Lydia Chukovskaya: biography, family, personal life, journalism

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:55

Chukovskaya Lydia Korneevna - daughter of the writer Korney Chukovsky, editor, writer, publicist, poet, critic, memoirist, dissident. He is a laureate of international and Russian awards. Her books were banned in the USSR for many years, and the name of Lydia Chukovskaya stands next to the names of Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky.

Childhood

Lidia Chukovskaya (Lidiya Nikolaevna Korneichukova) was born on March 24, 1907 in St. Petersburg in the family of Korney Chukovsky (Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneichukov) and Maria Borisovna Goldfeld. There were four children in the family.

In the upbringing of the girl, the atmosphere of creativity that filled the house of her parents played a big role. They gathered outstanding people, among them cultural and art figures. These were my father's friends, one of them was I. Repin. Details about this time can be found in the memoirs of Lidia Chukovskaya "Memory of Childhood".

The father called the eldest daughter "an inborn humanist". She could reread Kashtanka several times a day and dream of a world wherethere are no poor and rich. Her father spoke to her like an adult.

Korney Chukovsky and Lydia's favorite pastime was reading books for their daughter. And over time, the girl began to read to him for 3-4 hours a day. At the age of fifteen, Lydia perfectly edited her father's translations. Her literary talent, inherited from her father, was clearly manifested in her.

Chukovskaya studied at the Tagantsev gymnasium, and then at the Tenishevsky school. These establishments were considered the best in those years in Petrograd.

Youth

After graduating from college, Lidia Korneevna continued her education at the Leningrad Institute of Arts, where in 1924-1925 she had the opportunity to attend lectures by such great scientists as Y. Tynyanov, B. Eikhenbaum, V. Zhirmunsky and many others. In addition, she received a profession as a stenographer.

During her studies, Lidia Chukovskaya was arrested for writing an anti-Soviet leaflet, to which, according to her, she had nothing to do, and exiled in 1926 to Saratov for a period of three years. Her father did his best and helped her return home after 11 months. But already at that time, the desire to fight for justice was firmly rooted in Lidia Chukovskaya.

The beginning of literary activity

In 1928, after graduating from the philological faculty of Leningrad University, she received a position as an editor at the State Publishing House in the field of children's literature. S. Ya. Marshak himself was the head of Chukovskaya. The poet gave her all kinds of help at the beginning of her working career. Lydia Korneevna always remembered this person with gratitude and respect, which she told about in her book"In the editor's lab."

At this time, the aspiring writer was working on literary-critical essays. Lidia Chukovskaya's books, which she wrote for children, were published under the pseudonym Aleksey Uglov.

The main work of the writer, created during this period, is the story "Sofya Petrovna". The book tells about the Stalinist regime. The heroine of the story is a simple woman who, after her son was arrested, went crazy. The manuscript was miraculously preserved and published abroad, but, as the author testifies, with some distortions. The story is dedicated to the events of 1937-1938 and was written right on the "hot pursuit" in 1939-1940, but published in Russia only in 1988.

In 1940, for the first time in her creative biography, Lydia Chukovskaya, under her own name, publishes a story called "The Story of a Rebellion", written for children. The book deals with the rebellion of the peasants in Ukraine. The events take place in the eighteenth century.

War years

At the beginning of the war, Lidia Korneevna was in Moscow after a serious operation. She left for Chistopol, and then went with her daughter to Tashkent, where she worked at the Palace of Pioneers as a leading literary circle, and also helped children who survived the evacuation. In 1943 she returned to Moscow.

In 1944, the blockade of Leningrad was broken, and Chukovskaya tried to return home. Her apartment was occupied. After trying to return her housing, the writer received a transparent hint that living inLeningrad will not let her. The woman again went to Moscow. Here she took up literature, teaching and editorial activities. She worked in the Novy Mir magazine.

Pressure from the authorities

The second book about the events of Stalin's times was "Descent under water". It tells about the life of writers under the yoke of Soviet power. The book is predominantly an autobiography.

Chukovsky often took the side of disgraced writers and poets of the sixties, such as Brodsky, Solzhenitsyn, Ginzburg and others. Only thanks to her efforts was it possible to save the only sample of Boris Zhitkov's forbidden work "Viktor Vavich". In 1974, Lydia was expelled from the Writers' Union, and her works were banned in the USSR until 1987.

The poems that Lydia Chukovskaya wrote throughout her life are collected in one collection called "On this side of death."

Chukovsky's House

Lydia Korneevna organized a museum in Peredelkino in memory of her father, which she called the “Chukovsky House”. It was visited by a huge number of people interested in the life and work of the great writer.

But the Union of Writers and the Literary Fund of the USSR constantly made efforts to relocate Lydia Chukovskaya and her daughter from there. And take out the library, paintings by great artists and other valuable pieces of art, demolish the building.

The only thing that saved the house was that people who were not indifferent to what was happening turned to various authorities with requests to save this museum for them and their descendants.

Today we have the opportunity to visit the amazing place where the talented writer Korney Chukovsky lived and worked. This writer wrote a lot of serious prose, memoirs, made many translations and was very offended that he was known only as the author of Moydodyr and Tsokotukha.

Private life

The first husband of Chukovskaya was Caesar Volpe. He was a literary historian. Chukovskaya spoke of her husband as a good person, but admitted that there was no love in this relationship. The marriage had a daughter, Elena - Lyusha, as her parents called her. Then followed a divorce. Then there was the main meeting in the life of Lydia Korneevna - an acquaintance with Matvey Bronstein, a theoretical physicist, author of many scientific papers.

He was a guy of twenty-five, but he seemed older. Shy, with glasses. But as soon as Mitya laughed, he turned into a mischievous boy. He was both a physicist and a lyricist rolled into one. They worked together on a book: Bronstein is the author, Chukovskaya is the editor. Love merged with creativity.

But the terrible thirty-seventh year has come. Not only objectionable books were destroyed, but also the people who wrote them. Lydia herself barely escaped arrest. Bronstein disappeared without a trace. As if there was no such physicist. Lydia could never find out anything about him. Whether he was alive or dead, everything remained a mystery. The only positive moment in this period of Chukovskaya's life was friendship with Akhmatova. Only in 1940 did Chukovskaya learn that her husband had been shot.

Lydia Chukovskaya: “Notes onAkhmatova"

Back in 1938, the writer met and became friends with Anna Akhmatova. Keeping diaries during 1938-1995 by Lydia Chukovskaya served as the basis for writing a three-volume essay "Notes on Anna Akhmatova", which is a memoir and biographical work. This book is a memoir, a record of events that have just happened, when the memory of them is still alive. The story of life is read in one breath.

The content of the book helps to clearly imagine everything that surrounded Anna Akhmatova: her life, friends, character traits, hobbies. Heavy experiences are caused by the moment in the work when the son of Akhmatova is arrested. Chukovskaya at that time did not yet know about the execution of her husband. At the gates of the Leningrad prison, a friendship arose between the two great women. The poetess writes her poems on scraps of paper, gives them to Chukovskaya to remember, and then burns them.

As an appendix to the "Notes" are Lydia's "Tashkent notebooks", which describe in detail and reliably the life of Anna Akhmatova during the evacuation of 1941-1942.

In the summer of 1995, six months before her death, Lidia Chukovskaya was awarded the State Prize for "Notes on Anna Akhmatova". The work was highly appreciated by both literary critics and readers. To date, it is the best memoir-documentary work about a talented poetess.

Recent years

The end of her hard life Lydia Chukovskaya lived in Moscow on Tverskaya Street, in a house located in close proximity to the Kremlin. Butshe did not love this city, her native Leningrad remained in her heart, where the writer spent her youth, where she met her love. Chukovskaya admitted that Mitya's ghostly shadow always appeared to her, and even many decades after the last meeting. Only he always came to Leningrad…