Peace”, etc., which seem very important to them.” 
The expression “Balzac age” arose after the publication of Balzac’s novel “A Thirty-Year-Old Woman” and is acceptable for women no older than 40 years. 
French writer Guy de Maupassant was one of those who was irritated by the Eiffel Tower. Nevertheless, he dined at her restaurant every day, explaining that this was the only place in Paris from which the tower could not be seen. The American extravagant writer Timothy Dexter wrote a book in 1802 with very peculiar language and the absence of any punctuation. In response to reader outcry, in the second edition of the book he added a special page with punctuation marks, asking readers to arrange them in the text to their liking. 
Franz Kafka published only a few short stories during his lifetime. Being seriously ill, he asked his friend Max Brod to burn all his works after his death, including several unfinished novels. Brod did not fulfill this request, but, on the contrary, ensured the publication of the works that brought Kafka worldwide fame. 
Shakespeare's hero had real prototype Italian Maurizio Othello. He commanded the Venetian forces in Cyprus and lost his wife there under extremely suspicious circumstances. Diminutive name Mauro in Italian also means “Moor,” which led to Shakespeare’s mistake in assigning such a nationality to the hero. 
Winnie the Pooh got the first part of his name from one of the real toys of Christopher Robin, the son of the writer Milne. The toy was named after a female bear at the London Zoo named Winnipeg, who came there from Canada. The second part - Pooh - was borrowed from the name of the swan of acquaintances of the Milne family. In 1925, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Bernard Shaw, who called the event "a token of gratitude for the relief he has given the world by not publishing anything this year."