Russian writer, literary critic, doctor philological sciences. Real name and surname Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov. Works for children in verse and prose ("Moidodyr", "Cockroach", "Aibolit", etc.) are constructed in the form of a comic, action-packed "game" with an edifying purpose. Books: "The Mastery of Nekrasov" (1952, Lenin Prize, 1962), about A.P. Chekhov, W. Whitman, the Art of Translation, the Russian language, about child psychology and speech ("From Two to Five", 1928). Criticism, translations, artistic memoirs. Diaries.
Biography
Born on March 19 (31 n.s.) in St. Petersburg. When he was three years old, his parents divorced, and he stayed with his mother. They lived in the south, in poverty. He studied at the Odessa gymnasium, from the fifth grade of which he was expelled when, by special decree, educational establishments"liberated" from children of "low" origin.
WITH teenage years led a working life, read a lot, learned English on his own and French languages. In 1901 he began publishing in the newspaper Odessa News, for which he was sent to London in 1903 as a correspondent. He lived in England for a whole year, studied English literature, and wrote about it in the Russian press. After returning, he settled in St. Petersburg and started literary criticism, collaborated in the magazine "Libra".
In 1905, Chukovsky organized the weekly satirical magazine Signal (financed by the singer Bolshoi Theater L. Sobinov), where cartoons and poems with anti-government content were placed. The magazine was subjected to repression for “defaming the existing order”; the publisher was sentenced to six months in prison.
After the revolution of 1905 1907, Chukovsky’s critical essays appeared in various publications, and were later collected in the books “From Chekhov to the Present Day” (1908), “ Critical stories"(1911), "Faces and Masks" (1914), etc.
In 1912, Chukovsky settled in the Finnish town of Kuokkola, where he became friends with I. Repin, Korolenko, Andreev, A. Tolstoy, V. Mayakovsky and others.
Later he would write memoirs and fiction books about these people. The versatility of Chukovsky’s interests was expressed in his literary activity: published translations from W. Whitman, studied literature for children, children's verbal creativity, worked on the legacy of N. Nekrasov, his favorite poet. He published the book “Nekrasov as an Artist” (1922), a collection of articles “Nekrasov” (1926), and the book “The Mastery of Nekrasov” (1952).
In 1916, at the invitation of Gorky, Chukovsky began to head the children's department of the publishing house "Parus" and began writing for children: poetic tales "Crocodile" (1916), "Moidodyr" (1923), "Tsokotukha Fly" (1924), "Barmaley" (1925 ), "Aibolit" (1929), etc.
Chukovsky owns a whole series of books on the craft of translation: “Principles of Literary Translation” (1919), “The Art of Translation” (1930, 1936), “ High art"(1941, 1968). In 1967 the book "About Chekhov" was published.
IN last years During his life, he published essays about Zoshchenko, Zhitkov, Akhmatova, Pasternak and many others.
At the age of 87, K. Chukovsky died on October 28, 1968. He was buried in Peredelkino near Moscow, where he lived long years.
March 31 marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of the Russian writer and translator Korney Chukovsky.
Russian and Soviet poet, writer, critic, literary critic, translator Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (real name Nikolai Ivanovich Korneychukov) was born on March 31 (19 according to the old style) March 1882 in St. Petersburg. Chukovsky's father, St. Petersburg student Emmanuel Levenson, in whose family Chukovsky's mother, peasant woman Ekaterina Korneychukova, was a servant, left her three years after the birth of his son. Together with her son and eldest daughter, she was forced to leave for Odessa.
Nikolai studied at the Odessa gymnasium, but in 1898 he was expelled from the fifth grade, when, by a special decree (the decree on cooks' children), educational institutions were exempt from children of low origin.
From his youth, Chukovsky led a working life, read a lot, and independently studied English and French.
In 1901, Chukovsky began publishing in the newspaper "Odessa News", where he was brought by an older friend from the gymnasium, later a politician, ideologist of the Zionist movement, Vladimir Jabotinsky.
In 1903-1904, Chukovsky was sent to London as a correspondent for Odessa News. Almost every day he visited the free reading room of the British Museum library, where he read English writers, historians, philosophers, publicists. This helped the writer subsequently develop own style, which was later called paradoxical and witty.
Since August 1905, Chukovsky lived in St. Petersburg, collaborated with many St. Petersburg magazines, and organized (with the subsidy of singer Leonid Sobinov) a weekly magazine political satire"Signal". Fedor Sologub, Teffi, Alexander Kuprin were published in the magazine. For his bold cartoons and anti-government poems in four published issues, Chukovsky was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison.
In 1906, he became a regular contributor to Valery Bryusov's magazine "Scales". From this year, Chukovsky also collaborated with the Niva magazine and the Rech newspaper, where he published critical essays about modern writers, later collected in the books “From Chekhov to the Present Day” (1908), “Critical Stories” (1911), “Faces and Masks” (1914), “Futurists” (1922).
Since the fall of 1906, Chukovsky settled in Kuokkala (now the village of Repino), where he became close to the artist Ilya Repin and lawyer Anatoly Koni, met Vladimir Korolenko, Alexander Kuprin, Fyodor Chaliapin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Leonid Andreev, Alexei Tolstoy. Later, Chukovsky spoke about many cultural figures in his memoirs - “Repin. Gorky. Mayakovsky. Bryusov. Memoirs” (1940), “From Memoirs” (1959), “Contemporaries” (1962).
In Kuokkala the poet translated "Leaves of Grass" American poet Walt Whitman (published in 1922), wrote articles on children's literature ("Save the Children" and "God and the Child", 1909) and the first fairy tales (the anthology "Firebird", 1911). An almanac of autographs and drawings was also collected here, reflecting creative life several generations of artists - "Chukokkala", the name of which was invented by Repin.
This humorous handwritten almanac, in which Alexander Blok, Zinaida Gippius, Nikolai Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Ilya Repin, as well as writers Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, was first published in 1979 in an abridged version.
In February-March 1916, Chukovsky made a second trip to England as part of a delegation of Russian journalists at the invitation of the British government. In the same year, Maxim Gorky invited him to head the children's department of the Parus publishing house. The result collaboration became the almanac "Yolka", published in 1918.
In the fall of 1917, Korney Chukovsky returned to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), where he lived until 1938.
In 1918-1924 he was part of the management of the World Literature publishing house.
In 1919, he participated in the creation of the House of Arts and headed its literary department.
In 1921, Chukovsky organized a dacha colony for Petrograd writers and artists in Kholomki (Pskov province), where he “saved his family and himself from hunger,” and took part in the creation of the children’s department of the Epoch publishing house (1924).
In 1924-1925 he worked in the magazine "Russian Contemporary", where his books "Alexander Blok as a Man and a Poet" and "Two Souls of Maxim Gorky" were published.
In Leningrad, Chukovsky published books for children "Crocodile" (published in 1917 under the title "Vanya and the Crocodile"), "Moidodyr" (1923), "Cockroach" (1923), "Tsokotukha Fly" (1924, under the title "Mukhina" wedding"), "Barmaley" (1925), "Aibolit" (1929, entitled "The Adventures of Aibolit") and the book "From Two to Five", which was first published in 1928 under the title "Little Children".
Children's fairy tales became the reason for the persecution of Chukovsky that began in the 1930s, the so-called fight against “Chukovism,” initiated by Nadezhda Krupskaya, the wife of Vladimir Lenin. On February 1, 1928, her article “About K. Chukovsky’s Crocodile” was published in the Pravda newspaper. On March 14, Maxim Gorky spoke in defense of Chukovsky on the pages of Pravda with his “Letter to the Editor.” In December 1929 in " Literary newspaper"Korney Chukovsky publicly renounced his fairy tales and promised to create a collection of "Merry Collective Farm". He was depressed by the event and could not write for a long time after that. By his own admission, from that time on he turned from an author into an editor. Chukovsky's persecution campaign because of fairy tales were resumed in 1944 and 1946 - were published critical articles to "Let's Defeat Barmaley" (1943) and "Bibigon" (1945).
From 1938 until the end of his life, Korney Chukovsky lived in Moscow and at his dacha in Peredelkino, near Moscow. He left the capital only during the Great Patriotic War, from October 1941 to 1943, evacuating to Tashkent.
In Moscow, Chukovsky published children's fairy tales "The Stolen Sun" (1945), "Bibigon" (1945), "Thanks to Aibolit" (1955), "Fly in the Bath" (1969). For younger children school age Chukovsky retold the ancient Greek myth of Perseus, translated English folk songs ("Barabek", "Jenny", "Kotausi and Mausi" and others). In Chukovsky's retelling, children became acquainted with "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" by Erich Raspe, "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe, and "The Little Rag" by James Greenwood. Chukovsky translated Kipling's fairy tales, works by Mark Twain ("Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn"), Gilbert Chesterton, O. Henry ("Kings and Cabbages", stories).
Devoting a lot of time to literary translation, Chukovsky wrote the research work “The Art of Translation” (1936), later revised into “High Art” (1941), expanded editions of which were published in 1964 and 1968.
Fascinated by English-language literature, Chukovsky explored the detective genre, which was gaining momentum in the first half of the 20th century. He read a lot of detective stories, copied out particularly good passages from them, and “collected” methods of murder. He was the first in Russia to talk about the emerging phenomenon popular culture, citing as an example the detective genre in literature and cinema in the article “Nat Pinkerton and modern literature" (1908).
Korney Chukovsky was a historian and researcher of the work of the poet Nikolai Nekrasov. He owns the books “Stories about Nekrasov” (1930) and “The Mastery of Nekrasov” (1952), dozens of articles about the Russian poet have been published, and hundreds of Nekrasov’s lines banned by censorship have been found. Articles about Vasily Sleptsov, Nikolai Uspensky, Avdotya Panayeva, Alexander Druzhinin are devoted to the era of Nekrasov.
Treating language as a living being, Chukovsky in 1962 wrote a book “Alive as Life” about the Russian language, in which he described several problems modern speech, the main disease of which he called “clericalism” - a word invented by Chukovsky, denoting the contamination of the language with bureaucratic cliches.
The famous and recognized writer Korney Chukovsky, as a thinking person, did not accept many things in Soviet society. In 1958, Chukovsky was the only Soviet writer, who congratulated Boris Pasternak on the award Nobel Prize. He was one of the first to discover Solzhenitsyn, the first in the world to write an admiring review of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and gave the writer shelter when he fell into disgrace. In 1964, Chukovsky worked in defense of the poet Joseph Brodsky, who was put on trial for “parasitism.”
In 1957, Korney Chukovsky was awarded the academic degree of Doctor of Philology, and in 1962 - the honorary title of Doctor of Literature from Oxford University.
Chukovsky was awarded the Order of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor and medals. In 1962, he was awarded the Lenin Prize for his book “The Mastery of Nekrasov.”
Korney Chukovsky died in Moscow on October 28, 1969. The writer is buried at Peredelkinskoye cemetery.
On May 25, 1903, Chukovsky married Maria Borisovna Goldfeld (1880-1955). The Chukovsky couple had four children - Nikolai, Lydia, Boris and Maria. Eleven-year-old Maria died in 1931 from tuberculosis, Boris died in 1942 near Moscow during the Great Patriotic War.
Chukovsky's eldest son Nikolai (1904-1965) was also a writer. He is the author of biographical stories about James Cook, Jean La Perouse, Ivan Kruzenshtern, the novel "Baltic Sky" about the defenders of besieged Leningrad, psychological stories and short stories, translations.
Daughter Lydia (1907-1996) - writer and human rights activist, author of the story "Sofya Petrovna" (1939-1940, published in 1988), which is a contemporary testimony about the tragic events of 1937, works about Russian writers, memoirs about Anna Akhmatova, and also works on the theory and practice of editorial art.
The material was prepared based on information from open sources.
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (real name - Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov). Born on March 19 (31), 1882 in St. Petersburg - died on October 28, 1969 in 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.
Nikolai Korneychukov, who later took literary pseudonym“Korney Chukovsky”, born in St. Petersburg on March 31 according to the new style; the frequently occurring date of his birth, April 1, appeared due to an error when switching to a new style(13 days added, not 12, as it should have been for the 19th century). Nevertheless, Korney himself celebrated his birthday on April 1.
Nikolai’s mother was a peasant woman from the Poltava province, Ekaterina Osipovna Korneichukova, who worked as a maid in St. Petersburg for the Levenson family. She lived in a civil marriage with the son of the family, student Emmanuel Solomonovich Levenson. The boy who was born already had a three-year-old sister, Maria, from the same union. Soon after the birth of Nikolai, student Levenson left his illegitimate family and married a woman “of his circle.” Ekaterina Osipovna 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 music and 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 of Israel - in 1888 or 1889!!!”.
For some time, the future writer studied at the second Odessa gymnasium (later it 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, according to his own statements, due to his low origin. He described these events in his autobiographical story "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 the godfather), “Stepanovich”, “Emmanuilovich”, “Manuilovich”, “Emelyanovich”, sister Marusya bore the patronymic “Emmanuilovna” or “Manuilovna”.
From the beginning of his 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 - bore (at least after the revolution) the surname Chukovsky and the patronymic Korneevich / Korneevna.
Since 1901, Chukovsky began writing articles in Odessa News. Chukovsky was introduced to literature by his close friend at school, a journalist. 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 the “Tutorial in English"Ohlendorf), and tempted by the high salary for those times - the publisher promised 100 rubles monthly - he 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- read in the original, Thackeray.
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 magazine's authors 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 came to the Finnish town of Kuokkala (now Repino, Kurortny district (St. Petersburg)), where he made a close acquaintance with the artist and 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 it is formed "Chukokkala"(invented by Repin) - the name of the handwritten humorous almanac that Korney Ivanovich kept until 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, trashed tabloid literature (articles about Lydia Charskaya, Anastasia Verbitskaya, “Nata Pinkerton”, etc.), wittily defended the futurists - both in articles and in public lectures - from the attacks of traditional criticism (he met Mayakovsky in Kuokkala and later became friends with him), although the futurists themselves were not always grateful to him for this; developed his own recognizable style (reconstruction of the psychological appearance of the 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 - "Book about Alexander Blok"(“Alexander Blok as a person 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.
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. 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 the poems that were either previously prohibited by tsarist censorship, or were “vetoed” by copyright holders. About a quarter of Nekrasov’s currently known poetic lines were introduced 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”, “The 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.
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".
Chukovsky had another passion in his 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).
All my other works are overshadowed to such an extent by my children's fairy tales that in the minds of many readers, apart from “Moidodyrs” and “Tsokotukha Fly”, I wrote nothing at all.
In February 1928, Pravda published an article by Deputy people's commissar 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.”
According to researcher L. Strong, the widow’s speech at that time actually meant a “ban on the profession,” and among party critics and editors the term “Chukovism” soon arose.
In December 1929, the Literary Gazette published a letter from Chukovsky renouncing fairy tales and promising to create the collection “Merry Collective Farm.” Chukovsky took the abdication hard (his daughter also fell ill with tuberculosis): he really would not write a single fairy tale after that (until 1942), as well as the mentioned collection.
The 1930s were marked by two personal tragedies for Chukovsky: in 1931 she died after serious illness his daughter Murochka, and in 1938 the husband of his daughter Lydia, physicist Matvey Bronstein, was shot. In 1938, Chukovsky moved from Leningrad to Moscow.
In the 1930s, Chukovsky worked a lot on the theory of literary translation (“The Art of Translation” of 1936 was republished before the start of the war, in 1941, under the title “High Art”) and translations themselves into Russian (, and others, including in the form "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.
As the NKGB reported to the Central Committee, during the war years Chukovsky said: “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. "War Tale" K. Chukovsky characterizes the author as a person who either does not understand the duty of a writer in the Patriotic War, or who deliberately trivializes the great tasks of raising children in the spirit of socialist patriotism.
In the 1960s, K. Chukovsky started retelling 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 of the Soviet government. In particular, Chukovsky was demanded that the words “God” and “Jews” not be mentioned in the book; by the efforts of writers a pseudonym was invented for God "The Wizard of Yahweh".
A book called "The Tower of Babel and Other Ancient Legends" was published by the Children's Literature publishing house in 1968. However, the entire circulation was destroyed by the authorities. The circumstances of the publication ban were later described by Valentin Berestov, one of the authors of the book: “It was the very height 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 1988.
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 (Litvinov, 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 Secretary General The CPSU Central Committee is 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 of his life, his museum now operates.
Family of Korney Chukovsky:
Wife (since May 26, 1903) - Maria Borisovna Chukovskaya (nee Maria Aron-Berovna Goldfeld, 1880-1955). Daughter of accountant Aron-Ber Ruvimovich Goldfeld and housewife Tuba (Tauba) Oizerovna Goldfeld.
The son is a poet, prose writer and translator Nikolai Korneevich Chukovsky (1904-1965). His wife is translator Marina Nikolaevna Chukovskaya (1905-1993).
Daughter - writer and dissident Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya (1907-1996). Her first husband was the literary critic and literary historian Caesar Samoilovich Volpe (1904-1941), her second was the physicist and popularizer of science Matvey Petrovich Bronstein (1906-1938).
Son - Boris Korneevich Chukovsky (1910-1941), died shortly after the start of the Great Patriotic War, in the fall of 1941, returning from reconnaissance near the Borodino field.
Daughter - Maria Korneevna Chukovskaya (Murochka) (1920-1931), the heroine of her father’s children’s poems and stories. Granddaughter - Natalya Nikolaevna Kostyukova (Chukovskaya), Tata (born 1925), microbiologist, professor, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Honored Scientist of Russia.
Granddaughter - literary critic, chemist Elena Tsesarevna Chukovskaya (1931-2015).
Grandson - Nikolai Nikolaevich Chukovsky, Gulya (born 1933), communications engineer.
Grandson - cinematographer Evgeny Borisovich Chukovsky (1937-1997).
Grandson - Dmitry Chukovsky (born 1943), husband of the famous tennis player Anna Dmitrieva. Great-granddaughter - Maria Ivanovna Shustitskaya (born 1950), anesthesiologist and resuscitator.
Great-grandson - Boris Ivanovich Kostyukov (1956-2007), historian-archivist.
Great-grandson - Yuri Ivanovich Kostyukov (born 1956), doctor.
Great-granddaughter - Marina Dmitrievna Chukovskaya (born 1966).
Great-grandson - Dmitry Chukovsky (born 1968), chief producer of the directorate of NTV-Plus sports channels.
Great-grandson - Andrey Evgenievich Chukovsky (born 1960), chemist.
Great-grandson - Nikolai Evgenievich Chukovsky (born 1962).
Nephew - mathematician Vladimir Abramovich Rokhlin (1919-1984).
Russian Soviet poet, publicist, literary critic, translator and literary critic, children's writer, journalist
Korney Chukovsky
short biography
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky(real name - Nikolay Korneychukov, March 19, 1882, St. Petersburg, - October 28, 1969, Moscow) - Russian and 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 the literary pseudonym Korney Chukovsky, was born in St. Petersburg on March 19 (31), 1882 to a peasant woman, Ekaterina Osipovna Korneichukova; his father was the hereditary honorary citizen Emmanuel 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 the birth of his son, Levenson 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 (now Panteleimonovskaya), 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 Madame Bekhteeva's kindergarten , about his stay in which he left the following memories: “We marched to music and 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 of Israel - in 1888 or 1889!!!”. For some time, the future writer studied at the second Odessa gymnasium (later it became the fifth). His classmate at that time was Boris Zhitkov (in the future also a writer and traveler), with whom he had young Nicholas Korneichukova developed friendly relations. 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 was indicated in different ways - Vasilievich (in the marriage and baptism certificate of his son Nikolai, subsequently fixed in most later biographies as part of the “real name”; given by godfather), Stepanovich, Emmanuilovich, Manuilovich, Emelyanovich, sister Marusya bore the middle name Emmanuilovna or Manuilovna. From the beginning of his 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 - bore (at least after the revolution) the surname Chukovsky and the 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 at the British Museum. But in London, Chukovsky became thoroughly acquainted with English literature - he 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 magazine's authors were such famous writers as 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 of 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 kept until the last days of his 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 of the psychological appearance of the writer based on numerous quotes from him).
Osip Mandelstam, Korney Chukovsky, Benedikt Livshits and Yuri Annenkov, farewell to the front. Random photo of Karl Bulla. 1914
In 1916, Chukovsky and a delegation from the 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 turned out to be ungrateful for critical activity, and Chukovsky had to “bury” this talent of his, which he later regretted.
Literary criticism
V.V. Mayakovsky with Boris and K.I. Chukovsky
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 over the course of 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 introduced 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”, “The Thin Man” and others).
In addition to Nekrasov, Chukovsky studied the biography and work of a number of other writers of the 19th century (Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Sleptsov), which is the subject of, in particular, his book “People and Books of the Sixties,” and 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”. His famous fairy tales “Moidodyr” and “Cockroach” were published in 1923, and “Barmaley” in 1924.
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 disrespectful to 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 we don’t need to give “Krokodil” to our guys...
Soon, the term “Chukovism” arose 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, and the next fairy tale will be written only 13 years later.
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 by standard project in Stalingrad and other cities of Russia and Ukraine. The composition is an illustration to Chukovsky’s fairy tale of the same name. 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 children and their verbal creativity in the book “From Two to Five” (1933).
All my other works are overshadowed to such an extent by my children's fairy tales that in the minds of many readers, apart from “Moidodyrs” and “Tsokotukha Fly”, I wrote nothing at all.
Chukovsky K. I. “About myself” // Collected works: In 15 volumes. T. 1. - 2nd ed., electronic, revised.. - M.: FTM Agency, Ltd., 2013. - P. 11 -12. - 598 p.
Other works
In the 1930s, Chukovsky worked a lot on the theory of literary translation (the book “The Art of Translation,” published in 1936, was 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 said: “... 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. (Aibolitia is at 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 either does not understand the duty of a writer in the Patriotic War, or who deliberately trivializes 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 of the Soviet government. 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. The book entitled “The Tower of Babel and Other Ancient Legends” was published by the publishing house “Children's Literature” in 1968. However, the entire circulation was destroyed by the authorities. The 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 has been 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, Litvinov, his daughter Lydia was also a prominent human rights activist). At the dacha in Peredelkino, where he constantly lived in recent years, he organized meetings with local children, talked with them, read poetry, invited famous people, famous pilots, artists, writers, poets to meetings. Peredelkino children, who have long since become adults, still remember 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 of his life, his museum now operates.
From the memoirs of Yu. G. Oksman:
Lidia 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 the uniform ones, 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 Academy pedagogical sciences..." All this is pronounced with 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.
Family
- Wife (since May 26, 1903) - Maria Borisovna Chukovskaya (nee Maria Aron-Berovna Goldfeld, 1880-1955). Daughter of accountant Aron-Ber Ruvimovich Goldfeld and housewife Tuba (Tauba) Oizerovna Goldfeld.
- The son is a poet, prose writer and translator Nikolai Korneevich Chukovsky (1904-1965). His wife is translator Marina Nikolaevna Chukovskaya (1905-1993).
- Daughter - writer and dissident Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya (1907-1996). Her first husband was the literary critic and literary historian Caesar Samoilovich Volpe (1904-1941), her second was the physicist and popularizer of science Matvey Petrovich Bronstein (1906-1938).
- Son - Boris Korneevich Chukovsky (1910-1941), died shortly after the start of the Great Patriotic War, in the fall of 1941, returning from reconnaissance near the Borodino field.
- Daughter - Maria Korneevna Chukovskaya (Murochka) (1920-1931), the heroine of her father’s children’s poems and stories.
- Granddaughter - Natalya Nikolaevna Kostyukova (Chukovskaya), Tata (born 1925), microbiologist, professor, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Honored Scientist of Russia.
- Granddaughter - literary critic, chemist Elena Tsesarevna Chukovskaya (1931-2015).
- Grandchildren - Nikolai Nikolaevich Chukovsky (born 1933), communications engineer; Evgeny Borisovich Chukovsky)