Alexey Mikhailovich Remizov biography. Russian Writer Graphic Artist Remizov biography

Remizov was born in Moscow into a wealthy merchant family. His mother, M.A. Naydenova, came from the Naydenov family, known for their cultural traditions. Remizov's uncle, N.A. Naydenov, was famous not only as the founder of the bank, a major Russian financier, long-term chairman of the Moscow Exchange Committee, but also as a scholar-historian, organizer and philanthropist of many endeavors for the study and preservation of historical monuments of Moscow. The library of A. E. and N. A. Naydenov formed the basis of the library of the Moscow Exchange Committee, and then became part of the collections of the Russian State Library. In her youth, Remizov’s mother participated in the Bogorodsk circle of Moscow nihilists. Subsequently, because of unhappy love, she broke with the revolutionary environment and “out of spite” married a haberdasher M.A. Remizov. The Remizov merchants lived in Moscow since the 18th century. According to Remizov, his father began to write his last name “Remizov” rather than “Remezov”, not wanting to “descend from the remez bird.” Having given birth to five children (Remizov was the youngest), M. A. Remizova separated from her husband and, at the behest of her brothers, settled in an outbuilding on the territory of the Naydenov factory. For Remizov, the image of his mother was surrounded by an aura of suffering.

She became the prototype for many tragic female characters in his works. Since childhood, Remizov's abilities for calligraphy, drawing and literature were evident. Remizov wrote his first story at the age of 7.

Remizov's father died in 1883. In 1884, Remizov, together with his brother Victor, began studying at the 4th Moscow Gymnasium, but due to Victor's poor health, Remizov was transferred with him to the Alexander Commercial School.

In 1895, Remizov entered the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Mathematics of Moscow University as a volunteer student and attended lectures at the historical, philological and law faculties. In his political views he was close to the Social Democrats. For participation in riots and Marxist circles, he was sent into exile.

In 1903, in exile in Vologda, Remizov made the final choice between political activity and literary creativity. The spiritual atmosphere of Vologda, called “Northern Athens” in Remizov’s memoirs, contributed to the development of Remizov’s literary talent. The first published work, “The Cry of a Girl Before Marriage,” was published in the newspaper “Courier” in 1902 under the pseudonym. Nikolai Moldavanov.

From 1 Feb. 1905 Remizov received permission to live in the capitals and moved to St. Petersburg, where he served on the editorial board of the Symbolist magazine “Questions of Life.” He entered the modernist environment and became close to Vyach. Ivanov, A. Bely, A. Blok.

The basis of Remizov’s early works were the impressions of his childhood, youth, and years of exile. Autobiography remained an integral feature of Remizov’s work until the end of his life. According to Remizov, the main theme of his works: “The main question about fate, about man and about the world: about man to man and about man to the world. -What is man to man? - Man is a log to another, a wall. Man is a scoundrel to man. Man is a comforting spirit to man." Of the Russian classic writers, Remizov named F. Dostoevsky, N. Leskov, and N. Gogol as his main literary teachers. Remizov's work was influenced by the philosophical and aesthetic concepts of European modernism. Remizov experienced the ideological influence of ancient Gnostic teachings and concepts. Russian folk culture was also a significant spiritual source of Remizov’s creativity.

The novel “The Pond” (1905) is Remizov’s first significant work. The plot is based on the fate of a descendant of the merchant family Nikolai Ogorelyshev. Using individual facts from his biography (his mother’s story, episodes from his childhood, references), Remizov created a work about the hopeless tragedy of existence, innocent human suffering caused by the will of Fate. The plot narration alternated with lyrical “starts” and “endings” of chapters, as if holding mosaic passages together. A. Bely called the novel “a talented confusion”, where all the chapters are “solid lyrics”. A similar interpretation of the causes of human misfortune and the dominance of evil in human souls is revealed in Remizov’s early stories “At the Stage” (1903), “Silver Spoons” (1906), “Fortress” (1906), and in the story “The Hours” (1908).

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For Remizov, the folk worldview was closest to comprehending the bright fundamental principles of existence. In 1907, Remizov created his most joyful and beloved book - a collection of fairy tales “Posolon”, in which he turned to the processing of folklore texts. The writer’s task is to restore the myth hidden under later layers, embodying the people’s view of the world. The seasons change “solingly” (in the direction of the sun). Each of them corresponds to ancient rituals preserved in fairy tales, riddles, counting rhymes, and games. The adventures of fairy-tale heroes (Scarecrow-Chumichel, Bunny, Kota-Kotofeich, etc.) unfold against the backdrop of poetic descriptions of natural life. Remizov’s fairy tales were highly appreciated both in artistic circles (A. Blok, M. Voloshin, Vyach. Ivanov, A. Bely, etc.) and in the scientific community (academician A. A. Shakhmatov nominated Remizov’s book for the Pushkin Prize Academy of Sciences).

From ser. In the 1900s, Remizov began to process monuments of ancient Russian literature. This work continued for more than 50 years. Remizov was convinced of the internal unity of Russian culture and saw his task as restoring broken ties between its new and ancient layers. In human memory, Remizov believed, the “primordial memory” of the past is alive, which thus is part of the present. “In my “reconstructions” of ancient legends and tales, there is not only what is written in the books,” noted Remizov, “but also what is mine - from life - seen, heard and experienced. And when I sat over the ancient monuments and, of course, it was not without reason that I chose from what I had read, but according to some unconscious memories - the “knots and twists” of my eternal memory.” In 1907, Remizov wrote the first book of adaptations of ancient legends, “Limonar” (translated from Greek as “spiritual meadow”). Its plots are based on folk versions of biblical events that are “renounced,” that is, not accepted as church dogma.

In 1907, Remizov’s play “The Demon Act” was staged (directed by F. F. Komissarzhevsky, set by M. V. Dobuzhinsky), which brought scandalous fame to the author. This is a parable about life and death, based on material from folklore and ancient Russian works. Following her, Remizov wrote the plays “The Tragedy of Judas” (1908) and “The Act of St. George the Brave” (1912), in which he resurrected the traditions of folk theater. In “The Tragedy of Judas” the monkey king Asyka appeared for the first time, distributing orders - “monkey signs”, who was destined to have a long life in Remizov’s work.

For Remizov, the world of light and joy was connected with the world of dreams. He found it in a fabulous distance, in the past of Ancient Rus' and in the mythological space of the Monkey Great and Free Chamber (Obezvelvolpala) invented by him - a comic “secret” society, a game for children and adults. Its fantastic founders - monkeys - were creatures akin to horses - J. Swift's Houynghnmas. They despised the human community, based on self-interest, arrogance and evil, and accepted only kind, talented and cheerful people into their ranks. The society was headed by the monkey king Asyka the First of the Great Monkeys, never seen by anyone and unknown to anyone. All affairs were managed for him by Remizov, the permanent clerk of Obezvelvolpal. Remizov, on behalf of and signed by Tsar Asyka, revealed letters of grant to people who had earned the honor of being accepted into the Order. The first monkey badges were issued in 1908, the last in the 50s.

Remizov’s story “Sisters of the Cross” (1910) became a landmark work that placed the writer in the forefront of the literary elite of those years. She continued the traditions of the St. Petersburg theme of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky and in a new way revealed Remizov’s concept of fate, weighing on the fate of the heroes. “Burkov House”, where the main character, the retired official Marakulin, lived, was interpreted as a symbol of the whole of St. Petersburg and, more broadly, built by the imp. Peter of the Russian state, where many suffer. The depth of the theme was matched by the refinement of form and musicality of the language.

The collected works of Remizov, published in 1910-12, showed the integrity of the artistic world of Remizov, who paradoxically combined in himself a joker and a storyteller and an inventor of the nightmare and horror of everyday reality. The combination of both sides of existence was fundamental for Remizov, who wrote about the central theme of his work: “The suffering of the world, the misfortune of human life - how difficult it is to live in the world! People with means and those doomed to poverty are equally burdened by life. And the other side is funny.” In 1912, Remizov wrote the story “The Fifth Plague,” dedicated to the study of the essence of national character throughout Russian history from ancient times to the present. The main character of the story, the “fifth plague” of a small town, investigator Bobrov, is tragically separated from his people, whom he considers himself to have the right to judge and condemn. The concept of the story was affected by the strengthening of the role of the Christian ideal in Remizov’s worldview. Critics noted the aesthetic and social significance of Remizov's work. In a letter to Remizov, A. Bely noted that for him “The Fifth Plague,” like Blok’s cycle of poems “Kulikovo Field,” are “prophetic works.”

In the 2nd half. In the 10th Remizov published a collection of fairy tales and adaptations of ancient Russian legends (“Dokuka and Joker”, 1914; “Spring Powder”, 1915; “For Holy Rus'”, 1915; “Fortifications”, 1916) and worked on the novel “The Lion’s Ditch” ( "Ditch", 1914-19).

During the years of the revolution, Remizov experienced a creative upsurge. He perceived the revolution as a world fire, in the fire of which the old is destroyed and the new is born. Remizov wrote about the transformative power of revolutionary fire in the chronicle of the February revolution “General Uprising” (1918), the reworking of the statements of the philosopher Heraclitus “Electron” (1919), the book “Fiery Russia” (1921) and in the general book “Whirlwind Rus'” (published in 1927). For Remizov, the revolution is also the destruction of the old “Holy Rus',” that is, the Christian worldview, which Remizov considered one of the main foundations of the people’s worldview. Remizov did not accept this side either in the February revolution or in the October coup. The most programmatic grief at the end of a huge period of Russian history was expressed by Remizov in “Lament for the Destruction of the Russian Land” (written on October 5, 1917). According to Remizov, no social reorganization of life will bring results without the moral revival of people. “It would be a mistake to think,” Remizov wrote in his diary in 1917, “that the kingdom of God is some kind of just dispensation on earth, some kind of houses and temples and, of course, latrines of the very last word. In order to enjoy in the kingdom of God, with a refined conscience, you must not have a conscience - and here is the Mother of God, as the embodiment of conscience, her walk through torment is an example of the fact that the kingdom of God will never be realized under our conditions on a difficult earth.” In 1921 Remizov and his wife left Soviet Russia. From 1923 he lived in Paris.

The years of emigration were for Remizov years of constant longing for Russia, but also a time of fruitful creative work. The 20-30s were the time of creation and reflection on Remizov’s main books, based on autobiographical material. Diving into the depths of one’s “I” and into memories became an inexhaustible source of Remizov’s creativity. At the same time, he understood “memory” not only as real memories, but also as a deep “proto-memory” of his reincarnation in other guises over different eras. S n. From the 1930s until 1949, Remizov did not manage to publish his books in separate editions, so most of the works created before the Second World War were published later. The book of memoirs “With Trimmed Eyes” (1951) is dedicated to the time of childhood; the book “Iveren” (published in 1986) is dedicated to the years of exile; the book “Meetings. Petersburg Gully" (partially published in 1981), to the years of Parisian emigration - "Music Teacher" (published in 1981). Based on his wife’s stories, Remizov wrote books about her life - “Olya” (1927), “In a Pink Splendor” (1952).

Immersion in the world of legends, fairy tales and ancient Russian tales became for Remizov another mental path to Russian soil. He publishes a collection of adaptations of fairy tales and church legends “Three sickles” (Vol. 1 and 2, 1927), “The Image of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker” (1931), “The Pigeon Book” (1946), etc. Beginning in the late 1920s, Remizov created a cycle of retellings of ancient Russian stories about love and fate (“Solomonia”, “Savva Grudtsyn”, “Brunzvig”, “Melusina”, “Bova Korolevich”, “Tristan and Isolde”, “The Tale of Two Animals: Stefanit and Ikhnelat”, “O Peter and Fevronia of Murom”, “About Gregory and Ksenia Tverskaya”, etc.). Their heroes are scribes and dreamers who have experienced fantastic adventures and great love, which almost always ends tragically.

S n. In the 1930s, Remizov turned to the genre of handwritten book-albums, creating a whole series of drawings for his works. P. Picasso, M. Larionov, V. Kandinsky, N. Goncharova, M. Dobuzhinsky and many others. Other artists highly valued the work of Remizov the graphic artist. Yu. Annensky noted that “Remizov could undoubtedly paint like Serov, like Repin or like Malyavin. But their muses did not inspire him. Remizov created half-childish, half-abstruse graphic phantasmagoria that surprised me with their toy-like quality and deep graphic skill. He painted wonderfully and outlandishly.” At the end of his life, Remizov’s books were published in scanty editions in a publishing house created by Remizov’s friends specifically for the publication of his works.

Russian literature of the Silver Age

Alexey Mikhailovich Remizov

Biography

Alexey Mikhailovich Remizov was born on June 24 (July 6), 1877 in Moscow into a merchant family. For participating in student unrest, he, who was already studying at the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Mathematics of Moscow University, was expelled from Moscow and spent six years in Penza, Vologda, and Ust-Sysolsk. He made his debut as a prose writer in 1897; his first book, “Posolon,” which included adaptations of folk tales and apocrypha, was published in 1907. A year later, the novel “The Pond” was published, to which Remizov most of all owes his reputation as Dostoevsky’s heir in modern literature, “the great complainer” (Blok).

In the early years of his work, Remizov was noticeably influenced by symbolism, especially by Andrei Bely. However, more significant for his formation as a writer was the awakened interest from his youth in the spiritual heritage of ancient Russia, in national mythology, old printed books and monuments of folk culture (the collection “Limonar” (1907), the play “Demoniac Act” (1907)), numerous others publications from which books of retellings, adaptations, and adaptations of the plots of ancient Russian legends (“Besnovatye” (1951) and others) were compiled, published in emigration.

In his autobiography “With Trimmed Eyes” (1951), Remizov, speaking about the origins and specific features of his work, notes the importance of the idea of ​​primordial memory (“sleep”), which determines the nature of the construction of many of his works: “From the age of two I begin to remember clearly. It was as if I woke up and was, as it were, thrown into a world... inhabited by monsters, ghostly, with confused reality and dreams, colorful and sounding inseparable.” Although in the pre-revolutionary period Remizov published several novels with a clearly manifested social tendency (“Sisters of the Cross”, “The Irrepressible Tambourine” (both 1910) and others), his true originality appeared mainly in works that were based on folklore and apocrypha. They represent, according to the author’s description, “a new form of story, where the protagonist is not an individual person, but an entire country, and the time of action is centuries.” At the same time, this “story,” especially if it is related to the depiction of the events of the revolution and the subsequent Russian Troubles, always includes extensive and reliable documentary material and describes real historical characters who appear under their own names. This is how one of the main works created by Remizov in exile is structured - the book “Whirlwind Rus'” (1927), an autobiographical book based on the material. In it, with constant references to the poetics of hagiographic literature, for which the obligatory motives of rejection of the unrighteous world, ordeal, homelessness and spiritual purification in the finale, the author recreates the Russian hard times, introducing into his story those with whom he most communicated in his last Petersburg years, - Blok, Merezhkovsky, philosopher L. Shestov, his own student, the young prose writer Prishvin.

Remizov’s attitude to the revolution was already expressed in his “Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land,” published in the Socialist Revolutionary newspaper “Will of the People” shortly after the October Revolution. It contains direct reminiscences of the ancient Russian lament about the devastation of Rus' as a result of the Tatar-Mongol raid in 1237. “Swirled Rus'” describes a time when “man’s dream of a free human kingdom on earth burned exceptionally brightly,” but “never and nowhere so cruelly” had a “pogrom” thundered before (directly affecting Remizov himself, who was arrested and briefly imprisoned during the "Red Terror")

The story, as in the book “With Clipped Eyes”, which forms an autobiographical diptych with “Swirled Russia”, is conducted in the form of a free compilation of events of great public importance (Lenin’s arrival in Petrograd in the spring of 1917) and private evidence, right down to recording conversations in queues or scenes of bullying crowds over disarmed policemen. Remizov creates a deliberately fragmentary montage, where the chronicle, saddening the course of history, is combined with a recreation of the hardships and hardships endured by the narrator himself, with visions, dreams, echoes of legends, “spells,” a recording of the stream of consciousness, a mosaic of fleeting sketches of “whirled” everyday life. The narration, as in many other books by Remizov, is told in the form of a tale, organic to this artistic concept, where the subjectivity of the perception of what is happening is emphasized by the very construction of the story. Such a style and a similar compositional solution distinguish Remizov’s novel about emigration, “The Music Teacher,” which remained in manuscript (published posthumously, 1983), and the book of memoirs “Meetings” (1981), and the partially published autobiographical story “Iveren” (1986).

In August 1921, the writer emigrated. Remizov’s work of the emigrant period is dominated by the motif of separation, which is also correlated with the corresponding plots of ancient literature (about Peter and Fevronia, about Bova Korolevich), but also has a deeply personal meaning, especially in the story “Olya” (1927) and the novel “In the Pink Splendor” (1952). They are inspired by the history of the writer’s family (his only daughter did not follow her parents into emigration and died in occupied Kyiv in 1943; Remizov’s wife S.P. Dovgello died the same year). The experience of reconstructing a holistic picture of the national spirit based on legends that expressed religious beliefs, often moving away from the official Orthodox canon, was undertaken by Remizov in many works created in a foreign land - from the book “Russia in Letters” (1922) to a collection of “dreams” and reflections about the forms of Russian spirituality, as they were reflected in classical literature (Gogol, Turgneev, Dostoevsky). This theme becomes the main one in the book “The Fire of Things” (1954).

The sophistication of Remizov's style gave rise to heated debate about the fruitfulness or artificiality of his chosen artistic solutions. Criticism (G. Adamovich) saw in Remizov’s books only a straightforward imitation of “Russian pre-Petrine antiquity,” accusing the author of a deliberate predilection for the archaic. Other authors, like the artist Dobuzhinsky, believed that in fact the nature of Remizov’s talent was playful, linking this poetics with a distinctly unique style of life and social behavior, which attracted the attention of visitors to his apartment, where the wallpaper was painted with kikimoras, guests were given certificates of their membership in the “Great and Free Monkey Chamber” invented by the writer, and the atmosphere as a whole suggested thoughts of a “witch’s nest”. Still others, like the philosopher I. Ilyin, perceived Remizov as a “fool within culture” - an intelligent, educated, gifted artist, with his own significant but special vision.

Remizov's style had a significant influence on a number of Russian writers of the 1920s. (Prishvin, Leonov, Vyach. Shishkov and others), who were adherents of “ornamental prose”.

Alexey Remizov died in Paris on November 26, 1957. He was buried in the cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.

Remizov Alexey Mikhailovich (1877-1957) - Russian writer. Born on June 24 (July 6), 1877 in Moscow in the family of a merchant. In 1895 he studied at the Aleksandrovsky Commercial School, and upon graduation received a physics and mathematics education at Moscow University. He was mistakenly arrested and sent into 6-year exile in northern Russia. In 1903 he married Serafima Dovgello, who worked as a paleographer. Upon completion of the line in 1905, he returned to St. Petersburg and began to actively publish his works. The first printed book was a collection of folk tales “Posolon” ​​(1907), which was written back in 1897. In 1908, the novel “The Pond” was published, and Remizov’s play “Demon Action” was staged on the stage of the Komissarzhevskaya Theater.

In 1921 he went to Germany for treatment, but the economic crisis forced him to move to Paris. Remizov wrote many works, but it was difficult to publish them, and in 1931 he completely stopped publishing. Remizov also worked on graphic drawings. In 1933, an exhibition of his drawings took place in Prague. In 1943, the writer’s only daughter died in occupied Kyiv, refusing to emigrate to her parents. That same year his wife died. During World War II, Remizov began keeping a diary with graphic drawings of current events and images of his contemporaries. In 1953, with the help of fans, they managed to create a publishing house, which published the writer’s books. In the last years of his life he became a citizen of the USSR, but never returned to his homeland.

Alexey Mikhailovich Remizov is a Russian writer. One of the most prominent stylists in Russian literature.

Early years

Alexey Mikhailovich Remizov came from a Moscow merchant family. His second cousin Maria Vasilievna Remizova is the mother of the Russian botanist Konstantin Pangalo.

The writer’s mother, Maria Aleksandrovna Naydyonov, was the sister of the famous industrialist and public figure N.A. Naydyonov.

From childhood, Alexey Remizov was a great inventor and dreamer. At the age of 7, he wrote down, from the words of his nanny, a story about a fire in the village - this was his first realistic story. Later, working with “someone else’s word” was transformed into a special author’s style - creativity “based on the material”. Then he decided to become a writer.

In 1895, Alexey Remizov graduated from the Moscow Alexander Commercial School and entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. As a student, he was mistakenly arrested for resisting the police during a demonstration and exiled to the north of Russia (Penza, Vologda, Ust-Sysolsk) for 6 years.

Returning from exile in 1905 to St. Petersburg, Remizov began active literary work: his fairy tales and legends, a novel (“The Pond”) and stories (“The Clock,” “The Fifth Plague”), and dramatic works in the spirit of medieval mysteries (“The Clock”) were published. The Tragedy of Judas, Prince Iscariot", "Demon Act", "Tsar Maximilian"; in 1908, "Demon Act" was presented at the Komissarzhevskaya Theater). The writer was classified as a symbolist (and more broadly, modernism), although Remizov himself did not position himself as a symbolist.

During the revolution

During the years of the revolution and subsequent years of war communism, Remizov remained in Petrograd, although he was politically anti-Bolshevik (he himself was close to Socialist Revolutionary circles). In the summer of 1921, Remizov went to Germany for treatment - “temporarily,” as the writer believed, but he was not destined to return back.

In exile

In November 1923, Remizov moved, due to the economic crisis, from Berlin to Paris, where he spent the rest of his life. While in exile, Remizov continued to write a lot (the most famous were his artistic memoirs about life in St. Petersburg and the revolution - “Swirled Rus'” and “With Cropped Eyes”), but it became more difficult to publish every year. Remizov participated in the publication of the magazine "Versty", which published some of his works. Since 1931, the publication of Remizov’s books almost completely ceased. His friends and fans founded a special small publishing house “Opleshnik” in 1953, which allowed the writer to publish new books.

At the end of his life he received Soviet citizenship. He was buried in the cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.

Wife (since 1903) - Serafima Pavlovna Remizova-Dovgello (1876-1943), paleographer.

Creation

Marina Tsvetaeva called his work “a living treasury of the Russian soul and speech.” He is distinguished by an extremely vivid and imaginative perception of the world.

The first publication of A. M. Remizov’s work took place in 1902. Moscow newspaper "Courier" under the pseudonym "N. Moldavanov” published his “The Cry of a Girl Before Marriage,” which dates back to Zyryansk folklore.

At the beginning of 1905, he moved to St. Petersburg, where his real literary life began. Since 1921 he was in exile: first in Berlin, then in Paris. Not everyone knows that Alexey Mikhailovich was also a talented graphic artist. He always drew, on any piece of paper. He always accompanied each of his letters or tiny notes with some kind of drawing. In 1933, an exhibition of his drawings was exhibited in Prague. His work was appreciated by P. Picasso himself. During the war years, A. M. Remizov kept a “graphic diary”, which reflected dreams, portraits of his contemporaries and the events that worried him.

Features of prose

Remizov is characterized by a fragmentary composition, a combination of disparate episodes of the work - plotless prose. The plot core of the story is weakly felt, the main events are obscured, and the place of a general presentation is taken by showing private episodes or details of everyday life. Members of the depicted society, as a rule, are deprived of internal communication with each other, they live in solitary confinement; here “man is a log to man.” Such fragmentation is realized in cycles of miniatures and in the genre of “tableaux” - “literary pictures” - religious, for children, dreams (“From Eye to Eye”, “Body”, “Desperation Share”, cycles in the collection “Grass” -murava”, “Posolon”, etc.).

Alexey Mikhailovich Remizov was born on June 24 (July 6), 1877 in Moscow. “My last name is Remizov. The emphasis is on “re” and not on “mi,” he noted in his 1912 autobiography. By origin, Remizov belonged to the Moscow merchant class.

The writer's father, Mikhail Alekseevich Remizov, the son of a peasant from the Venevsky district of the Tula province, was brought as a child to the capital, where he made a career from an “errand boy” to the owner of his own haberdashery store, two shops in Moscow and two in Nizhny Novgorod and received the title of personal honorary citizen.

Remizov's mother, Marya Alexandrovna, belonged to the prominent Moscow merchant family of the Naydenovs. In 1765, the founder of the family (Remizov’s great-grandfather) - serf peasant Yegor Ivanovich Naydenov, a native of the village of Batyeva, Suzdal district, Vladimir province, was sold to the owner of silk factories, the Moscow merchant Kolosov and became a dyer, and over time opened his own business - a dyeing shop. His son (the writer's grandfather), Alexander Egorovich the Younger, expanded the business: he opened a weaving, printing and wool-spinning factory. All representatives of the Nayenov family were characterized by a craving for culture. Thus, Alexander Egorovich, who only graduated from a parish school, independently learned French, read a lot, and kept a kind of “Naiden chronicle.” He gave all his children (three sons and three daughters) a good education at the Peter and Paul Evangelical Lutheran School, where teaching was conducted in German and French. The most famous among them was Remizov’s uncle, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Naydenov. He continued the family trading business, founded and led the Moscow Trade Bank, and for 25 years was the permanent chairman of the Moscow Exchange Committee and an active member of the city duma. “Small, lively, fiery” - this is how he was remembered by his contemporaries who knew him well. N. A. Naydenov gained fame not only as a major entrepreneur and financier, but also as a historian who wrote many scientific works, and as a philanthropist who did a lot for the preservation and study of Moscow antiquities, a friend of I. E. Zabelin. The huge family library of A. E. and N. A. Naydenov formed the basis of the library of the Moscow Exchange Committee, and was subsequently included in the collections of the Russian State Library. Speaking about his roots - “grandfather’s testaments”, Remizov proudly wrote about N.A. Naydenov: “He has a “perky” disposition, with enormous knowledge not only in purely economic and legal sciences, but also in history and archeology, and with great creative in flight, all gifted, unlike anyone else, he turned his life - his days into some kind of constant work, without respite, without holidays, without absenteeism for a strong and active, tightly forged proud Russian Russia. According to relatives, Alexey Remizov was similar in appearance and disposition to his uncle, which led both of them to repeated clashes in life. In her youth, Remizov’s mother was imbued with the “advanced ideas” of the 60s and participated in the Bogorodsk circle of Moscow nihilists. Because of unhappy love, “in spite” of her previous aspirations, she married the widower M. A. Remizov, who was twice her age. Their marriage turned out to be unhappy. After the birth of five boys (one of them died in infancy), Marya Alexandrovna, taking the children, left her husband and returned home. By the will of their guardian brothers, they settled as poor relatives on the territory of their factory, in an outbuilding near the Naydenovsky Pond. A broken fate left its mark on the character of Marya Alexandrovna and on her relationship with her sons - Nikolai, Sergei, Victor and Alexei. All day long she sat locked in her room, reading books and doing little with the children. In Remizov’s perception, the image of his mother forever remained surrounded by an aura of suffering. It was she who became the prototype for many tragic heroines of his early work.

The Remizov brothers were initially in the care of servants, and then grew up surrounded by neighbors - factory workers and their children. At the age of two, Alexey broke his nose when he hit an iron toy stove. This was not only physical, but also severe mental trauma for him. Its consequences affected the formation of his personality and contributed, at the same time, to the formation of an inferiority complex (“ugliness”) and to the awareness of this event as a symbolic fact - the imposition of a certain stamp of chosenness on him.

Since childhood, Alexei Remizov was characterized by self-will, mischief, sometimes reaching the point of cruel jokes, and at the same time, spiritual sensitivity and compassion for the grief of others. In a diary entry dated January 1, 1927, he noted: “By the way, I want to explain: something that is strange and incomprehensible to people. Since childhood, I have felt that when I am praised, I am ashamed; and when I was reproached, I felt a blood connection with all the persecuted. // I had this feeling - and I said: “I’m somewhere on the sidelines - on the porch with beggars - with caught thieves behind bars - in the ranks of prisoners, who are seen off with hooting and whistles - with sinners.” // So approximately. // The image of the Mother of God, who goes to hell to suffer with sinners, for me is not only a legend from books, it is the light in which my heart lives. // I have been tormented by my conscience since childhood - I have not changed in this. And then I wanted (and this is from childhood) to always go and do things my own way. This was not always possible, and I think due to my lack of talent. Now I can evaluate myself. // There are a lot of fools in the world and many who exploit great spiritual values ​​without carrying these values ​​in their insignificant hearts: // people who have not yet evolved to monkeys. // And that’s why there’s so much funny in the world.”

From a young age and throughout his life, Remizov remained passionate about music, drawing and theater. The result of severe myopia, not noticed by adults until the age of 14, when Remizov first put on glasses, had several far-reaching consequences. Myopia prevented Alexei, who had perfect pitch, from learning to play the piano and draw “correctly” (he was expelled from classes in Sunday classes at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture for “caricatures”), and also contributed to the development of a strong stoop, which made him hunchbacked in old age . At the same time, myopia - seeing the world (to use the writer's expression) with “trimmed eyes” - strengthened Remizov’s natural imagination, giving rise to his drawings of “objective” - extraordinary creatures that emerged from spots of color penetrated by swirling lines-rays. As for the theater, Remizov was characterized by both a love for it as such and a constant desire to introduce an element of acting into his life. Remizov’s “game” is a complex sociocultural phenomenon that has not yet been fully studied. It turned (often simultaneously) into deliberately illogical, “rude” boyish mischief; and a form of self-defense from a hostile world; and the life-creativity so characteristic of the Silver Age era; and “foolishness”, which had its roots in the culture of Ancient Rus', in which the element of theatricality was associated with the exposure and ridicule of the unrighteous “this world.”

Remizov's father died in 1883. A year later, Alexey, together with Victor, entered the 4th Moscow classical gymnasium. Soon, due to Victor’s poor health, both brothers were “at the same time” transferred to the Alexander Commercial School, one of the founders and trustees of which was N. A. Naydenov. The school focused on mathematical and economic disciplines. Classical languages ​​(Latin and Greek) were excluded from teaching. The latter created an obstacle for graduates to enter the university as full students, where they could only be admitted as volunteer students. In 1895, Alexei graduated from college with excellent grades in the Law of God, jurisprudence, statistics, commercial geography and calligraphy. All his life he was convinced that in other subjects his grades were unfairly lowered at the request of N.A. Naydenov, an influential member of the school’s board of trustees. By the will of his guardians, Remizov was destined to take the place of accountant in the Naydenovsky bank. But he insisted on his own - he entered the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Mathematics of Moscow University as a volunteer, and also began attending lectures at the faculties of history, philology and law. At the same time, Remizov entered the environment of student revolutionary circles. The writer later recalled: “I was touched by misfortune and I didn’t know how to respond. And then from book conversations I learned how everything can be improved. At first it seemed to me that everything could be corrected by overthrowing the ruling king and ministers, and I was ready for a just cause, but this feeling did not last long. I believed in Marxism and was pushed towards Beltov-Plekhanov.” After his first year, in the summer of 1896, he traveled abroad to Switzerland, Germany and Austria, from where he brought back a chest with a double bottom filled with illegal literature of a social democratic orientation.”

On November 18, 1896, Remizov was arrested for his active participation in a clash between students and police at a demonstration in memory of the events on Khodynskoye Field. According to the degree of guilt, he was classified as a “leader of the riots” and exiled to Penza for two years. There, in the spring of 1897, Remizov joined the leadership of the revolutionary workers' circle. The activities of its members consisted of promoting Marxism among workers and students, establishing connections with other circles of a similar direction, and distributing literature and leaflets. In Penza, Remizov met a student at the Moscow Philharmonic School, V. E. Meyerhold, whom he involved in propaganda work. Soon the police uncovered the illegal organization and arrested its members. Documents from the Remizov case at the Police Department indicate that during interrogations he played a subtle game with investigators, without letting down any of his comrades and, in particular, managing to hide his involvement in Meyerhold’s circle. As many times later, Remizov put on a mask - this time, a Marxist theorist, far from life, unadapted to practical work, who, as he himself said, “extremely regrets his Penza hobbies, which began in the spring and ended completely with the first snow of winter 1897." As a result, by court order, Remizov was exiled for three years to the Vologda province under the open supervision of the police. He spent 1900–1903 in Ustsysolsk and Vologda.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Vologda was called “Northern Athens,” the capital of the exiled region. In those years, many later famous figures of Russian culture and politics served their exile there at the same time: N. A. Berdyaev, A. V. Lunacharsky, A. A. Bogdanov-Malinovsky, B. V. Savinkov, P. E. Shchegolev and others .

For the writer, the years of Vologda exile became a turning point in many ways. His philosophical and political views changed. Remizov finally rejected the revolutionary path of reorganizing the world. He openly defended his beliefs both in theoretical disputes with exiled revolutionaries (primarily with B.V. Savinkov), and in the practical struggle for the fate of his beloved girl - his future wife - S.P. Dovgello, “saved” by him from the fate of an executed man terrorist I. Kalyaev. In Vologda, Remizov finally realized his creative calling. In 1902, in the newspaper “Courier” under the pseudonym “N. Moldovanov" his first publication appeared - going back to the Zyryansk folklore "The Cry of a Girl before Marriage." M. Gorky, recommending Remizov’s work to the editor of the newspaper’s fiction department, Leonid Andreev, wrote: “‘The Cry of a Girl’ is, by God, good!” In Vologda, Remizov met with his literary “godfather" - the exiled philologist student P. E. Shchegolev. The essence of Shchegolev’s “teaching mission” was that it was he who opened for the aspiring writer, well-read in illegal literature, a world of banned books of a different kind - the space of ancient apocrypha. To understand the reasons for Remizov’s appeal to such texts, the scientific concept of Shchegolev’s book “Essays on the history of renounced literature. The Legend of Aphroditian” (St. Petersburg, 1900) is important - a student work published on the recommendation of academician A. N. Veselovsky. Shchegolev modernized the interpretation meaning and extra-aesthetic function of the apocrypha. In fact, he drew hidden parallels between the past and the present, as if comparing ancient and new prohibited literature. Remizov’s practical revolutionary experience entailed not only “disappointment” in teleologism, the absolutization of economic and social factors in the development of society, in the historical optimism of Marxism, but also the search for new philosophical guidelines. While still in Penza, he “discovered” the European “new drama”, the work of French, Polish and Russian symbolists, and the philosophy of F. Nietzsche. It is known that in the Ust-Sysol exile colony Remizov had the nickname “Decadent”. But among the writers and philosophers of modern times, he did not find an acceptable solution to the problem of theodicy, an explanation of the reasons for the existence of Evil, immeasurable human suffering. The renounced books gave their answers to these questions. Through Shchegolev, Remizov learned about A. N. Veselovsky’s research “Research in the field of Russian spiritual verse” (St. Petersburg, 1880–1891). The aspiring writer discovered in Veselovsky’s research a presentation of a whole complex of folk cosmogonic, anthropogonic, eschatological, fatalistic and other ideas underlying a number of heretical teachings, in particular, the heresy of the Bogomils, whose ideas largely went back to the views of the Gnostics. The impact of this scientific work on the development of Remizov’s philosophical, religious and aesthetic views was so serious that in some specific areas it remained until the end of his creative career. Starting from the Vologda period and ending with the time after the Second World War, Veselovsky’s research became an inexhaustible source of literary subjects for the writer.

In Vologda, Remizov created the first edition of the novel “The Pond” (1902–1903). It was an experience of aesthetic accumulation of ontological and epistemological ideas, plots and images of apocryphal literature. Already in Remizov’s first major work, a characteristic feature of his creative method appeared: for the writer, heroes and facts from his own “real” life were artistic components of the text, equivalent to “alien” (fictional or borrowed) heroes and plots. In fact, “The Pond” became one of the first Russian existential novels. Each of the characters was part of the author’s “I” - the only self-sufficient and all-filling hero of the novel. At first glance, the plot of “The Pond” is based on the vicissitudes of the fate of Nikolai Finogenov, both his appearance and biography largely coincided with the author’s. In fact, the plot of the novel is extra-fabular; it is the story of a change in the author's self-awareness. In this regard, the movement of the plot is understandable only in the context of the development of Remizov’s worldview, which occurs simultaneously with the process of working on the work. And here a significant role was played by the author’s (exiled revolutionary) assimilation of cosmogonic, anthropogonic and eschatological concepts preserved in apocryphal literature. This kind of literature became the basis for the formation of the ideological concept of the work and the direct source of its individual plot motifs. Modeling the macrocosm of the novel, Remizov relied on apocryphal legends about the beginning and end of the world. The very name of the novel (“The Pond”) arose on the basis of a contamination of myth (the cosmogonic legend “On the Sea of ​​Tiberias” retold by Veselovsky) and everyday reality (the same Naydenovsky pond on the shores of which the writer spent his childhood). This artistic principle was fundamental to the entire work. The author's method consisted of a consistent transformation of the object of artistic creation: from reality to symbol, from symbol to myth.

Creatively accumulating ideas borrowed from various sources, Remizov created his own myth. Its expression was Remizov's eschatological apocrypha about the Second Coming and the final destinies of this world. This apocrypha organically stemmed from the author’s rethinking of the eschatological optimism of Marxism (the central problem that he pondered in his Vologda exile). Having seen the revolutionaries and their deeds with his own eyes, Nikolai Finogenov was convinced of the speculative nature of their teachings. In the novel, this is shown through the use of symbolic parallelism: the falsity of the revolutionaries’ teleological faith in their ability to violently transform the world was revealed through Remizov’s myth of the unresurrected Christ. In the context of the mirroring of the ideas of apocryphal legends consistently carried out in the novel, the further development of Remizov’s eschatological myth was the replacement of Christ with the eternal rival and “brother” of God - Satanail. The plot culmination of the work - an attempt to transform the world by violent means - is given by Remizov through a system of symbolic correspondences. The highest level of symbolic generalization is Nikolai’s murder of his uncle “Antichrist” (a distant prototype of this hero was N.A. Naydenov) with a preliminary showing to him of a photograph of a pond. This is a sacred action encrypted in “real-like” images - an attempt to overthrow the Antichrist. The photograph of the pond is an emblematic symbol of the world, which, from the moment of its emergence from the water element, has been under the rule of Satanail and his brainchild - the Antichrist. Nicholas associated himself with the Messiah, but in the system of symbolic correspondences he turned out to be only a false pretender to the role of Christ. This was confirmed by a characteristic “artistic gesture” - the form of the hero’s death. He threw himself out of the window - that is, he fell down into the abyss of Non-Resurrection. The transformation of the world did not occur, since it was not preceded by the Resurrection.

On May 31, 1903, Remizov’s period of exile ended, and he left Vologda, taking from there the manuscripts of a novel and a number of other, also unpublished works, mainly prose poems. 1903–1905 - the time of Remizov’s wanderings with S.P. Remizova-Dovgello and daughter Natasha, born on April 18, 1904, in the southern regions of the Russian Empire (Kherson, Nikolaev, Elizavetgrad, Odessa, Kiev). The writer and his wife were prohibited from living in capital cities, so the offer Remizov received from V. Meyerhold came in very handy - to become the head of the repertoire department at the “Association of New Drama” organized by him. By accepting this position, Remizov became the “spiritual brother” of the innovative director. He actively participated in the formation of that part of the repertoire, which justified the name of Meyerhold’s enterprise, and was involved in the selection of plays by representatives of the European “new drama”, editing existing translations and creating new ones. So he translated the main body of plays by M. Maeterlinck and St. Przybyszewski, dramas by G. von Hofmannsthal, A. Strindberg and others. In the Kherson season of 1903/04, the play-manifestation of the “new art” promoted by Meyerhold was the drama of St. Przybyshevsky's "Snow", translated by S. and A. Remizov. At the same time, Remizov acted not only as the author of the translation, but also as (in his own words) a “tuner” of the actors - that is, in fact, an assistant director. He was also the author of an anonymous article explaining to the viewer the meaning of Meyerhold’s theatrical experiment: “Symbolic drama, as one of the main branches of art, strives for synthesis, for a symbol (connection) from the individual to the whole. This is the whole ideological essence of such a drama, but in order to catch and notice it, accommodation (adaptation) of spiritual vision is necessary: ​​we are so accustomed to looking in the art of reproducing life, whether new or old, its meaning or nonsense, purpose, etc. that an attempt to break the walls of everyday life and imagine the beating human soul is easy to overlook. And once this is seen, such a drama loses all value and meaning, and even interest.” The Kherson public did not accept either the production or Pshibyshevsky’s “new drama” itself. The writer's disappointment in the success of promoting the new dramatic art among the unprepared provincial public was combined with a feeling of dissatisfaction with the relationship that he had with Meyerhold, which ultimately led to Remizov's departure from the Partnership. For the 1904/05 season, Remizov remained in Kyiv, without going with the troupe to Tiflis.

The Kiev period is one of the darkest in the writer’s life. There was no literary income; the family subsisted on occasional tutoring lessons from his wife. At this time, Remizov created the story “The Hours” (1904; published 1908) - one of his most pessimistic works. In the dedicatory inscription to S.P. Remizova on a copy of the story, he wrote: “About the origin of the Clock: this is the most painful thing that I remember with shame: it was in Kiev - when you fed Natasha and went to lessons, and I wrote. There was also a large notebook - there were like poems in it - then it was “processed”. I remember the room, for some reason I always remember, one window, narrow, and right there a folding camp bed, and the door where you and Natasha are. I remember the fire. I took the manuscript of this “Clock”, the icon and Natasha. This is the initial memory of my breaking into the “people.” In October 1904, Remizov submitted a petition to the Police Department for permission to live in St. Petersburg. He pinned many hopes on moving to the capital, as evidenced, in particular, by his letter to his wife dated June 26 1904: "I dream of St. Petersburg. There I will not be in my “homeland,” but will be with “strangers,” that is, I myself will be different. I walk at my own pace and say “what” only in Moscow. But I also hate this Moscow, deeply loving. In “The Pond” I wrote the whole truth, but did I succeed? But saying so, in the black wave, I forgot all the warmth - the breath of the “native”, forgot the gospel, the chants, Easter - the unique lullaby of Moscow Will I find in In St. Petersburg, do strangers in a strange city even have a shadow from this “non-evening” light? // Human souls are different and go through life differently. What kind of common “service” can there be? You must overcome your separateness and not notice, but others must also forget you and unite with you in a game of “not yours and not mine.” // And this is above you - a myth. // Myth - the superpossible, the superpowerful - what you look at from the bottom up.” Remizov and his family moved to St. Petersburg at the beginning of 1905, receiving, with the help of friends (N.A. Berdyaev and G.I. Chulkov), a position as a technical employee in the magazine “Problems of Life”. There he immediately entered the literary circle of symbolist writers, occupying a special - “non-factional” - position in it.

During these years, Remizov became close to the poet Vyach. Ivanov, one of the theorists of Russian symbolism, became one of the regular participants in Ivanov’s “environments” on the Tower. At these meetings he met many St. Petersburg writers, philosophers and artists. The spiritual rapprochement between Remizov and Ivanov was caused by the consonance of their then views on the nature of artistic creativity and the tasks of modern art, seeking a path to the people's soul. For Remizov, the mid-1900s was a time of turning to folk art and intensive self-knowledge of the origins of his interest. A legend, a fairy tale, a half-forgotten ritual or a story - all these, according to Remizov, are fragments of a folk myth, which is the writer’s mission to resurrect. This idea was most clearly stated in his open letter to the editors of a number of newspapers and magazines, prompted by accusations of plagiarism that arose over his adaptations of folk tales. Remizov's declaration was closely related in ideas and verbal formulations to the articles of Vyach. Ivanov “On cheerful craft and smart fun” (1907) and “Two elements in modern symbolism” (1908). In it, Remizov actually confirmed his closeness to the “coming myth-making” that Ivanov propagated. The latter was perceived by Remizov as an ideologist of an artistic movement akin to the orientation of his aesthetic self-consciousness. In this regard, it is natural that the writer dedicated the first separate edition of his cycle of fairy tales “Posolon” ​​(M., 1907) to his three-year-old daughter Natasha and Vyach. Ivanov: a child - a natural object and subject of myth, and a theorist who substantiated the role of myth-making in the history of culture.

In “Posolon” ​​Remizov turned to the restoration of the myth hidden under later layers; to revealing the origins of the original harmonious integrity of the world. In the tales of this “salt” cycle (as the sun moves), the seasons changed, and each of them corresponded to ancient, sometimes forgotten rituals, echoes of which were preserved in fairy tales, riddles, counting rhymes, and children's games. Remizov managed to achieve an organic combination of two aesthetic tasks - the creation of a “truly” symbolist work and the achievement of that “simplicity” desired by artists at the beginning of the century, which “returned” the myth to its bearer, in this case, the child. For the writer, “Salting” remained the most favorite book for the rest of his life. In a dedicatory inscription to his wife on its first edition, he noted: “My first book is “selfless.” You always want to say something, convey something, struggle with something, protect something, but here - in this book - it’s like that. Just. This is how the birds sing (as it seems to us - people - “selflessly”).” The book was unanimously highly appreciated in the artistic community (A. Blok, Andrei Bely, Vyach. Ivanov, etc.). M. Voloshin wrote: ““Posolon” ​​is a book of folk myths and children's fairy tales. Her main treasure is her language.<..>Remizov doesn’t come up with anything. His fabulous talent lies in the fact that he eavesdrops on the silent life of things and phenomena and exposes the inner essence, the ancient dream of each thing. His art is a game. Remizov’s calling is to be a storyteller, to go from house to house and, wrapped in his knitted scarf, tell children and adults in his mysterious, insinuating voice endless fantastic stories about forgotten and naive human gods.” Starting with “Posolon”, the genre of literary fairy tale, based on folklore, became one of the main ones in the writer’s work (collections “Dokuka and Joker” (1914), “Strengthened” (1916), “Russian Women” (1918), etc. ).

The events of the 1905 revolution were the first practical test of those doctrines for which Remizov paid a decade of his youth to become fascinated and which were so difficult for him to “get rid of” during the Vologda period. In 1907, in the publishing house Vyach. Ivanov “Ory”, a collection of Remizov’s apocrypha “Limonar” was published.

The main textual and ideological-thematic source of Remizov’s apocrypha in the collection “Limonar” was the same study by Veselovsky “Research in the field of Russian spiritual verse.” "Limonar" has internal integrity. In his cycle, the writer “explored” the nature of the 1905 revolution, the nature of its driving forces and influence on the people’s destiny. To do this, he turned to ancient Russian apocryphal literature, to the religious, philosophical and aesthetic ideas contained in it.

Remizov did not try to “reconstruct” medieval thinking, in which, as A. N. Veselovsky showed, ancient pagan and Christian ideas were organically combined. He tried to understand the system, paradigms and artistic imagery of this thinking, because he considered it, in some basic elements, to be a living component of the modern thinking of the Russian people.

Remizov's apocrypha are not antique stylizations. The combination of the principle of symbolization, characteristic of medieval thinking and, in particular, of its artistic type, with the principle of “presumption” of parallels and correspondences, characteristic of modern symbolism, allowed the writer to create a cycle of artistically integral works, which in genre are “apocrypha” (i.e. works , “renounced” in content and diverse in form). In Remizov’s depiction, the revolution is a mad whirlwind, a spontaneous “dancer”, destroying everything and bringing chaos (“About the madness of Herodias, how a whirlwind was born on earth”, “The wrath of Elijah the Prophet, from him the Lord hid the day of his memory”). Its disastrousness lies in the fact that the violent creation of the “new sky” and “new man” planned by the revolutionaries is an act inorganic for the people (“Why is the unclean without heels and about the creation of the wolf”). In the system of symbolic correspondences used by the writer, this act was associated with the constant attempts of the forces of Evil to destroy what was pre-established by God (“The Thing Whose Names Are Twelve and a Half”). According to Remizov, the nature of man himself is dual, he is the creation of both God and Satan, but the desire to defeat Death through death led only to it.

The publication of the collection aroused considerable interest among medievalists. Since the late 1900s, Remizov has established friendly contacts with many famous scientists, such as A. A. Shakhmatov, A. I. Yatsimirsky, E. A. Anichkov, M. N. Speransky, I. A. Shlyapkin, I. A. Ryazanovsky and others. Their relationship is evidenced by numerous archival materials, as well as the works of the writer himself. His passion for ancient Russian culture influenced the further spiritual development of S. P. Remizova-Dovgello, on the advice of Vyach. Ivanov, who entered the St. Petersburg Archaeological Institute (1910–1912) with a degree in Russian paleography. In fact, Remizov studied with her and acquired not amateurish, but serious scientific knowledge in the field of Russian antiquities and, in particular, in the field of paleography of Slavic manuscripts. Then he learned to write using the ancient Slavic alphabet - Glagolitic. In the writer’s system of aesthetic self-knowledge, the Glagolitic alphabet initially took on not only the “compensatory” function of a means of introducing him to the chosen scientific world, but also the function of a “sacred language” - an attribute of esoteric knowledge, which was in line with the then interests of Russian modernists in all kinds of “secret doctrines” .

The year 1910 is significant in Remizov’s creative biography as the year the story “Sisters of the Cross” was created. After its appearance, critics started talking about the writer as an equal successor to the traditions of the masters of Russian prose of the 19th century. Along with Andrei Bely’s novel “Petersburg,” the story “Sisters of the Cross” became one of the works that completed the St. Petersburg period of Russian literature. As in the novel “The Pond,” Remizov artistically explored in it the same central problems of theodicy and the causes of human suffering. The plot basis of the work is the story of the tragic fate of the retired official Marakulin. But this “reality”, being projected and then included in the “St. Petersburg text” of Russian literature (the quotation context of the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoevsky), was transformed into a symbol that had mythological origins. In the system of symbolic correspondences, the final suicide of Marakulin, who jumped out of the window, appeared as a new failed attempt to liken himself to the Savior - to take on the “torment of the cross” for the sake of liberating the world from the power of Satanail.

For Remizov, 1912 was a time of summing up the results and the beginning of a new stage of creativity. In 1912, the publication of his Collected Works in eight volumes was completed (published by the Rosehip publishing house; the same set with bibliographic additions was repeated by the Sirin publishing house). It had a well-thought-out structure and presented the reader with a holistic picture of the writer’s work. A comparison of the early editions of Remizov’s works with the editions of the Collected Works allows us to see the dynamics of change in the author’s worldview, the movement from total pessimism to the acquisition of positive values ​​that Remizov sought in the depths of the people’s worldview.

The story “The Fifth Plague” (1912) became one of Remizov’s central works, dedicated to the study of the essence of national character throughout Russian history from ancient times to the present. The main character of the story, investigator Bobrov, is tragically separated from his people, whom he considers himself to have the right to judge and condemn. As is typical for Remizov, the “real” plot from the life of the Russian province was based on multiple symbolic allusions and references to images, situations, conflicts taken from ancient Russian historical and journalistic works. The main sources of the story included the apocrypha “The Word of Methodius of Patara about the Kingdom of the Language of Last Times” and “The Virgin’s Walk through Torment.” The whole story was presented as a chain of “courts”: real and “mental” - courts of conscience of the heroes. Bobrov’s main “court case” is writing an “indictment” against the Russian people. This is a journalistic work built on a masterly interweaving of individual motifs, hidden quotes, and stylistic formulas of ancient Russian monuments. Based on their subtlest contamination, Remizov created a contemporary work that is not a stylized imitation of journalism from the early 17th century. The plot development of the story was subordinated to the disclosure of the increasingly complex theme of the Last Judgment. As we moved toward the finale, the Supreme Court began to take place, but over those who took upon themselves the right to judge and condemn their people. The ending of the work - the death of the hero from a heart attack - was at the same time the moment of his moral insight. Towards the end of the story, hidden quotes from the apocrypha “The Virgin Mary’s Walk through Torment” became more and more frequent. Bobrov “went into agony,” but for Remizov this was the highest forgiveness of the hero, his merging, at least at the moment of death, with the single soul of the people.

By the time of the second Russian revolution, Remizov was a recognized writer, whose artistic worldview organically and firmly included the ideas and categories of ancient Russian culture. Only taking this into account can one adequately understand Remizov’s socio-political and aesthetic views of the period 1917–1921, when before his eyes a new attempt was made to create a “new” sky, earth and man in Russia.

Back in the mid-1900s, Remizov, in general terms, formed an idea of ​​the historical process as a process of development of the people's soul, the course of which is characterized not by the mechanical dynamics of a rectilinearly ascending, forward movement, but by a kind of constant rotation within a system of circles, both similar and different. from friend. In times close to the events of the 1905 revolution, the writer’s theological views were based on an essentially heretical idea (the author’s myth about the unresurrected Christ). Projected onto the predetermined historical fate of Russia, it determined the dead end of its path, as the path of a “closed”, “dog-headed” people. “Limonary” ended with a picture of the total victory of Evil. In the 1910s, Remizov's hopeless pessimism gradually transformed into an awareness of the teleological expediency of suffering. He understood Christ’s feat of the cross as a providential symbol of the path of Russia, a country of “cruciferous” sisters and brothers, whose development takes place in circles of suffering that purifies it. This concept predetermined Remizov’s attitude towards a new attempt to forcibly create a “new world.”

In the period 1917–1921, Remizov experienced a new creative upsurge. Metaphysically, he perceived the revolution as a world fire, in the fire of which the old is destroyed and the new is born both in the world and in his own destiny. It must be taken into account that Remizov, having won a strong literary reputation as a master of prose by 1917, nevertheless became increasingly alien to the literary environment. In a diary entry from the 1930s, he recalled: “I didn’t even know that it was only with the revolution that I sighed. My childhood was cruel, my youth was bitter, my literary life was thorny. The writing environment was vile. Either for show or vulgarity. And no “conviction”. Since childhood, I’ve been thinking about setting things on fire: it started with a toy stove, it was the same stove that I fell into - I just don’t remember what offended me then, but I lit a fire in the stove. Then I burned all my diaries. And I rejoiced at every bomb that exploded. I didn’t see the outcome except to set it on fire.” Remizov wrote about the transformative power of revolutionary fire in the chronicle “General Uprising” (1918), in the reworking of the statements of the philosopher Heraclitus “Electron” (1919), and in the book “Fiery Russia” (1921).

However, the writer did not accept either February or October 1917 as specific socio-political phenomena. He saw in them the stages of a tragic breakdown in the historical development of Russia, the onset of a new “Time of Troubles”, the result of the manipulation of the people’s darkness carried out by a small group of people. According to Remizov, what happened in Russia is a manifestation of the Supreme Court already taking place over the Russian people. Russia was plunged into torment, but behind the suffering, purification was expected - the guarantee of the coming Resurrection.

The end of 1917–1918 became a period of unprecedented journalistic activity of Remizov. In “Simple Gazette”, “Will of the Peoples”, “Evening Bells”, “Will of the Country” and others, Remizov published a number of parables based on ancient Russian sources. These stories about legendary heroes - saints and ascetics - were included by the writer in the context of reality and turned into relevant responses to modern times. Another type of Remizov journalism was direct appeals to the reader, both anonymous and signed with pseudonyms. So, for example, in “Novaya Simple Gazeta” under the pseudonym “Sergei Skrytnik” the work “Invitation // First Letter // To Skrytniks and Silencers” was published. Remizov the publicist called on readers to awaken from silent submission, which leads everyone to the loss of themselves, and all together to becoming a damned “closed” people. At the same time, in his journalism, he drew direct parallels between the Troubles of the 17th century and modernity, which was supposed to update the historical memory of the reader and remind him that only through action and resistance was it possible to overcome that first Troubles and revive Russia. A logical phenomenon of Remizov’s aesthetic self-awareness was the pinnacle work of his journalism - “The Lay of the Death of the Russian Land” (1917). Already contemporaries noted its direct connection (thematic and textual parallels) with the “indictment of the Russian people” - “crying over the devastation of the Russian land”, written by the hero of “The Fifth Plague” Bobrov. However, “The Word of Perdition” was a reflection of the next stage in the development of the writer’s historiosophical concept. Bobrov’s “Lament” is a monologue text - an essay by a literary character. It used artistic techniques of ancient Russian literature and quotes from sources. But the author’s position in this “cry” was the point of view of a single person who opposed himself to Russia. Remizov’s “The Word of Perdition” is a polyphonic text in which the author’s voice was actually one of the voices of the choir. The artistic structure of the work is a complex alloy of rhetorical questions, laments, sentences, parables and prophecies about the fate of Russia. The theme of death turned into the theme of “last times” and the coming Last Judgment. The voices of the prophets Isaiah and Saint John the Theologian sounded. After the apocalyptic prophecies, the voice of Remizov himself was included in the narrative for the first time - direct quotes from his Diary of those years were introduced into the text. In the finale, the cacophony of voices interrupting each other turned into the united sound of a choir, ending with Christian chants. Rus' was embarking on its way of the cross, and for Remizov this was the guarantee of the coming Resurrection; “The Word of Perdition” was a work of a new synthetic genre. Its creation was in line with the main direction of Remizov’s journalism of the revolutionary years - to remove the seal from “closed lips”, to let Russia itself speak - from the spiritual elite to those whose voices have faded in time.

A manifestation of Remizov’s attitude towards the Bolshevik dictatorship, one of whose decrees prohibited freedom of the press and the activities of “counter-revolutionary” parties, was the creation of a new unique “game”, which turned out to be the longest in his life - the Monkey Great and Free Chamber (Obezvelvolpala). The fantastic founders of this “secret society” - monkeys - were akin to the Houynghnmas - noble horses, into whose country Swift’s Gulliver ended up on one of his travels. Remizov’s monkeys despised the lack of freedom and violence that reigned in the human community, and accepted into their Chamber only those who opposed such a world order in any way. At the head of Obezvelvolpal was the unknown and never seen king Asyka-Valakhtantararakh-tarandarufa-Asyka-First-Apes-the-Great, and all affairs were managed by the former clerk of Obezvelvolpal, canceilarius Alexey Remizov. The latter sent letters on behalf of Asyka to people who were accepted into the Chamber and became servants, cavaliers and princes of Obezvelvolpal. The origins of the attributes and personalities of the “game” go back to 1908, when Tsar Asyka first appeared as a comic character in Remizov’s play “The Tragedy of Judas Prince Iscariot,” and to 1910–1912, when the writer became interested in correspondence with friends in the Glagolitic alphabet, which later became “ secret writing" Obezvelvolpal. However, the ideological concept of the “game” in Obezvelvolpal belonged entirely to the period of “war communism” and was based on opposition to the Bolshevik regime hidden under a mockery mask. One of the “meetings” of this society in the period of 1920 was recorded in his memoirs by the artist V. A. Milashevsky: “Mikhail Alekseevich [Kuzmin. - A.G.] invited me to go together to a meeting of the “Monkey Chamber” to its Supreme Master Alexei Mikhailovich Remizov. The knights of the Chapter began to approach. Vyacheslav Shishkov. Zamyatin Evgeniy Ivanovich. Yuri Verkhovsky That's all those gathered on this first evening of my acquaintance. Soon everyone sat down at the table - Eat! Eat! - said Alexey Mikhailovich. - The richer you are, the happier you are!.. This is sprinkled with the crushed liver of the Black Raven!.. Try to get it! // Then, lowering his voice to a whisper, with the significant air and conviction of an old healer: - Saves you from sudden arrests!.. That’s all we live for! Otherwise!..” Despite the memoirist’s inherent desire for literary embellishment of facts, the memoirs record a mixture of friendly jokes and politically oriented mockery of the paradoxes of revolutionary reality, characteristic of the communication style of the members of Obezvelvolpal. In 1917–1921, joining the Obezvelvolpal became a significant gesture for many, in which the modernist “play with reality” was combined with moral opposition to the realities of our time. It is characteristic that the author of “Untimely Thoughts” M. Gorky was among the princes of Obezvelvolpal, and that shortly before his arrest N. Gumilyov asked Remizov for the honor of joining the Chamber. The title of “Bishop of the monkey Zamutiy” was borne by E. Zamyatin, in whose novel “We” the world of free people behind the Green Wall was largely based on the paradigms of Remizov’s monkey kingdom of freedom. Cavaliers of the monkey sign were A. A. Akhmatova, Andrei Bely, V. V. Rozanov, F. K. Sologub, A. F. Koni and many others. In February 1919, Remizov was arrested by the Cheka in connection with the persecution of the Socialist Revolutionaries, in whose publications he published. It is characteristic that in the book “Spirited Rus'” (1927), in which the writer synthesized the chronicle of his life, historical events and works of the revolutionary years, he included the story of his stay in the Petrograd Cheka (on Gorokhovaya Street) in the section “Obezvelvolpal”, calling it “ walking through pea torment b. the clerk and three cavaliers were decapitated.” Since 1920, Remizov began efforts to obtain permission to leave and left Russia on August 7, 1921.

From 1921 to 1923, Remizov stayed in Berlin, where he participated in the meetings of the Berlin House of Arts, the Writers' Club, and the Free Philosophical Association (Wolfils). Russian literary Berlin then represented a kind of border space, the specificity of which was “the unprecedented intensity of the “dialogue” between the metropolis and emigration within this island of Russian culture.” For Remizov himself, the question of returning to his homeland had not yet been finally resolved. Thus, in a letter to S. M. Alyansky dated January 21, 1922, he said: “I do not consider myself an emigrant, but only temporarily living outside Russia, as if in a sanatorium to restore lost strength.” Archival data has been preserved indicating that at the end of 1923 Remizov submitted documents to the Consular Department of Soviet Russia to obtain permission for himself and his wife to return to their homeland. All the circumstances and reasons for the writer’s final decision to remain in exile still need further research, but the fact remains that on November 5, 1923, the Remizovs moved to Paris.

The years of Parisian emigration became a time of fruitful work for Remizov. 1920-1930s - a period of thinking and creating the writer’s main books, based on autobiographical material. Diving into the depths of one’s “I” and into memories became an inexhaustible source of Remizov’s creativity. At the same time, he understood “memory” not only as “real” memories, but also as a deep “primordial memory” of his reincarnations over the centuries. The paradox of the emigrant period of Remizov’s work (from the late 1920s to 1949) was that then he worked on several major works at once, managed to complete them, but the conditions of the emigrant printing business prevented their publication in the form of separate books. This led, firstly, to the fact that these books were published in periodicals - in the form of separate chapters and parts, presented as separate works of small genres. Secondly, the consequence of their actual unpublished nature was the endless continuation of the author’s work on them, reaching not only the creation of new editions, but also the division of the entire book into two new ones, only genetically related to their source. Most of this series of books, which can only conditionally be called “memoirs,” were published only after the Second World War, and some of them were published posthumously. Thus, the book “With Trimmed Eyes” (1951) is dedicated to the time of childhood (hereinafter the year of publication is indicated), the years of exile - “Iveren” (1986), the St. Petersburg period of his literary career - “Meetings. Petersburg gulley" (partially published in 1981), the years of Parisian emigration - "Myshkina's pipe" (1953), "Music teacher" (1981). Based on the biography of his wife, Remizov created books about her life, “Olya” (1927) and “In a Pink Splendor” (1952).

Remizov never stopped drawing. At the beginning of the century, his graphics were appreciated, which is confirmed by Remizov’s participation in the “Triangle” exhibition organized by N. Kulbin (1910). Since those years, his friendly contacts with artists M. Larionov, N. Goncharova, D. Burliuk began. During the years of the revolution, the problems that arose with the publication of books gave rise to Remizov’s so-called “food literature” - handwritten books” based on the type of handwriting and structure of the manuscript, which were direct imitations of ancient Russian manuscripts of the 17th century, written in cursive. Only in the design of titles and initials was there a connection with the aesthetics of futuristic publications. At the same time, Remizov began the tradition of creating albums of portrait images and auto illustrations. The Berlin period was the time of Remizov's closest friendly contacts with artists (V. Kandinsky, N. Puni, B. Anisfeld, N. Zaretsky and others) who appreciated his original pictorial style. Since the 1920s, the creation of a plastic image by Remizov often preceded the creation of a verbal image. Drawing became an organic part - a stage of his work on the book.

In the 1930s, Remizov’s creation of illustrated albums turned from an aesthetic hobby into a means of making money. As N.V. Reznikova recalled: “In those years (20-30s), Remizov’s drawings and inscriptions were a miracle of the finest graphics. A. M. compiled albums from these drawings, or illustrating his works, fairy tales, or on the theme of some events or literary works, or portraits of familiar faces or writers. A.M made these albums for sale. The Remizovs' friends visited the addresses of wealthy people, art lovers, or simply people who wanted to help a writer in need. Selling albums sometimes helped the Remizovs survive in the most difficult moments.” By the mid-1930s, the author's list of illustrated albums totaled 157 issues.

Remizov lived in Paris during the Second World War, surviving all the hardships of the German occupation. In 1943, S.P. Remizova-Dovgello died, which was an irreparable loss for the writer. The need to express in creativity the unending pain for his deceased wife and to punish the awareness of continuing life with his beloved, but in a different, metaphysical plane, gave impetus to a new rise in Remizov’s creativity, which manifested itself in his creation of the cycle “Legends through the Ages” - a set of works written on the basis of ancient Russian sources. Chronological framework of the cycle: 1947–1957. It included “A Tale of Two Beasts. Ikhnelat" (1947–1949), "Savva Grudtsyn" (1949), "Brunz-vig" (1949), "Melusina" (1949–1950), "Bova Korolevich" (1950–1951), "About Peter and Fevronin Muromsky "(1951), "Tristan and Isolde" (1951–1953), "Gregory and Ksenia" (1954–1957). They were published in the magazine “Vozrozhdenie” and in the non-profit publishing house “Opleshnik”. In addition to revealing the author’s myth about the immortality of love, Remizov’s artistic task was a kind of “research” of the process of literary development: its modern trends and aesthetic transformations that accompanied the transition from medieval to modern literature.

The idea of ​​lost love has become one of the central, deeply personal ideas of the cycle. As it was created, the idea of ​​Love was transformed in Remizov’s artistic worldview. Having arisen from the bitterness of the loss of a loved one, it first turned into the author’s desire to resurrect a passionate earthly feeling in art. Subsequently, the process of ascent of this idea to the highest level began, when it acquired the appearance of Divine Heavenly Love. It was She, who illuminated with a ray the last pages of “Savva Grudtsyn” and “Bova Korolevich” and already shining brightly in “Tristan and Isolde” and the story “About Peter and Fevronia of Murom”, who became the religious and philosophical basis of the last “legend through the ages” - “Gregory and Ksenia." This legend was published shortly after the writer’s death on November 26, 1957, and, in fact, became his literary testament.

In “Gregory and Ksenia” the entire hierarchy of appearances was presented

love that has passed through “legends through the ages.” Remizov's heroes loved and suffered from the loss of earthly love, but they, each in their own way, chose Heavenly Love. The writer understood that unique combination of a story about human passion and a story about a conscious preference for the highest Christian Love, which was inherent in the source, which made this ancient Russian story one of the eve works standing on the threshold of the classic Russian novel. Like all “legends through the ages,” the story “Gregory and Ksenia” was organically included in Remizov’s “autobiographical space.” It reflected two facets of the author's myth - separated love and the mystery of fate. In the process of creating this work, Remizov wondered: “my destiny is a sacrifice for something. Is it really for creating books? Thus, the sacrifice of the heroes - for the sake of creating a “holy place” - was interpreted by the author as an expanded metaphor, hiding another, deeper meaning of the work. The very fact of creating this text by a blind author was his last sacrifice to creativity, which conquers death.

Remizov, turning to the genre of “legends” in the last decade of his life, created a complete cycle of works based on the texts of ancient Russian “stories” and at the same time having a new form that synthetically combined the characteristics of genres of different literary genres. The tragic wanderings of his heroes ended with their sacrificial death, which had a mysterious character. Consistently developing a system of symbolic correspondences, Remizov in each legend comprehended his fate, the results and meaning of the path traveled. Speaking about the ideological concept of the entire cycle, we can conclude that for the author himself, an act of a mysterious nature was a creative act that transforms life and gives immortality. This interpretation combined the heritage of Russian symbolism of the early 20th century and the Christian symbolism of ancient Russian literature. This was the result of the process of self-knowledge, the components of which were the entirety of Remizov’s creativity.

. One of the most prominent stylists in Russian literature.

Alexey Remizov was born on July 6, 1877 in Moscow. The boy grew up in a wealthy merchant family. His mother belonged to the old Russian family of the Naydenovs, known for observing traditions and rituals. His uncle Nikolai Aleksandrovich Naydenov, his mother’s brother, was the founder of a large Russian bank and chairman of the Moscow Exchange Society. His rich library was considered one of the best in the city, and thanks to this Alexey Remizov read many books. Also, the boy’s mother had progressive views and participated in the Bogorodsk circle of nihilists.

Since childhood, Alexey was distinguished by his rich imagination and desire for mischief. His childhood hobbies: drawing, music, theater, remained with him throughout his life. Severe myopia prevented him from receiving a systematic musical education, but influenced the development of his imagination. The playful beginning of life, which he accepted as the main one, accompanied him all subsequent years.

Alexey received a good education at home. He studied at a commercial school, after which he entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. He was interested in the works of Herzen and Chernyshevsky, and read Marxist literature.

After his first year, Remizov went on a trip abroad, which became fatal for him. He brings a suitcase of prohibited literature from abroad, this became the reason for close attention from the police. On the day of remembrance of the victims of Khodynka, Alexey participates in mass gatherings, for which he was detained by the police, then he was accused of organizing riots and exiled to Penza for two years. There he only worsened his situation by joining Vsevolod Meyerhold’s circle. This led to new charges and exile to the Vologda region for three years under police supervision.

In Vologda he had the opportunity to meet many Russian philosophers and public figures. Also there, several fateful events happened to him: he met his future wife, finally realized his creative destiny and forever rejected revolutionary activity for himself.

There, in Vologda, Alexey Mikhailovich published his first texts in the newspaper “Courier”. He begins to write under the influence of Veselovsky's work on Russian verse. At the same time, the first edition of the novel “The Pond” appeared, in which he anticipated the traditions of existential literature.

Returning from exile in 1905 to St. Petersburg, Remizov began active literary work: his fairy tales and legends “Limonar, that is: Spiritual Meadow”, “Posolon”, “Dokuka and Joker”, “Nicholas’ Parables”, the novel “Pond” were published. and the stories “The Hours”, “The Fifth Plague”, dramatic works in the spirit of medieval mystery plays “The Tragedy of Judas, Prince Iscariot”, “Demon Act”, “King Maximilian”. In 1908, “Demon Action” was presented at the Komissarzhevskaya Theater. The writer was ranked among symbolism and, more broadly, modernism, although Remizov himself did not position himself as a symbolist.

In 1910, the story “Sisters of the Cross” was published, which showed the mature Remizov, a successor to the best traditions of Russian literature. During the St. Petersburg period he wrote a lot, improving his artistic style. The author's biography and books become well known to a wide Russian readership. In 1912, Aleksey Remizov published an 8-volume collection of his works in the publishing house of Vyacheslav Ivanov. By 1917 he was already a popular, accomplished writer.

During the years of the revolution and subsequent years of war communism, Remizov remained in St. Petersburg, although he was politically anti-Bolshevik. In the summer of 1921, he went to Germany for treatment, “temporarily,” as the writer believed, but he was not destined to return back.

For two years he was in a state of uncertainty and filed a petition to return to the Soviet Union. However, in November 1923, the Remizov family moved to Paris. The reasons for this choice remain unknown. This is where they will live until the end of their days. Aleksey Mikhailovich Remizov continued to consider himself part of Russia all his life. During the Second World War, he actively sympathized with the Soviet Union. The years of emigration became very productive for the writer. He writes a lot, continues to draw, and in the 1930s he even earned his living from drawings.

The works of Remizov, an artist, were admired by Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, and Pablo Picasso. During the war years he kept a “graphic diary”, which reflected dreams, portraits of his contemporaries and the events that worried him. At the end of his life he received Soviet citizenship.