Why kuprin. Four main passions in the life of Alexander Kuprin, a writer who could not live without Russia

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin was born on August 26, 1870 into a poor noble family. He graduated from the Alexander Military School in Moscow and from 1890 to 1894 served in a regiment located in the Podolsk province, on the borders of the Russian Empire. He devoted himself entirely to literature after retirement. Literary success came to Kuprin after the appearance of the story Moloch in 1896. The publication of the poetic story Olesya (1898) made the name of Kuprin known throughout reading Russia. His fame was strengthened by the first volume of Stories (1903) and especially the story The Duel (1905).

After the outbreak of World War I, Kuprin opened a military hospital in his house. In November 1914, he was mobilized into the army and sent to Finland as commander of an infantry company. Demobilized in July 1915 for health reasons. The writer received the abdication of Nicholas II with enthusiasm. Kuprin became the editor of the newspapers “Free Russia”, “Liberty”, “Petrogradsky Listok”, and sympathized with the Socialist Revolutionaries. Kuprin’s attitude towards the Bolshevik revolution was ambivalent and contradictory, but he tried to cooperate with the new government - he discussed with Lenin the project of publishing a newspaper for peasants, which was never implemented.

On October 16, 1919, Gatchina was occupied by Yudenich’s troops advancing on Petrograd. Kuprin entered the North-Western Army with the rank of lieutenant and was appointed editor of the army newspaper “Prinevsky Krai,” headed by General P. N. Krasnov. Already on November 3, Gatchina was liberated. Together with the retreating White Guards, Kuprin also left his homeland.

2 Helsinki

In November 1919, Alexander Kuprin and his family ended up in Revel. Then, having received a Finnish visa, the Kuprins moved to Helsinki. Finland, which had recently been Russian, had already become a foreign country, and the difference between past and present was striking.

“In Helsinki, as usual, we stayed at the Fenia Hotel - the best, and only climbing its marble stairs, seeing the lackeys and flirtatious maids in starched aprons, we realized how ragged and unsightly we were. And in general, our funds did not allow us to live in such a hotel,” recalled the writer’s daughter, Ksenia Kuprina, in her book “Kuprin is my father.” The Kuprins rented rooms, first from private individuals, then in a boarding house.

Kuprin lived in Helsinki for about six months. He actively collaborated with the emigrant press. But in 1920, circumstances developed in such a way that further stay in Finland became difficult. “It is not my will that fate itself fills the sails of our ship with wind and drives it to Europe. The newspaper will run out soon. I have a Finnish passport until June 1, and after this period they will allow me to live only with homeopathic doses. There are three roads: Berlin, Paris and Prague... But I, an illiterate Russian knight, don’t understand well, I turn my head and scratch my head,” Kuprin wrote to Repin. Bunin’s letter from Paris played a decisive role in the choice.

3 Paris

Kuprin arrived in Paris with his wife and daughter on July 4, 1920. “We were met by some acquaintances - I don’t remember who exactly - and were taken to a very mediocre hotel not far from the Grands Boulevards... On the first evening we decided to take a walk along the famous boulevards with the whole family. We decided to have dinner at the first restaurant we liked. The owner himself served, mustachioed, bloodshot... a little tipsy... The father took it upon himself to explain, vainly selecting refined formulas of politeness that had completely disappeared from use after the war. The owner didn’t understand for a long time what we wanted, then he suddenly became furious, tore the tablecloth off the table and showed us the door. For the first, but not the last time, I heard: “Dirty foreigners, go home!” …We left the restaurant in shame…” recalled Ksenia Kuprina.

Gradually, the Kuprins’ life settled into a rut. But the nostalgia did not go away. “You live in a beautiful country, among smart and kind people, among the monuments of the greatest culture... But everything is as if it were make-believe, as if it were unfolding in a cinematic film. And all the silent, dull sorrow that you no longer cry in your sleep and do not see in your dreams either Znamenskaya Square, or Arbat, or Povarskaya, or Moscow, or Russia, but only a black hole,” Kuprin wrote in the essay “Motherland.

Kuprin did not want to live in the city. He rented a dacha near Paris, but it turned out that even nature did not please him: “The alien situation, the alien land and the alien plants on it began to cause my father a bitter longing for distant Russia. Nothing was nice to him. Even the smells of earth and flowers. He said that lilacs smell like kerosene. Very soon he stopped digging in the flower beds and beds,” wrote the writer’s daughter. Eventually, the Kuprins returned to Paris and settled for ten years on Boulevard Montmorency, not far from the Bois de Boulogne.

How Kuprin lived in exile can be seen from his letters to Lydia, his daughter from his first wife. “Our life, I tell you frankly, is bad. We live in two dirty little rooms, where the sun doesn’t shine either morning or evening, neither in summer nor in winter... The worst thing is that we live on credit, that is, we constantly have to go to the grocery, dairy, meat, and bakery shops; We think about winter with a shudder: a new burden hangs over us - debts for coal.”

The material living conditions of the Kuprin family, like many other Russian emigrants, were increasingly deteriorating. When Ksenia became seriously ill and had to be sent to Switzerland for treatment, she had to organize a charity evening, and even borrow money. Then the doctors advised the girl to live in the south - they organized a lottery where family heirlooms were sold.

In 1926, the Kuprins opened a bookbindery, but the business did not work out, then they opened a bookstore, but there was no success here either. In 1934, the store was turned into a Russian library. In the 30s, Ksenia worked as a fashion model, and then began acting in films and gained some popularity as an actress. But Ksenia’s successes in this field could not ensure the well-being of her family. Almost all the money she earned went to purchase toilets, without which it was impossible to stay in a profession that was then still unprofitable.

Kuprin respected French culture and French traditions, and, comparing them with Russians, did not always give preference to the latter. “We Russians, in the rebellious breadth of our souls, considered even the most modest thriftiness to be a despicable vice. At the beginning of our stay in Paris, we almost unanimously dubbed the French "centimenies", but really - damn it! “For seven years we have not seen the light and are not convinced, with late repentance, that those countries are infinitely happy where general austerity has become more than a law, a habit,” he wrote in the series of essays “Paris at Home.” But, of course, with all due respect to French customs, Kuprin felt them alien.

Alexander Kuprin was an attentive listener, and now, in exile, numerous stories that he had once heard in Russia from “experienced” people came to life on the pages of his works. But by the end of the 20s and the beginning of the 30s, the stock of life impressions that Kuprin brought from Russia had largely dried up, and in the mid-30s Kuprin actually stopped his literary activity. The writer's last significant work was the story "Zhaneta", completed in 1933.

Daughter Ksenia wrote in her memoirs that Kuprin was not interested in politics and quickly moved away from the emigrant press. But a large number of journalistic articles written by him contradict her words. Probably, the low demand for fiction did not make it possible to leave journalism. True, the writer himself assessed this activity critically, and never even tried to collect his journalistic works into one book.

Kuprin's health began to deteriorate. The writer suffered from cerebrovascular accident and his eyesight was weakening. The circle of friends and acquaintances began to narrow significantly.

4 Return

More and more often the writer thought about returning to his homeland. But he was sure that the Soviet government would not allow him to return home. When the artist Ivan Bilibin, before leaving for the USSR in 1936, invited the Kuprins to his place, the writer told him that he also wanted to return. Bilibin undertook to talk with the Soviet ambassador about Kuprin’s return to his homeland, and the writer was invited to the Soviet embassy. The return, which seemed like a pipe dream, became a reality.

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin and his wife Elizaveta Moritsovna returned to their homeland in the spring of 1937. Daughter Ksenia remained in France. After returning, Kuprin lived a little over a year. His inner world at this time was tightly hidden from prying eyes. It is almost impossible to judge how aware he was of what was happening, whether he was satisfied or repented. Soviet propaganda, of course, tried to create the image of a repentant writer who returned to sing about a happy life in the USSR. But Kuprin was weak, sick and unable to work.

Kuprin died on the night of August 25, 1938 from esophageal cancer. He was buried in Leningrad on the Literatorskie bridge of the Volkovsky cemetery.

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin is a famous writer, a classic of Russian literature, whose most significant works are “The Junkers”, “The Duel”, “The Pit”, “The Garnet Bracelet” and “The White Poodle”. Kuprin’s short stories about Russian life, emigration, and animals are also considered high art.

Alexander was born in the district town of Narovchat, which is located in the Penza region. But the writer spent his childhood and youth in Moscow. The fact is that Kuprin’s father, hereditary nobleman Ivan Ivanovich, died a year after his birth. Lyubov Alekseevna’s mother, who also came from a noble family, had to move to a large city, where it was much easier for her to give her son upbringing and education.

Already at the age of 6, Kuprin was sent to the Moscow Razumovsky boarding school, which operated on the principle of an orphanage. After 4 years, Alexander was transferred to the Second Moscow Cadet Corps, after which the young man entered the Alexander Military School. Kuprin graduated with the rank of second lieutenant and served for exactly 4 years in the Dnieper Infantry Regiment.

After his resignation, the 24-year-old young man leaves for Kyiv, then to Odessa, Sevastopol and other cities of the Russian Empire. The problem was that Alexander did not have any civilian specialty. Only after meeting him does he manage to find a permanent job: Kuprin goes to St. Petersburg and gets a job at the “Magazine for Everyone.” Later he would settle in Gatchina, where during the First World War he would maintain a military hospital at his own expense.

Alexander Kuprin enthusiastically accepted the abdication of the Tsar's power. After the arrival of the Bolsheviks, he even personally approached with a proposal to publish a special newspaper for the village “Zemlya”. But soon, seeing that the new government was imposing a dictatorship on the country, he became completely disillusioned with it.

It was Kuprin who came up with the derogatory name for the Soviet Union - “Sovdepiya”, which will become firmly established in the jargon. During the Civil War, he volunteered to join the White Army, and after a major defeat he went abroad - first to Finland and then to France.

By the early 30s, Kuprin was mired in debt and could not provide his family with even the most necessary things. In addition, the writer did not find anything better than to look for a way out of a difficult situation in a bottle. As a result, the only solution was to return to his homeland, which he personally supported in 1937.

Books

Alexander Kuprin began writing in his final years in the cadet corps, and his first attempts at writing were in the poetic genre. Unfortunately, the writer never published his poetry. And his first published story was “The Last Debut.” Later, his story “In the Dark” and a number of stories on military topics were published in magazines.

In general, Kuprin devotes a lot of space to the theme of the army, especially in his early works. Suffice it to recall his famous autobiographical novel “Junkers” and the story that preceded it “At the Turning Point”, also published as “Cadets”.

The dawn of Alexander Ivanovich as a writer came at the beginning of the 20th century. He published the story “The White Poodle,” which later became a classic of children’s literature, his memoirs about his trip to Odessa, “Gambrinus,” and, probably, his most popular work, the story “The Duel.” At the same time, such creations as “Liquid Sun”, “Garnet Bracelet”, and stories about animals were released.

Separately, it is necessary to say about one of the most scandalous works of Russian literature of that period - the story “The Pit” about the life and destinies of Russian prostitutes. The book was mercilessly criticized, paradoxically, for “excessive naturalism and realism.” The first edition of "The Pit" was withdrawn from publication as pornographic.

In exile, Alexander Kuprin wrote a lot, almost all of his works were popular with readers. In France, he created four major works - “The Dome of St. Isaac of Dalmatia”, “The Wheel of Time”, “Junker” and “Zhaneta”, as well as a large number of short stories, including the philosophical parable about beauty “The Blue Star”.

Personal life

The first wife of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin was young Maria Davydova, the daughter of the famous cellist Karl Davydov. The marriage lasted only five years, but during this time the couple had a daughter, Lydia. The fate of this girl was tragic - she died shortly after giving birth to her son at the age of 21.

The writer married his second wife Elizaveta Moritsovna in 1909, although they had been living together for two years by that time. They had two daughters - Ksenia, who later became an actress and model, and Zinaida, who died at three years old from a complex form of pneumonia. The wife outlived Alexander Ivanovich by 4 years. She committed suicide during the siege of Leningrad, unable to withstand the constant bombing and endless hunger.

Since Kuprin’s only grandson, Alexei Egorov, died due to injuries received during World War II, the line of the famous writer was interrupted, and today his direct descendants do not exist.

Death

Alexander Kuprin returned to Russia with his health already in poor health. He was addicted to alcohol, plus the elderly man was quickly losing his sight. The writer hoped that he would be able to return to work in his homeland, but his health did not allow this.

A year later, while watching a military parade on Red Square, Alexander Ivanovich contracted pneumonia, which was also aggravated by esophageal cancer. On August 25, 1938, the famous writer’s heart stopped forever.

Kuprin’s grave is located on the Literary Bridge of the Volkovsky Cemetery, not far from the burial place of another Russian classic -.

Bibliography

1892 - “In the Dark”
1898 - “Olesya”
1900 - “At the Turning Point” (“Cadets”)
1905 - “Duel”
1907 - "Gambrinus"
1910 - “Garnet Bracelet”
1913 - “Liquid Sun”
1915 - “The Pit”
1928 - “Junkers”
1933 - “Zhaneta”

Alexander Kuprin is our own Jack London: a bottom explorer, a realist with a stormy biography. Before becoming a writer, he tried dozens of professions and activities. He was a military man, a circus wrestler, a fisherman, an aeronaut, he put out fires, worked as a salesman for “Engineer Timakhovich’s powder closet,” a land surveyor, a dentist, an actor, and an organ grinder. The only thing Kuprin loved more than adventure was vodka.

Kuprin's father, a minor official, died when his son was only two years old. The mother came from a family of Tatar princes. Kuprin attributed his violent temper to Horde blood. I found a love for literature and alcohol at the same time, thanks to my first (drinking) literature teacher. By the time Kuprin became famous for his stories, newspapers wrote about his drunkenness: the writer poured hot coffee on someone, threw him out of the window, threw him into a pool with sterlet, stuck a fork in someone’s stomach, painted his head with oil paint, set fire to his dress...

The tavern's fame thundered louder than literary fame. Kuprin called alcohol a “short drink”: it ends quickly. Once he even sent a telegram to the emperor with a request to grant Balaklava the status of a free city, to which Nicholas II responded with a wish to have a snack.

One day his wife wrote him a letter, reproaching him for his drunkenness. In response, Kuprin sent her a laconic telegram: “Pi pyu bu pi” (drank, drink, will drink). Publishers chased him to restaurants, where he spent days and nights with random drinking buddies.

There were poems among the people about him: “If truth is in wine, how many truths are there in Kuprin!” and “The vodka is uncorked and splashing around in the decanter. Shouldn’t we call Kuprin for this reason?”

Having emigrated to France, Kuprin changed his violent disposition to a meek one, glory to poverty. He became a complete alcoholic, getting drunk from just one drink. I could hardly write: my hands were shaking. The aging writer was taken to Russia by his wife. Kuprin wanted to die in his homeland, “like a forest animal that goes to die in its den.” Creativity dried up along with vodka or thanks to it. Just like life, which also turned out to be a “short drink.”

Genius against use

1870-1893 He tries to drink as a child, and publishes his first story when he is already an officer (for which he ends up in a punishment cell). During the service he hangs out with all his might: drinks, plays cards. He rides a horse into a restaurant and drinks a glass of cognac without getting off. Receives the rank of lieutenant. He goes to St. Petersburg to take exams at the Academy of the General Staff. Along the way, he throws a police officer out of a floating restaurant into the water. Resigns.

1893-1905 “Moloch”, “Duel”, “Olesya”. Rapidly changes professions. Becomes a reporter for a Kyiv newspaper. Wanders around the south of Russia, organizing scandalous sprees. He marries Maria Davydova and is a member of the editorial board of the magazine “God's World”. He drinks heavily, almost moving from home to the Capernaum tavern. His wife won't let him home until he slips a new manuscript under the door. Having received an advance, he gathers a group of drinking buddies and girls and drags everyone to the dacha, for which his wife hits him on the head with a decanter. After the publication of the volume in “Knowledge” he wakes up famous.

1907-1919 "Gambrinus", "Garnet Bracelet", "Pit". He falls in love with sister of mercy Elizaveta Heinrich. He goes on a drinking binge until she agrees to marry him - on the condition that Kuprin does not drink. He doesn't keep his word. With his new wife he moves to Odessa, where he drinks with the port workers at Gambrinus, and writes about it. With the outbreak of World War I, he briefly joined the army. In 1919, he left Russia with the whites.

1920-1936 "Junker". He lives in poverty in Paris, has poor vision, can’t drink, gets drunk on two glasses of red. “The doctor who examined him told us: “If he doesn’t stop drinking, he has no more than six months to live.” But he... held on for another fifteen years after that” (I. Bunin).

1937-1938 Returns to Soviet Russia. Pneumonia is added to cancer. Kuprin died on August 25, 1938.

A year after the boy was born, his father died. Mother Lyubov Alekseevna Kuprina moved with Sasha to Moscow and settled in the Widow's House. At the age of 6, the child was sent to an orphanage - the Moscow Razumovsky boarding school. After 4 years, the future classic of Russian literature was assigned to the Second Moscow Cadet Corps. Next was the Alexander Military School, after which Kuprin received the rank of second lieutenant and entered the Dnieper Infantry Regiment.

Being a career military man was reflected in the writer’s famous works - “Cadets”, “Junkers” and “Duel”. By the way, for the last story the author was repeatedly threatened with a challenge to a duel - for insulting career officers, creating an impartial image of the Russian military. They say that Alexander Ivanovich simply ignored the calls he received, although in fact he was a brave man. By the way, he was even friends with famous athletes Ivan Poddubny, Ivan Zaikin, Ivan Lebedev and was a co-founder of the first magazine about bodybuilding in Russia, Hercules.

However, despite his courage, Kuprin’s character, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, “was quarrelsome and bilious.” The prose writer even wrote to a friend about his friend Poddubny: “I had dinner with Poddubny yesterday. A man of enormous strength and equal stupidity.” Fortunately, these letters were made public after Poddubny’s death and did not interfere with the fighter’s friendship with Kuprin...

After retiring in 1894, Kuprin went to Kyiv. His life there was not easy. The former military man did not have a civilian profession, and he made a living whatever he had to: he worked as a journalist, an accountant in a forge, a carpenter, a porter, a laborer, and a prompter in the Ukrainian theater. Then there were Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sevastopol, Odessa...

The October Revolution of 1917, although it was not received with hostility by the classic, still raised concerns. In 1918, Kuprin wrote an essay about the Tsar’s brother, “Mikhail Alexandrovich,” in which he defended the Grand Duke. The writer was almost shot for this publication. In December 1919, the Kuprin family reached Helsinki. In July 1920, the Kuprins settled in Paris. The difficult years of debt and need began.

All the years of emigration, Kuprin dreamed of returning to the Soviet Union, as he acutely felt lost and useless. In his letters, the classic of Russian literature wrote: “I am ready to eat grist from my garden, just let me go home.”

Ksenia (Kisa) Kuprina. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

What finally finished him off was a story connected with his daughter Kisa, who became a famous actress. One day the writer got into a taxi and in a conversation with the driver introduced himself: “I am Alexander Kuprin.” To which I received the answer: “You are not a relative of the famous Kisa Kuprina? Then Alexander Ivanovich finally realized: as a writer in the West he had not succeeded and would never succeed...

The Soviet government denied him entry for a long time, but then permission was finally received. Moreover, Kuprin has repeatedly publicly repented in the press, saying that all these years he felt heavy guilt before the Russian people for emigrating after the revolution.

In 1937, the classic returned to his homeland. But here he did not live even a year, dying of esophageal cancer. Before his death, he was given the opportunity to invite a priest to visit him. Kuprin is buried on the Literary Mostki of the Volkovsky Cemetery in St. Petersburg.

Kuprin left Russia with the White Army. Homesickness did not leave him. In a letter to I.E. The writer admitted to Repin: “... I miss Russia so much... I can’t even say it. I would like with all my heart to live in my garden again... Never before, when I was abroad, did I feel such hunger for my homeland.”

Kuprin thought that it would be somewhat easier for him where most of the Russian emigrants lived. In mid-1920, the Kuprins settled in Paris. The writer successfully took up journalism. Edited the magazine "Fatherland"; was the editor-in-chief of the magazine “Illustrated Russia”; wrote journalistic articles and feuilletons for newspapers and magazines about writers and politicians, about the Russian creative intelligentsia who found themselves in exile; created memoir essays (about L.N. Tolstoy, V.I. Lenin); polemicized with the Soviet press.

In 1927-1930, Kuprin’s collections “New Tales and Stories”, “The Dome of St. Isaac of Dalmatia", "Elan", "Wheel of Time". During these same years, he created the autobiographical novel “Junkers” (1928-1932), dedicated to the years of his studies at the Alexander Junker School, which is a continuation of the autobiographical story “At the Turning Point” (“Cadets”), Kuprin’s novel is a detailed story about the spiritual formation of man , about the “ringing” and seemingly weightless life sensation of youth. Despite the sounds of a military orchestra, music, light, festivities, a magnificent ball, and the colorful life of the cadets, this is a sad novel about a wonderful, but irrevocable time.

In the work of this period, the writer also turns to the history of Russia, to his experiences (“The One-Armed Commandant”, “The Tsar’s Guest from Narovchat”); writes again on his favorite topics: about the circus (“The Daughter of the Great Barnum”, “Olga Sur”, “Blondel”), about animals (“Zaviraika”, “Yu-yu”, “Wreck-It Ralph”), creates fairy tales-legends (“Blue star", "Four Beggars"). Themes of rock and unknown forces before which man is helpless appear in his work. With great inner anguish, Kuprin writes about the spiritual loneliness of a person who finds himself far from his homeland.

In 1932-1933 A.I. Kuprin creates one of his best novels of the emigrant period - “Zhaneta”. The hero of the novel - a Russian emigrant, an old, lonely professor Simonov - wants to help a little girl, the daughter of a street newspaper girl, understand the beauty of the world. Kuprin describes the touching friendship of the professor with Zhaneta. In love for a child who has become attached to an old professor, his unspent spiritual strength is revealed, he realizes: “Oh, what are all the joys, joys and pleasures of the world worth in comparison with this simplest, purest, divine feeling of childish trust.” However, the story of the friendship between the Russian professor and the “princess of four streets” ends tragically for him. Zhaneta is taken away from Paris, Professor Simonov is left alone again. His life is now brightened only by the visits of the black stray cat Friday.

In the novel, the writer managed to reveal the bitterness of the loneliness of an old man living far from his homeland, and express the idea that a person’s soul should remain pure, strive for good in any life’s adversities and troubles.

The content and style of Kuprin’s works created in exile differ from those created in Russia: they contain melancholy and a sense of doom. “There are, of course, such writers that even if you send them to Madagascar for eternal settlement, they will write novel after novel there too. But I need everything native, everything - good, bad - only native... I’m ready to go to Moscow on foot,” he once said. His letters to his homeland are sad and sometimes tragic: “You can only work for Russia there. It is the duty of every sincere patriot to return there.” “I would now give all the hours, days, years that remain for me to live and all my posthumous memory, damn it, for the pleasure of listening to at least a few minutes of the former relaxed conversation of the great pagan Marya, the wife of the forester Yegor at the Trinity cordon,” he reported in another letter.

In 1937, Kuprin returned to Russia. Moscow greeted the writer solemnly. It seemed to Kuprin that returning to his homeland would give him strength for a new life. However, no miracle happened. Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin died in Leningrad on August 25
1938 and was buried at Volkova Cemetery.