Gorky's works for children to read. Tales M

Human destinies are different. For some people in life everything comes easy and simple, but for others long years searches and cannot find his own calling.

I want to tell you about the amazing fate of the poet and musicologist, writer and doctor Konstantin Mitrofanovich Mazurin - a man of pure soul and conscience, undeservedly forgotten after the October Revolution.

He was born in 1866 in the family of a well-known manufacturer in Moscow, hereditary honorary citizen Mitrofan Mazurin, famous throughout the district for his boundless charity.

Everyone knows the names of the merchants Tretyakov (with whom, by the way, the Mazurins were closely related), Morozov, Mamontov, with whose funds temples were erected, houses for the poor, and cultural institutions were built. The Mazurins were also among the famous philanthropists at that time. The family's money, in particular, supported almshouses in Vagankovskoe cemetery, Kotelnicheskaya Embankment (known as the “Mazurin Almshouse”), Moscow city orphanage.

Mitrofan Mazurin became no less famous as a successful businessman. It was he who founded the “Reutov Manufactory” and subsequently was its main owner. Under him, the small village of Reutovo began to turn into an industrial village.

Mazurin Sr., a well-mannered and well-read man, wanted his children to receive a good education. He and his wife, the famous Italian ballerina Guerra, tried to instill in them a sense of self-worth and humanism from an early age. And the children lived up to their parents' hopes. Eldest daughter Nadezhda became a wonderful pianist. She studied with Rubinstein and Taneyev and was considered one of the most educated and the most beautiful women Moscow. Konstantin Mazurin, to whom this article is dedicated, became famous poet and musicologist. He received a classical education at the Lyceum in memory of Tsarevich Nicholas, who graduated in 1886.

As a teenager, Mazurin began studying singing and music theory. He studied in Russia and abroad (in Italy, France, Germany). He became seriously interested in this and even during the lessons he developed his own system of teaching singing, taking the old Italian method as a basis.

Later, Konstantin created a system of teaching music theory, based on acoustic and mathematical laws, according to which many famous vocal performers subsequently studied.

To prove to others that he was right, Mazurin successfully tested this system at the Moscow synodal school, later writing and publishing several books on the history and bibliography of singing. And his last musicological work, “Methodology of Singing,” which was published in two volumes in 1902-03, according to the famous opera tenor Vsevolod Bagadurov, “became a valuable reference tool for specialists.”

Since childhood, along with studying music, Konstantin Mazurin enthusiastically wrote poetry. Even in adolescence, the theme of death and the transience of earthly joys began to play a noticeable role in his works. The motives of disappointment and loneliness are the main ones in Mazurin’s lyrics. “At twenty years old, an old man with a broken soul,” he wrote about himself. Therefore, Mazurin speaks of love for a woman only as “momentary pleasure.”

In the development of such a gloomy worldview, apparently, played a large role sudden death father, which shocked the whole family. But the theme of love ultimately won, and the intonation of romance prevails in his later poems. His favorite genre is the “scherzo,” an elegant, playful piece with an unexpected ending.

The first collection of poems by K. Mazurin “Dreams” was published in 1887, followed by several more books: “Lyrics of Love”, “Episodes”, “Stanzas of Kiruzama” and others.

In 1886, at the insistence of his father, who dreamed of seeing his son become an engineer, Mazurin entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. But technology did not appeal to him, so he was soon transferred to the historical and philological department, which he graduated in 1893.

At the university, Konstantin proved himself to be a talented and capable student. He was awarded two silver medals for his writings on art history and patristics. His teachers predicted a great future for him...

However, failures in life and lack of recognition as a poet and musicologist plunged Mazurin into a deep crisis. The death of his wife and daughter brought him to the brink of death. But he chose life, although thoughts of suicide haunted him for a long time.

Already in mature years Mazurin decided to completely change his lifestyle and devoted himself to medicine. In 1904 he entered the medical faculty of Moscow State University. He also studied in Berlin, where he studied gynecology and surgical art. After graduating from the university in 1909, he completed an external internship at the Moscow obstetric institution. Then he worked as a doctor for women's diseases at the Red Cross outpatient clinic named after. Prince Dolgorukov. He published several works on obstetrics. He was also known as an innovator in medicine (he invented, in particular, new models of obstetric forceps and an ice pack).

In spirit family traditions Konstantin Mazurin was a member of many societies: the council of orphanages, the Elizabethan Charitable Society, the archaeological institute, the automobile society, etc. He maintained a free hospital for the poor, where he himself treated patients as a supernumerary doctor. I often visited Reutov on visits.

First world war As a patriot, he becomes a resident at the 17th consolidated field hospital. During these years, he compiled two collections on military medicine for company paramedics.

Mazurin did not accept the revolution. In his understanding, she was a necessary evil, destroying the great Russian state. Therefore, after 1917, he left his homeland and never returned here. Like many of his contemporaries who found themselves in emigration against their will, Mazurin tragically experiences his loneliness, calling himself an eternal wanderer. He eventually settled in his mother's homeland, Italy, where he died in September 1927 at the age of 61.

From the poetry of K. Mazurin:

WITH I went for wine, dreamed and, carried away,
I thought: “Niruzam, you are a true poet!
Let him curse you all his life, even if he annoys you,
Not only worst enemy, but even the whole world!

And further:
L Do you command me to kill my enemies?
I have been trying to love my enemies for a long time,
What can we do if we all have to love them!
I try to love them as much as I can,
But, God, you are pushing me into another sin:
Won't your friends be jealous then?..