Shmelev Ivan Sergeevich biography personal life. Shmelev Ivan Sergeevich

Among the bustle of everyday life, the anniversary somehow went completely unnoticed - the 140th anniversary of the birth of the wonderful Russian writer Ivan Shmelev...

“Shmelev is now the last and only Russian writer from whom you can still learn the wealth, power and freedom of the Russian language. Shmelev is the most Russian of all Russians, and even a native, born Muscovite, with a Moscow dialect, with Moscow independence and freedom of spirit.”

(A. I. Kuprin)

(Konstantin Balmont)

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev was born on October 3 (September 21, old style) 1873 in the Donskaya Sloboda of Moscow, in the house at the address: B. Kaluzhskaya, 13, into the famous Moscow merchant family of the Shmelevs. The Shmelev family was prosperous, Orthodox with a patriarchal spirit. Shmelev's childhood was spent in close communication with artisans, which allowed him to get to know and love people's, working Russia well.
Initially, Shmelev was educated at home, where his mother acted as a teacher, who gradually introduced the young writer into the world of literature (the study of Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, etc.). Then he studied at the sixth Moscow gymnasium. After graduation, he entered the Faculty of Law of Moscow University in 1894. And then, 4 years later, having graduated from it, he undergoes military service for 1 year and then serves as an official in remote places of the Moscow and Vladimir provinces.

Shmelev’s desire for literary creativity awoke while still studying at a Moscow gymnasium. In 1895, the first story “At the Mill” was published in the magazine “Russian Review”. In the same year, while on his honeymoon to Valaam, Shmelev stopped at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra to receive the blessing of the revered ascetic, Hieromonk Barnabas of Gethsemane. The elder predicted to Shmelev the “cross” of suffering ahead of him, received his sight and strengthened his gift for writing, saying: “You will exalt yourself with your talent.”
The book of essays “On the Rocks of Valaam” (1897), describing the Valaam Monastery from the point of view of a secular tourist, was, according to Shmelev, naive, immature and was not successful with the reader. Shmelev retired from writing for 10 years. Having graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow University in 1898, he served as an official in the central provinces of Russia. “I knew the capital, the small craft people, the way of life of the merchants. Now I recognized the village, the provincial bureaucracy, the small nobility,” Shmelev would later say.

Shmelev's pre-revolutionary works were inspired by faith in the earthly happiness of people in a joyful future, hopes for social progress and enlightenment of the people, and expectations of changes in the social system of Russia. Questions of faith and religious consciousness at this time occupy little interest for the writer: having been carried away in his youth by the ideas of Darwinism, Tolstoyism, and socialism, Shmelev moved away from the Church for many years and became, by his own admission, “nobody by faith.” However, already during this period, the themes of suffering and compassion for man, which were very important for Shmelev, were clearly heard in his works, which would become decisive in all subsequent work.

I.S. Shmelev with his wife Olga Alexandrovna and son Sergei

Shmelev initially accepted the February Revolution with enthusiasm and enthusiasm, like many of his contemporaries. He travels to Siberia to meet political prisoners, speaks at meetings and rallies, and talks about the “wonderful idea of ​​socialism.” But soon Shmelev has to become disillusioned with the revolution, he discovers its dark side, sees in all this violence against the fate of Russia. He did not immediately accept the October revolution, and its subsequent events entailed a worldview change in the writer’s soul.

During the revolution, Shmelev left with his family for Alushta, where he bought a house with a plot of land. In the fall of 1920, Crimea was occupied by red units. The fate of Sergei, Shmelev’s only son, turned out to be tragic. A twenty-five-year-old officer of the Russian army, while in the hospital, was arrested. Despite all his father's efforts to free Sergei, he was sentenced to death.

Sergey Shmelev

This event, as well as the terrible famine his family experienced in the occupied city, and the horrors of the massacre carried out by the Bolsheviks in Crimea in 1920-1921, led Shmelev to severe mental depression.

Shmelev could not accept when all life around was dying, there was widespread red terror, evil, hunger, and brutalization of people. In connection with these experiences, the writer writes the epic “Sun of the Dead” (1924), where he reveals his personal impressions of the revolution and the Civil War. Shmelev depicts the triumph of evil, hunger, banditry, and the gradual loss of humanity by people. The style of the narrative reflects the extreme despair, the confused consciousness of the narrator, who is unable to understand how such a rampant of unpunished evil could happen, why the “Stone Age” with its bestial laws has come again. The image of empty skies and a dead sun runs through the book as a refrain: “I have no God. The blue sky is empty..." Shmelev's epic, which captured the tragedy of the Russian people with enormous artistic power, was translated into many languages ​​and brought the author European fame.

Emigration

The writer had a hard time experiencing the tragic events associated with the revolution and military events, and upon arriving in Moscow, he seriously thought about emigrating. I.A. actively participated in making this decision. Bunin, who invited Shmelev abroad, promising to help his family in every possible way. In January 1923, Shmelev finally left Russia for Paris, where he lived for 27 years.

The years spent in exile are distinguished by active, fruitful creative activity. Shmelev is published in many emigrant publications: “Latest News”, “Renaissance”, “Illustrated Russia”, “Segodnya”, “Modern Notes”, “Russian Thought”, etc.
And all these years, Ivan Sergeevich suffered separation from his homeland. He returned to Russia in his work.

Shmelev’s most famous book is “The Summer of the Lord.” Turning to his childhood years, Shmelev captured the worldview of a believing child who trustingly accepted God into his heart. The peasant and merchant environment appears in the book not as a wild “dark kingdom”, but as a holistic and organic world, full of moral health, internal culture, love and humanity. Shmelev is far from romantic stylization or sentimentality. He depicts the true way of Russian life of not so long ago, without glossing over the rough and cruel sides of this life, its “sorrows.” However, for a pure child’s soul, existence reveals itself primarily with its bright, joyful side. The existence of heroes is inextricably linked with church life and worship. For the first time in Russian fiction, the church-religious layer of folk life has been so deeply and completely recreated. In the psychological experiences and prayerful states of the characters, among whom are both sinners and saints, the spiritual life of an Orthodox Christian is revealed.
The meaning and beauty of Orthodox holidays and customs that remain unchanged from century to century are revealed so brightly and talentedly that the book has become a true encyclopedia of Russian Orthodoxy. Shmelev’s amazing language is organically connected with all the richness and diversity of living folk speech; it reflects the very soul of Russia. I. A. Ilyin noted that what is depicted in Shmelev’s book is not what “was and passed,” but what “is and will remain... This is the very spiritual fabric of believing Russia. This is the spirit of our people." Shmelev created “an artistic work of national and metaphysical significance” that captured the sources of our national spiritual strength.”

A living contact with the world of holiness also occurs in the book “Pilgrimage” (1931), adjacent to the “Summer of the Lord,” where all classes of believers in Russia appear in pictures of pilgrimages to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. The ascetic ministry of the “elder-comforter” Barnabas of Gethsemane was recreated by Shmelev with grateful love.

The novel “Nanny from Moscow” (1934), written in Shmelev’s favorite skaz form (in which the writer achieved unsurpassed skill), is the story of an ingenuous Russian woman caught in the turbulent whirlpool of events in the history of the twentieth century. and found herself in a foreign land. Deep faith, inner peace, boundless kindness and spiritual health allow Daria Stepanovna to soberly assess everything that happens to people and the country. In the simple words of the nanny about sin and retribution, the meaning of Russia’s suffering is revealed as a necessary and saving punishment for its purification.

The poetic essay “Old Valaam” (1936) introduces the reader to the world of an Orthodox Russian monastery and depicts a life immersed in an atmosphere of holiness. Recalling with bright sadness his youthful trip to the island, Shmelev shows how monastic life illuminates human life with the light of eternity and transforms sorrow into high joy. Images of Holy Rus' also fill the essay “The Grace of St. Seraphim" (1935) - about how Shmelev was saved from a fatal illness after fervent prayer to Father Seraphim of Sarov, and the story "Kulikovo Field" (1939) - about the miraculous appearance in Soviet Russia of St. Sergius of Radonezh, encouraging and strengthening the Christians who remained there.

In Paris, Shmelev begins to communicate closely with the Russian philosopher I.A. Ilyin. For a long time there was correspondence between them (233 letters from Ilyin and 385 letters from Shmelev). It is an important evidence of the political and literary process of the first wave of Russian emigration.
In a foreign land, three Russian Ivans met - Ivan Shmelev, Ivan Ilyin and Ivan Bunin - in whose hearts the love for Russia remained forever.

But critics were irritated by the patriotism and national aspiration of the writer’s work. The émigré press dubbed the novel “Soldiers,” which adequately depicts the tsarist officers, as “Black Hundred police.” A prominent critic of the Russian diaspora, G. Adamovich, persecuted Shmelev with insulting, playfully mocking reviews. Shmelev could not be forgiven by “Orthodox Russian traditions... for the fact that he dared to defend historical Russia against the revolution.”

Among Shmelev’s friends and like-minded people one can name I. Ilyin, the family of General A. Denikin, N. Kulman, V. Ladyzhensky, K. Balmont, A. Kuprin.

Both at home and in exile, Shmelev was subjected to “ultimate tests” one after another. In 1936, Shmelev’s wife Olga Aleksandrovna, his faithful companion, died, and from that moment on he bears the cross of loneliness. This was an irreparable and unbearable blow for Ivan Sergeevich. It was impossible to even imagine how he would live without her... Quiet, calm, always working, selflessly loving, she was his lifelong friend, his assistant, nanny, sister of mercy. He couldn't live a day without her.
And so... I had to live, get sick, work for years in complete, bitter loneliness... Only deep faith saved the writer.

Shmelev suffered from a serious illness, exacerbations of which more than once brought him to the brink of death. Shmelev's financial situation sometimes reached the point of beggary. The war of 1939-45, which he experienced in occupied Paris, and the slander in the press, with which enemies tried to smear the name of the writer, aggravated his mental and physical suffering.

The elderly writer was accused of almost collaborating with the Nazis (he published in publications that later began to be considered collaborationist, but it is unlikely that the elderly writer could understand such things). But Shmelev was always a kind, compassionate person. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Shmelev was a man of exceptional spiritual purity, incapable of any bad deed. He was characterized by deep nobility of nature, kindness and cordiality. The appearance of Shmelev spoke about the suffering he had experienced - a thin man with an ascetic face, furrowed with deep wrinkles, with large gray eyes full of affection and sadness.

Ksenia Denikina, the wife of General Denikin, recalled:
...When the last war began, I.S. I took it very hard. I will quote a few words from his letters from 1939, which sound as if they were written now: “I know: our Russia will be pure. A crowned sufferer... Now the eyes of the world have already opened and everything is clear. Let us believe that the lost one will be found.” the path to the truth, that true Russia will find itself... A new generation is coming, young, enough of everything and daring. May its coming be under the sign of the Lord! "

It doesn’t matter that many harsh critics do not approve of Shmelev, that they find shortcomings in him, that they prove that he is not up to the standard of classical examples.

He is a God-seeking soul, the last writer of that primordial Russian life, in which, despite progress, big cities and all modern technology and comforts, the Russian soul with its desire for the righteous still lived. He is a writer we understand and is our own.

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev died in 1950 as a result of a heart attack. The death of the writer, who so loved monastic life, became deeply symbolic: on June 24, 1950, on the name day of Elder Barnabas, who had previously blessed him “on his path,” Shmelev came to the Russian monastery of the Intercession of the Mother of God in Bussy-en-Haute and on the same the day is dying.
They say that the writer sat quietly in the refectory of the monastery, quietly fell asleep... and never woke up again. They say that the Lord sends such death to the righteous who suffered a lot during their lives...

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev was buried in the Parisian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois. In 2000, Shmelev’s cherished wish was fulfilled: the ashes of him and his wife were transported to their homeland and buried next to the graves of their relatives in the Moscow Donskoy Monastery.

Rest, O Lord, the soul of Your servant John.

Was bornIvan Sergeevich Shmelev September 21 (October 3), 1873 in Moscow,in the family of an Old Believer contractor. My great-grandfather traded in tableware and wood chips in Moscow; his grandfather continued his business and took out contracts for the construction of houses. “Father,” wrote I.S. Shmelev, - ... built bridges, houses, took contracts for the illumination of the capital on days of celebrations, maintained baths, boats, baths, introduced ice mountains for the first time in Moscow, erected booths... His last work was a contract for the construction of stands for the public at opening of the monument to Pushkin... I stayed after him for about seven years" ( « Autobiography » // Rus. Liter. 1973. No. 4. P. 142).

To his father, Sergei Ivanovich, I.S. Shmelev dedicated heartfelt pages in books "Pilgrimage" And "Summer of the Lord". The family was distinguished by its patriarchal and devout religiosity (“I saw no books in the house except the Gospel,” recalled I.S. Shmelev in his autobiography). An integral feature of this patriarchy was love for the native land and its history. The servants were also patriarchal and religious, telling little Vanya stories about icons and ascetics, accompanying him on his journey to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Later, the writer will devote lyrical memories of his childhood years to one of them, the old “file-maker” Gorkin.

A completely different spirit than in the house reigned in the Zamoskvoretsky courtyard of the Shmelevs, where construction workers flocked from all over Russia in search of work. “The early years,” recalled I.S. Shmelev - gave me a lot of impressions. I received them “in the yard”... This was the first book I read - a book of living, lively and colorful words. Here, in the courtyard, I saw people... Our courtyard for me was the first school of life - the most important and wise” (Ibid. pp. 142-143). The boy’s consciousness, therefore, was formed under various influences: “our yard” became for I.S. Shmelev’s first school of love of truth and humanism, which largely predetermined the nature of his further work and the author’s position as a defender of the offended and oppressed ( "Citizen Ukleikin" (1908), "The Man from the Restaurant" (1911); "Inexhaustible Chalice" (1918); "Napoleon"(1928), etc.). In his family, the trends of culture, education, and art were felt - and the further, the more. This was the merit of the mother, Evlampia Gavrilovna (a merchant’s daughter, nee Savinova, who graduated from one of the Moscow institutes for noble maidens).

Preschool education I.S. Shmelev passed in a private boarding school, then he studied at the 6th Moscow gymnasium. Studying was hampered by reading adventure novels and a passion for theater. A.P. Chekhov played a stimulating role in the passion for “writing” (essay "How I Met Chekhov", 1934). The chance encounters of the little high school student many years later began to seem like I.S. Shmelev were fateful in choosing the path of a writer - a sufferer, a people's defender. In everyday life at the gymnasium, literature teacher F. Tsvetaev stood out as a bright ray, appreciating the fifth-grader’s abilities and giving him the freedom to write about whatever he wanted. Under the influence of Tsvetaev, I.S.’s horizons expanded. Shmelev the high school student, his spiritual world was enriched. “Korolenko and Uspensky consolidated what was touched upon in me by Pushkin and Krylov, what I saw from life in our yard. Some of the stories from “Notes of a Hunter” corresponded to the mood that was growing in me,” he noted in his autobiography. “I will call this mood a feeling of nationality, Russianness, nativeness.” Tolstoy finally cemented this feeling in me” (Russian literature, 1973. No. 4, p. 144). High school student Ivan Shmelev composed a novel from the era of Ivan the Terrible, poems for the 30th anniversary of the liberation of the peasants, a drama in which “he” and “she” died of consumption, etc. The first success came when, in the days of preparation for final exams, Ivan Shmelev felt an extraordinary surge of creative excitement and wrote a big story in one evening "At the Mill"(published in July 1895 in the magazine “Russian Review”).

In the fall of 1894, Ivan Shmelev entered the law faculty of Moscow University. In his youth, his beliefs changed abruptly from devout religiosity to pure rationalism in the spirit of the sixties, from rationalism to the teachings of Leo Tolstoy, to the ideas of simplification and moral self-improvement. At the university, unexpectedly for himself, he became seriously interested in the botanical discoveries of K. Timiryazev. Then a new surge of religiosity associated with his marriage to Olga Alexandrovna Okhterloni, the daughter of a general, hero of the defense of Sevastopol in the Crimean War of 1853-1856. After their trip (August 1896) to the Valaam Transfiguration Monastery in the north-west of Ladoga, essays were written "On the Rocks of Valaam"(1897). Published at the expense of the author, the book, disfigured by censorship, sold poorly. The break in creativity lasted for a whole decade.

After graduating from university (1898) and a year of military service, I.S. Shmelev has been serving as an official on special assignments of the Vladimir Treasury Chamber of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for 8 years. These years enriched him with knowledge of district Russia. “I knew the capital, the small craft people, the way of life of the merchants,” noted I.S. Shmelev - Now I recognized the village, the provincial bureaucracy, the factory districts, the small nobility” (Ibid. p. 145). In district towns, factory settlements, suburbs, and villages, the writer meets prototypes of the heroes of many of his novels and short stories of the 1900s: "On urgent business"(1907), " Citizen Ukleikin», "In the hole" (1909), "Under the sky" (1910), "Syrup"(1911). The sounds of the approaching revolution reached here. “I was dead for service,” said I.S. Shmelev criticized V. Lvov-Rogachevsky. - The movement of the nineties seemed to have opened a way out. ...New things dawned before me, opening a way out for oppressive melancholy. I felt that I was starting to live” (Lvov-Rogachevsky V. Newest Russian literature. M., 1927. P. 276). The main works of I.S. Shmelev, written before " The man from the restaurant», - "Sergeant" (1906), "Disintegration", "Ivan Kuzmich"(1907), " Citizen Ukleikin" - passed under the sign of the 1st Russian Revolution. At the same time or a little later, he creates optimistic stories for children "To the sun" (1907), "Shelf" (1909), "Light Page"(1910), as well as stories about animals "Mary" (1907), "The last shoot" (1908), "My Mars" (1910).

In 1907 he left the service to devote himself entirely to literary work and moved to Moscow. In 1909 he became an active participant in the literary circle “Sreda” and met with the friendly support of V. Korolenko and M. Gorky. “You have been a bright feature in my activities...” M. wrote to I.S. Gorky. Shmelev December 5, 1911, “and if I am destined to leave something worthwhile... then on this path I owe you a lot!” (Archive of A. M. Gorky. IMLI). In 1910 I.S. Shmelev is a member of the “Knowledge” partnership, and in 1912 he becomes a contributing member of the Book Publishing House of Writers in Moscow, which publishes his first Collected Works in 8 volumes (1912-1914), it publishes short stories and novellas "Wall", "Shy Silence", "Rosstani", "Grape", which strengthened the position of I.S. Shmelev in literature as a major realist writer.

1st World War I.S. Shmelev perceived it as a difficult test for the Russian people, responding to it with a cycle of stories entitled "Hard Days", to which the story is thematically adjacent "Funny adventure"(1917). The writer greeted the February Revolution of 1917 with enthusiasm at first, as a correspondent for the newspaper “Russian Vedomosti”, making a trip to Siberia to meet amnestied political prisoners. But the harsh reality sobered the writer. “Deep social and political restructuring at once is completely unthinkable even in the most cultured countries,” he asserted in a letter to his son, an artillery officer in the Volunteer Army, “in ours, and even more so, our uncultured, completely ignorant people cannot accept the idea of ​​​​reorganization even approximately” ( July 30, 1917; Department of Manuscripts of the GBRF). I.S. Shmelev had a sharply negative attitude towards the October Revolution. In 1918 he left for Crimea, where he wrote a “quiet book” about a serf artist (“The Inexhaustible Chalice”, 1918), condemned the war as a mass psychosis of healthy people (story "It was", 1919, ed. in 1922), shows the meaninglessness of the death of the whole and pure, straightforward Ivan in captivity, on the wrong side ( "Alien Blood", 1919-1922). In all the works of these years, echoes of the later problematics of I.S. are already noticeable. Shmelev the emigrant.

With the arrival of the Red Army in Crimea, his son Sergei, an officer in A. Denikin’s army, was arrested and shot in November 1920. As a reserve officer in the tsarist army, I.S. himself was threatened with execution. Shmelev. On November 22, 1922, he and his wife left for Berlin. Abroad, the writer creates a number of works permeated with a sense of tragic hopelessness: "Sun of the Dead" (1923), "Stone Age"(1924), etc. His story is an “epic” “ Sun of the dead"translated into many foreign languages, aroused rave reviews from T. Mann, A. Amfiteatrova, brought I.S. Shmelev gained European fame. His novel has a completely different tone. "Love Story"(1927, ed. 1929). In the circle of friends I.S. Shmelev included A. Kuprin, General A. Denikin, A. Kartashev, philosopher and critic I. Ilyin, K. Balmont.

The pinnacle of creativity by I.S. Shmelev's works of the 30s appeared - “ Summer of the Lord: Holidays - joys - sorrows" (1933-48), " Pilgrimage"(1935), as well as a collection thematically close to them "Native"(1931). In 1936, his novel was published, built in line with “ The man from the restaurant", in the tale, - "Nanny from Moscow"(1936). Until the end of his days I.S. Shmelev is working on an epic about the religious trials of the Russian soul "Heavenly Paths"(T. 1 - 1935-1936; T. 2 - 1944-47, separate edition 1948; T. 3 not finished), above the short story "Soldiers", "Foreigner"(not finished).

When World War II began, he remained in Paris. At first I.S. Shmelev harbored illusions that Germany would liberate Russia from Bolshevism; spoke in the Russian newspapers “Novoe Slovo” (Berlin), in the anti-communist newspaper “Parizhsky Vestnik”, and although he did not touch upon political topics in his materials, this cooperation gave grounds to accuse him of collaboration. “I have never been a fascist and never showed sympathy for fascism,” wrote I.S. Shmelev (Russian Thought, May 31 1947 ). Having undergone a serious operation, he decides to settle near an Orthodox monastery in Bussy-en-Haute, 140 km from Paris, and on June 24, 1950 he arrives at the monastery. On the same day, a heart attack ends his life. The writer was buried in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery near Paris.

At the beginning of his creative career I.S. Shmelev is close to the realist writers grouped around the Znanie publishing house. In stories and stories " Ivan Kuzmich», « Citizen Ukleikin" and finally, " Restaurant Man“There is a sharp dissatisfaction with life and the topic of the “little man” is raised. “I would like to,” wrote M. Gorky to I.S. Shmelev, revealing the plan " The man from the restaurant", - to identify the servant of man, who, by specific activity, as if in focus, represents the whole mass of servants on different paths of life" (Letter dated December 22, 1910. Archive of A. M. Gorky. IMLI). About the deeply humanistic character " The man from the restaurant“said K. Chukovsky: “Shmelev wrote, in a completely old-fashioned way, a wonderful, exciting story, i.e. so beautiful that you will sit over it the night, suffer and suffer, and it will seem to you that someone has forgiven you for something, caressed you, or you have forgiven someone” (Chukovsky K. Russian lit-pa in 1911 // Yearbook gas, "Rech", 1912). In prose 1912-1916 the writer turns to new layers of life - he writes about the disintegration of the noble estate (“ Shy silence», « Wall"), the dramatic disconnection of the intelligentsia from the "common" man ( "Wolf's Roll"), the quiet life of the servants (“ Grape"), the last days of a wealthy contractor reassessing the past in the face of death (" Rosstani»).

In pre-revolutionary times, I.S. Shmelev did not create his own special style, which was noted by critics: “From elongation to compression - this is the general formula for the evolution of style and form in Shmelev,” noted A. Derman in a general article about him (Russian Notes. 1916. No. 6. P. 83 ). I.S. Shmelev is far from the classical precision and clarity of Bunin's descriptions, from the soulful lyricism of B. Zaitsev, infectious with its mood, from the semi-grotesque convexity of the monstrous figures of L. Tolstoy or E. Zamyatin. But sometimes I.S. Shmelev achieves almost equality with each of these writers: lyrics or landscape " Under the sky" And " Wolf's roll"worthy of Zaitsev, unhurried, calm clarity" Shy silence», "Forests" equal to Bunin's, competed at one time with " County"Zamiatin's tale" The man from the restaurant", could have been written by Chekhov "Fever" And "Mayfly", Gorky - “ Decay", entered the unforgettable "iron fund" of Russian literature " Restaurant Man», « Citizen Ukleikin", worthy of it - " Rosstani», « Funny adventure"(Gorbachev G. Realistic prose of the 1910s and the work of Ivan Shmelev // Shmelev Iv. A funny adventure. Stories. M., 1927. P. 12).

“Own”, lyrical, fantastic I.S. Shmelev acquires already in “ Inexhaustible Chalice" And " Someone else's blood“, however, Shmelev’s innermost is revealed with the greatest force in his emigrant work and, above all, in “ Pilgrimage" And " Summer of the Lord" “The great master of word and image, I.S. Shmelev created here, in the greatest simplicity, a refined and unforgettable fabric of Russian life, in precise, rich and graphic words... here everything radiates from restrained, unshed tears of touched, blessed memory. Russia and the Orthodox structure of its soul are shown here by the power of clairvoyant love. This power of image increases and becomes more refined because everything is taken and given from a child’s soul, open with all trust, reverently responsive and joyfully enjoying” (Ilyin I.A. The work of I.S. Shmelev // Ilyin I.A. About darkness and enlightenment Munich, 1959. P. 176) The language of the writer’s prose is defended and crystallized. “Shmelev is now the last and only Russian writer from whom you can learn the wealth, power and freedom of the Russian language,” said Kuprin (Kuprin A.I. To the 60th anniversary of I.S. Shmelev // Behind the wheel [Paris] 1933 7 Dec.). Like the pre-revolutionary creativity of I.S. Shmelev, his works of the emigrant period are marked by extreme inequality. Next to the poetic " Love story» created on the material of the 1st World War romantic "Soldiers"(1925, separate chapters published since 1924), following the lyrical essays, an autobiography of the character (“ Native», "Old Valaam", 1935, dept. Ed. 1936) an extended narrative appears " Heavenly ways"(1937-48) - about the collapse of scientific skepticism in a clash with higher intelligence. But everything in these books is imbued with the thought of Russia and love for it. The importance of the best books by I.S. Shmelev about the old, departed Russia - merchant, petty bourgeois, factory. However, the greatest recognition came to the writer thanks to his interest in the popular consciousness on religious topics. “So the applicant for a secular “teacher of life,” wrote A. Kartashev, “turned into a church teacher. People have volumes on their night tables along with the prayer book and the Gospel." Summer of the Lord"as before they lay" Lives“St. Dmitry of Rostov. This is no longer literature. This is a “soul asking.” This is the satisfaction of spiritual hunger” [Kartashev A. Singer of Holy Rus' (in memory of I.S. Shmelev) // Revival [Paris] 1950. No. 10. P. 157 ].

HE. Mikhailov

From the biographical dictionary "Russian writers of the twentieth century"

Shmelev Ivan Sergeevich(1873 - 1950), prose writer.
Born on September 21 (October 3, new year) in Moscow, in Zamoskvorechye, into a wealthy merchant family, distinguished by patriarchal habits and piety. On the other hand, I was influenced by the “court”, where construction workers flocked; a different, rebellious spirit reigned here. “Here, in the courtyard, I saw people. I got used to them here...”, I. Shmelev would later write. He heard songs, jokes, sayings, fairy tales and a varied and rich language here. All this will appear later on the pages of his books, in his fairy tales. After graduating from high school, in 1894 he entered the law faculty of Moscow University. In the fall of 1895 he makes a trip to Finland, to the Valaam Monastery. The result of this journey was his first book - essays “On the Rocks of Valaam”, published in Moscow in 1897. After graduating from university in 1898, he served in military service for a year, then served as an official in remote places of the Moscow and Vladimir provinces for eight years. “I knew the capital, the small craft people, the way of life of the merchants. Now I knew the village, the provincial bureaucracy, the small nobility,” Shmelev would later write. Here he meets the prototypes of the heroes of many of his stories. From here came “Treacle”, “Citizen Ukleikin”, “In the Hole”, “Under the Sky”. Particularly famous were the works written under the influence of the first Russian revolution (the stories “On a Urgent Business”, “Disintegration”, 1906; the stories “Vahmister”, 1906, “Ivan Kuzmin”, 1907). In 1911, Shmelev wrote one of his significant works, “The Man from the Restaurant,” which was a resounding success. In 1912, the publishing house "Book Publishing House of Writers in Moscow" was organized, whose contributing members were I. Bunin, B. Zaitsev, V. Veresaev, I. Shmelev and others. All of Shmelev's further work in the 1900s is associated with this publishing house, which published a collection of his works in eight volumes. Published novels and stories ("The Wall", "Shy Silence", "Wolf Roll", "Rosstani", etc.), published during 1912 - 1914. During the First World War, collections of his stories and essays "Carousel" (1916) , “Hard Days”, “Hidden Face” (1917), in which the story “A Funny Adventure” appeared, stood out noticeably against the backdrop of official patriotic fiction with its sincerity. He greeted the February Revolution with enthusiasm; he showed complete irreconcilability towards Oktyabrskaya, aggravated by the fact that his only son Sergei, an officer in the volunteer army, who did not want to go with Wrangel to a foreign land, was taken from the hospital in Feodosia and shot without trial. At the end of 1922, after a short stay in Moscow, Shmelev left for Berlin, then to Paris, where the emigrant chapter of his life opened. He created pamphlet stories full of hatred towards the Bolsheviks - “The Sun of the Dead” (1923), “The Stone Age” (1924), “On the Stumps” (1925). Over the years, memories of the past took a central place in Shmelev's work ("Bogomolye", 1931, "Summer of the Lord", 1933 - 48). Abroad, I. Shmelev published more than twenty books. I. Shmelev died on June 24, 1950 near Paris from a heart attack.

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev was born September 21 (October 3), 1873 in the Kadashevskaya settlement of Zamoskvorechye in a patriarchal merchant family. Ivan Sergeevich’s grandfather, a state peasant from Guslitsy, Bogorodsky district, Moscow province, settled in Moscow after the fire of 1812. The writer's father belongs to the merchant class, but was not involved in trade, but was a contractor, the owner of a large carpentry team, and he also ran bathhouses.

Ivan Shmelev was brought up in an atmosphere of reverence for antiquity and intense religiosity. At the same time, Shmelev experienced the influence of the “street” - the working people of different provinces, who flocked to the courtyard of his contractor-father in Zamoskvorechye and brought with them spontaneous rebellion, a rich language, and folklore. This predetermined the social acuity of Shmelev’s best works, on the one hand, and on the other hand, attention to the “skaz”, closeness to literary traditions coming from N.S. Leskova and F.M. Dostoevsky, contributed to the fact that I. Shmelev became a great master of the Russian literary language, a prominent representative of critical realism.

Ivan Shmelev studied literacy at home, as was the case not only in merchant families, but also in noble families. His first teacher was his mother. Together with her, he “passed through” Krylov, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev. At the sixth Moscow gymnasium, where he entered in 1884, his reading circle expanded - Tolstoy, Uspensky, Leskov, Korolenko, Melnikov-Pechersky became his favorite writers. However, Pushkin always remained the “symbol of faith” for Shmelev.

Autumn 1895 An important event occurs in the writer’s life: he marries Olga Alexandrovna Okhterloni. At the request of the young wife, they go on a somewhat unusual honeymoon - to the island of Valaam, where there is a famous monastery and many hermitages. From there the future writer brings his first book - “On the Rocks of Valaam. Beyond the world. Travel Stories". Its fate was unsuccessful: the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, Pobedonostsev, saw sedition in it, the book was published in a greatly truncated form and was not successful. Failure forces him to think seriously about his means of subsistence and about the structure of his future life. Then Ivan Sergeevich entered Moscow University. After graduating from law school in 1898 and years of military service, Shmelev spent 8 years as an official in the remote corners of the Moscow and Vladimir provinces.

In 1905 Shmelev returns to the idea that the real thing in life for him can only be one thing - writing. He begins to publish in “Children’s Reading”, collaborate in the magazine “Russian Thought”, and in 1907 Having believed in himself, he resigns, settles in Moscow and devotes himself entirely to literary work.

Shmelev’s works, written under the influence of the revolution, became famous 1905-1907(story “Disintegration”, 1907 , "Citizen Ukleikin", 1908 ; stories "Vakhmistr" 1906 , "Ivan Kuzmich", 1907 ). M. Gorky supported I. Shmelev in completing work on one of the significant works - the story “The Man from the Restaurant” ( 1911) .

Since the beginning of the war, Shmelev and his wife left for the Kaluga estate. Here the writer sees and understands with his own eyes how the world massacre has a detrimental effect on human morality. Shmelev did not accept the October Revolution. In the very first acts of the new government he sees serious sins against morality. Together with family in 1918 Shmelev leaves for Crimea and buys a house in Alushta.

Son Sergei ended up in the Volunteer Army. Twenty-five-year-old Sergei Shmelev served in the commandant's department in Alushta, and did not take part in the battles. After the escape of Wrangel's army spring 1920, Crimea was occupied by the Reds, many who served under Wrangel remained on the shore. They were asked to hand over their weapons. Among them was Shmelev’s son Sergei. He was arrested. Shmelev tried to rescue his son, but he was sentenced to death and executed.

But the trials of the Shmelev family did not end with this tragedy. They still had to survive a terrible famine, which in a prosperous, fertile region was no easier than in all of Russia - the tragic famine of 1921.

Returning from Crimea to Moscow spring 1922, Shmelev began to bother about going abroad, where Bunin persistently invited him. November 20, 1922 Shmelev and his wife travel to Berlin.

Bunin tries to help the Shmelev family, invites Ivan Sergeevich to Paris, promises to obtain visas. In January 1923 The Shmelevs move to Paris, where the writer lives for 27 long years.

Shmelev's first work of the immigrant period was “The Sun of the Dead” - a tragic epic. Sun of the Dead was first published in 1923, in the emigrant collection “Window”, and in 1924 published as a separate book. Immediately followed by translations into French, German, English, and a number of other languages, which was very rare for a Russian emigrant writer, and even unknown in Europe.

1924. - "Stone Age".
1925. - “On the stumps.”
1927. - “Love story.”
1930 . - novel “Soldiers”.
1933. - “Summer of the Lord.”
1935. - “Politics.”
1936-1948. - novel “Heavenly Paths”.

July 22, 1936 Ivan Shmelev’s wife, Olga Aleksandrovna, dies after a short illness, understanding him like no one else. In order to somehow distract the writer from his dark thoughts, his friends organized a trip for him to Latvia and Estonia. He also visited the Pskov-Pechora Monastery and stood near the Soviet border. Reaching through the wire fence, he plucked several flowers. In the last year of his life, illness confined him to bed. In November 1949 he had surgery. She was successful. The desire to work returned, new plans appeared. He wants to start the third book of “The Ways of Heaven.”

“You will be exalted by your talent” - this was the elder’s answer to the young man who was just beginning his journey in literature. This man was Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev.

In 1895, while traveling on board, he stopped at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and received a blessing from the hands of a famous ascetic to study literature.

Strengthening Ivan, the elder in a few words revealed to him that his life’s path would be fraught with many trials. The blessing was fulfilled exactly: his guest became an outstanding Russian writer, and it fell to his lot to witness the revolution and civil war, to experience the death of his closest people and...

Remembering the words of the elder in the most difficult circumstances, I.S. Shmelev found the strength to move on. In recent years, the cross fell with particular force on his shoulders: having lost his wife, bedridden by illness, far from Russia, he experienced a period of severe depression.

And yet, like the sun before sunset, in recent months hope has returned to him, the desire to continue working on a new volume of the novel “Heavenly Paths”, new plans have appeared...

The Lord judged differently. Ivan Sergeevich died suddenly, on the day of remembrance of his patron, already widely revered by believers, St. Barnabas of Gethsemane. And to the last he hoped that the time would come when he would be remembered in his homeland, and there would definitely be those who could fulfill his will - to rebury him and his wife in Moscow, where his relatives were buried, under the arches of the Donskoy Monastery.

"Native Muscovites of the Old Faith"

I.S. Shmelev. Drawing by E.E. Klimova. 1936

After the revolution of 1917, the name of Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev was hushed up in his homeland. He didn’t correspond, he didn’t like the new government. He was a believer all his life, Orthodox, and retained his faith as a thread connecting him with Russia.

...The future writer was born in Kadashevskaya Sloboda, in Zamoskvorechye. The writer's father belonged to the merchant class, but was not involved in trade, but was a contractor, the owner of a large carpentry artel, and also ran bathhouses. “We are from merchant peasants,” Shmelev said about himself, “native Muscovites of the old faith.”

The family structure was distinguished by patriarchy and a kind of democracy. The owners and workers lived together: they strictly observed fasts and church customs, celebrated holidays together, and went on pilgrimages. And such a unity of spiritual principles and a real way of life, when a neighbor is such not only in name, turned out to be a good “inoculation” of sincerity for Ivan Shmelev for the rest of his life.

Later, the influence of Russian classics will manifest itself not only in the choice of plots of his own works, but will also largely determine the style, allowing him to choose a special intonation, individual, and, at the same time, connecting him with the national literary tradition: Ivan early developed a sense of belonging and compassion .

"From what trash"

Little by little, his passion for literature, which formed a love and taste for language, awakened in him a desire to write. However, before his first works saw the light, Shmelev spent several years, after graduating from Moscow University, in practical studies, worrying about his daily bread. Having worked briefly as an assistant to a sworn attorney in Moscow, Ivan Sergeevich goes to Vladimir-on-Klyazma to serve as a tax inspector.

For months on end he travels along the potholes of Russian roads, meeting on his way representatives of all walks of life, spends the night in inns overgrown with lilacs and burdocks, saturated with the smells of hay and cabbage soup, accumulates impressions of the remote Russian province, warm and still retaining the atmosphere of antiquity. Characters, dialect and figures of speech are his “palette”, his literary capital...

By 1905, his interests were finally determined. Shmelev has no doubt: the real thing in life for him can only be one thing - writing. He begins to publish in “Children's Reading”, collaborate in the magazine “Russian Thought”, and finally, in 1907, he retires in order to settle in Moscow and devote himself entirely to literature.

Walking along the roads of Vladimir revealed a lot. In stories inspired by meetings during official travels, the aspiring writer conveys the feeling that something has shifted in the people's way of life. Barely noticeable cracks in relationships between loved ones can serve as the beginning of the end. In Decay (1906), discord occurs between father and son. As a result of the inability and unwillingness to understand each other, both die.

But real success was brought to Shmelev by the story “The Man from the Restaurant” (1910). The story of the “little man”, the relationship between fathers and children in the context of the 1905 revolution, was received with delight by critics and readers, comparing it with the debut. In the years between the two revolutions, Shmelev received wide recognition and respect from recognized masters and fellow writers.

In the land of the dead

The beginning of the 20s determined the nature of the work of Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev for many years. There is no subjunctive mood in history, and yet... If he had not been “locked” in Crimea during the famine of 1921, which cost Russia 5.5 million lives, if he had not become an eyewitness to the Red Terror, perhaps he would have been remembered as remarkable, a subtle, soulful realist writer, in whose work the motifs of Gogol, Leskov and Kuprin are sometimes noticeable.

The influence of the critical movement is especially obvious in his famous story “The Turn of Life” (1914-1915), written on the Kaluga estate, where the Shmelevs experienced the events associated with the beginning of the German war. The theme was chosen with Gogolian sharpness - the spirit of acquisitiveness, turning to one's own benefit from a common misfortune. The war brought profit to the carpenter Mitri. His job is to make grave crosses. But the unexpected “income” that fell on him pushes him to comprehend the ongoing tragedy. Shmelev’s perception of the war is partly aggravated due to the departure of his only son Sergei to the front. The harsh story “It Was” is also permeated with pain. But, in general, this is still a familiar, “recognizable” Shmelev.

We can also recognize it in “The Inexhaustible Chalice,” written after October, in 1918, in Alushta, where the writer hoped to take refuge with his family from a suddenly impending danger, vague and not yet sufficiently realized, but no longer leaving any doubt about serious crimes against morality .

Shmelev instinctively recognized in the October Revolution the spirit of hypocrisy, inhumanity, and blasphemy. In Crimea, he seems to be trying to get rid of the feeling of a nightmare and writes “in Leskov’s style” a piercing story, appealing to humanity, to goodness, about a serf master, so reminiscent of the story of “The Stupid Artist”...

But Russian realism, represented by its best representatives, with its empathy and rejection of injustice in relation to the “orphaned” and unprotected, could not admit that exposing the shortcomings of Russian life would not lead to a softening of hearts, but, on the contrary, to such bitterness that death in its ugliest guises will not disturb and will not force anyone to ring the bells or shout about the price of human life. Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev did not expect this either.

...The first sign of trouble was the arrest of his son, Sergei. His whole guilt in the eyes of the new authorities was that he was mobilized even before the revolution. First he ended up at the front, and then in the army of General Wrangel. A young man who refused to emigrate and did not foresee the possible consequences... He was imprisoned in one of those terrible “cellars” where thousands of commissars designated for extermination were starved, tortured to the point of exhaustion, before being robbed and shot secretly, at night, behind a beam, and throw them nameless into a common ditch... Over twenty thousand in Crimea alone!

Attempts to achieve Sergei's release were in vain. The Shmelevs wrote to Gorky, Veresaev, Lunacharsky... According to one version, a telegram was sent from the center to the Crimean security officers, but even if this was so, it was not possible to save Sergei. With great difficulty, the parents managed to find the remains of their son and bury him according to Christian custom.

And there was still such grief ahead that the death of his son turned out to be an event in a series: famine followed the “requisitions” in Crimea. In 1923, already abroad, Shmelev for the first time would be able to talk about what he saw and experienced himself. His “Sun of the Dead” will make many sympathizers of the “great social experiment” in Russia think for the first time about the cost of such an “experience.”

It takes a certain amount of courage to read this thing from start to finish. A book about dying, slow and inevitable. At the dachas near Yalta, recently lively, cozy, and now ruined, plants, people, birds, animals are equally doomed to death... Miraculously surviving the raids of the new “masters of life”, the inhabitants of the dachas find themselves involved in the struggle for the last grains, grape cakes, greenery in the beds. What reigns around is not a blessed silence, but the dead silence of a churchyard. The gardens are deceptively beautiful, the vineyards are devastated, the owners are killed. Nowhere: the church has been turned into a “prison basement”, and at the entrance sits a Red Army guard with a star on his cap. And under every roof there is one thought - bread!

Two worlds separated by an abyss: a well-fed one, shiny from what was acquired in an unjust way, and next to another: shackled by fear, fallen into a stupor from hunger - the world of lonely old people, children, mothers, getting crumbs for orphans... On the one hand - a demonstration of strength, orgies and nightly reprisals, on the other - good, breaking through despair and the feeling that the Lord has abandoned him forever; a world in which even on the threshold of death they share their last with a child, a bird.

The reader is presented with a series of personal disasters, each of which is followed by disappointment. The neighbor-nanny, barely dragging herself from exhaustion, laments: “Tell me something! Let's make it rich for the whole generation! That’s the rut, what a generation it is!” And recently she was waiting for the “true word” she heard at the rally to be fulfilled, and that dachas and vineyards would be distributed to “all working people.” A neighbor in tattered clothes and wearing props recalls how, in prosperity, abroad, he shook hands with a watch seller and spoke with feeling about the revolutionary movement emerging in Russia, which “will bring freedom to neighboring countries.”

One by one, the unemployed craftsmen who welcomed “their truth” in October 17 are dying. And on the road towards the city, in a kind of frenzy, no longer afraid of anything: no ambushes, no red patrols, with one thought: “I wish I could get there,” the commissar’s wife wanders with two still living children. The third was buried. Her husband left her, a “fool,” for the sake of a “communarka.” So she thinks: “It’s better to kill these people right away than like this...” Recently, she too lived in hope.

Yu.A. Kutyrina, Yves Zhantilhom, O.A. and I.S. Shmelevs. Paris. 1926

In the world of the doomed, sin itself becomes as if “excusable”: men indulge in sophisticated theft, children do not avoid corruption. Criminals against their will...

In Shmelev’s book, all the pangs of hunger: disorder of consciousness, vision, paralysis of the will, and incomparably greater moral torment - from the inability to help, protect and from belated repentance: they did not foresee, they did not prevent!

But who are these “heroes” who won? These are those who benefited from the war, by cunning, from behind, and defeated those who fought at the front:

“Entire armies were waiting in basements... Recently they fought openly. They defended their homeland. The Motherland and Europe were defended on the Prussian and Austrian fields, in the Russian steppes. Now, tortured, they ended up in the basements. They were locked up tightly and starved to take away their strength. They were taken from the basements and killed... And on the tables lay stacks of sheets, on which by nightfall a red letter was placed... one fatal letter. Two precious words are written with this letter: Motherland and Russia. “Consumption” and “Execution” also begin with this letter. Those who go out to kill knew neither the Motherland nor Russia. Now it's clear."

Against the backdrop of the Crimean tragedy, the dream seems no longer romantically naive, but inquisitorially cynical: “We are ours, we are new...”:

“They will make glue from human bones - for the future, from blood they will make “cubes” for broth... Now there is freedom for the ragpickers, the renewers of life. They carry it along with iron hooks.”

...No, after the flow of blood, the future will not become “bright.” “Heaven” will not grow out of hell.

Emigration

While remaining in the USSR, it was impossible to write the truth about the events of recent years, and Shmelev did not know how to lie and did not want to. Returning from Crimea to Moscow in the spring of 1922, he began to bother about going abroad, where Bunin persistently invited him, and on November 20, 1922, he and his wife left for Berlin. In January 1923, the Shmelevs moved to Paris, where the writer lived for another 27 long years.

For many Russian writers and cultural figures, emigration turned into a severe creative crisis. What supported I.S. Shmeleva? It is precisely his inherent special attitude towards creativity as the fulfillment of a duty to God, which is possible for a believer in any place. He was unable to “take root” on foreign soil, and political emigration was accompanied by internal emigration: he lived through creativity, memories of Russia, its spiritual heritage, and prayer.

“The Sun of the Dead,” first published in 1923 in the emigrant collection “Window” and released in 1924 as a separate book, immediately placed him among the most significant authors of the Russian diaspora: translations followed into French, German, English, and a number of other languages , which was very rare for a Russian emigrant writer, previously unknown in Europe.

But great talent cannot live only on the memory of grief. In the 20-30s. works by Shmelev dedicated to the Russia of his childhood were published. Crippled, disfigured by the atheistic government, she comes to life in his wonderful stories about Orthodoxy. In the “Summer of the Lord”, in a series of Orthodox holidays, the soul of the people seems to be revealed. “Pilgrim” retains a bright, warm memory of going to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.

Tombstone of I.S. and O.A. Shmelevs at the cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.

The writer is reserved in his assessments, he avoids moralizing and pathos, but sometimes the enchanting story about how it was before, about Moscow, about Christmas and about the shining dome of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior will be interrupted by a groan:

“...For God is with us! My God, I want to cry... - no, not with us. There is no Giant Temple and God is not with us. God has left us. Don't argue! God has left. We repent. The stars sing and praise. They shine on an empty place, incinerated. Where is our happiness? ...God cannot be scolded. Don't argue: I saw it, I know. Let there be meekness and repentance...”

And yet, in Shmelev’s later works there is no longer despair. Even the stories dedicated to the 1920s change in intonation: they are imbued with hope, a feeling of the closeness of God, His help, and consolation in sorrow. “Kulikovo Field” is a testimony to a real miracle of the phenomenon, about the participation of a saint in the lives of people, and in “The Saints of Solovetsky” Shmelev conveys the story of a Swiss man brought out of hell by the prayers of the Russian Saints depicted on the icon saved by this man.

In 1936, Shmelev completed the first volume of the novel “Heavenly Paths”, the leading theme of which is the possibility of spiritual transformation for modern man, whose consciousness is imbued with the spirit of rationalism... He would like to say a lot more, but God has his own deadlines.

In Russian literature, Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev left the image of Orthodox Russia as a medicine capable of healing the souls of people who grew up outside the national spiritual tradition. His works are a “letter” addressed from the past with love to those who have yet to learn to love.

1. According to the recollections of Yves Gentilhom, who grew up in Shmelev’s house, the writer’s family maintained the Russian way of life in France. This was manifested not only in the atmosphere and preference for national cuisine, but also, mainly, in the observance of fasts, holidays, customs, and in frequent going to church for services.

2. Today there is no consensus on how many officers died during the Crimean tragedy? – They give a figure from 20 to 150 thousand.

3. Shmelev I.S. Sun of the dead. M.: “Scythians”. 1991. P. 27

4. Shmelev I.S. Sun of the dead. S. 5

5. Shmelev I.S. Soul of the Motherland. M.: “Pilgrim”. 2000. pp. 402-403