The author of fairy tales familiar to everyone since childhood went in literature in an unbeaten way. The poetic lines of the works of Korney Chukovsky entered our everyday life and turned into a kind of folklore.
The childhood of Nikolai Korneychukov
The real name of the author of the fairy tale “Aibolit” is Nikolai Korneychukov, he was born on March 31, 1882 in St. Petersburg. Three years later, mother Ekaterina Osipovna took her son and daughter to Odessa. They settled in the outbuilding on Novorybnaya street. Through the efforts of her mother, the poor room turned into a cozy house.
Strict, stately woman Ekaterina Osipovna seemed to be able to do everything - sculpt marvelous dumplings, scrape and wash, whiten and color. She sang beautifully, read a lot. To feed her family, she had to work tirelessly: in the afternoon she stroked, and washed at night. She took up moonlighting when washing, when twelve-year-old Kolya fell ill with scarlet fever. All their simple savings went to treatment.
Ekaterina Osipovna worshiped education. Madame Bukhteeva gave her six-year-old son to kindergarten, which was rare at the time. Children in the garden are not more than fifteen people. They sang, painted and marched to the music. The oldest of them was curly Volodya Zhabotinsky. So two future writers met: the one who wrote Aibolit, and the author of the feuilleton Altalena, who played a fateful role in Chukovsky’s life.
Odessa was overrun with officers and merchants, sailors and merchants, travelers and pilgrims. And there was everything in it to satisfy the boy’s curiosity — fishing and mending nets, boat trips and diving, a bowling alley and shooting gallery, making kites and catching tarantulas. But the main thing was the sea. White sails made dreaming of wanderings and travels of more than one boy.
The future author of Aibolit also liked to dream about exotic countries. And the first verses are devoted to southern exotics - hippos, sharks, cannibals ... Books of Jules Verne, Fenimore Cooper and the magazine Around the World helped to dream. Little dreamers could not imagine which way they would go next and which cannibals they would fight.
Years at the gymnasium
In 1892, his mother gave Kolya to the Second Gymnasium. Nikolai loved to learn, even Latin knew perfectly. The inclinations of the future writer in him appeared at an early age, from the age of seven he wrote complex phrases without a single mistake. Children's memories are reflected in "The Present Eugene Onegin."
Yes, the author of the fairy tale “Aibolit” also had such poems. Whoever wrote the parody novel about life's realities could not help making fun of government officials. And in 1907, the poem “Today’s Eugene Onegin” was written, reflecting the then political life and mentioning famous people.
High school student Korneychukov was far from a good kid. Zhitkov, with whom they studied in the same class, recalls how their vocabulary, speaking of the word “by no means”, claimed that the word would die soon. Kolya heartily regretted the outdated word and persuaded the class to apply it as often as possible. And every time the teacher’s word “no” of the half-class shouted “not at all” in chorus. The instigator of "this disgrace" was left without dinner for two hours.
Kolya knew the grammar very well and once, in order to cope with the composition, they came up with a “telephone”: they tied the legs of the gymnasium students sitting in a row with a rope, came up with a certain code and, pulling the rope, determined where to put what letter. The rope, of course, was entrusted to Kolya. Chukovsky included this episode in the story "Silver Coat of Arms". In Onegin, he also mentioned that "a useful telephone was not appreciated by the authorities."
The phone was not rated not only by the authorities, but also by friends who, due to the difference in the speed of writing, put commas in the middle of the words and got the worst score. The future author of Aybolit was hacked so that he had to lie down at home. Kohl began to write poetry in the gymnasium; a nursery rhyme is given in the story Brandelak, which was published in Murzilka in 1940 and has not appeared in print since.
The boy wrote down poetry in a notebook and carried with him. Once she fell out, high school students grabbed her and started reading aloud. They teased Kolya with a “whack” and sang the teaser with the whole school. This permanently discouraged his desire to write poetry.
He never managed to finish high school. In the fifth grade he was expelled. And in vain the mother sat in the director’s reception room for six hours: the Delyanovsky circular, commanding the expulsion of the “cook children,” had its effect.
Adolescence
The teenager exhibited from the gymnasium went to work. He helped mend the nets, glued posters, cleaned old paint from the roofs so that it could be repainted. This was his first real job. I was embarrassed that now he was walking around as a grimy worker, and not a high school student in an overcoat. Then he firmly decided to graduate. I got textbooks on the market and began to study in the evenings. After several unsuccessful attempts, he passed exams for the gymnasium course as an external student.
Together with the textbooks, I acquired an English tutorial on the occasion and crammed words. I dreamed of independently reading Shakespeare and Dickens. As a free minute fell out, I went to the library and read everything - Schopenhauer, Marx, Dostoevsky, Plekhanov, Fisher. And, of course, beloved Chekhov. The verses of Nekrasov, Pushkin, Tyutchev knew by heart.
Journalism
Nikolai writes philosophical articles and writes in his notebook. Zhabotinsky, having once heard his philosophical opuses, took them to Odessa News. The article was published in the newspaper, paying the young author seven rubles. So the one who wrote Aibolit began to work as a correspondent. The author recalled that he was immensely glad of this, since he had turned from a ragged man to a writer. The young journalist wrote under the pseudonym Korney Chukovsky.
Two years later, Nikolai was sent as a correspondent to London. The newspaper soon stopped sending him money, and Chukovsky accepted the British Museum's offer to participate in the compilation of a catalog of Russian books. He studied British literature, wrote articles, rewrote catalogs. During the trip Chukovsky published eighty-nine works.
In 1905, Chukovsky moved to St. Petersburg and got a job as a correspondent for Theater Russia, where he wrote articles about books and performances. He edited the satirical magazine Signal. The authors in it were Sologub, Kuprin, Teffi, and a political satire was printed . He was arrested as an editor for anti-government works. But the lawyer got an acquittal and Chukovsky was free after 9 days.
The writer collaborates with magazines and newspapers, where he publishes essays on contemporary writers. In the fall of 1906, the author Aibolit settled in a cottage in Kuokkale. There he met Mayakovsky, Repin, A. Tolstoy. In 1916, Chukovsky again sent to England, as part of a delegation of journalists. Upon his return, in 1917, Gorky offers him the direction of the children's department at the Parus Publishing House.
Literature
Working on the almanac Firebird, Chukovsky wrote Chicken, Doctors, and The Kingdom of the Dog. On the eve of the revolution, Gorky invited him to create a work for the children's application of Niva. Returning from the dacha to distract his son, he began to invent verses on the go. Thus was born and published the work "Crocodile".
After the revolution, Chukovsky travels around the country with lectures, collaborates with many publishers. In the twenties he wrote “Moydodyr”, “Cockroach”, adapts folk songs for reading. One after another, “Confusion”, “Fly-Tsokotuha”, “Barmaley”, “Fedorino Gora”, “What Mura did”, “Wonder Tree”, “Phone”, “Toptygin and the Fox”, “The Stolen Sun”, "Aibolit."
The author monitors each printed line, runs around the publishers. He publishes his works in the magazines Chizh, New Robinson, Sparrow, and Hedgehog. Everything turned out wonderful, and at some point he believed that children's fairy tales - his vocation. After Krupskaya’s article, everything changed dramatically - she criticized the author who wrote the fairy tale “Aibolit”, and called all his works “bourgeois muddy”.
In all the works, the censors began to see the “secret meaning”: in “Mokha-Tsokotuha” he popularizes Komarik’s individualism, in “Fedorin Gora” he glorifies bourgeois values, in “Moydodyr” he does not voice the role of the Communist Party, and in “Cockroach” they saw a caricature of Comrade Stalin .
All this brought the writer to extreme despair, and he wrote an open letter in which he renounced his old works and promised a collection of poems, “Merry Collective Farm”. He never came out. The tale "Overcome Barmaley" Stalin personally deleted from the collection of Soviet poetry. “The Adventure of Bibigon” was published in Murzilka, but then it was recognized as “ideologically harmful”. Tired of fighting censors, Chukovsky returns to journalism.
Writer's works
From the pen of a children's writer came tales: "Toptygin and the Moon", "Brave Perseus", "Chicken", "It Is Not So," and many others. He is also the author of the poem Aibolit, The Glutton, The Hedgehogs Laugh, Fedotka, and Pigs. "Tadpoles", "Fly in the bath", "Sandwich", "Hardened", "Christmas tree", "Bebek" and many others. Dr. Chukovsky also wrote wonderful stories: “Silver Coat of Arms”, “Solar”.
It is impossible not to mention his famous works:
- “High art. Principles of literary translation. "
- The Art of Translation.
In 1962, Living As Life, a book about language, was published. Korney Ivanovich analyzes the “diseases” of the language, imaginary or genuine, and comes to the conclusion that the main trouble is bureaucratic turns of speech, clerical. With the writer's light hand, the word he had invented had already firmly entered our language.
Personal life
With his future wife Maria Goldfeld Chukovsky met in Odessa. The girl's father was an accountant, and her family did not approve of her daughter's choice. The lovers even intended to flee to the Caucasus. They got married in 1903 and immediately left for England. Upon learning that Masha was expecting a baby, Korney sent her to Russia.
When his son was born, he returned to Petersburg and very quickly became a leading critic. The wife raised three children - Nikolai, Lydia, Boris. In 1920, a daughter, Maria, was born, who became the heroine of many of her father’s works; everyone called her affectionately Murochka. In 1931, a girl died of tuberculosis. In 1941, the son of Boris died, and in 1955 his wife died. Korney Ivanovich died at the age of 87 from viral hepatitis in 1969.