Raisa Kudasheva biography A Christmas tree was born in the forest. Who was Raisa Kudasheva working with when she composed the lines of the future song A Christmas tree was born in the forest? Bulgarian language
One day, the chairman of the Writers' Union, Alexander Fadeev, was informed that some old woman had come, asking to see her, saying that she wrote poetry. Fadeev ordered to let her in. Entering the office, the visitor sat down, put the knapsack she was holding in her hands on her lap, and said:
- Life is hard, Alexander Alexandrovich, help somehow.
Fadeev, not knowing what to do, said:
— Do you really write poetry?
— I wrote it, it was published once.
“Well, okay,” he said to end this meeting, “read me some of your poems.”
She looked at him gratefully and in a weak voice started reading:
The Forest Raised a Christmas Tree.
She grew up in the forest.
Slim in winter and summer,
It was green...
- So you wrote this? - exclaimed the amazed Fadeev. By his order, the visitor was immediately registered with the Writers' Union and provided with all possible assistance.
Raisa Adamovna Kudasheva (that was the old lady’s name) lived long life(1878-1964). Born Princess Gidroits (Lithuanian princely family), in her youth she served as a governess to Prince Kudashev, and later married him. She worked as a teacher, and in Soviet time- librarian. In her youth she published mainly in children's magazines.
Kudasheva treated fame with amazing indifference and long years hid under various initials and pseudonyms. She explained it this way: “I didn’t want to be famous, but I couldn’t help but write.” In 1899, Kudasheva’s story “Leri” was published in the magazine “Russian Thought”, which remained her only work for adults. The story tells about the adolescence and youth of a girl from noble family, her first Great love to a brilliant officer. In total, Raisa Kudasheva published about 200 songs and stories, fairy tales and books of poetry.
In 1903 she wrote Christmas poem"Christmas tree":
Shaggy branches bend
Down to the children's heads;
Rich beads shine
Overflow of lights;
Ball hides behind ball,
And star after star,
Light threads are rolling,
Like golden rain...
Play, have fun,
The kids have gathered here
And to you, beautiful spruce,
They sing their song.
Everything is ringing, growing,
Goloskov children's choir,
And, sparkling, it sways
Christmas trees are a magnificent decoration.
* * *
A Christmas tree was born in the forest, it grew in the forest,
She was slim and green in winter and summer!
The snowstorm sang songs to her: “Sleep, Christmas tree... bye-bye!”
The frost was wrapped in snow: look, don’t freeze!
The cowardly gray bunny was jumping under the Christmas tree,
Sometimes the wolf himself, the angry wolf, ran at a trot.
* * *
More fun and friendly
Sing, kids!
The tree will bow soon
Your branches.
The nuts shine in them
Gilded…
Who is not happy with you here?
Green spruce?
* * *
Chu! The snow in the dense forest creaks under the runner,
The hairy horse is in a hurry and running.
The horse is carrying wood, and there is a man in the wood.
He cut down our Christmas tree right down to the root...
And here you are, dressed up, you came to us for the holiday,
And she brought a lot of joy to the children.
***
More fun and friendly
Sing, kids!
The tree will bow soon
Your branches.
Choose for yourself
What to like...
Ay, thank you
Beautiful spruce!
These verses signed “A.E.” were published in the Christmas issue of Malyutka magazine. As you can see, they were something like a Christmas game scenario. Children are encouraged to sing “more cheerfully and friendly” in order to earn gifts and goodies hanging on the Christmas tree. But the “voices of children’s choirs” based on her poems were heard only a few years later.
In 1905, the Kudashevo “Yolka” caught the eye of agronomist and passionate music lover Leonid Karlovich Bekman (1872-1939). He was a Baltic German, a hereditary nobleman who had extraordinary musical abilities. In the student choir of the university, he sang the part of the future outstanding singer Sobinov, when for some reason he could not perform. Shortly before the events described, in February 1903, L. Beckman married Elena Shcherbina, the adopted daughter of E.N. Shcherbina (director of the Slavic Bazaar Hotel), a talented pianist who graduated from the Moscow Conservatory four years earlier with a gold medal, later an Honored Artist of Russia, a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. Her professional skill was such that, for the sake of a joke, she could lie on her stomach on the lid of the instrument and play upside down.
L. Beckman with his family
The birth of the song occurred on October 17, 1905 - the day when the tsar signed a historical manifesto that transformed the foundations of government Russian Empire.
According to the memoirs of Elena Bekman-Shcherbina, it went like this:
“On October 17, 1905, my eldest daughter Verochka turned two years old, and in the morning I gave her a living doll - sister Olya, who was born at half past midnight, that is, also on October 17. Verochka was absolutely delighted. While I was still lying in bed, Leonid somehow sat down at the piano, sat Verika on his lap and composed a song for her based on a poem from the children’s magazine “Malyutka” - “A Christmas tree was born in the forest, it grew in the forest...” Verochka, who had excellent hearing , quickly learned it, and so as not to forget the song, I wrote it down. Subsequently, we both began to compose other songs for children. This is how the collection “Verochka’s Songs” arose, which lasted for short term four editions, then “Olenka the Singing Deer.”
Later music critics found that Beckmann's music was not entirely original. The melody of “Christmas Trees” echoes the song of the Swedish poet and composer Emmy Köhler “Thousands of Christmas candles are lit” (“Nu tändas tusen juleljus”, 1898)
and with a German student song early XIX century "Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus".
Nevertheless, Rachmaninov, Taneyev, and Scriabin spoke approvingly of “Yolka.” After that new song began to gain wider recognition, although Kudasheva did not even know about it for many years.
In 1933, when the USSR first officially celebrated New Year, designed to supplant the Christmas holidays, Kudasheva-Bekman's song again sounded under every tree. Kudasheva's text turned out to be ideologically sterile, and therefore acceptable - Christmas is never mentioned in this Christmas song!
Raisa Adamovna Kudasheva (1878-1964) - Russian and Soviet poetess and writer. Author of the lyrics of the song “A Christmas tree was born in the forest.”
Little is known about the life of Raisa Kudasheva. She graduated from the M. B. Pussel Women's Gymnasium. She served as a governess for Prince Kudashev and later married him. According to reviews from relatives, she had a teaching gift. She worked as a teacher, and in Soviet times as a librarian for several decades.
Since childhood I wrote poetry. The first essay appeared in print in 1896 (the poem “To a Stream” in the magazine “Malyutka”). Since then, Kudasheva’s poems and children’s fairy tales began to appear on the pages of many children’s magazines, such as “Malyutka”, “Firefly”, “Snowdrop”, “Solnyshko” under the pseudonyms “A. E", "A. Er", "R. TO.". “I didn’t want to be famous, but I couldn’t help but write,” she later said. In 1899, Kudasheva’s story “Leri” was published in the magazine “Russian Thought”, which remained her only work for adults. The story tells about the adolescence and youth of a girl from a noble family, her first great love for a brilliant officer.
Raisa Kudasheva is the author of the poem “Yolka”, part of this poem was set to music. This is how the song “A Christmas Tree Was Born in the Forest” appeared.
In December 1903 in New Year's issue The magazine “Malyutka” published the poem “Yolka”, signed with the pseudonym “A. E." The poem, set to music two years later by Leonid Bekman, gained nationwide fame, but the name of its true author for a long time remained unknown. Raisa Adamovna did not know that “Yolochka” became a song. Only in 1921, completely by accident, while she was traveling on a train, did she hear a girl singing her “Yolochka”. The poem was republished again just before the start of the war in 1941 in the collection “Yolka” (M.-L.: Detizdat, 1941). The compiler of the collection, Esther Emden, specifically sought out the author of the poem and indicated Kudasheva’s surname in the text.
There is a legend that Kudasheva’s authorship was revealed upon joining the USSR Writers’ Union. According to one version, one day there was a knock on Maxim Gorky’s office. elderly woman, who said she would like to join his organization. When Gorky asked what she had written, the woman replied: “Only thin children’s books.” To this Gorky replied that his organization only accepts serious authors who have written novels and stories. “No, no,” the woman answered and walked towards the exit, and then turned around and asked: “Have you heard at least one of my poems?” and read it to Gorky famous lines: “A Christmas tree was born in the forest, it grew in the forest, it was slender and green in winter and summer.” Having heard these lines, Gorky immediately accepted Kudasheva into the Writers' Union. According to another version, this story happened to Alexander Fadeev. Fadeev asked: “So you wrote this?” And he began to remember where it was published and how he read these poems for the first time and cried, as all children cry when they reach the last lines of a poem. He summoned his employees and ordered that the author be immediately registered with the Writers' Union and provide her with all possible assistance.
In total, Raisa Kudasheva published about 200 songs and stories, fairy tales and books of poetry: “Sled-scooters”, “Stepka-Rashka”, “Cockerel in Trouble”, “Granny-Fun and the Dog Boom”... Since 1948, after a many-year break, they began to be published again collections of her works: “A Christmas tree was born in the forest...”, “Christmas tree”, “Lesovichki”, “Cockerel” and others.
Fame and recognition came to the writer only in the late 1950s, when she was already in her seventh decade.
The history of this “ritual New Year’s anthem of the entire USSR” from the very beginning was full of secrets and accidents. Firstly, its authors never knew each other. Secondly, both of them were amateurs, that is, they treated poetry and music playing exclusively as a hobby, and did not count on national fame in this field.
Little of. Governess and librarian Raisa Kudasheva, when sending her poems to the editor, signed them exclusively with pseudonyms or generally incomprehensible initials. So under the poem “Yolka”, published in 1903 in the magazine “Malyutka”, there were only the letters “A.” E."
Here, take this magazine and fall into the hands of candidate of natural sciences Leonid Bekman. And the candidate: a) has a piano at home; b) daughter Olya is growing up. So, in his free time from biology and agronomy, he composes songs for his daughter.
Is it true, musical notation Beckman, as befits an amateur, did not master it. That’s why he had a wife - Elena Bekman-Shcherbina, a pianist and professor at the Moscow Conservatory. All in all, complete harmony: daughter stimulates dad, dad composes, and mom writes down.
Leonid Karlovich Bekman with his wife Elena Alexandrovna and daughters Olga and Vera.
When the number of works accumulated, the talented family published in 1905 a whole collection of “Verochka’s Songs” (we don’t know why not “Olechkin’s”). The collection went through as many as four editions, and “Yolochka” with poems by the unknown “A.E.” gradually became an invariable attribute of family New Year's celebrations.
Strange, but Raisa Kudasheva claimed that until 1921 she knew nothing about the existence of a song based on her poems. She first heard it on the train, performed by a girl entertaining her grandmothers. After a while, Kudasheva fell into need, so she had to forget about modesty, and she went straight to the Writers' Union.
According to legend, an old woman entered the office of the secretary of the Writers' Union and said that she was a poetess and could she be given some kind of allowance for this. Fadeev looked at the next “petitioner” with a sigh and, in order to get rid of it, said: “Well, then read something...”. But already at the first lines of “Yolochka” the venerable writer jumped up and excitedly exclaimed: “So you wrote this! And how I cried as a child when I got to the lines “They cut down our Christmas tree to the very root!” After which Fadeev ordered to allocate a personal prize to Kudasheva and admit her to the Writers' Union.
Raisa Adamovna Kudasheva (1878-1964).
In 1941, a collection of New Year's songs and poems, “Yelka,” was published, which the poetess first released under her real name. By this time, Kudasheva was already 63 years old...
From now on, the song practically becomes the “headliner” of all Soviet New Year holidays. And in its text, if you wish, you can even discern the peculiarities of the national worldview. Judge for yourself which one New Year's song we can meet death (remember how Fadeev sobbed) followed by resurrection and transformation: “Now she came to us dressed up for the holiday...”. Well, real Orthodox catharsis!
For all my long history the lyrics of the song have undergone some transformations.
Firstly, in the original, printed in 1903, it is much longer. Here's the original:
Shaggy branches bend
Down to the children's heads;
Rich beads shine
Overflow of lights;
Ball hides behind ball,
And star after star,
Light threads are rolling,
Like golden rain...
Play, have fun
The kids have gathered here
And to you, El-beautiful,
They sing their song.
Everything is ringing and growing
Goloskov children's choir,
And, sparkling, it sways
Christmas trees are a magnificent decoration.A Christmas tree was born in the forest, it grew in the forest,
She was slim and green in winter and summer!
The snowstorm sang songs to her: sleep, Yolka... bye-bye!
The frost was wrapped in snow: look, don’t freeze!
The cowardly little gray bunny was jumping under the Christmas tree,
Sometimes the wolf himself, the angry wolf, ran at a trot!..More fun and friendly
Sing, kids!
The Christmas tree will bow down soon
Your branches.The nuts shine in them
Gilded…
Who is not happy with you here?
Green spruce?Chu! the snow in the dense forest creaks under the runner,
The hairy horse is in a hurry and running.
The horse is carrying wood, and there is a man on the wood.
He cut down our Christmas tree to the very root...
Now you are here, dressed up, you came to us for a holiday,
And she brought a lot, a lot of joy to the children.More fun and friendly
Sing, kids!
The Christmas tree will bow down soon
Your branches.Choose for yourself
What to like...
Ah, thank you
Beautiful spruce!
The second edit was already ideological. After all, at first it was a “peasant” who cut down the Christmas tree, but the censorship thought that the “Soviet collective farmer” might be offended. As a result, an “old man” without any “class characteristics” was chosen for the role of the “executioner” of the Christmas tree. As you can guess, Kudasheva had to agree with this edit.
Of the folk-yard adaptations of this hit, the most famous is the children's refrain - “A Christmas tree was born in the forest, but who gave birth to it? Four drunken hedgehogs and Gena the crocodile” - these are the first steps of sex education.
And finally. One has only to look away from the usual warm feelings associated with “Yolochka”, and it becomes noticeable that the text of the song itself does not shine with any special poetic merits and hundreds and hundreds of others like it have been written.
Of course, the melody is very sweet, but I read somewhere that it was written in the footsteps of some old German song. But one way or another, Raisa Adamovna Kudasheva with light hand Fadeeva pulled out her “lucky ticket.”
Sometimes the path to popularity is truly inscrutable!
Since childhood, the ruined Christmas tree from the song has been a thorn in my soul.
R.A. Kudasheva “A Christmas tree was born in the forest.” There are contradictions in the text of this song:
a cut down Christmas tree cannot come to the holiday, and therefore cannot bring
children have “many, many joys.” But they teach them to destroy beauty “to the very root.”
I don’t think this is good. Therefore, I propose replacing the lines for destroying the Christmas tree with cheerful, New Year’s ones. Below you can read my version
string replacements.
R.A. Kudasheva
THE FOREST RAISED A CHRISTMAS TREE
Crying and trembling from the cruelty suffered,
The Christmas tree has left my page with the scene
lumberjack man. I promised her that her
no one will offend here anymore and she will always
will live in his own fairy forest and every
year will meet with Santa Claus
on New Year's holiday.
***
My option for replacing strings.
THE FOREST RAISED A CHRISTMAS TREE
(Fairy tale version)
The Forest Raised a Christmas Tree,
She grew up in the forest
Slim in winter and summer,
It was green.
The snowstorm sang a song to her:
"Sleep, Christmas tree, bye-bye!"
Frost covered with snow:
"Make sure you don't freeze!"
Gray bunny coward
Jumped under the Christmas tree,
Sometimes a wolf, an angry wolf,
I ran at a trot.
Chu! Snow in the dense forest
It creaks under the runner:
That's Santa Claus on a sleigh
He's in a hurry to get to the Christmas tree.
He's a Christmas tree for the New Year
Invited to visit us,
With a smile, I'm frisky
He launched across the field into the distance!
Now she's smart
She came to us for the holiday
And many, many joys
I brought it for the kids.
***
The shining, emerald Christmas tree congratulates you all on a magical New Year!
And smiles at you with thousands of sparkling needles for your kindness, and wishes you
earthly happiness, the kind that Mother Yolka found when she saw her daughter on
New Year's holiday!
***
The song "A Christmas Tree Was Born in the Forest" was written in 1903.
One hundred and eleven years have passed since then - enough time to understand
that teaching children to cut down Christmas trees and at the same time express joy by singing this song means traumatizing the innocent souls of children and setting a bad example. After all, it is sung, one might say, in all kindergartens.
Santa Claus is a fairy-tale character. Therefore, in my version we are transported
V fairy world, in in which the Christmas tree can move on invisible legs
or waving its branches. Let me remind you: even a broom flies in fairy tales.
That’s why, taking into account the above, in the author’s version, you can simply not perform
two quatrains, with the participation of a peasant lumberjack. And my version, for obvious reasons, cannot be accepted, even if it could exist. But in in this case everyone decides for themselves: to choose a truncated author’s version or a modified one.
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New Year and Christmas are approaching. These days, the lines of the famous song “A Christmas tree was born in the forest” involuntarily come to mind. Everyone remembers this favorite children's song, but few know anything about the author of the words.
The author is the writer Raisa Kudasheva, a person of aristocratic origin who lived a long, interesting life. Here's what, for example, Wikipedia says about her.
Raisa Adamovna Kudasheva (August 3 (15), 1878, Moscow - November 4, 1964, Moscow) - Russian and Soviet poetess and writer. Author of the song “A Christmas Tree Was Born in the Forest.”
Nee Giedroyts (rarely used surname variant in Russian). Descendant of the Lithuanian ruling Grand Ducal family, founded by one of the five sons of the Grand Duke Romundas (Roman) - Gedrus (~ + 1282) from the dynasty of Julian Dovsprung (~ 840 AD), who reigned in pagan Lithuania even before the house of Gediminas with the name t .n. Centaur Dynasty family coat of arms with the image of the heraldic Hippocentaurus in the upper field and the Red Rose in the lower one, representatives of some branches of which moved to modern Belarus, Russia and Ukraine back in the 14th - 16th centuries. In Russian spelling, a variant of the surname GEDROYTS was more often used (- Giedraitis, which can be translated from Lithuanian as “bright, clear.” According to another version of the translation, the surname could mean “singing horseman.” Subsequently it was Polonized as Giedroyc).
After last section Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between Russia, Austria and Prussia in 1794, representatives of some branches of the family for participation in Napoleonic Wars etc. Polish uprisings 1831,1848, 1861-63 were deprived of their ancestral princely title as well as the princely and noble dignity of the Russian Empire with the confiscation of lands, property and simultaneous exile to the north of the Empire in Arkhangelsk, as well as to Siberia: Chita and Irkutsk. At the end of their exile, they were not allowed to return to their previous places of residence; all families of former rebels were under open police surveillance. Obviously, Raisa Adamovna's father was from such a family. His parents settled in Moscow. And, in all likelihood, he or his father restored hereditary nobility, but without the princely title, which required considerable funds at that time. He was an official of the Moscow Post Office in the civil service.
Little is known about life. She graduated from the M. B. Pussel Women's Gymnasium. She served as a governess for Prince Kudashev and later married him. According to reviews from relatives, she had an undoubted teaching gift. She worked as a teacher, and in Soviet times as a librarian.
Literary activity
Since childhood I wrote poetry. The first essay appeared in print in 1896 (the poem “To a Stream” in the magazine “Malyutka”). Since then, Kudasheva’s poems and children’s fairy tales began to appear on the pages of many children’s magazines, such as “Malyutka”, “Firefly”, “Snowdrop”, “Solnyshko” under the pseudonyms “A. E", "A. Er", "R. TO.". “I didn’t want to be famous, but I couldn’t help but write,” she later said. In 1899, Kudasheva’s story “Leri” was published in the magazine “Russian Thought”, which remained her only work for adults. The story tells about the adolescence and youth of a girl from a noble family, her first great love for a brilliant officer.
A song about a Christmas tree
In December 1903, in the New Year's issue of the magazine "Malyutka" the poem "Yolochka" was published, signed with the pseudonym "A. E" The poem, set to music by L. Beckman two years later, gained nationwide fame, but the name of its true author remained unknown for a long time. Raisa Adamovna did not know that “Yolochka” became a song. Only in 1921, completely by accident, while she was traveling on a train, did she hear a girl singing her “Yolochka”. The poem was republished again just before the start of the war in 1941 in the collection “Yolka” (M.-L.: Detizdat, 1941). The compiler of the collection, E. Emden, specifically looked for the author of the poem and indicated Kudasheva’s last name in the text.
There is a legend that Kudasheva’s authorship was revealed upon joining the USSR Writers’ Union. According to one version, one day an elderly woman knocked on Maxim Gorky’s office and said that she would like to join his organization. When Gorky asked what she had written, the woman replied: “Only thin children’s books.” To this Gorky replied that his organization only accepts serious authors who have written novels and stories. “No, no,” the woman answered and walked towards the exit, and then turned around and asked: “Have you heard at least one of my poems?” and read the famous lines to Gorky: “A Christmas tree was born in the forest, it grew in the forest, it was slender and green in winter and summer.” Having heard these lines, Gorky immediately accepted Kudasheva into the Writers' Union. According to another version, this story happened to Alexander Fadeev. Fadeev asked: “So you wrote this?” And he began to remember where it was published and how he read these poems for the first time and cried, as all children cry when they reach the last lines of a poem: He called his employees to his place and gave the order that the author be immediately registered in the Writers' Union and given her all kinds of help.
Another version of this story is told in a letter from the widow of the poet Nikolai Aduev to the writer Viktor Konetsky:
During the war, writers were entitled to all sorts of rations. Aduev hated having to fetch them every month. One day, in the corridor of the Writers' Union, he saw an unfamiliar old woman enter the treasured door, and heard the following conversation: “Which list are you on?” - “...” - “Are you a prose writer or a poet?” - “I actually wrote one poem...” - “???” - “A Christmas tree was born in the forest...” The impenetrable secretary of the Union jumped out into the corridor and shouted: “Do you know who this is??? You won't understand this! You are too young!" And the old lady received everything at the highest level! So - hope for good memory generations!
In total, Raisa Kudasheva published about 200 songs and stories, fairy tales and books of poetry: “Sled-scooters”, “Stepka-rasshka”, “Cockerel’s Trouble”, “Granny-Fun and the Dog Boom”... Since 1948, after a many-year break, they began to be published again collections of her works: “A Christmas tree was born in the forest...”, “Christmas tree”, “Lesovichki”, “Cockerel”, etc.
Fame and recognition came to the writer only in the late 1950s, when she was already in her seventh decade. At that time, two interviews with the writer were published: one in Ogonyok, the other in Evening Moscow. In Ogonyok there is the only surviving photograph of Raisa Adamovna at a very old age.
Prepared by Vadim Grachev
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