Ilf and Petrov biography of writers. "envelope", the real names of Ilf and Petrov, as well as amazing stories Ilf and Petrov lived in the city

05.03.2020

Ilf I. and Petrov E.

Ilf I. and Petrov E.
Russian prose writers, co-authors. Ilf Ilya (real name Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg; 1897, Odessa - 1937, Moscow), was born into the family of a bank employee. In 1913 he graduated from technical school. Worked in a drawing office, at a telephone exchange, at an aircraft factory, was an employee of the newspaper "Seaman", editor humor magazine"Syndeticon". Since 1923 - in Moscow; publ. feuilletons, essays and reviews in newspapers and magazines (“Smekhach”, “Soviet Screen”, “Evening Moscow”). In 1925, at the editorial office of the newspaper Gudok, he met his future co-author. Petrov Evgeniy (real name - Evgeniy Petrovich Kataev; 1903, Odessa - 1942, died at the front). Brother of V.P. Kataev. After graduating from a classical gymnasium in 1920, he became a correspondent for the Ukrainian Telegraph Agency, then an inspector of the criminal investigation department. Since 1923 - in Moscow; worked in the satirical magazine “Red Pepper”, published in “ Komsomolskaya Pravda" and "Gudke" feuilletons and humorous stories under the pseudonym "Foreigner Fedorov".

The joint activity of Ilf and Petrov began in 1926 by composing themes for drawings and feuilletons in the magazine “Smekhach”. The first significant work, the novel “The Twelve Chairs” (1928), was enthusiastically received by the reader and, in fact, at his request, continued with the novel “The Golden Calf” (1931). The seemingly trivial story of the hunt for Madame Petukhova’s jewelry and the money of the underground millionaire Koreiko became, under the pen of talented satirists, a brilliant panorama of the life of the country in the 1920s. A working day at the editorial office of the newspaper "Stanok", the dormitory named after monk Bertold Schwartz, the communal "Voronya Slobodka", the shy thief Alkhen, the former leader of the district nobility, and now a frightened employee Kisa Vorobyaninov, the roguish father Fyodor, the wife of the answering officer Ellochka Shchukina with vocabulary cannibals - almost all the episodes and images of this dilogy, recognizable, vivid, memorable and at the same time generally typified, have become household names. Like N.V. Gogol in the poem “Dead Souls,” Ilf and Petrov, with the help of a fascinating story about the adventures of the main character, an enterprising seeker of quick wealth and charming swindler Ostap Bender, with penetrating accuracy, captured the disastrous vices not only of his time, but also of the entire system: bureaucracy, carelessness, theft, idleness, official idle talk, Manilov’s dreams of a quick and easy economic take-off, etc. The enduringly popular novels about Ostap Bender repeatedly staged and filmed, their apt characteristics and expressions sparkling with wit, especially understandable given the context, have become firmly established in Russian. speech (“abroad will help us,” “saving drowning people is the work of the drowning people themselves,” “the ice has broken,” and many others). Among other works of writers: the story “Bright Personality” (1928), the cycle of satirical short stories “1001 days, or the New Scheherazade” (1929); feuilletons and satirical stories, published mainly in the newspaper Pravda, where the writers worked since 1932 (including “The Merry Unit”, “Armored Place”, “Kloop”); book of travel essays “One-Storey America” (1936); film scripts. Ilf also left " Notebooks"(published in 1939), Petrov - scripts for the films "Air Cabby" (together with G. N. Moonblit), " Musical history", "Anton Ivanovich is angry", and also caused by the impressions of a war correspondent "Front Diary" (1942).

Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. - M.: Rosman. Edited by prof. Gorkina A.P. 2006 .

See what "Ilf I. and Petrov E." in other dictionaries:

ILF I. And Petrov E., Russian writers, co-authors: Ilf Ilya (real name and surname Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg) (1897 1937); Petrov Evgeniy (real name and surname Evgeniy Petrovich Kataev) (1902 42), died at the front, brother of V.P. Kataeva. IN… … Modern encyclopedia

ILF I. AND PETROV E. Russian writers, co-authors. Ilf Ilya (real name and last name Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg; 1897 1937), Evgeniy Petrov (real name and last name Evgeny Petrovich Kataev; 1902 42; died at the front). In the novels The Twelve Chairs (1928) and... ...

Russians Soviet writers satirists who worked together. Ilf Ilya (pseudonym; real name and surname Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg), born into the family of a bank employee. Was an employee... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Ilf I. and Petrov E.- I. Ilf and E. Petrov at work. ILF I. AND PETROV E., Russian writers, co-authors: Ilf Ilya (real name and surname Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg) (1897 1937); Petrov Evgeniy (real name and surname Evgeniy Petrovich Kataev) (1902 42), died on... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

Ilf I. and Petrov E. Russian writers, co-authors. Ilf Ilya, real name and surname Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg (1897 1937), Evgeniy Petrov, real name and surname Evgeny Petrovich Kataev (1902 1942), died at the front. In the novels “Twelve... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary

Ilf I. and Petrov E.- ILF I. AND PETROV E., Russian. writers, co-authors: Ilf Ilya (real name and last name Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg; 1897-1937), Evgeniy Petrov (real name and last name Evgeny Petrovich Kataev; 1902-42; died at the front). In rum. Twelve Chairs (1928) and... Biographical Dictionary

- – Russian satirical writers, co-authors. Ilf I. (real name and last name: Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg; 1897–1937); Petrov E. (real name and last name Evgeniy Petrovich Kataev; 1902–1942). Born in Odessa, I. - in the family of a bank employee, P. - in the family... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary of Pseudonyms

ILF I. AND PETROV E., Russian writers, co-authors. Ilf Ilya (real name and last name Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg; 1897 1937), Evgeniy Petrov (real name and last name Evgeny Petrovich Kataev; 1902 42; died at the front). In the novels “The Twelve Chairs” (1928) and... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary

ILF Ilya and PETROV Evgeniy- ILF Ilya (real name and last name Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg) (1897-1937) and PETROV Evgeniy (real name and last name Evgeny Petrovich Kataev) (1902-1942, died at the front; member of the CPSU since 1940), Russians Soviet writers. Rum. "Twelve Chairs" ... ... Literary encyclopedic dictionary

Ilf Ilya and Petrov Evgeniy, Russian writers, co-authors: Ilf Ilya (real name and surname Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg; 1897 1937), Petrov Evgeniy (real name and surname Evgeniy Petrovich Kataev; 1902 1942; died at the front). In the novels... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Books

Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov. Collected works. In 5 volumes. Volume 3. Fun unit, Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov. The second volume of the Collected Works of Ilf and Petrov includes the novel The Golden Calf, as well as essays, feuilletons and stories written in 1929-1931. As a preface, here is...

ILF AND PETROV– Ilf, Ilya Arnoldovich (1897–1937) (real name Fainzilberg), Petrov Evgeniy Petrovia (1903–1942) (real name Kataev), Russian prose writers.

Ilf was born on October 4 (16), 1897 in Odessa in the family of a bank employee. In 1913 he graduated from technical school, after which he worked in a drawing office, at a telephone exchange, at an aircraft factory, and at a hand grenade factory. After the revolution, he was an accountant, a journalist at YugROSTA, an editor in humorous and other magazines, and a member of the Odessa Union of Poets. In 1923 he came to Moscow and became an employee of the Gudok newspaper, with which M. Bulgakov, Y. Olesha and other subsequently famous writers collaborated in the 1920s. Ilf wrote materials of a humorous and satirical nature - mainly feuilletons. Petrov was born on November 30, 1903 in Odessa in the family of a teacher. Became the prototype for Pavlik Bachey in the trilogy of his older brother Valentin Kataev Waves of the Black Sea. In 1920 he graduated from a classical gymnasium and became a correspondent for the Ukrainian Telegraph Agency. In the autobiography of Ilf and Petrov (1929) it is said about Petrov: “After that, he served as a criminal investigation inspector for three years. His first literary work was a protocol for examining the corpse of an unknown man.” In 1923 Petrov arrived in Moscow. V. Kataev introduced it among journalists and writers. Petrov became an employee of the Red Pepper magazine, and in 1926 he came to work for the Gudok magazine. Like Ilf, he wrote mainly humorous and satirical materials.

In 1927, with collaboration on the novel Twelve chairs The creative collaboration between Ilf and Petrov began. The plot basis of the novel was suggested by Kataev, to whom the authors dedicated this work. In his memoirs about Ilf, Petrov later wrote: “We quickly agreed that the plot with chairs should not be the basis of the novel, but only the reason, the reason for showing life.” The co-authors fully succeeded in this: their works became the brightest “encyclopedia Soviet life» late 1920s – early 1930s.

The novel was written in less than six months; in 1928 it was published in the magazine “30 days” and in the publishing house “Land and Factory”. In the book edition, the co-authors restored the banknotes that they were forced to make at the request of the magazine editor.

Ostap Bender was originally intended to be a minor character. For him, Ilf and Petrov had only a phrase prepared: “The key to the apartment where the money is.” Subsequently, like many other phrases from novels about Ostap Bender (“The ice has broken, gentlemen of the jury!”; “A sultry woman is a poet’s dream”; “Money in the morning, chairs in the evening”; “Don’t awaken the beast in me”, etc.) , she became winged. According to Petrov’s recollections, “Bender gradually began to push out of the framework prepared for him, and soon we could no longer cope with him. By the end of the novel, we treated him as if he were a living person, and were often angry with him for the impudence with which he wormed his way into every chapter.”

Some images of the novel were outlined in Ilf's notebooks and in Petrov's humorous stories. So, Ilf has a note: “Two young people. All life phenomena are answered only with exclamations. The first one says “horror”, the second one says “beauty”. In Petrov's humoresque Gifted girl(1927) a girl “with an unpromising forehead” speaks in the heroine’s language Twelve chairs cannibals Ellochka.

Novel Twelve chairs attracted the attention of readers, but critics did not notice it. O. Mandelstam wrote with indignation in 1929 that this “pamphlet splashing with fun” was not needed by the reviewers. A. Tarasenkov’s review in Literaturnaya Gazeta was entitled The book that is not written about. Rapp critics called the novel “gray mediocrity” and noted that it does not contain “the charge of deep hatred for the class enemy.”

Ilf and Petrov began working on a continuation of the novel. To do this, they had to “resurrect” Ostap Bender, who was stabbed to death in the finale Twelve chairs Kisa Vorobyaninov. New novel Golden calf was published in 1931 in the magazine “30 days”, in 1933 it was published a separate book in the publishing house "Federation". After release Golden calf The dilogy became incredibly popular not only in the USSR, but also abroad. Western critics compared her to The adventures of the good soldier Schweik J. Hasek. L. Feuchtwanger wrote that he had never seen “the commonwealth develop into such a creative unity.” Even V.V. Nabokov, who spoke contemptuously of Soviet literature, noted in 1967 the amazing talent of Ilf and Petrov and called their works “absolutely first-class.”

In both novels, Ilf and Petrov parodied Soviet reality - for example, its ideological clichés (“Beer is sold only to trade union members,” etc.). Meyerhold's performances also became the subject of parody ( Marriage at the Columbus Theater), and the correspondence of F.M. Dostoevsky with his wife published in the 1920s (letters from Father Fyodor), and the searches of the post-revolutionary intelligentsia (“homespun truth” by Vasisualiy Lokhankin). This gave grounds for some representatives of the first Russian emigration to call the novels of Ilf and Petrov a libel against the Russian intelligentsia.

In 1948, the Secretariat of the Writers' Union decided to consider Twelve chairs And Golden calf libelous and slanderous books, the republication of which “can only cause indignation on the part of Soviet readers.” The ban on reprinting was also enshrined in a special resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which was in force until 1956.

Between two novels about Bender, Ilf and Petrov wrote a satirical story Bright personality(1928), two series of grotesque short stories Extraordinary stories from the life of the city of Kolokolamsk And 1001 days, or New Scheherazade(1929) and other works.

Since 1932, Ilf and Petrov began writing feuilletons for the newspaper Pravda. In 1933–1934 we visited Western Europe, in 1935 - in the USA. Sketches about travel to the USA compiled into a book One-story America(1937). It was a story about small country towns and farms, and ultimately about the “average American.”

The creative collaboration of writers was interrupted by Ilf’s death in Moscow on April 13, 1937. Petrov made a lot of efforts to publish Ilf’s notebooks, conceived great work My friend Ilf. In 1939–1942 Petrov worked on the novel Journey to the land of communism, in which he described the USSR in 1963.

During the Great Patriotic War Petrov became a front-line correspondent. He died on July 2, 1942 in a plane crash while returning to Moscow from Sevastopol.

As soon as “12 Chairs” was published, Ilf got new trousers, fame, money, and a separate apartment with antique furniture decorated with heraldic lions.

On April 13, 1937, the popular Soviet writer Ilya Ilf died in Moscow. Born in 1897 in Odessa, Ilya Arnoldovich worked for a long time as an accountant, journalist and editor in a humor magazine. In 1923, Ilf moved to Moscow, where he became an employee of the Gudok newspaper. During work, the creative collaboration between Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, who also worked at Gudok, began. In 1928, Ilf and Petrov published the novel “The Twelve Chairs,” which became incredibly popular among readers and was filmed huge amount once every different countries, A main character works - schemer Ostap Bender - became a people's favorite. Three years later, Ilf and Petrov released a sequel to the novel about Bender’s adventures, “The Golden Calf,” which also became a domestic hit. In the material of the “Idols of the Past” section we will talk about career, life and love popular writer Ilya Ilf.

In the first edition of “12 Chairs” the illustrator gave Ostap Bender the features famous writer Valentina Kataeva is a fun-loving and adventurous person. However, Ilya Ilf had one acquaintance who was much more suitable for the role of the Great Schemer...

From his eventful biography, Mitya Schirmacher willingly reported only one thing: “I am illegitimate son Turkish subject." To the question: “What is your profession?” - answered proudly: “Combinator!” In all of Odessa there was no second jacket and riding breeches like Mitya’s: bright yellow, shiny (he sewed them from restaurant curtains). At the same time, Mitya limped badly, wore an orthopedic boot, and his eyes were different: one green, the other yellow.

Ilf met this colorful person, whom literary scholars would later write down as a prototype of Ostap Bender, in 1920 at the Odessa “Collective of Poets.” Mitya had a very distant relationship with poetry, but he was active in literary activities. For example, he extorted space and money from the Odessa City Council to open a literary cafe, which for some reason was called “Paeon the Fourth.” Eduard Bagritsky, Valentin Kataev, Yuri Olesha read their works there for a free dinner. The cafe was quite popular. And it’s not hard to guess whose pocket the income went into. Mitya Schirmacher knew how to handle things! While the whole of Odessa was undergoing “densification” and getting a room of 10 meters for a family of five was considered lucky, Mitya alone managed to occupy a spacious three-room apartment, furnished with antique furniture, with Kuznetsov porcelain, silverware and a Becker piano.

The entire “Collective of Poets” spent cheerful evenings in this apartment. Ilf loved to sit on the windowsill, smiling ironically with his Negro lips. From time to time he uttered something profound: “I papered the room of my life with thoughts about her” or “Here are the girls, tall and shiny, like hussar boots.” Young, elegant, significant. Even the most ordinary cap from the market on his head took on an aristocratic look. What can we say about the long narrow coat and the inevitable colorful silk scarf, tied with elegant carelessness! Friends called Ilf “our lord.” The similarity was deepened by the eternal meerschaum pipe and God knows where I got the English pince-nez.

Once, a friend of mine, who was planning to move from Odessa, needed to sell things at a flea market. Ilf volunteered to help. He walked up to her with a bored look and began to ask the price, deliberately distorting his words. The resellers perked up: since a foreigner is ready to buy, it means the things are good! Having pushed Ilf aside, they sold out everything in a matter of minutes. “And this son is an artist,” Ilf’s father sighed sadly when he learned about this story.

10-year-old Jehiel-Leib (right) with his family. 1907 Photo: RGBI

The Unlucky Sons of Arie Fainsilberg

Father, Arie Fainzilberg, was a minor employee in the Siberian merchant bank. He had four sons (Ilya, or rather Jehiel-Leib, was the third). Arie did not even dream of giving a decent education to everyone, but in his dreams he saw the eldest, Saul, as a respectable accountant. How much money was spent on studying at a gymnasium, then at a commercial school - all in vain! Saul became an artist, renaming himself Sandro Fasini (he painted in a cubist style, eventually went to France, exhibited there in fashion salons. And in 1944 he died with his family in Auschwitz). Old Fainzilberg, barely recovering from disappointment, set to work on his second son, Moishe-Aron: and again the gymnasium, and again the commercial school, and again the expenses that were exorbitant for the family... And again the same story.

Taking the pseudonym Mi-Fa, the young man also became an artist. With his third son, Arie, Fainzilberg acted smarter - instead of a commercial one, he sent him to a craft school, where they did not teach anything unnecessary and “seductive”, like drawing. And for some time Yechiel-Leib pleased his old man: having rapidly changed many professions from a turner to a clay head maker in a doll workshop, the young man in 1919 finally became an accountant.

He was taken to the financial accounting department of the Oprodkomguba - the Special Provincial Food Commission for the supply of the Red Army. In “The Golden Calf” Oprodkomgub will be described as “Hercules”. It was there in the offices that oddly combined office desks with nickel-plated beds and gilded washbasins, left over from the hotel that had previously been located in the building. And people spent hours pretending useful activity, quietly carrying out small and large frauds.

And at the age of twenty-three, the third son suddenly stunned his father with a confession: they say, his vocation is literature, he has already joined the “Collective of Poets,” and he is leaving the service. For most of the day, Jehiel-Leib now lay on the bed and thought about something, fiddling with the coarse curl of hair on his forehead. I didn’t write anything, except that I came up with a pseudonym for myself: Ilya Ilf. But for some reason, everyone around them was sure: someone, someone, and over time he would become a really great writer! And, as you know, they were only half wrong. In the sense that Ilf became “half” of the great writer. The second “half” was Petrov.

Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov Photo: TASS

For a golden cigarette case

“I have doubts: will Zhenya and I be counted as one person?” - Ilf joked. They dreamed of dying together in a disaster. It was scary to think that one of them would have to be left alone with a typewriter.

Future co-authors met in 1926 in Moscow. Ilf moved there in the hope of finding some literary work. Valentin Kataev, a comrade in the Odessa “Collective of Poets”, who by that time had managed to make a great writing career in Moscow, brought him to the editorial office of the newspaper “Gudok”. “What can he do?” - asked the editor. - “Everything and nothing.” - “Not enough.” In general, Ilf was hired as a proofreader to prepare workers’ letters for printing. But instead of simply correcting mistakes, he began to remake the letters into small feuilletons. Soon his column became a favorite among readers. And then the same Kataev introduced Ilf to his brother Evgeny, who went by the pseudonym Petrov.

When he was just a boy, Evgeniy went to work in the Ukrainian criminal investigation department. He personally conducted an investigation into seventeen murders. Eliminated two dashing gangs. And he went hungry along with all of Ukraine. They say that the author of the story “The Green Van” wrote his investigator from him. It is clear that Kataev, living in a calm and relatively well-fed Moscow, went crazy with anxiety, at night he saw scary dreams about his brother, killed by a bandit’s sawn-off shotgun, and tried his best to persuade him to come. In the end, he persuaded me, promising to help with joining the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department. However, instead, Valentin tricked his brother into writing humorous story, got it into print and, through incredible intrigue, achieved a very high fee. So Evgeniy fell for the “literary bait”. He handed over his government revolver, got dressed, gained weight and made some decent acquaintances. The only thing he lacked was confidence in his abilities. It was then that Kataev came up with a great idea - to unite two aspiring writers so that they could get their teeth together as “literary blacks.” It was assumed that they would develop stories for Kataev, and then he himself, having edited what he had written, title page will put his name first. The first plot that Kataev proposed to Ilf and Petrov was the search for diamonds hidden in a chair.

However, " literary blacks“They quickly rebelled and told Kataev that they would not give him the novel. As compensation they promised a gold cigarette case from the fee. “Be careful, brothers, don’t cheat,” said Kataev. They didn’t cheat me, but due to inexperience they bought a women’s cigarette case - small, elegant, with a turquoise button. Kataev tried to be indignant, but Ilf defeated him with an argument: “There was no agreement that the cigarette case must necessarily be for men. Eat what they give you."

...Ilf is 29 years old, Petrov is 23. Previously, they lived completely differently, had different tastes and characters. But for some reason they were able to write together much better than separately. If a word occurred to both at the same time, it was discarded, recognizing it as banal. Not a single phrase could remain in the text if one of the two was dissatisfied with it. The disagreements resulted in furious arguments and shouting. “Zhenya, you are shaking over what is written, like a merchant over gold! - Ilf accused Petrova. - Don't be afraid to cross out! Who said composing is easy?” The matter turned out to be not only difficult, but also unpredictable. Ostap Bender, for example, was conceived minor character, but as things progressed, his role grew and grew, so that the authors could no longer cope with him. They treated him like a living person and were even irritated by his impudence - that’s why they decided to “kill” him in the finale.

Meanwhile, the final was far away, and the deadlines agreed with the magazine “30 Days” (Kataev agreed to publish the novel in seven issues) were running out. Petrov was nervous, and Ilf seemed to be on his guard. It happened that in the midst of work he would glance out the window and certainly become interested. His attention could be attracted by a coloratura soprano coming from a neighboring apartment, or an airplane flying in the sky, or boys playing volleyball, or just an acquaintance crossing the road. Petrov swore: “Ilya, Ilya, you’re being lazy again!” However, he knew: the scenes of life that Ilf spied, when he was lying on his stomach on the windowsill like this and, it seemed, simply idle, would sooner or later be useful for literature.

Everything was used: the name of the butcher, whose shop once overlooked the windows of Ilf’s apartment on Malaya Arnautskaya - Bender, memories of a trip along the Volga on the Herzen steamship to distribute bonds of the state peasant winning loan (in “12 chairs” Herzen " turned into " Scriabin "). Or the printing house dormitory in Chernyshevsky Lane (in the novel this anthill was named after the monk Bertold Schwartz), in which Ilf, as a hopelessly homeless journalist, was given a “pencil box” fenced off with plywood. The Tatars lived nearby in the outer corridor; one day they brought a horse there, and at night its hooves clattered mercilessly. Ilf had half a window, a mattress on four bricks and a stool. When he got married, a primus stove and some dishes were added to this.

Ilya Ilf with his wife Maria

Love or housing problem

He met seventeen-year-old Marusya Tarasenko back in Odessa. His artist brother Mi-Fa (his name was also Red Misha), before moving to Petrograd, taught at the Odessa girls’ art school, and Marusya was one of his students. And, as happens, she burned with secret love for the teacher. At first, the girl perceived Ilf only as Mi-Fa’s brother. But over time, his loving glances and wonderful, touching letters(especially the letters!) had an effect. “I saw only you, looked into your big eyes and talked nonsense. ...My girl with a big heart, we can see each other every day, but the morning is far away, and so I write. Tomorrow morning I will come to you to give you the letters and take a look at you.” In a word, Marusya forgot Red Misha, who did not pay the slightest attention to her, and fell in love with Ilya.

They loved to sit on the windowsill at night, look out the window, read poetry, smoke and kiss. They dreamed about how they would live when they got married. And then Ilya left for Moscow, because there were no prospects in Odessa. And a two-year, painfully tender romance began in letters... He: “My girl, in a dream you kiss me on the lips, and I wake up from a feverish fever. When will I see you? There are no letters, it was me, the fool, who thought that they remembered me... I love you so much that it hurts me. If you allow me, I’ll kiss your hand.” She: “I love trees, rain, dirt and sun. I love Ilya. I am here alone, and you are there... Ilya, my dear, Lord! You are in Moscow, where there are so many people, it is not difficult for you to forget me. I don’t believe you when you’re far away.” She wrote that she was afraid that when she met, she might seem boring and disgusting to him. He: “You’re not boring or disgusting. Or boring, but I love you. I love the hands, and the voice, and the nose, the nose in particular, the terrible, even disgusting nose. There's nothing you can do about it. I love this nose. And your eyes are gray and blue." She: “Ilya, my eyes are not at all gray and blue. I really wish they were gray and blue, but what can I do! Maybe my hair is blue and black? Or not? Don't be angry, dear. I suddenly felt very happy.”

Once every six months Marusya came to see Ilya in Moscow, and on one of these visits they got married, almost by accident. It’s just that train tickets were expensive, and by becoming the wife of an employee of a railway newspaper, she received the right to free travel. Soon Ilf persuaded his wife while waiting for permission “ housing issue»move to Petrograd, to Mi-Fe. He himself wrote to Marusya: “My rooms, my attic, my knowledge, my bald head, I am all at your service. Come. The game is worth the candle." But these two could not get along: Mi-Fa, who kept calling his daughter-in-law “golden-haired clarity”, “lunar girl”, suddenly spoke rude things to her: they say that there is no life in Marus, there is no gaiety, she is dead. Maybe he was just jealous of her brother?..

Fortunately, Ilf was soon able to take his wife with him - he received a room in Sretensky Lane. Yuri Olesha, also a newlywed, became his roommate. In order to somehow get by, the young writers sold almost all their clothes at a flea market, leaving only decent trousers between them. How much grief there was when the wives, while putting things in order in the apartment, accidentally washed the floor with these trousers!

However, as soon as “12 Chairs” was published, Ilf got new trousers, fame, money, and a separate apartment with antique furniture decorated with heraldic lions. And also - the opportunity to pamper Marusya. Since then, the only household duties she had left were to manage a housekeeper and also a nanny, when her daughter Sashenka was born. Marusya herself played the piano, painted and ordered gifts for her husband. “Bracelet, veils, shoes, suit, hat, bag, perfume, lipstick, powder compact, scarf, cigarettes, gloves, paints, brushes, belt, buttons, jewelry” - this is the list that she gave him on one of his business trips abroad. And Ilf and Petrov had many such business trips! After all, “12 Chairs” and “The Golden Calf” were stolen for quotes not only in their homeland, but also in a good dozen countries...

Ilya Ilf with his daughter Sasha. 1936 Photo: GLM

Ich sterbe

Ilf almost failed to work on The Golden Calf. It’s just that in 1930, having borrowed 800 rubles from Petrov, he bought a Leika camera and got carried away like a boy. Petrov complained that now he had neither money nor a co-author. All day long Ilf clicked the shutter, developed, and printed. Friends joked that he now even opens canned food in a red light so as not to be exposed. What was he photographing? Yes, everything in a row: his wife, Olesha, the destruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, felt boots... “Ilya, Ilya, let’s go to work!” - Petrov cried in vain. The publishing house almost broke the contract with the writers, but then Ilf finally came to his senses.

After “Calf” their popularity increased tenfold! Now they had to perform a lot in front of the public. This bothered Ilf, and out of excitement he always drank a carafe of water. People joked: “Petrov is reading, and Ilf is drinking water and coughing, as if his throat is dry from reading.” They still couldn't imagine life without each other. But they still couldn’t find the plot of the new novel. In the meantime, we wrote the script “Under the Circus Big Top.” Based on it, Grigory Alexandrov made the film “Circus,” which Ilf and Petrov were extremely dissatisfied with, so much so that they even demanded that their names be removed from the credits. Then, having visited the USA, we started working on “One-Storey America”. Ilf was not destined to finish it...

The first attack of the disease happened to him in New Orleans. Petrov recalled: “Ilf was pale and thoughtful. He went off alone into the alleys and returned even more thoughtful. In the evening he said that his chest had been hurting for 10 days, day and night, and today, when he coughed, he saw blood on his handkerchief.” It was tuberculosis.

He lived for another two years without stopping to work. At some point, he and Petrov tried to write separately: Ilf rented a dacha in Kraskovo, on sandy soil, among pine trees, where he could breathe easier. But Petrov could not escape from Moscow. As a result, each wrote several chapters, and both were nervous that the other wouldn't like it. And when they read it, they realized: it turned out as if they wrote it together. And yet they decided not to carry out such experiments anymore: “If we go our separate ways, the great writer will die!”

One day, picking up a bottle of champagne, Ilf sadly joked: “Champagne brand “Ich Sterbe” (“I’m dying”),” meaning last words Chekhov, said over a glass of champagne. Then he walked Petrov to the elevator, saying: “Tomorrow at eleven.” At that moment Petrov thought: “What a strange friendship we have... We never have manly conversations, nothing personal, and always on “you”... The next day Ilya didn’t get up. He was only 39 years old...

When Ilf was buried in April 1937, Petrov said that this was his funeral too. He alone did not do anything particularly outstanding in literature - except that he wrote the script for the films “A Musical Story” and “Anton Ivanovich is Angry.” During the war, Petrov went to the front as a military correspondent and in 1942, at the age of 38, crashed on a plane near Sevastopol. All other passengers survived.

Then they said that Ilf and Petrov were lucky that they both left so early. In 1948, in a special resolution of the Secretariat of the Writers' Union, their work was called slanderous and anathematized. However, eight years later “12 Chairs” was rehabilitated and republished. Who knows what could have happened to the writers and their families over these eight years if Ilf and Petrov had lived a little longer...

Essays

novel “The Twelve Chairs” (1928);
novel “The Golden Calf” (1931);
short stories “Extraordinary stories from the life of the city of Kolokolamsk” (1928);
fantastic story “Bright Personality”;
short story “A Thousand and One Days, or New Scheherazade” (1929);
script for the film “Once Upon a Summer” (1936);
story “One-Storey America” (1937).

The collected works of Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov in five volumes were re-published (after 1939) in 1961 by the State Publishing House fiction. In the introductory article to this collection of works, D. I. Zaslavsky wrote:

The fate of the literary partnership of Ilf and Petrov is unusual. She touches and excites. They did not work together for long, only ten years, but in history Soviet literature left a deep, indelible mark. The memory of them does not fade, and the love of readers for their books does not weaken. The novels “The Twelve Chairs” and “The Golden Calf” are widely known.

Film adaptations of works

- One day in the summer
- Quite seriously (essay on How Robinson was created)
- Ilf and Petrov rode on a tram (based on stories and feuilletons)

Interesting facts from the biography of writers

A few years after the start of the joint creative activity Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov wrote (in 1929) a kind of “double autobiography” (the text can be read: Ilf I., Petrov E., Collected Works in 6 volumes. T.1, Moscow, 1961, p.236), in which, with their characteristic wonderful humor, they talked about how the two “halves” of the author of “The Twelve Chairs”, the satirical story “Bright Personality”, and the grotesque short stories “Extraordinary Stories from the Life of the City” were born, grew up, matured and finally united (in 1925) Kolokolamsk" and so on.

Ilya Ilf was born into the family of a bank employee and in 1913. graduated from technical school. He worked in a drawing office, at a telephone exchange, at an aircraft factory and at a hand grenade factory. After which he became a statistician, then an editor of the humorous magazine Syndetikon, in which he wrote poetry under a female pseudonym, an accountant and a member of the Presidium of the Odessa Union of Poets.

Evgeniy Petrov was born into the family of a teacher and in 1920. He graduated from a classical gymnasium, after which he became a student at the Ukrainian Telegraph Agency. After, during three years, served as a criminal investigation inspector. His first literary work was a protocol for examining the corpse of an unknown man. In 1923 Evgeny Petrov moved to Moscow, where he continued his education while working in humorous newspapers and magazines. He wrote several books of humorous stories.

Evgeny Petrov was the younger brother of the famous Soviet writer Valentin Kataev.

Memory

Monuments to writers have been unveiled in Odessa. The monument shown at the end of the film The Twelve Chairs (1971) never actually existed.
Promotes his works "two fathers" Ilf's daughter Alexandra, who works as an editor at a publishing house where she translates texts into English language. For example, thanks to her work, the complete author’s version of The Twelve Chairs was published, without censorship and with a chapter not included in the earlier texts.

Ilf and Petrov biography of writers. "envelope", the real names of Ilf and Petrov, as well as amazing stories Ilf and Petrov lived in the city

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Books

Essays

Film adaptations of works

Interesting facts from the biography of writers

Memory

See also

See what “Ilf and Petrov” are in other dictionaries:

Books