Unknown facts about writers and poets. Interesting facts from the life of your favorite writers

How to shoot in abandoned buildings?

Photography in ruins and abandoned places is original and attractive. You just need to pick interesting place. Low-light photography skills will come in handy.

Make it a rule to study the area of ​​your future shooting in advance, this will protect your work and allow you to decide on good angles, because trash is not always good.

Dilapidated floors and beams in abandoned buildings are dangerous, especially on stairs and balconies.

At first glance, it is unlikely that a long lens will be needed, since the distance from the model to the walls is small. But a telephoto lens has the ability to magnify subject after subject. So, behind the model’s back the moon will not be the size of a pea, as when shooting with a wide angle, but a huge... huge success. At the same time, the shirik will serve as a universal weapon, but is unsuitable as a portraiture.

A tripod is essential; long shutter speeds will help avoid blur without introducing excessive noise.

Batteries are your salvation; when discharged, the equipment is useless.

Discuss with the model what kind of pictures you plan to get and what is required of her. Select costumes, accessories, hair and makeup in advance.

In order to give the picture volume, the distance between the wall and the model should be at least 2-3 meters. Be careful and do not allow random objects or inscriptions in the background to get into the frame.

In abandoned buildings, lighting comes through windows, so stay close to window openings.

Lighting, close to natural, falls softly and evenly. The background can be highlighted separately.

Entries from this magazine under the tag “questions to the photographer”

• A photographer is often asked what photographic equipment he uses, how much time he spends on processing and what tools he uses.…

• 
  The beginning of the series is the promise of long-term intrigue

  The plot of the series is the map presented to the viewer. A map with promises of treasure and adventure. The outcome alone is not enough, the promise of reward inspires...

• Rotating screen and Live View results

  Amateur photographic devices are oversaturated not so much with high-quality functionality as with a list of capabilities, but practice shows that some...

• Shooting this way means that the photographer does not have to announce each shutter press. Unfortunately, formal, mandatory,…

• In a hotel, as a rule, you can choose a spacious room, which will allow the photographer to experiment with lighting, take large and general plans,…

• The best example The roughest tool for creative photography is natural light. We do not control the sun, but we use it to achieve what we need...

• Mobility and comfort

  Compact full-frame cameras do not have the flaws of their bulky predecessors, but professional work still addicted to heavy...

More and more often they take place in places that are, frankly, creepy. This fashion trend is based on the contrast of the beautiful and the terrible. If you want to add such masterpieces to your photography portfolio, listen to our advice.
The topic of photographing ruins has been known for more than twenty years, but is still popular. Try yourself as a digger.

Additional lighting.

Even if you don't plan to spend the whole day in the ruins, still take an extra light source with you. It could be a regular flashlight. It's better when there are two of them. Such places, as a rule, were left without electricity. Therefore, only in some rooms you will see very dim natural light. So, take a flashlight with you to navigate dark rooms and corridors. After all, you will need to carefully study and choose a photo composition.
In addition to illumination on the go, a flashlight is useful for additional light during the shooting process. With a long shutter speed, a flashlight can provide good background light or create a spectacular spot of light in a composition. Of course, it is more convenient to use a flash for such purposes. But the flashlight also gives a precise directional beam. If you combine both a flash and a flashlight, you can create a dramatic combination of shadows in your photo. You will achieve real success with good practice. But you will get unusual pictures.

Use a tripod.

The lighting conditions we described assume the use of a tripod. Most You will have to take pictures at long shutter speeds (from one to 20-30 seconds!). No one can hold a camera still for that long. So, a tripod is a must. IN in some cases Image stabilization and the use of a fast lens help. If you're willing to risk shooting without a tripod, try the 17-50mm f 2.8 wide-angle, fast zoom. Combined with image stabilization, you can still get fairly clear shots. But is it worth the effort? So, take a tripod.

Use manual settings.

Modern cameras are real robots, automatically taking into account all shooting conditions in a split second and producing successful shots. We are not prudes, and we advise using automation capabilities where possible. After all, we live in the 21st century.
But a professional photo shoot in abandoned buildings - a special case. The illumination of the spaces here is truly extreme. Therefore, learn to manually adjust the camera and independently control all aspects of shooting. And so for each composition several times.

Volume of the composition.

This topic is covered in more detail in one of the previous Photosearch materials. Here we will touch only on some aspects of photographing ruins.
Use a wide-angle lens. It will give the composition a certain atmosphere and help convey the desolation and emptiness of the premises. Start with a 10-22mm wide-angle lens in 10mm mode. Try to emphasize the mood of the composition.

Photographing lifeless voids is significantly different from animal photography or landscape photography.
Abandoned buildings have a completely different image. Your photographs will be successful if they tell the story of a specific building in relation to its era or a specific historical episode. More often than not, it's a pretty dark story. We offer you some tips to help reveal your image.
1. Rotate the camera at different angles. This might provide an interesting perspective.
2. Install the camera as close to the floor as possible. This way you can highlight a special ceiling or spaciousness of the room.
3. Remove the corner between the walls. This is somewhat disorienting for the viewer.
4. Don’t forget to constantly emphasize the mood of the frame and composition.
Try to orientate yourself well and feel the room. After all, even the slightest shift of the camera will have big influence on the mood of the composition.

Pay attention to details.

It's easy to get caught up in the massive architecture of an abandoned building. Try to pay attention to small parts and elements. It's not easy at all. Furniture, books, toys, phones, dishes, etc. can become the main subject of your composition. Focus your attention on a specific object to make it an “anchor” in the chaotic mess.
And finally, the most main advice from Photosearch. Use caution when working in such areas. Not a single shot, even the coolest one, is worth your health or life.

Therefore, take strict precautions before filming. Be sure to take with you:
. flashlight with spare batteries,
. a first aid kit with antiseptics and bandages (for injuries, for example, from glass or a rusty nail),
. a charged phone with a sufficient amount of money in the account.

Even builders and repairmen are prohibited from walking alone in such conditions. Take a friend with you, or better yet, two. When looking around the room to choose a composition, do not forget to look at your feet. Such premises are very dilapidated and pose a danger of collapse. You go to photograph antiquity, and not to traumatize yourself with it.

The phrase “We all came out of Gogol’s overcoat” is well known, which is used to express humanistic traditions Russian literature. The authorship of this expression is often attributed to Dostoevsky, but in fact the first person to say it was the French critic Eugene Vogüe, who discussed the origins of Dostoevsky’s work. Fyodor Mikhailovich himself cited this quote in a conversation with another French writer, who understood it as own words writer and published them in this light in his work. The first manuscript " Strange story Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" Stevenson was burned by his wife. Biographers have two versions of why she did this: some say that she considered such a plot unworthy of a writer, others say that she was unhappy with the incomplete disclosure of the topic of split personality. Nevertheless, Stevenson, suffering from tuberculosis, re-wrote this novella in three days, which became one of his most commercially successful works and allowed his family to get out of debt. The French writer Stendhal, after a visit to Florence in 1817, wrote: “When I left the Church of the Holy Cross, my heart began to beat, it seemed to me that the source of life had dried up, I walked, afraid of collapsing to the ground...” The masterpieces of art that excite the writer can have a similar effect on other people, causing rapid heartbeat and dizziness - this psychosomatic disorder is called Stendhal syndrome. The person who has “picked up” it experiences extremely heightened emotions from contemplating the paintings, as if transported into the space of the image. Often the feelings are so strong that people try to destroy works of art. In more in a broad sense Stendhal syndrome can be caused by any observed beauty - for example, nature or women. There is a widely known legend about the medieval Swiss archer William Tell, who, for disobedience to the German governor, was forced to shoot at the apple on the head of his own son, and Tell did not miss. Inspired by this story, the American writer William Burroughs wanted to surprise the guests at one of the parties. He put a glass on the head of his wife Joan Vollmer and fired a pistol - the wife died from a hit in the head. His first book, Harry Potter and philosopher's Stone» JK Rowling graduated in 1995. The literary agent who agreed to represent her sent the manuscript to 12 publishing houses, but it was rejected by all of them. Only a year later, the manuscript was accepted by the small London publishing house Bloomsbury, although its editor-in-chief, even after approving the book, was sure that Rowling would not earn much from children's books, and advised her to find a permanent job. IN last years During his life, Ernest Hemingway became depressed and irritable, telling family and friends that FBI agents were following him everywhere. Several times the writer was treated in psychiatric clinic, from where he also called his friends, saying that there were bugs in the ward and their conversation was being listened to. Under the influence of electric shock, he lost the ability to write and formulate his thoughts as he could before. Finally, on July 2, 1961, Hemingway shot himself with a gun in his home. Several decades later, an official request was made to the FBI about the writer’s case, to which the answer came: surveillance and wiretapping took place, including in that mental hospital, since the authorities seemed suspicious of his activity in Cuba. The source of the plot for Gogol's play "The Inspector General" was real case in the city of Ustyuzhna, Novgorod province, and Pushkin told the author about this incident. It was Pushkin who advised Gogol to continue writing the work when he more than once wanted to give up this work. One day, Francois Rabelais did not have the money to get from Lyon to Paris. Then he prepared three bags with the inscriptions “Poison for the King”, “Poison for the Queen” and “Poison for the Dauphin” and left them in a visible place in the hotel room. Upon learning of this, the hotel owner immediately reported to the authorities. Rabelais was captured and convoyed to the capital directly to King Francis I so that he could decide the writer’s fate. It turned out that the packages contained sugar, which Rabelais immediately drank with a glass of water, and then told the king, with whom they were friends, how he solved his problem.
Daria Dontsova, whose father was Soviet writer Arkady Vasiliev, grew up surrounded by the creative intelligentsia. Once at school she was asked to write an essay on the topic: “What was Valentin Petrovich Kataev thinking about when he wrote the story “The Lonely Sail Whitens”?”, and Dontsova asked Kataev himself to help her. As a result, Daria received a bad grade, and the literature teacher wrote in her notebook: “Kataev was not thinking about this at all!” The fairy tale “The Wise Man of Oz” by the American writer Frank Baum was not published in Russian until 1991. At the end of the 30s, Alexander Volkov, who was a mathematician by training and taught this science at one of the Moscow institutes, began to study English language and for practice I decided to translate this book in order to retell it to my children. They really liked it, they began to demand a continuation, and Volkov, in addition to the translation, began to come up with something of his own. This was the beginning of it literary path, which resulted in The Wizard emerald city"and many other tales about the Magic Land. Alexandre Dumas, when writing his works, used the services of many assistants - the so-called “literary blacks”. Among them, the most famous is Auguste Macquet, who, according to the writer's most famous biographer, Claude Schoppe, conceived the basis of the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo and made a significant contribution to " Three Musketeers" Although it should be noted that it was thanks to Dumas’ talent that his novels, even if they grew from the rough notes of his assistants, were saturated with vivid details and lively dialogues. Alexandre Dumas once took part in a duel where the participants drew lots, and the loser had to shoot himself. The lot went to Dumas, who retired to the next room. A shot rang out, and then Dumas returned to the participants with the words: “I shot, but missed.” Some biographies of Erich Maria Remarque indicate that he real name- Kramer (Remarque in reverse). In fact, this is an invention of the Nazis, who, after his emigration from Germany, also spread the rumor that Remarque is the descendants of French Jews. Dostoevsky made extensive use of the real topography of St. Petersburg in describing the places in his novel Crime and Punishment. As the writer admitted, he compiled a description of the yard in which Raskolnikov hides the things he stole from the pawnbroker’s apartment from personal experience- when one day, while walking around the city, Dostoevsky turned into a deserted courtyard to relieve himself.
In 1976, Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren's progressive income tax rate was 102%. The satirical article she wrote caused fierce controversy, which is believed to be the reason why members of the Swedish Social Democratic Party did not enter the government after the next elections for the first time in 40 years. After the outbreak of World War II, Marina Tsvetaeva was sent for evacuation to the city of Elabuga, in Tatarstan. Boris Pasternak helped her pack her things. He brought a rope to tie up the suitcase, and, assuring of its strength, joked: “The rope will withstand everything, even if you hang yourself.” Subsequently, he was told that it was on her that Tsvetaeva hanged herself in Yelabuga. The famous formula “Twice two equals five,” which George Orwell repeatedly emphasized in the dystopian novel “1984,” came to his mind when he heard the Soviet slogan “Five-Year Plan in Four Years!” The term “robot” was coined by the Czech writer Karel Capek. Although at first in his play he called humanoid mechanisms “laboratories” (from the Latin labor - work), he did not like this word. Then, on the advice of his brother Josef, he renamed them robots. By the way, in Czech, the word robota, the original word for this neologism, means not just work, but hard work or hard labor. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, in correspondence with his wife Olga Leonardovna, Knipper used standard compliments and kind words very unusual: “actress”, “dog”, “snake” and - feel the lyricism of the moment - “the crocodile of my soul”. Having fallen ill, Chekhov sent a messenger to the pharmacy for castor oil capsules. The pharmacist sent him two large capsules, which Chekhov returned with the inscription “I am not a horse!” Having received the writer’s autograph, the pharmacist happily replaced them with normal capsules.
When Alexandre Dumas wrote “The Three Musketeers” in serial format in one of the newspapers, the contract with the publisher stipulated line-by-line payment for the manuscript. To increase the fee, Dumas invented a servant of Athos named Grimaud, who spoke and answered all questions exclusively in monosyllables, in most cases “yes” or “no.” The continuation of the book, entitled “Twenty Years Later,” was paid by the word, and Grimaud became a little more talkative. Initially, on Gogol’s grave in the monastery cemetery there was a stone nicknamed Golgotha ​​because of its resemblance to Mount Jerusalem. When they decided to destroy the cemetery, during reburial in another place they decided to install a bust of Gogol on the grave. And that same stone was subsequently placed on Bulgakov’s grave by his wife. In this regard, Bulgakov’s phrase, which he repeatedly addressed to Gogol during his lifetime, is noteworthy: “Teacher, cover me with your overcoat.” Alexander Griboyedov was not only a poet, but also a diplomat. In 1829, he died in Persia along with the entire diplomatic mission at the hands of religious fanatics. To atone for their guilt, the Persian delegation arrived in St. Petersburg with rich gifts, among which was the famous Shah diamond weighing 88.7 carats. James Barrie created the image of Peter Pan - the boy who will never grow up - for a reason. This hero became a dedication to the author’s older brother, who died the day before he turned 14 years old, and forever remained young in the memory of his mother. In 1835, Halley's comet flew near the Earth, and two weeks after its perihelion, Mark Twain was born. In 1909 he wrote: “I came into this world with a comet and I will leave with it too when it arrives in next year" And so it happened: Twain died on April 21, 1910, the day after the comet’s next perihelion. The term “bata-kusai” (translated as “smelling of oil”) is not milk drinkers The Japanese call everything foreign and pro-Western. Elderly Japanese used the same expression to describe the writer Haruki Murakami for his adherence to the Western way of life. Lewis Carroll loved to communicate and be friends with little girls, but was not a pedophile, as many of his biographers claim. Often his girlfriends underestimated their age, or he himself called older ladies girls. The reason was that the morality of that era in England strictly condemned communication with a young woman alone, and girls under 14 were considered asexual, and friendship with them was completely innocent. The French writer and humorist Alphonse Allais, a quarter of a century before Kazimir Malevich, painted a black square - a painting called “Battle of the Negroes in a Cave” late at night" He also anticipated minimalist art by almost seventy years. musical piece from one silence of John Cage’s “4’33”” with his similar work “Funeral March for the Funeral of the Great Deaf Man.” Leo Tolstoy was skeptical about his novels, including War and Peace. In 1871, he sent Fet a letter: “How happy I am... that I will never write verbose rubbish like “War” again.” An entry in his diary in 1908 reads: “People love me for those trifles - “War and Peace”, etc., which seem very important to them.” The expression “Balzac age” arose after the publication of Balzac’s novel “A Thirty-Year-Old Woman” and is acceptable for women no older than 40 years. French writer Guy de Maupassant was one of those who was irritated by the Eiffel Tower. Nevertheless, he dined at her restaurant every day, explaining that this was the only place in Paris from which the tower could not be seen. The American extravagant writer Timothy Dexter wrote a book in 1802 with very peculiar language and the absence of any punctuation. In response to reader outcry, in the second edition of the book he added a special page with punctuation marks, asking readers to arrange them in the text to their liking. Franz Kafka published only a few short stories during his lifetime. Being seriously ill, he asked his friend Max Brod to burn all his works after his death, including several unfinished novels. Brod did not fulfill this request, but, on the contrary, ensured the publication of the works that brought Kafka worldwide fame.
U Shakespearean hero was real prototype Italian Maurizio Othello. He commanded the Venetian forces in Cyprus and lost his wife there under extremely suspicious circumstances. Diminutive name Mauro in Italian also means “Moor,” which led to Shakespeare’s mistake in assigning such a nationality to the hero.
Winnie the Pooh got the first part of his name from one of the real toys of Christopher Robin, the son of the writer Milne. The toy was named after a female bear at the London Zoo named Winnipeg, who came there from Canada. The second part - Pooh - was borrowed from the name of the swan of acquaintances of the Milne family. In 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Bernard Shaw, who called the event "a token of gratitude for the relief he has given the world by not publishing anything this year."

Escaped Agatha Christie and spiritualist Conan Doyle

Have you ever wondered that two of England's greatest deductive minds lived and worked at the same time? Moreover, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was an active participant search operation during the disappearance of Agatha Christie. In 1926, the writer’s husband asked her for a divorce, since he was already in love with someone else. This was a huge blow for the creator of the mustachioed Poirot. And she disappeared. Rumor has it that Christie wanted to commit suicide and fabricate evidence against her unfaithful husband.

And among the volunteers from all over the country who helped find the literary diva, Sir Conan Doyle himself turned out to be. True, all his help consisted in the fact that he took Agatha’s glove to a famous medium. You won’t believe it, but the man who invented the most pragmatic and atheistic character of all time was an ardent supporter and promoter of spiritualism, and simply believed in all otherworldly forces. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the medium did not help the search operation in any way, and the writer was found 10 days later in a small spa hotel outside the city, where she calmly registered under the name of a careless homewrecker and drank cocktails for the entire 10 days. By the way, no one knows when, how and why Agatha Christie ended up in that hotel. The writer herself claims that she had short-term amnesia. But we are girls, we guess...

Lord Byron or Casanova?

Byron's love affairs are legendary. Biographers clearly include in his biography the fact that once in one year of Venice, Byron had the happiness of “communicating” with more than 250 ladies. And this despite the fact that the poet definitely limped and was extremely prone to being overweight. Moreover, the pride of all England had quite strange collection. He collected strands of hair from the most intimate places their lovers. The curls, and at that time there probably were some, were lovingly kept in envelopes, where the poet himself wrote out the names in his own hand: “Countess Guiccioli”, “Carolina Lamb”... In the 80s, to the great regret of literary scholars, the collection was lost and no trace of it has been found to this day por.

But the most common gossip revolves around George Byron's love for youths and animals. If the first is exactly what you thought, then the second is platonic love. In the poet’s personal mini-pet one could find crocodiles, badgers, horses, monkeys and many different animals. And the great English romantic poet became furious at the sight of an ordinary salt shaker. Rumor has it that such people were never present at the lavish festivities with the lord. The secret of such fierce aggression towards the salt shaker remained unsolved.

Papa Hem and his cats

Everyone has heard about the cat lover, alcoholic and suicide Hemingway. He really did suffer from a severe form of paranoia, he really did endure a number of sophisticated psychiatric techniques, and towards the end of his life he stopped writing. And when Hemingway died, American intelligence agencies confirmed what great writer He kept repeating all his life - he was really being followed.

But there is another side to the coin. The ideal man, life-fighter and womanizer, American dad Hem loved Cuban mojitos, beautiful journalists and honesty in everything. One day sipping a friendly cocktail another giant American literature, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, complained to Hemingway that his wife Zelda considered him " manhood"relatively small. To which the writer took him to the toilet, gave him a control check, and then reassured poor Fitzgerald that everything was fine. He already knew.

But as for cats, Hemingway’s favorite pet was Snowball, who has a small defect - six toes on soft paws. Now you can meet the descendants of Snowball, who continue to pay tribute to the genius of literature, and live in the house-museum of Uncle Hem in Florida.

Charlie and the Bax Factory

Being just a child, future pride England Charles Dickens had a very hard time. The writer's father ended up in debtor's prison, and little Charlie had to go to work, unfortunately, not at a chocolate factory, but at a real waxing factory, where the young talent had to stick labels on jars of polish all day long. No football with slingshots, no hulabud on a tree. That is why Dickens’s images of unfortunate orphans were so realistic.

In general, one can write and write about the oddities of Charles John Dickens. The most famous of them says that the writer could not sit at the table or go to bed with his head not facing north. Charlie wrote his brilliant works in precisely this direction.

Legend has it that Dickens was an avid hypnotist and mesmerist (telepathic communication between humans and animals), and even went into trances at random. During this state, the writer fiddled with his hats, which very quickly wore out after the attacks. Later I even had to give up hats altogether. Well, among other things, the English prose writer’s favorite pastime was going to the morgue. Especially in those sections where unidentified bodies were exhibited. A wonderful time, I must say!

Antosha Chekhonte

A domestic example of a writer’s difficult childhood is everyone’s favorite Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, whose father ran a tailor’s shop and forced his youths to work in it. Little Anton managed to study and sing in the church choir, but he never saw his childhood.

Another extremely interesting fact about the great satirist: Chekhov kept more than 50 original pseudonyms in his arsenal: Champagne, My Brother’s Brother, The Man Without a Spleen, Arkhip Indeykin, and of course, Antosha Chekhonte - only part of Chekhov’s boundless imagination.

But Stanislavsky describes such a story in his memoirs. One day, while Anton Pavlovich was visiting him, a friend came to see him. During the conversation, Chekhov was silent and only looked intently at the newcomer. When the guest left the master short genre said: “Listen, he’s a suicide,” to which Stanislavsky only laughed, because he had never met a more joyful, happy and optimistic person than this friend. Imagine the director’s amazement when a few years later the “cheerful” guest was poisoned.
And yet contemporaries describe Chekhov as the most kind person on the ground. WITH light hand Anton Pavlovich Chekhov Russia has become richer in schools, hospitals and shelters for those who have nowhere to go.

Coffee instead of sex

Once a thief broke into the apartment of a young, not yet very successful, writer. When he began to rummage through the drawers in the only chest of drawers in the apartment, he heard loud laughter behind him. Honore de Balzac, that was the name of the aspiring writer, loudly remarked that it was unlikely that a thief would be able to find money where he had not been able to find it himself for a long time.

The author's contemporaries claim that it was acute feeling humor helped Balzac survive in sorrows and poverty. Humor and coffee. The famous Frenchman could drink about 50 cups of extremely strong coffee per day. Someone even calculated that during the time of writing “ Human Comedy» Balzac drank 15,000 cups of aromatic drink. And this is without the beans that the coffee lover loved to chew when it was not possible to brew his favorite drink.

And Honore de Balzac believed that sex is tantamount to one thing good novel. A man's seed, in his competent opinion, is nothing more than particles of brain tissue. After a night of love, he even bitterly admitted to one of his friends that he had probably lost a brilliant work.

From comet to comet

Another lover of pseudonyms, Mark Twain, came up with more than a dozen of them. And “Mark Twain” itself meant “by the mark twain,” that is, the safe immersion of a ship in two fathoms. In his youth, the creator of Tom Sawyer worked for a long time on a ship somewhere in the waters of the Mississippi.

Few people know that Samuel Clemens, that is the writer’s real name, was born two weeks after Halley’s Comet passed over the Earth. And in 1909, Twain wrote: “I was born with Halley, and I will leave with her.” On April 20, the comet circled the planet again, and the next day the genius was gone.

Probably, it was precisely this fact that Mark Twain predicted such an unreal life, full of secrets. One of the prose writer's best friends was the mysterious Nikola Tesla. Together with him, Twain participated in the development of mysterious inventions and even patented several, including an album with adhesive pages for photos and an original self-regulating suspenders.

And the world-famous American hated children (despite our favorites - Tom and Huck), but adored cats and tobacco. He started smoking when he was only 8 years old, and before last day throughout my life I smoked 30 cigars daily. Moreover, Twain chose the cheapest and most smelly varieties.

Among other things, Mark Twain was one of the most famous American Freemasons. Little is known about his activities in the lodge. His initiation took place in 1861 in the small town of St. Louis and he quickly advanced through the “ career ladder».

In search of a green stick

Well last Hero of our article, a writer whose image has become legendary throughout Mother Russia. We have studied the life of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy from school inside and out. But do you know what influenced the writer’s ideas about universal peace, love and harmony? As a child, little Levushka’s brother told him many times a story about a magic green wand that can be found on the outskirts of that same Yasnaya Polyana and with its help make the world a much better place. It was this fairy tale that influenced the whole later life and the worldview of a great novelist and teacher.

But in my youth future star Russian literature suffered from a common illness - gambling. One card game with his neighbor, the landowner Gorokhov, Tolstoy lost the house in which he grew up, and all on the same Yasnaya Polyana. Gorokhov, without thinking twice, dismantled the building brick by brick and moved it to his estate.

Tolstoy's oddities do not end there. In my first wedding night, Lev Nikolaevich forced 18-year-old Sofia Bers to re-read his entire diary, especially devoting moments to love affairs. Tolstoy wanted to be honest with the woman he took as his wife, and told her about all his mistresses, including his affairs with countless peasant women. They say that what should happen between husband and wife did not happen that night.

Russian poets and writers came up with many new words: substance, thermometer (Lomonosov), industry (Karamzin), bungling (Saltykov-Shchedrin), fade away (Dostoevsky), mediocrity (Severyanin), exhausted (Khlebnikov).

Korney Chukovsky's real name was Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov.

Voltaire ridiculed Duke Rohan for his arrogance. The Duke ordered his servants to beat Voltaire, which was done. Voltaire challenged the Duke to a duel, but the Duke refused because Voltaire was not a nobleman.

When starting to work on a new work, Balzac locked himself in a room for one or two months and closed the shutters tightly so that light would not penetrate through them. He wrote by candlelight, dressed in a robe, for 18 hours every day.

Mark Twain was born in 1835, when Halley's Comet flew close to the Earth. He predicted that he would die the next time she appeared. This is what happened in 1910.

Alexandre Dumas once took part in a duel where the participants drew lots, and the loser had to shoot himself. The lot went to Dumas, who retired to the next room. A shot rang out, and then Dumas returned to the participants with the words: “I shot, but missed.”

The writer Charles Dickens always slept with his head facing north. He also sat facing north when writing his great works.

French writer Guy de Maupassant was one of those who was irritated by the Eiffel Tower. Nevertheless, he dined at her restaurant every day, explaining that this was the only place in Paris from which the tower could not be seen.

Beaumarchais, after performing his play The Marriage of Figaro, was arrested and imprisoned. Louis XVI, playing cards, wrote an arrest order on the seven of spades.

Jules Verne spent many hours a day studying scientific literature, writing down the facts that interest him on special cards. The card index he compiled could have been the envy of scientific society: it contained more than 20 thousand cards.

Hans Christian Andersen got angry when he was called a children's storyteller and said that he wrote fairy tales for both children and adults. For the same reason, he ordered that there should not be a single child on his monument, where the storyteller was originally supposed to be surrounded by children.

In 1925, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Bernard Shaw, who called the event "a token of gratitude for the relief he has given the world by not publishing anything this year."

American writer Emily Dickenson (1830-1886) wrote more than 900 poems during her life, only four of which were published during her lifetime.

Some biographies of Erich Maria Remarque indicate that his real name is Kramer (Remarque backwards). In fact, this is an invention of the Nazis, who, after his emigration from Germany, also spread the rumor that Remarque is the descendants of French Jews.

L.N. Tolstoy was anathematized. Once a year in all churches anathema was solemnly proclaimed to three persons: Mazepa, Grishka Otrepiev and Tolstoy.

The Belarusian poet Adam Mickiewicz was also a science fiction writer. In the novel “The History of the Future,” he wrote about acoustic devices with the help of which, sitting by the fireplace, you can listen to concerts from the city, as well as about mechanisms that allow the inhabitants of the Earth to maintain contact with creatures inhabiting other planets.

Jules Verne never visited Russia, but, nevertheless, the action of 9 of his novels takes place in Russia (in whole or in part).

The American extravagant writer Timothy Dexter wrote a book in 1802 with very peculiar language and the absence of any punctuation. In response to reader outcry, in the second edition of the book he added a special page with punctuation marks, asking readers to arrange them in the text to their liking.

Lord Byron had four pet geese that followed him everywhere, even to social gatherings. Despite being overweight and having a rather severe clubfoot, Byron was considered one of the most energetic and attractive people of his time.

Alexandre Dumas, when writing his works, used the services of many assistants - the so-called “literary blacks”. Among them, the most famous is Auguste Macquet, who invented the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo and made significant contributions to The Three Musketeers.

The author of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, was sentenced to prison (in 1703) for a satirical article. He spent a day tied to a pillory in the square. Those passing by were obliged to spit at him. Defoe was then forty-two years old.

Creator famous novel"Gadfly" Ethel Lilian Voynich was a composer and considered her musical works even more significant than literary ones.

Famous Soviet writer and public figure Konstantin Simonov lisped, that is, did not pronounce the letters “r” and “l”. This happened in childhood when, while playing, he accidentally cut his tongue with a razor, and it became difficult for him to pronounce his name: Kirill. In 1934 he took the pseudonym Konstantin.

The expression “Balzac age” arose after the publication of Balzac’s novel “A Thirty-Year-Old Woman” and is acceptable for women no older than 40 years.

Ilf and Petrov are very in an original way they avoided cliché thoughts - they discarded ideas that came to both of their minds at once.

One of the most prolific writers of all times and peoples was the Spaniard Lope de Vega. In addition to “Dog in the Manger,” he wrote another thousand eight hundred plays, all of them in verse. He never worked on a single play for more than three days. At the same time, his work was well paid, so Lope de Vega was practically a multimillionaire, which is extremely rare among writers.

The famous fabulist Aesop was so poor that he sold himself into slavery to pay off his debts. At that moment he was thirty years old.

Robinson Crusoe has a sequel. In it, Robinson again suffers a shipwreck and is forced to get to Europe through all of Russia. He waits out the winter in Tobolsk for eight months. The novel has not been published in Russia since 1935.

From American writers The works of Edgar Allan Poe have been filmed the most - 114 times.

Once, at an official reception, Khrushchev called the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn Ivan Denisovich.

Chekhov sat down to write, dressed in full dress. Kuprin, on the contrary, loved to work completely naked.

Spanish playwright Antonio Silva was burned at the stake on October 19, 1739. On the same day, his play “The Death of Phaeton” was performed at the theater.

Writer Ernest Vincent Wright has a novel called Gadsby, which is over 50,000 words long. There is not a single letter E (the most common letter in the English language) in the entire novel.

Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem wrote a collection of short stories called Absolute Emptiness. All the stories are united by the fact that they are reviews of non-existent books written by fictitious authors.

Brian Aldiss, an acquaintance of Agatha Christie, once spoke about her methods - “she finished the book before last chapter, then she chose the most unlikely of the suspects and, returning to the beginning, redid some points in order to frame him.”

Lewis Carroll loved to communicate and be friends with little girls, but was not a pedophile, as many of his biographers claim. Often his girlfriends underestimated their age, or he himself called older ladies girls. The reason was that the morality of that era in England strictly condemned communication with a young woman alone, and girls under 14 were considered asexual, and friendship with them was completely innocent.

When the writer Arkady Averchenko brought a story to one of the editorial offices during the First World War military theme, the censor deleted the phrase from it: “The sky was blue.” It turns out that from these words, enemy spies could guess that what was happening in the south.

The real name of the satirist writer Grigory Gorin was Ofshtein. When asked about the reason for choosing the pseudonym, Gorin replied that it was an abbreviation: “Grisha Ofshtein decided to change his nationality.”

If you read the works of writer Stephen King, you will notice that most of his stories take place in Maine. Paradoxically, this state has the lowest crime rate in the United States.

James Barrie created the character of Peter Pan - the boy who will never grow up - for a reason. This hero became a dedication to the author’s older brother, who died the day before he turned 14 years old, and forever remained young in the memory of his mother.

Initially, on Gogol’s grave in the monastery cemetery there was a stone nicknamed Golgotha ​​because of its resemblance to Mount Jerusalem. When they decided to destroy the cemetery, during reburial in another place they decided to install a bust of Gogol on the grave. And that same stone was subsequently placed on Bulgakov’s grave by his wife. In this regard, Bulgakov’s phrase, which he repeatedly addressed to Gogol during his lifetime, is noteworthy: “Teacher, cover me with your overcoat.”

After the outbreak of World War II, Marina Tsvetaeva was sent for evacuation to the city of Elabuga, in Tatarstan. Boris Pasternak helped her pack her things. He brought a rope to tie up the suitcase, and, assuring of its strength, joked: “The rope will withstand everything, even if you hang yourself.” Subsequently, he was told that it was on her that Tsvetaeva hanged herself in Yelabuga.

Daria Dontsova, whose father was the Soviet writer Arkady Vasiliev, grew up surrounded by the creative intelligentsia. Once at school she was asked to write an essay on the topic: “What was Valentin Petrovich Kataev thinking about when he wrote the story “The Lonely Sail Is White”?”, and Dontsova asked Kataev himself to help her. As a result, Daria received a bad mark, and the literature teacher wrote in her notebook: “Kataev didn’t think about this at all!”