Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin: biography, list of books and interesting facts

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

87 years of this man's life contained an entire era. Raised on the traditions of classical literature, he tried to reflect in his books a new type of heroes born in different historical conditions.

It seems I was a capable boy…

He was the youngest child in a large family of military musician Alexander Abramovich Zilber, who served in the Omsk Infantry Regiment. Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin was born in the spring of 1902, when a large family had been living in Pskov for more than 5 years. All 6 children of the Zilbers were gifted, subsequently reaching serious heights not only in music, but also in science. So, Alexander became a prominent composer and conductor, who later took the pseudonym Ruchiov,Elena is a musicologist, Lev is the founder of an entire scientific school of Soviet medical virology.

The children of Kapellmeister Zilber owed much to their mother, Anna Grigoryevna, for the solidity of their intellectual and creative baggage for the future life. She was a pianist, a graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, with a good education and broad-mindedness, which made their house a popular meeting place for the progressive youth of provincial Pskov. It is obvious that it was under her influence that the future writer quickly became interested in reading.

Favorite writer - Stevenson

He became a real book-swallower, devouring large quantities of literature of the most diverse nature: fairy tales by Andersen and Perrault, books by Dickens and Victor Hugo, works of Russian classics, adventure novels by Fenimore Cooper and Aymar, stories about Sherlock Holmes and tabloids about noble robbers and detectives. As Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin later recalled, he especially liked Robert Stevenson, who struck him with his ability to capture attention without a trace, through "the power of cohesion of words that gives birth to a miracle of art."

In addition to the mother, who paid great attention to the development of children, the elder brother Leo was a great authority for the boy. The person who had a great influence on the formation of the literary tastes of the future writer and instilled in him a real passion for literature was Lev's friend and classmate - Yuri Tynyanov - later a famous literary critic and writer, author of "Lieutenant Kizhe", "Kyukhli" and "The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar". Tynyanov for a long time became a true friend andfor Kaverin. It is interesting that he later married the sister of Leo and Venya - Elena, and Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin himself was subsequently married all his long life to Tynyanov's sister - Lydia Nikolaevna.

His universities

During his studies at the Pskov provincial gymnasium, where he spent 6 years, the only problem for Kaverin was mathematics. Since the gymnasium, he has been trying to write poetry, which was at that time a common thing for young men with a humanitarian mindset.

Kaverin's childhood ended in 1918 after the capture of Pskov by German troops, and he graduated from high school already in Moscow. There he goes to university. Then he moves to the capital - Petrograd. There, through Tynyanov, he became close to many famous writers - V. Shklovsky, E. Schwartz, Vs. Ivanov and others. Kaverin also dreams of studying literature, in particular versification. Veniamin Alexandrovich, whose biography eventually became an example of selfless service to Russian literature, received the first harsh lessons along the way. Osip Mandelstam proved himself the most cruel in relation to his poetic creations: “Poetry must be protected from people like you!”.

The poems were over, and Kaverin decides to devote himself to science. He enters the history department of Petrograd University and at the same time the Arabic department of the Institute of Living Oriental Languages.

The first experience of a prose writer

And yet, Kaverin was not destined to overcome the craving for writing. One day after a theory examLobachevsky, he saw a poster about a literary competition held by the House of Writers. The ten minutes that the road to the house took, Kaverin later called fateful, which determined the main features of his life. He decides to switch to prose and contemplates his story, which he will enter the competition with.

Kaverin's first prose experiment, en titled "The Eleventh Axiom", was awarded only the third prize. The amount of 3,000 rubles was only enough for six toffees - this is how money depreciated in 1920, but this was his first literary fee, his first literary success. Kaverin always remembered him. Veniamin Alexandrovich - a biography, a list of books published around the world, were evidence of the high appreciation of his work and talent - until the end of his days he remembered these six toffees.

Serapion Brothers

On February 1, 1921, the first meeting of the literary circle, called the Serapion Brothers, took place. Many “sympathizers” and like-minded people subsequently took part in the meetings, but the canonical composition was constant: Lev Lunts, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Ilya Gruzdev, Nikolai Nikitin, Elena Polonskaya, Nikolai Tikhonov, Vsevolod Ivanov, Mikhail Slonimsky, Konstantin Fedin. Kaverin became one of the permanent members of the association. Veniamin Alexandrovich, whose works began to appear regularly in the press by that time, actively participated in the meetings. He remained faithful to the "brotherhood" and the creative principles proclaimed by him to the end - Kaverin and half a century later celebrated the beginning of the "Serapion chronology" - February 1 - as the most important holiday.

And these principles were extremely out of time. The very name, borrowed by the founding fathers of the circle from a collection of short stories by the classic of German romanticism Ernest Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, spoke of complete apoliticality. This collection mentioned the literary community, named after the legendary Christian hermit and ascetic Serapion, and the proclamation of the main value of literary work, its quality, without taking into account the worldview and political views of the author, was almost a provocation in the third year of Soviet power.

Tough Times

Soon, the "brothers" themselves became clear the naivety of their noble motivation. Ideological differences among them began to manifest themselves more and more clearly. "Westerners" - Lunts, Kaverin, Slonimsky - put plot, adventurous genres above others, "eastern wing" - M. Zoshchenko, Vs. Ivanov - gravitated to the description of life using folklore motifs. The difference in literary priorities at first did not interfere with the preservation of creative and friendly unity, but under the powerful blows of official criticism and life circumstances, it collapsed as well.

Time scattered the "brothers" on different sides, making some of them principal opponents. Lunts died tragically early in 1924; Ivanov, Slonimsky, Nikitin began to zealously sing the pathos of the revolutionary struggle; Tikhonov and Fedin later held senior positions in the Writers' Union of the USSR, rigidly pursuing the party line, not sparing any dissent. When, after 1946, under the powerful pressure of ideological organs,Zoshchenko, only one of the "Serapion brothers" supported him and maintained warm relations with him - Veniamin Kaverin. He finally broke off relations with Fedin, when in 1968 he did not allow the publication of Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward.

Hard work and commitment

In the "Serapion" times, the founder of proletarian literature, Maxim Gorky, noted that one of the most talented writers of the younger generation was Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin. "Two Captains" (1940-1945) - a novel with which the name of the writer is primarily personified - is rumored to be very popular with Stalin, and he approved the award of Kaverin in 1946 with the Stalin Prize, after the release of the second book about the adventures of Sanya Grigoriev. Wish Fulfillment (1935-1936) and Open Book (1953-1956) enjoyed great popularity. During the war, Kaverin actively worked in the Northern Fleet, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Star.

Perhaps all this helped Kaverin avoid repressions similar to those suffered by his elder brother Leo, who conducted many of his studies in the field of virology while in the camps. A letter to Stalin asking for his release was also signed by Kaverin. Official criticism repeatedly fell upon the writer, accusing his books of being apolitical and entertaining.

Despite this, the writer did not betray his beliefs. He participated in the publication of the anthology "Literary Moscow" (1956), banned by the party authorities. Kaverin publicly refused to participate in harassmentBoris Pasternak in 1958, wrote a letter in defense of Daniel and Sinyavsky, fought for the publication of books by M. Bulgakov and A. Solzhenitsyn.

The legacy of a writer and a man

Perhaps it was more convenient for the official authorities to consider him an armchair writer who does not seriously influence the mass consciousness and individual minds of readers. But such an opinion cannot be considered reliable, given the volume and quality of Kaverin's writings.

“Two Captains” was reprinted more than 70 times during the life of the writer, they and “The Open Book” were repeatedly filmed. Reading people know such things as "Brawler, or Evenings on Vasilyevsky Island" (1928), "Unknown Friend" (1957), "Seven Pairs of Unclean" (1962), "Double Portrait" (1963), "O. Senkovsky (Baron Brambeus)" (1929, 1964), "In front of the mirror" (1972), etc.

He is the author of many stories and essays, dozens of children's fairy tales. His memoirs left a special mark, especially the book "Epilogue" (1979-1989), on the editorial of which he worked until the last hour, before his departure, which happened in May 1989. But even these volumes cannot tell everything about the life of Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin. The true image of this writer and person is preserved in the memory and memoirs of contemporaries decades later, and the scale of his talent, as many literary critics and ordinary readers note, has yet to be truly appreciated.