Korney Chukovsky articles about him. A word about the writer Kornei Ivanovich Chukovsky for elementary school students

He sculpts some pots out of clay with the children, laughs, wipes his hands on his knees, and then walks home with the grimy gang in pants stiffened by dried clay.

This huge, mustachioed, slightly awkward man with long arms, disheveled hair, transparent and sly eyes, like Vrubel’s Pan, is the incredibly kind children’s writer Korney Chukovsky.
Few people know that Chukovsky devoted a total of only a few years of his life to the fairy tales that made him famous. I wrote them quickly, with inspiration, and mainly for my own children and grandchildren.

“All my other works are overshadowed to such an extent by my children’s fairy tales that in the minds of many readers, except for “Moidodyrs” and “Mukh-Tsokotukh”, I wrote nothing at all,” Chukovsky said with some resentment.

But the main literary activity of Nikolai Korneychukov (the writer’s real name) is still connected with adult literature, with translations and critical works dedicated to W. Whitman, N. Nekrasov, A. Blok, L. Andreev, A. Akhmatova, A. Chekhov and to other writers.
For his many years of work studying the work of N.A. Nekrasov and the book “The Mastery of N. Nekrasov,” he was awarded the Lenin Prize. For his translation and research activities in the field of English literature in Great Britain, he received the degree of Doctor of Literature Honoris causa from the University of Oxford.

But the main surprise even for Korney Chukovsky himself was the universal love of readers for his children's books. Those boys to whom he wrote about Aibolit in the thirties, before his eyes, turned into parents, then into grandparents, and still read his fairy tales to their kids. More than one generation has grown up on these sincere and very vivid children's stories.
Chukovsky wrote his first book, “Crocodile,” by accident in 1916. He was traveling on a train with his eleven-year-old son, who had a cold, and to entertain him, he began to compose to the sound of the wheels:

Once upon a time there was
Crocodile.
He walked the streets
He smoked cigarettes.
He spoke Turkish -
Crocodile, Crocodile Crocodilovich!

At home, he forgot the fairy tale he had composed on the spot, but his son remembered it well. Because it was too close and understandable to the child.

This is how the children's writer Korney Chukovsky appeared.

All his life he had to prove to others his worth and the right to express his non-trivial view of things. It began with Chukovsky’s childhood trauma as an illegitimate child.

Nikolai Korneychukov was the son of a cook from the Poltava province (the name of his mother - the “Ukrainian girl” Ekaterina Osipovna Korneichukova - and the terrible word: illegitimate are written in the birth certificate). The father was a St. Petersburg student, who subsequently abandoned the writer’s mother.

Why did this kind, spontaneous person turn out to be so dangerous for the official state machine? Why did they begin to ban him, persecute him, and establish secret surveillance? Why did his Barmaley or Aibolit not please the ideologists of socialism?

The completely harmless, apolitical children's books by Korney Chukovsky turned out to be so original, devoid of edification and not fitting into the Soviet literary nomenclature that they caused sacred horror among officials.

In the early forties, in the fairy tale “The Cockroach,” written in 1921, long before Stalin became the “leader of the peoples,” they saw a parody of the head of state.
And many years later, already in the sixties, in the fairy tale about the tiny boy Bibigon, who fought with the turkey Brundulyak, they found ideological hints that were not there at all.

The first blow was struck in 1928 by N. Krupskaya, who was at that time the Deputy People's Commissar of Education. In her article for the Pravda newspaper, she wrote: “Should we give this book to little children? Crocodile... Instead of a story about the life of a crocodile, they will hear incredible nonsense about him. Animals in the guise of people are funny. It's funny to see a crocodile smoking a cigar while riding an airplane. But with the fun comes something else. The second part of “Crocodile” depicts the bourgeois home environment of the crocodile family, and laughter at the fact that the crocodile swallowed a napkin out of fear obscures the depicted vulgarity, teaching this vulgarity not to be noticed. The people reward Vanya for his valor, the crocodile gives gifts to his fellow countrymen, and they hug and kiss him for the gifts. “Virtue is paid for, sympathy is bought” - creeps into the child’s brain.

The persecution of the writer began, which was diligently picked up by fellow writers, in particular, the children's writer Agnia Barto.

In 1929, desperate to prove anything to anyone, Chukovsky publicly renounced his fairy tales: “I wrote bad fairy tales. I admit that my fairy tales are not suitable for building a socialist system. I realized that anyone who now avoids participating in the collective work to create a new way of life, there is either a criminal or a corpse. Therefore, now I cannot write about any “crocodiles”, I want to develop new topics that excite new readers. Among the books that I have outlined for my “five-year plan”, the first The place is now occupied by "Merry Collective Farm".

Shortly before his death, he remembers this betrayal with bitterness and repents that he was forced to play by someone else's rules. However, he betrayed himself only in words. After his abdication, Chukovsky wrote only two fairy tales, and then many years later.
"Merry Collective Farm" did not work out.
Apparently, the honesty and sincerity that essays for children required were forever poisoned in him by the “dialogue” with the Soviet regime.

The last blow to the storyteller was dealt in 1945-1946. When, together with the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad”, in which M. Zoshchenko and A. Akhmatova were branded, they attacked the magazine “Murzilka”, where Chukovsky worked and “The Adventures of Bibigon” were published at that time.
The bags of enthusiastic children's responses that poured into the editorial office were urgently destroyed.

Chukovsky's last fairy tale will be published only in 1963. 6 years before the writer’s death, which occurred from infection with viral hepatitis. He was 87 years old.

Korney Chukovsky, despite everything, lived a happy personal and creative life. There were always many children next to him. And this is the main thing, in my opinion, that saved him from repression, a bullet and complete despair. Here's how he himself writes about it:

I never knew it was so joyful to be an old man,
Every day my thoughts are kinder and brighter.
Near dear Pushkin, here on autumn Tverskoy,
I look at the children for a long time with farewell greed.
And tired, old, comforts me
Their endless running and fussing.
Why should we live on this planet?
In the cycle of bloody centuries,
If it weren't for them, not these
Big-eyed, loud children...

Today I would like to move from greatness, which is worth striving for for various reasons, to simplicity, which balances the craving for greatness. You need to understand many things while you live. And not only books by “high-brow” people and not only obviously significant things, cultural colossi, help with this. Things that sometimes completely despise us, because of their external simplicity, help with this. For example, fairy tales. And to varying degrees, folk. This is a late fixed folklore that lived among the people for centuries, and then was once collected somewhere, cultivated, combed and recorded with signs.

To write for children, you need to write not about cranes and steamships, not about love passions and not about how much sausage costs and whether it is available in the store. You need to go somewhere deep into your consciousness. Where there are fears, hope, good forces, evil forces, chance, miraculous deliverances, gratitude, punishment for ingratitude. That is, such an archetypal set of sacred things that every nation has and is reflected precisely in fairy tales.

I think Christian writers try to think in archetypes for children to talk to them about something. For example, like the flight of Adam and Eve from paradise. Daddy and mommy fell asleep in the evening, and Tanechka and Manechka ran to Africa. They were told in advance that do not go, there is a robber there, there is a villain, there is the terrible Barmaley. He runs around Africa and eats children. They took it and ran away. A series of terrible adventures begins.

Of course, the children listen with bated breath, with open eyes. They know that everything will be fine. Because this is precisely why a fairy tale is beautiful; it is almost an evangelical phenomenon. Good will still win there, although she will draw entire stages in the development of sin and mistakes.

Or, for example, this solar symbol: a crocodile swallows the sun. The sun, to which all the pagans of the world turned, deified it, sang hymns to it, and built temples. This is a warm sun, which is no longer a deity for us. Which has been studied, which warms. And suddenly a crocodile swallows him, and everything is plunged into darkness.

We, from our scientific world, the cold world of numbers and mechanisms, child and adult, return to the archetype, to the correct relationship to the sun. Even to the Resurrection of Christ, because Christ is the sun of truth. And when he lay down in the coffin, the devil seemed to swallow him. The mouth of hell closed and buried the Lord. And what? And then everything will be fine. The sun will tear apart this crocodile's belly. And again everyone will rejoice, and again everyone will dance. There Aibolit flies on an eagle, on the symbol of John the Evangelist. To whom? To the one who is waiting for him. They are waiting for him as a savior, but he flies with a cross, by the way. On the eagle. And there the hippos grabbed their tummies. They, hippos, have stomach ache.

If you have children, brothers and sisters, you can re-read these immortal things with them, but only looking at them with the eyes of the Gospel. There is a gospel paradigm everywhere there. That is, such deep archetypes of thinking that end in light, salvation, mercy and love. What, in fact, is what children need. Therefore, with all the severed heads of the villainous spiders, with all the bandits cut into pieces, children are not afraid of the Barmalei. Because they know that this is all make-believe. Good has won, everything is fine, mom is nearby, dad too.

To write such things, you need to be some very special person. Maybe very good. But being good is not enough. There are many good ones. But there are, of course, very few of them who are special, smart, connected with good ones.

I urge you from our vain multi-mindedness, sometimes from the vanity of everyday life, to turn to fairy tales in order to return to childhood, but to understand that not everything is so simple there. There is tremendous depth expressed in simple words.

Thanks to Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky. And peace to his ashes and grace to his soul.

Hello guys, today I want to tell you about a wonderful children's writer, a great friend of children -Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky.

He was born on March 31, 1882 in St. Petersburg. But soon, when the future writer was about two years old, he, along with his mother and sister, moved to the Ukrainian city of Odessa, where he spent his entire childhood.

When the future storyteller and literary critic turned five years old, he was sent to kindergarten, about which he later wrote that the children there marched to music and drew pictures. It was in this kindergarten that he met his true friends, with whom he maintained relationships throughout his life.

Korney Ivanovich did not immediately become a children's writer. He began writing for children when he was already a famous literary scholar and critic. Before this, Chukovsky worked as a journalist, translated foreign books, and wrote books about the life and work of famous poets.

But one day Korney Ivanovich was traveling with his little son on the train, and then, at night, the boy fell ill. The child was capricious, moaning, crying. To somehow entertain him, his father began to compose a fairy tale for him: “Once upon a time there was a crocodile, he walked the streets...” the boy suddenly fell silent and began to listen. The next morning, when he woke up, he asked his father to tell him yesterday’s tale again. It turned out that the boy remembered it all, word for word. This is how Chukovsky’s first fairy tale “Crocodile” was born.

And then another interesting incident happened. This is how Korney Ivanovich himself recalled it: “Once, while working in my office, I heard loud crying. It was my youngest daughter crying. She roared in three streams, violently expressing her reluctance to wash herself. I left the office, took the girl in my arms and, quite unexpectedly for myself, told her:

It is necessary, it is necessary to wash your face in the mornings and evenings,

And the unclean chimney sweeps

Shame and shame, shame and shame!

This is how “Moidodyr” was born.

Doctor Aibolit, a brave character in several works by Korney Chukovsky (“Barmaley”, “Aibolit”, “Let’s defeat Barmaley!”, “Doctor Aibolit”) owes his appearance to a real Russian doctor who devoted his whole life to treating children from a serious illness - bone tuberculosis. Korney Ivanovich greatly respected this doctor and admired his dedication to his work. Therefore, in fairy tales, Doctor Aibolit is always very kind and ready to help anyone in need.

Interestingly, a new species of antbird flies was named in honor of the Tsokotukha Fly, one of the most famous heroines of Korney Chukovsky.

Chukovsky wrote his works both for young children who do not yet know how to read, and for older children. Adults also enjoy reading his books. The heroes of the works of this amazing author were not only people, but animals, birds, insects, and also things.

The poems and fairy tales of Korney Chukovsky sound great, develop our speech, enrich us with new words, and form a sense of humor. They are also easy to remember, developing our memory, making us smarter.

Korney Ivanovich loved the children very much, he was always attentive and kind to them. He was distinguished by his great work ethic, and wherever he was: on the tram, in line for bread, in the doctor’s waiting room, in order not to waste time, he composed poems and fairy tales for children.

Chukovsky spent his last years of his roots in the Moscow region, at a dacha in Peredelkino, where he regularly organized meetings with local children, talked with them, read poetry, and invited famous people to meetings: famous pilots, artists, writers, poets. Peredelkino children, who have long since become adults, still remember these childhood gatherings at Chukovsky’s dacha.

At the dacha in Peredelkino, where the writer lived most of his life, his museum now operates.

Guys, now I propose to play. There are different things in my bag. Someone lost them. Who can help find the owners of these interesting things?

List of things:

Soap (“Moidodyr”)

Saucer (“Fedorino’s grief”)

Galosh ("Telephone")

Chocolate (“Doctor Aibolit”)

Gingerbread (“Cockroach”)

Thermometer (“Doctor Aibolit”)

Matches ("Confusion")

Toy pistol (“Crocodile”)

Well done boys! Thank you!

Korney Chukovsky, who gained fame as a children's poet, was for a long time one of the most underrated writers of the Silver Age. Contrary to popular belief, the creator's genius was manifested not only in poems and fairy tales, but also in critical articles.

Due to the unostentatious specificity of his creativity, the state throughout the writer’s life tried to discredit his works in the eyes of the public. Numerous research works have made it possible to look at the eminent artist “with different eyes.” Now the works of the publicist are read by both people of the “old school” and young people.

Childhood and youth

Nikolai Korneychukov (the poet’s real name) was born on March 31, 1882 in the northern capital of Russia - the city of St. Petersburg. Mother Ekaterina Osipovna, being a servant in the house of the eminent doctor Solomon Levenson, entered into a vicious relationship with his son Emmanuel. In 1799, the woman gave birth to a daughter, Maria, and three years later gave her common-law husband an heir, Nicholas.

Despite the fact that the relationship between the scion of a noble family and a peasant woman looked like a blatant misalliance in the eyes of society at that time, they lived together for seven years. The poet’s grandfather, who did not want to become related to a commoner, in 1885, without explaining the reason, put his daughter-in-law out into the street with two babies in her arms. Since Catherine could not afford separate housing, she and her son and daughter went to stay with relatives in Odessa. Much later, in the autobiographical story “The Silver Coat of Arms,” the poet admits that the southern city never became his home.

The writer's childhood years were spent in an atmosphere of devastation and poverty. The publicist's mother worked in shifts either as a seamstress or as a laundress, but there was a catastrophic lack of money. In 1887, the world saw the “Circular about Cook’s Children.” In it, the Minister of Education I.D. Delyanov recommended that the directors of the gymnasiums accept into the ranks of students only those children whose origin did not raise questions. Due to the fact that Chukovsky did not fit this “definition”, in the 5th grade he was expelled from a privileged educational institution.

In order not to idle around and benefit the family, the young man took on any job. Among the roles that Kolya tried on himself were a newspaper delivery man, a roof cleaner, and a poster paster. During that period, the young man began to be interested in literature. He read adventure novels, studied works, and in the evenings he recited poetry to the sound of the surf.

Among other things, his phenomenal memory allowed the young man to learn English in such a way that he translated texts from a sheet of paper without stuttering even once. At that time, Chukovsky did not yet know that Ohlendorf’s self-instruction manual lacked pages on which the principle of correct pronunciation was described in detail. Therefore, when Nikolai visited England years later, the fact that the local residents practically did not understand him incredibly surprised the publicist.

Journalism

In 1901, inspired by the works of his favorite authors, Korney wrote a philosophical opus. The poet’s friend Vladimir Zhabotinsky, having read the work from cover to cover, took it to the Odessa News newspaper, thereby marking the beginning of Chukovsky’s 70-year literary career. For the first publication, the poet received 7 rubles. Using considerable money for those times, the young man bought himself presentable-looking pants and a shirt.

After two years of working at the newspaper, Nikolai was sent to London as a correspondent for Odessa News. Over the course of a year, he wrote articles, studied foreign literature, and even copied catalogs in the museum. During the trip, eighty-nine works by Chukovsky were published.

The writer fell in love with British aestheticism so much that many, many years later he translated Whitman’s works into Russian, and also became the editor of the first four-volume work, which instantly acquired the status of a reference book in all literature-loving families.

In March 1905, the writer moved from sunny Odessa to rainy St. Petersburg. There, the young journalist quickly finds a job: he gets a job as a correspondent for the newspaper “Theater Russia”, where his reports on the performances he watched and the books he read are published in each issue.

A subsidy from singer Leonid Sobinov helped Chukovsky publish the Signal magazine. The publication published exclusively political satire, and even Teffi was listed among the authors. Chukovsky was arrested for his ambiguous cartoons and anti-government works. The eminent lawyer Gruzenberg managed to achieve an acquittal and, nine days later, free the writer from prison.

Further, the publicist collaborated with the magazines “Scales” and “Niva”, as well as with the newspaper “Rech”, where Nikolai published critical essays about modern writers. Later, these works were scattered in books: “Faces and Masks” (1914), “Futurists” (1922), “From to the Present Day” (1908).

In the autumn of 1906, the writer’s place of residence became a dacha in Kuokkala (the shore of the Gulf of Finland). There the writer was lucky enough to meet an artist, poets and... Chukovsky later spoke about cultural figures in his memoirs “Repin. . Mayakovsky. . Memories" (1940).

The humorous handwritten almanac “Chukokkala”, published in 1979, was also collected here, where they left their creative autographs, and. At the invitation of the government in 1916, Chukovsky, as part of a delegation of Russian journalists, again went on a business trip to England.

Literature

In 1917, Nikolai returned to St. Petersburg, where, accepting the offer of Maxim Gorky, he took over the post of head of the children's department of the Parus publishing house. Chukovsky tried on the role of a storyteller while working on the anthology “Firebird”. Then he revealed to the world a new facet of his literary genius by writing “Chicken Little,” “The Kingdom of Dogs,” and “Doctors.”

Gorky saw enormous potential in his colleague’s fairy tales and suggested that Korney “try his luck” and create another work for the children’s supplement of the Niva magazine. The writer was worried that he would not be able to release an effective product, but inspiration found the creator itself. This was on the eve of the revolution.

Then the publicist was returning from his dacha to St. Petersburg with his sick son Kolya. In order to distract his beloved child from attacks of illness, the poet began to invent a fairy tale on the fly. There was no time to develop the characters and plot.

The whole bet was on the quickest alternation of images and events, so that the boy would not have time to moan or cry. This is how the work “Crocodile”, published in 1917, was born.

After the October Revolution, Chukovsky traveled around the country giving lectures and collaborating with all sorts of publishing houses. In the 20-30s, Korney wrote the works “Moidodyr” and “Cockroach”, and also adapted the texts of folk songs for children’s reading, publishing the collections “Red and Red” and “Skok-skok”. The poet published ten poetic fairy tales one after another: “Fly-Tsokotukha”, “Miracle Tree”, “Confusion”, “What Mura Did”, “Barmaley”, “Telephone”, “Fedorino’s Grief”, “Aibolit”, “The Stolen Sun”, “Toptygin and the Fox”.

Korney ran around the publishing houses, never leaving his proofs for a second, and followed every line printed. Chukovsky’s works were published in the magazines “New Robinson”, “Hedgehog”, “Koster”, “Chizh” and “Sparrow”. For the classic, everything worked out in such a way that at some point the writer himself believed that fairy tales were his calling.

Everything changed after a critical article in which the revolutionary, who had no children, called the creator’s works “bourgeois dregs” and argued that Chukovsky’s works concealed not only an anti-political message, but also false ideals.

After this, a secret meaning was seen in all the works of the writer: in “Mukha-Tsokotukh” the author popularized Komarik’s individualism and Mukha’s frivolity, in the fairy tale “Fedorino’s Grief” he glorified petty-bourgeois values, in “Moidodyr” he purposefully did not voice the importance of the leading role of the Communist Party, but most importantly The censors even saw the hero of “Cockroach” as a caricature.

The persecution brought Chukovsky to extreme despair. Korney himself began to believe that no one needed his fairy tales. In December 1929, the Literaturnaya Gazeta published a letter from the poet, in which he, renouncing his old works, promised to change the direction of his work by writing a collection of poems, “The Cheerful Collective Farm.” However, the work never came from his pen.

The wartime tale “Let’s Defeat Barmaley” (1943) was included in an anthology of Soviet poetry, and then crossed out from there by Stalin personally. Chukovsky wrote another work, “The Adventures of Bibigon” (1945). The story was published in Murzilka, recited on the radio, and then, calling it “ideologically harmful,” it was banned from reading.

Tired of fighting with critics and censors, the writer returned to journalism. In 1962, he wrote the book “Alive as Life,” in which he described the “diseases” that affected the Russian language. We should not forget that the publicist who studied creativity published the complete collected works of Nikolai Alekseevich.

Chukovsky was a storyteller not only in literature, but also in life. He repeatedly committed actions that his contemporaries, due to their cowardice, were not capable of. In 1961, the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” fell into his hands. Having become its first reviewer, Chukovsky and Tvardovsky convinced him to publish this work. When Alexander Isaevich became persona non grata, it was Korney who hid him from the authorities at his second dacha in Peredelkino.

In 1964, the trial began. Korney, together with, are one of the few who were not afraid to write a letter to the Central Committee asking for the release of the poet. The writer’s literary heritage has been preserved not only in books, but also in cartoons.

Personal life

Chukovsky met his first and only wife at the age of 18. Maria Borisovna was the daughter of accountant Aron-Ber Ruvimovich Goldfeld and housewife Tuba (Tauba). The noble family never approved of Korney Ivanovich. At one time, the lovers even planned to escape from Odessa, which they both hated, to the Caucasus. Despite the fact that the escape never took place, the couple got married in May 1903.

Many Odessa journalists came to the wedding with flowers. True, Chukovsky did not need bouquets, but money. After the ceremony, the resourceful guy took off his hat and began to walk around the guests. Immediately after the celebration, the newlyweds left for England. Unlike Korney, Maria stayed there for a couple of months. Having learned that his wife was pregnant, the writer immediately sent her to her homeland.

On June 2, 1904, Chukovsky received a telegram that his wife had safely given birth to a son. That day, the feuilletonist gave himself a holiday and went to the circus. Upon returning to St. Petersburg, the wealth of knowledge and life experiences accumulated in London allowed Chukovsky to very quickly become a leading critic of St. Petersburg. Sasha Cherny, not without malice, called him Korney Belinsky. Just two years later, yesterday’s provincial journalist was on friendly terms with the entire literary and artistic elite.

While the artist traveled around the country giving lectures, his wife raised their children: Lydia, Nikolai and Boris. In 1920, Chukovsky became a father again. Daughter Maria, whom everyone called Murochka, became the heroine of many of the writer’s works. The girl died in 1931 from tuberculosis. Ten years later, Boris’s youngest son died in the war, and 14 years later, the publicist’s wife, Maria Chukovskaya, also died.

Death

Korney Ivanovich passed away at the age of 87 (October 28, 1969). The cause of death was viral hepatitis. The dacha in Peredelkino, where the poet lived in recent years, was turned into Chukovsky’s house-museum.

To this day, lovers of the writer’s work can see with their own eyes the place where the eminent artist created his masterpieces.

Bibliography

• “Sunny” (story, 1933);
• “Silver Coat of Arms” (story, 1933);
• “Chicken” (fairy tale, 1913);
• “Aibolit” (fairy tale, 1917);
• “Barmaley” (fairy tale, 1925);
• “Moidodyr” (fairy tale, 1923);
• “The Tsokotukha Fly” (fairy tale, 1924);
• “Let’s Defeat Barmaley” (fairy tale, 1943);
• “The Adventures of Bibigon” (fairy tale, 1945);
• “Confusion” (fairy tale, 1914);
• “The Kingdom of Dogs” (fairy tale, 1912);
• “Cockroach” (fairy tale, 1921);
• “Telephone” (fairy tale, 1924);
• “Toptygin and the Fox” (fairy tale, 1934);

Chukovsky Korney Ivanovich (1882-1969) - Russian poet and children's writer, journalist and literary critic, translator and literary critic.

Childhood and adolescence

Korney Chukovsky is the pseudonym of the poet, his real name is Korneychukov Nikolai Vasilievich. He was born in St. Petersburg on March 19, 1882. His mother, a Poltava peasant woman Ekaterina Osipovna Korneychukova, worked as a servant in the family of a wealthy doctor Levenson, who came to St. Petersburg from Odessa.

The maid Katerina lived for three years in an illegal marriage with the owner’s son, student Emmanuel Solomonovich, and gave birth to two children from him - the eldest daughter Marusya and the boy Nikolai.

However, Emmanuel’s father opposed his son’s relationship with the peasant woman. The Levensons were the owners of several printing houses in different cities, and such an unequal marriage could never become legal. Soon after the future poet was born, Emmanuel Solomonovich left Catherine and married a woman of his circle.

The mother of Korney Chukovsky and her two small children were forced to leave for Odessa. Here on Novorybnaya Street they settled in a small outbuilding. Little Nikolai spent his entire childhood in Nikolaev and Odessa. As the poet recalls his early years: “Mother raised us democratically – through need”. For many years, Ekaterina Osipovna kept and often looked at a photograph of a bearded man with glasses and said to the children: “Don’t be angry with your dad, he’s a good person”. Emmanuel Solomonovich sometimes helped Katerina with money.

However, little Kolya was very ashamed of his illegitimacy and suffered from it. It seemed to him that he was the most incomplete person on earth, that he was the only one on the planet born outside the law. When other children talked about their fathers and grandparents, Kolya blushed, began to invent something, lie and get confused, and then it seemed to him that everyone was whispering behind his back about his illegal origin. He was never able to forgive his father for his unhappy childhood, poverty and the stigma of “fatherlessness.”

Korney Ivanovich loved his mother very much and always remembered her with warmth and tenderness. From early morning until late evening, she washed and ironed for other people in order to earn money and feed her children, while still managing to run the house and cook delicious food. Their room in the outbuilding was always cozy and clean, even elegant, because there were many flowers and curtains and towels embroidered with patterns hung everywhere. Everything always sparkled, my mother was incredibly tidy and poured her broad Ukrainian soul into their small home. She was an illiterate peasant woman, but made every effort to ensure that her children received an education.

At the age of five, his mother sent Kolya to Madame Bekhteeva’s kindergarten. He remembered well how they drew pictures and marched to music. Then the boy went to study at the second Odessa gymnasium, but after the fifth grade he was expelled due to his low origin. Then he began to educate himself, studied English and read a lot of books. Literature invaded his life and completely captured the boy’s heart. Every free minute he ran to the library and read voraciously indiscriminately.

Nikolai had a lot of friends with whom he went fishing or flew a kite, climbed through attics or, hiding in large garbage bins, dreamed of traveling to distant lands. He recounted to the boys the books he had read by Jules Verne and the novels of Aimard.

To help his mother, Nikolai went to work: he repaired fishing nets, put up theater posters, and painted fences. However, the older he got, the less he liked the philistine Odessa, he dreamed of leaving here for Australia, for which he studied a foreign language.

Journalistic activity

Having become a young man and having grown a mustache, Nikolai tried to take up tutoring, but he just couldn’t seem to assume the proper respectability. He entered into arguments and conversations with the children he taught about tarantulas and methods of making arrows from reeds, and taught them to play robbers and pirates. He didn’t turn out to be a teacher, but then a friend came to the rescue - journalist Volodya Zhabotinsky, with whom they had been “inseparable” since kindergarten. He helped Nikolai get a job at the popular newspaper Odessa News as a reporter.

When Nikolai came to the editorial office for the first time, there was a huge hole in his leaky pants, which he covered with a large and thick book, taken with him precisely for this purpose. But very soon his publications became so popular and beloved among the newspaper’s readers that he began to earn 25-30 rubles per month. At that time it was quite decent money. Immediately under his first articles, the young author began to sign with a pseudonym - Korney Chukovsky, and later added a fictitious patronymic - Ivanovich.

Business trip to England

When it turned out that in the entire editorial office only one Korney knew English, the management invited him to go on a business trip to London as a correspondent. The young man had just recently gotten married, the family needed to get on its feet, and he was tempted by the proposed salary - 100 rubles a month. Together with his wife, Chukovsky went to England.

His English articles were published by the publishing houses “Odessa News”, “Southern Review” and several Kyiv newspapers. Over time, fees from Russia began to arrive in London in the name of Chukovsky irregularly, and then stopped altogether. His wife was pregnant, but due to a lack of funds, Korney sent her to her parents in Odessa, while he remained in London, looking for part-time work.

Chukovsky liked England very much. True, at first no one understood his language, which he learned on his own. But for Korney this was not a problem; he improved it, studying from morning to evening in the library of the British Museum. Here he found a part-time job copying catalogues, and at the same time read Thackeray and Dickens in the original.

Creative literary path

By the revolution of 1905, Chukovsky returned to Russia and completely immersed himself in the events taking place. He visited the rebel battleship Potemkin twice. Then he went to St. Petersburg and started publishing the satirical magazine Signal there. He was arrested for lese majeste and spent 9 days in custody, but soon his lawyer achieved an acquittal.

Upon his release, Korney published a magazine underground for some time, but soon realized that publishing was not for him. He devoted his life to writing.

At first he was more involved in criticism. From his pen came essays about Blok and Balmont, Kuprin and Chekhov, Gorky and Bryusov, Merezhkovsky and Sergeev-Tsensky. From 1917 to 1926, Chukovsky worked on a work about his favorite poet Nekrasov, and in 1962 he received the Lenin Prize for it.

And when he was already a fairly well-known critic, Korney became interested in children's creativity:

• In 1916, his first collection of children's poems “Yolka” and the fairy tale “Crocodile” were published.
• In 1923, “Cockroach” and “Moidodyr” were written.
• In 1924, Barmaley was published.

For the first time, a new intonation was heard in children's works - no one lectured the kids. The author humorously, but at the same time always sincerely rejoiced, together with his little readers, in the beauty of the world around him.

At the end of the 1920s, Korney Ivanovich developed a new hobby - studying the psyche of children and observing how they mastered speech. In 1933, this resulted in the creative verbal work “From Two to Five.”

Soviet children grew up reading his poems and fairy tales, then read them to their children and grandchildren. Many of us still remember by heart:

• “Fedorino’s grief” and “Mukhu-tsokotuhu”;
• "Stolen Sun" and "Confusion";
• "Telephone" and "Aibolit".

Almost all of Korney Chukovsky's fairy tales have been made into animated films.
Korney Ivanovich, together with his eldest son, did a lot of translation work. Thanks to their work, the Soviet Union was able to read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, “Robinson Crusoe” and “Baron Munchausen”, “The Prince and the Pauper”, fairy tales by Wilde and Kipling.

For his creative achievements, Chukovsky received awards: three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor, the Order of Lenin, numerous medals and a doctorate from Oxford University.

Personal life

The first and only love came to Korney Ivanovich at a very young age. In Odessa, the Jewish Goldfeld family lived on a nearby street. The head of the family, accountant Aron-Ber Ruvimovich, and his wife, housewife Tuba Oizerovna, had a daughter, Maria, growing up. Chukovsky really liked the black-eyed and plump girl.

When it turned out that Masha was not indifferent to him, Korney proposed to her. However, the girl's parents were against this marriage. Desperate Maria ran away from home, and in 1903 the lovers got married. This was the first, only and happy marriage for both.

Four children were born into the family, three of whom were survived by their father, Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky.

In 1904, their first-born son Kolya was born. Like his father, he was engaged in literary activities all his life, becoming the famous Soviet writer Nikolai Korneevich Chukovsky. During World War II, he took part in the defense of Leningrad and remained in the besieged city. In 1965, he died suddenly in his sleep. The death of his son was a severe blow for 83-year-old Korney Ivanovich.

In 1907, a daughter, Lydia, was born into the Chukovsky family, who also became a writer. Her most famous works are the stories “Sofya Petrovna” and “Descent Under Water,” as well as the significant work “Notes about Anna Akhmatova.”

In 1910, son Boris was born. At the age of 31, he died near the Borodino field, returning from reconnaissance. This happened almost immediately after the start of World War II, in the fall of 1941.

The youngest daughter Maria in the Chukovsky family was born in 1920. The late child was madly loved by everyone, she was affectionately called Murochka, and it was she who became the heroine of most of her father’s children’s stories and poems. But when she was 10 years old, the girl fell ill and had incurable bone tuberculosis. The baby became blind, stopped walking and cried a lot in pain. In 1930, her parents took Murochka to the Alupka sanatorium for children with tuberculosis.

For two years, Korney Ivanovich lived as if in a dream, went to see his sick daughter, and wrote children’s poems and fairy tales with her. But in November 1930, the girl died in her father’s arms; he personally made a coffin for her from an old chest. Murochka was buried there, in Crimea.

It was after her death that he transferred his love for his daughter to all the children of the Soviet Union and became everyone’s favorite - Grandfather Korney.

His wife Maria died in 1955, 14 years before her husband. Every day Korney Ivanovich went to her grave and recalled the happy moments of their life. He clearly remembered her velvet blouse, even the smell, their dates until dawn, all the joys and troubles that they had to experience together.

Two granddaughters and three grandsons continued the family line of the famous children's poet, and Korney Ivanovich has many great-grandchildren. Some of them connected their lives with creativity, like their grandfather, but there are other professions in the Chukovsky family tree - Doctor of Medical Sciences, producer of the directorate of NTV-Plus sports channels, communications engineer, chemist, cameraman, historian-archivist, resuscitation doctor.

In the last years of his life, Korney Ivanovich lived in Peredelkino at the dacha. He often gathered children at his place and invited famous people to such meetings - artists, pilots, poets and writers. The kids loved these gatherings with tea at Grandfather Korney’s dacha.

On October 28, 1969, Korney Ivanovich died from viral hepatitis. He was buried in the cemetery in Peredelkino.

At this dacha there is now a functioning museum of the writer and poet Grandfather Korney.