Korney Chukovsky
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (Russian Корней Иванович Чуковский; Nikolai Vasilyevich actually Korneitschukow or Russian Николай Васильевич Корнейчуков; * 19 Märzjul / March 31 1882greg in Saint Petersburg, .. † 28 October 1969 in Moscow) was a Russian and Soviet poet, a literary critic, translator and author of many books for children.
Life and work
Chukovsky, was born in St. Petersburg, the illegitimate son of the Jew Emmanuel Lewenson and his housekeeper, the Russian peasant woman Ekaterina Korneitschukowa from the Ukrainian city of Poltava. When his parents separated, he moved at the age of three years with his mother to Odessa, where he later attended first a high school, in fifth grade, however, due to its "too easy " descent of the school was referred to. Despite permanent poverty, had to live in the family, Chukovsky formed then amplified in the self-study and learned as well as English and French.
His professional career began in 1901 as a journalist and literary critic in the newspaper Odesskije Novosti ( in German " Odessa News "). In 1903 he was correspondent of this newspaper in London, moved there and lived there for a year. During this time he had published essays on works of English literature in the Russian press, among others. After returning to Russia Chukovsky continued to work as a literary critic. In 1905 he founded, also under the impression the Russian Revolution of 1905, a satirical magazine called signal in which, among other things, dissident poems and cartoons were printed. Among the authors of the journal were also well-known names such as Alexander Kuprin, Fyodor Sologub or Nadezhda Teffi. Due to the uncomfortable publications Chukovsky was arrested after the fourth edition of the magazine and put on trial for insulting the tsar, but acquitted.
1906 moved Chukovsky to Karelia in the former village Kuokkala. He lived there about ten years and became friends during this time, among other things with the renowned painter Ilya Repin and the writer Vladimir Korolenko on. From this period Tschukowskis translations of the works of Walt Whitman come into Russian. In addition Chukovsky began around 1915 to care for children's language and writing children's books. In 1916 he wrote his first fairy tale called " The Crocodile" and took over the same year, at the invitation of Maxim Gorky, the management of the children's book department of the publishing house Parus ( German for " sailing "). Since then, he wrote frequently fairytale poems for children, including such well-known works such as Moidodyr (Russian Мойдодыр to German as " washing Spotless " ), Tarakanischtsche (Russian Тараканище, " The Riesenkakerlak " ) or Aibolit (Russian Айболит, " Dr. Ow ", modeled on Hugh Lofting's " Doctor Dolittle "). In addition, he gave in 1933 the book From Two to Five (Russian От двух до пяти ) out, in which he detailed his impressions and observations of the linguistic behavior of young children.
In the Stalin era Chukovsky came with his works with those in power in disgrace - even and especially with a number of his children's books, since among other things the story was denounced by the Riesenkakerlak by some critics loyal to the regime of that time as a pamphlet against Stalin. Many works Tschukowskis were therefore banned and only released in the Khrushchev thaw after Stalin's death and the seizure of power of Nikita Khrushchev. 1957, again that is after the death of Stalin, Chukovsky was honored for his work with the Order of Lenin. 1962 conferred upon him the University of Oxford the honorary doctorate.
In his last years, Chukovsky devoted increasingly to literary criticism and wrote, among other books, each extending to the work of some well-known authors devoted, so among other things Nikolai Nekrasov, Yuri Tynjanow or Mikhail Zoshchenko. Even after his rehabilitation at Khrushchev's times he kept a certain distance from the state power; he was among other things the only Soviet writer who officially congratulated Boris Pasternak to his winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. His daughter Lidija Chukovskaya (1907-1996), also a writer and long-time friend of the poet Anna Akhmatova, was considered very critical of the regime and had most of her life to fight for this reason long harassment and prohibition.
Much of his last years lived Korney Chukovsky in the art colony Peredelkino near Moscow, where a museum exists to this day in his former country house. In Peredelkino Chukovsky also found his last resting after he died from a viral hepatitis in 1969.