The life and work of Alexander Green: a short biography of the writer. Alexander Stepanovich Green (Grinevsky)

1. Childhood and youth romance. Life collisions.
2. The beginning of a creative journey.
3. Greenland.
4. Romantic literature and cruel reality.

Still, he is an amazing, wonderful writer, a true romantic and writer of incredible stories, the likes of which are few in all of world literature!
Y. K. Golovanov

A. S. Green was born ( real name Grinevsky) August 23, 1880. His childhood and youth were spent in Vyatka. They say that the first word that little Sasha put together from cubes and read syllable by syllable was “sea.” But the father, an exiled Pole, wanted his son to receive a land profession. Grinevsky Sr., a participant in the Polish uprising of 1863, worked as an accountant in a zemstvo hospital; his wife died at thirty-seven, leaving four children. Sasha was the oldest, he was thirteen at the time. A little later he got a stepmother.

All the boys at that time were keen on adventure literature, and Grinevsky had three chests of books in Polish, French and Russian - they were left over from his deceased uncle, Lieutenant Colonel Grinevsky. The parents teased their son, saying that he was a bad student and would become a swineherd. It is quite understandable that the family, starving and wearing cast-offs, wanted Alexander to help them earn a living. But the Red Sea became the dream of life for Sasha - he wanted to become a sailor. Soon, suffering from misunderstanding, he became withdrawn and spoke to few people about himself.

Green's only favorite subject is geography, in which the boy always got an A+. Expelled from the real zemstvo school, and then expelled more than once and again accepted into the city four-year school, Alexander began to study more diligently. He learned that the certificate gives the opportunity to become a navigator. In the end, Green (as his friends called him) fled to Odessa. The sea struck the young man, but it was difficult to get hired to work on a ship.

Only two months later he was hired as a cabin boy on the steamer Platon. The practice did not go well; Green did not even learn how to tie sea knots. He had his own ideas about the sea. His proximity was everything to Green. He made his second voyage on the sailboat "St. Nicholas", the third - as a sailor on the ship "Tsesarevich". None of the trips made it possible to earn money. After that, I had to return to Vyatka and live with odd jobs. Work in oil fields, timber rafting, gold prospecting, service in tsarist army, escape from the battalion and meeting with the Social Revolutionaries, a second escape, a prison sentence, a third escape and exile... “I was a sailor, a loader, an actor, rewrote roles for the theater, worked in gold mines, in a blast furnace factory, in peat bogs, in fisheries; was a woodcutter, a tramp, a scribe in the office, a hunter, a revolutionary, an exile, a sailor on a barge, a soldier, a navvy...,” the writer recalled, saying that his life path was strewn not with roses, but with nails. In 1905, he escaped from exile and lived in Vyatka under a false name.

To the literature A.S. Green entered as a master of everyday stories, describing his personal impressions and life stories. The writer’s first story was called “The Merit of Private Panteleev” and was published in 1906. Censorship considered it propaganda, and the entire circulation was confiscated.

The first book, The Invisible Cap, was published in 1907. In the works of 1918-1919 (“The Shining World”, “Jesse and Morgiana”, “Road to Nowhere”) the main theme of creativity was the conflict of freedom and unfreedom.

Over twenty-five years of creativity, over four hundred works were published. The main topic His books became a belief in the high morality of man. “Alexander Green is a sunny writer and, despite difficult fate“, happy, because through all his works a deep and bright faith in man, in the good principles of the human soul, faith in love, friendship, loyalty and the feasibility of dreams victoriously passes through,” said writer V.K. Ketlinskaya. Researcher of Green's work V.V. Kharchev notes that the writer tried to show that a miracle is possible everywhere, even where it seems that it cannot exist.

In the most famous works of Green, an excellent landscape painter and master of plot - in "Scarlet Sails", "Running on the Waves", "The Shining World" - romance is closely intertwined with fantasy. Green's characters live in fictitious cities dreamed of by their creator - Apambo, Gel-Gyu, Zurbagan, Gerton, Lissa, Pocket, on Reno Island. Critics began to study this fictional world already in the 1910s. It is perceived in different ways: both as the world of the past, and as a writer’s universe with its own laws of development, heroes and plots, and as an artistic space. K. G. Paustovsky reasoned: “When he became a writer, he imagined the non-existent countries where the action of his stories took place, not as foggy landscapes, but as well-studied places, traveled hundreds of times. He could draw a detailed map of these places, could mark every turn in the road and the nature of the vegetation, every bend of the river and the location of houses...” The unusualness of this universe is obvious. It differs from the real one and is populated by brave heroes with rich inner world, capable of self-sacrifice, noble and courageous people, bearing some wonderful, foreign-like names: Arthur Gray, Longren, Assol, Letika, Gez, Frezi Grant, etc. The apt name “Greenland”, invented by K.I. Zelinsky in 1934, took root and became entrenched in this literary world. It combines romance and realism, irrationality and harmony, thoughtfulness and the unbridled imagination of the author.

But not everything was so rosy real life writer. Happy family life Green was darkened by his long drinking bouts - so he tried to escape from reality and overcome himself. He could not ask and bow for anything in a sober state. The person who suffered most from Green's behavior was Assol, his second wife Nina. But it was necessary to ask: there was nothing to live on, printing was allowed no more than one book a year. Green's work has been recognized as contrary to the ideological guidelines of the party since the late 1920s. his works were no longer published. Requests for financial assistance were either not answered or refused. Later N. Grinevskaya had to ask former comrades send a dying writer even just a couple of lines. Only the wife remained devoted to her husband until death. Recent years Green spent his life in Crimea, near his old passion - the sea. During these years, more than half of his works were written, which at that time were actually of no use to anyone. In 1932, the writer died of cancer.

His last book became “Autobiographical Tale” - a realistic and harsh work. It is a pity that the writer received wide recognition only after his death. “Until the end of my days I would like to wander through the bright lands of my imagination,” said Green. For readers, this master of words will forever remain a resident of wonderful Greenland.

Alexander Green - Russian writer and poet, representative literary direction neo-romanticism. He is the author of philosophical and romantic works with elements of fantasy. In total he has about 400 literary works. The writer's real name is Grinevsky.

VKontakte

Childhood

According to the Wikipedia portal, the writer was born on August 23, 1880 in the Vyatka province. His father, Stefan Grinevsky, is a Polish nobleman, his mother Anna Stepanovna Lepkova. Alexander was the first-born in the family; later he had a brother, Boris, and sisters, Ekaterina and Antonina.

At the age of 6, Sasha learned to read. The first book he read was Gulliver's Travels. Since childhood, Sasha has been addicted to literature about travelers and sailors. He dreamed of becoming a sailor and going to sea and even made repeated attempts to run away from home.

At the age of 9, Sasha was sent to a preparatory class at a real school. It was there that he received the nickname Green. Being a very unsuccessful student, he nevertheless completed the preparatory class and moved on to the first. However, while studying in the second grade, he wrote a poem about his teachers, which was considered offensive, for which he was expelled from the school. The father petitioned for the boy to be admitted to another school in Vyatka, which was very notorious.

When the boy was 15 years old, his mother died of tuberculosis. A few months later, my father remarried the widow Lydia Avenirovna Boretskaya. Alexander did not have a good relationship with his stepmother, and he began to live separately from new family. The teenager lived independently, earning extra money by copying documents and making book bindings. I read it a lot and enjoyed it. For some time the boy was fond of hunting, but often returned without prey, which was due to his very impulsive character.

Youth

At the age of 16, Alexander graduated from the fourth grade of the Vyatka City School and moved to Odessa, deciding to become a sailor. The father gave his son 25 rubles for travel and the address of his Odessa friend. At first, the sixteen-year-old teenager wandered in search of work and went hungry. In the end, he still had to turn to that very friend of his father. He fed the young man and helped him get a job on the Platon steamer, which sailed from Odessa to Batumi and back. Once Greene even had a chance to visit Alexandria, the capital of Egypt.

Unfortunately, Green never became a sailor - he was disgusted by the hard and routine work of a sailor. Very soon he had a fight with the captain and left the ship. In 1897 he returned back to Vyatka, but a year later he left again - this time to Baku. Here he tried himself in a variety of professions - he was a laborer, a worker in railway workshops, and a fisherman. Wandering around the country, he managed to work as a lumberjack, a gold miner in the Urals, a miner, and even a copyist in the theater.

Revolutionary activities

In 1902, Green served for some time as a soldier in an infantry reserve battalion, which was stationed in Penza. Here, in the service, Greene's revolutionary views only intensified. Of the six months he spent in the service, he spent three and a half in a punishment cell. Six months later, Greene deserted his unit, was found and captured, but was able to escape again.

During his service in the army, Green managed to make acquaintance with, who appreciated the mood of the young man and helped him hide in Simbirsk. At this time, he received the nickname Lanky and threw all his strength into the fight against the existing social system, which he deeply hated. Nevertheless, Green did not take part in carrying out terrorist attacks, limiting himself to propaganda among workers and soldiers.

In 1903, Grinevsky was arrested in Sevastopol for disseminating revolutionary anti-government ideas. After a failed escape attempt, he was transferred to a maximum security prison, where he was kept for more than a year. In police documents, Greene was described as angry, withdrawn, capable of anything, even at the risk of his own life. Grinevsky’s case was dealt with for more than a year and a half, during which he twice attempted to escape.

In 1905, the Sevastopol Naval Court sentenced Grinevsky to 10 years of exile in Siberia. Six months later he was released under a general amnesty, but was soon arrested again in St. Petersburg and exiled to the Tobolsk province for 4 years. After 3 days, he fled home to Vyatka, where, with the help of his father, he obtained documents in the name of Malginov, according to which he returned to St. Petersburg.

In 1908, Green married 24-year-old Vera Abramova. In his story “One Hundred Miles Along the River”, under the names Nok and Gelly, Green described himself and his wife.

Beginning of literary activity

The surname Malginov became Green's first literary pseudonym.

1. In 1906, Green wrote his first two stories - "The Merit of Private Panteleev" And "Elephant and Moska". The first of the stories was of a propaganda nature and told about the atrocities of the military among the peasants. Green received a fee for his stories, but almost the entire circulation was found by the police and burned. Miraculously, we managed to find several copies. The second story suffered the same fate.
2. Green's works began to be published and reach readers only in December 1906. His first legally published story was "To Italy". The story was published in the newspaper Birzhevye Vedomosti.
3. Story "Happening" was first published under the pseudonym Green in the newspaper Tovarishch.
4. At the beginning of 1908, Green published his first author's collection in St. Petersburg "Invisibility Cap". Most of the stories in this collection told about the Social Revolutionaries.
5. In 1910, the author’s second collection was published - "Stories". Most of them are of a purely realistic nature. However, in some of the stories one can already discern Green’s style – a romantic and a storyteller. In stories "Lanphier Colony" And "Reno Island" The action takes place in a fictional country. According to Green himself, he began to feel like a writer precisely after these stories.

In the first few years of his writing career, Greene published 25 stories a year. He was quickly recognized as a young and talented author, and as a result he made acquaintance with outstanding Russian writers of that time - Alexei Tolstoy, Valery Bryusov, etc. Green had particularly warm friendly relations with Kuprin.

At this time, Green began to earn large sums of money, but they did not stay with him for long, quickly flowing out of his hands during card games and parties.

"Greenland"

In July 1910, the St. Petersburg police finally came to the conclusion that famous writer Green and the fugitive exile Grinevsky are one and the same person. He was arrested again and exiled to Arkhangelsk province. Vera Abramova followed him, and here they officially got married. After 2 years, Greene’s sentence was reduced and allowed to return to St. Petersburg.

1. While in exile, Green wrote 2 more romantic works "The Life of Gnor" And "Blue Cascade Telluri".
2. In 1913 they were published "Devil of Orange Waters", "Zurbagan shooter". In these works, the image of a fictional country was finally formed, which literary scholars later called Greenland.
3. At first, Green published his work primarily in illustrated magazines and newspapers. Periodically, his works were featured on their pages in such reputable publications of the time as “Russian Thought” and “ Modern world" Green published here thanks to his close acquaintance with Kuprin.
4. In 1913-14 Green's three-volume work was published.
5. In 1914, the writer began collaborating with the popular magazine “New Satyricon” and published his collection as a supplement to the magazine short stories "An Incident on Dog Street". At this time he worked as productively as ever. The themes of his works are becoming more and more diverse - from humorous "Captain Duke" to a sophisticated and psychological novella "Hell Returned".
6. When the First World War began, his works began to have a pronounced anti-war character. An example is "Battlelist Shuang", "Blue Top" or "Poisoned Island".

Since the police again brought charges of inappropriate statements about the reigning person, Green was forced to hide for some time in Finland. When the February Revolution occurred, Grinevsky returned to Petrograd.

October Revolution

In the hope of revolutionary renewal, the writer published an essay in the spring of 1917 entitled "Walking to the Revolution". After the start October Revolution Green began to publish in magazines and newspapers a whole series of short feuilletons and notes that condemned the violence and outrage that was happening around.

In 1918, the Satyricon magazine was banned by the new government as reactionary, and Green was arrested and almost sentenced to death. However, in 1919 he was drafted into the Red Army as a signalman and sent to the front. Very soon, Grinevsky fell ill with typhus and ended up in the Botkin barracks, where he spent several months. Here Green was supported by Maxim Gorky, who sent him food - honey, bread and tea.

When Green recovered, Gorky helped him get housing in the House of Arts on Nevsky Prospekt and academic rations. The writer’s housemates were V.A. Rozhdestvensky, O. Mandelstam, N. Gumilyov, V. Kaverin. According to his neighbors, Green lived as a hermit and made acquaintances with practically no one. It was here that his famous extravaganza “Scarlet Sails” was written.

1. In the early 20s, the writer conceived and finally decided to bring to life his first novel - "Shining World". Main character books Drood - a man with the extraordinary ability to fly - tried to convince people to turn to the highest values ​​of the Shining World.
2. In addition to great prose, the writer did not stop publishing stories. His books were published in Leningrad "The Loquacious Brownie", "The Pied Piper", "Fandango".
3. In 1925, Green wrote and published the novel "Golden Chain". This book was conceived and executed as “a memoir of the dream of a boy seeking miracles and finding them.”

Not merged with the era

A year later, the writer finished one of his masterpieces - the book "Running on the Waves". This work reflected the most brilliant facets of Green's talent. For several years the writer could not publish his work in Soviet publications. The publication of the following novels took no less effort - "Jesse and Morgiana", "The Road to Nowhere".

In 1927, a private publisher attempted to publish the author’s collected works in 15 volumes, but soon the publisher was arrested and only 8 volumes were released. Failures began to lead Green to frequent drinking bouts. A few years later, the Grinevsky family finally managed to win a lawsuit against the publishing house and win several thousand rubles. However, by this time this amount had greatly depreciated due to inflation. The Grinevsky family was forced to move to Old Crimea, where life was somewhat cheaper.

In 1930, the existing censorship prohibited the republication of Grinevsky’s books, citing the fact that he “does not merge with the era.” New works by a writer were also limited to one per year. Green and his wife were often sick due to hunger. Attempts to hunt came to nothing.

The writer began working on a new novel "Touchable", but was never able to finish it.

Alexander Grinevsky died in 1932 at the age of 52 from a stomach tumor. He was buried in the city cemetery of Old Crimea. At his grave there is a monument “Running on the Waves” by sculptor Tatyana Gagarina, as a reflection of the life and work of Alexander Green.

real name - Grinevsky

Russian prose writer and poet, representative of neo-romanticism

Alexander Green

Brief biography

Real name Alexander Stepanovich Green- Russian Soviet prose writer of Polish origin, who created his works in line with romantic realism, - Grinevsky. His name is associated primarily with the story “ Scarlet Sails».

He was born in the Vyatka province, the city of Slobodskaya on August 23 (August 11, O.S.), 1880. A tendency to change places, daydreaming, supported by a love of books about foreign lands and travel, he already had childhood years, he did not I tried to run away from home once. In 1896, his studies at the four-year Vyatka City School ended, and Alexander left for Odessa, where his six-year period of vagrancy began.

Having got a job on a ship, he initially wanted to realize his old dream of becoming a navigator, but he soon lost interest in it. Fisherman, loader, digger, lumberjack, gold miner and even sword swallower - Alexander Grinevsky tried all these professions on himself, but he could not get rid of the dire need that in 1902 forced him to enlist in the army as a volunteer.

His service lasted 9 months, a third of which he spent in a punishment cell, and ended with desertion. At this time, he became close to the Socialist Revolutionaries, who involved him in propaganda work. The sailors' agitation in Sevastopol ended with Green's arrest in 1903, and an unsuccessful escape attempt resulted in two years in a maximum security prison. However, he continued to engage in propaganda work, and in 1905 he was supposed to be exiled to Siberia for 10 years, and only an amnesty helped to avoid such an unenviable fate.

In 1906, Alexander Green’s first story, “To Italy,” was published, and the ones that followed in the same year, “The Merit of Private Panteleev” and “Elephant and Pug,” were confiscated directly from the printing house and burned. Their author, who was in St. Petersburg at that time, was arrested and exiled to the Tobolsk province, but the disgraced aspiring writer managed to quickly escape from the place of exile with someone else’s documents. In 1907, the story “The Case” was published, notable for the fact that for the first time in creative biography the author signed himself with the pseudonym A.S. Green. The following year, the first collection of short stories, “The Invisible Cap,” was published, which did not go unnoticed.

In 1910, Green was sent into exile for the second time - this time for two years in the Arkhangelsk province. Upon returning home, Green actively wrote and published; his stories, novellas, satirical miniatures, poems, and poems were published in 60 publications. Until October 1917, Greene published about 350 works. During this period, the romantic orientation of his writings was formed, which came into conflict with harsh reality.

The February Revolution raised hopes for changes for the better, but they dissipated with the Bolsheviks coming to power. Their actions disappointed Green even more in the surrounding reality, he new strength began to create his own world. Today it is difficult to imagine that the famous story “Scarlet Sails,” beloved by all romantics, was born in Petrograd, engulfed in revolutionary transformations (it was published in 1923). The heroes of Green's works and fictional cities did not fit well into Soviet literature, filled with the pathos of building socialism - along with their author. His works were published less and less and were increasingly criticized.

In 1924, the novel by A.S. was published. Green's "The Shining World", and in the same year he moved to Feodosia. Suffering from tuberculosis and poverty, he continued to write, and new stories came from his pen, the novels “The Golden Chain” (1925), “Running on the Waves” (1928), “Jessie and Morgiana” (1929), in 1930 . The novel “Road to Nowhere” was released, permeated with the tragic attitude of a sick and misunderstood artist. The last place of residence in Green’s biography was the city of Old Crimea, where he moved in 1930 and died on July 8, 1932.

Biography from Wikipedia

Alexander Green(real name - Grinevsky; August 11, 1880, Sloboda, Vyatka province, Russian Empire - July 8, 1932, Old Crimea, USSR) - Russian prose writer and poet, representative of neo-romanticism, author of philosophical and psychological works, with elements of symbolic fiction. He began publishing in 1906 and published about 400 works in total.

The creator of a fictional country, which, thanks to the critic K. Zelinsky, received the name “Greenland”. Many of his works take place in this country, including his most famous romantic books - the novel “Running on the Waves” and the extravaganza “Scarlet Sails”.

Early years

Alexander Grinevsky was born on August 11 (23), 1880 in the city of Slobodskaya Vyatka province. Father - Stefan Grinevsky (Polish Stefan Hryniewski, 1843-1914), a Polish nobleman from the Disna district of the Vilna province of the Russian Empire. For participation in the January Uprising of 1863, at the age of 20, he was indefinitely exiled to Kolyvan, Tomsk province. Later he was allowed to move to the Vyatka province, where he arrived in 1868. In Russia it was called " Stepan Evseevich" In 1873 he married 16-year-old Russian nurse Anna Stepanovna Lepkova (1857-1895). For the first 7 years they had no children, Alexander became the first-born, later he had a brother Boris and two sisters, Antonina and Ekaterina.

Sasha learned to read at the age of 6, and the first book he read was Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. Since childhood, Green loved books about sailors and travel. He dreamed of going to sea as a sailor and, driven by this dream, made attempts to run away from home. The boy's upbringing was inconsistent - he was either pampered, severely punished, or abandoned unattended.

In 1889, nine-year-old Sasha was sent to a preparatory class at a local real school. There his fellow students first gave him the nickname “ Green" The school's report noted that Alexander Grinevsky's behavior was worse than all others, and if not corrected, he could be expelled from the school. Nevertheless, Alexander was able to graduate from the preparatory class and enter the first class, but in the second class he wrote an offensive poem about the teachers and was nevertheless expelled from the school. At the request of his father, Alexander was admitted to another school in 1892, which had a bad reputation in Vyatka.

At the age of 15, Sasha was left without his mother, who died of tuberculosis. 4 months later (May 1895), my father married the widow Lydia Avenirovna Boretskaya. Alexander's relationship with his stepmother was tense, and he settled separately from his father's new family. Subsequently, Green described the atmosphere of provincial Vyatka as “ swamp of prejudices, lies, hypocrisy and falsehood" The boy lived alone, enthusiastically reading books and writing poetry. He worked part-time by binding books and copying documents. At the encouragement of his father, he became interested in hunting, but due to his impulsive nature, he rarely returned with prey.

Wanderings and revolutionary activities (1896-1906)

In 1896, after graduating from the four-year Vyatka City School, 16-year-old Alexander left for Odessa, deciding to become a sailor. His father gave him 25 rubles of money and the address of his Odessa friend. For a while" a sixteen-year-old beardless, frail, narrow-shouldered youth in a straw hat"(this is how the then Greene ironically described himself in " Autobiographies") wandered around in an unsuccessful search for work and was desperately hungry. In the end, he turned to his father’s friend, who fed him and got him a job as a sailor on the Platon steamship, which plied the route Odessa - Batum - Odessa. However, Greene once managed to visit abroad, in Alexandria, Egypt.

Green did not make a sailor; he had an aversion to the prosaic work of a sailor. Soon he quarreled with the captain and left the ship. In 1897, Green went back to Vyatka, spent a year there and again left in search of happiness, this time to Baku. There he tried many professions - he was a fisherman, a laborer, and worked in railway workshops. In the summer he returned to his father, then went on his travels again. He was a lumberjack, a gold miner in the Urals, a miner in an iron mine, and a theater copyist. " For several years he tried to enter life as into a stormy sea; and each time he, beaten against the stones, was thrown ashore - into the hated, philistine Vyatka; dull, prim, remote city».

Vyatka Zemstvo Real School. Green wrote about one of the reasons for his expulsion: “ Enough large library Vyatka Zemstvo Real School<…>was the reason for my poor performance».

In March 1902, Green interrupted his series of wanderings and became (either under pressure from his father, or tired of hunger ordeals) a soldier in the 213th Orovai Reserve Infantry Battalion, stationed in Penza. The morals of military service significantly strengthened Green's revolutionary sentiments. Six months later (of which he spent three and a half in a punishment cell) he deserted, was caught in Kamyshin, and fled again. In the army, Green met Socialist Revolutionary propagandists who appreciated the young rebel and helped him hide in Simbirsk.

From that moment on, Greene, having received the party nickname “ Lanky", sincerely devotes all his strength to the fight against the social system he hates, although he refused to participate in the execution of terrorist acts, limiting himself to propaganda among workers and soldiers of different cities. Subsequently, he did not like to talk about his “Socialist Revolutionary” activities. The Social Revolutionaries appreciated his bright, enthusiastic speeches. Here is an excerpt from the memoirs of N. Ya. Bykhovsky, a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party:

“Lanky” turned out to be an invaluable underground worker. Having once been a sailor himself and having once completed a long voyage, he was excellent at approaching sailors. He had an excellent knowledge of the life and psychology of the sailor masses and knew how to speak to them in their language. In his work among the sailors of the Black Sea squadron, he used all this with great success and immediately gained considerable popularity here. For the sailors, he was a completely different person, and this is extremely important. In this regard, none of us could compete with him.

Green later said that Bykhovsky once told him: “ You would make a writer" For this Green called him " my godfather in literature»:

Already experienced: the sea, vagrancy, wanderings showed me that this is still not what my soul thirsts for. I didn’t know what she needed. Bykhovsky's words were not only an impetus, they were a light that illuminated my mind and the secret depths of my soul. I understood what I longed for, my soul found its way.

In 1903, Green was once again arrested in Sevastopol for “anti-government speeches” and the dissemination of revolutionary ideas, “which led to undermining the foundations of autocracy and overthrowing the foundations of the existing system.” For attempting to escape, he was transferred to a maximum security prison, where he spent more than a year. In police documents it is characterized as “ a closed, embittered nature, capable of anything, even risking her life" In January 1904, the Minister of Internal Affairs V.K. Pleve, shortly before the Socialist Revolutionary attempt on his life, received a report from the Minister of War A.N. Kuropatkin that " a very important civilian figure who called himself first Grigoriev and then Grinevsky».

The investigation dragged on for more than a year (November 1903 - February 1905) due to Green's two attempts to escape and his complete denial. Green was tried in February 1905 by the Sevastopol naval court. The prosecutor demanded 20 years of hard labor. Lawyer A. S. Zarudny managed to reduce the penalty to 10 years of exile in Siberia.

In October 1905, Green was released under a general amnesty, but in January 1906 he was arrested again in St. Petersburg. In prison, due to the absence of friends and relatives, she visited him (under the guise of a bride) Vera Pavlovna Abramova, the daughter of a wealthy official who sympathized with revolutionary ideals.

In May, Green was sent to the city of Turinsk, Tobolsk province, for four years. He stayed there for only 3 days and fled to Vyatka, where, with the help of his father, he got someone else’s passport in the name Malginova(later this would be one of the writer’s literary pseudonyms), by which he left for St. Petersburg.

The beginning of creativity (1906-1917)

Alexander Green with his first wife Vera in the village of Velikiy Bor near Pinega, 1911.

The years 1906-1908 became a turning point in Green's life. First of all, he became a writer.

In the summer of 1906, Green wrote 2 stories - “ Merit of Private Panteleev" And " Elephant and Moska" The first story was signed " A.S.G."and published in the fall of the same year. It was published as a propaganda brochure for punitive soldiers and described the atrocities of the army among the peasants. Green received the fee, but the entire circulation was confiscated at the printing house and destroyed (burnt) by the police; by chance, only a few copies were preserved. The second story suffered a similar fate - it was submitted to the printing house, but was not printed.

Only starting on December 5 of that year did Greene's stories begin to reach readers; and the first “legal” work was the story “To Italy,” written in the fall of 1906, signed “ A. A. M-v" (that is Malginov). For the first time (under the title " In Italy") it was published in the evening edition of the newspaper " Stock statements" dated December 5(18), 1906

Nickname " A. S. Green" first appeared under the story "Case" (the first publication was in the newspaper " Comrade" dated March 25 (April 7), 1907).

At the beginning of 1908, in St. Petersburg, Green published his first collection of books, “ Invisibility hat" (with the subtitle " Stories about revolutionaries"). Most of the stories in it are about the Social Revolutionaries.

Another event was the final break with the Social Revolutionaries. Green still hated the existing system, but he began to form his own positive ideal, which was not at all similar to the Socialist Revolutionary.

The third important event was his marriage - his imaginary “prison bride,” 24-year-old Vera Abramova, became Green’s wife. Knock And Gelly- the main characters of the story “One Hundred Miles Along the River” (1912) are Green and Vera themselves.

According to V. B. Shklovsky, A. S. Green’s own aunt was the St. Petersburg poetess, translator and playwright Isabella Grinevskaya. This statement is repeated by L. I. Borisov, the author of an artistic biography “ The Wizard from Gel-Gyu" A. N. Varlamov questions Shklovsky’s version, calling him a hoaxer and the possible author of another legend about Green. The supposed aunt and nephew were published in the same illustrated magazines, but one way or another, Alexander Greene’s entry into literature was completely independent.

In 1910, his second collection “ Stories" Most of the stories included there were written in realistic manner, but in two - “Reno Island” and “ Lanphier Colony“- the future Green storyteller is already guessed. The action of these stories takes place in a conventional country; in style they are close to his later work. Greene himself believed that starting with these stories he could be considered a writer. In the early years, he published 25 stories annually.

A. Green in St. Petersburg. Photo 1910

As a new original and talented Russian writer, he meets Alexei Tolstoy, Leonid Andreev, Valery Bryusov, Mikhail Kuzmin and other major writers. He became especially close to A.I. Kuprin. For the first time in his life, Green began to earn a lot of money, which, however, did not last long, quickly disappearing after carousing and card games.

On July 27, 1910, the police finally discovered that the writer Green was the fugitive exile Grinevsky. He was arrested for the third time and in the fall of 1911 he was exiled to Pinega in the Arkhangelsk province. Vera went with him, they were allowed to officially get married. In the link, Greene wrote " Life of Gnor" And " Blue Cascade Telluri" The period of his exile was reduced to two years, and in May 1912 the Grinevskys returned to St. Petersburg. Other works of a romantic direction soon followed: “ Devil of orange waters», « Zurbagan shooter"(1913). In them, the features of a fictional country are finally formed, which literary critic K. Zelinsky will call “Greenland.”

Greene publishes primarily in the small press: newspapers and illustrated magazines. His works are published by “Birzhevye Vedomosti” and the newspaper supplement “Novoe Slovo”, “New Magazine for Everyone”, “Rodina”, “Niva” and its monthly supplements, the newspaper “Vyatskaya Rech” and many others. Occasionally, his prose is published in the reputable “thick” monthly journals “Russian Thought” and “Modern World”. Green published in the latter from 1912 to 1918 thanks to his acquaintance with A.I. Kuprin. In 1913-1914, his three-volume work was published by the Prometheus publishing house.

In the fall of 1913, Vera decided to separate from her husband. In her memoirs, she complains about Green’s unpredictability and uncontrollability, his constant carousing, and mutual misunderstanding. Green made several attempts at reconciliation, but without success. On his 1915 collection, donated to Vera, Green wrote: “ To my only friend" He never parted with the portrait of Vera until the end of his life. Almost simultaneously (1914), Green suffered another loss: his father died in Vyatka. Green also kept a photograph of his father throughout all his travels.

In the memoirs of Nina Nikolaevna Green, Green’s words are quoted about how he spent the bohemian pre-war years.

They called me “Mustang”, so I was charged with a thirst for life, full of fire, images, plots. He wrote on a grand scale, and did not exhaust himself. I got to life by accumulating greed for it in a hungry, vagabond, compressed youth, in prison. He greedily grabbed and devoured it. Couldn't get enough. I spent and burned myself from all ends. I forgave myself everything, I had not yet found myself.

In 1914, Green became an employee of the popular magazine “New Satyricon” and published his collection “An Incident on Dog Street” as a supplement to the magazine. Green worked extremely productively during this period. He had not yet decided to start writing a big story or novel, but his best stories of this time show the profound progress of Green the writer. The themes of his works are expanding, the style is becoming more and more professional - just compare the funny story " Captain Duke"and a sophisticated, psychologically accurate novella" Hell returned"(1915).

"Captain Duke" Monthly literary and popular scientific supplements to Niva, October 1916.

After the outbreak of the First World War, some of Greene's stories took on a distinctly anti-war character: for example, “ Battalist Shuang», « Blue top"(Niva, 1915) and "Poisoned Island". Due to an “inappropriate comment about the reigning monarch” that became known to the police, Green was forced to hide in Finland from the end of 1916, but upon learning about the February Revolution, he returned to Petrograd.

In the spring of 1917, he wrote a short story “ On foot to the revolution”, indicating the writer’s hope for renewal. I. S. Sokolov-Mikitov recalled how he and Green “ lived with the worries and hopes of those days" Some hope for changes for the better also fills the poems written by Greene during this period (“XX Century”, 1917, No. 13):

The bells are ringing and humming,
And their powerfully menacing singing...
The bells are buzzing and calling
On the bright holiday of rebirth.

Soon the revolutionary reality disappointed the writer.

After the October Revolution, Green’s notes and feuilletons appeared one after another in the magazine “New Satyricon” and in the small small-circulation newspaper “Devil’s Pepper Shaker”, condemning cruelty and outrages. He said: " I can’t get my head around the idea that violence can be destroyed by violence." In the spring of 1918, the magazine, along with all other opposition publications, was banned. Green was arrested for the fourth time and nearly shot. According to A.N. Varlamov, the facts indicate that Green “ did not accept Soviet life... even more fiercely than pre-revolutionary life: he did not speak at meetings, did not join any literary groups, did not sign collective letters, platforms and appeals to the Party Central Committee, wrote his manuscripts and letters using pre-revolutionary spelling, and counted the days according to the old calendar... this dreamer and inventor - in the words of a writer from the near future - did not live by a lie" The only good news was the resolution of divorces, which Green immediately took advantage of and married a certain Maria Dolidze. Within a few months, the marriage was considered a mistake, and the couple separated.

In the summer of 1919, Green was drafted into the Red Army as a signalman, but he soon fell ill with typhus and ended up in the Botkin barracks for almost a month. Maxim Gorky sent the seriously ill Green honey, tea and bread.

After recovery, Green, with the assistance of Gorky, managed to obtain academic rations and housing - a room in the “House of Arts” on Nevsky Prospekt, 15, where Green lived next to N. S. Gumilyov, V. A. Rozhdestvensky, O. E. Mandelstam, V. Kaverin. Neighbors recalled that Green lived as a hermit, hardly communicating with anyone, but it was here that he wrote his most famous, touchingly poetic work - the extravaganza “Scarlet Sails” (published in 1923). " It was difficult to imagine that such a bright flower, warmed by love for people, could be born here, in gloomy, cold and half-starved Petrograd, in the winter twilight of the harsh 1920; and that he was raised by a man who was outwardly gloomy, unfriendly and seemingly closed in a special world into which he did not want to let anyone in“,” recalled Vs. Christmas. Among the first to appreciate this masterpiece was Maxim Gorky, who often read the episode of the appearance before the guests. Assol - the main character extravaganza - a fairy-tale ship.

In the spring of 1921, Green married a 26-year-old widow, nurse Nina Nikolaevna Mironova (after Korotkova’s first husband). They met at the beginning of 1918, when Nina worked at the Petrograd Echo newspaper. Her first husband died in the war. A new meeting took place in January 1921, Nina was in desperate need and was selling things (Green later described a similar episode at the beginning of the story “The Pied Piper”). A month later he proposed to her. During the eleven subsequent years allotted to Green by fate, they did not part, and both considered their meeting a gift of fate. Green dedicated the Scarlet Sails extravaganza, completed this year, to Nina. (" The Author offers it to Nina Nikolaevna Green and dedicates it to her. PBG, November 23, 1922»)

The couple rented a room on Panteleimonovskaya, transported their meager luggage there: a bunch of manuscripts, some clothes, a photograph of Father Green and the constant portrait of Vera Pavlovna. At first, Green was almost never published, but with the beginning of the NEP, private publishing houses appeared, and he managed to publish a new collection “ White fire"(1922). The collection included the vivid story “Ships in Liss,” which Greene himself considered one of the best.

In the early 1920s, Greene decided to begin his first novel, which he called “The Shining World.” The main character of this complex symbolist work is a flying superman Drood, persuading people to choose the highest values ​​of the Shining World instead of the values ​​of “this world.” In 1924, the novel was published in Leningrad. He continued to write stories, the pinnacles of which were “ Talkative brownie», « Pied Piper», « Fandango».

Using the fees, Green threw a feast, went with Nina to his beloved Crimea and bought an apartment in Leningrad, then sold this apartment and moved to Feodosia. The initiator of the move was Nina, who wanted to save Green from drunken Petrograd revelry and pretended to be sick. In the fall of 1924, Green bought an apartment on Galereynaya Street, house number 10 (now there is the Alexander Green Museum). Occasionally, the couple went to Koktebel to see Maximilian Voloshin.

In Feodosia Green wrote the novel " Gold chain"(1925, published in the magazine " New world"), intended as " memories of a boy's dream seeking miracles and finding them" In the fall of 1926, Greene completed his main masterpiece, the novel “Running on the Waves,” on which he worked for a year and a half. This novel combines the best features of the writer's talent: a deep mystical idea about the need for a dream and the realization of dreams, subtle poetic psychologism, and a fascinating romantic plot. For two years the author tried to publish the novel in Soviet publishing houses, and only at the end of 1928 the book was published by the publishing house “Earth and Factory”. With great difficulty, Greene’s last novels were published in 1929: “ Jesse and Morgiana», « Road to nowhere».

Green noted sadly: “ The era rushes by. She doesn't need me the way I am. And I cannot be anyone else. And I don't want to». « Even though in all my writing nothing has been said about me as a person who has not licked the heels of modernity, never at all, but I know my own worth».

Banned. Last years and death (1929-1932)

Gul, Greene's pet hawk, with his owner (1929). The writer’s story “is dedicated to him” The story of a hawk».

In 1927, the private publisher L.V. Wolfson began publishing a 15-volume collected works of Green, but only 8 volumes were published, after which Wolfson was arrested by the GPU.

NEP was coming to an end. Green's attempts to insist on fulfilling the contract with the publishing house only led to huge legal costs and ruin. Greene's binges began to recur again. However, in the end, the Green family still managed to win the case, winning seven thousand rubles, which, however, were greatly devalued by inflation.

The apartment in Feodosia had to be sold. In 1930, the Grinevskys moved to the city of Old Crimea, where life was cheaper. Since 1930, Soviet censorship, with the motivation " you don't blend in with the era", banned reprints of Greene and introduced a limit on new books: one per year. Both Green and Nina were desperately hungry and often sick. Green tried to hunt nearby birds with a bow and arrow, but was unsuccessful.

Novel " Touch-me-not", begun by Greene at this time, was never completed, although some critics consider it the best of his work. Green mentally thought through the whole plot to the end and said to Nina: “ Some scenes are so good that remembering them makes me smile" At the end of April 1931, already seriously ill, Greene last time I went (through the mountains) to Koktebel to visit Voloshin. This route is still popular among tourists and is known as the Greene Trail.

In the summer, Green went to Moscow, but not a single publishing house showed interest in his new novel. Upon his return, Green wearily said to Nina: “ Amba for us. Will no longer print" There was no response to the request for a pension from the Writers' Union. As historians have found out, at a board meeting Lydia Seifullina said: “ Greene is our ideological enemy. The Union should not help such writers! Not a single penny at all!“Green sent another request for help to Gorky; it is unknown whether it reached its destination, but there was no answer either. In Nina Nikolaevna’s memoirs, this period is characterized by one phrase: “ Then he began to die».

In May 1932, after new petitions, a transfer of 250 rubles unexpectedly arrived. from the Writers' Union, sent for some reason to the name " widow of writer Green, Nadezhda Green", although Green was still alive. There is a legend that the reason was Green’s last mischief - he sent a telegram to Moscow “ Green died send two hundred funeral».

The grave of A. S. Green at the city cemetery of Old Crimea

Alexander Green died on the morning of July 8, 1932, at the age of 52, in Old Crimea, from stomach cancer. Two days before his death, he asked to invite a priest and confessed.

The writer was buried in the city cemetery of Old Crimea. Nina chose a place from where she could see the sea. At Green’s grave, sculptor Tatyana Gagarina erected a monument “ Running on the waves».

Upon learning of Greene's death, several leading Soviet writers called for the publication of a collection of his works; Even Seifullina joined them. Collection by A. Green " Fantastic novels"was released 2 years later, in 1934.

Nina Nikolaevna Green, the writer's widow, continued to live in Old Crimea, in an adobe house, and worked as a nurse. When the Nazi army captured Crimea, Nina remained with her seriously ill mother in Nazi-occupied territory and worked in the occupation newspaper “Official Bulletin of the Staro-Krymsky District.” Then she was taken to work in Germany, and in 1945 she voluntarily returned from the American occupation zone to the USSR.

After the trial, Nina received ten years in the camps for “collaboration and treason,” with confiscation of property. She served her sentence in the camps on Pechora. Green's first wife, Vera Pavlovna, provided her with great support, including things and food. Nina served almost her entire sentence and was released in 1955 under an amnesty (rehabilitated in 1997). Vera Pavlovna died earlier, in 1951.

Scene from the ballet by V. M. Yurovsky " Scarlet Sails" Bolshoi Theater, December 5, 1943 Assol- Olga Lepeshinskaya.

Meanwhile, books by the “Soviet romantic” Green continued to be published in the USSR until 1944. IN besieged Leningrad radio broadcasts were broadcast with the reading of “Scarlet Sails” (1943), in Bolshoi Theater The premiere of the ballet “Scarlet Sails” took place. In 1946, the story by L. I. Borisov “ The Wizard from Gel-Gyu"about Alexander Green, which earned the praise of K. G. Paustovsky and B. S. Grinevsky, but later - condemnation from N. N. Green.

During the years of the struggle against cosmopolitanism, Alexander Green, like many other cultural figures (A. A. Akhmatova, M. M. Zoshchenko, D. D. Shostakovich), was branded in the Soviet press as a “cosmopolitan”, alien to proletarian literature, “ militant reactionary and spiritual emigrant" For example, V. Vazhdaev’s article was devoted to the “exposure” of Green. Preacher of cosmopolitanism"(New World, No. 1, 1950). Greene's books were confiscated en masse from libraries.

After Stalin's death (1953), the ban on some writers was lifted. Since 1956, through the efforts of K. Paustovsky, Y. Olesha, I. Novikov and others, Greene was returned to literature. His works were published in millions of copies. Having received, through the efforts of Green’s friends, a fee for “ Favorites"(1956), Nina Nikolaevna arrived in Old Crimea, with difficulty found her husband’s abandoned grave and found out that the house where Green died had passed to the chairman of the local executive committee and was used as a barn and chicken coop. In 1960, after several years of struggle to return the house, Nina Nikolaevna opened on a voluntary basis Green Museum in Old Crimea. There she spent the last ten years of her life, with a pension of 21 rubles (copyright no longer applied). In July 1970, the Green Museum was also opened in Feodosia, and a year later Green’s house in Old Crimea also received the status of a museum. Its opening by the Crimean regional committee of the CPSU was linked to the conflict with Nina Nikolaevna: “ We are for Green, but against his widow. The museum will only be there when she dies.».

Nina Nikolaevna Green died on September 27, 1970 in a Kyiv hospital. She bequeathed to bury herself next to her husband. The local party leadership, irritated by the loss of the chicken coop, imposed a ban; and Nina was buried at the other end of the cemetery. On October 23 of the following year, Nina’s birthday, six of her friends reburied the coffin at night in its designated place.

Creativity and personal position

Artistic and ideological features of prose

Greene is openly didactic, that is, his works are based on a clear system of values ​​and invite the reader to accept and share these ideals with the author.

It is generally accepted that Greene is a romantic, " dream knight" Green understands the dream as the desire of a spiritually rich person for higher, truly human values, contrasting them with callousness, greed and animal pleasures. The difficult choice between these two paths and the consequences of the choice made is one of Greene's important themes. Its goal is to show how organic goodness and dreams, love and compassion are for a person, and how destructive evil, cruelty, and alienation are. Critic Irina Vasyuchenko notes the rare transparency and purity of the moral atmosphere characteristic of Greene's prose. " The author more than believes in the power of the good principles of life - he knows it" Existing simultaneously in real world and in the world of dreams, Green felt himself " translator between these two worlds" IN " Scarlet Sails“The author, through the mouth of Gray, calls for “working a miracle” for another person; " He will have a new soul and you will have a new one." In “The Shining World” there is a similar call: “ Bring into your life that world, the sparkles of which have already been given to you by a generous, secret hand.».

Among Green's instrumental means are excellent taste, alien to naturalism, the ability by simple means to elevate a story to the level of a deep parable, and a bright, exciting plot. Critics note that Greene is incredibly “cinematic.” Transferring the action to a fictional country is also a thoughtful technique: “ By and large, what is important to Green is the person and only the person, apart from his connection with history, nationality, wealth or poverty, religion and political beliefs. Green, as it were, abstracts, cleanses his heroes from these layers and sterilizes his world, because this way he can see people better».

The writer is focused on the struggle in human soul and depicts the subtlest psychological nuances with amazing skill. " The volume of Greene's knowledge in this area, the accuracy of the depiction of the most complex mental processes, sometimes exceeding the level of ideas and capabilities of his time, amaze specialists today».

« Green said that sometimes he spends hours on a phrase, achieving the highest completeness of its expression, brilliance" He was close to the symbolists who tried to expand the possibilities of prose, to give it more dimensions - hence the frequent use of metaphors, paradoxical combinations of words, etc.

An example of Green’s style using an example from “Scarlet Sails”:

She knew how and loved to read, but even in a book she read mainly between the lines, as she lived. Unconsciously, through a kind of inspiration, she made at every step many ethereal-subtle discoveries, inexpressible, but important, like purity and warmth. Sometimes - and this continued for a number of days - she was even reborn; the physical confrontation of life fell away, like silence in the blow of a bow, and everything she saw, what she lived, what was around, became a lace of secrets in the image of everyday life.

Green the poet

Alexander Green from a poem "Dispute"

The balloon flew over the killing field.
Two wise men were arguing in a basket.
One said: “Let's fly to the blue firmament!
Get away from the earth!
The earth is mad; her world is bloody
Untamed, eternal and heavy.
Let him amuse himself with bloody fun,
Having broken the fence, the yocked ox!
There, in the clouds, there will be no anxiety for us,
The marble of their airy forms is beautiful.
The shine is beautiful, and we ourselves are like gods,
Let's breathe in the good nirvana of chloroform.
Should I open the valve? "No! - the second answered. -
I hear the roar of battle below me...
Have you not noticed the movement of troops?
They crawl like a swarm of ants;
Their squares, trapezoids and rhombuses
Here, from above, they are exquisitely funny...
O king of the earth! How worthy are you of a bomb?
Iron fury of war!
Are there centuries of incredible pain,
Suffering and wisdom only led to this,
So that you, drawn by an alien will,
Lying, crushed, in the dust?!
No, we'll go down.
Picture of a vile dump
Observed closely, it will show again and again,
That humanity needs sticks,
Not love."

Since 1907, they have appeared in print poetic works Green, although Green began writing poetry in the Vyatka real school. One of the poems did the then twelve-year-old student a disservice - in 1892 he was expelled. After entering the Vyatka City School, the writing of poetry continued. Greene spoke about this period as follows:

Sometimes I wrote poems and sent them to Niva and Rodina, never receiving a response from the editors, although I attached stamps to the response. The poems were about hopelessness, hopelessness, broken dreams and loneliness - exactly the same poems that weekly magazines were then full of. From the outside, one might think that a forty-year-old Chekhov hero was writing, and not a boy of eleven to fifteen years old

- A. S. Green, “Autobiographical story”

In an earlier autobiography, written in 1913, Greene stated: " When I was a kid I wrote bad poems hard" The first mature poems that appeared in print, like his prose, were of a realistic nature. In addition, Greene’s satirical streak as a high school student manifested itself with might and main in the poet’s “adult” poems, which was reflected in his long-term collaboration with the New Satyricon magazine. In 1907, his first poem “ Elegy” (“When the blushing Duma is worried,” to the tune of Lermontov’s poem “When the yellowing field is worried”). But already in the poems of 1908-1909, romantic motifs clearly appeared in his work: “ Young Death», « Tramp», « Motyka».

Among the poets of the older generation, A. N. Varlamov calls the name of Valery Bryusov the most attractive to Alexander Green. Greene's biographer concludes: Greene " in his youth he wrote poetry in which the influence of symbolism is felt more strongly than in his prose" During the years of the revolution, Green paid tribute to civic poetry: “ Bells», « Dispute», « Petrograd in the autumn of 1917" Literary critic and emigrant poet Vadim Kreid at the end of the 20th century responded in the New York “New Journal” about the last poem: ““Petrograd in the autumn of 1917” by A. Green is newspaper poems that have something of a report in them, but this They are also valuable, because they are historical in the literal sense of the word. This kind of poetry was written by Pyotr Potemkin and Sasha Cherny, the emigrant newspaper poet Munstein and the “red”, as he called himself, newspaper poet Vasily Knyazev.”

Many of the poet's lyric poems of the 1910s-1920s were dedicated to Vera Pavlovna Abramova(Kalitskaya), Nina Nikolaevna Mironova(Green). In 1919, he published the poem “Flame” in the magazine “Flame” edited by A.V. Lunacharsky. Factory of Drozd and Lark" However, by the 20s, Green the prose writer overshadowed Green the poet.

First attempt to publish Soviet era(early 1960s) Greene's poetry collection ended in failure. Only the intervention of the poet Leonid Martynov shook the established opinion: “ Greene's poems need to be published. And as soon as possible" As N. Orishchuk writes, the fact that Green wrote satirical poems came in handy. This allowed Soviet criticism to conclude that the poet was revolutionary. However, Orishchuk believes that the statement about Green’s susceptibility to revolutionary sentiments conceals one of the Soviet myths about Green, namely the myth about Green as the author of a political declaration. One way or another, several of Green’s satirical poems were published in 1969 in the large series “Poet’s Library” as part of the publication “Poetic Satire of the First Russian Revolution (1905-1907).” In the 1991 Collected Works of Greene, 27 of the poet's poems were published in the third volume.

Place in literature

A sailboat symbolizing Gray's ship from A. S. Green's story "Scarlet Sails"

Alexander Green occupies a very special place in Russian and world literature. He had neither predecessors nor direct successors. Critics tried to compare him with those close in style to Edgar Allan Poe, Ernst Hoffmann, Robert Stevenson, Bret Harte and others - but each time it turned out that the similarity was superficial and limited. " He seems to be a classic of Soviet literature, but at the same time not quite: he is alone, outside the frame, outside the series, outside literary continuity».

Even the genre of his works is difficult to determine. Sometimes Greene's books are classified as science fiction (or fantasy), but he himself protested against this. Yuri Olesha recalled that he once expressed his admiration to Green for the wonderful fantastic idea of ​​a flying man (“ Glittering World"), but Green was even offended: " This is a symbolic novel, not a fantasy one! It’s not a person flying at all, it’s the soaring of the spirit!" A significant part of Greene’s works do not contain any fantastic techniques (for example, “ Scarlet Sails»).

However, with all the originality of Green’s work, his main value guidelines are in line with the traditions of Russian classics. From what has been said above about the ideological motives of Green’s prose, brief conclusions can be formulated: Green is a moralist, a talented defender of the traditional humanistic principles of Russian literature moral ideals. « For the most part, A. Green's works are poetically and psychologically sophisticated fairy tales, short stories and sketches, which tell about the joy of dreams coming true, about the human right to more than just “living” on earth, and about the fact that the earth and sea are full miracles - miracles of love, thought and nature - joyful meetings, deeds and legends... In the romance of the Grinov type “there is no peace, no comfort,” it comes from an unbearable thirst to see the world more perfect, more sublime, and therefore the artist’s soul reacts so painfully to everything dark , mournful, humiliating, offending humanity».

The poet Leonid Martynov, who revered the work of Alexander Green, in the late 1960s drew the attention of his contemporaries to the fact that “ Greene was not only a wonderful romantic, but one of the brilliant critical realists" Because of the reissue of the same works, Greene is known “ far from entirely, presenting it still somehow one-sidedly, often in a leaf-romantic way».

Religious views

Alexander Greene was baptized according to the Orthodox rite, although his father was still a Catholic at that moment (he converted to Orthodoxy when Alexander was 11 years old). Some episodes of his early life described in " Autobiographical story”, are interpreted as an indicator that in his youth Green was far from religion.

Later, Greene's religious views began to change. The novel The Shining World (1921) contains an extensive and vivid scene, which was later cut out at the request of Soviet censors: Runa enters the village church, kneels before a painted “holy girl from Nazareth”, next to whom “the pensive eyes of the little Christ looked to the distant fate of the world." Runa asks God to strengthen her faith, and in response she sees Drood appear in the picture and join Christ and the Madonna. This scene and Drood's numerous appeals in the novel show that Greene viewed his ideals as close to Christian ones, as one of the paths to the Shining World, “where it is quiet and dazzling.”

Nina Nikolaevna recalled that in Crimea they often attended church; Green’s favorite holiday was Easter. In a letter to Vera shortly before his death (1930), Green explained: “ Nina and I believe without trying to understand anything, since it is impossible to understand. We are given only signs of the participation of the Higher Will in life" Green refused to give an interview to Bezbozhnik magazine, saying: I believe in God" Before his death, Green invited a local priest, confessed and received communion.

Creativity in the mirror of criticism

Pre-revolutionary criticism

Attitude literary critics to Green's work was heterogeneous and changed over time. Pre-revolutionary criticism was generally dismissive of Greene's works, despite the fact that Greene's early realistic stories were well received by readers. In particular, Menshevik critic N.V. Volsky condemned Green for excessive displays of violence. The new romantic stage of the writer’s work that followed the realistic one, manifested in the choice of exotic names and subjects, was also not liked by critics; Greene was not taken seriously and was accused of epigonism, imitation of Edgar Allan Poe, E. T. A. Hoffman, Jack London, Haggard. L. N. Voitolovsky and A. G. Gornfeld came to the writer’s defense, believing that Green’s likening to popular Western romantic writers essentially explains nothing in Alexander Green’s creative method.

Thus, the critic Gornfeld wrote in 1910: “Strangers are his own people, distant countries are close to him, because these are people, because all countries are our land... Therefore, Bret Harte or Kipling, or Poe, who really gave a lot Green's stories are just a shell... Green is primarily a poet of intense life. He wants to talk only about the important, about the main thing, about the fatal: and not in everyday life, but in the human soul.” L. N. Voitolovsky supported Gornfeld, speaking about the story “Reno Island”: “Perhaps this air is not entirely tropical, but this is a new special air that all of modernity breathes - alarming, stuffy, tense and powerless... Romance is different from romance. And decadents are called romantics... Greene has a different kind of romanticism. He is akin to Gorky’s romanticism... He breathes faith in life, a thirst for healthy and strong sensations.” The similarity between the romantic works of Gorky and Green was noted by other critics, for example, V. E. Kovsky.

Arkady Gornfeld returned once again to Greene’s allusions to Edgar Poe in 1917 in a review of the story “ Adventurer" “At first impression, the story of Mr. Alexander Greene can easily be mistaken for the story of Edgar Allan Poe... It is not difficult to reveal and show everything that is external, conventional, mechanical in this imitation... Russian imitation is infinitely weaker than the English original. It is indeed weaker... This... would not be worth talking about if Greene were a powerless imitator, if he wrote only worthless parodies of Edgar Allan Poe, if only the comparison of his works with the work of his wonderful prototype would be an unnecessary insult... Greene - an extraordinary figure in our fiction, the fact that he is little appreciated is rooted to a certain extent in his shortcomings, but his merits play a much more significant role... Greene is still not an imitator of Edgar Allan Poe, not an adopter of the stencil, not even a stylizer; he is more independent than many who write mediocre stories... Greene has no template at his core;... Greene would have been Greene if there had not been Edgar Allan Poe.”

Gradually, in the criticism of the 1910s, an opinion was formed about the writer as a “master of plot,” a stylizer and a romantic. Therefore, in subsequent decades, the leitmotif of Green’s research was the study of the writer’s psychologism and the principles of his plotting.

Criticism of the 1920s-1930s

In the 1920s, after Greene wrote his most significant works, interest in his prose reached its peak. Eduard Bagritsky wrote that “ few Russian writers have so perfectly mastered the word in all its fullness" Maxim Gorky spoke about Green like this: “ useful storyteller, useful dreamer" Mayakovsky, on the contrary, was skeptical about Green’s work: “The counter of the large Baku Worker store. In total, 47 books fit... Of those that fit, 22 are foreign... Russian, and then Green.”

In the 1930s-1940s, attention to the work of A. Greene was complicated by the general ideologization of literary criticism. However, in the 1930s, articles about Greene by Marietta Shaginyan, Cornelius Zelinsky, Konstantin Paustovsky, Caesar Volpe, Mikhail Levidov, Mikhail Slonimsky, Ivan Sergievsky were published , Alexandra Roskina. According to Shaginyan, “Green’s misfortune and misfortune is that he developed and embodied his theme not on the material of living reality - then we would have before us the true romance of socialism - but on the material of the conventional world of a fairy tale, entirely included in the “associative system” capitalist relations."

Cornelius Zelinsky's approach was different. Like Gornfeld, he compares the creative method of Green and Edgar Allan Poe. According to Zelinsky, A. Green is not just a dreamer, but a “militant dreamer.” Discussing the writer’s style, he comes to the following conclusion: “ In the eternal hunt for the melody of poetic fantasy, Greene learned to weave such verbal networks, to operate with words so freely, elastically and subtly that his skill cannot fail to attract our working interest" “Green, in his fantastic short stories, creates such a play of artistic forms, where the content is also conveyed by the movement of verbal parts, the properties of a difficult style.” “In Green’s stories one can trace a curious and gradual transformation of his style, in connection with the evolution from realist to science fiction writer, from Kuprin to ... Edgar Allan Poe.”

Literary critic Ivan Sergievsky did not avoid the traditional comparison of Green with the classics of the adventure genre in the West: “Green’s novels and stories echo the works of the classic adventure-fantasy short story Edgar Allan Poe and the best works Joseph Conrad. However, Greene does not have the power of thought, and there are no realistic traits of these writers. It is much closer to the adventure-fantastic novella of artists of modern decadence such as, say, McOrlan.” In the end, I.V. Sergievsky still comes to the conclusion that Alexander Green has overcome the “adventurous canon of literature of bourgeois decadence.”

But not all pre-war critics could fit Green into the usual scheme of socialist creativity. The ideologized approach to the writer in pre-war journalism was revealed with all its force in Vera Smirnova’s article “A Ship without a Flag.” In her opinion, writers like Greene deserve to have their anti-Soviet nature made clear, and that “the ship on which Greene and his crew of outcasts sailed from the shores of their fatherland has no flag, it is heading “to nowhere."

Post-war criticism

Free discussion of Green's work was interrupted in the late forties during the ideological struggle with representatives of so-called cosmopolitanism. Carrying out the guidelines of the new program of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to tighten the ideological course of the country and for the approval of a new “Soviet patriotism”, Soviet writer V. M. Vazhdaev in the article “ Preacher of cosmopolitanism"in the magazine "New World" (1950) turned to the work of Alexander Green. Vazhdaev’s entire article is an open and unambiguous call to fight against cosmopolitanism, which, according to Vazhdaev, was embodied by A. S. Green: “In this regard, it is worth taking a closer look at the peculiar cult of Alexander Green, a third-rate writer, author of “fantastic” novels and short stories , a writer whom aesthetic criticism has persistently praised for many years.”

V. Vazhdaev further argued that numerous fans of A. Green - Konstantin Paustovsky, Sergei Bobrov, Boris Annibal, Mikh. Slonimsky, L. Borisov and others - exaggerated Green's work beyond all measure into a major literary phenomenon. Moreover, the Stalinist publicist saw some political motives in the creation of Greenland. The apotheosis of Vazhdaev was expressed in the following statement: “A. Green was never a harmless “dreamer.” He was a militant reactionary and a cosmopolitan." “The artist’s skill is inextricably linked with his worldview and is determined by it; innovation is possible only where there is a bold revolutionary thought, deep ideological commitment and the artist’s devotion to his homeland and people.” And the work of A. Green, according to Vazhdaev, did not meet the requirements of revolutionary innovation, since Green did not love his homeland, but painted and poeticized the alien bourgeois world. Vazhdaev’s rhetoric was repeated word for word in A. Tarasenkov’s article “On National Traditions and Bourgeois Cosmopolitanism” in the Znamya magazine, published simultaneously with Vazhdaev’s article.

After Stalin's death, Green's books were again in demand among readers. The ideological approach to Greene gradually began to give way to a literary one. In 1955, in the book “Golden Rose”, Konstantin Paustovsky assessed the significance of the story “Scarlet Sails” as follows: “ If Greene had died, leaving us with only one of his prose poems, “Scarlet Sails,” then this would have been enough to place him in the ranks of wonderful writers who disturb the human heart with a call to perfection».

Writer and literary critic Viktor Shklovsky, reflecting on Greene the romantic, wrote that Greene “ led people, leading them away from the desire for ordinary bourgeois well-being. He taught them to be brave, truthful, believe in themselves, believe in Man».

Writer and critic Vladimir Amlinsky drew attention to Green's peculiar loneliness in literary world Soviet Union. “In today’s literary process he is less noticeable than any of the Masters of his caliber; in today’s criticism (...) his name is mentioned in passing.” Analyzing Green’s work in comparison with the work of M. Bulgakov, A. Platonov, K. Paustovsky, who are somewhat similar to Green, Amlinsky makes the following conclusion: “Green’s failure lies in the extraordinary concentration of romanticism, which had the opposite effect, especially in the early stories.” .

Vadim Kovsky believes that “ Greene's prose often provokes “superficial enthusiasm” (…) However, more often than not, Greene simply deceives us, hiding under the guise of the adventure genre and the unmistakable emotional impact a high artistic thought, a complex concept of personality, an extensive system of connections with the surrounding reality». « Greene has a highly poetic vision of the world, characterized by pervasive lyricism.. “The ‘cognitive part’, the material specification of the description are contraindicated for such a vision,” he writes in the book “ The romantic world of Alexander Green».

Critic V. A. Revich (1929-1997) in his posthumously published essay “Unreal Reality” stated that those who accused Green of “escaping reality” were largely right - the demonstrative ignorance of the surrounding imperial or Soviet realities was a deliberate challenge to the vices of this reality. Because Greene was never a fiction writer detached from life, “ his world is a world of militant goodness, kindness and harmony. Unlike many noisy and arrogant contemporaries, Greene is no worse read today than at the time of its first publication. This means that in its conventional plots there is something eternal.».

Critic and writer Irina Vasyuchenko in the monograph “ The life and work of Alexander Green” writes that Greene had not only numerous predecessors, but also heirs. Among them, she points out Vladimir Nabokov. In her opinion, Green’s style of writing is close to the style of V.V. Nabokov’s novel “Invitation to Execution.” Vasyuchenko also claims that Greene managed to anticipate the creative quest of Mikhail Bulgakov in the novel “The Master and Margarita.” On the similarities of Green's story " Fandango“and some episodes of Bulgakov’s novel were also paid attention to by literary critic Marietta Chudakova.

Contemporary writer Natalya Meteleva published her own analysis of Green’s work. The basis of Green’s worldview is, in her opinion, a child’s attitude towards the world (infantility). The writer is distinguished by “ naivety<…>an eternal teenager with complete inability to live in the world, which he retained until the end of his life" “When they talk about the “romantic maximalism” of A. S. Green, for some reason they always forget that maximalism in adulthood is a sign of infantile personality development.” Meteleva reproaches Green for his unkind attitude towards technological progress, calls the writer a “hippie storm petrel”, and in his books she sees “the eternal dreams of a dependent about equalization” (““do good”: have you noticed at whose expense this good is being done?”).

Green scholar Natalya Orishchuk points out that the term is more applicable to Green neo-romanticism than the usual romanticism. She dwells in detail on the process of “Sovietization” of Green’s work in the 1960s - the posthumous inscription of the writer’s initially apolitical work into the context of art socialist realism. In her opinion, Greene's works became the object of very intense indoctrination. The resulting Soviet stereotype of Greene's perception became unique cultural phenomenon- "Green's sign". “The products of Soviet ideological myth-making,” according to Orishchuk, are four myths:

1. Green’s devotion to the October Revolution and the state political regime; 2. Green's transition to the fold of socialist realism; 3. Interpretation of Greene's early prose as a political declaration of the writer; 4. Green as an author of works for children.

As a result, the phenomenon of a mass Soviet cult of Greene emerged in the 1960s.

Bibliography

• 1906 : To Italy (the first legally published story by A. S. Green) The merit of Private Panteleev Elephant and Moska
• 1907 : Oranges Brick and music Favorite Marat On the stock exchange At leisure Underground Case
• 1908 : Hunchback Guest Eroshka Toy Captain Quarantine Swan Little Committee Checkmate in three moves Punishment She Hand Telegraph operator from Medyansky Bor Third floor Hold and deck Murderer The man who cries
• 1909 : Barge on the Green Canal Airship Dacha of the big lake Nightmare Little conspiracy Maniac Accommodation Window in the forest Reno Island According to the marriage advertisement Incident in the street Dog Paradise Cyclone in the Plain of Rains Navigator of the “Four Winds”
• 1910 : In the flood In the snow Return of the "Seagull" Duel Khonsa's estate The story of one murder Lanfier colony Jacobson's raspberry garden Puppet On the island On the hillside Nakhodka Easter on a steamboat Powder magazine Strait of storms Story Tag River Death Romelinka Mystery of the forest Box of soap
• 1911 : Forest drama Moonlight Pillory Mnemonic System Atlea Words
• 1912 : Hotel of Evening Lights (1912) The Life of Gnor A Winter's Tale From the detective's memorable book Ksenia Turpanova The Puddle of the Bearded Pig The Passenger of the Pyzhikov The Adventures of Ginch The Passage Yard The Story of a Strange Fate The Blue Cascade of Tellurium The Tragedy of the Suan Plateau Heavy Air Fourth for All
• 1913 : Adventure Balcony Headless Horseman Wilder path Granka and his son Long journey Devil of the Orange Waters Lives of great people Zurbagan shooter History of Tauren On the hillside Naive Tussaletto New circus Siurg tribe Last minutes of Ryabinin Seller of happiness Sweet poison of the city Taboo Mysterious forest Quiet everyday life Three adventures of Ekhma Man with a person
• 1914 : Without an audience The Forgotten The mystery of foreseen death Earth and water And spring will come for me How the strongman Red John fought the king Legends of war Dead for the living In the balance One of many A story ended thanks to a bullet A duel A penitential manuscript Incidents in Madame Cerise's apartment A rare photographic camera Conscience has spoken The Sufferer A strange incident at a masquerade Fate taken by the horns Three brothers Urban Graz receives guests An episode during the capture of Fort Cyclops
• 1915 : Lunatic aviator Shark Diamonds Armenian Tintos Attack Batalist Shuang Missing in action Battle in the air Blonde Bullfight Fighting with bayonets Fighting with a machine gun Eternal bullet Alarm clock explosion Returned hell Magic screen Fiction of Epitrim Harem of Khaki Bey Voice and sounds Two brothers Double Plereza The case with the white one bird, or White Bird and the Destroyed Church Wild Mill Man's Friend Iron Bird Yellow City The Beast of Rochefort Golden Pond Game Toys Interesting Photo Adventurer Captain Duke Rocking Rock Dagger and Mask Nightmare Case Leal at Home Flying Doge Bear and the German Bear Hunt Sea Battle On the American mountains Over the abyss Hired killer Pik-Mik's legacy Impenetrable shell Night walk At night Night and day Dangerous jump Original spy Island Hunt in the air Hunt for Marbrun Hunt for a bully Mine hunter Dance of death Duel of leaders Suicide note Incident with the sentry Bird Kam-Bu Path Fifteenth of July Scout Jealousy and Sword Fatal Place Woman's Hand Knight Malyar Masha's Wedding Serious Prisoner The Power of Words Blue Top Killer Word Death of Alambert Calm Soul Strange Weapon Scary Package Terrible Secret of a Car Fate of the First Platoon Mystery of a Moonlit Night Here or There Three Meetings Three Bullets Murder in a Fish Shop Murder romance Choking gas Terrible vision The owner from Lodz Black flowers Black novel Black farm Wonderful failure
• 1916 : Scarlet Sails (tale-extravaganza) (publ. 1923) The great happiness of a little fighter Cheerful butterfly Around the world Resurrection of Pierre High technology Behind bars Capture of the banner Idiot How I died on the screen Labyrinth Lion's blow Invincible Something from the diary Fire and water Poisoned island The Hermit of Grape Peak Vocation Romantic murder Blind Day Kanet Hundred miles along the river Mysterious record Mystery of the house 41 Dance Tram disease Dreamers Black diamond
• 1917 : Bourgeois spirit Return Rebellion Enemies Main culprit Wild rose Every millionaire himself The bailiff's mistress Pendulum of spring Darkness Knife and pencil Fire water Orgy Walking to the revolution (essay) Peace To be continued by Rene Birth of thunder Fatal circle Suicide Creation of Asper Merchants Invisible corpse Prisoner of the "Crosses" Apprentice sorcerer Fantastic providence Man from the Durnovo dacha Black car Esperanto masterpiece
• 1918 : Atta him! The fight against death The ignorant beech Vanya is angry with humanity The cheerful dead Back and forth The hairdresser's invention How I was a king Carnival Club arap Spikes Ships in Lissa (publ. 1922) The footman spat in the food It became easier The lagging platoon The crime of the fallen leaf Trifles Conversation Make a grandmother The power of the incomprehensible An old man walks in a circle. Three candles.
• 1919 : Magic Mischief Fighter
• 1921 : Vulture Competition in Lisse
• 1922 : White fire Visiting a friend Rope Monte Cristo Tender romance New Year's holiday father and little daughter Saryn on the typhoid dotted line
• 1923 : Riot on the ship "Alceste" Genius player Gladiators Voice and eye Willow Be that as it may Horse head Order for the army Missing sun Traveler Uy-Few-Eoy Mermaids of the air Heart of the desert Loquacious brownie Murder in Kunst-Fisch
• 1924 : Legless White Ball Tramp and Warden Cheerful Companion Gutt, Witt and Redott Voice of the Siren Boarded Up House Pied Piper On the Cloudy Bank Monkey According to the Law Random Income
• 1925 : Gold and Miners Winner Gray car Fourteen feet Six matches
• 1926 : Marriage of August Esborn Snake Personal reception Nanny Glenau Someone else's fault
• 1927 : Two Promises The Legend of Ferguson The Weakness of Daniel Horton A Strange Evening Fandango Four Guineas
• 1928 : Watercolor Social Reflex Elda and Angotea
• 1929 : Mistletoe Branch Thief in the Forest Father's Wrath Betrayal Lock Opener
• 1930 : Barrel of fresh water Green lamp The story of a hawk Silence
• 1932 : Autobiographical story
• 1933 : Velvet curtain Commandant of the port of Paris

Green A. Collected works, 1-6 vols. M., Pravda, 1965.

Green A. Collected Works, 1-6 vols. M., Pravda, 1980. Republished in 1983.

Green A. Collected works, 1-5 volumes. M.: Fiction, 1991.

Green A. From the unpublished and forgotten. - Literary heritage, vol. 74. M.: Nauka, 1965.

Green A. I am writing you the whole truth. Letters from 1906-1932. - Koktebel, 2012, series: Images of the past., (erroneous).

Memory

Named after Alexander Green

• In 1985, the name “Grinevia” was assigned to the small planet 2786, discovered on September 6, 1978 by Soviet astronomer N. S. Chernykh.

• In 2000, on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the birth of A. S. Green, the Union of Writers of Russia, the administration of the cities of Kirov and Slobodsky established the annual Russian literary prize named after Alexander Green for works for children and youth, imbued with the spirit of romance and hope.
• In 2012, the three-deck river passenger ship received the name “Alexander Green”.

Museums

• In 1960, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, the writer’s wife opened the Writer’s House-Museum in Old Crimea.
• In 1970, the Greene Literary and Memorial Museum was also created in Feodosia.
• On the occasion of the centenary of his birth, in 1980, the Alexander Green Museum was opened in the city of Kirov.
• In 2010, the Alexander Greene Museum of Romance was created in the city of Slobodskaya.

Green's readings and festivals

• International scientific conference “Grinov Readings” - has been held in even years in Feodosia since 1988 (the first half of September).
• Green's readings in Kirov are held once every 5 years (sometimes more often) since 1975, on the writer's birthday (August 23).
• Since 1987, the Greenland art song festival has been held in the village of Basharovo near Kirov.
• “Bereg Grina” - a Far Eastern festival of art songs and poetry near Nakhodka; has been held since 1994.
• The annual Greenland festival in Old Crimea, held since 2005 on the writer’s birthday.

Streets

Alexander Green Street exists in many Russian cities:

• Arkhangelsk,
• Gelendzhik,
• Moscow (since 1986),
• Naberezhnye Chelny,
• Saint Petersburg,
• Slobodskaya,
• Old Crimea,
• Feodosia.

In Kirov there is an embankment named after the writer..

Libraries

Several large libraries are named after Green:

• Kirov Regional Library for Children and Youth.
• Youth Library No. 16 in Moscow.
• City library in Slobodskoye.
• Library in Nizhny Novgorod.
• Central city library in the city of Feodosia.

Other

• In Kirov there is a Gymnasium named after Alexander Green.
• In 1986, in Leningrad, a memorial plaque was unveiled on a house at 11 Dekabristov Street (architect V. B. Bukhaev) with the text: “ The famous Soviet writer Alexander Green lived and worked in this house in 1921-1922." The board should be located on Pestel Street, building 11 (in the early 1920s it was called “Dekabrist Pestel Street”), but for more than 30 years the board has been hanging at a different address.
• In 2000, a bronze bust of the writer was installed on the Green embankment in Kirov. (Sculptors Kotsienko K.I. and Bondarev V.A.)
• There is a tradition in St. Petersburg when Russian schoolchildren attend their graduation party at night at the mouth of the Neva. sailing ship with scarlet sails. See Scarlet Sails (graduates holiday).
• In 1987, in the city of Chusovoy (where Green lived for some time in his youth), in an ethnographic park, on the initiative of Leonard Postnikov, local sculptor Viktor Bokarev created a project for a monument to Alexander Green, and a year later, Perm resident Radik Mustafin carved the image of the writer from a single piece of granite. This monument is one of a kind, since there are no more monuments to Alexander Green in full height. Now the monument stands right in the waters of the Arkhipovka River. Newlyweds often come to him, according to established tradition. Next to Green, rocking on the waves of his " scarlet sails».
• In 2014, Green Boulevard was named after the writer in St. Petersburg.

Residence addresses

House-Museum of A. S. Green, Kirov. It is located on the site of the house where the future writer spent his childhood in 1888-1894. The dilapidated house was demolished in 1902, a new building was built in 1905.

Vyatka province

• 1880-1881 - Slobodskoy.
• 1881-1888 - Vyatka, in the building of the Vyatka provincial zemstvo government.
• 1888-1894 - Vyatka, st. Nikitskaya (now Volodarsky St., 44).
• 1894-1896 - Vyatka, st. Preobrazhenskaya, 17.

Petrograd-Leningrad

• 1913-1914 - Zagorodny Avenue, 10
• 1914-1916 - Pushkinskaya street, 1:
• 1920 - May 1921 - House of Arts (DISK) - Nevsky Prospekt (then called 25th October Avenue), 15 (“Chicherin’s house”).
• May 1921 - February 1922 - Zaremba apartment building - Panteleimonovskaya Street (Pestelya Street since 1923), 11.
• 1922-1924 - apartment building - 8th Rozhdestvenskaya (Soviet since 1923) street, 23.

Odessa

• St. Lanzheronovskaya, 2.

Feodosia

• Gallery, 10.

Film adaptations

• 1958 - Watercolor
• 1961 - “Scarlet Sails”, dir. A. L. Ptushko
• 1967 - Running on the Waves, dir. P. G. Lyubimov
• 1968 - Knight of Dreams, dir. V. Derbenev, Moldova-film, Lenfilm, pseudobiographical film ballad about the youth of A. Green
• 1969 - Lanphier Colony
• 1972 - Morgiana, Juraj Hertz
• 1976 - The Deliverer (film by Yugoslav-Croatian director Krsto Papic, based on the story “The Pied Piper”)
• 1982 - Assol, television film-play directed by B. P. Stepantsev
• 1983 - The Man from Green Country (teleplay)
• 1984 - Shining World
• 1984 - Life and books of Alexander Green (television play)
• 1986 - Golden Chain
• 1988 - Mister Decorator
• 1988 - “Father’s Wrath” (short film, directed by I. Morozov)
• 1990 - One hundred miles along the river
• 1992 - Road to nowhere
• 1992 - “The Pied Piper” (short film, directed by Yuri Pokrovsky)
• 1994 - “Angothea” (short film, directed by Elena Malikova)
• 1995 - Gelly and Nok
• 2003 - Infection
• 2007 - Running on the waves
• 2010 - The True Story of Scarlet Sails
• 2010 - Man from the Unfulfilled (documentary film by V. Nedoshivin about A. Green)

, Vyatka province, Russian Empire - July 8, city of Old Crimea, USSR) - Russian and Soviet writer, prose writer, representative of neo-romanticism. He considered himself a Symbolist. Creator of the fictional country Greenland, where his most famous story, “Scarlet Sails,” takes place. Since 1924 he lived and worked in Crimea.

Family

Brothers and sisters:

Biography

Alexander Green with his first wife Vera Pavlovna in the village of Velikiy Bor near Pinega. 1911

Alexander Grinevsky was born on August 11 (23), 1880 in the city of Slobodskaya Vyatka province. Since childhood, Green loved books about sailors and travel. He dreamed of going to sea as a sailor and, driven by this dream, made attempts to run away from home.

A significant influence on Green was exerted by his father, the nobleman Stefan Grinevsky, who allowed his son to buy a gun and encouraged him to take long excursions into nature, which influenced both the development of the young man’s character and the future original style of Green’s prose.

Due to a conflict with the authorities, Green was forced to hide in Finland from the end of the year, but, having learned about the February Revolution, he returned to Petrograd. In the spring of the year, he writes a story-essay “On Foot for the Revolution,” testifying to the writer’s hope for renewal. However, reality soon disappoints the writer.

In 1924, Green’s novel “The Shining World” was published in Leningrad. That same year, Green moved to Feodosia. In 1927, he took part in the collective novel “Big Fires”, published in the magazine “Ogonyok”.

The novel “Touchable,” which he began at this time, was never completed. Green died on July 8, 1932 in the city of Stary Krym. He was buried there in the city cemetery. On his grave, sculptor Tatyana Gagarina erected a monument “Running on the Waves”.

Addresses

In Petrograd - Leningrad

• 1920 - 05.1921 - DISK - 25th October Avenue, 15;
• 05.1921 - 02.1922 - Zaremba apartment building - Panteleimonovskaya street, 11;
• 1923-1924 - apartment building - Dekabristov Street, 11.

Addresses in Odessa

• St. Lanzheronovskaya, 2.

Bibliography

Memory

There is a tradition in St. Petersburg when, on the night of the prom of Russian schoolchildren, a sailing ship with scarlet sails enters the mouth of the Neva. See Scarlet Sails (graduates holiday).

Alexander Green Prize

Memorial plaque on the Green embankment, 21, Kirov

Bust on the Green embankment in Kirov

Alexander Green on a postage stamp of Ukraine, 2005

In 2000, on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the birth of A. S. Green, the Union of Writers of Russia, the administration of Kirov and Slobodsky established the annual Russian Literary Prize named after Alexander Green for works for children and youth, imbued with the spirit of romance and hope.

Museums

• In 1960, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, the writer’s wife opened the Writer’s House-Museum in Old Crimea.
• In 1970, the Greene Literary and Memorial Museum was also created in Feodosia.
• On the occasion of the centenary of his birth, in 1980, the Alexander Green House-Museum was opened in the city of Kirov.
• In 2010, the Alexander Greene Romance Museum was created in the city of Slobodskaya.

Green's readings

• International scientific conference “Grinov Readings” - has been held in even years in Feodosia since 1988 (the first half of September).
• Green's readings in Old Crimea are an annual festival on the writer's birthday (August 23).
• Green's readings in Kirov are held once every 5 years since 1975 on the writer's birthday.

Streets

• In Kirov there is an embankment named after him.
• In Moscow in 1986, a street was named after the writer (Green Street).
• In Old Crimea there is a street named after him.
• In Slobodskoye, the street on which A. Green was born is named in his honor.
• In the city of Naberezhnye Chelny there is a street named after the writer (Alexander Green Street).
• In Gelendzhik there is a street named after him (Green Street).
• In Feodosia there is Alexander Green Street
• In Riga there is Alexander Greens Street, but it is named after the Latvian writer Aleksandrs Grins, the namesake and namesake of the Russian romantic.

Libraries

• The Kirov Regional Children's Library named after A. S. Green is located in Kirov.
• In Slobodskoye the city library is named after A. Green.
• In Moscow Youth Library No. 16 named after. A. Green.
• Library named after A. Green in Nizhny Novgorod.
• Central City Library named after. A. Green in Feodosia, Crimea, Ukraine.

Other

• In 1985, the minor planet 2786, discovered on September 6, 1978 by Soviet astronomer N. S. Chernykh, was named Grinevia.
• Since 1987, the festival of author's songs "Greenland", named after the writer, has been held in Kirov.
• In 2000, a bronze bust of the writer was installed on the embankment in Kirov. (Sculptors Kotsienko K.I. and Bondarev V.A.)
• In Kirov there is a Gymnasium named after Alexander Green.
• Memorial plaque in the city of Slobodskoye, where the writer was born.

Based on Green's works

Movies

• - Morgiana
• - The Man from Green Country (television play)
• - Life and books of Alexander Green (television play)
• - One hundred miles along the river
• - Gelly and Nok
• - Green lamp

Animated film

Rock opera

Russian composer Andrei Bogoslovsky wrote the musical “Scarlet Sails” in the second half of the 20th century. Recorded in 1977.

Adaptations

• “Scarlet Sails” () is a graduation performance by graduates of the Faculty of Puppetry of the Music College named after. Gnesins, who created the famous theater “People and Dolls” under the leadership of L. A. Khait ( Gray- V. Garkalin, Assol- doll)
• Scarlet Sails - rock opera by A. Bogoslovsky. Recorded by VIA "Music" in 1977.

• Musical “Scarlet Sails” (2007)
• “Scarlet Sails” is a musical performance. Theater-festival "Baltic House". Staged by Eduard Gaidai, stage director - Raimundas Banionis, composer - Faustas Latenas. Premiere in St. Petersburg - 2008.
• “Scarlet Sails” is a musical extravaganza based on the play by Mikhail Bartenev and Andrei Usachev. RAMT. Stage director: Alexey Borodin. Music - Maxim Dunaevsky. 2009
• “Assol” is a musical extravaganza based on the play by Pavel Morozov, composer Mikhail Mordkovich, in the Lugansk Regional Academic Russian Drama Theater. Stage director: Oleg Alexandrov. 2010
• Musical extravaganza “Assol” based on the play by Pavel Morozov, Zhambyl Regional Russian Drama Theater (Kazakhstan). Premiere - November 13, 2010.
• Performance “Scarlet Sails”, “Theater on Spasskaya” (Kirov). Director - Boris Pavlovich. Premiere May 20, 2011.
• The musical “Scarlet Sails” by Maxim Dunaevsky at the Free Space Theater. Libretto by Mikhail Bartenev and Andrey Usachev. Stage director - A. Mikhailov. (2011)
• Musical performance “Scarlet Sails” based on the play by Pavel Morozov at the Irkutsk Regional Theater for Young Spectators. Stage director: Ksenia Torskaya. 2011
• “Scarlet Sails” at the Bratsk Drama Theater. Stage director - Valery Shevchenko. (2008)
• Musical-drama “Scarlet Sails”. Moscow musical theater "Monoton". Music by A. Bogoslovsky. Libretto by I. Chistozvonova. 2010
• “Scarlet Sails” (based on the play “Assol”) on the stage of Chuvash state theater opera and ballet. Stage director: Anatoly Ilyin, Composer: Olga Nesterova. 2011.
• Musical-drama “Scarlet Sails”. Moscow musical theater "Monoton". Music by A. Bogoslovsky. Libretto by I. Chistozvonova. 2010
• The play “Pier of Scarlet Dreams” at the Irkutsk Regional Puppet Theater “Stork” based on the works “Scarlet Sails” and “Running on the Waves”. Author - Alexander Khromov. Director - Yuri Utkin. Premiere: March 21, 2012.
• The play “Scarlet Sails” (based on the play “Assol” by P. Morozov) at the “SILVER ISLAND” theater. Stage director - Honored Artist of Ukraine Lyudmila Lymar. (Kyiv, Ukraine). 2011
• Theatrical extravaganza “Scarlet Sails” on the stage of the Dzerzhinsky Drama Theater. Stage director: Valentin Morozov. 2012
• The musical “Scarlet Sails” at the Globus Theater to the music of Maxim Dunaevsky, directed by Nina Chusova. 2012
• Premiere of the play “Scarlet Sails” based on Pavel Morozov’s play “Assol” at the Bryansk Theater of Young Spectators Directed by Larisa Lemenkova. 2012
• musical “Scarlet Sails” to the music of Maxim Dunaevsky at the Perm Theater. Stage director Boris Milgram. 2012

• The song of the bard Vladimir Lanzberg “Scarlet Sails” and thematically adjacent to it “But in vain no one believed in miracles.”
• Song by Yuri Chernavsky to the words of Leonid Derbenev “Zurbagan”, performed by Vladimir Presnyakov Jr. (1985)
• Song “Assol” by the group “Untouchables” from the album “Brel, wandered, wandered” (1994)
• “Assol and Gray” - song by the group “Zimovye Zverey” from the album “Like Adults” (2006)
• Instrumental New-Age album by Andrei Klimkovsky - “Scarlet Sails” (2000)

Notes

Literature

• Basinsky P.V., Fedyakin S.R. Russian literature of the late XIX - early XX centuries and the first emigration. - M., 1998.
• Blok A. A. Notebooks 1901 - 1920. - M., 1965.
• Borisov L. I. The Wizard from Gel-Gyu. Romantic story. - L., 1972.
• Memories of Alexander Green / Comp., intro., notes. Vl. Sandler. - L., 1972.
• Green N. N. Memories of Alexander Green. - Simferopol, 2000.
• Kobzev N. A. A novel by Alexander Green. - Chisinau, 1983.
• Kovsky V. E. The romantic world of Alexander Green. - M., 1967.
• Literary heritage. T. 93. From the history of Soviet literature of the 1920-1930s. - M., 1983.
• Mikhailova L. Alexander Green: Life, personality, creativity. - M., 1972.
• Pervova Yu. A. Memories of Nina Nikolaevna Green. - Simferopol, 2001.
• Prishvin M. M. Diary 1923-1925. - M., 1999.
• Prokhorov E. I. Alexander Green. - M., 1970.
• Tarasenko N. F.

GREEN (real name Grinevsky) Alexander Stepanovich(1880-1932), Russian writer.
In the romantic-fantasy stories “Scarlet Sails” (1923), “Running on the Waves” (1928), the novels “The Shining World” (1924), “The Road to Nowhere” (1930) and short stories, he expressed a humanistic belief in the high moral qualities of man.
* * *
GREEN Alexander Stepanovich (real name Grinevsky), Russian writer.
House-Museum of A. Green
He spent his childhood and youth in Vyatka. His father, a Pole, was exiled to Siberia after participating in the Polish uprising of 1863-1864, where he became an assistant manager of a brewery, then worked as an accountant in a zemstvo hospital; his mother was from the middle class and died when Green was 13 years old. There was no one to raise the boy, but he primary education it was homemade. He studied at the Aleksandrovsky Real School (humanitarian subjects were better), from which he was expelled for a poetic satire on the teacher, then at the Vyatka City School (graduated in 1896). I became interested in reading early. I especially liked to read about travel related to the sea. His favorite authors were Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Alexandre Dumas, Daniel Defoe, Mine Reed, Robert Stevenson. Green's first youthful poetic experiments date back to this period. Being by nature a dreamer and a passionate lover of adventure, the future writer at the age of 16 left Vyatka for Odessa, where, wanting to become a sailor, he got a job as a sailor and sailed to Egypt. Then he tried many other professions, he was a scribe, a bath attendant, a raftsman, he worked as a prospector in the Ural gold mines, in a fishing artel, but he also had to wander. In 1901, partly at the request of his father, he enlisted as a soldier in the 213th Orovai Reserve Battalion (Penza), from where in 1902, having become close to the Socialist Revolutionaries, he deserted. As a member of the underground Socialist Revolutionary organization, he was engaged in propaganda work in Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Tambov, Kyiv, Odessa, and Sevastopol. What attracted Green to the Socialist Revolutionary program was the lack of strict party discipline and the promise of universal happiness after the revolution. In November 1903 he was arrested for this activity for the first time; he was exiled twice in 1907 and 1910.
In 1906, his first story “The Merit of Private Panteleev” and the book “Elephant and Moska” appeared, both of a propaganda nature (circulations were confiscated by censorship and destroyed). The cycle of published works about revolutionary Russia opened with the story “To Italy” (1906). A. Green’s signature was first put on the story “The Case” (1907). In 1908, the collection “The Invisible Cap” was published, which reflected the writer’s already rethought attitude towards the Socialist Revolutionaries and a clear rejection of some of their ideological positions. During his 1910 exile in the Arkhangelsk province, Green wrote a number of “northern” stories (“Ksenia Turpanova”, “The Winter’s Tale”), the heroes of which, tormented by boredom, strive to change their lives and fill it with meaning. Early stories Green's works were written in the spirit of realistic literature of the 1900s; the writer was just trying to find his way in literature. Green’s life, “meager” in warmth and love, and his thirst for adventure intensified his desire for the unknown, the ideal. Green was increasingly attracted by a hero who broke out of the established way of life of most ordinary people (“She”, 1908), the idea of ​​​​creating a strong romantic hero(“Airship”, 1909).
In 1909, the short story “Reno Island” was published - the first truly romantic work Greena. Sailor Tart, finding himself on an exotic island and imbued with its nature, did not want to return to the ship to his crew, because he decided to preserve the freedom he had gained on the island. But loneliness led Tart to death. Thematically close to “Reno Island” are works whose heroes are bright but lonely individuals: “Lanphier Colony” (1910), “The Tragedy of the Suan Plateau” (1912), “The Blue Cascade of Telluri” (1912), “The Zurbagan Shooter” (1913) , “Captain Duke” (1915), “Bitt-Boy, Bringing Happiness” (1918). Gradually, Greene's characters changed without being confined to their own world.
In 1910 Green left the Socialist Revolutionary organization; in 1912 he was accepted by the literary community, becoming close to A. I. Kuprin and A. I. Svirsky. He began to collaborate in periodicals, and until 1917 he published more than 350 stories, poems, and novellas. During the First World War, a long crisis occurred in the writer’s work, caused by the author’s internal fluctuations. Green perceived his contemporary era as anti-aesthetic (“A Tale Finished Thanks to a Bullet,” 1914). In the stories of 1914-1916, one could feel the writer’s attraction to the “mysterious” caused by the influence of Edgar Allan Poe’s aesthetics (“Hell Revisited”, 1915). In 1916, the writer tried to evaluate his own creativity and, on the basis of this assessment, express his attitude towards art. For Green, art became the basis of personal existence, a retreat into a different, more perfect reality; he considered himself a symbolist. At the end of 1916, for his impudent comment about the Tsar, Green was forced to leave Russia and settle in Finland. Having learned about the February Revolution, he returned to Petrograd along the sleepers (essay “On Foot to the Revolution,” 1917). He received the revolution enthusiastically, but these sentiments turned out to be fleeting. Already in the stories “Uprising” (1917), “The Birth of Thunder” (1917), “Pendulum of the Soul” (1917), one can feel the feeling of the writer’s rejection of the new reality. The pamphlet “Blister, or Good Dad” is dedicated to reflections on socialism - in it Green writes with irritation that the revolution is not happening as “beautifully” as expected. In 1919, he was published only in the magazine “Flame” under the editorship of A.V. Lunacharsky. Here his poetic story “The Factory of the Thrush and the Lark” was published, filled with faith in beauty, with which Green began his life and creative path. In the fall of 1919, the writer was mobilized as a private in the Red Army. During this period, the idea was born and the first “draft” of the extravaganza story “Scarlet Sails” (1921) appeared, which became one of the most famous works Greena. The heroes of the story - Assol and Gray - have a rare gift of a “different” vision of the world; their exclusivity lies in the fact that they know how to perform miracles on their own. After the most difficult trials Civil War Green, despite the need, continued to work. In 1923, the novel “The Shining World” (1923) appeared, in which the tragic death of the main character Druda is the result of the author’s internal doubts about the possibility of achieving the ideal.
In 1925, the writer published the novel “The Golden Chain”, in 1928 - “Running on the Waves” - one of the most complex and iconic. In “Running on the Waves,” the motif of the illusory nature of any dream was again heard. Only creative person, according to the author, one can fully experience the subtle nature of this illusion.
From the mid-1920s, Greene was published less and less, mainly in little-known publications. From 1924 he lived in Feodosia, in 1930 he moved to Old Crimea. Financial disadvantage and serious illness broke the writer. Tragic feeling his last novel with the symbolic title “The Road to Nowhere” (1930) is filled with hopelessness. Two months after the novel was published, Greene died. At the end of the 1930s. Several critical articles appeared (by K. Zelinsky, M. Shaginyan, K. Paustovsky), in which the writer’s talent and his unique vision of the world were finally recognized. But Green’s work received general recognition only in the 1960s.
Some of Green's works ("Scarlet Sails", "Running on the Waves", etc.) were successfully filmed.
The real life around him rejected Green's world along with its creator. Critical remarks about the uselessness of the writer appeared more and more often, the myth of the “foreigner in Russian literature” was created, and Green was published less and less. The writer, suffering from tuberculosis, left in 1924 for Feodosia, where he experienced extreme poverty, and in 1930 he moved to the village of Stary Krym, where he died on July 8, 1932.