Chukovsky Nikolai: biography and photos

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Chukovsky Nikolai Korneevich is the son of a famous father, Russian and Soviet writer Korney Chukovsky, his firstborn, who also connected his life with literature, translations of prose and poetry. He was born in Odessa on November 4, 1965. His mother, Maria Borisovna, was nee Golfeld. After the wedding, she went with her husband to London, who at that time worked as a correspondent for the printed publication Odessa News. A year later, she returned to Odessa in the last month of pregnancy and gave birth to a son.

Nikolai Chukovsky: biography

Nikolai spent all his childhood in St. Petersburg and in the resort village of Kuokkale (Petersburg region). The environment of their family could be envied. My father was friends with well-known writers and poets in the literary field, such as K. Vaginov, N. Zabolotsky, M. Slonimsky, V. Kaverin, etc. Therefore, he very quickly introduced his son into this circle. Nikolai was lucky to capture A. Blok in his memory. He and his father spent the summer of 1921 at the dacha of the Literary Fund with such great personalities as O. Mandelstam, V. Khodasevich, R. Dobuzhinsky andothers.

Study and the beginning of creativity

Chukovsky Nikolai graduated from the Tenishev School in 1921, he spent several years studying at the IFF of Petrograd University (until 1924). Then in 1930 he graduated from the Supreme High Command at the Institute of Art History in Leningrad.

And soon he began working for Nikolai Gumilyov in the writing studio "Sounding Shell". And then Chukovsky Nikolai became very close to the Petrograd Association of Young Writers "Serapion Brothers". Once he even became the hero of one satirical work "The Aristocrat" by Mikhail Zoshchenko.

M. Voloshin

From 1922 to 1928, his poems were repeatedly published under the pseudonym Nikolai Radishchev. His poetry was approved by M. Gorky, N. Gumilyov, V. Khodasevich. In 1928 Chukovsky Nikolay published the first collection of poems "Through the Wild Paradise", after which he began to engage in poetic translations.

The father introduced his son to Maximilian Voloshin, a famous Russian poet, literary critic and landscape painter, and Nikolai even visited him in Koktebel. There he met another famous Russian writer and poet, Alexander Bely.

In the middle of the summer of 1932, Chukovsky went on a trip to the Litfond's rest house in Koktebel. There he witnessed the last days of the life of M. Voloshin, who died of a second stroke on August 11, 1932. Nikolai Chukovsky was at his funeral. Friends carried the coffin in their arms to the very top of the Kuchuk-Yanyshar hill.

Case

In the period from 1937 to 1938, the name of Chukovsky, along with the names of L. Nikulin, V. Kibalchich, G. Kuklin, B. Lifshitz and others, began to be mentioned in investigation cases on anti-Soviet agitation among Moscow and Leningrad writers. He accidentally escaped arrest.

In 1939 Nikolai was drafted into the army. At first he was a participant in the Soviet-Finnish war, and then in the Great Patriotic War he served in the army as a military commissar for the newspaper Red B altic Fleet. In July 1941, Chukovsky Nikolay came on foot from the B altic port of Paldiski to Tallinn, with him was a group of several people from the 10th bomber air brigade, which was almost completely destroyed by the Germans in the first days of the war.

In the autumn of the same year, his younger brother Boris died near Moscow. Nikolay suffered the death of his brother very hard.

Leningrad

During the siege of Leningrad, Chukovsky was in the city. Then he became friends with the famous bibliophile critic A. Tarasenkov. In October 1943, he was appointed as an instructor in the Main Political Directorate of the Navy of the Soviet Union, the Navy Publishing Office. Once, the writer miraculously survived, because, having stayed up late at Leonid Rachmaninov's house, he did not have time to draw the bridges. Arriving home in the morning, he saw that his house had been bombed.

In 1946 Nikolai was demobilized. And then he started translating popular works by famous foreign writers such as M. Twain, R. L. Stevenson, E. Seton-Thompson, Y. Tuwim and others.

In the 50s, Chukovsky took up his memoirs. By the endIn his lifetime, he was a member of the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR and the RSFSR, served as chairman of the section of translators of the same Union of Writers and was in the leadership of the publishing house "Soviet Writer".

Nikolai Chukovsky: books

He began his creative activity with poems, absolutely traditional in form and theme. He was first published in the almanac "Ushkuiniki" in 1922 under the pseudonym N. Radishchev, these were his three poems: "Above the golden domes", "To the soul" and "And the lights are burning in the temple."

In the same year, several of his poems also appeared in the newspaper Nakanune. Then he began to publish in the publishing houses "Russian Contemporary", "Leningrad", "Red Raven", "Sounding Shell", etc. M. Gorky strongly supported the poetic experiments of a talented young man. In 1928, his only collection of poems, Through the Wild Paradise, will be released.

Soon he began to collaborate with the children's magazines Hedgehog and Murzilka, where he wrote poems for children, but critics spoke not very flattering about them, they say, they are weak and should not be remembered.

Then he leaves children's poetry and takes up the novel "Youth" (1930), a year later a collection of his novels and stories "In a Sunny House" is published, and then in 1933 - the book "Tales", official criticism spoke negatively about them: the author was accused of having a limited outlook.

The novel "Yaroslavl" (1938) about the anti-Soviet uprising in Yaroslavl in 1918 became a creative success.

After the war, the theme of heroism became the main one. Byhis story "Sea Hunter" (1945) was made into a film. One of his brightest and best works was the novel B altic Sky (1955).

Last years of life

Nikolai Korneevich Chukovsky died suddenly on November 4, 1965. According to his wife, Lydia, he took a nap after dinner and never woke up again. The death of a son for 83-year-old Korney Ivanovich was a terrible test. He then often wrote about him in his diaries and letters.

N. K. Chukovsky was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy cemetery. He was married to Marina Nikolaevna Reinke (1903-1993). She bore him two sons - Nikolai (communications engineer) and Dmitry (television director).

On the anniversary of his death, one of the "Serapions" will write that Chukovsky was a real writer of the 30s, 40s and 50s, but a man of the 20s, which is characterized by awareness of the responsibility of serving great literature, a measure of taste and imagery.