Writer Alexander Green biography. Creativity and personal position

Alexander Stepanovich Green ( real name– Grinevsky) is a Soviet prose writer from Russia, whose name is always remembered along with the extravaganza story “Scarlet Sails”. His real name is Grinevsky, which helped him create the fictional country “Greenland”.

The poet was born in Vyatka province, Slobotskaya August 23 (11), 1880. Even as a child, he loved to read books about different places in the world and people’s travels; he wanted to get to know the world so much that there were even cases when he tried to run away from home. When in 1896 Grinevsky completed his studies at the four-year Vyatka educational institution, he moved to Odessa, and after which he became a tramp for 6 years.

At that moment, when Alexander was working on the ship, he wanted to become a navigator, but over time he resigned himself and forgot about this dream. Green managed to immerse himself in many professions, he was a loader and a lumberjack, he tried his hand at fishing, but all these activities did not help him cope with the desire that forced him to go into service. He had to survive exactly 9 months in order to return home. A third of this time he spent in a punishment cell, and the rest of the time he ended up as a deserter.

During his service, he became close to the socialist revolutionaries, who lured him into activities with a propaganda bent. Support for the interests of sailors in Sevastopol ended for Alexander in 1903 with prison for 2 years, but this did not stop him from his propaganda activities. They wanted to send Green into exile in Siberia for ten years, but with the help of an amnesty he avoided this punishment.

Grinevsky’s first story “To Italy” was published in 1906, and then the story “The Case” appeared, the peculiarity of which was that for the first time the author wrote his pseudonym “Alexander Stepanovich Green”. Being poor and suffering from tuberculosis, in 1924 the writer moved to Feodosia, continuing to write various novels and stories.

The writer died of stomach cancer (July 8, 1932), in Old Crimea, where he came to live in 1930. In the city, he was buried in the cemetery in the exact place where his beloved sea was visible.

6th grade about his life for children

Biography of Green Alexander Stepanovich about the main thing

Alexander Stepanovich Green (Grinevsky) is a prose poet, philosopher, and also one of the representatives of Russian neo-romanticism. Author of popular romantic books such as “Running on the Waves” and “Scarlet Sails”.

On August 23, 1880 he was born in Slobodskaya Vyatka province. His father was Stepan Evseevich Grinevsky, who was a participant in the Polish uprising, as a result of which, at the age of twenty, he was sent into exile indefinitely. His mother is Anna Stepanovna Grinevskaya, a Russian woman who worked as a doctor. In 1889, Alexander was already in the preparatory class of the district school, and that’s where the nickname “Green” came from. His actions, according to the teachers, were the worst of all, for which they wanted to expel him, but still he entered the first grade. When he entered the second grade, he wrote a poem disgracing the teachers and still found himself expelled.

At the age of fifteen, he was left without his mother, who died of tuberculosis. After this, his father had a wedding with Lydia Boretskaya. Due to the fact that Alexander had a very tense relationship with his father’s wife, he decided to live separately and began to earn extra money, for example, by copying documents.

Alexander Stepanovich wrote quite a lot of famous romantic works, which were mentioned at the very beginning of this article. He began his work in 1906, writing the stories “The Merit of Private Panteleev” and “Elephant and Moska”. At the age of 28 (1908), he created his first publication - “The Invisible Cap”.

In connection with his marriage to twenty-four-year-old Vera Abramova, he wrote “One Hundred Miles Along the River,” where the key characters in the story personify this couple.

In 1914, Green began collaborating with the New Satyricon. The same magazine published his well-known collection “An Incident on Dog Street.”

In 1920, Alexander Stepanovich continued his own literary movement, taking up the novel “The Shining World,” which was released in Leningrad 4 years later. He also showed his talent in the works: “The Pied Piper”, “Fandango”, “The Loquacious Brownie”.

In 1926 he completed probably his most famous and basic novel, “Running on the Waves,” which was released in 1928.
In 1932, the poet’s last edition, “Fantastic Novels,” was published.

In 1932, on July 8, the poet left this world in Old Crimea due to stomach cancer; they decided to bury him in a local cemetery on the sea coast, which Green loved very much.

Interesting facts and dates from life

GREEN, ALEXANDER STEPANOVICH (1880?1932), present. surname Grinevsky, Russian prose writer, poet. Born on August 11 (23), 1880 in Slobodskaya Vyatka province. in the family of an exiled Pole who took part in the uprising of 1863. He graduated from the four-year Vyatka City School. He spent six years wandering, worked as a loader, a navvy, a traveling circus performer, and a railway worker. In 1902, due to extreme need, he voluntarily (“I’ll be fed and clothed”) entered military service and spent several months in a punishment cell. The hardship of a soldier's life forced Green to desert, he became close to the social revolutionaries and took up underground work in different cities Russia. In 1903 he was arrested, served in a Sevastopol prison, and was exiled to Siberia for ten years (he fell under the October amnesty of 1905). Until 1910, Green lived under someone else’s passport in St. Petersburg, was again arrested and deported to Siberia, from where he escaped and returned to St. Petersburg. He spent his second, two-year exile in the Arkhangelsk province.

The years of living under an assumed name became the time of a break with the revolutionary past and Green’s development as a writer. After the first published story To Italy (1906), the following - The Merit of Private Panteleev (1906) and Elephant and Pug (1906) - were removed from print by censorship.

Green's first collections of stories, The Invisible Cap (1908) and Stories (1910), attracted critical attention. In 1912-1917 Greene worked actively, publishing about 350 stories in more than 60 publications. They strengthened the writer's manner of extracting a dream of human happiness from tragic reality. The noble people invented by Green inhabited the fictional cities of Liss, Zurbagan, Gel-Gyu - the “mainland” that would later be called Greenland.

He enthusiastically greeted the February Revolution of 1917; he considered subsequent events a tragedy. Green saw and described “people covering their faces with their hands... they rushed and fell... they were covered in blood” (note Trifles, published 1918 in the magazine “New Satyricon”). In the midst of the savagery and chaos that the Bolshevik rule unleashed on the country, Green wrote such works as the extravaganza story (1923), the novels The Shining World (1924), The Golden Chain (1925), Running on the Waves (1928) and other works, in which created their own romantic world of human happiness.

The Scarlet Sails extravaganza, one of the brightest and most life-affirming works of Soviet literature, was written in the Petrograd House of Arts. In hungry and cold Petrograd, according to the writer’s original plan, the action of Scarlet Sails was supposed to take place. However, as Greene worked, he moved the action to the city of Caperna, in the name of which literary scholars subsequently found consonance with the Gospel Capernaum. The love story of Assol and Gray, their dream come true, was based on the conviction expressed by Green: “I understood one simple truth. It’s about making miracles with your own hands...” Scarlet Sails became a landmark book for the Thaw generation of the 1960s and the romantics of the 1970s.

The real life around him rejected Green's world along with its creator. Critical remarks about the uselessness of the writer appeared more and more often, the myth of the “foreigner in Russian literature” was created, and Green was published less and less. The writer, suffering from tuberculosis, left in 1924 for Feodosia, where he experienced extreme poverty, and in 1930 he moved to the village. Old Crimea.

Brief biography of A.S. Greena - option 2

Alexander Stepanovich Green - Russian poet, prose writer (1880?1932).
Alexander's real name is Grinevsky. He was born on August 23, 1880 in the Slobodskaya Vyatka province into the family of an ordinary exiled Pole. His father was a participant in the 1863 uprising. Alexander's mother was Russian. She died when Alexander was only 13 years old.

In 1896, after graduating from the four-year Vyatka School, the future poet left for Odessa. Since childhood, he was attracted to stories about sailors and travels, and was attracted by the theme of discoveries and accomplishments.

In Odessa, Alexander Green tried to fulfill his childhood dream - to go to sea. However, he had to wander a little in search of at least some suitable work. He spent six years wandering, working as a loader, a traveling circus performer, a railway worker, etc. Several times he was lucky enough to go to sea as a sailor on the Odessa-Batumi-Odessa route. Upon his return, Green realized that this job was not for him.

In 1902, due to great need, he voluntarily entered military service and spent several months in a punishment cell. While serving in a reserve infantry battalion, Greene joined the Social Revolutionaries, who helped him desert military service. He found common interests with social revolutionaries and began to conduct underground work in different cities of Russia. In 1903, Greene was arrested for propaganda work and his “wrong” appeals to society. He served a severe sentence in a Sevastopol prison, then was exiled to Siberia for ten years. In 1905 he came under amnesty. Until 1910, Alexander Green was in hiding and lived under an assumed name in St. Petersburg, then he was again arrested and deported to Siberia, from where he fled to St. Petersburg.

Green wrote many stories before he found “his” hero. The writer composed romantic short stories in which events develop in artificial and sometimes exotic circumstances. In 1908, Greene published his first collection of short stories. The famous extravaganza story “Scarlet Sails” became one of the brightest works of Soviet literature, written by Alexander Green in the Petrograd House of Arts.

In 1919, Green served as a signalman in the Red Army. In 1924, Green, a patient with tuberculosis, went to Feodosia for treatment, which over the years brought only a fleeting improvement to his condition. On July 8, 1932, Alexander Green died in the village of Stary Krym.

Biography of A.S. Green |

Alexander Green

real name - Grinevsky

Russian prose writer and poet, representative of neo-romanticism, author of philosophical and psychological works, with elements of symbolic fiction; Began publishing in 1906, published about 400 works in total

Brief biography

Real name Alexander Stepanovich Green- Russian Soviet prose writer of Polish origin, who created his works in line with romantic realism, - Grinevsky. His name is associated primarily with the story “Scarlet Sails”.

He was born in the Vyatka province, the city of Slobodskaya on August 23 (August 11, O.S.), 1880. A tendency to change places, daydreaming, supported by a love of books about foreign lands and travel, he already had childhood years, he did not I tried to run away from home once. In 1896, his studies at the four-year Vyatka City School ended, and Alexander left for Odessa, where his six-year period of vagrancy began.

Having got a job on a ship, he initially wanted to realize his old dream of becoming a navigator, but soon lost interest in it. Fisherman, loader, digger, lumberjack, gold miner and even sword swallower - Alexander Grinevsky tried all these professions on himself, but he could not get rid of the dire need that in 1902 forced him to enlist in the army as a volunteer.

His service lasted 9 months, a third of which he spent in a punishment cell, and ended with desertion. At this time, he became close to the Socialist Revolutionaries, who involved him in propaganda work. The sailors' agitation in Sevastopol ended with Green's arrest in 1903, and an unsuccessful escape attempt resulted in two years in a maximum security prison. However, he continued to engage in propaganda work, and in 1905 he was supposed to be exiled to Siberia for 10 years, and only an amnesty helped to avoid such an unenviable fate.

In 1906, Alexander Green’s first story, “To Italy,” was published, and the ones that followed in the same year, “The Merit of Private Panteleev” and “Elephant and Pug,” were confiscated directly from the printing house and burned. Their author, who was in St. Petersburg at that time, was arrested and exiled to the Tobolsk province, but the disgraced aspiring writer managed to quickly escape from the place of exile with someone else’s documents. In 1907, the story “The Case” was published, notable for the fact that for the first time in creative biography the author signed himself with the pseudonym A.S. Green. The following year, the first collection of short stories, “The Invisible Cap,” was published, which did not go unnoticed.

In 1910, Green was sent into exile for the second time - this time for two years in the Arkhangelsk province. Upon returning home, Green actively wrote and published; his stories, novellas, satirical miniatures, poems, and poems were published in 60 publications. Until October 1917, Greene published about 350 works. During this period, the romantic orientation of his writings was formed, which came into conflict with harsh reality.

The February Revolution raised hopes for changes for the better, but they dissipated with the Bolsheviks coming to power. Their actions disappointed Green even more in the surrounding reality, he new strength began to create his own world. Today it is difficult to imagine that the famous story “Scarlet Sails,” beloved by all romantics, was born in Petrograd, engulfed in revolutionary transformations (it was published in 1923). The heroes of Green's works and fictional cities did not fit well into Soviet literature, filled with the pathos of building socialism - along with their author. His works were published less and less and were increasingly criticized.

In 1924, the novel by A.S. was published. Green's "The Shining World", and in the same year he moved to Feodosia. Suffering from tuberculosis and poverty, he continued to write, and new stories came from his pen, the novels “The Golden Chain” (1925), “Running on the Waves” (1928), “Jessie and Morgiana” (1929), in 1930 . The novel “Road to Nowhere” was released, permeated with the tragic attitude of a sick and misunderstood artist. The last place of residence in Green’s biography was the city of Old Crimea, where he moved in 1930 and died on July 8, 1932.

Biography from Wikipedia

Alexander Green(real name - Grinevsky; August 11, 1880, Slobodskaya, Vyatka province, Russian Empire- July 8, 1932, Old Crimea, USSR) - Russian prose writer and poet, representative of neo-romanticism, author of philosophical and psychological works, with elements of symbolic fiction. He began publishing in 1906 and published about 400 works in total.

The creator of a fictional country, which, thanks to the critic K. Zelinsky, received the name “Greenland”. Many of his works take place in this country, including his most famous romantic books - the novel “Running on the Waves” and the extravaganza “Scarlet Sails”.

Early years

Alexander Grinevsky was born on August 11 (23), 1880 in the city of Slobodskaya Vyatka province. Father - Stefan Grinevsky (Polish Stefan Hryniewski, 1843-1914), a Polish nobleman from the Disna district of the Vilna province of the Russian Empire. For participation in the January Uprising of 1863, at the age of 20, he was indefinitely exiled to Kolyvan, Tomsk province. Later he was allowed to move to the Vyatka province, where he arrived in 1868. In Russia it was called " Stepan Evseevich" In 1873 he married 16-year-old Russian nurse Anna Stepanovna Lepkova (1857-1895). For the first 7 years they had no children, Alexander became the first-born, later he had a brother Boris and two sisters, Antonina and Ekaterina.

Sasha learned to read at the age of 6, and the first book he read was Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. Since childhood, Green loved books about sailors and travel. He dreamed of going to sea as a sailor and, driven by this dream, made attempts to run away from home. The boy's upbringing was inconsistent - he was either pampered, severely punished, or abandoned unattended.

In 1889, nine-year-old Sasha was sent to a preparatory class at a local real school. There his fellow students first gave him the nickname “ Green" The school's report noted that Alexander Grinevsky's behavior was worse than all others, and if not corrected, he could be expelled from the school. Nevertheless, Alexander was able to graduate from the preparatory class and enter the first class, but in the second class he wrote an offensive poem about the teachers and was nevertheless expelled from the school. At the request of his father, Alexander was admitted to another school in 1892, which had a bad reputation in Vyatka.

At the age of 15, Sasha was left without his mother, who died of tuberculosis. 4 months later (May 1895), my father married the widow Lydia Avenirovna Boretskaya. Alexander's relationship with his stepmother was tense, and he settled separately from his father's new family. Subsequently, Green described the atmosphere of provincial Vyatka as “ swamp of prejudices, lies, hypocrisy and falsehood" The boy lived alone, enthusiastically reading books and writing poetry. He worked part-time by binding books and copying documents. At the encouragement of his father, he became interested in hunting, but due to his impulsive nature, he rarely returned with prey.

Wanderings and revolutionary activities (1896-1906)

In 1896, after graduating from the four-year Vyatka City School, 16-year-old Alexander left for Odessa, deciding to become a sailor. His father gave him 25 rubles of money and the address of his Odessa friend. For a while" a sixteen-year-old beardless, frail, narrow-shouldered youth in a straw hat"(this is how the then Greene ironically described himself in " Autobiographies") wandered around in an unsuccessful search for work and was desperately hungry. In the end, he turned to his father’s friend, who fed him and got him a job as a sailor on the Platon steamship, which plied the route Odessa - Batum - Odessa. However, Greene once managed to visit abroad, in Alexandria, Egypt.

Green did not make a sailor; he had an aversion to the prosaic work of a sailor. Soon he quarreled with the captain and left the ship. In 1897, Green went back to Vyatka, spent a year there and again left in search of happiness, this time to Baku. There he tried many professions - he was a fisherman, a laborer, and worked in railway workshops. In the summer he returned to his father, then went on his travels again. He was a lumberjack, a gold miner in the Urals, a miner in an iron mine, and a theater copyist. " For several years he tried to enter life as into a stormy sea; and each time he, beaten against the stones, was thrown ashore - into the hated, philistine Vyatka; dull, prim, remote city».

Vyatka Zemstvo Real School. Green wrote about one of the reasons for his expulsion: “ Quite a large library of the Vyatka Zemstvo Real School<…>was the reason for my poor performance».

In March 1902, Green interrupted his series of wanderings and became (either under pressure from his father, or tired of hunger ordeals) a soldier in the 213th Orovai Reserve Infantry Battalion, stationed in Penza. Manners military service significantly strengthened Green's revolutionary sentiments. Six months later (of which he spent three and a half in a punishment cell) he deserted, was caught in Kamyshin, and fled again. In the army, Green met Socialist Revolutionary propagandists who appreciated the young rebel and helped him hide in Simbirsk.

From that moment on, Greene, having received the party nickname “ Lanky", sincerely devotes all his strength to the fight against the social system he hates, although he refused to participate in the execution of terrorist acts, limiting himself to propaganda among workers and soldiers of different cities. Subsequently, he did not like to talk about his “Socialist Revolutionary” activities. The Social Revolutionaries appreciated his bright, enthusiastic speeches. Here is an excerpt from the memoirs of N. Ya. Bykhovsky, a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party:

“Lanky” turned out to be an invaluable underground worker. Having once been a sailor himself and having once completed a long voyage, he was excellent at approaching sailors. He had an excellent knowledge of the life and psychology of the sailor masses and knew how to speak to them in their language. In his work among the sailors of the Black Sea squadron, he used all this with great success and immediately gained considerable popularity here. For the sailors, he was a completely different person, and this is extremely important. In this regard, none of us could compete with him.

Green later said that Bykhovsky once told him: “ You would make a writer" For this Green called him " my godfather in literature»:

Already experienced: the sea, vagrancy, wanderings showed me that this is still not what my soul thirsts for. I didn’t know what she needed. Bykhovsky’s words were not only an impetus, they were a light that illuminated my mind and the secret depths of my soul. I understood what I longed for, my soul found its way.

In 1903, Green was once again arrested in Sevastopol for “anti-government speeches” and the dissemination of revolutionary ideas, “which led to undermining the foundations of autocracy and overthrowing the foundations of the existing system.” For attempting to escape, he was transferred to a maximum security prison, where he spent more than a year. In police documents it is characterized as “ a closed, embittered nature, capable of anything, even risking her life" In January 1904, the Minister of Internal Affairs V.K. Pleve, shortly before the Socialist Revolutionary attempt on his life, received a report from the Minister of War A.N. Kuropatkin that " very important figure from civilians, who called himself first Grigoriev and then Grinevsky».

The investigation dragged on for more than a year (November 1903 - February 1905) due to Green's two attempts to escape and his complete denial. Green was tried in February 1905 by the Sevastopol naval court. The prosecutor demanded 20 years of hard labor. Lawyer A. S. Zarudny managed to reduce the penalty to 10 years of exile in Siberia.

In October 1905, Green was released under a general amnesty, but in January 1906 he was arrested again in St. Petersburg. In prison, due to the absence of friends and relatives, she visited him (under the guise of a bride) Vera Pavlovna Abramova, the daughter of a wealthy official who sympathized with revolutionary ideals.

In May, Green was sent to the city of Turinsk, Tobolsk province, for four years. He stayed there for only 3 days and fled to Vyatka, where, with the help of his father, he got someone else’s passport in the name Malginova(later this will be one of literary pseudonyms writer), according to which he left for St. Petersburg.

The beginning of creativity (1906-1917)

Alexander Green with his first wife Vera in the village of Velikiy Bor near Pinega, 1911.

The years 1906-1908 became a turning point in Green's life. First of all, he became a writer.

In the summer of 1906, Green wrote 2 stories - “ Merit of Private Panteleev" And " Elephant and Moska" The first story was signed " A.S.G."and published in the fall of the same year. It was published as a propaganda brochure for punitive soldiers and described the atrocities of the army among the peasants. Green received the fee, but the entire circulation was confiscated at the printing house and destroyed (burned) by the police; by chance, only a few copies were preserved. The second story suffered a similar fate - it was submitted to the printing house, but was not printed.

Only starting on December 5 of that year did Greene's stories begin to reach readers; and the first “legal” work was the story “To Italy,” written in the fall of 1906, signed “ A. A. M-v" (that is Malginov). For the first time (under the title " In Italy") it was published in the evening edition of the newspaper " Stock statements" dated December 5(18), 1906

Nickname " A. S. Green" first appeared under the story "Case" (the first publication was in the newspaper " Comrade" dated March 25 (April 7), 1907).

At the beginning of 1908, in St. Petersburg, Green published his first collection of books, “ Invisibility hat" (with the subtitle " Stories about revolutionaries"). Most of the stories in it are about the Social Revolutionaries.

Another event was the final break with the Social Revolutionaries. Green still hated the existing system, but he began to form his own positive ideal, which was not at all similar to the Socialist Revolutionary.

The third important event was his marriage - his imaginary “prison bride,” 24-year-old Vera Abramova, became Green’s wife. Knock And Gelly- the main characters of the story “One Hundred Miles Along the River” (1912) are Green and Vera themselves.

According to V. B. Shklovsky, A. S. Green’s own aunt was the St. Petersburg poetess, translator and playwright Isabella Grinevskaya. This statement is repeated by L. I. Borisov, the author of an artistic biography “ The Wizard from Gel-Gyu" A. N. Varlamov questions Shklovsky’s version, calling him a hoaxer and possible author another legend about Green. The supposed aunt and nephew were published in the same illustrated magazines, but one way or another, Alexander Greene’s entry into literature was completely independent.

In 1910, his second collection “ Stories" Most of the stories included there are written in a realistic manner, but in two - “Reno Island” and “ Lanphier Colony“- the future Green storyteller is already guessed. The action of these stories takes place in a conventional country; in style they are close to his later work. Greene himself believed that starting with these stories he could be considered a writer. In the early years he published 25 stories annually.

A. Green in St. Petersburg. Photo 1910

As a new original and talented Russian writer, he meets Alexei Tolstoy, Leonid Andreev, Valery Bryusov, Mikhail Kuzmin and other major writers. He became especially close to A.I. Kuprin. For the first time in his life, Green began to earn a lot of money, which, however, did not last long, quickly disappearing after carousing and card games.

On July 27, 1910, the police finally discovered that the writer Green was the fugitive exile Grinevsky. He was arrested for the third time and in the fall of 1911 he was exiled to Pinega in the Arkhangelsk province. Vera went with him, they were allowed to officially get married. In the link, Greene wrote " Life of Gnor" And " Blue Cascade Telluri" The period of his exile was reduced to two years, and in May 1912 the Grinevskys returned to St. Petersburg. Other works of a romantic direction soon followed: “ Devil of orange waters», « Zurbagan shooter"(1913). In them, the features of a fictional country are finally formed, which literary critic K. Zelinsky will call “Greenland.”

Greene publishes primarily in the small press: newspapers and illustrated magazines. His works are published in “Birzhevye Vedomosti” and in the newspaper supplement “Novoye Slovo” magazine, “ New magazine for everyone", "Rodina", "Niva" and its monthly supplements, the newspaper "Vyatskaya Rech" and many others. Occasionally, his prose is published in the reputable “thick” monthly journals “Russian Thought” and “ Modern world" Green published in the latter from 1912 to 1918 thanks to his acquaintance with A.I. Kuprin. In 1913-1914, his three-volume work was published by the Prometheus publishing house.

In the fall of 1913, Vera decided to separate from her husband. In her memoirs, she complains about Green’s unpredictability and uncontrollability, his constant carousing, and mutual misunderstanding. Green made several attempts at reconciliation, but without success. On his 1915 collection, donated to Vera, Green wrote: “ To my only friend" He never parted with the portrait of Vera until the end of his life. Almost simultaneously (1914), Green suffered another loss: his father died in Vyatka. Green also kept a photograph of his father throughout all his travels.

In the memoirs of Nina Nikolaevna Green, Green’s words are quoted about how he spent the bohemian pre-war years.

They called me “Mustang”, so I was charged with a thirst for life, full of fire, images, plots. He wrote on a grand scale, and did not exhaust himself. I got to life by accumulating greed for it in a hungry, vagabond, compressed youth, in prison. He greedily grabbed and devoured it. Couldn't get enough. I spent and burned myself from all ends. I forgave myself everything, I had not yet found myself.

In 1914, Green became an employee of the popular magazine “New Satyricon” and published his collection “An Incident on Dog Street” as a supplement to the magazine. Green worked extremely productively during this period. He had not yet decided to start writing a big story or novel, but his best stories of this time show the profound progress of Greene the writer. The themes of his works are expanding, the style is becoming more and more professional - just compare the funny story “ Captain Duke"and a sophisticated, psychologically accurate novella" Hell returned"(1915).

"Captain Duke" Monthly literary and popular scientific supplements to Niva, October 1916.

After the outbreak of the First World War, some of Greene's stories took on a distinctly anti-war character: for example, “ Battalist Shuang», « Blue top"(Niva, 1915) and "Poisoned Island". Due to an “inappropriate comment about the reigning monarch” that became known to the police, Green was forced to hide in Finland from the end of 1916, but, having learned about February Revolution, returned to Petrograd.

In the spring of 1917, he wrote a short story “ On foot to the revolution”, indicating the writer’s hope for renewal. I. S. Sokolov-Mikitov recalled how he and Green “ lived with the worries and hopes of those days" Some hope for changes for the better also fills the poems written by Greene during this period (“XX Century”, 1917, No. 13):

The bells are ringing and humming,
And their powerfully menacing singing...
The bells are buzzing and calling
On the bright holiday of rebirth.

Soon the revolutionary reality disappointed the writer.

After the October Revolution, Green’s notes and feuilletons appeared one after another in the magazine “New Satyricon” and in the small small-circulation newspaper “Devil’s Pepper Shaker”, condemning cruelty and outrages. He said: " I can’t get my head around the idea that violence can be destroyed by violence." In the spring of 1918, the magazine, along with all other opposition publications, was banned. Green was arrested for the fourth time and nearly shot. According to A.N. Varlamov, the facts indicate that Green “ did not accept Soviet life... even more fiercely than pre-revolutionary life: he did not speak at meetings, did not join any literary groups, did not sign collective letters, platforms and appeals to the Party Central Committee, wrote his manuscripts and letters using pre-revolutionary spelling, and counted the days according to the old calendar... this dreamer and inventor - in the words of a writer from the near future - did not live by a lie" The only good news was the resolution of divorces, which Green immediately took advantage of and married a certain Maria Dolidze. Within a few months, the marriage was considered a mistake, and the couple separated.

In the summer of 1919, Green was drafted into the Red Army as a signalman, but he soon fell ill with typhus and ended up in the Botkin barracks for almost a month. Maxim Gorky sent the seriously ill Green honey, tea and bread.

After recovery, Green, with the assistance of Gorky, managed to obtain academic rations and housing - a room in the “House of Arts” on Nevsky Prospekt, 15, where Green lived next to N. S. Gumilyov, V. A. Rozhdestvensky, O. E. Mandelstam, V. Kaverin. Neighbors recalled that Greene lived as a hermit and barely communicated with anyone, but it was here that he wrote his most famous, touchingly poetic work - the extravaganza “Scarlet Sails” (published in 1923). " It was difficult to imagine that such a bright flower, warmed by love for people, could be born here, in gloomy, cold and half-starved Petrograd, in the winter twilight of the harsh 1920; and that he was raised by a man who was outwardly gloomy, unfriendly and seemingly closed in a special world into which he did not want to let anyone in“,” recalled Vs. Christmas. Among the first to appreciate this masterpiece was Maxim Gorky, who often read the episode of the appearance before the guests. Assol - the main character extravaganza - a fairy-tale ship.

In the spring of 1921, Green married a 26-year-old widow, nurse Nina Nikolaevna Mironova (after Korotkova’s first husband). They met at the beginning of 1918, when Nina worked at the Petrograd Echo newspaper. Her first husband died in the war. A new meeting took place in January 1921, Nina was in desperate need and was selling things (Green later described a similar episode at the beginning of the story “The Pied Piper”). A month later he proposed to her. During the eleven subsequent years allotted to Green by fate, they did not part, and both considered their meeting a gift of fate. Green dedicated the Scarlet Sails extravaganza, completed this year, to Nina. (" The Author offers it to Nina Nikolaevna Green and dedicates it to her. PBG, November 23, 1922»)

The couple rented a room on Panteleimonovskaya, transported their meager luggage there: a bunch of manuscripts, some clothes, a photograph of Father Green and the constant portrait of Vera Pavlovna. At first, Green was almost never published, but with the beginning of the NEP, private publishing houses appeared, and he managed to publish a new collection “ White fire"(1922). The collection included the vivid story “Ships in Liss,” which Greene himself considered one of the best.

In the early 1920s, Greene decided to begin his first novel, which he called “The Shining World.” The main character of this complex symbolist work is a flying superman Drood, persuading people to choose the highest values ​​of the Shining World instead of the values ​​of “this world.” In 1924, the novel was published in Leningrad. He continued to write stories, the pinnacles of which were “ Talkative Brownie», « Pied Piper», « Fandango».

Using the fees, Green threw a feast, went with Nina to his beloved Crimea and bought an apartment in Leningrad, then sold this apartment and moved to Feodosia. The initiator of the move was Nina, who wanted to save Green from drunken Petrograd revelry and pretended to be sick. In the fall of 1924, Green bought an apartment on Galereynaya Street, house number 10 (now there is the Alexander Green Museum). Occasionally, the couple went to Koktebel to see Maximilian Voloshin.

In Feodosia Green wrote the novel " Gold chain"(1925, published in the magazine "New World"), conceived as " memories of a boy's dream seeking miracles and finding them" In the fall of 1926, Greene completed his main masterpiece, the novel “Running on the Waves,” on which he worked for a year and a half. This novel combines the best features of the writer's talent: a deep mystical idea about the need for a dream and the realization of dreams, subtle poetic psychologism, and a fascinating romantic plot. For two years the author tried to publish the novel in Soviet publishing houses, and only at the end of 1928 the book was published by the publishing house “Earth and Factory”. With great difficulty, in 1929 we managed to publish latest novels Green: " Jesse and Morgiana», « Road to nowhere».

Green noted sadly: “ The era rushes by. She doesn't need me the way I am. And I can’t be anyone else. And I don't want to». « Even though in all my writing nothing has been said about me as a person who has not licked the heels of modernity, never at all, but I know my own worth».

Banned. Last years and death (1929-1932)

Gul, Greene's pet hawk, with his owner (1929). The writer’s story “is dedicated to him” The Story of a Hawk».

In 1927, the private publisher L.V. Wolfson began publishing a 15-volume collected works of Green, but only 8 volumes were published, after which Wolfson was arrested by the GPU.

NEP was coming to an end. Green's attempts to insist on fulfilling the contract with the publishing house only led to huge legal costs and ruin. Greene's binges began to recur again. However, in the end, the Green family still managed to win the case, winning seven thousand rubles, which, however, were greatly devalued by inflation.

The apartment in Feodosia had to be sold. In 1930, the Grinevskys moved to the city of Old Crimea, where life was cheaper. Since 1930, Soviet censorship, with the motivation " you don't blend in with the era", banned reprints of Greene and introduced a limit on new books: one per year. Both Green and Nina were desperately hungry and often sick. Green tried to hunt nearby birds with a bow and arrow, but was unsuccessful.

Novel " Touch-me-not", begun by Greene at this time, was never completed, although some critics consider it the best of his work. Green mentally thought through the whole plot to the end and said to Nina: “ Some scenes are so good that remembering them makes me smile" At the end of April 1931, already seriously ill, Greene last time I went (through the mountains) to Koktebel to visit Voloshin. This route is still popular among tourists and is known as the Greene Trail.

In the summer, Green went to Moscow, but not a single publishing house showed interest in his new novel. Upon his return, Green wearily said to Nina: “ Amba for us. Will no longer print" There was no response to the request for a pension from the Writers' Union. As historians have found out, at a board meeting Lydia Seifullina said: “ Greene is our ideological enemy. The Union should not help such writers! Not a single penny at all!“Green sent another request for help to Gorky; it is unknown whether it reached its destination, but there was no answer either. In Nina Nikolaevna’s memoirs, this period is characterized by one phrase: “ Then he began to die».

In May 1932, after new petitions, a transfer of 250 rubles unexpectedly arrived. from the Writers' Union, sent for some reason to the name " widow of writer Green, Nadezhda Green", although Green was still alive. There is a legend that the reason was Green’s last mischief - he sent a telegram to Moscow “ Green died send two hundred funeral».

The grave of A. S. Green at the city cemetery of Old Crimea

Alexander Green died on the morning of July 8, 1932, at the age of 52, in Old Crimea, from stomach cancer. Two days before his death, he asked to invite a priest and confessed.

The writer was buried in the city cemetery of Old Crimea. Nina chose a place from where she could see the sea. At Green’s grave, sculptor Tatyana Gagarina erected a monument “ Running on the waves».

Upon learning of Greene's death, several leading Soviet writers called for the publication of a collection of his works; Even Seifullina joined them. Collection by A. Green " Fantastic novels"was released 2 years later, in 1934.

Nina Nikolaevna Green, the writer's widow, continued to live in Old Crimea, in an adobe house, and worked as a nurse. When the Nazi army captured Crimea, Nina remained with her seriously ill mother in Nazi-occupied territory and worked in the occupation newspaper “Official Bulletin of the Staro-Krymsky District.” She was then hijacked labor work to Germany, in 1945 she voluntarily returned from the American occupation zone to the USSR.

After the trial, Nina received ten years in the camps for “collaboration and treason,” with confiscation of property. She served her sentence in the camps on Pechora. Green's first wife, Vera Pavlovna, provided her with great support, including things and food. Nina served almost her entire sentence and was released in 1955 under an amnesty (rehabilitated in 1997). Vera Pavlovna died earlier, in 1951.

Scene from the ballet by V. M. Yurovsky " Scarlet Sails" Bolshoi Theatre, December 5, 1943 Assol- Olga Lepeshinskaya.

Meanwhile, books by the “Soviet romantic” Green continued to be published in the USSR until 1944. IN besieged Leningrad Radio programs with readings of “Scarlet Sails” (1943) were broadcast, and the premiere of the ballet “Scarlet Sails” took place at the Bolshoi Theater. In 1946, L. I. Borisov’s story “ The Wizard from Gel-Gyu"about Alexander Green, which earned the praise of K. G. Paustovsky and B. S. Grinevsky, but later - condemnation from N. N. Green.

During the years of the struggle against cosmopolitanism, Alexander Green, like many other cultural figures (A. A. Akhmatova, M. M. Zoshchenko, D. D. Shostakovich), was branded in the Soviet press as a “cosmopolitan”, alien to proletarian literature, “ militant reactionary and spiritual emigrant" For example, V. Vazhdaev’s article was devoted to the “exposure” of Green. Preacher of cosmopolitanism"(New World", No. 1, 1950). Greene's books were confiscated en masse from libraries.

After Stalin's death (1953), the ban on some writers was lifted. Since 1956, through the efforts of K. Paustovsky, Y. Olesha, I. Novikov and others, Greene was returned to literature. His works were published in millions of copies. Having received, through the efforts of Green’s friends, a fee for “ Favorites"(1956), Nina Nikolaevna arrived in Old Crimea, with difficulty found her husband’s abandoned grave and found out that the house where Green died had passed to the chairman of the local executive committee and was used as a barn and chicken coop. In 1960, after several years of struggle to return the house, Nina Nikolaevna opened on a voluntary basis Green Museum in Old Crimea. There she spent the last ten years of her life, with a pension of 21 rubles (copyright no longer applied). In July 1970, the Green Museum was also opened in Feodosia, and a year later Green’s house in Old Crimea also received the status of a museum. Its opening by the Crimean regional committee of the CPSU was linked to the conflict with Nina Nikolaevna: “ We are for Green, but against his widow. The museum will only be there when she dies.».

Nina Nikolaevna Green died on September 27, 1970 in a Kyiv hospital. She bequeathed to bury herself next to her husband. The local party leadership, irritated by the loss of the chicken coop, imposed a ban; and Nina was buried at the other end of the cemetery. On October 23 of the following year, Nina’s birthday, six of her friends reburied the coffin at night in its designated place.

Creativity and personal position

Artistic and ideological features of prose

Greene is openly didactic, that is, his works are based on a clear system of values ​​and invite the reader to accept and share these ideals with the author.

It is generally accepted that Greene is a romantic, " dream knight" Green understands the dream as the desire of a spiritually rich person for higher, truly human values, contrasting them with callousness, greed and animal pleasures. The difficult choice between these two paths and the consequences of the choice made is one of Greene's important themes. Its goal is to show how organic goodness and dreams, love and compassion are for a person, and how destructive evil, cruelty, and alienation are. Critic Irina Vasyuchenko notes the rare transparency and purity of the moral atmosphere characteristic of Greene's prose. " The author more than believes in the power of the good principles of life - he knows it" Existing simultaneously in the real world and in the world of dreams, Green felt “ translator between these two worlds" IN " Scarlet Sails“The author, through the mouth of Gray, calls for “working a miracle” for another person; " He will have a new soul and you will have a new one." In “The Shining World” there is a similar call: “ Bring into your life that world, the sparkles of which have already been given to you by a generous, secret hand.».

Among Green's instrumental means are excellent taste, alien to naturalism, the ability by simple means to elevate a story to the level of a deep parable, and a bright, exciting plot. Critics note that Greene is incredibly “cinematic.” Transferring the action to a fictional country is also a thoughtful technique: “ Greene is, by and large, interested in the person and only the person, apart from his connection with history, nationality, wealth or poverty, religion and political beliefs. Green, as it were, abstracts, cleanses his heroes from these layers and sterilizes his world, because this way he can see people better».

The writer is focused on the struggle in human soul and depicts the subtlest psychological nuances with amazing skill. " The amount of Greene's knowledge in this area, the accuracy of the depiction of the most complex mental processes, sometimes exceeding the level of ideas and capabilities of his time, today surprise specialists».

« Green said that sometimes he spends hours on a phrase, achieving the highest completeness of its expression, brilliance" He was close to the symbolists who tried to expand the possibilities of prose, to give it more dimensions - hence the frequent use of metaphors, paradoxical combinations of words, etc.

An example of Green’s style using an example from “Scarlet Sails”:

She knew how and loved to read, but even in a book she read mainly between the lines, as she lived. Unconsciously, through a kind of inspiration, she made at every step many ethereal-subtle discoveries, inexpressible, but important, like purity and warmth. Sometimes - and this continued for a number of days - she was even reborn; the physical confrontation of life fell away, like silence in the blow of a bow, and everything she saw, what she lived, what was around, became a lace of secrets in the image of everyday life.

Green the poet

Alexander Green from a poem "Dispute"

The balloon flew over the killing field.
Two wise men were arguing in a basket.
One said: “Let's fly to the blue firmament!
Get away from the earth!
The earth is mad; her world is bloody
Untamed, eternal and heavy.
Let him amuse himself with bloody fun,
Having broken the fence, the yocked ox!
There, in the clouds, there will be no anxiety for us,
The marble of their airy forms is beautiful.
The shine is beautiful, and we ourselves are like gods,
Let's breathe in the good nirvana of chloroform.
Should I open the valve? "No! - the second answered. -
I hear the roar of battle below me...
Have you not noticed the movement of troops?
They crawl like a swarm of ants;
Their squares, trapezoids and rhombuses
Here, from above, they are exquisitely funny...
O king of the earth! How worthy are you of a bomb?
Iron fury of war!
Are there centuries of incredible pain,
Suffering and wisdom only led to this,
So that you, drawn by an alien will,
Lying, crushed, in the dust?!
No, we'll go down.
A picture of a vile dump,
Observed closely, it will show again and again,
That humanity needs sticks,
Not love."

Since 1907, they have appeared in print poetic works Green, although Green began writing poetry in the Vyatka real school. One of the poems did the then twelve-year-old student a disservice - in 1892 he was expelled. After entering the Vyatka City School, the writing of poetry continued. Greene spoke about this period as follows:

Sometimes I wrote poems and sent them to Niva and Rodina, never receiving a response from the editors, although I attached stamps to the response. The poems were about hopelessness, hopelessness, broken dreams and loneliness - exactly the same poems that weekly magazines were then full of. From the outside, one might think that a forty-year-old Chekhov hero was writing, and not a boy of eleven to fifteen years old

- A. S. Green, “Autobiographical story”

In an earlier autobiography, written in 1913, Greene stated: " When I was a kid I wrote bad poems hard" The first mature poems that appeared in print, like his prose, were of a realistic nature. In addition, Greene’s satirical streak as a high school student manifested itself with might and main in the poet’s “adult” poems, which was reflected in his long-term collaboration with the New Satyricon magazine. In 1907, his first poem “ Elegy” (“When the blushing Duma is worried,” to the tune of Lermontov’s poem “When the yellowing field is worried”). But already in the poems of 1908-1909, romantic motifs clearly appeared in his work: “ Young Death», « Tramp», « Motyka».

Among the poets of the older generation, A. N. Varlamov calls the name of Valery Bryusov the most attractive to Alexander Green. Greene's biographer concludes: Greene " in his youth he wrote poetry in which the influence of symbolism is felt more strongly than in his prose" During the years of the revolution, Green paid tribute to civic poetry: “ Bells», « Dispute», « Petrograd in the autumn of 1917" Literary critic and emigrant poet Vadim Kreid at the end of the 20th century spoke in the New York “New Journal” about last poem: ““Petrograd in the autumn of 1917” by A. Green are newspaper poems that have something of a report in them, but this is why they are valuable, because they are historical in the literal sense of the word. This kind of poetry was written by Pyotr Potemkin and Sasha Cherny, the emigrant newspaper poet Munstein and the “red”, as he called himself, newspaper poet Vasily Knyazev.”

Many of the poet's lyric poems of the 1910s-1920s were dedicated to Vera Pavlovna Abramova(Kalitskaya), Nina Nikolaevna Mironova(Green). In 1919, he published the poem “Flame” in the magazine “Flame” edited by A.V. Lunacharsky. Factory of Drozd and Lark" However, by the 20s, Green the prose writer overshadowed Green the poet.

First attempt to publish Soviet era(early 1960s) Greene's poetry collection ended in failure. Only the intervention of the poet Leonid Martynov shook the established opinion: “ Greene's poems need to be published. And as soon as possible" As N. Orishchuk writes, the fact that Green wrote satirical poems came in handy. This allowed Soviet criticism to conclude that the poet was revolutionary. However, Orishchuk believes that in the statement about Green’s susceptibility to revolutionary sentiments lies one of Soviet myths about Greene, namely the myth about Greene as the author of the political declaration. One way or another, several of Greene's satirical poems were published in 1969 in large series“The Poet’s Library” as part of the publication “Poetic Satire of the First Russian Revolution (1905-1907).” In Greene's Collected Works of 1991, 27 of the poet's poems were published in the third volume.

Place in literature

A sailboat symbolizing Gray's ship from A. S. Green's story "Scarlet Sails"

Alexander Green occupies a very special place in Russian and world literature. He had neither predecessors nor direct successors. Critics tried to compare him with those close in style to Edgar Poe, Ernst Hoffmann, Robert Stevenson, Bret Harte and others - but each time it turned out that the similarity was superficial and limited. " He seems to be a classic of Soviet literature, but at the same time not quite: he is alone, outside the frame, outside the series, outside literary continuity».

Even the genre of his works is difficult to determine. Sometimes Greene's books are classified as science fiction (or fantasy), but he himself protested against this. Yuri Olesha recalled that he once expressed his admiration to Green for the wonderful fantastic idea of ​​a flying man (“ Glittering World"), but Green was even offended: " This symbolic romance, not fantastic! It’s not a person flying at all, it’s the soaring of the spirit!" A significant part of Greene’s works do not contain any fantastic techniques (for example, “ Scarlet Sails»).

However, with all the originality of Green’s work, his main value guidelines are in line with the traditions of Russian classics. From what has been said above ideological motives Green's prose can formulate brief conclusions: Green is a moralist, a talented defender of humanistic moral ideals traditional for Russian literature. " For the most part, A. Green's works are poetically and psychologically sophisticated fairy tales, short stories and sketches, which tell about the joy of dreams coming true, about the human right to more than just “living” on earth, and about the fact that the earth and the sea are full miracles - miracles of love, thought and nature - joyful meetings, deeds and legends... In the romance of Grinov’s type “there is no peace, no comfort,” it comes from an unbearable thirst to see the world more perfect, more sublime, and therefore the artist’s soul reacts so painfully to everything dark , mournful, humiliating, offending humanity».

The poet Leonid Martynov, who revered the work of Alexander Green, in the late 1960s drew the attention of his contemporaries to the fact that “ Greene was not only a wonderful romantic, but one of the brilliant critical realists " Because of the reissue of the same works, Greene is known “ far from entirely, presenting it still somehow one-sidedly, often in a leaf-romantic way».

Religious views

Alexander Greene was baptized according to the Orthodox rite, although his father was still a Catholic at that moment (he converted to Orthodoxy when Alexander was 11 years old). Some episodes of his early life described in " Autobiographical story”, are interpreted as an indicator that in his youth Green was far from religion.

Later, Greene's religious views began to change. The novel The Shining World (1921) contains an extensive and vivid scene, which was later cut out at the request of Soviet censors: Runa enters the village church, kneels before a painted “holy girl from Nazareth”, next to whom “the pensive eyes of the little Christ looked to the distant fate of the world." Runa asks God to strengthen her faith, and in response she sees Drood appear in the picture and join Christ and the Madonna. This scene and Drood's numerous appeals in the novel show that Greene viewed his ideals as close to Christian ones, as one of the paths to the Shining World, “where it is quiet and dazzling.”

Nina Nikolaevna recalled that in Crimea they often attended church; Green’s favorite holiday was Easter. In a letter to Vera shortly before his death (1930), Green explained: “ Nina and I believe without trying to understand anything, since it is impossible to understand. We are given only signs of the participation of the Higher Will in life" Green refused to give an interview to Bezbozhnik magazine, saying: I believe in God" Before his death, Green invited a local priest, confessed and received communion.

Creativity in the mirror of criticism

Pre-revolutionary criticism

The attitude of literary critics to Greene's work was heterogeneous and changed over time. Pre-revolutionary criticism was generally dismissive of Greene's works, despite the fact that Greene's early realistic stories were well received by readers. In particular, Menshevik critic N.V. Volsky condemned Green for excessive displays of violence. The new romantic stage of the writer’s work that followed the realistic one, manifested in the choice of exotic names and subjects, was also not liked by critics; Greene was not taken seriously and was accused of epigonism, imitation of Edgar Allan Poe, E. T. A. Hoffman, Jack London, Haggard. L. N. Voitolovsky and A. G. Gornfeld came to the writer’s defense, believing that Green’s likening to popular Western romantic writers essentially explains nothing in Alexander Green’s creative method.

Thus, the critic Gornfeld wrote in 1910: “Strangers are his own people, distant countries are close to him, because these are people, because all countries are our land... Therefore, Bret Harte or Kipling, or Poe, who really gave a lot Green's stories are just a shell... Green is primarily a poet of intense life. He wants to talk only about the important, about the main thing, about the fatal: and not in everyday life, but in the human soul.” L. N. Voitolovsky supported Gornfeld, speaking about the story “Reno Island”: “Perhaps this air is not entirely tropical, but this is a new special air that all of modernity breathes - alarming, stuffy, tense and powerless... Romance is different from romance. And decadents are called romantics... Greene has a different kind of romanticism. He is akin to the romanticism of Gorky... He breathes faith in life, a thirst for healthy and strong sensations" The similarity between the romantic works of Gorky and Green was noted by other critics, for example, V. E. Kovsky.

Arkady Gornfeld returned once again to Greene’s allusions to Edgar Poe in 1917 in a review of the story “ Adventurer" “At first impression, the story of Mr. Alexander Greene can easily be mistaken for the story of Edgar Allan Poe... It is not difficult to reveal and show everything that is external, conventional, mechanical in this imitation... Russian imitation is infinitely weaker than the English original. It is indeed weaker... This... would not be worth talking about if Greene were a powerless imitator, if he wrote only worthless parodies of Edgar Allan Poe, if only the comparison of his works with the work of his wonderful prototype would be an unnecessary insult... Greene - an extraordinary figure in our fiction, the fact that he is little appreciated is rooted to a certain extent in his shortcomings, but his merits play a much more significant role... Greene is still not an imitator of Edgar Allan Poe, not an adopter of the stencil, not even a stylizer; he is more independent than many who write mediocre stories... Greene has no template at his core;... Greene would have been Greene if there had not been Edgar Allan Poe.”

Gradually, in the criticism of the 1910s, an opinion was formed about the writer as a “master of plot,” a stylizer and a romantic. Therefore, in subsequent decades, the leitmotif of Green’s research was the study of the writer’s psychologism and the principles of his plotting.

Criticism of the 1920s-1930s

In the 1920s, after Greene wrote his most significant works, interest in his prose reached its peak. Eduard Bagritsky wrote that “ few Russian writers have so perfectly mastered the word in all its fullness" Maxim Gorky spoke of Green like this: “ useful storyteller, useful dreamer" Mayakovsky, on the contrary, was skeptical about Green’s work: “The counter of the large Baku Worker store. In total, 47 books fit... Of those that fit, 22 are foreign... Russian, and then Green.”

In the 1930s-1940s, attention to the work of A. Greene was complicated by the general ideologization of literary criticism. However, in the 1930s, articles about Greene by Marietta Shaginyan, Cornelius Zelinsky, Konstantin Paustovsky, Caesar Volpe, Mikhail Levidov, Mikhail Slonimsky, Ivan Sergievsky were published , Alexandra Roskina. According to Shaginyan, “Green’s misfortune and misfortune is that he developed and embodied his theme not on the material of living reality - then we would have before us the true romance of socialism - but on the material of the conventional world of a fairy tale, entirely included in the “associative system” capitalist relations."

Cornelius Zelinsky’s approach was different. Like Gornfeld, he compares creative method Greene and Edgar Allan Poe. According to Zelinsky, A. Green is not just a dreamer, but a “militant dreamer.” Discussing the writer’s style, he comes to the following conclusion: “ In the eternal hunt for the melody of poetic fantasy, Greene learned to weave such verbal networks, to operate with words so freely, elastically and subtly that his skill cannot fail to attract our working interest" “Green, in his fantastic short stories, creates such a play of artistic forms, where the content is also conveyed by the movement of verbal parts, the properties of a difficult style.” “In Green’s stories one can trace a curious and gradual transformation of his style, in connection with the evolution from realist to science fiction writer, from Kuprin to ... Edgar Allan Poe.”

Literary critic Ivan Sergievsky did not avoid the traditional comparison of Green with the classics of the adventure genre in the West: “Green’s novels and stories echo the works of the classic adventure-fantasy short story Edgar Allan Poe and the best works Joseph Conrad. However, Greene does not have the power of thought, and there are no realistic traits of these writers. It is much closer to the adventure-fantastic novella of artists of modern decadence such as, say, McOrlan.” In the end, I.V. Sergievsky still comes to the conclusion that Alexander Green has overcome the “adventurous canon of literature of bourgeois decadence.”

But not all pre-war critics could fit Green into the usual scheme of socialist creativity. The ideologized approach to the writer in pre-war journalism was revealed with all its force in Vera Smirnova’s article “A Ship without a Flag.” In her opinion, writers like Greene deserve to have their anti-Soviet nature made clear, and that “the ship on which Greene and his crew of outcasts sailed from the shores of their fatherland has no flag, it is heading “to nowhere."

Post-war criticism

Free discussion of Green's work was interrupted in the late forties at the time ideological struggle with representatives of so-called cosmopolitanism. Performing installations new program All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to tighten the country’s ideological course and for the approval of a new “Soviet patriotism”, Soviet writer V. M. Vazhdaev in the article “ Preacher of cosmopolitanism"in the magazine "New World" (1950) turned to the work of Alexander Green. Vazhdaev’s entire article is an open and unambiguous call to fight against cosmopolitanism, which, according to Vazhdaev, was embodied by A. S. Green: “In this regard, it is worth taking a closer look at the peculiar cult of Alexander Green, a third-rate writer, author of “fantastic” novels and short stories , a writer whom aesthetic criticism has persistently praised for many years.”

V. Vazhdaev further argued that numerous fans of A. Green - Konstantin Paustovsky, Sergei Bobrov, Boris Annibal, Mikh. Slonimsky, L. Borisov and others - exaggerated Green's work beyond all measure into a major literary phenomenon. Moreover, the Stalinist publicist saw some political motives in the creation of Greenland. The apotheosis of Vazhdaev was expressed in the following statement: “A. Green was never a harmless “dreamer.” He was a militant reactionary and a cosmopolitan." “The artist’s skill is inextricably linked with his worldview and is determined by it; innovation is possible only where there is a bold revolutionary thought, deep ideological commitment and the artist’s devotion to his homeland and people.” And the work of A. Green, according to Vazhdaev, did not meet the requirements of revolutionary innovation, since Green did not love his homeland, but painted and poeticized the alien bourgeois world. Vazhdaev’s rhetoric was repeated word for word in A. Tarasenkov’s article “On national traditions and bourgeois cosmopolitanism" in the magazine "Znamya", published simultaneously with Vazhdaev's article.

After Stalin's death, Green's books were again in demand among readers. The ideological approach to Greene gradually began to give way to a literary one. In 1955, in the book “Golden Rose”, Konstantin Paustovsky assessed the significance of the story “Scarlet Sails” as follows: “ If Greene had died, leaving us with only one of his prose poems, “Scarlet Sails,” then that would have been enough to place him among the remarkable writers who disturb human heart a call to excellence».

Writer and literary critic Viktor Shklovsky, reflecting on Greene the romantic, wrote that Greene “ led people, leading them away from the desire for ordinary bourgeois well-being. He taught them to be brave, truthful, believe in themselves, believe in Man».

Writer and critic Vladimir Amlinsky drew attention to Green's peculiar loneliness in literary world Soviet Union. “In today’s literary process he is less noticeable than any of the Masters of his caliber; in today’s criticism (...) his name is mentioned in passing.” Analyzing Green’s work in comparison with the work of M. Bulgakov, A. Platonov, K. Paustovsky, who are somewhat similar to Green, Amlinsky makes the following conclusion: “Green’s failure lies in the extraordinary concentration of romanticism, which had the opposite effect, especially in the early stories.” .

Vadim Kovsky believes that “ Greene's prose often provokes “superficial enthusiasm” (…) However, more often than not, Greene simply deceives us, hiding a high artistic thought, a complex concept of personality, an extensive system of connections with the surrounding reality». « Greene has a highly poetic vision of the world, characterized by pervasive lyricism.. “The ‘cognitive part’, the material specification of the description are contraindicated for such a vision,” he writes in the book “ The romantic world of Alexander Green».

Critic V. A. Revich (1929-1997) in a posthumously published essay “ Unreal reality" stated that those who accused Green of "escaping reality" were largely right - the demonstrative ignorance of the surrounding imperial or Soviet realities was a deliberate challenge to the evils of this reality. Because Greene was never a fiction writer detached from life, “ his world is a world of militant goodness, kindness and harmony. Unlike many noisy and arrogant contemporaries, Greene is no worse read today than at the time of its first publication. This means that in its conventional plots there is something eternal.».

Critic and writer Irina Vasyuchenko in the monograph “ The life and work of Alexander Green” writes that Greene had not only numerous predecessors, but also heirs. Among them, she points out Vladimir Nabokov. In her opinion, Green’s style of writing is close to the style of V.V. Nabokov’s novel “Invitation to Execution.” Vasyuchenko also claims that Greene managed to anticipate creative quest Mikhail Bulgakov in the novel “The Master and Margarita”. On the similarities of Green's story " Fandango“and some episodes of Bulgakov’s novel were also paid attention to by literary critic Marietta Chudakova.

Contemporary writer Natalya Meteleva published own analysis Green's creativity. The basis of Green’s worldview is, in her opinion, a child’s attitude towards the world (infantility). The writer is distinguished by “ naivety<…>an eternal teenager with complete inability to live in the world, which he retained until the end of his life" “When they talk about the “romantic maximalism” of A. S. Green, for some reason they always forget that maximalism in adulthood is a sign of infantile personality development.” Meteleva reproaches Green for his unkind attitude towards technological progress, calls the writer a “hippie storm petrel”, and in his books she sees “the eternal dreams of a dependent about equalization” (““do good”: have you noticed at whose expense this good is being done?”).

Green scholar Natalya Orishchuk points out that the term is more applicable to Green neo-romanticism than the usual romanticism. She dwells in detail on the process of “Sovietization” of Green’s work in the 1960s - the posthumous inscription of the writer’s initially apolitical work into the context of the art of socialist realism. In her opinion, Greene's works became the object of very intense indoctrination. The resulting Soviet stereotype of Greene's perception became unique cultural phenomenon- "Green's sign". “The products of Soviet ideological myth-making,” according to Orishchuk, are four myths:

1. Green’s devotion to the October Revolution and the state political regime; 2. Green's transition to the fold of socialist realism; 3. Interpretation of Greene's early prose as a political declaration of the writer; 4. Green as an author of works for children.

As a result, the phenomenon of a mass Soviet cult of Greene emerged in the 1960s.

Bibliography

• 1906 : To Italy (the first legally published story by A. S. Green) The merit of Private Panteleev Elephant and Moska
• 1907 : Oranges Brick and music Favorite Marat On the stock exchange At leisure Underground Case
• 1908 : Hunchback Guest Eroshka Toy Captain Quarantine Swan Little Committee Checkmate in three moves Punishment She Hand Telegraph operator from Medyansky Bor Third floor Hold and deck Murderer The man who cries
• 1909 : Barge on the Green Canal Airship Dacha of the big lake Nightmare Little conspiracy Maniac Accommodation Window in the forest Reno Island According to the marriage announcement Incident in the street Dog Paradise Cyclone in the Plain of Rains Navigator of the “Four Winds”
• 1910 : In the flood In the snow Return of the "Seagull" Duel Khonsa's estate The story of one murder Colony Lanfier Jacobson's raspberries Puppet On the island On the hillside Nakhodka Easter on the steamer Powder magazine Strait of storms Story Tag River Death Romelinka Mystery of the forest Box of soap
• 1911 : Forest drama Moonlight Pillory Atleya Words Mnemonic System
• 1912 : Hotel of Evening Lights (1912) The Life of Gnor A Winter's Tale From the detective's memorable book Ksenia Turpanova The Puddle of the Bearded Pig The Passenger of the Pyzhikov The Adventures of Ginch The Passage Yard The Story of a Strange Fate The Blue Cascade of Tellurium The Tragedy of the Suan Plateau Heavy Air Fourth for All
• 1913 : Adventure Balcony Headless Horseman Wilder path Granka and his son Long journey Devil of the Orange Waters Lives of great people Zurbagan shooter History of Tauren On the hillside Naive Tussaletto New circus Siurg tribe Last minutes of Ryabinin Merchant of happiness Sweet poison of the city Taboo Mysterious forest Quiet everyday life Three adventures of Ekhma Man with man
• 1914 : Without an audience The Forgotten The mystery of a foreseen death Earth and water And spring will come for me How the strongman Red John fought the king Legends of war Dead for the living In the balance One of many A story ended thanks to a bullet A duel A penitential manuscript Incidents in Madame Cerise's apartment A rare photographic camera Conscience has spoken The Sufferer A strange incident at a masquerade Fate taken by the horns Three brothers Urban Graz receives guests An episode during the capture of Fort Cyclops
• 1915 : Lunatic aviator Shark Diamonds Armenian Tintos Attack Batalist Shuang Missing in action Battle in the air Blonde Bullfight Fighting with bayonets Fighting with a machine gun Eternal bullet Alarm clock explosion Returned hell Magic screen Fiction of Epitrim Harem of Khaki Bey Voice and sounds Two brothers Double Plereza The case with the white one bird, or White bird and the ruined church Wild mill Man's friend Iron bird Yellow city Beast of Rochefort Golden pond Game Toys Interesting photo Adventurer Captain Duke Rocking rock Dagger and mask Nightmare incident Leal at home Flying doge Bear and the German Bear hunt Sea battle On the American Mountains Over the Abyss Hired Assassin Pik-Mick's Legacy Impenetrable Shell Night Walk Night Night and Day Dangerous Jump Original Spy Island Hunt in the Air Hunt for Marbrun Hunt for the Hooligan Mine Hunter Dance of Death Duel of the Leaders Suicide note Incident with the sentry Bird Kam-Bu Path Fifteenth of July Scout Jealousy and sword Fatal place Woman's hand Knight Malyar Masha's wedding Serious captive The power of the word Blue top Killer word Death of Alembert Calm soul Strange weapon Terrible package Terrible secret of the car Fate of the first platoon Mystery of the moonlit night There or there Three meetings Three bullets Murder in a fish shop Murder of romance Asphyxiating gas Terrible vision The owner from Lodz Black flowers Black novel Black farm Wonderful failure
• 1916 : Scarlet Sails (tale-extravaganza) (published 1923) The great happiness of a little fighter A cheerful butterfly Around the world Resurrection of Pierre High technology Behind bars Capture of the banner Idiot How I died on the screen Labyrinth Lion's blow Invincible Something from the diary Fire and water Poisoned island The Hermit of Grape Peak Vocation Romantic murder Blind Day Kanet A hundred miles along the river Mysterious record The secret of house 41 Dance Tram disease Dreamers Black diamond
• 1917 : Bourgeois spirit Return Rebellion Enemies Main culprit Wild rose Every millionaire himself The bailiff's mistress Pendulum of spring Darkness Knife and pencil Fire water Orgy Walking to the revolution (essay) Peace To be continued by Rene Birth of thunder Fatal circle Suicide Creation of Asper Merchants Invisible corpse Prisoner of "Crosses" Apprentice sorcerer Fantastic providence Man from the Durnovo dacha Black car Esperanto masterpiece
• 1918 : Atta him! The fight against death The ignorant beech Vanya is angry with humanity The cheerful dead Back and forth The hairdresser's invention How I was a king Carnival Club arap Spikes Ships in Lissa (publ. 1922) The footman spat in the food It became easier The lagging platoon The crime of the fallen leaf Trifles Conversation Make a grandmother The power of the incomprehensible An old man walks in a circle. Three candles.
• 1919 : Magic Mischief Fighter
• 1921 : Vulture Competition in Lissa
• 1922 : White fire Visiting a friend Rope Monte Cristo Tender romance New Year's holiday of father and little daughter Saryn on Kichka Typhoid dotted line
• 1923 : Riot on the ship "Alceste" Genius player Gladiators Voice and eye Willow Be that as it may Horse head Order for the army Missing sun Traveler Uy-Few-Eoy Mermaids of the air Heart of the desert Loquacious brownie Murder in Kunst-Fisch
• 1924 : Legless White Ball Tramp and Warden Cheerful Companion Gutt, Witt and Redott Voice of the Siren Boarded Up House Pied Piper On the Cloudy Bank Monkey According to the Law Casual Income
• 1925 : Gold and Miners Winner Gray car Fourteen feet Six matches
• 1926 : Marriage of August Esborn Snake Personal reception Nanny Glenau Someone else's fault
• 1927 : Two Promises The Legend of Ferguson The Weakness of Daniel Horton A Strange Evening Fandango Four Guineas
• 1928 : Watercolor Social Reflex Elda and Angotea
• 1929 : Mistletoe Branch Thief in the Forest Father's Wrath Betrayal Lock Opener
• 1930 : Fresh water barrel Green lamp The Story of a Hawk Silence
• 1932 : Autobiographical story
• 1933 : Velvet curtain Commandant of the port of Paris

Green A. Collected works, 1-6 volumes. M., Pravda, 1965.

Green A. Collected Works, 1-6 vols. M., Pravda, 1980. Republished in 1983.

Green A. Collected works, 1-5 volumes. M.: Fiction, 1991.

Green A. From the unpublished and forgotten. - Literary heritage, vol. 74. M.: Nauka, 1965.

Green A. I am writing you the whole truth. Letters from 1906-1932. - Koktebel, 2012, series: Images of the past., (erroneous).

Memory

Named after Alexander Green

• In 1985, the name “Grinevia” was assigned to the small planet 2786, discovered on September 6, 1978 by Soviet astronomer N. S. Chernykh.

• In 2000, on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the birth of A. S. Green, the Union of Writers of Russia, the administration of the cities of Kirov and Slobodsky established the annual Russian literary prize named after Alexander Green for works for children and youth, imbued with the spirit of romance and hope.
• In 2012, the three-deck river passenger ship received the name “Alexander Green”.

Museums

• In 1960, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, the writer’s wife opened the Writer’s House-Museum in Old Crimea.
• In 1970, the Greene Literary and Memorial Museum was also created in Feodosia.
• On the occasion of the centenary of his birth, in 1980, the Alexander Green Museum was opened in the city of Kirov.
• In 2010, the Museum of Romance of Alexander Green was created in the city of Slobodskaya.

Green's readings and festivals

• International scientific conference “Grinov Readings” - has been held in even years in Feodosia since 1988 (the first half of September).
• Green's readings in Kirov have been held once every 5 years (sometimes more often) since 1975, on the writer's birthday (August 23).
• Since 1987, the Greenland art song festival has been held in the village of Basharovo near Kirov.
• "Green Shore" - far eastern festival art songs and poetry near Nakhodka; has been held since 1994.
• The annual Greenland festival in Old Crimea, held since 2005 on the writer’s birthday.

Streets

Alexander Green Street exists in many Russian cities:

• Arkhangelsk,
• Gelendzhik,
• Moscow (since 1986),
• Naberezhnye Chelny,
• Saint Petersburg,
• Slobodskaya,
• Old Crimea,
• Feodosia.

In Kirov there is an embankment named after the writer..

Libraries

Several large libraries are named after Green:

• Kirovskaya regional library for children and youth.
• Youth Library No. 16 in Moscow.
• City library in Slobodskoye.
• Library in Nizhny Novgorod.
• Central city library in the city of Feodosia.

Other

• In Kirov there is a Gymnasium named after Alexander Green.
• In 1986, in Leningrad, a memorial plaque was unveiled on a house at 11 Dekabristov Street (architect V. B. Bukhaev) with the text: “ The famous Soviet writer Alexander Green lived and worked in this house in 1921-1922." The board should be located on Pestel Street, building 11 (in the early 1920s it was called “Dekabrist Pestel Street”), but for more than 30 years the board has been hanging at a different address.
• In 2000, a bronze bust of the writer was installed on the Green embankment in Kirov. (Sculptors Kotsienko K.I. and Bondarev V.A.)
• There is a tradition in St. Petersburg when Russian schoolchildren attend their graduation party at night at the mouth of the Neva. sailing ship With scarlet sails. See Scarlet Sails (graduates holiday).
• In 1987, in the city of Chusovoy (where Green lived for some time in his youth), in an ethnographic park, on the initiative of Leonard Postnikov, local sculptor Viktor Bokarev created a project for a monument to Alexander Green, and a year later, Perm resident Radik Mustafin carved the image of the writer from a single piece of granite. This monument is one of a kind, since there are no more monuments to Alexander Green in full height. Now the monument stands right in the waters of the Arkhipovka River. Newlyweds often come to him, according to established tradition. Next to Green, rocking on the waves of his " scarlet sails».
• In 2014, Green Boulevard was named after the writer in St. Petersburg.

Residence addresses

House-Museum of A. S. Green, Kirov. It is located on the site of the house where the future writer spent his childhood in 1888-1894. The dilapidated house was demolished in 1902, a new building was built in 1905.

Vyatka province

• 1880-1881 - Slobodskoy.
• 1881-1888 - Vyatka, in the building of the Vyatka provincial zemstvo government.
• 1888-1894 - Vyatka, st. Nikitskaya (now Volodarsky St., 44).
• 1894-1896 - Vyatka, st. Preobrazhenskaya, 17.

Petrograd-Leningrad

• 1913-1914 - Zagorodny Avenue, 10
• 1914-1916 - Pushkinskaya street, 1:
• 1920 - May 1921 - House of Arts (DISK) - Nevsky Prospekt (then called 25th October Avenue), 15 (“Chicherin’s house”).
• May 1921 - February 1922 - Zaremba apartment building - Panteleimonovskaya Street (Pestelya Street since 1923), 11.
• 1922-1924 - apartment building - 8th Rozhdestvenskaya (Soviet since 1923) street, 23.

Odessa

• St. Lanzheronovskaya, 2.

Feodosia

• Gallery, 10.

Film adaptations

• 1958 - Watercolor
• 1961 - “Scarlet Sails”, dir. A. L. Ptushko
• 1967 - Running on the Waves, dir. P. G. Lyubimov
• 1968 - Knight of Dreams, dir. V. Derbenev, Moldova-film, Lenfilm, pseudobiographical film ballad about the youth of A. Green
• 1969 - Lanphier Colony
• 1972 - Morgiana, Juraj Hertz
• 1976 - The Deliverer (film by Yugoslav-Croatian director Krsto Papic, based on the story “The Pied Piper”)
• 1982 - Assol, television film-play directed by B. P. Stepantsev
• 1983 - The Man from Green Country (television play)
• 1984 - Shining World
• 1984 - Life and books of Alexander Green (television play)
• 1986 - Golden Chain
• 1988 - Mister Decorator
• 1988 - “Father’s Wrath” (short film, directed by I. Morozov)]
• 1990 - One hundred miles along the river
• 1992 - Road to nowhere
• 1992 - “The Pied Piper” (short film, directed by Yuri Pokrovsky)]
• 1994 - “Angothea” (short film, directed by Elena Malikova)]
• 1995 - Gelly and Nok
• 2003 - Infection
• 2007 - Running on the waves
• 2010 - True story about Scarlet Sails
• 2010 - Man from the Unfulfilled ( documentary V. Nedoshivina about A. Green)
• 2012 - Green lamp

Russian writer, author of approximately four hundred works... His works are in the genre of neo-romanticism, philosophical and psychological, mixed with fantasy. His creations are famous throughout the country, they are loved by adults and children, and the biography of the writer Alexander Green is very rich and interesting.

Early age

The real name of the writer is Grinevsky. Alexander is the first child in his family, which had four children in total. He was born on August 23, 1880, in the Vyatka province, in the city of Slobodskoye. Father - Stefan - Pole and warrior-aristocrat. Mother - Anna Lepkova - worked as a nurse.

As a boy, Alexander loved reading. He learned this early, and the first thing he read was a book about Gulliver's Travels. The boy liked books about traveling around the world and sailors. He repeatedly ran away from home to become a sailor.

At the age of 9, little Sasha began to study. He was a very problematic student and caused a lot of trouble: he behaved badly and fought. Once he wrote offensive poems to all the teachers, because of this he was expelled from the school. The guys who studied with him nicknamed him Green. The boy liked the nickname, then he used it as a writer's pseudonym. In 1892, Alexander was successfully enrolled in another educational institution, with the help of his father.

At the age of 15 future writer lost his mother. She died of tuberculosis. Less than six months later, my father married again. Greene didn't get along with Dad's new wife. He left home and lived separately. He worked part-time by weaving and gluing book bindings and copying documents. He was keen on reading and writing poetry.

Youth

A short biography of Alexander Green contains information that he really wanted to be a sailor. At the age of 16, the young man graduated from the 4th grade of college, and with the help of his father he was able to leave for Odessa. He gave his son a small amount of money for the journey and the address of his friend, who could shelter him for the first time. Upon arrival, Green was in no hurry to look for his father's friend. Didn't want to become a burden to a stranger, I thought I could achieve everything on my own. But alas, it was very difficult to find a job, and the money ran out quickly. Brodyazhnichiv and hungry, the young man still found his father's friend and asked for help. The man sheltered him and got him a job as a sailor on the steamer Platon. Green did not serve long on deck. Sailor routine and hard work turned out to be alien to Alexander, he left the ship, finally quarreling with the captain.

As he says short biography, Alexander Stepanovich Green returned to Vyatka in 1897, where he lived for two years, and then went to Baku to “try his luck.” There he worked in various industries. He was engaged in fishing, then got a job as a laborer, and then became a railway worker, but even here he did not stay long. Lived in the Urals, worked as a goldsmith and lumberjack, then as a miner.

In the spring of 1902, tired of traveling, Alexander enlisted in the 213th Orovai Reserve Infantry Battalion. Six months later he deserted from the army. Green spent half of his service in a punishment cell for his revolutionary sentiments. He was caught in Kamyshin, but the young man managed to escape again, this time to Simbirsk. Socialist Revolutionary propagandists helped him in this. He communicated with them in the army.

Since then, Greene rebelled against the social order and enthusiastically divulged revolutionary ideas. A year later, he was arrested for such activities, and later caught trying to escape and sent to a maximum security prison. The trial took place in 1905, they wanted to give him 20 years in prison, but the lawyer insisted on a reduced sentence, and Green was sent to Siberia for half the term. Very soon, in the fall, Alexander was released early and arrested again six months later in St. Petersburg. While serving his sentence, he was visited by his fiancée, Vera Abramova, the daughter of a high official who secretly supported the revolutionaries. In the spring, Green was sent to the Tobolsk province for four years, but thanks to his father, he got someone else’s passport and escaped three days later under the name Malginov.

Mature years

Soon Alexander Green ceased to be considered a Socialist Revolutionary. They got married to Vera Abramova. In 1910 he was already quite famous writer, and then it dawned on the authorities that the fugitive Grinevsky and Green were the same person. The writer was found again and taken into custody. They were sent to the Arkhangelsk region.

When the revolution passed, Greene was even more dissatisfied with social foundations. Divorces became allowed, which Vera, his wife, took advantage of. The reasons for the divorce were the lack of mutual understanding and Alexander’s obstinate, hot-tempered character. He tried to reconcile with her more than once, but in vain.

Five years later, Green met Maria Dolidze. Their union was very short-lived, only a few months, and the writer was left alone again.

In 1919, Alexander was called up to serve, where Green was a signalman. Very soon he contracted typhus and was treated for a long time.

In 1921, Alexander married Nina Mironova. They fell in love with each other very much and considered their meeting a magical gift of fate. Nina was a widow then.

Last years of life

In 1930, Alexander and Nina moved to Stary Crimea. Then the Soviet censorship motivated the refusal to reprint Green with the phrase: “You do not merge with the era.” A limit was set for new books: no more than one per year. Then the Grinevskys “fell to the bottom of poverty” and were terribly hungry. Alexander tried to hunt to get food, but all in vain.

Two years later, the writer died of a tumor in his stomach. He was buried in the Old Crimea cemetery.

Green's creativity

The very first story, entitled “The Merit of Private Panteleev,” was created at a difficult time for Alexander, in the summer of 1906. The work began to be published months later in the form of a propaganda brochure for punitive forces. It talked about official and military unrest. Green was rewarded, but the story was removed from print and destroyed. The story “The Elephant and the Pug” met the same fate. Several copies were randomly saved. The first thing people were able to read was the work “To Italy”. The writer published these stories under the name Malginov.

From 1907 he already signed as Green. One year later, collections of 25 stories per year were published. And Alexander began to be paid good fees. Green created some of his creations while in exile. At first it was published only in newspapers, and the first three volumes of works were published in 1913. A year later, Green began to take a masterful approach to writing. The books became deeper, more interesting, and sold out even more.

In the 1950s, stories were still published. But novels also began to be published: “The Shining World”, “The Golden Chain” and others. Alexander Green dedicated “Scarlet Sails” (his biography confirms this) to his third wife, Nina. The novel "Touchy" remained unfinished.

After death

When Alexander Stepanovich Green passed away, a collection of his works was published. Nina, his wife, remained to live there, but was under occupation. She was sent to Germany, to the camps. When the war ended, upon returning home she was accused of treason and sentenced to ten years in forced labor camps. All of Green's works were banned, but they were rehabilitated after Stalin died. Then new books began to be published again. While Nina was in the camps, her and Alexander’s house was transferred to other people. The woman sued them for a long time and eventually “won” him back. She created a museum dedicated to her husband, a writer, to whom she devoted the rest of her life.

Characteristic features of Alexander Green's prose

The author is recognized as a romantic. He always said that he was a conductor between the world of dreams and human reality. He believed that the world is ruled by the good, the bright and the good. In his novels and stories, he showed how good and bad deeds are reflected in people. He called for doing good to people. For example, in “Scarlet Sails” through the hero he conveyed the following message in the phrase: “He will have a new soul and a new one for you, just create a miracle for a person.” One of Greene's highest themes was the choice between good and high values ​​and low desires and the temptation to do evil.

Alexander knew how to elevate a simple parable so that it revealed a deep meaning, explaining everything in simple, understandable words. Critics have always noted the brightness of the plots and the “cinematic quality” of his works. He freed his characters from the burden of stereotypes. From their belonging to religions, to nationality and so on. Showed the essence of the person himself, his personality.

Poetry

Alexander Stepanovich Green had been interested in writing poetry since his college days, but they began to be published only in 1907. In his autobiography, Alexander told how he sent poems to various newspapers. They were about loneliness, despair and brokenness. “It’s as if a forty-year-old Chekhov’s hero wrote, and not little boy", he said about himself. His later and more serious poems, in the genre of realism, began to be published. He had lyrical poems that were dedicated to his first, and then to his last wife. In the early 1960s, the publication of his collections of poetry failed. Until the poet Leonid Martynov intervened, who said that Greene’s poems needed to be published, because this was the true legacy.

Place in literature

Alexander Stepanovich Green had neither followers nor predecessors. Critics compared him with many writers, but there were still very, very few similarities with anyone. He seemed to be a representative of classical literature, but, on the other hand, he was special, unique, and it is not known how to accurately determine his creative direction.

The originality of creativity lay in the differences in genre. Somewhere there was fantasy, and somewhere realism. But the focus on human moral values ​​still classifies Green’s works more as classics.

Criticism

Before the revolution, the work of Alexander Stepanovich Green was criticized, many treated him very disdainfully. He was condemned for excessive display of violence, for the exotic names of the characters, and was accused of imitating foreign authors. Over time, the negativity of the critics weakened. They began to often talk about what the author wanted to say. How he shows life in its real reflection and how he wants to convey to readers faith in miracles, a call to goodness and correct actions. After the 1930s, people began to talk about Alexander’s works differently. They began to equate him with the classics and call him a master of the genre.

Views on religion

In his youth, Alexander had a neutral attitude towards religion, although he was baptized according to Orthodox customs as a child. His opinion about religion changed throughout his life. This was noticeable in his works. For example, in The Shining World he demonstrated more Christian ideals. The scene where Runa asked God to strengthen her faith was cut due to censorship.

He and his wife Nina often went to church. Alexander Green, whose biography is presented to your attention in the article, loved the holiday of Holy Easter. He wrote in letters to his first wife that he and Nina were believers in God. Before his death, Green received communion and confession from a priest invited to the house.

The biography of Alexander Greene is now known to you. Finally, I would like to tell you some interesting facts:

• Green had many pseudonyms, in addition to the well-known two, there were also these: Odin, Victoria Klemm, Elsa Moravskaya, Stepanov.
• Alexander had a large tattoo of a ship on his chest. She was a symbol of his love for the sea.
• An interesting fact in the biography of Alexander Stepanovich Green is that all his life he considered his first wife his closest friend and did not stop corresponding with her.
• Many streets, museums, and even one tiny planet discovered in the 80s (Grinevia) were named after Alexander Greene.
• There is also Alexander Green Street in Riga, but it was named after his Latvian namesake and colleague.
• K. Zelinsky called the fictional country where several of the writer’s novels take place “Greenland.”

Alexander Grinevsky was born in 1880 in the town of Slobodskaya near Vyatka in the Urals in the family of an exiled Polish nobleman. He was the eldest of 4 children.

As a child, Sasha was inquisitive and read from the age of 6. Green was a difficult teenager, he even ran away from home.

At the age of 10, the boy was sent to a real school, but he behaved badly and devoted his school time to reading. This is where he got his nickname Green. In the second grade, Sasha was expelled and transferred to another educational institution.

Green's mother died when he was 15 years old, and his father quickly remarried. The young man did not get along with his stepmother and settled separately, read with voraciousness, wrote poetry and even worked part-time.

Trips

After graduating from the Vyatka School, Green decided to fulfill his childhood dream and become a sailor. He left for Odessa. The 16-year-old boy suffered through grief until he got a job as a sailor on a ship, but he did not work for long, had a fight with the captain and returned home. A year later, Green left for Batum. There he tried many professions and continued his search for what he loved, returning to his father.

At 22, Green became a soldier, but after 6 months Alexander deserted. The rebellious spirit was combined in his personality with humanism, so when he became an agent of the Socialist Revolutionaries, he flatly refused to participate in terrorist attacks.

From 1903 to 1905, Green was arrested twice and deported to the Tobolsk province, but fled to his father, who helped him obtain a fake passport.

Green becomes a writer

The first stories appeared in 1906. The theme is about ordinary people and revolutionaries. Green signed his stories with pseudonyms. One of them is the last name on a fake passport ( Malginov). Nickname Green appeared in the story "The Case" in 1907.

In 1908 and 1910 collections of the writer's stories were published. These were realistic works.

Since 1912, Greene gradually begins to write romantic stories about heroic people and a fictional country. The writer publishes stories in newspapers and magazines and gets acquainted with the writing community. In 1915, a collection of stories with an anti-war theme was published.

Green became disillusioned with Soviet reality even faster than with pre-revolutionary reality. He was opposed to any violence; he did not even change his spelling or calendar. In 1919, the writer was drafted into the Red Army, but fell ill with typhus. Gorky secured a writer's ration and housing for him. In 1920-1922 The extravaganza “Scarlet Sails” was written and published in 1923. A collection of short stories was published in 1922.

In 1924, Green's first novel, “The Shining World,” was published, in 1925, “The Golden Chain,” and in 1926, the novel “Running on the Waves” was written and published in 1928. In 1929, two more of Green's novels were published.

"The era rushes by"

Greene is an awkward writer. He refused to write in the spirit of “socialist realism”, therefore, with the collapse of the NEP, the publication of the 15-volume volume of his works ceased. The family is almost starving; they move from Feodosia to Old Crimea. Since 1930, reprints of Greene's books have been prohibited. Greene did not finish his last novel.

The writer died in 1932.

Personal life

Alexander Green was married three times. The first time his wife was Vera Abramova, who visited the future writer in 1906 in prison in St. Petersburg under the guise of a bride. The history of their relationship is described in the 1912 story “One Hundred Miles Along the River.” His wife went into exile with him in 1911. The couple divorced in 1913. Until the end of his life, Green carried her portrait with him everywhere.

Greene's second wife remained married to him for several months in 1919.

The writer's third wife, Nina, appeared in 1921. He dedicated his most to her famous work- “Scarlet Sails”.

Escapism

A. Green’s main work is the extravaganza “Scarlet Sails”. This is a fairy tale about how a dream comes true if it is a real dream. The action takes place in the fictional city of Kaperna, as dark and evil as St. Petersburg in the early 20s, in which the fairy tale was written. Assol is not like the residents of the city; she believes in the myth of a ship with scarlet sails on which she will sail to happiness. Captain Gray takes Assol away, having played out her myth for his beloved.