Alexander Stepanovich Green. Biography
There is such a country – Greenland. True, it should be sought not on a geographical map, but in the books of the Russian writer Alexander Stepanovich Greene. In them you will find detailed descriptions of the exotic nature of this country and the history of the life of its inhabitants – people endowed with unusual names and unusual power of imagination, a thirst for dreams and faith in a miracle.
Greenland – of course, the country is fictional, but not fabulous. It has cars, newspapers, telephones and many other “signs” of reality in the first decades of the 20th century. And the Greenlanders themselves are not very similar to the fairy-tale characters: they struggle with the same everyday difficulties that their real contemporaries faced, are carried away by the same ideas and suffer from the same spiritual ailments. But above this country the scarlet banner of the Miracle, throwing away fantastic reflections for all her life, is flying. It is cut
It is significant that the name of this amazing country was invented not by Green. It was invented by the critic K. Zelinsky to denote the peculiar artistic world of the Grinov books. The word “Greenland” he formed from the pseudonym of the writer “Green.” And this was a special intention, which was intended to emphasize that Greenland is not only a country of Green heroes, but also of Green himself – the country of his soul, his fantasy, his life.
Meanwhile, Green was a man of severe destiny. So severe that it may arise where this writer derived strength from his holy faith in the Dream, his romantic stories about the miracles that are coming true, and the colorful pictures of the imaginary country. Yes, and considering the photos on which an emaciated person with a sad, even tragic glance is captured, it is difficult to believe that he is the author of the radiant, elated-happy fairy tale “Scarlet Sails” that has been sparking readers for many decades with joy and hope. But there
Alexander Stepanovich Grinevsky was born on August 23, 1880 in the town of Slobodskoye Vyatka province. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Vyatka. The boy learned to read rather early. The first word he read at the age of five was “the sea.” The first book he conquered on his own was Gulliver’s Travels by J. Swift. Thus, in the dreary philistine life, as if by magic, a “glittering world” of imagination arose over which the Dream, woven from sea foam, distant wanderings and miraculous events, ascended the sun.
Enchanted by its radiance, Sasha lost interest in reality. Instead of diligently preparing for the lessons, he was boozing reading novels about captains, pirates, Indians and noble robbers. And after the end of the real school, instead of earning a modest and boring job, he went to the port city of Odessa in order to get a job as a sailor on some steamer. It was found out there that the state of health of the young adventurer does not leave any hopes for the fulfillment of his fantasies about sea wanderings. Nevertheless, Green achieved his: he was allowed to groom on flights along the Black Sea coast, and once even traveled abroad. But how far were these journeys from his dream! They turned for the young man with excessive work, the gross ridicule of comrades, mockery of the owners. The cup of his patience was filled with an order compelling him to exercise in a meaningless boat rowing. Green mutinied – and was fired.
The years of vagrancy and poverty began. Alexander wandered around the country, grabbing at every opportunity to get a piece of bread – hunting, rafting down the river, working on gold mines or on a barges bazaar… There were days when he had to beg. Completely exhausted by the struggle for survival, the future writer went to the soldiers’ service, relieving him of his worries about food, clothes and a roof over his head. But even in this service he did not last long, because he could not reconcile with drill and violence accompanying her.
The sense of protest against social injustice and the hope of changing the social order led the future writer to join the ranks of the revolutionaries. At first, new comrades attracted him to illegal propaganda of revolutionary ideas, and then offered to take part in the terrorist act. Green, who did not tolerate any form of violence since childhood, refused. From that moment his enthusiasm for political activity declined, and eventually the writer lost interest in it.
Active cooperation with the revolutionaries did not last for a year, the payment for him extended for a decade, during which Green had occasion to visit both prisoner, exile, and a fugitive, and a man living under a foreign name. It was a difficult period, in comparison with which the misadventures of free vagabond life could seem like a fascinating romantic adventure. But it was during this period that the main event in Green’s life took place – he became a writer.
By the whim of fate, Green was obliged by his literary birth to a short-lived participation in the revolutionary struggle. Once, on instructions from his comrades-in-arms, he wrote a proclamation. After reading it, one of the comrades, N. Bykhovsky, said to Green: “… you, I think, could be a good writer.” “These words,” said Alexander Stepanovich, “as a blow, pushed my soul, creating in it a secret, bashful dream of the future.” Until now, I did not know what to strive for, there was chaos and confusion of desires in me. I have the opportunity to dwell on some firm decision about my future: the already experienced: the sea, vagrancy, wanderings showed me that it was still not what my soul yearned for, but I did not know what she needed. were not only a push, they were the light that illuminated my mind and the secret depths of my soul. What I crave, my soul has found its way. It was like first love. I was ashamed even of my thoughts about this, believing that for the writer is very insignificant, I know little, I can not do much, and, perhaps, impatient. But the buried true thought did not fade. Gradually I began to understand that I was drawn to writing with all my being, although I did not yet understand how this would happen. “
It happened by itself, during Green’s stay in Sevastopol prison. A year after his release from prison, he published several short stories signed by the initials “ASG”, and two years later published the first selection of his prose under the title “Invisible Hat”. The works included in it were written primarily in the traditional realistic vein. The author himself called them “stories, the action of which takes place in Russia.” But a few years later, Green opened his Greenland, and along with it – his own path in Russian literature, and a new way to achieve his dream.
In the period from 1912 to 1917, Green printed a lot, gradually gaining increasing fame in the readership circles. The October Revolution and the civil war that followed it destroyed the writer’s barely adjusted creative life. He was mobilized in the Red Army. It is not hard to imagine what the creator of the wonderful Greenlandia should have felt, seeing around him the pictures of fratricidal slaughter and unjustified suffering. But even these days, over the horizon of his inner world, the scarlet glow of dreams was playing: walking in war-torn roads, Greene in a soldier’s bag, along with a pair of footcloths and a change of linen, carried… fragments of the manuscript of “Scarlet Sails”, conceived back in 1917-1918 .
In the 1920s, despite all the difficulties caused by post-revolutionary devastation and the formation of a totalitarian regime, the writer is experiencing the happiest time of his life. In this decade, he wrote the brightest works, including the story “Scarlet Sails”, the novels “The Shining World”, “Running on the Waves”, etc. In them before the audience again and again appeared amazing heroes, with the power of their imagination, performed miracles. In the same years, Green found a companion of life, whose love, tenderness and devotion to his hundredfold rewarded his soul for years of deprivation. Nina Nikolayevna carefully protected his writings and inner balance, healed his wounds, supported the burning fire of romance and boyish faith in the Dream. This woman, trying to make her husband’s life look like his fairy tales, she seemed to be the revived heroine of the best works of the Greene. Not for nothing did friends call her the names of these heroines, and the writer himself dedicated her “Scarlet Sails” to her. Together with Nina Nikolayevna, Green settled in the Crimea – at the edge of the sea, the sun and the salty winds that fascinated him from a young age and served him as a prototype of Greenland. But the happy time did not last long. A few years after moving to the Crimea, publishers and journals practically stopped publishing allegedly “alien” works of Green, which entailed serious material difficulties. Then the writer was struck by a deadly disease. He was slowly dying, suffering greatly from poverty, the indifference of his colleagues and the looming oblivion of readers. The only consolation for him was Nina Nikolaevna’s selfless love. Not for nothing did friends call her the names of these heroines, and the writer himself dedicated her “Scarlet Sails” to her. Together with Nina Nikolayevna, Green settled in the Crimea – at the edge of the sea, the sun and the salty winds that fascinated him from a young age and served him as a prototype of Greenland. But the happy time did not last long. A few years after moving to the Crimea, publishers and journals practically stopped publishing allegedly “alien” works of Green, which entailed serious material difficulties. Then the writer was struck by a deadly disease. He was slowly dying, suffering greatly from poverty, the indifference of his colleagues and the looming oblivion of readers. The only consolation for him was Nina Nikolaevna’s selfless love. Not for nothing did friends call her the names of these heroines, and the writer himself dedicated her “Scarlet Sails” to her. Together with Nina Nikolayevna, Green settled in the Crimea – at the edge of the sea, the sun and the salty winds that fascinated him from a young age and served him as a prototype of Greenland. But the happy time did not last long. A few years after moving to the Crimea, publishers and journals practically stopped publishing allegedly “alien” works of Green, which entailed serious material difficulties. Then the writer was struck by a deadly disease. He was slowly dying, suffering greatly from poverty, the indifference of his colleagues and the looming oblivion of readers. The only consolation for him was Nina Nikolaevna’s selfless love. Together with Nina Nikolayevna, Green settled in the Crimea – at the edge of the sea, the sun and the salty winds that fascinated him from a young age and served him as a prototype of Greenland. But the happy time did not last long. A few years after moving to the Crimea, publishers and journals practically stopped publishing allegedly “alien” works of Green, which entailed serious material difficulties. Then the writer was struck by a deadly disease. He was slowly dying, suffering greatly from poverty, the indifference of his colleagues and the looming oblivion of readers. The only consolation for him was Nina Nikolaevna’s selfless love. Together with Nina Nikolayevna, Green settled in the Crimea – at the edge of the sea, the sun and the salty winds that fascinated him from a young age and served him as a prototype of Greenland. But the happy time did not last long. A few years after moving to the Crimea, publishers and journals practically stopped publishing allegedly “alien” works of Green, which entailed serious material difficulties. Then the writer was struck by a deadly disease. He was slowly dying, suffering greatly from poverty, the indifference of his colleagues and the looming oblivion of readers. The only consolation for him was Nina Nikolaevna’s selfless love. A few years after moving to the Crimea, publishers and journals practically stopped publishing allegedly “alien” works of Green, which entailed serious material difficulties. Then the writer was struck by a deadly disease. He was slowly dying, suffering greatly from poverty, the indifference of his colleagues and the looming oblivion of readers. The only consolation for him was Nina Nikolaevna’s selfless love. A few years after moving to the Crimea, publishers and journals practically stopped publishing supposedly “alien” works of Green, which entailed serious material difficulties. Then the writer was struck by a deadly disease. He was slowly dying, suffering greatly from poverty, the indifference of his colleagues and the looming oblivion of readers. The only consolation for him was Nina Nikolaevna’s selfless love.
During his lifetime, AS Green did not receive a worthy recognition. At the beginning of his creative career, he encountered the aversion of literary critics. Green, who wrote about fictional foreign lands and fictitious oddballs, seemed to them a sort of “foreigner of Russian literature.” Later, during the years of Soviet power, the writer often had to hear accusations that his books lead the reader from the life struggle to the world of unrealistic dreams and that his characters are too far from the present. In fact, Green’s works depicting the impulses, searches and sufferings of a romantic soul in a cruel world, did not “lag behind” their epoch, but, instead, rose above it, as they returned true value to enduring spiritual values and strengthened the person’s faith in himself. And his beautiful tales, AS Green did not compose at all in order, to run away from reality, but in order to awaken in the readers faith in the dream and the power to translate their dreams into reality in order to strengthen in them the desire for true happiness. That is why the books of Green, having overcome all obstacles, have won a huge army of admirers, and his Greenland has become an important part of the continent of Russian culture.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)