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“A children’s writer should be happy” – Korney Chukovsky followed this commandment all his life. Until old age, he retained the ability to enjoy any work and generously share this joy with others.
Chukovsky’s poems enter our lives when we are just beginning to understand the meaning of words, and return when it comes time for us to raise our own children. “Fly-Tsokotuha” and “Barmaley” lie at the foundation of Russian culture, uniting its bearers better than any state or national ideas. However, Chukovsky’s merit is not only in this: his poems, childish in form and meaning, in a bizarre way reflect the world of adults, and in this magic mirror we can discern those features of ourselves that we ourselves do not know about or have long forgotten.
Expelled from the gymnasium, Chukovsky was forced to earn his living as a teenager. However, this did not make him unhappy: even then he knew how to enjoy any work. The only punishment for him could be idleness. Everyone loved Chukovsky: meeting in the writer’s house in Kuokkala, even old enemies forgot about their enmity out of respect for the owner. Like no one else, he knew how to turn boring everyday life into holidays: he came up with “Crocodile” on the train as a consolation to his sick son, and made his handwritten almanac “Chukokkala” an exciting game for several generations of writers and artists …
Understanding the value of every moment made him fearless: he was the only Soviet writer who congratulated the disgraced Boris Pasternak on being awarded the Nobel Prize and was not afraid to support Solzhenitsyn during the years of persecution. From the same source – the immediacy and freshness of his view of the world, which he so generously shared with his contemporaries and with us – descendants.
His dates
- March 19, 1882: born in St. Petersburg. 1883: Chukovsky’s mother and children move to Odessa.
- 1898: expulsion from the gymnasium.
- 1901: first article in Odessa News.
- 1903: married to Maria Goldfeld.
- 1903–1904: lives in London as a correspondent for Odessa News.
- 1907: First book published, The Anarchist Poet Walt Whitman.
- 1923: “Moydodyr” and “Cockroach” were printed.
- 1928: First edition of Little Children, subsequently entitled Two to Five.
- 1956: publication of Bibigon.
- 1962: Doctor of Literature awarded by the University of Oxford.
- October 28, 1969: died in the Kuntsevo hospital in Moscow.
Keys to Understanding
be passionate
“The craving for innovation, for overcoming stagnant, moldy ideas is absolutely inherent in everyone who works enthusiastically in any field of knowledge. This is where the festive joy of work lies for us, its main charm, its seductiveness. By introducing an element of creativity into any daily business, fantasizing and finding new ways to bypass the trampled routes, we can not only overcome the routine of life, but also turn any work into an exciting adventure.
Feel and comprehend everything
The abundance of impressions prevents us from fully perceiving each of them separately. “Each of us, urban people, now experiences as much in one day as another person of the last century would have had enough for a lifetime … There are more experiences, but each of them seems to have shortened.” That is why any impression, no matter how fleeting it may be, must be comprehended and felt, at least for a few moments concentrating all our intellectual and emotional forces on it – this is the only way we can maintain a sense of the authenticity and significance of what is happening to us here and now.
Learn from children
“Happiness is the natural state of the soul, which is not yet aware of either the threat of imminent death or the painful hardships and anguish of life.” Communicating with children, penetrating into their secret world, sincerely and deeply empathizing with their joys and sorrows, sensitively capturing their needs and desires, we can regain our childish joy of being. And then “during periods when it would be appropriate to whimper and complain, you suddenly jump out of bed with such an insane feeling of joy, as if you were a five-year-old boy who was presented with a whistle … You walk down the street and, senselessly rejoicing at everything that you see – signs, trams, sparrows, – ready to kiss everyone you meet.
be able to part
Experiencing the pain of loss, we either concentrate on our grief, which seems to us unique and incurable, or drive away sad thoughts, trying to quickly forget about the loss that has befallen us. However, according to Chukovsky, neither one nor the other path leads us to the desired goal. “I studied the “science of parting” and realized that the main thing in this science is not avoiding grief, not deserting, not fleeing from the dear departed, and also not locking in grief that cannot be helped, but expanding the heart, love – pity – compassion to the living.”