Pavel Bazhov writer. Pavel Bazhov

Name: Pavel Bajov

Age: 71 years old

Place of Birth: Sysert, Perm region.

A place of death: Moscow

Activity: writer, journalist

Family status: was married

Pavel Bazhov - biography

People come to great literature in different ways. Some for the sake of money and fame, some in the hope of changing the world, and others in search of salvation from the horrors of life. The last case is about Bazhov.

Childhood, family of the writer

In the Ural town of Sysert, on January 15, 1879, he was born into the family of a simple miner. only child- future author of “Malachite Box” and “Silver Hoof” Pavel Bazhov.

The mother saved the family: for days on end she knitted shawls and stockings, which she sold to neighbors. However, the family never got out of poverty - the father died early from alcoholism, and the mother became blind...

Studies

Already in the first grade of the factory school, it became clear that Pasha had rare abilities and a thirst for learning. The literature teacher showed the gifted boy to a veterinarian he knew from Yekaterinburg. To the surprise of his parents, he allowed Bazhov to live with him while studying at theological school. “It was a saving ticket to people,” as the writer would later say.

Pavel Bazhov - biography of personal life

It’s hard to believe, but until the age of 30, Bazhov did not have a single novel. All the energy and time young man jobs and part-time jobs were taken away. After all, it was necessary to feed not only himself, but also his widowed mother. Bazhov did not complain - he taught until lunch, then gave private lessons, and after that, in the evening (sometimes at night!) he wrote articles for Ural newspapers and magazines.

One day Pavel Petrovich came into new class and... I realized that I was missing. Valentina Ivanitskaya was different from everyone else: smart, beautiful, stately, with a thick braid. What to do? The girl is only 15, Bazhov is already 28. Moreover, she is his student! For 4 years the writer struggled with his feeling, was ashamed of it, considered it criminal, and tried to overcome it. In vain.

And now all the final exams have been passed. A couple more days, and Bazhov will part with his best student forever. "Come what may!" - the teacher decided and, with his tongue slurring from fear, confessed his feelings to Ivanitskaya. In response, the girl threw herself on the writer’s neck. It turns out that she fell in love with him on the very first day of school. In 1911, the lovers got married.

Pavel Bazhov - revolutionary

While not being a singer of the revolution, like Bazhov, he was an ardent supporter of it as a citizen. The horrors of childhood took their toll: ordinary Ural workers lived poorly and hard. That’s why they drank, and fought, and committed crimes. Pavel Petrovich sincerely believed that the Bolsheviks would change Rus', that happiness, equality, and wealth would come to his beloved Urals.

In 1905, Bazhov was “on the barricades”: he participated in protests, even spent 2 weeks in prison. In 1917, he joined the Bolshevik Party and became the editor of the revolutionary Perm newspaper “Okopnaya Pravda.” This position almost cost the writer his life. Kolchak, having captured Perm, began brutal political purges. Almost a third of the city ended up in prison, including Bazhov. The cells, initially overcrowded, quickly emptied - the whites shot several dozen people per day.

Mad with horror and hunger, Bazhov decided to escape. Barefoot in the snow, stumbling over corpses, along railway tracks the sufferer wandered to Yekaterinburg. A compassionate peasant came to the rescue - he hid Pavel Petrovich in a heap of hay and took him through the Cossack posts.

At home there is a new nightmare: the children are crying from hunger, the wife is in a fever with a dead baby in her arms, all her relatives have disappeared... Entrusting his family to a neighbor, Bazhov went to partisan in the forest near Tomsk, and from there to Altai. Could he then have thought that the party would not appreciate his exploits and would sentence him to death for books full of truth?

Pavel Bazhov - books

The Civil War took away three of the seven children from the Bazhovs. Hoping to forget the terrible past, Pavel Petrovich plunged headlong into work - in the Ural political publications he was an editor, a journalist, a critic, and a mentor for young people. At the same time I helped local history museum, collected Ural folklore, wrote the first piece of art- “They were from the Urals.” So far completely realistic.

In the early 1930s, Bazhov made a mistake - he took up writing the political-historical essay “Formation on the Go.” It would seem that everything was going well: the order was prestigious, “from above”; the goal is good - to describe the process of formation of a new government on the battlefields of the Reds and the Whites. The book turned out to be powerful, passionate, truthful. So true that the authorities were horrified and summoned the writer for questioning.

“Well, goodbye, Valya!” - said Pavel Petrovich, collecting a bundle for the camps.

However, a day later he returned home: the investigator who led the Bazhov case was himself sent to the Gulag. There was no need to rejoice for long: the writer’s son Alexei died in an explosion at the plant. Official version- accident, unofficial - political order, revenge on a dissident journalist.

Bazhov again lost himself in his work. Traveled a lot around the country, wrote about shock construction projects. In 1936 he ended up at the Paper Mill in Krasnokamsk. It was necessary to write well about the project, but there was nothing to tell - the work proceeded with delays and errors, the leaders, one after another, were carried away by the whirlwind of Stalin's terror... As a result, Bazhov submitted only a small part of the manuscript entitled “How We Lived and Worked.” Naturally, the material was not allowed through, and the author was expelled from the party and fired from his job.

Bazhov - " Malachite Box"

During this terrible period of his life, in 1937, Bazhov created the legendary “Malachite Box” - a collection of Ural tales full of romance, beauty, folk wisdom, and wondrous mysticism. He created into nowhere - forgetting about modernity, no longer hoping for anything. I ran away from troubles, healed my soul with childhood memories of ancient country mountain masters...

And suddenly the incredible: after the first publication of the book in 1939, he was given back his party card, accepted into the Union of Writers of the USSR, and given first the Lenin and then the Stalin Prize. In just a few years, the book was translated into 100 languages ​​of the world! Reprints were sold out in millions of copies, and “The Malachite Box” was simply stolen from libraries.

What is unique about Bazhov’s tales? In their amazing non-politicality, folk linguistic originality, Russian deep humanity. They restored people's faith in work, in miracles, in great power albeit exhausted, but still invincible Russia, so dear and unique.

Last years and death of Bazhov

IN last years Bazhov did not spare himself his life. Having become a deputy of the USSR, I tried to help as much as possible more the disadvantaged, to listen and understand everyone who wrote to him or came to his house.

In 1950, at the 72nd year of his life, Pavel Petrovich passed away. Shortly before his death, he completed his last tale, “The Living Light.” He still burns in our hearts.

Biography

BAZHOV, PAVEL PETROVICH (1879−1950), Russian writer. Born on January 15 (27), 1879 at the Sysertsky plant near Yekaterinburg in a family of hereditary mining masters. The family often moved from factory to factory, which allowed the future writer to get to know well the life of the vast mountain district and was reflected in his work - in particular, in the essays The Ural Were (1924). Bazhov studied at the Yekaterinburg Theological School (1889−1893), then at the Perm Theological Seminary (1893−1899), where tuition was much cheaper than in secular educational institutions.

Until 1917 he worked as a school teacher in Yekaterinburg and Kamyshlov. Every year during summer holidays traveled around the Urals, collecting folklore. Bazhov wrote in his autobiography about how his life developed after the February and October revolutions: “From the beginning February Revolution went into the work of public organizations. From the beginning of open hostilities, he volunteered for the Red Army and took part in combat operations on the Ural Front. In September 1918 he was accepted into the ranks of the CPSU (b). He worked as a journalist in the divisional newspaper “Okopnaya Pravda”, in the Kamyshlov newspaper “Red Path”, and from 1923 in the Sverdlovsk “Peasant Newspaper”. Work with letters from peasant readers finally determined Bazhov’s passion for folklore. According to his later admission, many of the expressions he found in letters from readers of the Peasant Newspaper were used in his famous Ural tales. His first book, The Ural Were, was published in Sverdlovsk, where Bazhov depicted in detail both factory owners and “lordly armrest” clerks, as well as simple artisans. Bazhov sought to develop his own literary style, was looking for original forms of embodiment of his writing talent. He succeeded in this in the mid-1930s, when he began publishing his first tales. In 1939, Bazhov combined them into the book Malachite Box (USSR State Prize, 1943), which he subsequently supplemented with new works. Malachite gave the name to the book because, according to Bazhov, “the joy of the earth is collected” in this stone. Creating fairy tales became the main work of Bazhov’s life. In addition, he edited books and almanacs, including those on Ural local history, headed the Sverdlovsk writers' organization, and was the editor-in-chief and director of the Ural book publishing house. In Russian literature, the tradition of the skaz literary form goes back to Gogol and Leskov. However, calling his works tales, Bazhov took into account not only literary tradition genre, implying the presence of a narrator, but also the existence of ancient oral traditions of the Ural miners, which in folklore were called “secret tales”. From these folklore works Bazhov adopted one of the main signs of his tales: confusion fairy tale images(Snake and his daughters Zmeevka, Ognevushka-Poskakushka, Mistress of the Copper Mountain, etc.) and heroes written in a realistic vein (Danila the Master, Stepan, Tanyushka, etc.). The main theme of Bazhov's tales is the common man and his work, talent and skill. Communication with nature, with the secret foundations of life, is carried out through powerful representatives of the magical mountain world. One of the most bright images this kind is the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, whom Master Stepan meets from the tale The Malachite Box. The Mistress of the Copper Mountain helps the hero of the tale Stone Flower Danila to reveal his talent - and becomes disappointed in the master after he gives up trying to make the Stone Flower himself. The prophecy expressed about the Mistress in the tale of Prikazchikovy Soles is coming true: “It is sorrow for the bad to meet her, and little joy for the good.” Bazhov owns the expression “zhivinka in action”, which became the title of the tale of the same name, written in 1943. One of his heroes, grandfather Nefed, explains why his student Timofey mastered the skill of a charcoal burner: “And because,” he says, “because you looked down, - on that means what is done; and when you looked at it from above - what should be done better, then the little creature caught you. You see, it’s there in every business, it runs ahead of skill and pulls a person along with it.” Bazhov paid tribute to the rules " socialist realism", in the conditions in which his talent developed. Lenin became the hero of several of his works. The image of the leader of the revolution acquired folklore features in those written during Patriotic War tales of the Sun Stone, Bogatyrev's Mitten and Eagle Feather. Shortly before his death, speaking to fellow countrymen writers, Bazhov said: “We, the Urals, living in such a region, which is some kind of Russian concentrate, is a treasury of accumulated experience, great traditions, we need to take this into account, this will strengthen our positions in the show modern man" Bazhov died in Moscow on December 3, 1950.

Bazhov Pavel Petrovich, years of life 1879−1950. The Russian writer was born on January 15 (27), 1879 near Yekaterinburg at the Sysertsky plant in a family of mining workers. From 1889 to 1893, Bazhov studied at the Yekaterinburg Theological School, then from 1893 to 1899 at the Perm Theological Seminary, where, of course, tuition was much cheaper than in secular educational institutions.

Bazhov managed to work as a teacher in Yekaterinburg and Kamyshlov until 1917. Every year during the summer holidays, Pavel Petrovich loved to collect folklore while traveling around the Urals. After the February and October revolutions, he described in his biography how his fate developed: “At the very beginning of the February revolution, he worked in public organizations. When hostilities began, he joined the Red Army and fought on the Ural Front. In September 1918 he was admitted to the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). He also worked as a journalist in the newspaper Okopnaya Pravda, and from 1923 in the Sverdlovsk Peasant Newspaper.

Working with letters from readers, I realized that it was important for him to study folklore. Bazhov later admitted that much of what he used in his Ural tales was drawn from letters from readers of the Peasant Newspaper. The first book, “The Ural People,” was published in Sverdlovsk, in which he quite clearly depicted factory owners and ordinary workers.

He managed to find his literary style only in the middle of 1930, when the world saw his first tales. In 1943, Bazhov received State Prize(for the fact that in 1939 he combined his tales into one book, The Malachite Box). In addition, he edited books, was the head of the Sverdlovsk writers' organization, and the director of the Ural book publishing house.

In his several works he gave the image of V.I. Lenin. The image of the leader was visible in such tales as “Eagle Feather”, “Sun Stone”, written during the Patriotic War. Shortly before his death, speaking to writers, he said: “For us, the Urals, living in such a region, this is a treasure trove of accumulated experience, huge traditions, we need to take this into account, this will increase our position in showing modern man.” On December 3, 1950, the writer passed away in Moscow.

Name: Pavel Bazhov

Age: 71 years old

Activity: prose writer, folklorist, journalist, publicist

Family status: was married

Pavel Bazhov: biography

Biographers of Pavel Petrovich Bazhov say that this writer had a happy fate. The great storyteller lived a long and peaceful life, eventful. The master of the pen perceived all political revolutions relatively calmly and in those troubled times managed to achieve recognition and fame. For many years, Bazhov did what he loved - he tried to make reality a fairy tale.

His works are still popular among young people and the older generation. Perhaps there are few people who have not seen soviet cartoon“The Silver Hoof” or have not read the collection of stories “The Malachite Box”, which includes the tales “The Stone Flower”, “The Blue Well” and “Dear Name”.

Childhood and youth

Pavel Petrovich Bazhov was born on January 15 (27 according to the new style) January 1879. Future writer grew up and was brought up in an average family. His father Pyotr Bazhov (originally the surname was spelled with the letter “e”), a native of the peasants of the Polevskaya volost, worked at a mining site in the town of Sysert, in the Sverdlovsk region. Later the Bazhovs moved to the village of Polevskoy. The writer’s parent earned his bread through hard work, and agriculture didn’t work: there were no arable lands in Sysert land plots. Peter was hardworking person and a rare specialist in his field, but the bosses did not favor the man, so Bazhov Sr. changed more than one workplace.

The fact is that the head of the family loved to sip on strong drink and often went on binges. But it was not this bad habit that became a stumbling block between managers and subordinates: the tipsy Bazhov did not know how to keep his mouth shut, so he criticized the working elite to the nines. Later, the “talkative” Peter, who for this reason was nicknamed Drill, was taken back, because such professionals are worth their weight in gold. True, the factory management did not immediately condescend to forgive; Bazhov had to beg for a job for a long time. At the moments of the helmsmen’s thoughts, the Bazhov family was left without a means of subsistence; they were saved by the odd earnings of the head of the family and the crafts of his wife Augusta Stefanovna (Osintseva).

The writer's mother came from Polish peasants, ran a household and raised Pavel. IN evening time She was fond of needlework: she wove lace, knitted fishnet stockings and created other cozy little things. But because of this painstaking work that was carried out in dark time days, the woman’s vision was severely deteriorated. By the way, despite Peter’s wayward character, he and his son developed friendly relations. Pavel’s grandmother even used to say that his father indulged his child all the time and forgave any pranks. And Augusta Stefanovna had a completely soft and flexible character, so the child was raised in love and harmony.

Pavel Petrovich Bazhov grew up as a diligent and inquisitive boy. Before moving, he visited zemstvo school in Sysert, I studied excellently. Pavel picked up subjects on the fly, be it Russian or mathematics, and every day he pleased his relatives with fives in his diary. Bazhov recalled that thanks to him he was able to get a decent education. The future writer took a volume of the great Russian writer from the local library under harsh conditions: the librarian jokingly ordered the young man to learn all the works by heart. But Paul took this task seriously.

Later it school teacher told a veterinarian friend about the student as a gifted child from a working-class family who knew Alexander Sergeevich’s creations by heart. Impressed by the talented young man, the veterinarian gave the boy a start in life and provided the native poor family decent education. Pavel Bazhov graduated from the Ekaterinburg Theological School, and then entered the Perm Theological Seminary. The young man was invited to continue his studies and receive church orders, but the young man did not want to serve in the church, but dreamed of poring over textbooks at the university. In addition, Pavel Petrovich was not a religious, but rather a revolutionary-minded person.

But money for further education wasn't enough. Pyotr Bazhov died of liver disease, so he had to be content with Augusta Stefanovna’s pension. Therefore, without receiving a university diploma, Pavel Petrovich worked as a teacher in theological schools of Yekaterinburg and Kamyshlov, teaching students Russian language and literature. Bazhov was loved, each of his lectures was perceived as a gift, he read the works of great classics sensually and with soul. Pavel Petrovich was one of those rare teachers who could interest even an inveterate student and restless student.

The girls at school had a peculiar custom: they pinned bows made of multi-colored satin ribbons to their favorite teachers. Pavel Petrovich Bazhov had no free space left on his jacket, because he had the most “insignia” of all. It is worth saying that Pavel Petrovich participated in political events and perceived October Revolution as something proper and fundamental. In his opinion, the abdication of the throne and the Bolshevik coup were supposed to end social inequality and provide the inhabitants of the country with a happy future.

Until 1917, Pavel Petrovich was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party; during the civil war he fought on the side of the Reds, organized the underground and developed a strategy in case of a fall. Soviet power. Bazhov also served as head of the trade union bureau and public education department. Later, Pavel Petrovich headed the editorial activities and published a newspaper. Among other things, the writer organized schools and called for the fight against illiteracy. In 1918, the master of words joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Literature

As you know, as a student, Pavel Petrovich lived in Yekaterinburg and Perm, where instead of living nature there was continuous railways, and instead of small houses there are stone apartments of several floors. IN cultural cities life was in full swing: people went to theaters and discussed social events at restaurant tables, but Pavel loved returning to his native land.

There he became acquainted with semi-mystical folklore: a local old man nicknamed Slyshko (“Glass”) - watchman Vasily Khmelinin - loved to tell folk tales, the main characters of which were mythical characters: the Silver Hoof, the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, the Jumping Fire, the Blue Snake and Grandma Sinyushka.

Grandfather Vasily Alekseevich explained that all his stories are based on everyday life and describe “ancient life.” Khmelinin especially emphasized this difference between Ural tales and fairy tales. Local children and adults listened to every word of grandfather Slyshko. Among the listeners was Pavel Petrovich, who absorbed Khmelinin’s amazingly magical stories like a sponge.

From those times, his love for folklore began: Bazhov carefully kept notebooks in which he collected Ural songs, tales, legends and riddles. In 1931, a conference on Russian folklore was held in Moscow and Leningrad. As a result of the meeting, the task of studying modern worker and collective farm-proletarian folklore was set, then it was decided to create a collection “Pre-revolutionary folklore in the Urals.” Local historian Vladimir Biryukov was supposed to search for materials, but the scientist did not find the necessary sources.

Therefore, the publication was headed by Bazhov. Pavel Petrovich collected folk epics as a writer, and not as a folklorist. Bazhov knew about passportization, but did not carry it out. The master of the pen also adhered to the principle: the heroes of his works came from Russia or the Urals (even if these assumptions contradicted the facts, the writer rejected everything that was not in favor of his homeland).

In 1936, Pavel Petrovich published his first work entitled “The Azov Girl”. Later, in 1939, the collection “The Malachite Box” was published, which during the author’s lifetime was replenished with new tales from the words of Vasily Khmelinin. But, according to rumors, one day Bazhov admitted that he did not rewrite his stories from other people’s lips, but composed them.

Personal life

It is known that for a long time Pavel Petrovich was not involved in relationships with women. The writer was not deprived of the attention of lovely ladies, but at the same time he was not a Don Juan either: Bazhov did not plunge headlong into fleeting passions and novels, but led an ascetic bachelor life. Why Bazhov remained single until he was 30 is difficult to explain. The writer was passionate about his work and did not want to waste time on the young ladies passing by, and also believed in sincere love. However, this is how it happened: the 32-year-old folklorist proposed his hand and heart to 19-year-old Valentina Aleksandrovna Ivanitskaya, a former student. Serious and educated girl answered with consent.

It turned out to be a marriage for life, the lovers raised four children (seven were born in the family, but three died in infancy from illness): Olga, Elena, Alexei and Ariadne. Contemporaries recall that comfort reigned in the house and there were no cases where the spouses were burdened by domestic or other disagreements. It was impossible to hear the name Valya or Valentina from Bazhov, because Pavel Petrovich called his beloved affectionate nicknames: Felyanushka or Valestenochka. The writer did not like to be late, but even leaving for a meeting in a hurry, he returned to the threshold if he forgot to kiss his beloved wife goodbye.

Pavel Petrovich and Valentina Aleksandrovna lived happily and supported each other. But, like any other mortal, in the life of the writer there were both cloudless and sad days. Bazhov had to endure a terrible grief - the death of a child. Young Alexey died due to an accident at the factory. It is also known that Pavel Petrovich, although he was a busy person, always set aside time to talk with children. It is noteworthy that the father communicated with his offspring as with adults, gave them the right to vote and listened to their opinions.

“The ability to know everything about his loved ones was an amazing feature of my father. He was always the busiest, but he had enough spiritual sensitivity to be aware of everyone’s worries, joys and sorrows,” said Ariadna Bazhova in the book “Through the Eyes of a Daughter.”

Death

Shortly before his death, Pavel Petrovich stopped writing and began giving lectures that strengthened the spirit of the people during the Great Patriotic War.

Great writer died in the winter of 1950. The creator's grave is located on a hill ( central alley) in Yekaterinburg at the Ivanovo cemetery.

Bibliography

• 1924 - “The Ural Were”
• 1926 - “For Soviet truth”;
• 1937 - "Formation on the Move"
• 1939 - “The Green Filly”
• 1939 - “Malachite Box”
• 1942 - “Key-Stone”
• 1943 - “Tales of the Germans”
• 1949 - “Far - Close”

View full list fairy tales

Biography of Bazhov Pavel Petrovich

Bazhov Pavel Petrovich(January 27, 1879 - December 3, 1950) - famous Russian Soviet writer, famous Ural storyteller, prose writer, talented interpreter of folk tales, legends, and Ural tales.

Biography

Pavel Petrovich Bazhov was born on January 27, 1879 in the Urals near Yekaterinburg in the family of the hereditary mining foreman of the Sysertsky plant, Pyotr Vasilyevich and Augusta Stefanovna Bazhov (as this surname was spelled then).

The surname Bazhov comes from the local word “bazhit” - that is, to bewitch, to foretell. Bazhov also had a boyish street nickname - Koldunkov. And later, when Bazhov began to publish his works, he signed himself with one of his pseudonyms - Koldunkov.

Pyotr Vasilyevich Bazhev was a foreman in the puddling and welding shop of the Sysert metallurgical plant near Yekaterinburg. The writer's mother, Augusta Stefanovna, was a skilled lacemaker. This was a great help for the family, especially during the husband’s forced unemployment.

The future writer lived and was formed among the Ural miners. Childhood impressions turned out to be the most important and vivid for Bazhov.

He also loved to listen to other old experienced people, experts on the past. The Sysert old men Alexey Efimovich Klyukva and Ivan Petrovich Korob were good storytellers. But the best of all whom Bazhov had the chance to know was the old Polevsky miner Vasily Alekseevich Khmelinin. He worked as a watchman for the wood warehouses at the plant, and children gathered at his guardhouse on Dumnaya Mountain to listen to interesting stories.

Pavel Petrovich Bazhov spent his childhood and adolescence in the town of Sysert and at the Polevsky plant, which was part of the Sysert mining district.

The family often moved from factory to factory, which allowed the future writer to get to know the life of the vast mountain district well and was reflected in his work.

Thanks to chance and his abilities, he got the opportunity to study.

Bazhov studied at a men's zemstvo three-year school, where there was a talented literature teacher who managed to captivate the children with literature.

Thus, a 9-year-old boy once recited the entire school collection poems by N.A. Nekrasov, learned by him on his own initiative.

We settled on the Yekaterinburg Theological School: it has the lowest tuition fees, you don’t have to buy a uniform, and there are also student apartments rented by the school - these circumstances turned out to be decisive.

Excellent passing entrance exams, Bazhov was enrolled in the Ekaterinburg Theological School. The assistance of a family friend was needed because the theological school was not only, so to speak, professional, but also class-based: it trained mainly church ministers, and mostly the children of the clergy studied there.

After graduating from college at the age of 14, Pavel entered the Perm Theological Seminary, where he studied for 6 years. This was the time of his acquaintance with classical and modern literature.

In 1899, Bazhov graduated from the Perm Seminary - third in terms of total points. The time has come to choose a path in life. An offer to enter the Kyiv Theological Academy and study there full content was rejected. He dreamed of university. However, the way there was closed. First of all, because the spiritual department did not want to lose its “cadres”: the choice of the highest educational institutions for seminary graduates was strictly limited to Dorpat, Warsaw, and Tomsk universities.

Bazhov decided to teach in primary school in an area inhabited by Old Believers. He began his career in the remote Ural village of Shaidurikha, near Nevyansk, and then in Yekaterinburg and Kamyshlov. He taught Russian, traveled a lot around the Urals, was interested in folklore, local history, ethnography, and was engaged in journalism.

For fifteen years, every year during school holidays, Bazhov wandered around his native land on foot, everywhere he looked at the life around him, talked with workers, wrote down their apt words, conversations, stories, collected folklore, studied the work of lapidaries, stone cutters, steelworkers, foundries , gunsmiths and many other Ural craftsmen, talked with them about the secrets of their craft and kept extensive notes. A rich supply of life impressions and samples of folk speech greatly helped him in his future work as a journalist, and then in writing. He replenished his “pantry” all his life.

Just at this time, a vacancy opened up at the Yekaterinburg Theological School. And Bazhov returned there - now as a teacher of the Russian language. Later, Bazhov tried to enter Tomsk University, but was not accepted.

In 1907, P. Bazhov moved to the diocesan (women's) school, where until 1914 he taught classes in the Russian language, and at times – in Church Slavonic and algebra.

Here he met his future wife, and at that time just his student, Valentina Ivanitskaya, with whom they married in 1911. The marriage was based on love and unity of aspirations. The young family lived a more meaningful life than most of Bazhov’s colleagues who spent free time for the cards. The couple read a lot and went to theaters. Seven children were born into their family.

When did the first one start? World War, the Bazhovs already had two daughters. Due to financial difficulties, the couple moved to Kamyshlov, closer to Valentina Alexandrovna’s relatives. Pavel Petrovich transferred to the Kamyshlovsky religious school.

Participated in the civil war of 1918-21. in the Urals, Siberia, Altai.

In 1923-29 he lived in Sverdlovsk and worked in the editorial office of the Peasant Newspaper. At this time, he wrote over forty tales on themes of Ural factory folklore.

Since 1930 - in the Sverdlovsk book publishing house.

In 1937, Bazhov was expelled from the party (a year later he was reinstated). But then, having lost his usual job in a publishing house, he devoted all his time to tales, and they shimmered in the “Malachite Box” like genuine Ural gems.

In 1939 the most famous work Bazhov’s collection of fairy tales “The Malachite Box”, for which the writer received the State Prize. Subsequently, Bazhov expanded this book with new tales.

Bazhov’s writing career began relatively late: the first book of essays, “The Ural Were,” was published in 1924. Only in 1939 were his most significant works published - the collection of tales “The Malachite Box,” which received the USSR State Prize in 1943, and an autobiographical story about childhood "Green filly" Subsequently, Bazhov replenished the “Malachite Box” with new tales: “The Key-Stone” (1942), “Tales of the Germans” (1943), “Tales of the Gunsmiths” and others. His late works can be defined as “tales” not only due to their formal genre characteristics (the presence fictional narrator with individual speech characteristics), but also because they go back to the Ural “secret tales” - oral traditions of miners and prospectors, distinguished by a combination of real-life and fairy-tale elements.

Bazhov’s works, dating back to the Ural “secret tales” - oral traditions of miners and prospectors, combine real-life and fantastic elements. Tales that have absorbed plot motifs, the colorful language of folk legends and folk wisdom, embodied the philosophical and ethical ideas of our time.

He worked on the collection of tales “The Malachite Box” from 1936 to last days own life. First separate publication it came out in 1939. Then, from year to year, the “Malachite Box” was replenished with new tales.

The tales of “The Malachite Box” are a kind of historical prose in which events and facts of the history of the Middle Urals of the 18th-19th centuries are recreated through the personality of the Ural workers. Tales live as an aesthetic phenomenon thanks to a complete system of realistic, fantastic and semi-fantastic images and a rich moral and humanistic problematic (themes of labor, creative search, love, fidelity, freedom from the power of gold, etc.).

Bazhov sought to develop his own literary style and looked for original forms of embodiment of his literary talent. He succeeded in this in the mid-1930s, when he began publishing his first tales. In 1939, Bazhov combined them into the book “Malachite Box,” which he subsequently supplemented with new works. Malachite gave the name to the book because, according to Bazhov, “the joy of the earth is collected” in this stone.

Direct artistic and literary activity began late, at the age of 57. According to him, “there was simply no time for literary work of such kind.

Creating fairy tales became the main work of Bazhov’s life. In addition, he edited books and almanacs, including those on Ural local history.

Pavel Petrovich Bazhov died on December 3, 1950 in Moscow, and was buried in his homeland in Yekaterinburg.

Tales

As a boy, he first heard an interesting story about the secrets of the Copper Mountain.

The old people of Sysert were good storytellers - the best of them was Vasily Khmelin, he at that time worked as a watchman of the wood warehouses at the Polevsky plant, and children gathered at his guardhouse to listen to interesting stories about fairytale snake Snake and his daughters Zmeevka, about the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, about grandmother Sinyushka. Pasha Bazhov remembered the stories of this old man for a long time.

Bazhov chose an interesting form of storytelling: “skaz” - this is primarily an oral word, an oral form of speech transferred to a book; in the tale one can always hear the voice of the narrator - grandfather Slyshko - involved in the events; he speaks in a colorful folk language, full of local words and expressions, sayings and sayings.

Calling his works skaz, Bazhov took into account not only the literary tradition of the genre, which implies the presence of a narrator, but also the existence of ancient oral traditions of the Ural miners, which in folklore were called “secret tales.” From these folklore works, Bazhov adopted one of the main signs of his tales: a mixture of fairy-tale images.

The main theme of Bazhov's tales is the common man and his work, talent and skill. Communication with nature, with the secret foundations of life, is carried out through powerful representatives of the magical mountain world.

One of the most striking images of this kind is the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, whom Master Stepan meets from the tale “The Malachite Box”. The Mistress of the Copper Mountain helps the hero of the tale Stone Flower Danila to reveal his talent - and becomes disappointed in the master after he gives up trying to make the Stone Flower himself.

The works of the mature Bazhov can be defined as “tales” not only due to their formal genre characteristics and the presence of a fictional narrator with an individual speech characteristic, but also because they go back to the Ural “secret tales” - oral traditions of miners and prospectors, distinguished by a combination of reality and reality. everyday and fairy-tale elements.

Bazhov's tales absorbed plot motifs, fantastic images, color, language of folk legends and folk wisdom. However, Bazhov is not a folklorist-processor, but independent artist, who used the knowledge of the Ural miners' life and oral creativity to implement philosophical and ethical ideas.

Talking about the art of Ural craftsmen, reflecting the colorfulness and originality of the old mining life, Bazhov at the same time puts in his tales general issues- about true morality, about the spiritual beauty and dignity of the working person.

Fantastic characters in fairy tales personify the elemental forces of nature, which trusts its secrets only to the brave, hardworking and pure of soul. Bazhov managed to give the fantastic characters (the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, the Great Snake, the Jumping Ognevushka) extraordinary poetry and endowed them with a subtle, complex psychology.

Bazhov's Tales - an example of masterful use vernacular. Carefully and at the same time creatively treating the expressive capabilities of the folk language, Bazhov avoided the abuse of local sayings, the pseudo-folk “playing off phonetic illiteracy” (Bazhov’s expression).

P.P. Bazhov's tales are very colorful and picturesque. His color is in keeping with the spirit folk painting, folk Ural embroidery - solid, thick, ripe. The color richness of tales is not accidental. It is generated by the beauty of Russian nature, the beauty of the Urals. The writer in his works generously used all the possibilities of the Russian word to convey the diversity color range, its richness and juiciness, so characteristic of the Ural nature.

The tales of Pavel Petrovich are an example of the masterful use of the folk language. Carefully and at the same time creatively treating expressive possibilities folk word, Bazhov avoided the abuse of local sayings and pseudo-folk “playing up phonetic illiteracy” (the expression of the writer himself).

Bazhov's tales absorbed plot motifs, fantastic images, color, the language of folk legends and their folk wisdom. However, the author is not just a folklorist-processor, he is an independent artist who uses his excellent knowledge of the Ural miners’ life and oral creativity to embody philosophical and ethical ideas. Talking about the art of the Ural craftsmen, about the talent of the Russian worker, reflecting the colorfulness and originality of the old mining life and the characteristics characteristic of it social contradictions At the same time, Bazhov poses general questions in his tales - about true morality, about the spiritual beauty and dignity of a working person, about the aesthetic and psychological laws of creativity. Fantastic characters in fairy tales personify the elemental forces of nature, which trusts its secrets only to the brave, hardworking and pure of soul. Bazhov managed to give his fantastic characters (the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, the Great Snake, Ognevushka-Rocking, etc.) extraordinary poetry and endowed them with a subtle and complex psychology.

The tales recorded and processed by Bazhov are originally folklore. Many of them (the so-called “secret tales” are ancient oral traditions Ural miners) he heard as a boy from V.A. Khmelinin from the Polevsky plant (Khmelinin-Slyshko, Slyshko’s grandfather, “Glass” from “Ural Byli”). Grandfather Slyshko is the narrator in “The Malachite Box.” Later, Bazhov had to officially declare that this was a technique, and he did not just write down other people’s stories, but was actually their author.

Later, the term “skaz” entered Soviet folklore with light hand Bazhov to define workers' prose (workers' prose). After some time, it was established that it did not denote any new folklore phenomenon - “tales” turned out to be traditions, legends, fairy tales, memories, that is, genres that have existed for many hundreds of years.

Ural

The Urals are “a rare place both in terms of craftsmanship and beauty.” It is impossible to experience the beauty of the Urals without visiting the amazing Ural ponds and lakes, enchanting with peace and quiet, pine forests, on the legendary mountains. Here, in the Urals, they lived and worked for centuries talented craftsmen, only here could Danila the master sculpt his stone flower, and somewhere here the Ural craftsmen saw the Mistress of the Copper Mountain.

Since childhood, he liked the people, legends, fairy tales and songs of his native Urals.

The work of P.P. Bazhov is firmly connected with the life of the mining and processing Urals - this cradle of Russian metallurgy. The writer’s grandfather and great-grandfather were workers and spent their entire lives at copper smelters at Ural factories.

Due to the historical and economic characteristics of the Urals, the life of factory settlements was very unique. Here, as everywhere else, the workers could barely make ends meet and had no rights. But, unlike other industrial regions of the country, the Urals were characterized by significantly lower earnings for artisans. Here there was an additional dependence of workers on the enterprise. The factory owners presented the free use of land as compensation for reduced wages.

Old workers, “byvaltsy”, were the keepers of folk mining legends and beliefs. They were not only a kind of “folk poets”, but also a kind of “historians”.

The Ural land itself gave birth to legends and fairy tales. P.P. Bazhov learned to see and understand the wealth and beauty of the mountainous Urals.

Archetypal images

The Mistress of the Copper Mountain is the keeper of precious rocks and stones, sometimes appears before people in the form beautiful woman, and sometimes in the form of a lizard in a crown. Its origin most likely stems from the “spirit of the area”. There is also a hypothesis that this is the image of the goddess Venus, refracted by the popular consciousness, with whose sign Polevsky copper was branded for several decades in the 18th century.

The Great Snake is responsible for gold. His figure was created by Bazhov based on the superstitions of the ancient Khanty and Mansi, Ural legends and signs of miners and ore miners. Wed. mythological serpent.

Grandma Sinyushka is a character related to Baba Yaga.

Ognevushka-Jumping - dancing over a gold deposit (connection between fire and gold).

Pavel was born on January 15 (27), 1879 near Yekaterinburg in a working-class family. The childhood years in Bazhov's biography passed in small town– Polevsky, Sverdlovsk region. He studied at a factory school, where he was one of the best students in his class. After graduating from theological school in Yekaterinburg, he entered the Perm Theological Seminary. After completing his studies in 1899, he began working as a teacher of the Russian language.

It is worth briefly noting that Pavel Bazhov’s wife was his student Valentina Ivanitskaya. In their marriage they had four children.

The beginning of a creative journey

The first writing activity of Pavel Petrovich Bazhov occurred in the years Civil War. It was then that he began working as a journalist, and later became interested in the stories of the Urals. However more biography Pavla Bazhova is known as a folklorist.

The first book with Ural essays entitled “The Ural Were” was published in 1924. And the first tale of Pavel Petrovich Bazhov was published in 1936 (“The Azov Girl”). Basically, all the tales retold and recorded by the writer were folklore.

The writer's main work

The publication of Bazhov’s book “The Malachite Box” (1939) largely determined the writer’s fate. This book brought the writer world fame. Bazhov’s talent was most clearly demonstrated in the tales of this book, which he constantly updated. “The Malachite Box” is a collection of folklore stories for children and adults about life and everyday life in the Urals, about the beauty of the nature of the Ural land.

The “Malachite Box” contains many mythological characters, for example: the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, the Great Snake, Danila the Master, Grandma Sinyushka, the Jumping Ognevushka and others.

In 1943, thanks to this book, he received Stalin Prize. And in 1944 there was awarded the order Lenin for fruitful creativity.

Pavel Bazhov created many works, on the basis of which ballets, operas, plays, films and cartoons were made.

Death and legacy

The writer's life was cut short on December 3, 1950. The writer was buried in Sverdlovsk at the Ivanovo cemetery.

In the writer’s hometown, in the house where he lived, a museum was opened. A folk festival in the Chelyabinsk region, an annual prize awarded in Yekaterinburg, is named after the writer. Commemorative monuments were erected to Pavel Bazhov in Sverdlovsk, Polevsky and other cities. Streets in many cities of the former USSR are also named after the writer.