Vitaly Bianchi opened the magical world of nature to Soviet children; on the pages of his books, the lives of animals are filled with incredible adventures. The writer is called a wizard who was able to see miracles in simple things. The light and colorful language, supported by the knowledge of a biologist and naturalist, easily awakens the imagination of every child.
Childhood and youth
“We all come from childhood” - this expression suits Vitaly Bianchi like no one else. The boy was born and raised in an amazing environment. Father Valentin Lvovich, head of the ornithological department of the zoological museum of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, set up a real zoo at home.
Vitaly Bianchi in childhood (bottom left), his parents and brothers
The rooms were filled with cages with birds, adjacent to an aquarium and terrarium with lizards, snakes and turtles. The family, taking the animals, went to the village of Lebyazhye for the summer. Once, a moose calf, picked up by the rangers, even settled in the courtyard of Bianchi’s dacha, but in the fall the animal was placed in a zoo.
An even more fascinating world opened up in nature, which the father was in a hurry to introduce the children to. His sons wandered through the forests with him, recorded observations, learned to hunt and fish. Interest in nature and science determined the children's professions. The eldest son devoted his life to entomology, the middle one became a meteorologist. And the youngest, Vitaly, saw himself as an ornithologist, having been impressed by trips to Lebyazhye, where the great sea route of migratory birds lay.
Vitaly Bianchi in his youth Love for animals is not Vitaly’s only childhood passion. The boy wrote poetry, respected music and sang well, and also played football well. After graduating from high school, the future writer entered St. Petersburg University, the department of natural sciences, but the First World War made adjustments - the young man was mobilized.
Vitaly Bianchi was interested in politics in his youth, joined the Socialist Revolutionaries, and walked under the banners. He later paid for the sins of his youth. The man was persecuted by the Soviet authorities, arrested on suspicion of counter-revolutionary activities, and once even deported to Uralsk (Kazakhstan).
After the October Revolution, Vitaly Valentinovich lived for several years in Altai, in the city of Biysk. Here the writer gave lectures on ornithology, worked in the local history museum, introduced schoolchildren to the basics of biology, organized scientific expeditions and wrote stories for children.
Literature
Vitaly wrote down observations of animal life - these notes became the basis for his works about nature. The author's bibliography contains more than 300 fairy tales, stories, articles and stories, and 120 books were published. The writer once admitted in an address to readers:
“I tried to write in such a way that fairy tales would be interesting to adults as well. But now I realized that I was creating for adults who kept a child in their souls.”
Vitaly Bianchi's literary talent blossomed after returning from Altai to his hometown in 1922. In Leningrad, he joined a circle of children's writers and plunged headlong into creating a world woven from the chirping of birds, the greenery of grass and the adventures of animals.
Vitaly Bianchi watches birds The first fairy tale, “The Journey of the Red-Headed Sparrow,” was appreciated by young readers, and in gratitude they received a number of separate books: “Forest Houses,” “Mouse Peak,” “Whose Nose is Better?”
More than one generation of children read the miniature humorous stories “How the Ant Hurried Home,” “The First Hunt,” “Bear-Bashka,” “Teremok,” “Owl,” etc. In 1932, the writer’s first large collection, “Forest,” appeared in bookstores. There were also fables.”
Young parents are sure to replenish their home library with the fairy tale “Titmouse’s Calendar,” which in a playful way introduces kids to the changing seasons and months. It’s a pleasure to explore the world together with Zinka the titmouse. On the pages of the book are answers to questions about why rivers freeze, when birds fly in and out, and many other interesting facts about animals and nature.
An extraordinary work that had no analogues in literature was the book “Forest Newspaper”. Vitaly Bianchi began this work in 1924; until 1958, 10 editions were published, which were constantly supplemented and changed in appearance.
An encyclopedia, a calendar, a game - this is all about the “Forest Newspaper”, consisting of 12 chapters, each dedicated to a month of the year. The writer put the material into newspaper genres: telegrams, advertisements, chronicles and even feuilletons containing news about the life of the forest appeared on the book’s page. "Lesnaya Gazeta" was warmly received by children in other countries - the book was translated into several languages.
Vitaly Valentinovich received additional recognition from the radio program “News of the Forest,” which was loved by young listeners in the 50s. Bianchi explained that the educational program was conceived as a gift to post-war children - “so that the children would not be bored, but would be happy.” “News from the Forest” was broadcast once a month; the program was also a kind of calendar.
The unfinished book “Bird Identifier in the Wild” put an end to the writer’s creative biography. In his diary Vitaly Bianchi wrote:
“There is a certain cheerful force living inside me. I see: everything that I had and still have that is good and bright in life... comes from this power. She is blessed both in me and in others - in people, birds, flowers and trees, in earth and in water.”
Personal life
Vitaly Bianki met his future wife in the Altai region when they worked together at the gymnasium. Vera Klyuzheva, the daughter of a doctor and a French teacher, gave birth to the writer four children - a daughter and three sons. The heirs, thanks to their father, also absorbed an interest in the surrounding nature.
Today, only one son of Bianka is alive and well - Vitaly, an ornithologist, Doctor of Science, working in the Kandalaksha Nature Reserve in the Murmansk Region. The man celebrated his 90th birthday last year, but despite his age, he is still absorbed in scientific work and traveling on field expeditions.
In one of his interviews, Vitaly Vitalievich says that his father, following the example of his parent, took his children to the village every summer. At home, in a city apartment, there lived canaries, dogs, and once a bat settled in.
The author of children's books had a positive attitude towards life and knew how to enjoy little things - the sunrise, spring streams and the burning gold of autumn. Traditions have taken root in the Bianchi family, which are still supported by their grandchildren whenever possible - they created New Year's toys exclusively with their own hands, and on the day of the spring equinox they baked larks from dough.
Vitaly Valentinovich loved to play with children, his daughter and sons were the first critics of his new works, and he happily whiled away the hours playing board games.
Death
In the last years of his life, Vitaly Bianchi was tormented by illness. While he was still able to walk, he often went closer to nature; in the Novgorod region, he sometimes rented half of a private house and walked through his favorite forest. However, diabetes and vascular disease soon deprived the writer of the ability to move.
Grandson Alexander Bianchi recalls that for the last 20 years his grandfather was constantly preparing for death and lamented:
“How I want to live and write something else.”
Bibliography
- 1926 – “Hunter on the Seaside”
- 1928 – “Forest newspaper for every day”
- 1932 - “There were forest tales and tall tales”
- 1936 – “Where the crayfish spend the winter”
- 1947 – “Unexpected Meetings”
- 1949 – “Hide and Seek. Tales of an Old Hunter"
- 1951 – “Forest Houses”
- 1952 – “Tales of the Hunt”
- 1953 – “Somersault and Other Stories”
- 1954 – “Orange Neck”
- 1954 – “First Hunt”
- 1955 – “Forest Scouts”
- 1955 – “In the Footsteps”
- 1956 – “Tales and Stories”
Bianki Vitaly (01/30/1894 – 06/10/1959) - Soviet writer, known for his children's works about nature. Author of more than three hundred stories, fairy tales, articles that have been translated into many languages of the world.
Early years
Vitaly Valentinovich was born in St. Petersburg. His family has German and Swiss roots: his grandfather sang in the opera and had the surname Weiss, which he changed in the Italian manner to Bianchi (both surnames translate as “white”). His father was a doctor by training, was engaged in science, worked in the ornithological museum at the Academy of Sciences. Valentin Bianchi made a serious contribution to the development of domestic zoology and published many scientific articles.
The family lived in a spacious academic apartment near the zoological museum. Bianki always kept a lot of different living creatures: from fish and birds to snakes and hedgehogs.
Vitaly was the youngest of three sons. The boys spent a lot of time in the museum and in the summer in the village of Lebyazhye. The future writer loved to be outside the city and watch migratory birds, on the way of which the village was located.
Valentin often visited the forest and took his youngest son with him and taught him to write down all his observations. Throughout his childhood, the boy perceived the forest as a separate magical world. From an early age he was involved in hunting, gathering and fishing. He also wrote poetry and loved music. At school, Vitaly struggled with exact sciences; his real hobby was football, in which he showed good results. He played in various football clubs.
Vitaly Bianchi with his wife
Life in Altai
After high school in 1915, Vitaly entered the physics and mathematics department of St. Petersburg University, and in 1916 he was called up for army service. With the rank of ensign he was sent to Tsarskoe Selo. In the post-revolutionary period he lived in Samara, Ufa, Yekaterinburg, Tomsk and Biysk.
In Biysk in 1919, he joined Kolchak’s army as a clerk and was transferred to Barnaul, then to the Orenburg front as part of the infantry, from where he escaped in the fall and began to live in Biysk under the name Belyanin. The name Bianki-Belyanin remained in his documents. At that time, he lectured and wrote notes on ornithology, organized scientific expeditions, worked in a local history museum, and taught biology at school.
In the Altai Territory, he met his wife Vera Klyuzheva, a French teacher. At the same time he began to write “Lesnaya Gazeta” and began publishing poems and notes. The plans were to return to St. Petersburg and receive a biological education. Vitaly recorded and stored all his observations of nature; a huge amount of them accumulated. These notes were later useful for creating his works of art.
Because of his past in the Socialist Revolutionary Party, Bianchi was arrested twice in 1921. In 1922, a daughter, Elena, was born into the Bianchi family. A few months later, Vitaly heard rumors about a new upcoming arrest. Then he urgently, under the pretext of a business trip to St. Petersburg, left Biysk forever with his wife and child. In total, four children were born into the Bianchi family (Elena, Mikhail, Vitaly, Valentin).
One of the main attractions of Biysk is the local history museum named after. Bianchi
Literary creativity
In his hometown, Bianchi devoted himself entirely to literature. He joined the children's writers club, which also included Marshak, Chukovsky and Zhitkov. The first publication of Vitaly’s story “The Journey of the Red-Headed Sparrow” took place in 1923 in the magazine “Sparrow”. Later the first book “Whose Nose is Better?” was published. Stories about the animal world, filled with interesting facts and humorous notes, appealed to young readers. The story “Following the Footsteps” gained great popularity, and was subsequently republished many times.
From the pen of Bianchi came many stories, cycles, and fairy tales, and all of them were not only interesting for children, but also educational, as they contained reliable information about nature and instilled in readers a love for the living world. Quite quickly, Vitaly became a popular writer; his books immediately flew off store shelves.
Bianchi's life was stable and prosperous until another arrest occurred at the end of 1925. The writer was accused of being a member of a non-existent underground group and sent into three-year exile in Uralsk. In exile, Vitaly did not stop writing; many works date back to that time, including “Karabash”, “Odinets”, “Askyr”. Three years after returning to Leningrad, he was arrested again, but three weeks later he was released due to lack of charges. The next arrest occurred in 1935, the writer was sentenced to five years of exile with his family in the Aktobe region, but the charge was dropped.
The tombstone on the grave of V. Bianchi is recognized as an object of historical and cultural heritage
During wartime, due to heart problems, Bianchi was not called to the front. During the blockade, he was evacuated to the Urals and then returned to his hometown. The writer spent a lot of time at the dacha. He loved to go to villages and conduct his observations there; he especially fell in love with the Novgorod land. The writer’s most outstanding work was “Lesnaya Gazeta”, it was created in 1924 and was corrected by Vitaly throughout his life, and was republished several times. Many cartoons and radio programs have been released based on his works; the circulation of publications authored by Bianchi is more than 40 million copies.
The last years of the writer’s life were accompanied by constant illness. Vascular disease and diabetes deprived Vitaly of the opportunity to walk and get out into the forest. But he continued to write. Bianchi did not have time to complete the book “Bird Identifier in the Wild.” Died of lung cancer. The writer was buried at the Bogoslovskoye cemetery. Many libraries and city streets are named after him; millions of children were raised on Bianchi’s books.
Vitaly Valentinovich Bianki is a children's writer who, on the pages of his works, opens up the amazing and picturesque world of nature for children. The biography of Bianchi, who is not only a biologist, but also a naturalist, is full of vivid life events.
Childhood years
Vitaly Bianki was born in February 1894 in St. Petersburg. It is known that the father of the future writer, Valentin Lvovich, worked at the zoological museum of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. While heading the ornithology department, Valentin Lvovich set up a zoo at his home. From birth, Vitaly Bianchi, whose biography is interesting to readers, was accustomed to the fact that they constantly had turtles, terrariums with snakes and lizards in the apartment.
In the summer, the whole family, taking the entire zoo, left for the village of Lebyazhye. One summer they even lived with a small elk calf, which was picked up by the huntsmen and brought to Bianchi’s house. But in the city it was impossible to keep him in an apartment, so he was soon sent to the zoo.
The father of the future writer enjoyed introducing his children to the amazing and mysterious world of nature. They went into the forest together, where the children recorded their observations. In the future, this interest in science determined the future fate of the children of this family. The elder brother of the famous writer became interested in entomology, and the middle brother - in meteorology.
Education
Since childhood, watching the flights of birds, Vitaly Bianchi dreamed of becoming a scientist - an ornithologist. But already in his childhood and school years he was interested in music, singing, football, and even began to write poetry. After graduating from high school, the future writer enters the University of St. Petersburg, but Bianchi’s biography changes dramatically since the First World War began. I had to postpone my studies for a while.
Politics in the fate of a writer
Bianchi's biography could have turned out completely differently if not for the war and the events that took place in Russia in those years. In his youth, the future writer became interested in politics. So, he first joined the Social Revolutionaries, then ended up in Kolchak’s army. And this later influenced his fate.
After all the revolutionary events, the Soviet authorities persecuted the young and talented writer. He was even arrested several times for his counter-revolutionary activities.
But not only arrests were in the biography of the famous writer. He was sent from St. Petersburg to Uralsk. After the revolution, Vitaly Valentinovich Bianki, whose biography is eventful, settled in Biysk. He works in a local history museum, gives lectures on ornithology to students and teaches biology to schoolchildren. But all this time he continues to write for children.
Literary activity
Vitaly Valentinovich always observed the natural world, so he wrote down all his observations. Usually, any short biography of Bianchi gives a list of all the works that he wrote. There are more than three hundred of them: stories, stories, tales about animals and articles.
The talented writer was able to truly pursue his literary career only after he returned to St. Petersburg from Altai in 1922. He immediately got into the literary circle of children's writers, which was organized by Samuil Marshak. He was so carried away by the adventures of animals and descriptions of the natural world that he did not see anything else around him. That is why any short biography of Vitaly Bianchi always indicates that the wonderful author created and published 120 books. The first work about nature was the fairy tale “The Journey of the Red-Headed Sparrow.” This was followed by books such as “Mouse Peak”, “Forest Houses” and others.
In 1932, a large collection of the writer’s works was published. Readers really liked the book “Forest Tales and Tales,” where a talented writer talks about the natural world and animals.
An unusual work was “Forest Newspaper” - the work of Vitaly Valentinovich Bianki, whose biography is eventful. There have never been such works in Russian literature before. Valentin Bianchi began his work on this book in 1924. But, even though the book was being printed, until 1958 he constantly returned to work on it, editing and adding to it. Over the course of 34 years, ten editions of this extraordinary work were published.
It is known that the “Forest Newspaper” consists of 12 chapters, each of which is dedicated to a specific month of the year. Each section contains encyclopedic articles, calendars, games, telegrams and announcements, feuilletons and stories from forest life. This book was liked not only by children, but also by adults. It has been translated into several languages of the world.
In the 50s, Vitaly Bianka hosted an educational radio program “News from the Forest”. It came out once a month and also represented a kind of calendar. Vitaly Valentinovich’s latest work was his book “Bird Identifier in the Wild.” Unfortunately, it was never completed.
Personal life
The famous writer was married once. His wife, Vera Klyuzheva, was the daughter of a doctor and a French teacher. Vitaly Valentinovich met Vera in the Altai Territory when he began working at the gymnasium. Vera Klyuzheva also worked there.
This happy marriage also had children: three sons and a daughter. From birth, the famous writer tried to instill in his children a love for their native nature. Every summer, Vitaly Bianchi, like his father, took the whole family to the village. And in their city apartment there lived many animals. One day, even among the dogs and canaries, a bat settled.
One of the sons of the famous writer, Vitaly Vitalievich, became an ornithologist and even defended his doctoral dissertation. He worked in the Kandalaksha Nature Reserve, which is located in the Murmansk region.
Death of a Writer
The famous writer spent the last years of his life in the Novgorod region, where he rented half of a private house. He still loved to walk in the forest. But vascular disease deprived him of this opportunity.
It is known that in the last years of his life, the talented writer Vitaly Bianca suffered greatly due to illness. Doctors discovered not only that he had a vascular disease that left him unable to move, but that he was soon diagnosed with diabetes. According to the memoirs of the grandson of the famous writer, Vitaly Valentinovich suffered for 20 years from the fact that he really wanted to live and he wanted to write even more.
The famous and talented writer died in June 1959, when he was 65 years old, from lung cancer. It is known that he was buried at the Bogoslovskoye cemetery.
BIANCHI, VITALY VALENTINOVICH(1894–1959), Russian writer. Born on January 30 (February 11), 1894 in St. Petersburg in the family of an ornithologist, he wrote poetry since childhood. Bianchi’s father, whom the writer called his first and main “forest teacher,” introduced him to biological science - he took him to the Zoological Museum and instructed him to take naturalistic notes. Bianchi continued to keep these notes while studying at the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Petrograd University, and then at the Institute of Art History.
For four years, Bianchi participated in scientific expeditions along the Volga, Ural, Altai and Kazakhstan. In 1917 he moved to Biysk, where he worked as a science teacher and organized a local history museum. In 1922 he returned to Petrograd. By this time, he had accumulated “whole volumes of notes,” about which he wrote: “They lay like a dead weight on my soul. In them - like in the Zoological Museum - there was a collection of many inanimate animals in a dry record of facts, forest was mute, the animals froze motionless, the birds did not fly or sing. Then again, as in childhood, I painfully wanted to find a word that would disenchant them, magically make them come to life.” The need for the artistic embodiment of knowledge about living nature made Bianchi a writer. In 1923, he began publishing a phenological calendar in the Leningrad magazine “Sparrow” (later “New Robinson”). This publication became the prototype of his famous Forest newspaper for every year (1927).
Bianchi's first published children's story - Whose nose is better? (1923). The heroes of the story, the birds Tonkonos, Crusader, Grosbeak, and others, resembled fairy-tale characters; Bianchi’s narrative style was full of accurate observations and humor.
In the article About anthropomorphism(1951) the writer rejected the definition of himself as an anthropomorphist writer. Bianchi considered his work as a “self-teacher for the love of nature.” He wrote more than 30 tales about nature, including such classics as First hunt (1923),Who sings what? (1923), How Ant hurried home (1935), Trapper's Tales(1937), etc. According to some of them ( Orange neck(1937, etc.) cartoons were made. Bianchi also wrote stories ( Odinets, 1928, Karabash, 1926, etc.), stories (collection Hide and seek, 1945, etc.) and thematic cycles ( Mouse Peak, 1926, Sinichkin calendar, 1945, etc.).
Bianchi traveled a lot - routes passed through Central Russia and the North. In 1926–1929 he lived in Uralsk and Novgorod, in 1941 he returned to Leningrad. Due to heart disease, the writer was not drafted into the army, was evacuated in the Urals, and returned to Leningrad at the end of the war. For most of the year, from early spring to late autumn, he lived outside the city.
The folklore tradition is strong in Bianchi's works. He believed that “a writer is a child of the people, he grows from the depths of the people’s worldview.”
Bianchi’s work is characterized by constant reference to already written and published works, supplementing them with new texts. Thus, until the writer’s death, they were repeatedly supplemented during reprints. Forest newspaper, collection There were forest tales(last lifetime edition 1957), which have become classic examples of scientific and artistic works for children.
In the last years of his life, Bianchi was seriously ill - his legs and partially his arms were completely paralyzed. However, writers who considered him their teacher still gathered with him, and meetings of the editorial board of “News from the Forest” were held. He participated in writing scripts for films, cartoons and filmstrips about nature; in memory of his favorite writer A. Green, he dreamed of creating the Scarlet Sails club.
Over 35 years of creative work, Bianchi created more than 300 stories, fairy tales, novellas, essays and articles. All his life he kept diaries and naturalistic notes, and answered many letters from readers. His works have been published in a total circulation of more than 40 million copies and translated into many languages of the world.
Shortly before his death, Bianchi wrote in the preface to one of his books: “I have always tried to write my fairy tales and stories so that they would be accessible to adults. And now I realized that all my life I wrote for adults who still have a child in their souls.”