Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko

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Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko is a famous Russian Soviet writer and playwright. Even experts do not know when Zoshchenko was born. Officially in 1894, as recorded in the birth register, although the author himself claimed that he was born a year later. Thus, it turns out that the writer was born twice.

His father was a Ukrainian, an Itinerant artist, his mother was an actress, and the writer’s great-great-great-grandfather was an architect. In the old days, an architect was called an architect, hence the surname Zodchenko, and later, to make it easier to pronounce, it was simplified to Zoshchenko.

At the age of 8, his parents sent the boy to the St. Petersburg gymnasium. This is how he recalled these years: “I studied very poorly. And I was especially bad at Russian; at the exam I got a unit in Russian composition...”

Life can sometimes be paradoxical - a future major writer, who began writing at the age of 9, is the most backward in the Russian language!

Despite the fact that his success at school was not so impressive, at the age of 9 Misha tried to write poetry. And at the age of 11 he wrote the story “Coat.”

Zoshchenko described his childhood in stories for children - “Lelya and Minka”, where Minka is him, and Lyolya is his older sister. These stories combine humor with seriousness; they are interesting to read for both adults and children.

At the age of 18, Mikhail graduated from high school in St. Petersburg and entered the Faculty of Law, but a year later he was expelled due to non-payment of tuition. The young man had to go to work as a controller on the railway, but then the world war began. Zoshchenko decides to go into military service.

For personal courage, Mikhail Zoshchenko was awarded four orders.

He took part in many battles, was seriously wounded and gassed, but even during the war years he did not stop writing.

Doctors advised Zoshchenko to switch to quiet work. And after the war, Mikhail changed many different professions. To survive, he had to darn his pants and cut out the insoles.

An interesting episode occurred when Mikhail Zoshchenko had to sew up the pants of another struggling writer, Yuri Olesha, with his own hands and very efficiently.

Zoshchenko thought that he would never find a suitable job, but suddenly he remembered how he loved to read as a child.

Over the years of wandering, he has seen so much that if you write about it, it will turn out to be an interesting book. “Maybe this is my profession?” - thought Zoshchenko.

And Mikhail Mikhailovich sat down at the table. It turned out that he had a rare literary gift.

In 1921, the first book of his stories was published, and 10 years later he already had about 60 books! They sold out at lightning speed: everyone knew him - from workers to academics. He knew how to look at everything with a smile and wanted to teach this to others with his stories. Not a single humorous evening was complete without his stories.

Mikhail Zoshchenko had millions of fans all over the Earth. Japanese fans turned out to be some of the most active.

In the last years of his life, the writer worked in the magazines “Crocodile” and “Ogonyok”.

In the story “Grandma’s Gift,” Zoshchenko wrote about his life.

Zoshchenko died in 1958 in Sestroretsk, where he was buried.

Poet Anna Akhmatova wrote poems

“In memory of M.M. Zoshchenko”:

The monument at the grave of M.M. Zoshchenko was opened in 1995. It is not known, maybe it is the will of fate, but the date of birth of the author and the date of his death consist of the same numbers...

In 1992, the M. M. Zoshchenko Museum was created in St. Petersburg in apartment No. 119, where the last years of the writer’s life passed.

Currently, the writer’s great-granddaughter, TV presenter, Vera Zoshchenko, is very proud of her great-grandfather.

MIKHAIL ZOSCHENKO Russian Soviet writer. Born on July 29 (August 10), 1895 in St. Petersburg in the family of the artist, Mikhail Ivanovich Zoshchenko () and Elena Osipovna Zoshchenko, nee Surina (), who before her marriage was an actress and wrote stories.

Childhood impressions - including the difficult relationship between parents - were reflected both in Zoshchenko's stories for children (Overshoes and Ice Cream, Christmas Tree, Grandma's Gift, Don't Lie, etc.) and in his story Before Sunrise (1943). The first literary experiences date back to childhood. In one of his notebooks, he noted that in 1902–1906 he had already tried to write poetry, and in 1907 he wrote the story Coat.

MIKHAIL ZOSHCHENKO In 1913 Zoshchenko entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. His first surviving stories, Vanity (1914) and Two-kopeck (1914), date back to this time. Studies were interrupted by the First World War. In 1915, he volunteered to go to the front, commanded a battalion, and became a Knight of St. George. Literary work did not stop during these years. Zoshchenko tried his hand at short stories, epistolary and satirical genres (he composed letters to fictitious recipients and epigrams to fellow soldiers). In 1917 he was demobilized due to heart disease that arose after gas poisoning.

MIKHAIL ZOSHCHENKO Upon returning to Petrograd, Marusya, Meshchanochka, Neighbor and other unpublished stories were written, in which the influence of G. Maupassant was felt. In 1918, despite his illness, Zoshchenko volunteered for the Red Army and fought on the fronts of the Civil War until returning to Petrograd, earning a living, as before the war, in various professions: shoemaker, carpenter, carpenter, actor, rabbit breeding instructor, policeman, criminal investigation officer, etc. In the humorous Orders on railway police and criminal supervision written at that time, Art. Ligovo and other unpublished works can already feel the style of the future satirist.

In 1919, Zoshchenko studied in a creative studio organized by the publishing house “World Literature”. The classes were supervised by K.I. Chukovsky. Recalling his stories and parodies written during his studio studies, Chukovsky wrote: “It was strange to see that such a sad person was endowed with this wondrous ability to powerfully make his neighbors laugh.”

In 1920–1921 Zoshchenko wrote the first stories that were subsequently published: Love, War, Old Woman Wrangel, Female Fish. The cycle Stories of Nazar Ilyich, Mr. Sinebryukhov (1921–1922) was published as a separate book by the Erato publishing house. This event marked Zoshchenko's transition to professional literary activity. The very first publication made him famous. Phrases from his stories acquired the character of catchphrases: “Why are you disturbing the disorder?”; “The second lieutenant is wow, but he’s a bastard,” etc. From 1922 to 1946, his books went through about 100 editions, including collected works in six volumes (1928–1932).

By the mid-1920s, Zoshchenko became one of the most popular writers. His stories Bathhouse, Aristocrat, Case History, etc., which he often read himself in front of numerous audiences, were known and loved in all levels of society. In a letter to Zoshchenko, A.M. Gorky noted: “I don’t know of such a ratio of irony and lyricism in anyone’s literature.” Chukovsky believed that at the center of Zoshchenko’s work was the fight against callousness in human relationships. Aristocrat, Case History

In the collections of stories of the 1920s, Humorous Stories (1923), Dear Citizens (1926), etc. Zoshchenko created a new type of hero for Russian literature - a Soviet person who has not received an education, has no skills in spiritual work, does not have cultural baggage, but strives to become a full participant in life, to become equal to “the rest of humanity.” The reflection of such a hero produced a strikingly funny impression. The fact that the story was told on behalf of a highly individualized narrator gave literary critics the basis to define Zoshchenko’s creative style as “fairy-tale.” Humorous stories

In 1929, which was called “the year of the great turning point” in Soviet history, Zoshchenko published the book Letters to a Writer - a kind of sociological study. It consisted of several dozen letters from the huge reader mail that the writer received, and his commentary on them. In the preface to the book, Zoshchenko wrote that he wanted to “show genuine and undisguised life, genuine living people with their desires, taste, thoughts.” The book caused bewilderment among many readers, who expected only more funny stories from Zoshchenko. Letters to the writer

Restored youth Soviet reality could not but affect the emotional state of the sensitive writer, prone to depression from childhood. A trip along the White Sea Canal, organized in the 1930s for propaganda purposes for a large group of Soviet writers, left a depressing impression on him. But after this trip he wrote about how criminals are re-educated in the camps (The Story of One Life, 1934). An attempt to get rid of a depressed state and correct one’s own painful psyche was a kind of psychological study - the story Youth Restored (1933). The story evoked an interested reaction in the scientific community that was unexpected for the writer: the book was discussed at numerous academic meetings and reviewed in scientific publications; Academician I. Pavlov began to invite Zoshchenko to his famous “Wednesdays”.

The Blue Book As a continuation of Youth Restored, the collection of short stories The Blue Book (1935) was conceived. Zoshchenko considered the Blue Book to be a novel in its internal content, defined it as “a short history of human relations” and wrote that it “is driven not by a novella, but by a philosophical idea that makes it.” Stories about modernity were interspersed in this work with stories set in the past - in different periods of history. Both the present and the past were presented in the perception of the typical hero Zoshchenko, unencumbered by cultural baggage and understanding history as a set of everyday episodes.

Before Sunrise In the 1930s, the writer worked on a book that he considered the most important in his life. The work continued during the Patriotic War in Almaty, in evacuation, since Zoshchenko could not go to the front due to severe heart disease. In 1943, the initial chapters of this scientific and artistic study of the subconscious were published in the magazine “October” under the title Before Sunrise. Zoshchenko examined incidents from his life that gave impetus to severe mental illness, from which doctors could not save him. The modern scientific world notes that in this book the writer anticipated many discoveries of science about the unconscious by decades.

Adventures of a Monkey The 1946 resolution criticizing Zoshchenko led to his public persecution and a ban on the publication of his works. The occasion was the publication of Zoshchenko's children's story The Adventures of a Monkey (1945), in which there was a hint that in the Soviet country monkeys live better than people.

Monument to Mikhail Zoshchenko in Sestroretsk In June 1953, Zoshchenko was again admitted to the Writers' Union. In the last years of his life he worked for the magazines “Crocodile” and “Ogonyok”. After reaching retirement age and until his death (from 1954 to 1958), Zoshchenko was denied a pension. In recent years, Zoshchenko lived in a dacha in Sestroretsk. The funeral of Zoshchenko at the Volkov cemetery, among former writers, was prohibited. He was buried at the Sestroretsk cemetery near St. Petersburg.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko This year, on August 10, we celebrate the 115th anniversary of the birth of the Russian writer Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko () MUK "Central City Hospital of Murmansk" Fmlmal 11

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The work of Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko Performed by: Gaisarova M.G., teacher of Russian language and literature MCOU secondary school No. 9, Ashi, Chelyabinsk region

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Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko (1894-1958) - Russian writer, satirist and playwright. In the stories of the 20s, mainly in the form of a skaz, he created a comic image of a hero-everyman with poor morals and a primitive view of the environment. "Blue Book" (1934-35) - a series of satirical short stories about the vices and passions of historical characters and the modern tradesman. The stories “Michelle Sinyagin” (1930), “Youth Restored” (1933), the story-essay “Before Sunrise” (part 1, 1943; part 2, entitled “The Tale of Reason”, published in 1972). Interest in a new linguistic consciousness, widespread use of skaz forms, construction of the image of the “author” (the bearer of “naive philosophy”). The works of Mikhail Zoshchenko were subjected to devastating criticism in the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (VKP(b) “On the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad” (1946) as slander of Soviet reality.

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Early years Mikhail Zoshchenko was born on July 28 (August 10), 1894, in St. Petersburg (according to other sources - in 1895, in Poltava) into a poor, intelligent family (father was an artist-Itinerant, mother was a writer; burdened with a family of eight children , she sometimes published her stories in the Kopeika newspaper). In 1894, at the age of 20, having interrupted his studies at the university, Zoshchenko went to the front, where he was a platoon commander, warrant officer and battalion commander. For personal courage he was awarded five orders, among which was the rarest - the soldier's Cross of St. George. At the same time he was wounded, poisoned with gases, suffered a heart defect and depression, which worsened during the sharp turns of his fate. After the February Revolution, under the Provisional Government, he worked as head of post and telegraph, commandant of the Main Post Office in Petrograd, and secretary of the regimental court in Arkhangelsk. After the October Revolution, Mikhail Zoshchenko served as a border guard in Strelna and Kronstadt, then volunteered for the Red Army, where he was the commander of a machine gun team and an adjutant near Narva and Yamburg. In 1919 he was demobilized and began to write. The first experiments were literary critical articles (the book “At the Turning Point”, not completed). In 1921, he published his first story in the Petersburg Almanac. After demobilization, he tried himself in many professions and never regretted it: the internal experience of the war and the first post-revolutionary years formed the basis of his artistic vision. .

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Zoshchenko’s literary environment The desire to become a professional writer led Zoshchenko (1921) to the group “Serapion Brothers” (Lev Natanovich Lunts, Vsevolod Vyacheslavovich Ivanov, Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin (real name Zilber), Konstantin Aleksandrovich Fedin, Mikhail Leonidovich Slonimsky, Elizaveta Grigorievna Polonskaya, Nikolai Semenovich Tikhonov, Nikolai Nikolaevich Nikitin, Vladimir Pozner). The “Serapion Brothers” shunned demagoguery and frivolous declarativeness, tried to make art independent of politics, and in depicting reality they deliberately followed the facts of life, and not slogans. Their position was conscious independence, which they contrasted with the early formed ideological conjuncture in Soviet literature. Critics, wary of the “serapions,” nevertheless believed that Zoshchenko was the “strongest” figure among them.

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Zoshchenko's creative attitude Zoshchenko's self-awareness developed in the sociocultural context of Russian life-creativity. The revolution strengthened in him the idea of ​​direct participation in the transformation of life. Having broken with his class even before the revolution, as he stated repeatedly, Zoshchenko perceived it as “the death of the old world,” “the birth of a new life, new people, a country.” His worldview was in line with the “intellectual-populist” (Alexander Konstantinovich Voronsky) trend of the 1920s. “I always,” he wrote to Maxim Gorky in 1930, “when I sat down at my desk, I felt some kind of guilt, some kind of, so to speak, literary guilt. I remember previous literature. Our poets wrote about flowers and birds, and along with this there were wild, illiterate and even scary people. And then something terribly started to happen. And all this forced me to redraw my work and neglect my respectable and comfortable position” (Literary Heritage, T.70, M., 1963, p. 162). This is how Zoshchenko’s prose was born, which parodists called literature “for the poor” (“Literary Leningrad”, 1935, January 1, p. 4). The writer rejected previous literature as sluggish and passive. He was afraid of a “noble restoration” in literature; he considered Alexander Blok a “knight of a sad image” and pinned his hopes on literature with heroic pathos, modeling it after Gorky and Vladimir Mayakovsky (the book “At the Turning Point”). In the early stories of Mikhail Zoshchenko (“Love”, “War”, “Female Fish”, etc.) the school of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was noticeable, but soon, however, it was rejected: the larger form of Chekhov’s story seemed to Zoshchenko not to meet the needs of the new reader. He chose a short form of 100-150 lines, which for a long time became the canonical form of his satirical stories. He wanted to write in a language that would reproduce “the syntax of the street... of the people” (Before Sunrise. “October”, No. 6-7, p. 96). He considered himself a person temporarily replacing the “proletarian writer.”

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Zoshchenko the satirist The first victory of Mikhail Mikhailovich was “Stories of Nazar Ilyich, Mr. Sinebryukhov” (1921-1922). The loyalty of the hero, the “little man” who had been in the German war, was told ironically, but kindly; The writer, it seems, is more amused than saddened by the humility of Sinebryukhov, who “understands, of course, his title and post,” and his “boasting,” and the fact that from time to time “a bump and a regrettable incident” happens to him. The case takes place after the February Revolution, the slave in Sinebrykhov still seems justified, but it already appears as an alarming symptom: a revolution has occurred, but the psyche of the people remains the same. The narration is colored by the words of the hero - a tongue-tied person, a simpleton who finds himself in various funny situations. The author's word is collapsed. The center of artistic vision is moved to the consciousness of the narrator.

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The structure of satirical stories by M. Zoshchenko In the context of the main artistic problem of the time, when all writers were deciding the question “How to emerge victorious from the constant, exhausting struggle of the artist with the interpreter” (Konstantin Aleksandrovich Fedin), Zoshchenko was the winner: the relationship between image and meaning in his satirical stories was extremely harmonious. The main element of the narrative was linguistic comedy, the form of the author's assessment was irony, and the genre was the comic tale. This artistic structure became canonical for Zoshchenko's satirical stories.

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Zoshchenko the satirist The gap between the scale of revolutionary events and the conservatism of the human psyche that struck Zoshchenko made the writer especially attentive to that area of ​​life where, as he believed, high ideas and epoch-making events were being deformed. The writer’s phrase, “And we are little by little, and we are little by little, and we are on a par with Russian reality,” which caused a lot of noise, grew out of a feeling of an alarming gap between the “rapidity of fantasy” and “Russian reality.” Without questioning the revolution as an idea, M. Zoshchenko believed, however, that, passing through “Russian reality,” the idea encounters obstacles on its way that deform it, rooted in the age-old psychology of yesterday’s slave. He created a special - and new - type of hero, where ignorance was fused with a readiness for mimicry, natural acumen with aggressiveness, and old instincts and skills were hidden behind new phraseology. Stories such as “Victim of the Revolution”, “Grimace of NEP”, “Westinghouse Brake”, “Aristocrat” can serve as a model. The heroes are passive until they understand “what’s what and who isn’t shown to beat,” but when it’s “shown,” they stop at nothing, and their destructive potential is inexhaustible: they mock their own mother, a quarrel over a brush escalates into “an integral battle” (“Nervous People”), and the pursuit of an innocent person turns into an evil pursuit (“Terrible Night”).

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A new image in literature A new type was the discovery of Mikhail Zoshchenko. He was often compared to the “little man” of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, and later with the hero of Charlie Chaplin. But the Zoshchenkovsky type - the further, the more - deviated from all the models. Linguistic comedy, which became an imprint of the absurdity of his hero’s consciousness, became a form of his self-exposure. He no longer considers himself a small person. “You never know what the average person has to do in the world!” - exclaims the hero of the story “Wonderful Holiday”. A proud attitude towards “the cause” is from the demagoguery of the era; but Zoshchenko parodies her: “You understand: you drink a little, then the guests will hide, then you need to glue a leg to the sofa... The wife, too, will sometimes begin to express complaints.” So in the literature of the 1920s, Zoshchenko’s satire formed a special, “negative world,” as he said, so that it would be “ridiculed and pushed away from itself.”

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"Sentimental stories." Since the mid-1920s, Mikhail Zoshchenko has been publishing “sentimental stories.” Their origins were the story “The Goat” (1922). Then the stories “Apollo and Tamara” (1923), “People” (1924), “Wisdom” (1924), “Terrible Night” (1925), “What the Nightingale Sang” (1925), “A Merry Adventure” (1926) appeared ) and “The Lilac is Blooming” (1929). In the preface to them, Zoshchenko for the first time openly sarcastically spoke about the “planetary tasks”, heroic pathos and “high ideology” that are expected of him. In a deliberately simple form, he posed the question: where does the death of the human in a person begin, what predetermines it and what can prevent it. This question appeared in the form of a reflective intonation.

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“Sentimental Stories” The heroes of the “sentimental stories” continued to debunk the supposedly passive consciousness. Evolution of Bylinkin (“What the Nightingale Sang About”), who at the beginning walked in the new city “timidly, looking around and dragging his feet,” and, having received “a strong social position, public service and a salary of the seventh category plus for the workload,” turned into a despot and boor, convinced that the moral passivity of the Zoshchensky hero was still illusory. His activity revealed itself in the degeneration of his mental structure: the features of aggressiveness clearly appeared in it. “I really like,” Gorky wrote in 1926, “that the hero of Zoshchenko’s story “What the Nightingale Sang About,” the former hero of “The Overcoat,” at least a close relative of Akaki, arouses my hatred thanks to the author’s clever irony.”

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New types of heroes But, as Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky noted in the late 1920s - early 1930s, Zoshchenko has another type of hero - a man who has “lost his human appearance,” a “righteous man” (“The Goat,” “The Terrible Night”) . These heroes do not accept the morality of the environment, they have different ethical standards, they would like to live according to high morality. But their rebellion ends in failure. However, unlike the rebellion of the “victim” in Chaplin, which is always covered in compassion, the rebellion of Zoshchenko’s hero is devoid of tragedy: the individual is faced with the need for spiritual resistance to the morals and ideas of his environment, and the strict demands of the writer do not forgive her for compromise and capitulation.

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Heroes - Righteous Men The appeal to the type of heroes-righteous people revealed the eternal uncertainty of the Russian satirist in the self-sufficiency of art and was a kind of attempt to continue Gogol’s search for a positive hero, a “living soul”. However, one cannot help but notice: in the “sentimental stories” the writer’s artistic world has become bipolar; the harmony of meaning and image was disrupted, philosophical reflections revealed a preaching intention, the pictorial fabric became less dense. The word fused with the author's mask dominated; in style it was similar to stories; Meanwhile, the character (type) stylistically motivating the narrative has changed: he is an intellectual of average grade. The old mask turned out to be attached to the writer.

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A tragic misunderstanding The attitude of criticism towards the talent of Mikhail Zoshchenko is a tragic misunderstanding. Until his last days, he was accused of philistinism, vulgarity, everydayism, apoliticality (the first reason was the article “About himself and his work”, the last - the works of the 1940s). He was advised to stop writing about “the bourgeois swamp, which is already becoming obsolete and of no interest to anyone” (“Literary Contemporary”, 1941, no. 3, p. 126). The real refutation of this point of view was embedded in the wide range of Zoshchenko’s heroes: their social circle was large and went beyond those who have “some small property” - there were workers, peasants, office workers, intellectuals, and NEP owners, and “formers”.

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Zoshchenko and criticism Defending his commitment to depicting a special type of heroes, Zoshchenko wrote: “I don’t want to say that we are all philistines and swindlers, and all owners. I want to say that almost each of us has one or another trait, one or another instinct of a tradesman and an owner.” He explained the rootedness of philistinism by the fact that it “accumulated over centuries.” With this understanding, the philistinism was taken beyond the boundaries of class divisions and included in another series - ethical, socio-psychological. “Philistinism” became not so much an attribute of the hero’s consciousness as a sign of a special form of human existence in the world, a special way of seeing and feeling the world, a system of life where life is not spiritualized and where it has not risen to the level of being. Consequently, the real reason for the discrepancy between Zoshchenko and criticism was his focus on human nature: it did not fit into the orthodox Soviet idea of ​​​​a quick “remake” of man, his hero fell out of the canonized example of Soviet literature - the bearer of progressive views, the representative of the “selected qualities” of his class. Criticism also reproached Zoshchenko for the lack of clarity in the author’s assessment. Sarcastic intonation and irony seemed to her an insufficiently energetic form of the author's tendency.

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The search for a “bright formula” This led to the writer’s deep and unfruitful reflection on his work. He obeyed her. He began to feel the “ironic” fold of his character as his own insufficiency. The search for a “bright formula” occupied a huge place in his thoughts. “The mind should not stop at a gloomy decision,” he wrote in an article about Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky (1937). “Gloomy qualities are unsuitable for a Soviet satirist...,” he wrote in an article of the same years about Ilya Ilf, “and commented: “Such a worldview is unusual for the people.” Having previously confidently rejected the “loose,” as he said, idea of ​​the necessary presence of a positive hero in satire, Zoshchenko over the years began to identify the demand for official criticism with “popular opinion.”

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The corpus of Zoshchenko’s works, written in the 1930s, is quite large: it includes about two dozen plays (“Dear Comrade”, 1930; “Crime and Punishment”, 1933; “Fallen Leaves”, 1941; “Under the Linden Trees of Berlin” ( together with Evgeny Lvovich Schwartz, 1941), “Soldier's Happiness”, etc.), as well as the stories “Youth Returned”, “The Story of One Life”, “The Black Prince”, “Kerensky”, “Belkin’s Sixth Tale”, “Taras Shevchenko” " Stylistically, they are written in a neutral style, they do not contain Zoshchenko’s linguistic comedy, their rhetoric is moralizing and banal. The Blue Book (1935) attracted more attention than others. In order to strengthen the impact of his ideas on people, Zoshchenko, on the advice of Gorky, grouped the stories into the cycles “Money”, “Love”, “Cunning”, “Failure”, “Amazing Events”. Short stories on historical and edifying themes stood side by side with old stories censored by the writer himself. In the name of an optimistic sound, the satirical sting was taken out of them. Optimistic sound of M. Zoshchenko’s works

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The contradictions in the narrative fabric of Zoshchenko’s works in the late 1930s testified to deep internal shifts in the structure of his artistic world: as if having ceased to trust the crushing power of laughter, Zoshchenko brings moralism to the surface. And then edification, the restructuring of the hero before the eyes of the readers (“City Lights”) and preaching intonation (“Wake”) appear in his stories. Occasionally appearing in its true form, Zoshchenko’s satire still turned out to be deeper and more pointed, and stories such as “History of a Case” convinced of the unspent powers of Zoshchenko the satirist. The similarity with Gogol that has passed through the writer’s entire life makes itself felt palpably in the last period. Exploring the human in man, Zoshchenko, judging by the works of the 1930-1940s, in particular, the book “Before Sunrise,” used himself as a research model. Having survived the revolution, he personally knew the feeling of fear of “chance”, and the feeling of “shakyness”, and “some kind of cunning catch in life”, and the discrepancy between a person and himself, and the “laziness” of consciousness, which was unable to overcome the terrible truth real life. Similarities with N.V. Gogol

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He traced his personal discrepancy with the life around him, the gnawing impossibility of merging with it, to his “gloominess.” Just as Gogol believed that, while fighting an illness, he was engaged in “exorcism of demons,” Zoshchenko in the book “Before Sunrise” (1943-1944), descending into the depths of his subconscious, exploring his childhood traumas according to Freud, fleshing out his early impressions in a word, I hoped to get rid of depression. He shared the Soviet view of the subconscious as a damp basement that must be invaded and confronted by reason. In this he saw the significance of his work during the Great Patriotic War. But the publication of the story in the magazine “October” (1943) caused sharp criticism. The second part never saw the light of day during the writer’s lifetime (it was first published in 1972, not textologically verified, under the title “The Tale of Reason”). A wave of political accusations swept through the press in 1945 - after the reprint in Zvezda of Zoshchenko’s children’s story “The Adventures of a Monkey” (originally in the magazine “Murzilka”). The wary attitude of critics towards his “mocking”, as they wrote, “anecdotes” about the revolution was put in direct connection with the “apoliticality” of the “Serapion Brothers” (who were remembered in 1944 in connection with the publication of the first part of Konstantin Aleksandrovich Fedin’s book “Gorky among us"). Mismatch with the environment

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Latest works by M. Zoshchenko In 1946, thunder struck, which cost Zoshchenko his health and greatly shortened his life. In the report of Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov “On the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad”” and the subsequent resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated August 14, 1946, Zoshchenko was called a “scum”, “slanderer” and “scoundrel”. He was expelled from the Writers' Union and deprived of his pension and cards. The decree was canceled only during the years of perestroika. In a state of severe depression, Zoshchenko tried to write (feuilletons and partisan stories). He also penned translations of the novels “Behind the Matches” and “Resurrected from the Dead” by Mayu Lassila, “From Karelia to the Carpathians” by Antti Nikolaevich Timonen and others (translation work, which was arranged for him by friends, in particular Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin, was the only means of subsistence his family). Zoshchenko's health was seriously undermined. Poverty, undeserved insults and the loneliness in which he found himself intensified his painful condition. Mikhail Zoshchenko died on July 22, 1958, in Leningrad. He was buried in Sestroretsk. Zoshchenko's satirical types complicated traditional Russian people-hunting. The satirical depiction of life, already in the method itself, carried the debunking of populist illusions. It was intensified by Zoshchenko’s focus on the study of personality and his conviction that only in the spiritual, moral renewal of man lie the prospects for the revival of society.

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M. Zoshchenko - satirist (1894-1985)

The writer's family. Born on July 29 (August 10, n.s.) in Poltava in the family of the Itinerant artist Mikhail Ivanovich Zoshchenko and the writer Elena Iosifovna Surina. Large family: eight children. When the boy was 12 years old, his father died.

Military merits of the writer. In 1915, having completed accelerated military courses, Zoshchenko went to the front. He took part in many battles, was wounded and gassed. He had four military orders.

Military positions. In 1915 - 1917 he held various military positions, and after the February Revolution he was commandant of the Main Post Office and Telegraph of Petrograd. After the October Revolution, he joined the Red Army and served in the border troops in Kronstadt, then transferred to the active army and was at the front until the spring of 1919.

Zoshchenko during the war.

The beginning of literary activity. In April 1919 he was demobilized due to heart disease and began serving as an investigator in the Criminal Supervision. In 1920 he entered the Petrograd military port as a clerk, and from that time began to engage in literary activities.

Zoshchenko in his youth.

Creative activity. In 1922, the first book of stories by M. Zoshchenko, “Stories of Nazar Ilyich, Mr. Sinebryukhov,” was published, followed by a number of collections of stories: “Sentimental Stories” (1923 - 1936), “Blue Book” (1935), “Historical Stories”, etc. In total, from 1922 to 1946, there were 91 editions and reprints of his books.

Popularity of Zoshchenko. From 1922 to 1946, his books went through about 100 editions, including collected works in six volumes. By the mid-1920s, Zoshchenko became one of the most popular writers. His stories were known and loved in all levels of society.

Zoshchenko is a playwright. In 1944 - 1946 he worked a lot for theaters. Two of his comedies were staged at the Leningrad Drama Theater, one of which, “The Canvas Briefcase,” had 200 performances in a year.

Appointment of Zoshchenko. In the 1930s, the nature of Zoshchenko’s works changed: people are indifferent to each other, their actions are controlled by envy. People cannot get rid of the old on their own; they should be helped. And Zoshchenko saw his purpose in this. After the war, a wave of repression swept across the country; Zoshchenko was openly banned from publishing.

“I write very briefly. My sentence is short...Maybe that’s why I have a lot of readers.”

Creativity in recent years. In July 1953, Zoshchenko was readmitted to the Writers' Union, which brought temporary relief to his health condition. In the last years of his life he was published in the magazines "Crocodile" and "Ogonyok".

The writer's health is deteriorating. In the period 1946 - 1953, the writer was mainly engaged in translation activities. The exacerbation of mental illness did not allow the writer to work fully. Zoshchenko died in Leningrad on July 22, 1958.

Dedication to Zoshchenko. It’s as if I’m listening to a distant voice, But there’s nothing, no one around. You will lay his body in this good black earth. Neither the wound nor the weeping willow will overshadow the lightest ashes, Only the sea winds from the bay will fly in to mourn him... (A. Akhmatova).

Father - Mikhail Ivanovich Zoshchenko (1857-1907), nobleman, artist.

Mother - Surina Elena Iosifovna (1875-1920), noblewoman, actress before marriage. Afterwards I wrote articles for the Kopeika magazine.

Misha Zoshchenko was born on August 10, 1894 in St. Petersburg. In addition to him, there were 7 children in the family. Parents often argued.

In 1903 he became a student at the Eighth Gymnasium. I studied mediocrely. After passing the exam in Russian, he tried to commit suicide.

In 1913 he entered St. Petersburg University to become a lawyer, from where he was expelled in 1914 for non-payment. To earn money for his studies, he got a job as a controller for the railway. But in September 1914 he volunteered for the war. For excellent service he was awarded 4 orders. In 1916, as a result of a gas attack, he was hospitalized; the poisoning resulted in heart disease and prolonged depression. Demobilized in 1917

In 1917 he joined the Red Army. He fought until 1919. After a heart attack he was discharged.

In one year, Zoshchenko tried about 10 different professions - shoemaker, joiner, carpenter, actor, rabbit breeder, chicken breeder, policeman, investigator, court secretary!

In 1920 he married Vera Vladimirovna Kerbits-Kerbitskaya. He finally decides on literary activity.

1921 - joins the Serapion Brothers literary circle.

In May 1921, Zoshchenko's son Valera was born.

Until 1930, Zoshchenko was one of the most popular writers, even published in a Belgian magazine. Works with humorous magazines "Begemot", "Mukhomor", "Inspector General", etc.

During this period, he lives comfortably with his family. They occupy a large apartment and visit restaurants. But the relationship with his wife is complicated due to Zoshchenko’s love affairs.

In 1932, the satirist worked with the Krokodil magazine. During this period, he studied medical literature, trying to independently get rid of frequent bouts of depression.

In 1934 he was admitted to the Writers' Union.

In 1939 he was awarded the order.

In 1941, he was declared unfit for conscription and sent to the rear in Alma-Ata, from where he returned to the capital in 1943. Zoshchenko published the work “Before Sunrise,” which became a turning point in his fate.

Scandal, merciless criticism, insults, persecution, expulsion from the Writers' Union in 1946, deprivation of food cards - such persecution broke Zoshchenko. His mental illness worsened. He worked as a translator without the right to indicate his last name, as a shoemaker, and mended clothes.

In 1953, after Stalin’s death, the disgraced writer was again accepted into the Writers’ Union, and even in 1958 they were awarded a special pension of 1,200 rubles. But Zoshchenko no longer writes, he is fading away before our eyes.

On July 22, 1958, the satirist died.

Zoshchenko devoted his entire life, starting in 1907, to literature. He wrote stories, feuilletons, articles about the work of fellow writers, plays, and stories for children. His books were reprinted hundreds of times, and the play “The Canvas Briefcase” was staged in the theater more than 200 times.

Main works: collections “Blue Book”, “Sentimental Stories”, “Humorous Stories”, “Historical Stories”, “Letters to a Writer”, “The Story of a Life”, “Youth Restored”.