Does Alexander Kuprin belong to prose writers? Notes

September 7 marks the 145th anniversary of the birth of the author of "The Pit", "Duel", "Pomegranate Bracelet" and other wonderful works

People who knew the great Russian writer were sure: he was to become the captain of a sailing ship, deal with pirates, hunt tigers in the jungle, or roam the world in the company of gold diggers. The comrades of Alexander KUPRIN could well have been robbers - but noble robbers, "with a special drunken wisdom and honest love for a person," as the writer Nadezhda TEFFI imagined. In fact, his life was not much different from such a description - he found his "pirates", "tigers" and "gold diggers" everywhere, greedily invading those areas of life where it is better for a "decent" person not to meddle.

A brawler and a reveler, explosive and sometimes cruel - and then there is almost childish sentimentality in relation to people. Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin claimed that he became a writer by accident. Before that, he managed to work as a turner at the factory, as a prompter in the theater, and as a toilet salesman. He was a compositor, carpenter, psalmist, engaged in land surveying and dental work, grew shag, sailed as a stoker, fished and loaded watermelons. He flew in an airplane, put out fires with the fire brigade, went down to the seabed ...
They say that some "exploits" were attributed to him by "well-wishers", but it was painful for them to fall on the contradictory nature of the rebel writer.

Doomsday

As soon as Sasha was one year old, his father died of cholera. Mother, Lyudmila Alekseevna, moved to Moscow and settled with her son in the Widow's House. The woman, exhausted by getting a piece of bread, often beat the boy. When leaving on business, the mother drew a circle with chalk, beyond which Sasha was forbidden to go, or tied the child to the leg of the bed.
Growing up, Kuprin remembered childhood grievances. When Lyudmila Alekseevna reprimanded him in the presence of outsiders, he flared up: “I hate my mother!” She, by the way, remained in the Widow's House until her death.

singed wife

The first wife of the writer, Maria Karlovna Davydova, publisher of the magazine "God's World", wanting to inspire her husband to literary exploits, often did not let him go home until he brought the prescribed number of written pages. Kuprin squeezed the sheets through the open door to her. If it wasn't opened to him, he would sit on the steps and cry. Sometimes he cheated, slipping old pages or copying a passage from Chekhov.
The writer, brought to the handle, somehow threw a lit match on his wife's gas dress. The robe broke out, but the unfortunate managed to be saved.

Scandalous divorce

The second wife appeared in Kuprin's life when he had not yet divorced the first. Having fallen in love with his daughter's nanny, 22-year-old Lisa Heinrich, he soon began to live with her. Maria Karlovna delayed the divorce, and then the writer began to accuse her of neglecting parental duties.
- M. K. only pretends to be a loving mother, - he was indignant. - That she threw the girl for whole days and months on Aunt Lisa, that's nothing. But M.K. left her in the care of an absurd, broken maid, in the care of a completely unfamiliar German bonnet, with an animal muzzle, dyed hair, about 50 years old and in a corset. All her concern for Lidush was that in the morning she took her to a dirty bed and let her play with a scythe or, leaving home, teased her: “And mother is leaving, poor mother, but don’t you feel sorry for mother?” etc.
Having stated these insinuations, Kuprin achieved his goal: after two years of cohabitation with his young wife, a divorce was obtained.

Once in a state of drunkenness, Kuprin sent a letter to Nicholas II with a request to grant the provincial Crimean Balaklava, in which he spent the summer, the status of a free city.
The postman knocked off his feet, looking for Kuprin in all the hot spots. Finally, in one of the restaurants, he handed the writer the answer of the emperor.
The glasses were filled with champagne, Kuprin solemnly opened the envelope and, addressing the audience, said: “But here the tsar writes to me ...” Nikolai’s answer consisted of three words: “When you drink, have a snack.”

decent rider

Kuprin liked to communicate with circus performers, respected their hard work. Having met a very bourgeois lady, he seriously urged her to give up everything and become a rider.
“Your parents didn’t take care of you, didn’t give you a real upbringing. Where did you study?
- At University.
- Well, you see. Since the parents did not take care in time, try to correct their mistake. Of course, it is already difficult for you to work on the trapezoid. They woke up late. But you can still make a pretty good rider.

touchy cat

The name of Kuprin often appeared in scandalous incidents. One of them was told by his daughter Xenia.
- In St. Petersburg, there was a disgusting trial of cat-hunters. A wealthy breeder sent a lackey to collect cats in a bag, which were then tied to furniture and dogs were lowered onto them. Several people from the literary environment were present at the same time. And when the process began, they began to accuse the writer that he, they say, had also been to these vile entertainments. Kuprin immediately dashed off a protest in the newspapers.
Alexander Ivanovich could not pass by street dog not to stroke. But, having drunk, this humanist enthusiastically searched all over Odessa for dill, in order to see what would happen if he was fed a parrot: he was told that the bird would die in terrible agony.
In recent years, Kuprin talked a lot with his beloved cat. Somehow upset:
- Everything is not glued this morning. They reduced the fee in the newspaper, the cat is pouting at me for something. The doctor forbade drinking Calvados and told me to lie down. Everything doesn't stick. But why is the cat offended?

The power of smell

For Kuprin, smell and smell meant a lot. He told us that he “sniffed” people:
- I'll pull my nose and I know what kind of person.
Somehow in society they showed him a beautiful lady.
- What do you say, Alexander Ivanovich, is she really good?
- Stupid dog. She smells like a radish from her muzzle, - he answered loudly.

"The Captivating Females"

After the release of The Pit, Alexander Ivanovich received a lot of letters, mostly anonymous. Complained:
- They scold me for the first part of "The Pit", they call me a pornographer, the destroyer of youth and, most importantly, the author of dirty lampoons on men. It would be nothing! Letters from anonymous spewing blasphemy do not surprise me. Wounded townsfolk, publicly defending chastity and morality, and secretly indulging in all the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, have the right to be angry. But the criticism surprises me. How can you draw conclusions about a work that has not yet been completed?
Later, while living in Paris, accusations reached him that in his works there were no “social women”, but “captivating females”. According to the order of the People's Commissariat of Education, sent to libraries, Kuprin's books should have been burned. The destruction of "harmful" publications was led by Deputy People's Commissar of Education Nadezhda Krupskaya.

Red-eyed Ilyich

In early 1919, the writer turned to Lenin with a proposal to publish a newspaper for the villagers called "Earth". In the note “Instant Photography”, Kuprin described that landmark meeting as follows:
- Lenin rises from the table and takes a few steps towards him. He rolls from side to side as if he were lame on both legs; so walk bow-legged, born horsemen. At the same time, there is something crab in all his movements.
His hands are big and very unpleasant. But I looked into his eyes. Last summer in the Paris Zoological Gardens, when I saw the golden-red eyes of a lemur monkey, I said to myself with satisfaction: “Here, I finally found the color of Lenin's eyes!”
At night, already in bed, I again turned my memory to Lenin and ... got scared. “In essence,” I thought, “this man, so simple, polite and healthy, is much more terrible than Nero, Tiberius, Ivan the Terrible. Those, with all their spiritual ugliness, were still people accessible to the whims of the day and fluctuations in character. This one is something like a stone, like a cliff, which has broken away from the mountain range and is rapidly rolling down, destroying everything in its path. He has no feelings, no desires, no instincts. One sharp, dry, invincible thought: falling, I destroy.

forced anxiety

At the time of emigration, Alexander Ivanovich and his wife at one time lived in the south of France. There he became friends with the fishermen and went out with them on a boat to the sea. In the evening, Elizaveta Moritsovna ran around the coastal taverns, looking for her husband. Once I found him in the company of a drunken girl who was sitting on his lap.
- Daddy, go home! wife pleaded.
“I don’t understand you,” Kuprin replied importantly. - You see, a lady is sitting on me. I can't disturb her.

Insulted dignity

In France, Kuprin, his wife Elizaveta Moritsovna and daughter Xenia lived in constant debt.
“We owe ten thousand for meat,” he reported to his friends.
Everyone was amazed: well, what Parisian butcher would let go of so much on credit to a Russian refugee?
Fundraising was arranged for Kuprin. Bunin transferred five thousand francs to his friend from the money he received. Nobel Prize. Elizaveta Moritsovna opened a small library and stationery shop. But things were going badly.

Important milestones
* Born on September 7 (August 26), 1870 in the city of Narovchat, Penza province.
* At the age of six, he was placed in an orphanage.
* Graduated from the Alexander Junker School in Moscow. In 1890 - 1894 served in a regiment in the Podolsk province.
* With the outbreak of the First World War, he becomes an army instructor, and his house in Gatchina turns into a hospital.
* In 1919 he emigrated with his family to France.
* In 1937 he returned to his homeland, where he died on August 25, 1938. Five years later, in the spring of 1942, during the siege of Leningrad, his wife Elizaveta Moritsovna hanged herself in Gatchina.

"Who did not fall - he did not rise"

Quotes from the writer's works have long become aphorisms.

* Most of all I am ashamed of lies, always coming from cowardice and weakness.
* Separation for love is the same as the wind for fire: it extinguishes a small love, and inflates a big one even more.
* Do not climb to death until you are called.
* Nowhere does a person speak so clearly as during a meal.
* Fate cannot be tortured twice. Not good. She learns, she listens. Fate doesn't like being questioned.
* Every Jew will be born into the world of God with a destined mission to be a Russian poet.

Cupcakes for tea

The term allotted to KUPRIN on Earth, he predicted for himself. In the story “Olesya”, an old fortune-teller speaks about this, referring to the main character with whom the writer associated himself: “If you don’t die at sixty-seven, then ...” He did not live up to 68 a day.

Kuprin passed away in Gatchina, where he settled after returning from emigration. They say that more than one delegate was sent to him, persuading him to leave France - for the Soviet authorities it was a matter of honor to call the renegade to his homeland. It was said that there was complete abundance in the USSR. He and his wife were promised a free apartment, a dacha, and servants. The writer had cancer of the esophagus, and he was told that in Soviet hospitals and sanatoriums a complete recovery from all diseases is guaranteed. “How do you like the new Soviet homeland?” - Alexander Ivanovich was asked upon arrival. “Mmm... Here they give donuts for tea,” the writer answered indifferently and, not paying attention to those around him, began to drink tea.

Kuprin Alexander Ivanovich (1870 - 1938) - Russian writer. Social criticism marked the story "Moloch" (1896), in which industrialization appears in the form of a monster plant that enslaves a person morally and physically, the story "Duel" (1905) - about the death of a mentally pure hero in the deadly atmosphere of army life and the story "The Pit" (1909 - 15) - about prostitution. The variety of finely defined types, lyrical situations in the novels and stories "Olesya" (1898), "Gambrinus" (1907), "Garnet Bracelet" (1911). Cycles of essays ("Listrigons", 1907 - 11). In 1919 - 37 in exile, in 1937 he returned to his homeland. Autobiographical novel "Junker" (1928 - 32).

Big encyclopedic dictionary, M.-SPb., 1998

Biography

Kuprin Alexander Ivanovich (1870), prose writer.

Born on August 26 (September 7, NS) in the city of Narovchat, Penza province, in the family of a petty official who died a year after the birth of his son. Mother (from the ancient family of the Tatar princes Kulanchakov) after the death of her husband moved to Moscow, where the future writer spent his childhood and youth. At the age of six, the boy was sent to the Moscow Razumovsky boarding school (orphan), from where he left in 1880. In the same year he entered the Moscow military academy, transformed into the Cadet Corps.

After the end of the exercise, he continued his military education at the Alexander Cadet School (1888 - 90). Subsequently, he will describe his "military youth" in the stories "At the Break (The Cadets)" and in the novel "Junkers". Even then he dreamed of becoming a "poet or novelist."

Kuprin's first literary experience was poetry, which remained unpublished. The first work to see light, story"The Last Debut" (1889).

In 1890, after graduating from a military school, Kuprin, with the rank of second lieutenant, was enrolled in an infantry regiment stationed in the Podolsk province. The life of an officer, which he led for four years, provided rich material for his future works. In 1893 - 1894 in the St. Petersburg magazine "Russian wealth" his story "In the Dark" and the stories "Moonlight Night" and "Inquiry" were published. A series of stories is dedicated to the life of the Russian army: "Overnight" (1897), "Night Shift" (1899), "Campaign". In 1894 Kuprin retired and moved to Kyiv, having no civilian profession and little life experience. In the following years, he traveled a lot around Russia, having tried many professions, eagerly absorbing life experiences that became the basis of his future works. In the 1890s he published the essay "Yuzovsky Plant" and the story "Moloch", the stories "Forest Wilderness", "The Werewolf", the stories "Olesya" and "Kat" ("Army Ensign"). During these years, Kuprin met Bunin, Chekhov and Gorky. In 1901 he moved to St. Petersburg, began working as a secretary for the Journal for All, married M. Davydova, and had a daughter, Lydia. Kuprin's stories appeared in St. Petersburg magazines: "Swamp" (1902); "Horse Thieves" (1903); "White Poodle" (1904). In 1905, his most significant work was published - the story "Duel", which had big success. The writer's speeches with the reading of individual chapters of the "Duel" became an event in the cultural life of the capital. His works of this time were very well-behaved: the essay "Events in Sevastopol" (1905), the stories "Staff Captain Rybnikov" (1906), "The River of Life", "Gambrinus" (1907). In 1907 he married a second marriage to sister of mercy E. Heinrich, daughter Ksenia was born. Kuprin's work in the years between the two revolutions opposed the decadent moods of those years: the cycle of essays "Listrigons" (1907 - 11), stories about animals, the stories "Shulamith", "Garnet Bracelet" (1911). His prose became a prominent phenomenon in Russian literature at the beginning of the century. After the October Revolution, the writer did not accept the policy of war communism, the "Red Terror", he experienced fear for the fate of Russian culture. In 1918 he came to Lenin with a proposal to publish a newspaper for the village - "Earth". At one time he worked in the publishing house "World Literature", founded by Gorky. In the autumn of 1919, while in Gatchina, cut off from Petrograd by Yudenich's troops, he emigrated abroad. The seventeen years that the writer spent in Paris were an unproductive period. Constant material need, homesickness led him to the decision to return to Russia. In the spring of 1937, the seriously ill Kuprin returned to his homeland, warmly welcomed by his admirers. Published an essay "Moscow dear". However, new creative plans were not destined to come true. In August 1938 Kuprin died in Leningrad from cancer.

CHILDHOOD. - SCHOOL YEARS. - FIRST LITERARY EXPERIENCES. - REGIMENTAL SERVICE

"I was born on August 26, 1870 in the Penza province in the city of Narovchat, about which there is still a saying:" Narovchat - only pegs stick out, "because it gently burns out every two years in the third to the ground," wrote Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin in a short autobiographical letter to the autograph collector E. P. Yurgenson February 20, 19131

The father of the future writer, Ivan Ivanovich Kuprin, the staff doctor's son, was a petty official, a clerk at the world mediator. According to surviving legends, he was a man who was not devoid of artistic abilities: he played the violin quite well, painted with oil paints. His wife, Lyubov Alekseevna, came from the once rich family of the Tatar princes Kulanchakovs or Kulunchakovs, listed in the "List of Titled Families" (St. Petersburg, 1892), who traced their genealogy to the "kings of Kasimov". Kuprin knew about his Tatar ancestors and subsequently, in one private letter, talking about the ridiculous claims of some Baltic baron to be aristocratic, not without some coquetry remarked: "A descendant of Lang Temir, I despise this nonsense." In fact, the "Kasimov tsars" had nothing to do with Tamerlane.

Kuprin's mother was an extraordinary woman. She was distinguished, according to her son, by rare observation, energy and perseverance. In a letter sent by the writer to his mother shortly before her death (1910), Kuprin wrote: "I really need you now. Not your experience, not your mind, but your instinctive taste, which I trust more than all current criticism."

After the death of her mother (she was then over 70 years old), Kuprin, in a conversation with a newspaper reporter, gave her the following characterization: “My mother experienced all the political and literary movements in Russia, always taking the side of the new, the young. My mother died a modern person.”3 Kuprin told another reporter: “If you tell or read something to her, she will certainly express her opinion in a well-aimed, strong, characteristic word. Where did she get such words from? How many times I robbed her, inserting her words and expressions into my stories. 4 AI Kuprin, when his father died of cholera, was in his second year. Left a widow, L. A. Kuprina moved with her two daughters and son to Moscow, to her homeland: she was "an old, convinced Muscovite" (VII, 153): This move dates back to 1873-1874; soon L. A. Kuprina and her son settled in the Moscow widow's house, later described by Kuprin in the story "Holy Lies".

Financial difficulties forced L. A. Kuprin to give her only son at the age of seven to the Razumovsky boarding school (Alexandrovsky juvenile orphan school).

Kuprin's stay at the Razumovsky pension lasted no more than three years; however, it left a heavy mark on the writer's soul. Always cheerful and generally not inclined to complain about fate, Kuprin carried through his whole life a disgust for educational institutions like the Razumovsky boarding school and for the educational system that dominated there. Recalling in the story (* 7) "The Runaways" about Razumovsky "educations", as the boarders of this closed educational institution were called, Kuprin wrote: "All of them were poorly prepared ... Having spent their best years under the influence of hysterical old maids, they were from the very beginning warped." About one of his then teachers, Kuprin wrote in the same story: “Among the rest of the monsters in skirts, old, skinny yellow maidens with tied ears, throats and cheeks, angry, noisy, nervous, among all the cool ladies that boys and girls have in different there were up to twenty classes - she alone left Nelgin with a relatively gratifying impression for the rest of her life, but she was not without reproaches either.

In 1880, despite poor training, Kuprin passed the exam for the Second Moscow Military Gymnasium. Military gymnasiums were established in 1862-1863. Minister of War D. A. Milyutin instead of the pre-reform barracks cadet corps.

At the beginning of the reign of Alexander III, military gymnasiums were declared unsuitable for the training of future officers and in 1882, during a period of increased reaction, they were liquidated; to replace them, cadet corps were again created. The Second Moscow Military Gymnasium during the years of studying in it Kuprin turned into the Second Moscow cadet corps . Staying in the cadet corps had a strong influence on the character of Kuprin. From "gentle", "impressionable", "not like other boys" (IV, 24), he turned into one of the members of the "reckless boyish republic", which "tempered them physically and crippled them morally" (IV, 103) . In the story "At the Break (The Cadets)" Kuprin with severe honesty and captivating sincerity portrayed this "military bursa", which was not much inferior to the real Pomyalovsky's bursa. Kuprin recalled with particular warmth in the Cadets of a literature teacher: “Another teacher of the Russian language, Mikhail Ivanovich Trukhanov, also drank,” Kuprin wrote, “and he must have drank mainly beer, because with a small stature and narrow build he was distinguished by an excessive belly "He had a red beard, blue glasses and a hoarse voice. However, with this hoarse voice, he read aloud Gogol, Turgenev, Lermontov and Pushkin remarkably well. The most desperate lazybones, notorious loafers listened to his reading, as if spellbound, afraid to move, afraid to miss even a single word, what amazing beauty, what depth of feeling he achieved with his cold, drunken voice. Subsequently, Bulanin was obliged to him alone for his love of Russian literature "(IV, 107). In the person of Trukhanov, Kuprin brought out the teacher Tsukhanov. In the gloomy atmosphere of the military gymnasium and the cadet corps, Kuprin, thanks to a talented teacher, developed a love for his native literature. This is understandable: Tsukhanov's lessons and readings transferred his young listeners from the suffocating atmosphere of the building to the bright world of Russian literature, the charm of which in such conditions became even deeper, even stronger, even more irresistible. However, even before meeting with Tsukhanov, young Kuprin had strong literary impressions, which undoubtedly left a mark on his receptive soul. In early childhood, his grandmother told him the story of Joan of Arc, apparently believing that semi-legendary stories about a historical heroine are more suitable spiritual food for a child than fairy tales. But the world of fairy tales did not remain alien to little Kuprin: at the age of six, he devoured books with rapture Perhaps these childhood and adolescent literary impressions formed the first layer of his courageous, cheerful and prone to romantic heroism artistic manner.And in the boarding school, and in the cadet corps, and, finally, in the cadet school, where he entered in September 1888 5, the future writer was distinguished by a "hot" character, often and sharply protested against school irregularities and rules, and was often subjected to reprimands and punishments. "Rebellion became characteristic of his trait," wrote one of his biographers about this period of Kuprin's life. By the time Kuprin was in the cadet corps, his poetic experiments belong. Kuprin's poems dated 1883-1887 have come down to us. Among them, along with student rehashings and imitations of Polezhaev, Nadson and Minsky, there are more independent works representing responses young poet to current political events. These poems testify that in the cadet corps, despite the strict regime, Kuprin had to some extent the opportunity to follow the socio-political life of his homeland and that he already had democratic views at that time. Such, for example, is the satirical "Ode to Katkov" (1886), in which the 16-year-old Kuprin, still poorly coping with poetic size , wrote: He opened our eyes: Men supposedly de animals, Doors should be closed to them everywhere, Their supposedly de "thousands of snouts!" ... No less satirical is the poem "Misunderstanding", written about one of the travels of Alexander III. The poem "Dreams", dated April 14, 1887, was created under the clear impression of information circulating in society about meetings of the special presence of the Senate, which examined the case of A. I. Ulyanov and comrades accused of attempting to assassinate Alexander III. On April 15, the court ruled on the execution of A. I. Ulyanov and four of his accomplices. Rumors about the possibility of the execution of A. I. Ulyanov, apparently, also penetrated into the cadet corps. In the poems of these years, Kuprin follows the democratic poets of the eighties, who, along with the motives of despondency and longing, also encountered attempts to portray revolutionary fighters. Such, on the one hand, are Kuprin's poems "Fruitless Tears, Heavy Thoughts", "Song of Sorrow", on the other - "Fighter" (1885), with the image of a dying revolutionary, a fighter for "truth (* 10) holy ", for the "dear homeland", passing on to the "brothers" the banner that he "held high."6 Weak and little independent poems by Kuprin 1883-1887. nevertheless, they are important as documents characterizing the formation of his socio-political views and literary interests. In 1889, Kuprin met a then quite famous poet, Liodor Ivanovich Palmin, the author of the poem "Requiem" ("Do not cry over the corpses of fallen fighters"); through Palmin, Kuprin managed to publish one of his works - the "suite" "The Last Debut" in the journal "Russian satirical sheet", published in Moscow by N. N. Soedov. The story was published in No. 48 and signed in abbreviated form: "A. K-rin."7 This very weak work tells how a tragic actress, seduced by the director, takes poison on stage and dies. Some researchers suggest that Kuprin's story reflected the story of E. P. Kadmina, the prototype of the heroine of Turgenev's "Clara Milich", but this hypothesis is not supported by any evidence. The literary performance brought trouble on the young author, he was subjected to disciplinary action: he was put in a punishment cell. Kuprin recalled this episode in the story "The Firstborn" (1897), although there the name of the journal and the work and the time of the event are somewhat changed, and the name of the poet who provided him with literary patronage is very encrypted: he is called Ivan Liodorych Venkov. In the story "Junker" this episode is described in more detail, and the name of the poet is given in a more transparent form - Diodor Ivanovich Mirtov. The story with which Kuprin began his literary career in print was not his first experience in prose genre; at least the hero of his story "The Duel", Romashov, in whom researchers see many biographical features of its creator and who is also engaged in literary work, composes the story "The Last Fatal Debut": "This was the third story composed (* 11) by Romashov" , says Kuprin (II, 98). Yes, and in the story "Firstborn" the first experience of the writer is called "Early Tears". The trouble caused by the printed speech only suspended, but did not stop writing activity Kuprin. Kuprin's systematic education ended with his stay at the cadet school. He did not take much knowledge out of school. Future life also did not contribute to the strengthening and expansion of his scientific horizons. Therefore, subsequently Kuprin, feeling the insufficiency of his educational background, often expressed regret about this: "No talent is worth anything without a systematic education," he wrote in his autobiography.8 In lectures on Russian literature, which he read in 1916 in Tbilisi , Kuprin "spoke about his own works, a major drawback of which, in his opinion, is the lack of systematic education of their author." unbridled, incredibly senseless and bestial reaction.”10 In the plans of the reactionary government, the army and especially the officers were assigned the role of mercilessly cruel suppressors of the revolutionary movement, strangling the slightest signs of public discontent. The inspirers of this government policy were journalists M. N. Katkov, publisher of Moskovskie Vedomosti, Prince V. P. Meshchersky, publisher of the Grazhdanin newspaper, and A. S. Suvorin, editor-publisher of the Novoe Vremya newspaper. In all these publications, the idea was persistently carried out that the army is the backbone of the throne, religion and national interests, that it is necessary to educate officer cadres in the spirit of blind, unreasoning obedience to superiors. All these reactionary beginnings were carried out in a straightforward and rude manner in teaching and education in the cadet corps and cadet schools in the 1880s and 1890s. It is not surprising, therefore, that the cultural level of Russian officers in the last decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries. was very low. It is all the more significant that the young Kuprin in such an environment appeared satirical "Ode to Katkov" and "Misunderstanding" and the poem "Dreams", condemning the execution of revolutionaries. Obviously, during vacations and during the vacation months, Kuprin revolved around progressive-minded people, communication with whom to some extent counteracted the suffocating atmosphere of the monarchist cadet school. Unfortunately, it was these years of Kuprin's life that were very little reflected in the surviving handwritten and printed sources. In 1890, Kuprin graduated from the cadet school in the first category and was assigned to the 46th Dnieper Infantry Regiment, which was stationed successively in Kamenetz-Podolsky, Proskurov, Volochisk. Kuprin served in the regiment for about four years. No information about this period of his life, except for the official track record, has been preserved. Therefore, those places in literary works Kuprin of a later time, which are marked by the stamp of autobiography. Here is how, for example, the story "The Inexplicable" (1915) begins: "At that time, the now notorious writer Alexandrov was a naive, cheerful and mischievous second lieutenant... "The second lieutenant was often subjected to house arrest for two, then for three, then for five days with the addition of a sentry and without. And since the small southwestern town did not have its own guardhouse, on important occasions the young officer was sent to the neighboring provincial city , where, having handed over his checker to the commandant's office for preservation, he sat out twenty-one days, eating from the fat cauldron of the clerk's team. (* 13) "His misdeeds were almost innocent. Once he rode into a restaurant, on the second floor, riding someone else's old, one-eyed, defective horse and, having drunk a glass of cognac at the counter, safely, on horseback, went down. This adventure cost him safely, but a large crowd gathered on the street, and a temptation for the honor of the uniform came out. "11 Further, it is told how Lieutenant Aleksandrov jumped out of the window from the officers' meeting, located on the second floor of the dance hall, to bring a rose thrown by the "prom queen", and, - completely like the knight Delorge from Schiller's "Glove" - ​​refused the promised reward - a kiss. However, Kuprin was not only "a naive, cheerful and mischievous second lieutenant." During the years of his officership, he accumulated a lot of impressions and observations on the life of the military, their families, on the life of the provincial inhabitants. Subsequently, these materials were used by him in novels and stories from officer and soldier life; Kuprin depicted regimental life in the story "Duel" in especially detail and truthfully. The sixth chapter of this work presents a concise description of an ordinary infantry regiment of the last decades of the last century, before the war with Japan. In each line of this chapter one can see a comprehensive, deep, serious knowledge of the way of life of officers, their boring and difficult everyday life, their dull, drunken joys, their hopeless, hopeless life, one can see the ability to artistically generalize, typify the accumulated materials. In the stories "Inquiry", "Overnight", "Wedding", "Night Shift", "Campaign" and others, Kuprin drew individual episodes from the regimental life he had studied well, which were not included in the "Duel" plan. This entire cycle of Kuprin's works occupied in Russian literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. a notable place, rightfully bringing their author the glory of the largest writer of everyday life in the Russian army. In the regiment, Kuprin continued to engage in literary work. It is possible that it was also published after 1889 after The Last Debut. In any case, (*14) the works written by him during his military service are much more artistic than his poems of 1883-1887. and his first story. In the first half of 1893, Kuprin, through one of his St. Petersburg acquaintances, sent the story "In the Darkness" to the liberal populist magazine Russkoe Bogatstvo, which enjoyed great prestige at that time. It was accepted for publication and saw the light in Nos. 6 and 7 of Russian Wealth for 1893. Later, in No. 11, the story "Moonlight Night" was published, and in 1894, in No. 8, - "From a distant of the past". Kuprin continued to publish in Russian Wealth for almost a decade. However, not everything sent by Kuprin to the editors of Russian Wealth got into print. So, from his undated letter to the secretary of the journal A.I. Ivanchin-Pisarev, apparently dating back to 1893, it is clear that he sent the story "Ideal" to "Russian Wealth", which did not appear in print. Two years later, upon arrival in the regiment, Kuprin made an attempt to change his position. Like a number of characters in his war stories, he made it his goal to prepare for the exam at the General Staff Academy. For most army officers of that period, the Academy was the only way to get out of the sucking mud of provincial regimental life with its petty squabbles, intrigues, vulgar romances and constant lack of money. Kuprin prepared quite thoroughly and in 1893 went to St. Petersburg for an exam. On the way, when crossing the river by ferry, Kuprin witnessed the incorrect attitude of the police officer to some young girl. Kuprin stood up for the victim; according to people who mentioned this episode dully, he did it in a somewhat peculiar form - either he threw the bailiff into the water, or he beat him. In any case, by order of the commander of the Kiev Military District, General Dragomirov, who was subordinate to the 46th Dnieper Regiment, during the exams, Kuprin was recalled back to the regiment, and he was forbidden to take the exam "as a person politically (* 15) unreliable" was forbidden. After that, Kuprin decided to retire. The regimental authorities, prejudiced against him, began to find fault with him even more; once he was reprimanded in a particularly harsh manner. Kuprin submitted his resignation. After some time, his request was granted. The military period of Kuprin's life is over. However, during the imperialist war of 1914-1918. Kuprin again served in the army, but for health reasons not for long. First three printed works Kuprin, relating to the period 1889-1893 - "The Last Debut", "In the Dark" and "Moonlight Night" - do not have any serious historical and literary interest. In each of them, an "extraordinary", "exciting" plot is taken - suicide or murder; the characters are also "unusual", "mysterious"; the psychologism of the novice author is shallow, unconvincing. However, in the story "Moonlight Night", despite the fact that the young writer walked along the beaten path, the features of some independence of him already appear, in particular, the night landscape attracts attention, although it evokes similar pictures of Turgenev and Chekhov.

Kuprin Alexander Ivanovich was born in August 1870 in the Penza province; by mother comes from the family of the Tatar princes Kolonchaki. He studied at the 2nd Cadet Corps and the Alexander Military School. He began to write as a cadet; his first story: "The Last Debut" was published in 1889 in the Moscow "Russian Satirical Leaf". In 1894, Kuprin left military service, worked in provincial publications, studied dental art, served in technical offices, was engaged in land surveying, and was an actor; All this was later reflected in his work. Early essays Kuprin were published in Kyiv, in two collections: "Kyiv Types" (1896) and "Miniatures" (1897); they are rather pale and superficial. The first big story that put forward Kuprin as a writer, "Moloch", was published in 1896 in "Russian. God."; it was followed by: "The Night Shift" (1899), in "The World of God", and a number of other stories published in these two magazines. In 1901, Kuprin settled in St. Petersburg, becoming the closest employee of the World of God and the Knowledge publishing house. This publishing house published the first two volumes of Kuprin's works (1903 and 1906). Later, the collected works of Kuprin were published in Moscow, and also given, in 1912, in the appendices to the Niva (in eight volumes). In 1914 Kuprin was called up for military service. Kuprin is a writer of transitional times. In his work, the mood of the "roadless" era was captured, but not of its hopelessly pessimistic generation, which is depicted by Chekhov, but of a younger one. The social twilight at this time was already drawing to a close, but still had a great influence on the psychology of the intelligentsia. The main characters of Kuprin's first stories: engineer Bobrov ("Moloch"), doctor Kashintsev ("Zhidovka") and student Serdyukov ("Swamp") have much in common with Chekhov's heroes. These are sensitive, conscientious, but broken, mentally tired people, entangled in reflections and Hamlet's moods. They are horrified by the evil of the world, they keenly sympathize with the suffering of others, but are incapable of fighting. Consciousness of their own impotence prompts them to perceive life only from the side of its rigidity, injustice and aimlessness. However, these reflective heroes of Kuprin also have a new feature that distinguishes them from Chekhov's pessimists. They organically love life and tenaciously cling to it. Their minds say one thing, their hearts say another. When the tormented neurasthenic, morphine addict Bobrov comes to the decision to commit suicide, a truthful inner voice whispers to him that he will not do it. "Why pretend to yourself? You love the sensation of life too much to kill yourself..." In the student Serdyukov, this love for the sensation of life, so characteristic of the new generation, is even more obvious. He is shocked by the misfortunes of the forester and his family, who are slowly dying from a fever, he sharply sympathizes with poor people and, spending the night in their hut, comes to hallucinations, to nightmares; life seems impossible to him in the presence of this kind of suffering, cruelty and injustice of fate ... But with the onset of morning, Serdyukov does not leave a trace of these painful moods. He is seized by an irresistible desire to get out of the disgusting fog as soon as possible. He "suddenly greedily, to the point of suffering, wanted to see the sun," and when he finally ran up the hillock, he "suffocated from a surge of inexpressible joy." The significant ending of this story sounds almost symbolic for Kuprin's work, for the social band that is reflected in it. "The fog lay like a white swaying endless smoothness at his feet, but above it the blue sky shone, fragrant green branches whispered, and the golden rays of the sun rang with the triumphant triumph of victory." Small sparks gradually flared up into a whole flame. The later works of Kuprin, especially his famous "Duel" - a real apotheosis of life. For the new sense of life of the intelligentsia, a corresponding ideology was found - in Nietzscheism. The preachers of individualism in "The Duel" are Romashev and, mainly, Nazansky, with his extreme motto: "when I am gone, the whole world will perish ..." These convinced Nietzscheans are sincerely devoted to the new faith, but are too weak to carry it out in life. Kuprin well captured this discrepancy between the "cult of personality" and the flabbiness of its bearers. Kuprin's individualistic moods were expressed not only in the description of new intellectuals, but also in the creation of a whole series of peculiar heroes in the spirit of Gorky's tramps - simple, whole, spontaneous, healthy natures, living a full, intense life. Such, for example, is the strongman and athlete Buzyga in "Horse Thieves", whom "at least with what you want to beat, and you can't beat off his liver, because his liver has grown to his ribs." In the image of these elemental individualists, full of life and close to nature, Kuprin's writing features are most of all revealed. Here he gives vent to his stormy cheerfulness, amusing himself with a colorful play of colors, sometimes coarse, but bright, with ease of poses, and continuity of movement. In this particular area, the difference between Kuprin and his closest teacher, the elegiac, restrained Chekhov, is especially felt; one feels that Kuprin grew up under a different, clearer sky. Kuprin's talent reaches its greatest flowering in "Duel", the best of Kuprin's works. A bright writer of everyday life here joined in Kuprin with a psychologist and a lyricist. The theme of the "Duel" was so clear and dear to the author that no effort was required to develop it; she poured herself out. The captivating overall impression of "Duel" does not interfere with the distinctness of its individual figures. Each of them is not only interesting as part of a larger whole, but also lives its own life in itself. "Duel" appeared in the middle of 1905, shortly after the unfortunate war with Japan for Russia, and therefore attracted attention mainly with its everyday side, sharp criticism of the military environment. The pictures of military life and military psychology, drawn in "Duel", were, as it were, illustrations of recent military failures. Now, from an objective point of view, what is striking is not so much this sharp criticism as its general background. The military environment depicted by Kuprin is at the same time a characteristic picture of all pre-revolutionary Russian life. The theme that Romashev intended to use for the unwritten novel: "the horror and boredom of military life" - could have been the theme of any public novel of that time. Everywhere one noticed mortification and impoverishment, boredom and stereotype reigned everywhere. "The feeling of absurdity, confusion, incomprehensibility of life", which oppressed Lieutenant Romashev, was inherent in all sensitive townsfolk old Russia who did not have time to overcome the ideological "off-road". The need to stifle it is the reason for the licentiousness of officer morals, the rudeness and harshness of the military in relation to each other and to subordinates, exposed in the "Duel". And the main vice, alcoholism, to which Kuprin devoted such vivid pages, was widespread not only among the military class, but throughout Russia. Kuprin's officers (both in "The Duel" and in the stories) are in close spiritual affinity with his civilian heroes. These are neurasthenics, for whom the impressions of everyday reality are unbearable, people with "alive torn skin", like the engineer Bobrov. They react sharply to the suffering of others, they are indignant at the cruel order of things, but they cannot do anything to change it; they are destined only for "good impulses." Psychologically, the bright story "The River of Life" closely adjoins the "Duel". This is the final act of that intellectual drama, which is depicted in the works of Kuprin. A short period of time separates the "River of Life" from the "Duel", but a big turnaround has taken place in the public mood - a wave of liberation events has swept by. The hero of Kuprin (still the same benevolent and sensitive, but not viable intellectual) did not remain indifferent to her, he rushed to meet her, but immediately felt that he had no place in his new life. Like Nazansky, he is an individualist, a fan of the new faith - "sacred respect for his joyful, proud, free self." And just like Nazansky's, his individualism has a very special, Russian - altruistic, social coloring. He glorifies life, but leaves it because he considers himself unworthy of it. "At the present time it is hard and shameful and directly impossible to live like me ...", he writes in a suicide letter to a friend. Kuprin's optimistic attitude to life is especially striking in two areas; in a lofty conception of love as a mysterious gift bestowed only on the chosen ones (Nazansky's fiery speeches, Romashev's tragic romance with Shurochka, hopeless love in The Pomegranate Bracelet), and in his attitude to nature as a living whole. Kuprin's sense of nature is very intense. His "descriptions" may at first seem somewhat old-fashioned - too detailed and flowery; but gradually this flexible, subtle "flowering" begins to capture, because its details are not rhetorical metaphors, but creative sparks; they ignited from that complex, greedy perception of the world, which was spoken of by another inspired singer of the earth, Maupassant, and which is characteristic of Kuprin (the dream of the Emerald in the story of the same name, hunting in the story "For wood grouse"). Kuprin's external sharpness of perception corresponds to his internal fullness and depth. With some special instinct, subconscious mind, Kuprin captures the hidden essence of things, the connection of causes and effects, the fundamental principle of life and its deep meaning, despite the seeming randomness of individual phenomena ("Evening Guest", "River of Life", Nazansky's mysticism in "Duel") . To area artistic techniques Kuprin did not introduce anything significant new. Only in later stories ("River of Life", "Staff Captain Rybnikov", etc.) does he notice some change - a clear inclination towards impressionism, towards dramatization of the story, and its greater brevity. But in the great chronicle novel "The Pit", where Kuprin acts as a humane writer of everyday life of brothels, he again returns to the old realistic methods. Not striving for novelty in the field of form, Kuprin deepened and refined the good old. - See: A. Izmailov "Songs of earthly joy" ("Literary Olympus", M., 1911); A. Lunacharsky (Collection "Responses of Life", 1906); K. Chukovsky "From Chekhov to our days"; V. Lvov-Rogachevsky (Collection "Struggle for Life", 1907); E. Koltonovskaya (Collection "New Life", 1910, and "Bulletin of Europe", 1915, No. 1); N. Shapir ("Northern Notes", No. 12, 1914). E. Koltonovskaya.

KUPRIN Alexander Ivanovich, Russian realist writer, one of the loudest names of the first quarter of the 20th century, author of the works "Moloch", "Duel", "Garnet Bracelet", "Gambrinus" and others included in the golden fund of Russian literature.

Military career

Born in the family of a petty official who died when his son was in his second year. A mother from a Tatar princely family, after the death of her husband, was in poverty and was forced to send her son to an orphanage for minors (1876), then a military gymnasium, later transformed into a cadet corps, from which he graduated in 1888. In 1890 he graduated from the Alexander Military School. Then he served in the 46th Dnieper Infantry Regiment, preparing for a military career. Not enrolling in the Academy of the General Staff (this was prevented by a scandal associated with the violent, especially drunk, disposition of the cadet who threw a policeman into the water), Lieutenant Kuprin resigned in 1894.

Life style

The figure of Kuprin was extremely colorful. Greedy for impressions, he led a wandering life, trying different professions - from a loader to a dentist. Autobiographical life material formed the basis of many of his works.

Legends circulated about his turbulent life. Possessing remarkable physical strength and explosive temperament, Kuprin greedily rushed towards any new life experience: went down under water in a diving suit, flew an airplane (this flight ended in a disaster that almost cost Kuprin his life), organized an athletic society ... During the First World War, he and his wife set up a private infirmary in his Gatchina house.

The writer was interested in people of various professions: engineers, organ grinders, fishermen, card sharpers, beggars, monks, merchants, spies ... In order to more reliably know the person who interested him, to feel the air that he breathes, he was ready, not sparing himself, the wildest adventure. According to his contemporaries, he approached life like a true researcher, seeking the fullest and most detailed knowledge possible.

Kuprin was willingly engaged in journalism, publishing articles and reports in various newspapers, traveled a lot, living either in Moscow, or near Ryazan, or in Balaklava, or in Gatchina.

Writer and revolution

Dissatisfaction with the existing social order attracted the writer to the revolution, so Kuprin, like many other writers of his contemporaries, paid tribute to revolutionary sentiments. However, he reacted sharply negatively to the Bolshevik coup and to the power of the Bolsheviks. At first, he nevertheless tried to cooperate with the Bolshevik authorities and even planned to publish the peasant newspaper Zemlya, for which he met with Lenin.

But soon he unexpectedly went over to the side of the White movement, and after its defeat, he left first for Finland, and then for France, where he settled in Paris (until 1937). There he actively participated in the anti-Bolshevik press, continued his literary activity (the novels The Wheel of Time, 1929; Junkers, 1928-32; Janet, 1932-33; articles and stories). But living in exile, the writer was terribly poor, suffering both from lack of demand and isolation from his native soil, and shortly before his death, believing in Soviet propaganda, in May 1937 he returned with his wife to Russia. By this time he was already seriously ill.

Sympathy for the common man

Almost all of Kuprin's work is imbued with the pathos of sympathy, traditional for Russian literature, for the "little" person, doomed to drag out a miserable lot in a stagnant, miserable environment. In Kuprin, this sympathy was expressed not only in the depiction of the "bottom" of society (the novel about the life of prostitutes "The Pit", 1909-15, etc.), but also in the images of his intelligent, suffering heroes.

Kuprin was inclined precisely to such reflective, nervous to the point of hysteria, characters not devoid of sentimentality. Engineer Bobrov (the story "Moloch", 1896), endowed with a quivering soul responsive to someone else's pain, worries about the workers who waste their lives in overworking factory labor, while the rich live on ill-gotten money. Even characters from the military environment like Romashov or Nazansky (the story "Duel", 1905) have a very high pain threshold and a small margin of mental strength to withstand the vulgarity and cynicism of their environment. Romashov is tormented by the stupidity of military service, the debauchery of the officers, the downtroddenness of the soldiers. Perhaps none of the writers threw such a passionate accusation against the army environment as Kuprin.

True, in the depiction of ordinary people, Kuprin differed from the populist writers prone to popular worship (although he received the approval of the venerable populist critic N. Mikhailovsky). His democratism was not limited to a tearful demonstration of their "humiliation and insult." A simple man in Kuprin turned out to be not only weak, but also able to stand up for himself, possessing an enviable inner strength. Folk life appeared in his works in its free, spontaneous, natural course, with its own circle of ordinary concerns - not only sorrows, but also joys and consolations (Listrigons, 1908-11).

At the same time, the writer saw not only its bright sides and healthy beginnings, but also outbursts of aggressiveness and cruelty, easily directed by dark instincts (the famous description of the Jewish pogrom in the story Gambrinus, 1907).

The joy of being

In many of Kuprin's works, the presence of an ideal, romantic beginning is clearly felt: it is both in his craving for heroic plots, and in his desire to see the highest manifestations of the human spirit - in love, creativity, kindness ... It is no coincidence that he often chose heroes that fell out, broke out of the habitual track of life, seeking truth and seeking some other, more complete and living being, freedom, beauty, grace ...

Few people in the literature of that time, as poetically, like Kuprin, wrote about love, tried to restore her humanity and romance. "Garnet Bracelet" (1911) has become for many readers just such a work, where pure, disinterested, ideal feeling is sung.

A brilliant depicter of the mores of the most diverse strata of society, Kuprin described the environment, life in relief, with special intentness (for which he got criticized more than once). There was also a naturalistic tendency in his work.

At the same time, the writer, like no one else, knew how to feel the course of natural, natural life from the inside - his stories "Barbos and Zhulka" (1897), "Emerald" (1907) were included in the golden fund of works about animals. The ideal of natural life (the story "Olesya", 1898) is very important for Kuprin as a kind of desired norm, he often highlights modern life with it, finding in it sad deviations from this ideal.

For many critics, it was precisely this natural, organic perception of Kuprin's life, the healthy joy of being, that was the main distinguishing quality of his prose with its harmonious fusion of lyrics and romance, plot-compositional proportionality, dramatic action and accuracy in descriptions.

literary skill

Kuprin is an excellent master not only literary landscape and everything related to the external, visual and olfactory perception of life (Bunin and Kuprin competed who would more accurately determine the smell of a particular phenomenon), but also of a literary nature: portrait, psychology, speech - everything is worked out to the smallest nuances. Even the animals that Kuprin liked to write about reveal complexity and depth in him.

The narration in Kuprin's works, as a rule, is very spectacular and is often turned - unobtrusively and without false speculation - precisely to existential problems. He reflects on love, hatred, the will to live, despair, the strength and weakness of man, recreates the complex spiritual world of man at the turn of epochs.

On August 26 (September 8), 1870, a remarkable Russian writer was born. We get to know him in childhood, listening with bated breath to how they read to us, or already reading his story “White Poodle” on our own; we meet again in adolescence, reflecting on the story "Garnet Bracelet", which poses very difficult questions for us ... And what a pity that few of us turn to Kuprin in our mature years, and after all, each of his works is a lesson in humanity. Meanwhile, the life of the writer himself from childhood was full of hardships, trials and losses.

100 years for history is a very small segment on a straight line directed from the past to the future. , revolutions, achievements and crushing defeats, all the more so - the fate of individual, albeit brilliant, people in this interval is barely visible.

Less than 100 years ago, thousands of poets, writers, artists and scientists, thinkers and composers were forced to flee Russia, wander, seek refuge, trying in vain to merge into an unfamiliar system of life, all the while thinking about the abandoned Motherland. Dreaming of returning and being afraid to admit it to myself. The path of each of them to their homeland was long and painful. Most of them never made it in their lifetime.

Today, when it is possible to work freely in one country, live in another, and at the same time call a third one the Motherland, it is almost impossible to imagine how those exiles felt.

But, as Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev said, "memory overcomes time."

1937

Moscow. Spring 1937. Atrocities and horrors, civil war, endless purges and massacres, which seemed to have shaken the Universe, could not change one iota the usual pace of nature. Warm rain rustled on young leaves, tulips blossomed, lilacs were fragrant. Not recognized by the Russian emigration, but already officially recognized throughout the world and growing stronger day by day, the Soviet state seeks to construct a positive image of the country in the international arena. The return of one of the great and "repentant" emigrants becomes a matter of honor.

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, who lived in Paris, by that time was weak, sick, unable to work and doomed to a miserable existence. "Almost without receiving fees, Kuprin now lived on private handouts, feeling like he was buried alive, undermined by serious illnesses and old age."

Andrei Sedykh, correspondent for a Russian newspaper in Paris Last news", was one of the few who sometimes dropped in on the forgotten writer. Alexander Ivanovich constantly remembered his beloved Russia, he immediately became more cheerful and even younger.

“- Do you know? - he said, stopping and almost with tears in his eyes. Do you know what I sometimes think about? After all, I believe that I will return to Russia ... And then one night in Moscow I wake up and suddenly remember Paris, this boulevard with its chestnuts, autumn, and my soul will ache from longing for this damned and beloved city! ..

“There are people who ... claim that it is possible without a homeland, or that the homeland is where you are happy ... I can’t live without Russia”

You need to die in Russia, at home. Just like a forest animal that goes to die in its lair... We hid from the fiery rain, saving our lives. Oh! There are people who, out of stupidity or out of desperation, assert that it is possible without a homeland, or that a homeland is where you are happy... I cannot live without Russia. I got to the point where I can’t calmly write letters there… Lump in my throat!” .

The distant, but emphatically benevolent Soviet government persistently invited me to return. Apparently, more than one delegate was sent to him and his wife, persuading them to leave France.

“Politics, both Soviet and anti-Soviet, he already perceived “from afar” ... he no longer saw a big difference between Soviet politicking and emigre politicking, and by his own condition he himself was no longer capable of any political games.”

The choice has been made.

"Frayed Film" emigration

A.I. Kuprin. Suburb of Paris Sevres Ville d "Avray. 1922

At the end of 1919, after the defeat of the Northwestern Army of the White Movement, the editor of the army newspaper, 49-year-old Lieutenant Alexander Kuprin, was forced to flee Russia. The writer had reason to think that he was on the death list. The route for that time was trodden: Revel, Helsinki, Paris ...

By that time, Kuprin, who grew up in the Widow's House and saw nothing in his childhood but poverty and drill, was a writer known throughout Russia, moved in high society, all of St. Petersburg knew him by sight. All the most famous works were already written by him: “Moloch”, “Olesya”, “White Poodle”, “Duel”, “River of Life”, “Shulamith”, “Garnet Bracelet”, “Pit”. So a person who was accustomed to fame and attention went into exile. But what is surprising: contemporaries noted that the writer never attached much importance to his fame. “Others - Gorky, Andreev, Chaliapin - lived in unceasing rapture with their glory, in continuous feeling of them not only in public, at all public meetings, but also at a party, at each other, in separate rooms of restaurants, - they sat, talked, smoked with terrible unnaturalness, every minute they emphasized the chosenness of their company and their false friendship with these added to every word “you, Alexei, you, Leonid, you, Fedor” ... And Kuprin, even in those years when he was little inferior in Russian glory to Gorky, Andreev , carried it as if nothing new had happened in his life. Alexander Ivanovich said to himself: “I am arrogant to the point of rage and because of this I am sometimes shy to meanness. And I don't even have a right to ambition. I became a writer by accident, for a long time I fed on anything, then I began to feed on stories, that's my whole writing history.

Those who got out of the cage of post-revolutionary Russia, the whole world seemed to open its arms.

"Freedom! What a wonderful and enticing word! Walking, driving, sleeping, living, talking, thinking, praying, working - all this will be possible tomorrow without idiotic control, without begging for a humiliating permission, without a crude absurd prohibition. And most importantly - the inviolability of the house, housing ... Freedom! ( Kuprin A.I. Dome of Saint Isaac of Dalmatia).

Kuprin, like many of his contemporaries, in the troubled years, with enthusiasm and subsequent disappointment, took two things: the revolution and emigration. quickly weathered from his mind all the illusions and hopes, the goals and methods of achieving them were too strikingly divergent. But he clearly saw all the vices of tsarist Russia and with all the strength of his soul strove to get rid of them. The happy life “there” was also treacherously melting before our eyes. “The idea that in the future it will be necessary to speak in a foreign language, to walk on foreign territory, observing foreign rules, that in order to travel and even sleep like a human being, funds will be needed, that no one guarantees work, but immunity at home, housing, there is not much joy for those who do not have it. Soon all this was destined to be understood by Kuprin. His daughter Xenia recalled: “In Helsinki, as usual, we stayed at the Feniya Hotel - the best - and only climbing its marble stairs, seeing footmen and coquettish maids in starched aprons, we realized how ragged we were and unsightly. In general, our funds did not allow us to live in such a hotel.

There was nothing to fill the void that arose with the loss of the Motherland. The melancholy not only swooped down on the writer without warning - it "occupied" him for many years.

“Now I live in Helsinki and I miss Russia so much… I can’t even say it. With all my heart I would like to live again in my garden, eat potatoes with sunflower oil, or even that, or cabbage porridge with salt, but without bread ... Never before, having been abroad for a long time, have I felt such a hunger for my homeland. Every piece of Finnish smorgos gets in my throat, although I dare not complain about the Finns themselves: they were helpful to me. But I am not distracted by the thought of the people who are there ... "

In the very first restaurant in Paris, the Kuprins heard: “Dirty foreigners, go home!”

In the very first restaurant in Paris, the Kuprins, who tried to explain themselves in a non-native language, heard: “Dirty foreigners, get out to your home!”

Of course, everything gradually formed: home, work, emigrant society ... - but the nostalgia did not go away.

“You live in a beautiful country, among smart and kind people, among the monuments greatest culture... But everything is just for fun, as if the film of cinematography is unfolding. And all the silent, dull sorrow that you no longer cry in your sleep and see in your dream neither Znamenskaya Square, nor Arbat, nor Povarskaya, nor Moscow, nor Russia, but only a black hole ”( Kuprin A.I. Motherland).

In Paris, Kuprin became friends with Konstantin Balmont.

The poet dedicated several poems to Alexander Ivanovich. In the first of them, the characteristic features of the writer's work are noted:

If the winter day is viscous
Spring replaced us
Read on for this
Two pages of Kuprin.

On one you will find winter
On the other you will enter spring.
And "thank you brother" -
Tell Kuprin with your heart.

Here, in foreign days, in Paris,
I'm tired that I'm alone, -
And feel Russia closer
Kuprin always gives me...

... So in Russia the sound is random,
The rustle of grass, the rumble of peaks -
The same beckon the heart with a secret,
What does Kuprin carry.

This is the wisdom of true strength,
Silence in the storm itself.
You are dear and dear to all of us,
We all love Kuprin.

Lost Russia could be found only in memories and resurrected - in creativity. Down to the smallest detail, with great love, as if lost heaven, describes Kuprin his homeland.

“Moscow boulevards turn green with the first linden leaves. From the insinuating smell of the spring earth it tickles in the heart. Scattered cheerful clouds float across the blue sky; when you look at them, it seems that they are spinning, or is it a head drunk from spring?

The incessant discordant ringing of all its vociferous bells buzzes, trembles, sings, floods, shimmers over Moscow ... ”( Kuprin A.I. Moscow Easter).

“He recalls the boundless Paschal joy of childhood, and the boyish fun of ringing the bells on Bright Week, and the pilgrimage “to the Trinity-Sergius”, and reverence from the old robe of the Reverend seen in the Lavra sacristy, and former acquaintances, Polissya hunters (“Night in forest”, “Woodcocks”), circus performers (“Olga Sur”, “Blondel”), lovers of horse racing (“Redheads. Grey, bay, black”), recalls childhood and youth, his own and his generation (“Junkers”, “Pink pearl”, “At the Trinity-Sergius”, “Easter bells”)” .

“I will be reproached, perhaps,” wrote Kuprin, “for telling everything in the present tense: I say There is, but not was... But what can I do with myself, if the past lives in me with all the feelings, sounds, songs, cries, images, smells and tastes, and the present life stretches out before me like a daily, never changing, tired, worn out movie. And do we not live in the past sharper, but deeper, sadder, but sweeter than in the present?

One of the sketches written by Kuprin in is called "The Russian Soul":

“Of course, it is very easy to abolish the soul and count God as superfluous, leading the interests of the stomach and sex over the world: it becomes much more convenient and easier to stretch out a temporary earthly existence than to go forever into a black “nothing”.

But a Russian person cannot live without a soul.

“Have pity on the peasant, tell him: “Oh, you poor!” He will correct you: “One poor devil. He doesn't have a soul."

Good is an old peasant word. Have pity on the peasant, tell him: “Oh, you poor!” He will correct you: “One poor devil. He has no soul."

That is why I do not have enough words to express in a newspaper article all the deep respect, all the proud delight that I feel when I think about how beautifully, broadly and graciously the living Russian soul manifests itself here, in a foreign land, among labors, sorrows. and deprivation, away from the sweet Motherland.<…>

Ah, my brothers, tears of joy stand in your eyes when you think: “God lives, Russia lives, we live and bloom with the invariable color of the Russian soul.”

Alexander Ivanovich often repeated: “I have never belonged to any party, nor do I belong and will not belong”; he was only trying to "understand the tangle in which the current Russian reality is tangled", and in his journalism he spoke about what really worries him.

In 1923, in the emigrant Russkaya Gazeta, Kuprin wrote about:

“... in these unfortunate, terrible days and months, we see from the few letters of the Empress, with what beautiful dying white flowers her human, female, maternal soul suddenly blooms. What a deep quiet Christian light shines from her last letters to Vyrubova.<…>But we do not feel any timidity or anxiety in the words of the Empress. Only the readiness to meet death without a murmur, only Christian forgiveness to enemies, only the blessing of the lost Russia and the prayer for her recovery.

In 1924, the 35th anniversary of Kuprin's work was celebrated in Paris. Sasha Cherny responded to the anniversary with a heartfelt word:

“Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin is one of the closest and dearest names to us in modern Russian literature. Literary trends are changing, forms are decaying; there are immeasurably more searches and theories than achievements, but the simplicity, depth and clarity that all Kuprin's artistic pages breathe have long put him beyond the limits of capricious fashion and assigned him a strong, favorite place in the minds of readers who do not need guides. For there is no more difficult and higher system in art ... Dear to us, and every day more and more dear, and the very world of Kuprin's muse.

"Saint Alexander Nevsky will keep it for you"

Life in poverty, "continuous seventeen years of seclusion in all kinds of state institutions ..."

Ivan Bunin, whom Kuprin had known since 1897, recalled: “As for much that concerned his personal life, he was very secretive that, despite all our great and such a long closeness, I don’t know his past well ...”. The secrecy of Alexander Ivanovich can be easily explained by the unwillingness to stir up painful memories, of which he had plenty. Life in poverty, consciousness of one's own clumsiness, "continuous seventeen years of seclusion in all kinds of state institutions (Moscow Orphanage, military gymnasium, cadet corps, cadet school)" .

Bunin in the essay “Kuprin” wrote: “How much of this animal was once in him! .. And how much Tatar!<…>Alexander Ivanovich was very proud of his Tatar blood. At one time (at the time of his greatest fame), he even wore a colored skullcap, visited it on a visit and in restaurants, where he sat down as wide and important as a real khan would, and screwed up his eyes especially narrowly.

If you look at the portrait of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, his Tatar features are immediately evident: small black eyes, clearly defined eastern cheekbones. The writer’s daughter, Ksenia Alexandrovna, recalled: her father “believed that the founder of their family was the Tatar prince Kulunchak, who came to Rus' in the 15th century among the followers of the Kazan prince Kasim ... In the second half of the 17th century, Alexander Ivanovich’s great-grandfather was granted estates in the Narovchatsky district of the Penza province . According to family traditions, the ruin of the ancestors was due to their violent morals, wasteful lifestyle and drunkenness.

The Tatar blood of Alexander Ivanovich was awarded by his mother - Lyubov Alekseevna Kulunchakova. A woman with a "strong, unyielding character and high nobility." Perhaps it was her determination and will that allowed the writer to "break out into the people."

Alexander Ivanovich's father, Ivan Ivanovich Kuprin, was much lower in origin than his wife. If it were not for the complete ruin of the family, Lyubov Alekseevna would hardly have paid attention to the petty official of the provincial city of the Penza province. In marriage with him, she lived a very short and, probably, not very happy life. The husband lived 37 years and died of cholera. So the nee Princess Kulunchakova, and now the widow Kuprin, was left with three children in her arms, the youngest of whom, Alexander, was not even two years old. An energetic woman, driven by the idea of ​​giving a worthy upbringing to her children, went to Moscow.

The family was waiting for a semi-beggarly life.

Sasha was a long-awaited son. The first, in 1861, was born daughter Sophia, then, in 1863, Zinaida. Three boys who were born after died in infancy.

“When I felt that I had become a mother again,” Lyubov Alekseevna told her son and future daughter-in-law, Maria Karlovna, “I was advised to turn to an old man who was famous for his piety and wisdom. The elder prayed with me and then asked when I would be relieved of the burden. I answered: in August. “Then you will name your son Alexander. Prepare a good oak board, and when the baby is born, let the artist depict on it - exactly according to the measure of the newborn - the image of St. Alexander Nevsky. Then you will consecrate the image and hang it over the head of the child. And keep it for you."

And so it happened. By the grace of God, on August 26 (September 8), 1870, a healthy baby was born, named, according to the elder, Alexander. The icon of Alexander Nevsky was painted, and it was in this holy way that after 32 years the mother blessed her son and his chosen one to create a family.

military education

Upon arrival in Moscow, Lyubov Alekseevna and her children settled in the common ward of the Widow's House on Kudrinskaya Square. The domineering, and at times even despotic mother, has been an indisputable authority for her son all her life. “Whether you tell or read something to her,” Kuprin recalled, “she will certainly express her opinion in a well-aimed, strong, characteristic word. Where did she get those words from? How many times have I robbed her, inserting her words and expressions into my stories ... "

In 1876, a six-year-old boy separated from his mother. First - the Moscow Razumovsky boarding school (orphan), after - the 2nd Moscow Cadet Corps, for all eight years of his stay in which Kuprin carried "kliros obedience". And finally - the Alexander Military School. Sasha's first story, "The Last Debut", published in the weekly "Russian satirical sheet" on December 3, 1889, brought its author, Junker Kuprin, a two-day imprisonment in a punishment cell.

In 1890, Alexander graduated from the cadet school, was enrolled in the 46th Dnieper Infantry Regiment and sent as a second lieutenant to the town of Proskurov, Podolsk province (now the Vinnitsa and Khmelnitsky regions of Ukraine). The writer found himself “in an incredible wilderness, in one of the southwestern border towns. Eternal dirt, herds of pigs on the streets, khatenki, smeared with clay and manure ... "( Kuprin A.I. to fame). Tiringly monotonous training in rifle training and "literature" with soldiers stunned by the drill; drinking parties in the officers' club and idle intrigues were disgusting to Kuprin. But it was here, in the very wilderness of the Southwestern Territory, that the writer accumulated experience for his future works: “Inquiry”, “Overnight”, “Night Shift”, “Duel”, “Wedding”, “Slavic Soul”, “Horror”, "To Glory", "Millionaire", "Zhidovka", "Coward", "Telegrapher", "Inexplicable" and others were born from Proskurov's impressions.

“In order to escape from the sucking quagmire, Lieutenant Kuprin began to prepare for exams at the Academy of the General Staff. In 1893 he went to St. Petersburg for this purpose. The reason for the collapse in the exams is known only from the words of Kuprin himself. In Kyiv, in a barge restaurant on the Dnieper, he saw a tipsy bailiff insulting a waitress. Kuprin either beat him or threw him overboard. The subject filed a complaint, which reached Governor-General Dragomirov, and Lieutenant Kuprin was not allowed to take subsequent exams. After serving in the outback for another year, during which Kuprin devoted much time to literature, he finally resigned and broke free, although he knew that by doing so he was inflicting a terrible blow to his mother. And since then began his wandering, motley life.

Kuprin wrote: “With all the strength of my soul, I hate the years of my childhood and youth, the years of the corps, the cadet school and service in the regiment. All that I have experienced and seen, I must write. And with my novel, I will challenge the tsarist army to a duel. Thus was born the story "Duel", written in 1905. Even earlier, in 1900, the story "At the Break (The Cadets)" was written. And already in exile, in 1928-1932, Kuprin, recalling his "military youth", wrote the novel "Junker". Thus, these works form a single trilogy. But the further in time the described events go, the more softened the attitude towards them. So, "At the Break" and "Duel" are permeated with accusatory pathos. And the "Junkers", despite the mention of the gloomy aspects of the life of the school, are imbued with a warm sense of nostalgia for youth, not easy, but still happy. The hero of the novel, Junker Alexandrov, simply radiates happiness. “A real Junker-Alexandrovite is already being developed from him. He is always smart, straight, agile and precise in his movements. He is proud of his school and zealously upholds its honor. He is irrevocably convinced that of all the military schools in Russia, and perhaps the whole world, the Alexander School is the most excellent. And this conviction, it seems to him, is shared with him by all of Moscow - Moscow, which so passionately and jealously loves everything that is its own, in defiance of bureaucratic and cold Petersburg.

“And our writers?! Who do they look like? “You rarely see a person with a straight figure among them.”

Military education, coupled with Tatar genes, provided Kuprin with remarkable physical strength. “Man must develop all his physical faculties,” he said. - You can not be careless about your body. Among people of intelligent professions, I very rarely met lovers of sports and physical exercises. What about our writers? Who do they look like? - You will rarely meet among them a person with a straight figure, well-developed muscles, precise movements, and a correct gait. Most of them are stooped or lopsided, while walking they sway with their whole body, raking their legs or dragging them - it's disgusting to look at. And almost all of them, without exception, wear pince-nez, which often falls off their nose. And he developed his abilities - he had such physical strength that he easily fought with the strongest circus strongmen of the then Russia ...

"At the bottom of the people's sea"

Kuprin told about the ups and downs of his own fate: “Having gone into the reserve, at first I planned to get a job at the factory. But I'm out of luck. A week later, I got into an argument and nearly got into a fight with a senior foreman who was extremely rude to the workers. Then I started working as a compositor in a printing house and from time to time dragged notes about street incidents to the editorial office of the newspaper printed there. Gradually I got involved in newspaper work, and a year later I became a real newspaperman ... Suddenly, the days of severe lack of money came ... The newspaper in which I worked stopped paying me for feuilletons ... I owed the hostess for the room, and she threatened to “throw my things out into the street” . I had to think about how to temporarily move to a rooming house and, since summer was coming, to take up not literary, but honest work as a loader on the pier. Still, I did not break with the newspaper and gave notes to the “From City News” department.<…>

I also collaborated in the gossip section (the newspaper also had one), where I reported: “At the first performance of the play by the famous playwright H., we admired the luxurious toilets of the ladies. It should be noted about azar<по случаю - fr.> parmi<среди - fr.> present toilets Mrs. N.N. - a green velvet gris de perle dress and a pink mov dress with luxurious trimmings of Valenciennes brussels lace. I wrote these notes with pleasure. They delivered to me free entertainment, and, most surprisingly, no one - neither the editor nor the readers - noticed the obvious mockery of their ignorance and stupidity.

Kuprin experienced the professions of a fisherman and a hunter, a wrestler in a circus, a bailiff and even a psalmist. Bunin exclaimed: "What only<он>was not! He studied dentistry, served in some offices, then at some factory, was a land surveyor, an actor, a small-time journalist.

“Plunging “to the bottom of the sea of ​​the people”, Kuprin did not seem to feel rejected”

“In Kuprin, it is also surprising that, plunging “to the bottom of the sea of ​​the people,” he did not seem to feel rejected or deprived and did not make “the suffering of the people” his literary specialty. With equal awareness and often equal sympathy, he wrote about circus performers and officials, about musicians (from restaurant “tappers” to great maestro) and officers, about pillar nobles and horse thieves, appreciating in people, regardless of their social status, courage, dedication to their work , unselfishness and mercy".

Kuprin often studied people with methods that were dangerous to himself. He himself did not hide the fact that he appreciated ... the spiritual outpourings of drunkards. In his opinion, in these moments a person reveals himself as in no other situation. However, this method of "participant observation" required the writer to act not only as a listener, but also as a drinking buddy. The risk of embarking on the path of abuse of strong drinks was high. And in the end, this evil habit of Kuprin did not pass: in tsarist Russia he could easily be found in restaurants and taverns, and in exile the hobby grew into an ineradicable need.

At the turn of the century, Kuprin met I.A. Bunin, A.P. Chekhov and M. Gorky. Leo Tolstoy speaks favorably of him.

Kuprin's talent gains confidence and strength. The writer is promoted to the forefront of Russian literature.

At the beginning of 1902, Alexander Ivanovich marries Maria Karlovna Davydova, daughter of the publisher of the magazine "The World of God" Alexandra Arkadyevna Gorozhanskaya.

Gradually Petersburg began to burden Kuprin. The couple moved to Balaklava, where Alexander Ivanovich bought a small plot of land near a picturesque bay. As before, he easily converged with the simplest people - workers, fishermen. Bunin recalled: “It seemed that he did not give her (glory. - Approx. author) does not have the slightest significance, is on friendly terms, does not part only with old and new friends and drinking companions like the drunkard and tramp Manych. Fame and money gave him, it seemed, one thing - already complete freedom to do in my life what my leg wants, to burn my candle from both ends, to send everything and everyone to hell.

There were amazing stories about Kuprin's fervor and his readiness to rush to defend the truth at any moment. It was said that in 1902 a friend of the writer, Anton Bogomolets, told him about a man who constantly beats his mother. Without a moment's hesitation, Alexander Kuprin went looking for him. And, finding the offender, he scolded him so that he began to beg for forgiveness. Needless to say, what was the reaction of Alexander Ivanovich, who witnessed the dramatic story that happened in the summer of 1905 in Balaklava. Vice-Admiral Chukhnin suppressed the uprising of sailors on the cruiser Ochakov with gunfire. Many crew members were burned alive ... Kuprin immediately described this tragedy in the essay "Events in Sevastopol." Chukhnin personally ordered the observant writer to be sent out of the city. Kuprin returned to the capital. The court considered this case until 1908. In the end, the writer was offered either to pay a fine of 50 rubles, or to agree to house arrest with a police officer. Alexander Ivanovich chose arrest.

"I will not accept malice"

The initial joy of a quiet family life gradually gave way to routine and predictability. Relations between Alexander Ivanovich and his wife began to deteriorate. Maria Karlovna was a bright and emancipated woman and, apparently, cared little about creating a family hearth. Yes, and Kuprin, who loved to drink often and a lot and had an indomitable temper, hardly looked like an ideal husband.

Unexpectedly for himself, Alexander Ivanovich fell in love with Elizaveta Moritsovna Heinrich, the former sister of mercy and governess of his own daughter. After long hesitation, Kuprin decided to explain himself. Elizaveta Moritsovna burst into tears in response and said that there could be no reciprocity here, because she would not destroy the family. Kuprin objected that the family had long been gone.

The very next day Elizaveta Moritsovna hurriedly left her place as a governess in the Kuprins' house and went to a small town to work as a ward nurse in a military hospital.

Kuprin left the family, settled in a hotel, where he began to drink deeply, and began to seek a divorce.

It is not known how this story would have ended if it were not for Professor Fyodor Batyushkov, who tracked down Elizabeth and informed her about the deplorable state of the writer in love. Batyushkov simply begged her to come to Kuprin as soon as possible and stay with him.

Elizabeth agreed with one condition: Alexander Ivanovich must be treated for alcoholism. The condition was accepted.

In March 1907, Kuprin finally divorced his first wife and joined his fate with Elizaveta Moritsovna. In 1908 their daughter Xenia was born. The divorce procedure was long, and official documents were prepared only in 1909. Now nothing prevented Alexander and Elizabeth from getting married. Then their daughter was baptized.

The writer finally found a quiet family hearth, which he lacked so much in childhood and which he dreamed of all his life. Revolutionary views are gradually replaced by conservatism. In the mouth of the hero of the story “Anathema”, Protodeacon Olympia Kuprin, perhaps, put his own conviction: “I truly believe, according to the Creed, in Christ and in the apostolic Church. But I will not accept malice. “God has done everything for the joy of man.”

From the very beginning, Kuprin, who had recently denounced the vices of tsarism, organized in his house a small hospital with ten beds and even own will entered the military service. A few months later, the already middle-aged Kuprin could not stand the constant stress and fell ill. Having recovered, for some time he worked in Kyiv in the committee of the All-Russian Zemstvo Union - an organization that helped the front.

The war, and after it the revolution, which swept over crushingly and mercilessly, buried the barely found quiet family happiness under them.

Later, already in exile, Kuprin wrote: “The Bolsheviks are like other dangerous, violent madmen who skillfully hide their sick and evil will for weeks, months, resorting to extraordinary tricks of cunning and pretense, deceiving even experienced doctors. But at some acute, critical moment, their illness suddenly erupts in ugly, disgusting, terrible forms. Kuprin A.I. Orientation).

In 1918, Alexander Ivanovich got an appointment with Lenin. “For the first and probably the last time in my life I went to a man with the sole purpose of looking at him,” he admitted. There was something "crablike" in the leader's movements with the fiery red remnants of hair and orange, like rose hips, eyes. “In essence,” I thought, “this man, so simple, polite and healthy, is much more terrible than Nero, Tiberius, Ivan the Terrible. Those, with all their spiritual ugliness, were still people accessible to the whims of the day and fluctuations in character. This one is something like a stone, like a cliff, which has broken away from the mountain range and is rapidly rolling down, destroying everything in its path. And besides - think! - a stone, by virtue of some magic - thinking! He has no feelings, no desires, no instincts. One sharp, dry, invincible thought: falling, I destroy ”( Kuprin A.I. Lenin. snapshot).

"Captain of Juvenile Romance"

“But Kuprin. Why is he a great writer? Yes, because he is alive. In every little thing alive "

Contemporaries joked that in Kuprin there was something "from a big beast." D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak said: “But Kuprin. Why is he a great writer? Yes, because he is alive. He is alive, alive in every little thing. He has one small touch - and it's ready: here he is all here, Ivan Ivanovich ... By the way, you know, he has a habit of sniffing people in a real way, like a dog. Many, especially ladies, are offended. The Lord is with them if Kuprin needs it.”

Taffy recalled: “He was a romantic. He was the captain of juvenile novels, a sea wolf with a naso-warmer in his teeth, a frequenter of port taverns. He felt brave and strong, rude in appearance and poetically tender in spirit ... "

Sensitive Balmont noticed, perhaps, the most important feature of Alexander Ivanovich:

Among the feelings I love the fire of love,
In the year I wish for spring,
I love among flashes - inspiration,
Among the pure in heart - Kuprin.

(“Among the birds, the condor is dearer to me than all ...”)

There was in this irrepressible and quick-tempered strong man boyish gaiety and unexpected shyness, naivety, gullibility and kindness of heart.

His works, familiar to us since childhood, are full of joy, simplicity and faith in the impossible. A wonderful doctor who fed two chilled boys on a cold night and saved an entire family from death; a spoiled sick girl demanding an elephant to visit; the poodle Arto, doing incredible tricks to the sonorous commands of the boy Serezha, and the cat Yu-yu, gracefully sleeping under the newspaper...

In Paris, at the North Station, before boarding the Moscow train, Kuprin said:

“I am ready to go to Moscow on foot…”

"Big Beast" went to die.

Konstantin Balmont has a poem that very accurately conveys the state of many emigrants:

I'm in the old, I'm in the gray-haired, in the deaf Brittany,
Between fishermen who are meager, like me.
But they are given fish in the ocean,
Only the bitterness of the spray is my marine part.

Separated by alien spaces
From everything that is dear to a dream,
I spend all my days in gray smoke.
One. One. In despair. On the line.

Sails flicker in the distant Sea.
There are many of them, yellow, red, blue.
Here paint with paint in an eternal conversation,
I am in the fusion of dark and blind colors.

My mourning is not for months,
It will last for many strange years.
The last flame will be wasted by me,
And at all I will be dressed in ashes.

And maybe when to where now
The fire of demonic forces is rampant,
I can walk, only I will meet dust in the desert,
What winds in the wind near the graves ...

Whether Kuprin met “ashes in the desert” when he returned to Russia is unknown. His inner world remained tightly closed from prying eyes.

“To leave, like Tolstoy, in order to get baptisms or places, is a shame, but if I knew that I was dying, I would definitely die soon, then I would have left for my homeland to lie in native land”, he said.

Returning to Russia in the spring of 1937, Kuprin lived for a little over a year. He was tormented by constant pain caused by cancer of the esophagus, he suffered from cerebrovascular accident, his eyesight was weakening and his handwriting was deteriorating. Everything that needed to be said to the returnee, "who realized his guilt before his homeland," was done and written by the journalists assigned to Kuprin.

It is difficult to say what this long-awaited return to the Motherland was for Alexander Ivanovich - by the grace of God or another test. But one thing is clear: what the writer could only dream of for many years came true: he breathed the air of childhood, enjoyed his beloved nature and found peace exactly where he wanted - in his native land.

Before his death in a Leningrad hospital, Kuprin demanded a priest, with whom he had a private conversation for a long time. Elizaveta Moritsovna recalled the last minutes of her husband's life: “He crossed himself and said:“ Read to me “Our Father” and “Theotokos,” he prayed and wept. - Why am I sick? What happened? Do not leave me"".

A friend of the Balaklava fishermen,
Friend of silence, comfort, sea, villager,
Shady Gatchina homeowner,
He is sweet to us with the simplicity of his heartfelt words...

The song foamed lilac gardens -
The nightingale sang, the spring caller,
And, listening to her, a stranger from the army
In the soul of the killers I heard the call to love ...

He considered the universe in the village,
He made an excuse for the fallen Zhenya,
Living soul found in horse...

And the rank of an officer, the soul of a monk,
He boldly challenged
All those who prevented his country from living.

(Igor Severyanin. Kuprin)

Notes

This volume includes works written by Kuprin in 1905-1907, at the time of his creative flourishing. The inspiring influence of the revolution, the closeness to advanced art raised his realism to a new level. The story "Duel" (1905) dedicated to Gorky - "the main, ninth wave" of Kuprin - is one of the most truthful and exciting books of Russian literature of the beginning of the century.

The social significance of the "Duel" for his time was due to the fact that in the everyday life of one of the countless army regiments of the Russian Empire, Kuprin saw and branded the features of decay and decline, characteristic of the entire obsolete autocratic system. On the eve of Tsushima, in the days of the heavy defeats of the tsarist army on the Russian-Japanese fronts, Nazansky's monologues about the backward, degraded officers who forgot about the needs of the country and the people sounded like political appeals.

But, hating and denying the old, Kuprin managed in his own way to see and reflect the new that the approaching revolution brought with it: the awakening of the common man, striving to throw off class, estate, caste oppression. The "Duel" embodied not only the typical aspects of Russian social life at the beginning of the century, but also the internal, deep processes of individual existence: the "straightening" of the individual, the "psychological preparation" of the revolution in broad democratic strata.

The story of Lieutenant Romashov, whom captivity in the barracks made him think about social inequality, about the suffering of the oppressed, about the meaning and purpose of life, ends with his death. But the finale of "Duel" does not sound pessimistic, as it was in "Moloch", where the hero remains to live, broken by the forces of social evil. Romashov dies, having managed to embark on the path of resistance to the old world, and this tells the story, despite a number of gloomy pictures, an optimistic perspective.

The reality of the revolutionary era was reflected in other works of this period. In the short story "Staff Captain Rybnikov" that followed the "Duel", a work remarkable for its mastery of psychological analysis, the atmosphere of the "Tsushima days", the tragic and shameful end of the Russo-Japanese War, is truthfully recreated. A Japanese spy operating in broad daylight in the capital is "material proof" of the decay and panic that has gripped the ruling circles. Voluntary servants of the reaction - an official who dreams of an all-Russian flogging, and a spiteful reactionary teacher - are depicted in the stories "Mechanical Justice" and "Giants". The optimistic endings of these works are noteworthy: a retrograde teacher is stigmatized, who initiated a trial of the giants of Russian literature, and an official who invented a mechanical rod for students, soldiers and striking workers himself becomes a victim of his invention. The anecdotal story "Resentment", in which professional thieves protest when they are identified with pogromists, is imbued, according to V. Vorovsky, with "the fighting mood of 1905, with a growth of feeling characteristic of this time human dignity, respect for public opinion, the moral improvement of the whole atmosphere, which the revolution gave "(V. Borovsky. A. I. Kuprin, 1910. In the book: V. Borovsky. Literary-critical articles, M., 1956, p. 278) .

The bright story "Gambrinus" is also full of echoes of the revolution. Drawing the courage and resilience of a small man, a port musician, a Jew Sashka, who became a victim of the Black Hundred terror, Kuprin impressively reflected the political situation of 1904-1906, the short "rejoicing days of freedom" and the onset of reaction with executions and pogroms.

Kuprin spoke about the corrupting influence of counter-revolutionary terror on the human psyche in The River of Life. Against the backdrop of pictures of bourgeois life painted with a juicy realistic brush, the drama of a member of a revolutionary organization who committed an involuntary betrayal unfolds here. The condemnation of betrayal as a terrible evil that "kills a person alive" is also heard in the allegory "Demir-Kaya".

Kuprin expressed his thoughts about the role of the artist in the revolutionary era in the parable "Art". True beauty and truth is there, says the writer, where art inspires "the joy of struggle," like a statue of a freed slave, sculpted by a brilliant sculptor. The artist's goal is not to please an ignorant philanthropist (like a character in the story "Legend"), but to serve the people ("Gambrinus"), to sing the heroes of the liberation struggle.

However, the writer failed to create a living realistic image of a revolutionary. The revolutionary fighters in the story "Toast" are rhetorically depicted "people with burning eyes, heroes with fiery souls." The kingdom of the future in "Toast" looks static and unpromising: the people of 2906 languish in the glass palaces of the new world and yearn for pre-socialist times. The "Toast" reflected some of Kuprin's anarcho-individualistic ideas, which appeared even in the "Duel". Fairly criticizing Christian humanism, Nazansky comes to denying any public service, collectivism, recognizing only the individual rebellion of a lonely person. Lack of understanding of the ways of social reorganization also affected a number of other works of these years. So, in stories about counter-revolutionary terror, Kuprin's strong and sincere protest against the "sticky nightmare of reaction" was combined with utopian hopes that the executioners of the revolution would suffer moral punishment, severe remorse ("The Killer"). In the story "Delirium", the image of a punitive expedition against the rebels becomes an occasion for moralizing about the dangers of any violence.

As at other stages of his journey, Kuprin in these years willingly turns to the theme of nature, the "natural" state. “From the social struggle,” Borovsky wrote, “his thought is torn into the wilderness, to the sea” (V. Borovsky. Literary-critical articles, p. 287). However, the best of the works created in these years about nature and animals - "Emerald" - is only a new artistic aspect of a socially important topic: bourgeois society with its competition, the struggle of low passions destroys everything natural, pure, beautiful.

Kuprin's works of 1905-1907 are especially diverse in their stylistic qualities, artistic forms and means. The complex evolution of the "seemed" hero is depicted in "The Duel" in the spirit of L. Tolstoy's psychological realism, with a detailed reproduction of the "dialectic of the soul", the struggle between the old and the new in the mind of a person. But subtle psychologism, as well as good realistic life writing, were combined in "Duel" (and this is one of the features of the style of this story) with a direct, declarative, journalistic expression of the author's ideas. From the pathetic monologues of Nasansky, a special stream of Kuprin's prose originates - heightened emotional, saturated with paths, syntactic repetitions, gravitating towards rhythmization. The "Toast", "Dreams", "Delirium", "The Murderer" painted by her are, as it were, civic lyrics in prose. Kuprin also uses allegorical genres - parable, allegory, legend ("Art", "Demir-Kaya", "Legend", "Fairy Tale"), pays tribute to satire. The pen of a participant in satirical magazines wrote political "Tales" - "On the Duma" and "On the Constitution" - exposing the meager freedoms "granted" by the tsar's manifesto on October 17th. In "Mechanical Justice", "Giants", "Fairy Tales" parody, grotesque, Aesopian language are widely used. Along with these types of story, new to him, Kuprin continued to develop a moralistic novel ("How I was an actor", "Small fry"), an artistic essay ("On the Capercaillie").

Kuprin's further path was not straightforward: in the difficult socio-political conditions of the following decades, the artist knew some fluctuations and breakdowns. But the contribution made by the writer in 1905 to democratic art was enduring. For the broad masses of readers, Kuprin remained the author of "Duel", this "bold and violent" expression of the liberation upsurge of the era of the first Russian revolution.

Duel

First published in May 1905 in the "Collection of t-va "Knowledge" for 1905", book. VI, with a dedication to Maxim Gorky "with a feeling of true friendship and deep respect."

The first drafts of the story were made in 1902; one of them - the scene "In the barracks" (see vol. 3 of this edition), a sketch for the XI chapter of "Duel", - was then sent by Kuprin to "Russian Vedomosti" (letter to L. I. Elpatievskaya, summer 1902 . Department of Manuscripts IMLI), but was published only a year later on Sat. "Help". In December 1902, the forthcoming publication of "Duel" was announced (Journal for All, 1902, No. 12, pp. 1565-1566). In the spring of 1903, in Miskhor, Kuprin sketched out individual chapters, but, not satisfied with them, destroyed the manuscript (M. Kuprina-Iordanskaya. Years of youth. M., 1960, pp. 142, 143, 146). In the summer of 1903, responding to V. S. Mirolyubov’s reproach that there was “no nail” in his stories, Kuprin wrote that he hoped to drive this “nail” into his story from military life (“ Literary archive", vol. V, M.-L., IRLI, 1960, p. 123).

Kuprin began to work closely on "Duel" in the spring of 1904, in the context of the Russo-Japanese War, when the image of the army was of particular relevance. The story was intended for the journal "The World of God" (letter to F. D. Batyushkov, 1904, August 25. Arch. IRLI), but then the author decided to publish it in the third collection "Knowledge", dedicated to the memory of A. P. Chekhov. "Kuprin will give his story, "Duel" is a big thing," Gorky told I. A. Bunin in mid-July 1904, inviting him to participate in Chekhov's collection ("Gorky Readings 1958-59", M., 1961 , page 29). At the same time, Gorky wrote to Andreev that there would be eight sheets in The Duel (Lit. Newspaper, 1957, June 18, No. 73). However, the manuscript more than doubled in size, and work on it dragged on. “I’m completely lost in the story,” Kuprin wrote to Gorky in the summer of 1904, and on September 5 he informed the managing editor of Knowledge, K. P. Pyatnitsky, from Odessa: “I already have about 2/3 of the story in its final form” ( Archive of A. M. Gorky, fund "Knowledge"). Apparently, the chapters of "Duel" came from Pyatnitsky to Gorky. On October 15 and 23, 1904, from Balaklava, Kuprin asked Pyatnitsky about Gorky's opinion, wanted to get his advice (A. M. Gorky's archive, Knowledge collection). In November 1904, in St. Petersburg, Gorky listened to the author's reading of individual scenes. "When I read the conversation between Lieutenant Romashov and the pitiful soldier Khlebnikov, Alexei Maksimovich was moved, and it was strange to see this big, adult man with wet eyes" (A. Kuprin. Fragments of memoirs. "Izvestia", 1937, June 18, No. 142). “Kuprin wrote a wonderful story,” Gorky told E.P. Peshkova on November 14, 1904 (M. Gorky. Collected works in 30 vols., vol. 28, M., 1954, p. 337). According to Gorky, "Duel" was supposed to be published in Chekhov's collection next to L. Andreev's "Red Laughter", so as to stigmatize both the war and the military (Gorky's letter to L. N. Andreev dated mid-November 1904. Archive of A. M. Gorky ). But Kuprin was late, and "Duel" was transferred to the VI collection. A new obstacle was the need to restore chapter XIV from memory: its manuscript, along with other papers, was taken away by the gendarmes during a search at Kuprin (letter to K. P. Pyatnitsky, 1905, February 11). Pyatnitsky demanded that the story be finished in April, so that the term for the collection to be in the Censorship Committee would fall on Easter week. Under these conditions, Kuprin was forced to abandon the detailed depiction of the duel and end the story with a report on the duel (Kuprin's interview in Petersburg Newspaper, 1905, 4 Aug. , No. 203). The version that the end of the "Duel", which was not given to the author, was allegedly written by Gorky together with L. Andreev and Bunin (see V. Stavsky's articles in the newspaper "Working Territory", 1936, September 10, No. 209 and P Pavlenko in the album "Crimea", 1948, No. 2 and Zh. "Znamya", 1951, No. 6), is unfounded. Both the draft of the end of the story (Department of Manuscripts of the Saltykov-Shchedrin GPB) and the white text of the last chapter (TsGALI) coincide with the published text. This is a report on the duel, hastily rewritten by Kuprin from the Dueling Code in April 1905, when all the other chapters were already printed (M. Kuprina-Iordanskaya. Years of Youth, p. 200). At that time, Bunin was in Vasilievsky, L. Andreev was in Finland. Gorky was treated in Yalta; he returned to St. Petersburg on May 16, that is, after the story was published (Chronicle of the life and work of A. M. Gorky, vol. I, M., 1958, pp. 527 and 532). It was in Yalta that Kuprin wrote to Gorky on May 5, 1905: “The 6th collection is coming out tomorrow. You will probably find him in St. Petersburg. Now that everything is over, I can say that everything bold and violent in my story belongs to you. If If only you knew how much I have learned from you, and how grateful I am to you for it" (Archive of A. M. Gorky).

The VI collection "Knowledge" with "Duel" was published in the days of the defeat of the Russian fleet at Tsushima, which marked the "complete military collapse of tsarist Russia" (V. I. Lenin. Soch., vol. 10, p. 251). Indignation at the policy of tsarism swept the whole country. Kuprin's true portrayal of a backward, incapacitated army, decomposed officers, and downtrodden soldiers acquired an important socio-political meaning: the paintings of "Duel" seemed to answer the question about the causes of the Far Eastern catastrophe. “Is it surprising,” the Slovo newspaper wrote on May 22, 1905, “that the regiment, whose life the author describes, finally failed at the review ... Is it surprising, we add, that we fail at the big bloody review in the Far East, although We know that not only the whole of Russia, but the whole world is looking at our troops." "Duel" brought Kuprin all-Russian fame. The first edition of the story - 20 thousand copies - was sold out in one month, a number of reprints were needed. Translated in manuscript into German, French, and then into Polish, Swedish, Italian, "Duel" already in 1905 became known to the Western European reader. At the same time, a Latvian translation of the story was also made, but censorship banned its publication in the Social Democratic newspaper "Deenas Lapa". The stage version of The Duel, made by A. Shevlyakov at the end of 1905, was not missed either: the censorship saw in it "continuous propaganda of anti-militarism" ("The First Russian Revolution and Theatre", Moscow, 1956, pp. 336-337). Only after the story was remade into "a picture of the morals of an army infantry regiment ... with a romantic intrigue," did it see the light of the limelight (premiered in March 1906 in St. Petersburg). According to the journal Theater and Art, in 1906 over 30 provincial theaters staged a dramatization of The Duel.

A controversy broke out around the "Duel" in the press. On the pages of "Russian invalid", "Military voice", "Scout" the reactionary military clique raged; Kuprin's story was assessed as a factor in "underground propaganda, in which the common people are set against the army, the soldiers against the officers, and these latter against the government" (quoted from the book: Drozd-Bonyachevsky. A duel from the point of view of a military officer. St. Petersburg, 1910, p. 1).

The Black Hundreds, attacking Kuprin for his supposedly "maliciously tendentious ... pamphlet on the military", were indignant against the collections of "Knowledge", which "cross out one estate after another from our list of viable" (A. Vvedensky-Basargin. Literary attack against the military. Moscow News, 1905, May 21, No. 137).

"Duel" called new wave attacks on Gorky. "The hero of Mr. Kuprin ... thinks in Gorky's way with all his specific quirks and radicalism," Moskovskiye Vedomosti emphasized (in No. 137, 1905), taking the opportunity to attribute Nietzschean views to Gorky. According to Russkiy Vestnik, proximity to the "great" Maxim "spoiled the Duel" with "tendentious preaching pages", and the basis of the "evilly blind criticism of the army" is "the same recipe of Maxim Gorky:" Man! This sounds proud "( "Russian Bulletin" 1905, vol. 297, No. 6, pp. 689 and 726). For the "August" writer K. R. (Konstantin Romanov), Kuprin is just as "absurd and vague" as Gorky and Chekhov ("Red Archive", vol. I, M., 1931, p. 133), and N. Skif , mocking Gorky and Kuprin, whose fame is given de "social madness", considered the work of both writers as symptoms of "moral decay ... thinking Russia" ("Russian Bulletin", 1906, vol. 306, No. 12, p. 586 and 573).

Warning the reader against the "corrupting" pictures of the "Duel", the protective press claimed that Kuprin not only "raises the ax over all the military and precisely as over the class", but "generally promotes some kind of social leveling with the abolition of all class and estate differences" ( Moscow News, 1905, No. 151). On the other hand, the liberals tried in every possible way to weaken the sharpness of Kuprin's speech, likening his story to the novel "From the Life of a Little Garrison" by the German writer Bilse, who stood for partial reforms in the army while maintaining its foundations.

The democratic public and the critics, in welcoming the Duel, sought above all to reveal its revolutionary meaning. "The military class is only a part of the huge bureaucratic class that has flooded the Russian land..." When reading the story, "... you begin to feel the oppression of life around you more intensely and look for a way out of it," wrote Vestnik i biblioteka samoobrazovaniya (1905, no. 28, pp. 888 and 887).

Noting the realism of the story, which exposed "the whole miserable lining of military affairs," the newspaper Nasha Zhizn pointed out that another army was unthinkable "in a bureaucratic state where the will and thought of the people are bound" ("Our Life", 1905, July 30, No. 186)

“The whole essence of (“Duel” - I. K.), emphasized the democratic journal Obrazovanie, “is not in pictures of everyday life, but in the rubbish that has accumulated over the years in the life of society, stopped its development and should be thrown away "(" Education ", 1905, No. 7, p. 86). social democratic literary magazine Pravda welcomed the liberating spirit of the story, in which "the pulse of an entire epoch trembles and beats, bursting from the darkness of impersonality and humility into the light ..." (Pravda magazine, 1905, September-October, p. 421). Even the liberal "Russian Thought" had to admit the radicalism of the revelations of "Duel": "... his scourge and his blows ... are directed ... not at Lech, not at Agamalov and Osadchy, but they beat and execute the damned system, system, common machine , a common spirit and a slavish disposition of all life" ("Russian Thought", 1905, No. 11, p. 67). The story was evaluated as a bold step in the fight against the "hydra of militarism", in the anti-war movement ("Rodnaya Niva", 1905, No. 32). "... The idea of ​​peace is becoming more and more popular, it is already entering, though little by little, into the practice of resolving certain issues that arise between states," wrote the journal "Bulletin of Knowledge" (1905, No. 12, p. 126), in solidarity with Romashov's protest against the war as a "shameful all-human misunderstanding." Despite the pacifist overtones, the anti-war charge of Kuprin's story was of great social importance, like speeches in defense of peace by L. Tolstoy, who exposed the evil of militaristic propaganda among the masses.

Gorky assessed "Duel" in the light of the events of the Russo-Japanese War and the rise of revolutionary sentiment in the army. Kuprin's "Magnificent Story" contributed, according to Gorky, to the growth of the political consciousness of the army, awakened by the "heavy price of the war" ("From a conversation with Maxim Gorky." "Birzhevye Vedomosti", eternal issue, 1905, June 22, No. 8888). "Appeal to the army" called the best pages of "Duel" A. V. Lunacharsky, who believed that the eloquent criticism of the tsarist army in Kuprin's story would awaken in the officers "the voice of real honor"), that is, revolutionary aspirations (A. Lunacharsky. About honor. " Pravda", 1905, September-October, p. 174). This voice was heard in a greeting address to Kuprin from a group of St. Petersburg officers, which said: "The ulcers that affect ... the officer environment do not need palliative, but radical treatment, which will become possible only with the complete recovery of all Russian life" ("Petersburg Vedomosti", 1905, June 21, No. 149).

In the summer-autumn of 1905, Kuprin repeatedly gave public readings of the chapters of "Duel". On July 30, 1905, he read Nazansky's monologue at a large literary and artistic evening in Terioki, arranged by Gorky and M. F. Andreeva in favor of the striking workers of the Putilov factory. The speeches of Gorky, Kuprin, L. Andreev aroused the enthusiasm of the audience, numbering more than 800 people. “All the poems, recitations and melody recitations were clearly tendentious in nature,” the agents of the Finnish gendarme administration reported to the police department, “and the audience was very excited, expressing their approval of the performers. After the evening, Gorky was especially honored, who read his work “The Man” at the evening. Part The collection went to the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP During the intermission, collections were made: 1) in favor of the families of the Sestroretsk workers, 2) the Social Democratic Committee, 3) for "active action, etc." ("Red Archive", 1936, vol. 5 , pp. 66-67) "The program is completely revolutionary," one of the participants recalled the excited atmosphere of this evening-rally, which brought together revolutionaries, workers, scientists and writers of the "Knowledge Guard." ... "Forward - and higher! Forward - and higher!"... "The time will come when the chief and staff officers will be beaten! ..- The hall is buzzing" (Iv. Rukavishnikov. My meetings with Maxim Gorky. In the book: "About Gorky - contemporaries" , M., p. 41). It can be assumed that the author of "Duel" then sought to establish ties with the revolutionary elements of the fleet. "... Kuprin ... is going to the Caucasus the other day, he wants to become a commander on the Potemkin," - Gorky wrote to Chirikov in June 1905 (M. Gorky. Collected works in 30 vols., Vol. 28, p. 376). Kuprin came to Sevastopol after the suppression of the Potemkin uprising, but he took part in the Ochakov events in the autumn of 1905 (see notes to the story "The Caterpillar" and to the article "Events in Sevastopol" in vols. 7 and 9 of this edition). Kuprin's speech in revolutionary Sevastopol in October 1905 with the reading of the chapters of "Duel" was greeted by Lieutenant Schmidt. During the second public reading of the story in Sevastopol, there was a sharp disengagement of the audience: the reactionary officers tried to obstruct Kuprin, accused him of insulting the army, and the sailors went backstage to the author, expressing their sympathy and solidarity with him.

The impact of "Duel" on the minds and hearts of contemporaries was determined by the fact that the socially significant content of the story, its advanced ideas were clothed in a beautiful art form. Most of the critics who wrote about it (A. Bogdanovich, D. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, F. Batyushkov, K. Chukovsky, A. Redko and many others) agreed in recognizing the high literary merits of "Duel". An exception was the opinion of the symbolist magazine "Vesy", which more than once spoke out against the collections of "Knowledge". In a review of the VI collection, Pentaur (V. Bryusov) tried to present "Duel" as artistically weak, written according to "old patterns"; "The best scenes," he wrote, "are nothing more than ... anecdotes from soldier's and officer's life ..." ("Balance", 1905, No. 5, p. 46). "The priests of blessed memory of the theory of self-sufficient art are afraid of the lumen of the truth of life," the newspaper Nasha Zhizn answered the aesthetes from Libra (in No. 282 of September 24, 1905).

V. V. Stasov enthusiastically greeted the “Duel”, called it a “pearl”, “a poem about Russian officers” (letters to K. P. Pyatnitsky, July 1905. Archive of A. M. Gorky). The realism of the pictures of Kuprin's story, the subtlety of psychological analysis were appreciated by L. N. Tolstoy. Reading "Duel" in the VI collection "L[ev] Nikolayevich] listened attentively, every word that he did not catch, he asked again. "I'm interested in the description of military life, he (Kuprin) knows it well, he is a military man," said L N. L. N. praised the reprimand of the colonel to the drunkard-captain, burdened with a family, at first strict as a boss, and then human, soft. Alexandra Lvovna came in ... L. N. asked her about the “Duel”: - “Have you read it? To end? - and added: "Good, fun ... The regimental commander is a wonderful positive type" (From the diary of D. P. Makovitsky, 1905, October 8. In the book: N. N. Apostolov. Leo Tolstoy and his companions. M. , 1928, pp. 249-250). However, the ideas of Nazansky and the criticism of Christian humanism in the story provoked a sharp rebuke from Tolstoy. "This is a pathetic reasoning of Nazansky. This is Nietzsche," Tolstoy said to D.P. Makovitsky ("Voice of the Past", 1923, No. 3, p. 15). “What an abomination is Nazansky’s speech,” he wrote to M. L. Tolstoy-Obolenskaya on October 15, 1905 (L. N. Tolstoy, Complete collection of works, vol. 76, p. 43). Scene Romashov - Khlebnikov Tolstoy considered "false". The features of vulgarized Nietzscheanism in Nazansky's speeches have been repeatedly noted by critics. A detailed analysis of Nazansky's ideas as "an individualist typical of his kind" was given in 1905 by AV Lunacharsky. But, condemning Nazansky's "outwardly beautiful, allegedly Nietzschean theory" as "the most typical philistinism," Lunacharsky defended the social and artistic significance of "The Duel": "... if the wisdom of the wisest of officers is bad, then Mr. Kuprin's story is still very good. .." Kuprin "is very observant, truthful, an excellent storyteller" (A. Lunacharsky. About honor. Pravda, 1905, September-October, p. 174). Gorky considered "Duel" a stage in the development of Kuprin's skill. Advising K. Trenev to stubbornly improve the language, studying the "lexicators" and "shapers" of the word - Leskov, Chekhov, Korolenko - Gorky wrote: "This advice was given to many, and justified by many. Take Kuprin's language before the "Duel" and after, - you will see what the matter is and how the above-named writers teach us well "(M. Gorky. Collected works in 30 vols., vol. 29, p. 212).

Shortly after the release of "Duel", the officers of the 46th Dnieper Regiment sent a protest to their former colleague. Refuting accusations of portraiture, Kuprin wrote: "... I did not mean exclusively my regiment. I did not take a single living image from there" ("Neue freie Presse" (Wien), 1906, 8 Sept.). However, Proskurov's impressions left a noticeable mark on the story. The researchers found a number of prototypes of the "Duel" from the army encirclement of Kuprin in the 90s. It is also known that the “liberal” General M. I. Dragomirov, who at that time commanded the Kyiv Military District, was portrayed as a corps commander. The scene between Romashov and Colonel Shulgovich in "Duel" is very close to an episode from the life of Kuprin, an officer who could not stand the rudeness of a regimental commander (letter to A. A. Izmailov, March 16 (1913). IRLI archive). As V. Borovsky rightly noted in his article about Kuprin (1910), "... the military environment left many strong impressions in him, which gave him material for a number of works", provided him with "a rich field for studying" depravity "and" ugliness "modern ... society."

The ideas and images of "Duel" continued to dominate Kuprin in subsequent years. In 1907, in a letter to I. A. Bunin, Kuprin mentioned "an unwritten chapter from the Duel" - a duel scene, that is, apparently, one of the unused options for the end of the story (letter to I. A. Bunin, TsGALI ). In 1908, Gorky inquired whether the second collection of the almanac "Earth" with Kuprin's "Beggars" had come out (letter to S.P. Bogolyubov. Archive of A.M. Gorky). The novel "Beggars" was conceived by Kuprin in the process of creating "Duel" as a continuation of the story of Romashov, who, having recovered from a duel wound, left the army and began a life full of wandering and need (M. Iordanskaya. Years of Youth, pp. 203 and 205 ). But, having "killed" Romashov, Kuprin could not continue the "Duel". The attempt to turn The Beggars into an autobiographical novel about the Kiev "years of reporting ..., terrible poverty and cheerful youth", which Kuprin mentioned in an interview in 1908 (Birzhevye Vedomosti, eternal issue, 1908, June 17, No. 10557). The idea of ​​"Beggars" was not realized.

The TsGALI has a white manuscript of "Duel" - the original of set VI of the "Knowledge" collection, part of which was written by Kuprin's hand. The draft manuscript of the last, XXIII chapter of the story is in the Department of Manuscripts of the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Library.

In addition to reprints as part of the VI collection "Knowledge", the story was included in the II volume of "Stories" by Kuprin, published by "Knowledge" in 1906. Preparing the text for the collected works published by the partnership of A. F. Marx, Kuprin removed the most harsh judgments in the XXI chapter Nazansky about officers: ("... the time will come .. when we, gentlemen of the headquarters and chief officers, will be beaten on the cheeks in alleys, in dark corridors, in water closets, when we ... will finally stop obey our loyal soldiers. And it will be ... not because we, bossy parasites, covered Russian weapons with disgrace in all countries and on all battlefields, while our soldiers drove us out of the corn with bayonets ... "(excluded the words are given in italics.—I.K.) With the same changes, Chapter XXI was printed in subsequent editions.

In 1927, the first Soviet separate edition of "Duel" (M.-L., GIZ) was published. In the 30s, a number of dramatizations of the story were made (I. Vsevolozhsky, "Duel", M., Tsedram., 1935; V. Golichnikov and B. Paparigopulo, "Lord Officers", M., Tsedram, 1938, and others. ), marching with success on the stages of Soviet theaters. In 1957, People's Artist Vl. Petrov staged the film "Duel" with Yu. Puzyrev in the role of Romashov.

"We know how bad you play checkers!"- inaccurate quote from " dead souls"Gogol.

... said General Dokhturo - Dokhturov Dmitry Sergeevich (1756-1816) - hero Patriotic War 1812

Dragomirov... screaming... - Dragomirov Mikhail Ivanovich (1830-1905) - general, military historian and teacher. During Kuprin's service in the 46th Dnieper Regiment, Dragomirov commanded the Kyiv Military District.

...now after the fights are resolved.- Prohibited by the decree of Peter I, fights were introduced by a special order of the military department on May 13, 1894 for "trial of quarrels that occur among officers."

"I know how to wield a dagger. / I was born near the Caucasus"- an inaccurate quote from A. S. Pushkin's poem "The Fountain of Bakhchisaray".

... notes on the Carlist war ...- Wars of the Carlists - civil wars in Spain in the 30s and 70s of the XIX century between feudal and bourgeois elements, unleashed by clerics, supporters of the pretender to the Spanish throne, Don Carlos Jr.

Luneg... barbet- types of military engineering structures.

Guerillas(Guerillas) - Spanish partisans early XIX century, fighting against the troops of Napoleon.

...chouans- counter-revolutionary detachments that rebelled against the French Republic in 1793.

... jokingly ... called Colonel Brem.- Brehm, Alfred (1829-1884) - German zoologist.

... chords of the requiem of John of Damascus...- an Orthodox funeral hymn, authored by the Byzantine theologian John of Damascus (late 7th-mid-8th century)

Staff Captain Rybnikov

For the first time - in the journal "God's World", 1906, No. 1.

The story was written in the autumn of 1905 in Balaklava.

When preparing the third volume in the publication of The World of God (St. Petersburg, 1907), Kuprin removed the following lines in the first chapter of the magazine text after the words: "... very close to the staff captain's heart" (p. 235) the following lines: "In a word, the behavior of the staff "Captain Rybnikov was more and more justified by the apt remark of one brilliant naval adjutant about his abnormality. This is probably why the staff captain forgot to send the money that was so urgently demanded of him to Irkutsk." At the end of the story, after Rybnikov’s words “... I broke my leg,” it followed: “Shchavinsky never knew the end of this story. A few days later, when his wife returned from the dacha, he told her very colorfully and touchingly about the Japanese spy.

Oh, what a pity that I was not, - said the actress. Then Shchavinsky remembered the staff captain's autograph and told his wife about it. She began to fuss.

Let's go, honey, let's see.

It's embarrassing, - Shchavinsky hesitated, - after all, I promised to look only after three months ..

Well, here it is, nonsense! - the wife got angry. - What are these words. And, most importantly, who has the floor - the Japanese spy.

Together they took out the buttons, took off a quarter of white paper and read the words written in a thin, clear, elegant handwriting: "Although you are Ivanov's seventh, you are still a fool."

Well, there is nothing witty, - said the actress. - Some kind of nonsense!

But Shchavinsky suddenly remembered with unusual vividness the face, voice, and movements of Staff Captain Rybnikov, and he said with a sigh:

And yet, this is the most amazing and incomprehensible person for me, which I have only seen in my life.

Preparing a story for the third volume of the Complete Works, ed. t-va A.F. Marx, Kuprin in the fifth chapter (which refers to visitors to brothels), after the words "civilian, military ..." removed the words "... and disguised priests."

A. M. Gorky considered "Staff Captain Rybnikov" to be among the best works of Kuprin. In 1919, he included the story in the prospectus "Series of Russian Writers" of the library "Life of the World"; in 1928 - in the editorial plan of the State Publishing House for the release of Russian classics; in 1935 - in the plan of the publishing house "Academia" (Archive of A. M. Gorky; gas. " Soviet art", 1936, No. 29, June 23). Kuprin himself considered the story his best work (Conversation with A. I. Kuprin, Odessa News, 1909, No. 7934, October 8).

...campers the corner of his face.- The 18th century Dutch anatomist Peter Camper (1722-1789) used the facial angle to determine the characteristic features of the head profile.

Toast

For the first time - in the satirical magazine "Signals", 1906, January 18, issue 2, with a dedication to the Wanderer (S. G. Petrov).

The title "Toast", made in this magazine in the form of a vignette of the "Modern" style, was lost among the lines of the ornament and was not noticed. Therefore, in the notes to the works of Kuprin (in 3 volumes, M., 1953 and in 6 volumes, M., 1958), only the subtitle was indicated for the first publication: "A. I. Kuprin's story."

V.V. Borovsky considered the story characteristic of the views of Kuprin, who was inclined to exalt "the self-sacrifice of individual heroes, not noticing the work ... nameless averages ...". “It prevents him from reproducing the pictures of a new social struggle taking place before Kuprin’s eyes ... - wrote Vorovsky, - that his apolitical psychology is alien to the life of those sections of the people who bear this grandiose struggle on their shoulders and pave with their bodies the path to that happy state of 2906, about which Kuprin speaks with such love "(V. V. Vorovsky. Literary and critical articles, pp. 285-286).

Happiness

For the first time - in the journal "Literary Evenings" (Moscow), 1906, No. 3 with the subtitle "Fairy Tale".

Murderer

For the first time - under the title "Killers" in the magazine "Liberation Movement", 1906, No. 1.

In the sixth volume of the Complete Works, ed. t-va A.F. Marx, the story was included under the title "The Killer".

The magazine text of the story began with an introduction, which was removed by the author when the story was included in the third volume of works in the publication "God's World".

river of life

For the first time - in the journal "God's World", 1906, No. 8. The story was written in the summer of 1906 in Danilovsky. On July 2, 1906, M. K. Kuprina wrote to F. D. Batyushkov: “Alexander Ivanovich finished the second story for M[ir] God’s sake, he hastily rewrites both in order to leave as soon as possible. I like this story “Life” more. ..". On July 16, 1906, she informed the same addressee: “At the same time I am sending the story “The River of Life”, the title is somewhat magnificent, but the story is successful ... Alexander Ivanovich asks to quickly type and send proofs for editing” (IRLI).

The sketch "The Landlady" (1895) from the cycle "Kyiv Types" can be considered as the initial sketch for the story.

Editing for the Complete Works, ed. t-va A.F. Marx, magazine text of the story, Kuprin made some corrections caused by a change in the political situation in the conditions of the onset of reaction. Thus, in a student's letter, the words: "In the present great, fiery time..." were replaced by the words: "In the present terrible delusional time." Instead of words about the "eagles" of the revolution: "Let someone keep their flight!" - Kuprin inserted the phrase: "How short, but how wonderful and heroic was their flight to the blazing sun of freedom!" The following words were replaced in the student's letter (highlighted in italics): "I am positively sure that the current sixth grader in the presence of all monarchs and all police chiefs of Europe, in any throne room, will firmly, sensibly and even, perhaps, somewhat boldly declare the demand of his True, he is a little ridiculous, this precocious high school student, but a sacred respect for his joyful, proud, free "I" is already growing in him ... "

V. V. Borovsky wrote about the story "The River of Life": "Who you rarely meet in Kuprin's works is a typical Russian intellectual, who usually appears - in one situation or another - in all our writers. There is, however, one story, in which Kuprin deliberately, for the sake of contrast, inserted a lonely figure of such an intellectual into the vulgar, dirty petty-bourgeois environment. This is a tenant in the rooms in the story "The River of Life". The weak-willed, flabby Russian intellectual is drawn here in purely Chekhovian tones", "... "new young words, wild dreams, free, fiery thoughts" breathed on this "demagnetized intellectual". But, alas, they turned out to be beyond his power ... And, realizing the horror of his situation ... he decides to end the calculations with his life "(V.V. Borovsky. Literary-critical articles, p. 282).

The great Russian physiologist I. P. Pavlov highly appreciated the psychological mastery of the story. In a conversation with A. M. Gorky, he said: “I liked Kuprin’s story,“ The River of Life ”is called something. I then thought a lot about the goal reflex, about the freedom reflex. suicidal letter, it was clear that he had become a victim of a reflex of slavery ... Understand this well, he, firstly, would have judged himself more fairly, and, secondly, could ... develop in himself a successful arrest, suppression of this reflex "(Archive of A. M. Gorky).

Resentment

The story was written in the summer of 1906 in the Danilovskoye estate, Novgorod province (letters from M. K. Kuprina to F. D. Batyushkov on July 2 and 13, 1906 and from September 1906 to IRLI).

Editing the text for the third volume of his writings, ivd. Peace of God", Kuprin removed a number of details at the beginning of the story, significantly reduced the descriptions of the appearance of the thieves and added the end, starting with the words: "The lawyers dispersed from the theater ..." and ending with the words: "... he quickly went out into the street."

...as Giraldoni sings in the prologue from Piazza.- With the Italian singer Eugenio Giraldoni (1871-1924), Kuprin met in Odessa in the early nineties with the editor of the newspaper "Odessa News" P. T. Herzo-Vinogradsky (L. V. Nikulin. About one essay by A. I. Kuprin, " Spark", 1957, No. 34).

On capercaillie

Included in the fourth volume of the Collected Works, ed. "Moscow publishing house".

The story was written in the Crimea in the autumn of 1906 and was intended for the first book of The Modern World (letter from M. K. Kuprina to F. D. Batyushkov on September 23, 1906, IRLI). However, the story was not published in the magazine.

Legend

For the first time - in the journal "Life" (St. Petersburg), 1906, No. 1, November, with the subtitle: "words to the "Legend" of Venyavsky."

Venyavsky, Henryk (1835-1880) - famous Polish violinist and composer; "Legend" is one of his most popular violin works.

Art

The parable was written in response to the newspaper's request to artists to express themselves "in a brief aphoristic form" on the topic "Revolution and Literature". I. Repin, V. Bryusov, A. Lunacharsky, E. Chirikov, I. Yasinsky, N. Minsky, A. Kamensky, A. Kugel and others. In many responses, the ideas of "pure art" varied, saying that "tendentiousness is harmful to literature," that "an artist and revolutionary spirit are antipodes." A. V. Lunacharsky in the article "Art and Revolution" (in No. 11 of November 5) stood up for the connection of art with the life of the people, with the liberation struggle. "Isn't it because, - he wrote, - the artist is so helpless in the area that so excites the hearts of his nation, that he is too devoted ... to one small fragment of the world, displays graces on one short string?" Lunacharsky called on writers to "feel the revolution, not just the clouds" and "talk about art in connection with the tasks, hopes and sorrows of conscious humanity."

Demir-Kaya

First time in a magazine Modern world", 1906, № 12.

V. V. Borovsky attributed the story "Demir-Kaya" to those works of Kuprin, where "an active attitude to political issues breaks through", although this attitude is "clothed in a vague artistic form" (V. V. Borovsky. Literary-critical articles, p. 277).

Narghile- Oriental smoking device.

Vilayet- a unit of territorial-administrative division in Turkey.

How I was an actor

The story was started by Kuprin in Danilovsky in July 1906 and completed in Helsingfors in November 1906 (letter from M. K. Kuprina to F. D. Batyushkov on July 13, 1906, letter from A. I. Kuprin to F. D. Batyushkov, November 1906 IRLI).

Depicted in the story "city C" - Sumy, Poltava province, where in the spring - autumn of 1898 Kuprin served in local theater actor "on the way out". “The environment in which I then played,” he later said, “was incredibly uncultured, and all taken together left its mark on my attitude to the theater ...” (“Birzhevye Vedomosti”, evening issue, 1913, No. 13764 , September 21).

A.P. Chekhov appreciated Kuprin's acting skills and advised him to join the troupe of the Art Theater. In December 1901, Kuprin informed Chekhov that he did not dare to take the exam because of the large influx of applicants (Department of Manuscripts of the Lenin State Library). In Kuprin's correspondence and in the press, there are references to the fact that for amateur performances he prepared the roles of Khlestakov in N. Gogol's The Government Inspector, Astrov in Uncle Vanya, and Lomov in A. Chekhov's Proposal, a cook in Fruits of Enlightenment L Tolstoy, the dog in "Chantecler" by E. Rostand and others.

Kuta- kind of clothing.

... from the detachment of Mark the Magnificent. - Mark Vinicius- Roman commander, character in the novel by the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916) "Quo Vadis"("Kamo are coming", 1894-1896) about the struggle of pagan Rome against the first Christians. Page 357.

Tigellinus(d. 69 AD) - temporary worker of the Roman emperor Claudius Nero (37-68 AD); here - the character of the novel by G. Senkevich "Kamo come".

... And like a wild beast, the broad-shouldered tragedian howled -

lines from N. A. Nekrasov's poem "The Provincial Party" (1852).

"... whistle, please, this yesterday's motive from "Clowns".- This episode was told by Kuprin in the early nineties to A.P. Chekhov; partially cited in Kuprin's essay "In Memory of Chekhov" (vol. 9).

Charsky, Lyubsky...- Charsky (Chistyakov) Vladimir Vasilievich (d. 1910), Lyubsky Anatoly Klavdievich - tragic actors, popular in the Russian provinces in the late XIX - early XX centuries.

Ivanov-Kozelsky, Mitrofan Timofeevich (1850-1898) - a tragic actor who played a lot in the provinces.

Gambrinus

For the first time - in the journal "Modern World", 1907, No. 2.

The story was written in Gatchina in December 1906 (Kuprin's letter to F. D. Batyushkov dated December 5, 1906. IRLI).

The journal text of the story was hardly edited. Let us note only two cases of corrections made by Kuprin when preparing a story for the fourth volume of collected works, ed. "Moscow Book Publishing House": in the fourth chapter, in the description of visitors to "Gambrinus", the words about the stinginess inherent in thieves were removed; in the eighth chapter, in the characterization of Mitka Gundosy, after the words "pimp and detective" "baptized Jew" was added.

L. N. Tolstoy found the language of the story "beautiful", he read it to his family (L. N. Tolstoy. Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 58, p. 468).

Anatolian kochermas- large single-masted deck boats common in Anatolia (Turkey).

Trebizond feluccas- deckless single-masted sailing ships from the Turkish port of Trabzon (Trabzon).

... Franco-Russian celebrations.- Apparently, we are talking about the festivities on the occasion of the arrival of the President in Russia french republic E. Loubet and decades of the Franco-Russian military-political alliance.

"Kuropatkin March"- march in honor of General A. N. Kuropatkin (1848-1925), who commanded the Russian land army during the Russo-Japanese War until March 1905

Ocarina- wind musical instrument.

Elephant

For the first time - in the children's magazine "Path", 1907, No. 2.

Rave

For the first time - in the anthology "Rosehip", 1907, book 1.

"Delirium" is a reworking of an earlier work by A. Kuprin - the story "The Killer", published in the newspaper "Odessa News" on January 1, 1901. Written on the theme of the events of the Anglo-Boer War that was going on at that time, the story "The Killer" was imbued with protest against unjust wars and sympathy for the national liberation struggle of the Boers against the English invaders, although Kuprin did not avoid here abstract humanistic discussions about the dangers of any bloodshed.

In the story "Delirium", the author retained the plot and composition of the story "The Killer", its individual episodes (the feverish delirium of an officer, the monologue of an old rebel, the shooting of hostages), but transferred the action of the story to contemporary Russia and thereby gave the work a completely different historical and political coloring. .

...applauded Sanson when he showed...the bloodied head of Louis. - Sanson, Charles-Henri - the executioner, who in 1793 guillotined the French king Louis XVI of Bourbon, who was convicted during the Great French Revolution Convention for Treason of the Nation.

... fed moray eels.- Moray eel is a large predatory fish from the eel family.

fairy tales

I. About the thought

For the first time - in an illustrated supplement to the newspaper "Rus", 1907, No. 12, March 20. During the life of the writer, the story was not republished. Included in the six-volume collected works (GIHL).

II. About the constitution

For the first time - in an illustrated supplement to the newspaper "Rus", 1907, No. 13, March 30. During the life of the writer, the story was not republished. Included in the six-volume collected works (GIHL).

Published according to the first publication.

mechanical justice

Let us remember ... Gogol, who said through the lips of a simple, uncomplicated serf servant: the peasant must be beaten, because the peasant indulges ...- This refers to the words of the coachman Selifan from the III chapter of the I part of the novel by N. V. Gogol " Dead Souls":" Why not cut, if for the cause? that is the will of the Lord. It needs to be cut, because the man is playing around ... ".

giants

The story was written no later than mid-July 1907 and, together with the story "Mechanical Justice", was transferred to the newspaper "Rus" for the satirical magazine published under it " Gray wolf", but was not published there (letter from V. F. Botsyanovsky to E. M. Rotshtein on July 5, 1939)

... and the Duma, and the cut, and the parish, and all kinds of freedoms.- The convocation of the State Duma (1906), the decree of the reactionary tsarist minister P.A. revolutionary movement. The hero of Kuprin, a retrograde official, calls these acts "freedoms."

There you are, young man...- meaning A. S. Pushkin.

And you, officer?- We are talking about M. Yu. Lermontov.

He praised Turgenev... but reproached him with his love for a foreigner.- We are talking about the relationship between I. S. Turgenev and the French singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821-1910).

... regretted Dostoevsky's engineering career, but approved for the Poles ...- F. M. Dostoevsky graduated in 1843 from the St. Petersburg Military Engineering School. Kuprinskiy official approves of the chauvinistic attacks against the Poles that took place in a number of Dostoevsky's works.

Is that how you are, Mr. Governor?- In 1858-1861, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, who is discussed here, served as vice-governor in Ryazan and Tver.

Emerald

For the first time - in the anthology "Rosehip", 1907, book 3.

Kuprin wrote the story in August-September 1907 in Danilovsky (letter to F. D. Batyushkov on August 29, 1907, IRLI). On October 1, he informed V.A. Tikhonov: "... I wrote a story about a race horse called "Emerald" (TsGALI). The story is based on a real episode that played out in the early nineties in Moscow with a race stallion Rassvet, poisoned by a competing with its owner, a horse breeder (N. D. Teleshov. Notes of a writer, M., 1952, p. 45).

I dedicate it to the memory of the incomparable pinto trotter Kholstomer.- This refers to the story of L. Tolstoy "Strider".

Small fry

For the first time - in the journal "Modern World", 1907, No. 12. The story was written no later than mid-November 1907, on November 17 Kuprin read it in the St. Petersburg literary society("Birzhevye Vedomosti", morning issue, 1907, No. 1.0209, November 18). A. M. Gorky introduced this story into the prospectus "Series of Russian Writers" of the library "Life of the World" (Pg, 1919).

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin survived many diverse events, whose life and work are filled with the drama of events that have taken place in the world. His works are always popular with both ordinary readers and professionals. Many of Kuprin's stories are a standard literary genre, for example, "Staff Captain Rybnikov". Such pearls from the treasury of Russian literature as "Garnet Bracelet", "Shulamith", "Olesya", "Listrigons," Junkers "- all will remain popular for all time. And how do modern children read such stories as Alexander Kuprin in our country has a truly national recognition.

Childhood and youth

The future writer was born in August 1880 in a small town in the Penza province. His father, a petty official, died when his son was barely a year old. The mother could not raise little Alexander to his feet, because there were not enough funds, and she sent the boy to an orphanage.

The Alexander School in Moscow left not only bleak memories. Here adolescence and youth passed, the first youthful hobbies, literary experiments appeared, and the main thing that Alexander Kuprin acquired at the school was friends.

Moscow was beautiful with its patriarchal customs, its own myths, filled with small-town pride (the infringed capital!), with its local celebrities, eccentrics. The appearance of the city was integral and unlike any other.

Beginning of writing

Studying gave Kuprin enough complete education: languages ​​- Russian, French, German. Physics, mathematics, history, geography and literature (literature). Here the latter became for him a refuge for life. Here, at the school, his first story was written - "The Last Debut", published piping hot in the "Russian satirical messenger".

Kuprin was incredibly happy, although he served time in a punishment cell for this act (publications without the knowledge of the head of the school were prohibited, but young Kuprin did not know this, and he was punished for ignorance of the internal service).

Finally, the novice writer was released from the school in the first category and assigned to serve on the southwestern border of Russia, remote provincial towns of this kind were brilliantly described by him in the story "Duel" and the story "Wedding".

Service at the borders of the country

Service on the border became the material for excellent works, worked to the end, such as "Inquiry", "Overnight" and others. However, the writer seriously thought about professional literary activity. It was necessary to acquire sufficient experience for this, so it was published in provincial newspapers, and the story "In the Dark" was accepted into the journal "Russian Wealth".

In 1890, Kuprin, whose life and work seemed to be covered with moss in the outback, suddenly met Chekhov and Gorky. Both masters played a huge role in the fate of Kuprin. Naturally, Alexander valued them extremely highly, and even more - their opinion, and almost idolized Chekhov.

main topic

Not even one of the main, but the main theme that the writer Alexander Kuprin used throughout his life is love. The characters from the pages of his prose directly shine with this feeling, revealing themselves in their best manifestations, always light, always tragic, with very rare exceptions (for example, "The Lilac Bush" - this amazingly beautiful story is equal in terms of the power of impression to "The Gifts of the Magi" by O. Henry, everything ends well there, except for the feeling of shame of the hero-officer for his little deceit). For all real writers, like Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, a biography helps to create.

"Olesya"

The first fairly large and very significant work appears in 1898. This is the story "Olesya" - sad, without the slightest melodrama, bright, romantic. The world of nature of the heroine is spiritual harmony as opposed to a person from a big and cruel city. Naturalness, inner freedom, Olesya's simplicity attracted the main character faster than a magnet a piece of metal.

Cowardly kindness turned out to be stronger than spiritual wealth, almost destroying a pure and strong girl. The framework of social and cultural life is capable of changing even such a natural person as Olesya, but Kuprin did not allow this. Even a high feeling of love cannot revive those spiritual qualities that civilization has destroyed. Therefore, the meaning of this excellent story is high, because the life of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin taught to see everywhere both the light and the shadow that obscures it.

"Garnet bracelet"

In the most everyday reality, the writer seeks and finds such people, whose obsession with high feeling is able to rise above the prose of life, even in dreams. Referring to the description of the "little man", Alexander Kuprin, whose books are read avidly, truly works wonders. It turns out that Kuprin's "little" person is characterized by a refined, all-encompassing love, hopeless and touching. It's a miracle, a wonderful gift. Even when dying, love revives to life, conquering death. And music, music that regenerates the soul. It sounds in every line, moving from cold contemplation to a quivering feeling of the world.

Truly unavoidably tragic. The chastity of heroes has a creative creative power. This is how heroes appear before readers, as Kuprin saw, whose life and work depict them to us in a cruel world trying to break a fragile soul. At the same time, there is almost always a certain underestimation by the hero of himself, disbelief in the right to possess the woman that his whole essence lusts for. Nevertheless, the complexity of the situations and the drama at the end do not leave the reader feeling despondent, the characters that Alexander Kuprin brought to the reader, his entire books are the very love of life, the very optimism. A bright feeling after reading for a long time does not leave the reader.

"White Poodle"

This story, published in 1903, about an elderly organ grinder, the boy Seryozha and their faithful dog, the poodle Arto, was named by the writer - "White Poodle". Alexander Kuprin, as often happened, copied the plot from nature. Guests often came to his dacha - artists, just passers-by, pilgrims, and the Kuprins family welcomed everyone, fed them lunch and gave them tea. Among the guests once appeared an old man with a hurdy-gurdy, a little acrobat and a white scientific dog. So they told the writer about what happened to them.

The rich lady insisted on selling the poodle for her little, spoiled and capricious son, the artists, of course, refused. The lady got angry and hired a man to steal the dog. And Seryozha risked his life, freeing his beloved Artoshka. This story seemed to Kuprin interesting topics that the story easily included two of his favorite topics - social inequality and disinterested friendship, love for animals, caring for them. So often, instead of a writer, he works, as Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin himself said, a biography.

"Duel"

While serving as a lieutenant in the 46th Dnieper Infantry Regiment, Alexander Kuprin conceived and suffered through "Duel". The city of Proskurov, where the service was held, is easily recognizable in this story. After retiring, the writer began to systematize his disparate records. When the story was ready, Maxim Gorky highly appreciated it, calling it magnificent and should make an indelible impression on all thinking and honest officers.

Also, A. V. Lunacharsky devoted an article to "Duel" in the journal "Pravda" in the fall of 1905, where he welcomed such topics and such a style of writing in every possible way, saying about the beautiful pages of Kuprin's story, which are an eloquent appeal to the army, and every officer will certainly hear your own voice of unmistakable honor.

Paustovsky called some scenes of the "Duel" the best in Russian literature. But there were also opposite opinions. Not all army men agreed with the reality that Alexander Kuprin revealed (life and work clearly say that he did not write a word of lies). However, Lieutenant General Geisman accused the writer of slander, hatred of the army, and even an attempt on the state system.

This is one of the most significant works of Kuprin about the history of the conflict between the young lieutenant Romashov and a senior officer. The morals, the drill, the vulgarity of the officer society - Kuprin pushed the whole background of the life of a provincial regiment with a young romantic worldview and - again! - real, all-forgiving and all-encompassing, sacrificial love.

The first edition of the story came out with a dedication to Maxim Gorky, since all the most violent and most daring in the story determined his influence. But Chekhov did not like the story, and her romantic mood - especially, which Kuprin was very puzzled and upset about.

In the autumn of this year, the writer spent in Balaklava, in the Crimea, where he read Nazansky's monologue from "Duel" at a charity evening. Balaklava is a city of military men, and there were a lot of them in the hall at that moment. A huge scandal broke out, which helped to extinguish the sailor, Lieutenant P.P. Schmidt, who headed the writer a month later. The writer saw with his own eyes the ruthless reprisal of government troops against the rebels and described these events by sending correspondence to St. Petersburg, to the New Life newspaper. For this, Kuprin was expelled from Balaklava at forty-eight hours. But the writer managed to save several sailors from the Ochakov from persecution. Beautiful stories were later written about this uprising: "The Caterpillar", "Giants", the most wonderful "Gambrinus".

Writer's family

Kuprin's first wife was Maria Karlovna Davydova, whom he married in 1902 and divorced in 1909. She was a highly educated lady, the daughter of a famous cellist and magazine publisher. By her next marriage, she became the wife of a prominent statesman Nicholas of Jordan-Negorev. Maria Karlovna left a book of memoirs about Kuprin - "The Years of Youth".

They also had a joint daughter, Lidia Alexandrovna Kuprina, who died early, in 1924, giving the writer a grandson Alexei. Alexander Ivanovich and his grandson did not leave other offspring, the Kuprins family was interrupted.

The second wife, his muse and guardian angel, is Elizaveta Moritsevna Heinrich, who married the writer in 1909. She was the daughter of a photographer and the sister of an actress. Elizaveta Moritsevna worked all her life, which was not typical for that time, she was a sister of mercy. Could not survive the blockade of Leningrad.

They had a daughter, Ksenia Alexandrovna, a beauty and a clever girl, a favorite not only of the whole family, but also of people who had at least a little contact with her. She worked at the Fashion House of Paul Poiret, famous in those days, was a model and actress. In 1958 she returned from France to the USSR. She also wrote memoirs "Kuprin is my father." She played in the Moscow theater named after Pushkin. One-year-old Xenia had a sister, Zinaida, but in 1912 she died of pneumonia.

Pre-war, war and post-war years

Throughout 1909, Kuprin worked hard - he wrote a story that was risky for our times as well. The writer decided to show from the inside the life of a brothel somewhere in the province. He called the story "The Pit". She wrote for a long time. In the same year, he was awarded the Pushkin Prize, as well as Ivan Bunin. This was already an official recognition from the Academy of Sciences.

In 1911, Kuprin had to sell the publishing rights to the Complete Works. Having received one hundred thousand rubles of royalties from the publisher, already in 1915 the writer wrote that he was mired in debt. Then the story "Garnet Bracelet" was published, which Kuprin Alexander Ivanovich wrote so reverently, the stories "Telegraph Operator" and "Holy Lies" - works are subtle, lyrical, sad. They clearly showed that the author's soul was not mired in wealth, that he was still ready to sympathize, love and sympathize.

In 1914, Kuprin volunteered for the war, again as a lieutenant. He served in Finland, but not for long: he was declared unfit for service due to health reasons. He returned home, and at home - the infirmary: Elizaveta Moritsevna and daughter Ksenia nursed the wounded ... So the war years passed. The revolution of 1917 Kuprin did not understand and did not accept. Lenin did not like. After the defeat of the white movement in 1920, the Kuprins left Russia.

Twenty years of Kuprin's life in France showed how difficult it is for a Russian person to adapt abroad. There were no earnings. The most famous works of the writer were translated into French, but new ones were not written. Commercial enterprises all the more failed. The main thing is that longing ate the soul. Youth, health, strength, hopes are gone ... This nostalgia is permeated through and through the only major work, written by Alexander Ivanovich far from Russia, is the novel "Junker". It turned out to be almost documentary memories of a military school, warm, sad, but with the same kind and gentle Kuprin humor. He really, really wanted to return to his homeland.

Home!

Too late, Kuprin's dream of returning to Russia came true. The terminally ill writer returned home to die. The meeting was incredibly warm - he was loved so much that almost all of Moscow decided to see him. Alexander Ivanovich's joy was immeasurable. Eyewitnesses testify that he often cried, he was touched by everything: the children, and the very smell of the homeland, and especially the attention and love of those around him. The writer, despite his illness, published: an essay about the capital "Moscow dear", then memoirs about Gorky (with huge omissions, since in exile Kuprin did not complain about Gorky for supporting and aiding the "regime of horror and slavery").

On the eve of the new year 1937, the Kuprins moved to Leningrad and settled there, surrounded by care and attention. In June 1938, they visited their dear Gatchina, where lilacs once bloomed so magnificently. They gave up both their old dacha and seventy thousand compensation for it, settled with a familiar widow of a famous architect. Kuprin walked in the beautiful garden, enjoying peace and quiet joy.

Nevertheless, the disease intensified, the diagnosis was terrible - cancer of the esophagus. In Leningrad, after returning from Gatchina, the council decided to operate on Kuprin. Temporarily he felt better, but the doctors warned that, in principle, there was nothing to hope for. Kuprin died. In recent days, he had everything that was possible - the best doctors, excellent care. But even such an extension of life cannot be forever.

Life eternal

Literary critics, critics, memoirists have written a vivid portrait of a remarkable, truly Russian writer who continued the best classical traditions a brilliant follower of Leo Tolstoy. Alexander Kuprin, whose quotes have been around for a century, wrote more than a hundred works of various genres. He was truthful, sincere, with a large share of life specifics in each of his words, he wrote only about what he himself experienced, saw, felt.

Kuprin addressed the widest audience, his reader does not depend on gender and age, everyone will find his own, cherished in his lines. Humanism, persistent love of life, plastic, vivid descriptions, exceptionally rich language help Kuprin's works to remain one of the most widely read to this day. His works have been filmed, staged and translated into many languages ​​of the world.