Biography. Remizov Alexey Mikhailovich: biography, selected works and features of Remizov’s creativity

Remizov Alexey Mikhailovich
Born: June 24 (July 6), 1877
Died: November 26, 1957

Biography

Alexey Mikhailovich Remizov (June 24 (July 6) 1877, Moscow - November 26, 1957, Paris) - Russian writer. One of the most prominent stylists in Russian literature.

Alexey Mikhailovich Remizov came from a Moscow merchant family. His second cousin Maria Vasilievna Remizova is the mother of the Russian botanist Konstantin Pangalo.

The writer’s mother, Maria Aleksandrovna Naydyonov, was the sister of the famous industrialist and public figure N.A. Naydyonov.

Since childhood Alexey Remizov was a great inventor and dreamer. At the age of 7, he wrote down, from the words of his nanny, a story about a fire in the village - this was his first realistic story. Later, working with “someone else’s word” was transformed into a special author’s style - creativity “based on the material”. Then he decided to become a writer.

In 1895, Alexey Remizov graduated from the Moscow Alexander Commercial School and entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. As a student, he was mistakenly arrested for resisting the police during a demonstration and exiled to the north of Russia (Penza, Vologda, Ust-Sysolsk) for 6 years. Returning from exile in 1905 to St. Petersburg, Remizov began active literary work: his fairy tales and legends ("Limonar, that is: Spiritual Meadow", "Posolon", "Dokuka and Joker", "Nicholas' Parables"), a novel ( “The Pond”) and stories (“The Hours”, “The Fifth Plague”), dramatic works in the spirit of medieval mysteries (“The Tragedy of Judas, Prince Iscariot”, “Demon Act”, “Tsar Maximilian”; in 1908 at the Komissarzhevskaya Theater “Demon Action” is presented). The writer was classified as a symbolist (and more broadly, modernism), although Remizov himself did not position himself as a symbolist.

During the revolution

During the years of the revolution and subsequent years of war communism, Remizov remained in Petrograd, although he was politically anti-Bolshevik (he himself was close to Socialist Revolutionary circles). In the summer of 1921, Remizov went to Germany for treatment - “temporarily,” as the writer believed, but he was not destined to return back.

We are all born into the world to be caressed by Princess Mymra, but we are all devoured by the stinking snake Scarapea - such is the sad meaning of Remizov’s books.

In exile

In November 1923, Remizov moved, due to the economic crisis, from Berlin to Paris, where he spent the rest of his life. While in exile, Remizov continued to write a lot (the most famous were his artistic memoirs about life in St. Petersburg and the revolution - “Swirled Rus'” and “With Cropped Eyes”), but it became more difficult to publish every year. Since 1931, the publication of Remizov’s books almost completely ceased. His friends and fans founded a special small publishing house “Opleshnik” in 1953, which allowed the writer to publish new books.

At the end of his life he received Soviet citizenship. He was buried in the cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.

Wife (since 1903) - Serafima Pavlovna Remizova-Dovgello (1876-1943), paleographer.

Major works

Creation

Marina Tsvetaeva called his work “a living treasury of the Russian soul and speech.” He is distinguished by an extremely vivid and imaginative perception of the world.

First seal

The first publication of A. M. Remizov’s work took place in 1902. Moscow newspaper "Courier" under the pseudonym "N. Moldavanov” published his “The Cry of a Girl Before Marriage,” which dates back to Zyryansk folklore.

Kyiv period in the life of Remizov

At the beginning of 1905, he moved to St. Petersburg, where his real literary life began. Since 1921 he was in exile: first in Berlin, then in Paris. Not everyone knows that Alexey Mikhailovich was also a talented graphic artist. He always drew, on any piece of paper. He always accompanied each of his letters or tiny notes with some kind of drawing. In 1933, an exhibition of his drawings was exhibited in Prague. His work was appreciated by P. Picasso himself. During the war years, A. M. Remizov kept a “graphic diary”, which reflected dreams, portraits of his contemporaries and the events that worried him.

Memoirs of contemporaries

Gleb Vladimirovich Chizhov-Kholmsky recalls:
“On my long journey in life, I had to meet many interesting, talented and even famous people, but I have never met anyone more sensitive and friendly than Alexey Mikhailovich Remizov.”

Writer and publicist Ivan Ilyin described Remizov’s work as follows:
“Here is a master of words and a painter of images, whose artistic and spiritual appearance is so unique and unusual that a literary critic who wants to comprehend and describe his work faces a very subtle and difficult task. Remizov as a writer does not fit into any traditional literary forms, does not lend itself to any ordinary “categories”; and moreover, because he always creates new, his own forms in everything, and these new literary forms require new “categories” and, what is even more important, they require from the reader and from the critic, as it were, new mental “organs” of contemplation and comprehension ."

Remizov's work attracted the attention of figures of the French intellectual elite in the 1940s and 50s. At this time, he was translated a lot into French, he appeared on the radio reading his works, was included in literary salons, and the largest French newspapers wrote about his work.

According to Remizov’s concepts, only a legend about him or a fairy tale can adequately reproduce the writer’s face and biography (A. D. Sinyavsky. Literary process in Russia).

Remizov created all his life. In many ways, his works are autobiographical.

Remizov says in “The Music Teacher” that “in every person there is not one person, but many different people.” And when his biographer, N. Kodryanskaya, asked Remizov about his diversity, “Alexey Mikhailovich was not even surprised by my question, but cheerfully exclaimed: “But they all echo each other!”

The internal unity of all the “faces” in which Remizov appears to us or their roll call is achieved by Alexey Remizov to a large extent thanks to the cross-cutting fairy-tale plot of his life and work, taken as a basis.

“Even as a child, Remizov was given the nickname “empty head,” and it stuck to him until the end of his days. Before us is a variation of the fairy tale fool, who in turn is a variation of the “poor man,” despised by everyone, and at the same time the chosen one of the fairy tale, the one most beloved by it,” writes A. D. Sinyavsky.

Style

His prose, thematically extremely versatile, contains elements of symbolism (condensation, condensation) and expressionism (excess, exaggeration). In addition to the means of folk poetry, such as repetitions and clearly expressed rhythm, in Remizov one can also find defamiliarization through the stylization of oral speech (skaz) put into the mouth of a fictional character. Remizov’s language combines affection for the ancient forms of the Russian language and a desire to update poetic means; he also uses elements of the language of Russian books of the 17th century, as well as dialectal and folk vocabulary; At the same time, Remizov strictly refuses European borrowings.

Features of prose

Remizov is characterized by a fragmentary composition, a combination of disparate episodes of the work. The plot core of the story is weakly felt, the main events are obscured, and the place of a general presentation is taken by showing private episodes or details of everyday life. Members of the depicted society, as a rule, are deprived of internal communication with each other, they live in solitary confinement; here “man is a log to man.” Such fragmentation is realized in cycles of miniatures and in the genre of “tableaux” - “literary pictures” - religious, for children, dreams (“From Eye to Eye”, “Body”, “Desperation Share”, cycles in the collection “Grass” -murava”, “Posolon”, etc.).

Works

Remizov became famous for his fairy tales and symbolist novels, primarily the collections “Posolon” ​​(1907), “Dokuka and Jokers” (1914), novels and stories “Pond” (1905), “The Hours” (1908), “The Fifth Plague” "(1912), "Cross Sisters" (1910). In exile, Remizov mainly wrote fictionalized memoirs, the most famous of which are “Whirlwind Rus'” (1927). Remizov also owns a number of dramatic works (“Demonic Act”, “About Judas, Prince Iscariot”). All of them were included in the academic edition of the Collected Works, published in 2000-2004.

In “Posolon” ​​and “Limonar” Remizov seemed to put forward his own alternative to the decadent principle in art, which was in tune with the searches of the “younger symbolists”. His version of overcoming egocentric tendencies in literature turns out to be close to Vyach’s concept of conciliarity of art. Ivanova.

In his dramatic works, Remizov most clearly realized the “neo-baroque” poetics he professed, allowing him to combine farce and tragedy, the invariably animal and the sublimely spiritual, the “seraphic,” invective to eternity and topical allusions. The last play is “Tsar Maximilian” (1919) - a stylistic reworking of several folklore options - another act of the writer’s admiration for folk art.

“Swirled Rus'” is the first book of Remizov’s autobiographical epic, which occupied the main place in his emigrant work and in which the writer covered his life - “Iveren” (1897-1905), “Petersburg Gully” (1905-1917), “Swirled Russia "(1917-1921), "Music Teacher" (1923-1939), "Through the Fire of Speedmen" (1940-1943). Remizov’s autobiographical prose differs in many ways from the usual forms of this genre: real facts are intertwined with the author’s imagination, the composition is not linear-chronological, but mosaic-sequential, subordinated to the lyrical impulse.

In the writer’s latest books, the most significant monuments of several millennia of Russian and world culture are reinterpreted (“Tristan and Isolde”, “Savva Grudtsyn”, “Circle of Happiness”, “Peacock’s Feather”, etc.). The most important topic for understanding Remizov’s connections with the Russian and European avant-garde was the theme of dream-making. She expressed herself in two books: “Martin Zadeka” and “The Fire of Things.” The latter is a kind of aesthetic testament - a unique “hypnological” study of Russian literature, as it were, closes the literary and philosophical essays of the “Silver Age”, dedicated to Russian classics.

The collected works of Remizov (1910-1912) showed the integrity of the artistic world of the writer, who paradoxically combined a joker and a storyteller, the inventor of the nightmare and horror of everyday reality. The combination of the two sides of existence was fundamental for Remizov, who wrote about the central theme of his work: “The suffering of the world, the misfortune of human life - how difficult it is to live in the world! People with means and those doomed to poverty are equally burdened by life. And the other side is funny.”

Remizov Alexey Mikhailovich - (1877-1957), Russian writer. In August 1921 he emigrated. Born June 24 (July 6), 1877 in Moscow. He came from a Moscow merchant environment, in which the traditions of ancient piety were rooted. He studied at the 4th Moscow Gymnasium and the Alexander Commercial School.

For participating in student unrest, Remizov, who was already studying at the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Mathematics of Moscow University, was expelled from Moscow and spent six years in Penza, Vologda, and Ust-Sysolsk. As a prose writer he made his debut in 1897, the first book of Posolon, which included adaptations of folk tales and apocrypha, was published in 1907. A year later, the novel Prud was published, to which Remizov most of all owes his reputation as the heir of F.M. Dostoevsky in modern literature, the “great pityer” ( A.A.Blok).

In my “reconstructions” of ancient legends and tales, not only what is written in the books, but also what I have seen, heard and experienced from life. And when I sat over the ancient monuments and, of course, it was not without reason that I chose from what I had read, but according to some unconscious memories - the “knots and twists” of my eternal memory.

Remizov Alexey Mikhailovich

In the early years of his work, Remizov experienced a noticeable influence of symbolism, especially A. Bely. However, more significant for his formation as a writer was the awakened interest from his youth in the spiritual heritage of ancient Russia, in national mythology, early printed books and monuments of folk culture (the collection Limonar, 1907, the play Demon Action, 1907), numerous other publications from which were compiled books of retellings, adaptations, and adaptations of the plots of ancient Russian legends published in emigration (Besnovatye, 1951, etc.).

In his autobiography With Trimmed Eyes (1951), Remizov, speaking about the origins and specific features of his work, notes the importance of the idea of ​​primordial memory (“sleep”), which determines the nature of the construction of many of his works: “From the age of two I begin to remember clearly. It was as if I woke up and was thrown into a world... inhabited by monsters, ghostly, with confused reality and dreams, colorful and sounding inseparably.” Although in the pre-revolutionary period Remizov published several novels with a clearly manifested social tendency (Sisters of the Cross, The Irrepressible Tambourine, both 1910, etc.), his true originality appeared mainly in works that were based on folklore and apocrypha. They represent, according to the author’s description, “a new form of story, where the protagonist is not an individual person, but an entire country, and the time of action is centuries.” At the same time, this “story,” especially if it is related to the depiction of the events of the revolution and the subsequent Russian Troubles, always includes extensive and reliable documentary material and describes real historical characters who appear under their own names. This is how one of the main works created by Remizov in exile is structured - the book Swirling Rus' (1927), autobiographical in material.

In it, with constant references to the poetics of hagiographic literature, for which the obligatory motives of rejection of the unrighteous world, ordeal, homelessness and spiritual purification in the finale, the author recreates the Russian hard times, introducing into his story those with whom he most communicated in his last Petersburg years, - Blok, D.S. Merezhkovsky, philosopher L. Shestov, his own student, young prose writer M.M. Prishvin.

Remizov’s attitude to the revolution was already expressed in his Word on the destruction of the Russian Land, published in the Socialist Revolutionary newspaper “The Will of the People” shortly after the October Revolution. It contains direct reminiscences of the ancient Russian lament about the devastation of Russia as a result of the Tatar-Mongol raid in 1237. Whirled Russia describes a time when the dream of man about a free human kingdom on earth “burned exceptionally brightly,” but “never and nowhere so cruelly” a “pogrom” had previously thundered (directly affecting Remizov himself, who was arrested and briefly imprisoned during the period of the “Red Terror”).

The story, as in the book With Trimmed Eyes, which forms an autobiographical diptych with Turbulent Russia, is told in the form of a free compilation of events of great public importance (Lenin’s arrival in Petrograd in the spring of 1917) and private evidence, right down to recording conversations in queues or scenes of crowds mocking disarmed policemen. Remizov creates a deliberately fragmentary montage, where the chronicle, saddening the course of history, is combined with a recreation of the hardships and hardships endured by the narrator himself, with visions, dreams, echoes of legends, “spells,” a recording of the stream of consciousness, a mosaic of fleeting sketches of “whirled” everyday life. The narration, as in many other books by Remizov, is told in the form of a tale, organic to this artistic concept, where the subjectivity of the perception of what is happening is emphasized by the very construction of the story. Such a style and a similar compositional solution distinguish Remizov’s novel about emigration, The Music Teacher, which remained in manuscript (published posthumously, 1983), and the book of memoirs Meetings (1981), and the partially published autobiographical story Iveren (1986).

Remizov’s work of the emigrant period is dominated by the motif of separation, which is also correlated with the corresponding plots of ancient literature (about Peter and Fevronia, about Bova Korolevich), but also has a deeply personal meaning, especially in the story Olya (1927) and the novel In a Pink Splendor (1952). They are inspired by the history of the writer’s family (his only daughter did not follow her parents into emigration and died in occupied Kyiv in 1943; Remizov’s wife S.P. Dovgello died the same year).

The suffering of the world, the misfortune of human life - how difficult it is to live in the world! People with means and those doomed to poverty are equally burdened by life. And the other side is funny.

Remizov Alexey Mikhailovich

The experience of reconstructing a holistic picture of the national spirit based on legends that expressed religious beliefs, often moving away from the official Orthodox canon, was undertaken by Remizov in many works created in a foreign land - from the book Russia in Letters (1922) to a collection of “dreams” and reflections on forms Russian spirituality, as they were reflected in classical literature (Gogol, I.S. Turgneev, Dostoevsky). This theme becomes the main one in the book The Fire of Things (1954). The sophistication of Remizov's style gave rise to heated debate about the fruitfulness or artificiality of his chosen artistic solutions. Criticism (G. Adamovich) saw in Remizov’s books only a straightforward imitation of “Russian pre-Petrine antiquity,” accusing the author of a deliberate predilection for the archaic. Other authors, like the artist M. Dobuzhinsky, believed that in fact the nature of Remizov’s talent was playful, linking this poetics with a distinctly unique style of everyday life and social behavior, which attracted the attention of visitors to his apartment, where the wallpaper was painted with kikimoras, guests were given certificates of their membership in the “Great and Free Monkey Chamber” invented by the writer, and the atmosphere as a whole suggested thoughts of a “witch’s nest”. Still others, like the philosopher I. Ilyin, perceived Remizov as a “holy fool within the culture” - an intelligent, educated, gifted artist, with his own significant but special vision.

REMIZOV, ALEXEY MIKHAILOVICH(1877–1957), Russian writer. In August 1921 he emigrated. Born June 24 (July 6), 1877 in Moscow. He came from a Moscow merchant environment, in which the traditions of ancient piety were rooted. He studied at the 4th Moscow Gymnasium and the Alexander Commercial School. For participating in student unrest, Remizov, who was already studying at the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Mathematics of Moscow University, was expelled from Moscow and spent six years in Penza, Vologda, and Ust-Sysolsk. How the prose writer debuted in 1897, first book Salting, which included adaptations of folk tales and apocrypha, was published in 1907. A year later, the novel was published Pond, to whom Remizov most of all owes his reputation as the heir of F.M. Dostoevsky in modern literature, the “great complainer” (A.A. Blok).
In the early years of his work, Remizov experienced a noticeable influence of symbolism, especially A. Bely. However, more significant for his formation as a writer was the awakened interest from his youth in the spiritual heritage of ancient Rus', in national mythology, early printed books and monuments of folk culture (collection Limonar, 1907, play Demon action, 1907), numerous other publications, from which books of retellings, adaptations, and adaptations of the plots of ancient Russian legends, published in emigration, were compiled ( Possessed, 1951, etc.).
In autobiography Trimmed eyes(1951) Remizov, speaking about the origins and specific features of his work, notes the importance of the idea of ​​primordial memory (“sleep”), which determines the nature of the construction of many of his works: “From the age of two I begin to remember clearly. It was as if I woke up and was thrown into a world... inhabited by monsters, ghostly, with confused reality and dreams, colorful and sounding inseparably.” Although in the pre-revolutionary period Remizov published several novels with a clearly manifested social tendency ( Cross Sisters, The irrepressible tambourine, both 1910, etc.), his true originality appeared mainly in works that are based on folklore and apocrypha. They represent, according to the author’s description, “a new form of story, where the protagonist is not an individual person, but an entire country, and the time of action is centuries.” At the same time, this “story,” especially if it is related to the depiction of the events of the revolution and the subsequent Russian Troubles, always includes extensive and reliable documentary material and describes real historical characters who appear under their own names. This is how one of the main works created by Remizov in exile is structured - a book autobiographical in material Swirling Rus'(1927). In it, with constant references to the poetics of hagiographic literature, for which the obligatory motives of rejection of the unrighteous world, ordeal, homelessness and spiritual purification in the finale, the author recreates the Russian hard times, introducing into his story those with whom he most communicated in his last Petersburg years, – Blok, D.S. Merezhkovsky, philosopher L. Shestov, his own student, young prose writer M.M. Prishvin.
Remizov’s attitude towards the revolution was already expressed in his The word about the destruction of the Russian Land, published in the Socialist Revolutionary newspaper “The Will of the People” shortly after the October Revolution. It contains direct reminiscences of the ancient Russian lament about the devastation of Rus' as a result of the Tatar-Mongol raid in 1237. Swirling Rus' describes a time when man’s dream of a free human kingdom on earth “burned exceptionally brightly,” but “never and nowhere so cruelly” had a “pogrom” thundered before (directly affecting Remizov himself, who was arrested and briefly imprisoned during the “Red terror").
Story like in the book Trimmed eyes, forming with Swirling Russia an autobiographical diptych, carried out in the form of a free compilation of events of great public importance (Lenin’s arrival in Petrograd in the spring of 1917) and private testimonies, including recordings of conversations in queues or scenes of crowd mockery of disarmed policemen. Remizov creates a deliberately fragmentary montage, where the chronicle, saddening the course of history, is combined with a recreation of the hardships and hardships endured by the narrator himself, with visions, dreams, echoes of legends, “spells,” a recording of the stream of consciousness, a mosaic of fleeting sketches of “whirled” everyday life. The narration, as in many other books by Remizov, is told in the form of a tale, organic to this artistic concept, where the subjectivity of the perception of what is happening is emphasized by the very construction of the story. Such stylistics and a similar compositional solution characterize Remizov’s novel about emigration, which remains in the manuscript. Music teacher(published posthumously, 1983), and a book of memoirs Meetings(1981), and a partially published autobiographical story Iveren(1986).
Remizov’s work of the emigrant period is dominated by the motif of separation, which is also correlated with the corresponding plots of ancient literature (about Peter and Fevronia, about Bova Korolevich), but also has a deeply personal meaning, especially in the story Olya(1927) and novel In pink glitter(1952). They are inspired by the history of the writer’s family (his only daughter did not follow her parents into emigration and died in occupied Kyiv in 1943; Remizov’s wife S.P. Dovgello died the same year). The experience of reconstructing a holistic picture of the national spirit based on legends that expressed religious beliefs, often moving away from the official Orthodox canon, was undertaken by Remizov in many works created in a foreign land - from the book Russia in letters(1922) to a collection of “dreams” and reflections on the forms of Russian spirituality, as they were reflected in classical literature (Gogol, I.S. Turgneev, Dostoevsky). This theme becomes the main one in the book. Fire of things(1954). The sophistication of Remizov's style gave rise to heated debate about the fruitfulness or artificiality of his chosen artistic solutions. Criticism (G. Adamovich) saw in Remizov’s books only a straightforward imitation of “Russian pre-Petrine antiquity,” accusing the author of a deliberate predilection for the archaic. Other authors, like the artist M. Dobuzhinsky, believed that in fact the nature of Remizov’s talent was playful, linking this poetics with a distinctly unique style of everyday life and social behavior, which attracted the attention of visitors to his apartment, where the wallpaper was painted with kikimoras, guests were given certificates of their membership in the “Great and Free Monkey Chamber” invented by the writer, and the atmosphere as a whole suggested thoughts of a “witch’s nest”. Still others, like the philosopher I. Ilyin, perceived Remizov as a “holy fool within culture” - an intelligent, educated, gifted artist, with his own significant but special vision.
Remizov's style had a significant influence on a number of Russian writers of the 1920s. (Prishvin, L.M. Leonov, Vyach. Shishkov and others), who were adherents of “ornamental prose”.
Remizov died in Paris on November 26, 1957.

, Literary figure, Folklorist, Artist

Remizov Alexey Mikhailovich - (1877–1957), Russian writer. In August 1921 he emigrated. Born June 24 (July 6), 1877 in Moscow. He came from a Moscow merchant environment, in which the traditions of ancient piety were rooted. He studied at the 4th Moscow Gymnasium and the Alexander Commercial School.

For participating in student unrest, Remizov, who was already studying at the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Mathematics of Moscow University, was expelled from Moscow and spent six years in Penza, Vologda, and Ust-Sysolsk. As a prose writer he made his debut in 1897, the first book of Posolon, which included adaptations of folk tales and apocrypha, was published in 1907. A year later, the novel Prud was published, to which Remizov most of all owes his reputation as the heir of F.M. Dostoevsky in modern literature, the “great pityer” ( A.A.Blok).

In my “reconstructions” of ancient legends and tales, not only what is written in the books, but also what I have seen, heard and experienced from life. And when I sat over the ancient monuments and, of course, it was not without reason that I chose from what I had read, but according to some unconscious memories - the “knots and twists” of my eternal memory.

Remizov Alexey Mikhailovich

In the early years of his work, Remizov experienced a noticeable influence of symbolism, especially A. Bely. However, more significant for his formation as a writer was the awakened interest from his youth in the spiritual heritage of ancient Russia, in national mythology, early printed books and monuments of folk culture (the collection Limonar, 1907, the play Demon Action, 1907), numerous other publications from which were compiled books of retellings, adaptations, and adaptations of the plots of ancient Russian legends published in emigration (Besnovatye, 1951, etc.).

In his autobiography With Trimmed Eyes (1951), Remizov, speaking about the origins and specific features of his work, notes the importance of the idea of ​​primordial memory (“sleep”), which determines the nature of the construction of many of his works: “From the age of two I begin to remember clearly. It was as if I woke up and was thrown into a world... inhabited by monsters, ghostly, with confused reality and dreams, colorful and sounding inseparably.” Although in the pre-revolutionary period Remizov published several novels with a clearly manifested social tendency (Sisters of the Cross, The Irrepressible Tambourine, both 1910, etc.), his true originality appeared mainly in works that were based on folklore and apocrypha. They represent, according to the author’s description, “a new form of story, where the protagonist is not an individual person, but an entire country, and the time of action is centuries.” At the same time, this “story,” especially if it is related to the depiction of the events of the revolution and the subsequent Russian Troubles, always includes extensive and reliable documentary material and describes real historical characters who appear under their own names. This is how one of the main works created by Remizov in exile is structured - the book Whirling Rus' (1927), autobiographical in material.

In it, with constant references to the poetics of hagiographic literature, for which the obligatory motives of rejection of the unrighteous world, ordeal, homelessness and spiritual purification in the finale, the author recreates the Russian hard times, introducing into his story those with whom he most communicated in his last Petersburg years, – Blok, D.S. Merezhkovsky, philosopher L. Shestov, his own student, young prose writer M.M. Prishvin.

The suffering of the world, the misfortune of human life - how difficult it is to live in the world! People with means and those doomed to poverty are equally burdened by life. And the other side is funny.

Remizov Alexey Mikhailovich

Remizov’s attitude to the revolution was already expressed in his Word on the destruction of the Russian Land, published in the Socialist Revolutionary newspaper “The Will of the People” shortly after the October Revolution. It contains direct reminiscences of the ancient Russian lament about the devastation of Russia as a result of the Tatar-Mongol raid in 1237. Whirled Russia describes a time when the dream of man about a free human kingdom on earth “burned exceptionally brightly,” but “never and nowhere so cruelly” a “pogrom” had previously thundered (directly affecting Remizov himself, who was arrested and briefly imprisoned during the period of the “Red Terror”).

The story, as in the book With Trimmed Eyes, which forms an autobiographical diptych with Turbulent Russia, is told in the form of a free compilation of events of great public importance (Lenin’s arrival in Petrograd in the spring of 1917) and private evidence, right down to recording conversations in queues or scenes of crowds mocking disarmed policemen. Remizov creates a deliberately fragmentary montage, where the chronicle, saddening the course of history, is combined with a recreation of the hardships and hardships endured by the narrator himself, with visions, dreams, echoes of legends, “spells,” a recording of the stream of consciousness, a mosaic of fleeting sketches of “whirled” everyday life. The narration, as in many other books by Remizov, is told in the form of a tale, organic to this artistic concept, where the subjectivity of the perception of what is happening is emphasized by the very construction of the story. Such a style and a similar compositional solution distinguish Remizov’s novel about emigration, The Music Teacher, which remained in manuscript (published posthumously, 1983), and the book of memoirs Meetings (1981), and the partially published autobiographical story Iveren (1986).

Remizov’s work of the emigrant period is dominated by the motif of separation, which is also correlated with the corresponding plots of ancient literature (about Peter and Fevronia, about Bova Korolevich), but also has a deeply personal meaning, especially in the story Olya (1927) and the novel In a Pink Splendor (1952). They are inspired by the history of the writer’s family (his only daughter did not follow her parents into emigration and died in occupied Kyiv in 1943; Remizov’s wife S.P. Dovgello died the same year).

It would be a mistake to think that the kingdom of God is some kind of just dispensation on earth, some houses and temples and, of course, latrines of the very last word. In order to enjoy in the kingdom of God, with a refined conscience, you must not have a conscience - and here the Mother of God, as the embodiment of conscience, her walk through torment is an example of the fact that the kingdom of God will never be realized under our conditions on a difficult earth.

Remizov Alexey Mikhailovich

The experience of reconstructing a holistic picture of the national spirit based on legends that expressed religious beliefs, often moving away from the official Orthodox canon, was undertaken by Remizov in many works created in a foreign land - from the book Russia in Letters (1922) to a collection of “dreams” and reflections on forms Russian spirituality, as they were reflected in classical literature (Gogol, I.S. Turgneev, Dostoevsky). This theme becomes the main one in the book The Fire of Things (1954). The sophistication of Remizov's style gave rise to heated debate about the fruitfulness or artificiality of his chosen artistic solutions. Criticism (G. Adamovich) saw in Remizov’s books only a straightforward imitation of “Russian pre-Petrine antiquity,” accusing the author of a deliberate predilection for the archaic. Other authors, like the artist M. Dobuzhinsky, believed that in fact the nature of Remizov’s talent was playful, linking this poetics with a distinctly unique style of everyday life and social behavior, which attracted the attention of visitors to his apartment, where the wallpaper was painted with kikimoras, guests were given certificates of their membership in the “Great and Free Monkey Chamber” invented by the writer, and the atmosphere as a whole suggested thoughts of a “witch’s nest”. Still others, like the philosopher I. Ilyin, perceived Remizov as a “holy fool within culture” - an intelligent, educated, gifted artist, with his own significant but special vision.

Remizov's style had a significant influence on a number of Russian writers of the 1920s. (Prishvin, L.M. Leonov, Vyach. Shishkov and others), who were adherents of “ornamental prose”.

Alexey Mikhailovich Remizov - photo

Alexey Mikhailovich

24.VI(7.VII).1877, Moscow - 26.IX.1957, Paris

If Pasternak was called the Hamlet of the 20th century, then Remizov is a storyteller and sorcerer of Russian literature. Remizov said about his literary pedigree: “...The fabulous in me was awakened by L. Tieck and Hoffmann... The lyrical from Marlinsky... From Leskov the apocrypha and the warmth of the heart that envelops his stories. Theater - Ostrovsky, but through Dobrolyubov, Superficial, and Ap. Grigorieva. From Dostoevsky - the pain, the bitterness of life. From Tolstoy - the merciless truth."

Alexey Remizov is a merchant’s son who was raised in the patriarchal old Moscow spirit. His childhood was gloomy. His mother did not love him, because he was the fifth unwanted child. And all his young years passed with complete indifference to him on the part of those around him. Subsequently, Remizov spent his entire life establishing himself in the image of a writer persecuted by fate and misunderstood by people. As a student, he became interested in revolutionary ideas, was arrested twice and was exiled first to Penza, then to Vologda. It was Vologda that became “Northern Athens” for Remizov, where he decisively broke with the revolution and also decisively devoted himself to literature. Remizov was involved in translations. He translated Nietzsche, Maeterlinck and Przybyszewski, who was popular in Russia. I became interested in folklore and mythology and began to compose myself.

In connection with the first publication - September 8, 1902 - Remizov admitted: “The poison of being printed comes with the first thing printed. And what dreams and how much self-delusion. After all, only a beginner has such faith in his own. And over time, disappointment will come, and no matter how much you snort and rant, everything is clear and despite any friendly criticism, that you are not Pushkin, not Tolstoy, not Dostoevsky, but only a booger - I am.”

In 1905, Remizov moved to St. Petersburg and began working in the magazine “Questions of Life” - one of the centers of Russian philosophical and artistic thought of those years. Published in all magazines of the artistic avant-garde, less often in newspapers. “I participated in the newspapers as a guest performer at Easter and Christmas,” Remizov, who by that time had already acquired a reputation as an “exquisite stylist,” remarked, as always slyly.

In 1907, Remizov’s first book was published - the cycle of fairy tales “Posolon”, and in 1910-1912 - “Collected Works” in 8 volumes, which included the first novels “Pond” and “Clocks”. In 1912, the novel “The Fifth Plague” appeared - a reflection on the fate of the Russian people. Remizov also creates a number of dramatic works (“The Demon’s Act” was staged at the Vera Komissarzhevskaya Theater),

Remizov is a regular visitor to almost all literary salons in St. Petersburg, he knows many people and is friends with many, in particular Lev Shestov. At the same time, the writer does not swim in the general mainstream of modernism and decadence, but finds his own current, or better yet, a backwater - neo-mythological literature. He is a brilliant processor of myths and legends from all over the world, groping and re-creating the archetypes of national consciousness, looking for the relationship between good and evil, the devilish and the divine in man and comes to the sad formula: “man is a log to man” (“Sisters of the Cross”, 1910), for which it is awarded the definition from the philosopher Ilyin - “dark vision”.

Even in her emigre days, Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams wrote: “As a writer, Remizov walked and continues to walk the hard way. He is obsessed with artistic pride and has never taken anyone's opinion into account. His eccentricities, everyday and literary, are combined with a large, sober and clear mind, with rare accuracy of judgment. The steep paths along which he, most often with great effort, drags his “knots and twists” do not lead to easy success or widespread popularity. He knows this very well. But there is an unyielding, self-merciless stubbornness that he possesses that does not allow for indulgence or concessions to fashion, to the tastes of the crowd and critics, who sometimes understand worse than the crowd.”

Remizov perceived himself as a bearer of collective national consciousness, a writer who synthesized in his work various sections of a single Russian culture, developing from folklore to modern individual author literature as a single whole. Remizov's books are original mythologies, expanded by the images and motifs of his contemporary literature.

Remizov perceived the October Revolution as a tragic breakdown of 1000 years of Russian statehood and culture (“The Word about the Destruction of the Russian Land”). For a short time he becomes close to the Socialist-Revolutionaries, but they also cause him bitter disappointment: “How brutal all these parties are: each has only its own truth, and in other parties there is none, lies everywhere. And as many parties as there are truths, and as many truths as there are lies.”

As a perspicacious artist, Remizov, back in 1907, in the legend “Nikola the Saint,” defined the picture of chaos that would arise as a result of the revolution. “Nikola did not recognize his Russian land. It was cut down, scorched, conquered, it stands empty and empty, and only the winds blow across the remote steppes, there is no truth to be found in them...” Nikola brought some order, returned to paradise and told the saints: “Everyone suffered with his own, a lost people: a thief against thief, robber against robber, rob, burn, kill, brother against brother, son against son, father against son, daughter against mother! And everyone is good, they eat each other, the Russian people have become insolent.”

This is how Remizov saw his native land in revolutionary upheavals. The writer emigrated in August 1921, first lived in Berlin, then from November 5, 1923 until his death in Paris. I perceived my departure from Russia as tragic, as an eternal separation from my beloved land. He gave an assessment of the revolutionary era in the epic “Swirled Rus'” (1927), which, according to Andrei Bely, is one of the best artistic chronicles of Russia during the Time of Troubles. Subsequently, Remizov did not allow frontal anti-Soviet invective and received a Soviet passport in 1946 for his loyalty, but nevertheless did not risk returning to his homeland.

In exile, Remizov worked a lot, studied myths and legends, experimented with words, wrote autobiographical prose and continued to do what Maximilian Voloshin noticed at an early stage: “Remizov doesn’t invent anything. His fabulous talent lies in the fact that he eavesdrops on the silent life of things and phenomena and exposes the inner essence, the ancient dream of each thing.”

All this is true, but it is also true that from 1931 to 1949 Remizov was unable to publish a single book. He “published” them himself, in a single copy, copied by hand in beautiful calligraphic handwriting, and there were 430 such notebooks.

In 1943, Remizov’s wife, with whom he lived for 40 years, dies (they got married in 1903). Remizov restored her appearance in the book “In Pink Splendor” (1952). And in this regard, Remizov was unlike all the other silversmiths. Blok, Balmont, Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Pasternak and other poets and writers of that time had many beloved women, wives, mistresses and muses, but Remizov had only one. Favorite and unique for him.

They met while being political prisoners. In prison, their cells were next to each other. They were talking through the headquarters. So two years passed. They were so close and at the same time so far from each other. He fell in love and expressed a desire to see her at least briefly on a walk.

The meeting made Remizov incredibly happy - he saw a woman of rare beauty, but, alas, he made a terrible impression on her - she fainted. She believed that her neighbor, who had an exceptional gift of eloquence, would turn out to be a handsome man. Who appeared before her eyes? A nondescript little man, with very long hair, with eyebrows raised on both sides, with a flattened nose, with nostrils that constantly moved, with a large mouth - in a word, he looked like a hornless devil. However, in the end everything worked out. If nature denied Remizov external beauty, then she richly endowed him with intelligence and a generous heart. Despite his unattractiveness, he managed to win her over. She became his wife, his “Beautiful Lady”, his inspiring muse, his goddess...

So who is she? Serafima Dovgello is from an old Lithuanian family, which even owns a castle in the Chernigov province. When Serafima Pavlovna married Alexei Mikhailovich and brought him to the family castle, the whole family immediately shunned such a son-in-law. “Small, almost hunchbacked, doesn’t look like anyone, didn’t graduate from university, has no fortune, writes fairy tales. And from merchants at that. Where did she dig this up?..” (A. Tyrkova-Williams).

She is tall, plump, fair-bodied and fair-faced, with lush blond hair and wide-set blue eyes, in short, a beauty. And he - “small, stooped figure, pale face... nose, eyebrows, hair - everything rose up with one stroke and stood on end” (M. Voloshin). But what about appearance? Their inner worlds and interests were the same and harmonious with each other. Someone came up with a comparison for them: raisin and Easter cake. Irina Odoevtseva used another comparison: like a mortar and pestle. It was cozy and delicious to drink tea with her - the writers who came to visit laughed: “like a rich bun.”

And so the “bun” was gone - Remizov lived without his beloved Serafima Pavlovna for 14 years. He lived ascetically according to the principle of “a little food and warmth in the apartment.”

Remizov defined the post-war world in two phrases: “What is the last word of our culture? - Cinema and the Gestapo. What is our poverty? “We’re happy with the little things.”

Remizov’s own concern was still the Russian language. Marina Tsvetaeva called the writer’s work “a living treasury of the Russian soul and speech.” “And I love the word, the first sound of the word and the combination of sounds,” Remizov himself admitted. “And crazy bulge and nonsense, said in one’s own eyes and voice.” Remizov constantly delved into the storehouses of words, in dictionaries, read a lot, and copied them out. This was a true collector's passion. Marina Tsvetaeva admired Remizov, but for Bunin, all of Remizov’s linguistic efforts to “wash the icon” and find the original Russian language in the wilds of the etymological night were ridiculous. Ivan Alekseevich also considered the current state of the Russian language to be excellent, without any ancient nonsense.

In exile, Remizov was constantly in the midst of people. He contacted Bunin, Zaitsev, Shmelev, Lifar, Evreinov, mentored the literary youth of the emigrant generation (Poplavsky, Kakhovskaya, Nabokov), and dealt with representatives of the French intellectual elite. Upon returning to the USSR, Irina Odoevtseva said: “Remizov worked terribly hard, published a lot in exile. He was, of course, extremely talented. And you know, this is the only Russian writer of that time who was loved and appreciated by the French. They considered him a surrealist."

One of Remizov’s latest books, “The Fire of Things,” is an original study of the theme of dreams in the works of Russian writers Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and others.

Eternal sleep overtook Remizov in old age (he was 80 years old), when he was already helpless and almost blind, in his apartment at 7 rue Boileau (now the very prestigious 16th district of Paris).

What remains to be added? Remizov is one of the most original writers of the Silver Age and, perhaps, of all Russian literature. He himself studied with Gogol, Dostoevsky, Leskov and Tolstoy, and the next generation of writers studied with him - Boris Pilnyak, Evgeny Zamyatin, Vyacheslav Shishkov, Mikhail Prishvin, Leonid Leonov, Konstantin Fedin, Alexei Tolstoy, Artem Vesely. We can say that they all came from Remizov’s roots.

And one last thing. Only a year after Remizov’s death, in 1958, the writer’s first books appeared in the Soviet Union. And phrases “like a honeycomb” appeared before the eyes of Soviet readers, and they felt Remizov’s favorite “confusion of times.”