Brief biography: Klychkov Sergey Antonovich. Sergei Klychkov - the undervalued heritage of Old Believer culture A brief message about Klychkov

Sergei Antonovich Klychkov (1889-1937) - the son of a handicraft shoemaker in the village of Dubrovki, Tver province. The family was Old Believer, and, as S. Klychkov himself believed, he inherited his creative gift from his “eloquent” parents and ancestors. He studied at a zemstvo school, a real school in Moscow, and at various faculties of Moscow University (he did not complete the course due to financial difficulties). Thanks to the support of M.I. Tchaikovsky, he made a trip to Italy.

In 1909 he met writers from the Young Symbolist circle and at the end of 1910 he published his first collection of poems, “Songs”. The formation of his poetics was strongly influenced by Sergei Gorodetsky; later he met writers creatively and spiritually close to him - S. Yesenin and N. Klyuev.

Folklore stylizations and mythological images of pagan, pre-Christian Rus' formed the content of his next books - “The Hidden Garden” (1913-1918); "Dubravna" (1918); "Ring of Lada" (1919). Fairy-tale heroes inhabit the conventional world of his poems; earthly, concrete images are found in Klychkov’s poetic system only in descriptions of nature, and no cataclysms of time - revolutions, wars - are reflected in his “timeless” works.

Klychkov served in Finland, on the Western Front, in the Crimea, but his military impressions were reflected only in prose (in the autobiographical novel “The Sugar German,” 1925). Like all the new peasant poets, he enthusiastically accepted the October Revolution, worked in Proletkult, published and republished books.

IN Soviet time switched mainly to prose, translated Georgian poets and Kyrgyz epics. His later lyrics lose the features of romantic convention, fabulousness, and naive dreaminess.

In the 1930s, he was persecuted as a “kulak poet”; in 1937, he was arrested as a member of the “Labor Peasant Party” (a non-existent organization); sentenced to death and executed on the same day.

A knock on the door around midnight on July 31, 1937 became fatal in the life of the remarkable poet Sergei Antonovich Klychkov, who was arrested that night on a fabricated case of participation in anti-Soviet activities. By the verdict of the Military Collegium Supreme Court USSR on October 8, 1937, the poet Klychkov was sentenced to death; the sentence was carried out on the same day. 19 years later, on July 25, 1956, the same authority posthumously rehabilitated the poet, overturning the death sentence due to “newly discovered circumstances.” Alas, this admission of error does not negate the main horrifying fact: another poet of Russia died a tragic, absurd death.
At the time of the execution, Sergei Klychkov was 48 years old.

The poet's childhood. The beginning of a creative journey. Revolutions.
Sergei Klychkov was born on July 13, 1889 in the village of Dubrovki, Tver province, into the family of an Old Believer shoemaker. According to family legend, the mother of the future poet Thekla gave birth to her first child in the forest, where she went to pick berries, and “brought home a screamer in an apron and did not spill the basket of raspberries.” The family lived in extreme poverty, Sergei’s parents were engaged in sewing shoes and took them to sell to Moscow, for which they had to walk 100 kilometers in one direction. Sometimes they stayed in Moscow, taking on odd jobs. Until the age of 10, Sergei was raised by his paternal grandmother, and her fairy tales, songs and legends had a huge influence on the worldview of the future peasant poet. And the winters were spent in Taldom, with his maternal grandmother, where Sergei attended - and later successfully graduated from - a parish school.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the family’s financial situation had strengthened, and Sergei went to Moscow to a real school. During these years, the first poems of Sergei Klychkov appeared, including those on revolutionary themes: the poet took part in the revolution of 1905, after which he hid for a long time in his village, fearing arrest.
Fleeing from unhappy love, in 1908 the poet, with the assistance of friends, went to Italy, where he met Maxim Gorky and Lunacharsky. In the same year, the poet Klychkov entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. These years become important in the development of the young poet: in 1911, the first collection of his poems, “Songs,” was published; Klychkov meets Sergei Yesenin and a friendship begins between the two poets that will last until the end of Yesenin’s life.
In the fall of 1914, Klychkov was drafted into the army and took part in the First World War. Next is the revolution of 1917, which Sergei accepted enthusiastically. By 1919 he finds himself in Crimea, engulfed Civil War, where the distinguished-looking poet is constantly tortured by either the whites or the reds. A direct threat to life forced Klychkov to leave Crimea and return to Moscow.

20s. Literary maturity.
10 years, from 1920 to 1930, can be attributed to the period of Klychkov’s creative heyday. During this period, the bulk of his works were written, and several collections of his own were published. The poems of Sergei Klychkov become popular, and the glory of a folk, peasant poet is finally assigned to him. The author’s work begins to include themes of the development of civilization at the expense of preserving pristine nature.
Sergei Klychkov considered poetry to be the main work of his life, but in the 20s the author’s prose works also saw the light: he wrote 3 novels, as well as a number of critical articles.

Last years. Problems: personal and creative.
1930 marked the beginning of a crisis in Klychkov’s life, which ultimately led him to a tragic ending. Klychkov’s poems become more and more philosophical and dramatic; he falls out of the literary “mainstream” of the era: his work is mercilessly criticized. A divorce from his wife also adds fuel to the fire - the relationship with Alexandra Lobova never became happy, although the poet was in love from his youth and spent a long time seeking the favor of his future wife.
Klychkov marries for the second time. Changes and creative path poet: having fallen into disgrace, Sergei Klychkov practically does not write poetry, focusing mainly on translations (of Georgian authors, epics and folklore texts of the peoples of the USSR). In addition to his literary work, Sergei has been working a lot on the land during these years, own garden, is raising her son.
However, the disgrace intensifies, and the arrest of the poet becomes a logical end to his creative and life path for that era.

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Sergey Antonovich Klychkov(the village nickname of the family, sometimes used as a pseudonym, - Leshenkov; July 1, 1889, Dubrovki, Tver province - October 8, 1937, Moscow) - Russian and Soviet poet, prose writer and translator.

Biography

Born in the village of Dubrovki, Tver province (now Taldomsky district, Moscow region) in the family of an Old Believer shoemaker. In 1899, on the advice of a rural teacher, his father brought him to Moscow, where he began studying at the school of I. I. Fidler (in Lobkovsky Lane). As a student, he took part in the 1905 revolution and was part of the fighting squad of Sergei Konenkov. In 1906, he wrote a number of poems on revolutionary themes, published in the almanac “At the Crossroads.” Klychkov's early poems were approved by S. M. Gorodetsky.

In 1908, with the help of Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky, he went to Italy, where he met Maxim Gorky and A.V. Lunacharsky. After returning from Italy, he entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University, but did not graduate (he was expelled in 1913). In 1911, with the financial assistance of M. Tchaikovsky, his first collection of poetry, “Songs,” was published in the Alcyone publishing house. In 1914, the second collection “The Hidden Garden” appeared in the same publishing house.

During the First World War he went to the front; He began the war in Helsingfors, then was transferred to the Western Front and later, with the rank of ensign, to Balaklava, where his long-time acquaintance and beloved (who soon became his wife), former high school student Evgenia Aleksandrovna Lobova, went to pick him up. Klychkov would later reproduce his military impressions in the novel “The Sugar German.”

After October revolution in Moscow, in the Proletkult building, he lives in the same room with Sergei Yesenin. In the mansion on Vozdvizhenka, with the participation of Klychkov, Yesenin, Oreshin, Bely, Povitsky, the publishing house “Moscow Labor Artel of Word Artists” was organized, and a store of this publishing house was opened on Bolshaya Nikitskaya. This publishing house published several collections of Klychkov.

In 1919-1921 he lived in Crimea, where he was almost shot (by the Makhnovists, then by the White Guards). In 1921 he moved to Moscow, where he collaborated mainly in the Krasnaya Nov magazine.

The poems of Klychkov’s early poetry collections (“Songs: Sadness-Joy. Lada. Bova”, 1911; “The Hidden Garden”, 1913) are in many ways consonant with the poems of the poets of the “new peasant” movement - Yesenin, Klyuev, Ganin, Oreshin, etc. Some of Klychkov's poems were published in the "Anthology" of the Musaget publishing house. Early Klychkov themes were deepened and developed in subsequent collections “Dubrava” (1918), “Home Songs” (1923), “Wonderful Guest” (1923), “Visiting the Cranes” (1930), the poems of which reflected the impressions of the First World War wars, destruction of the village; One of the main images becomes the image of a lonely, homeless wanderer. In Klychkov’s poetry, notes of despair and hopelessness appeared, caused by the death under the onslaught of the “machine” civilization “that had gone astray from the path of the Nature of old Rus'.”

Klychkov wrote three novels - the satirical “The Sugar German” (1925; published in 1932 under the title “The Last Lel”), the fairy-tale-mythological “Chertukhinsky Balakir” (1926), “The Prince of Peace” (1928). They were conceived as parts of the nine books of Life and Death; The names of the following parts were announced: “The Kitezh Peacock”, “The Gray Master”, “Burkan - a Man’s Son”, “The Savior on Spilled Blood”, “Phantom Rus'”, “The Elk with Golden Horns” - but one of them did not appear in print.

Klychkov's lyrics are associated with folk art; he seeks solace in nature. At first, his poems were narrative; later they were distinguished by certain thoughts of a pantheistic, pessimistic nature, but they were always far from any revolutionary nature. In Klychkov’s prose, his original connection with the traditional world of the peasantry and peasant demonology emerges, as well as the influence of N. Gogol, N. Leskov and A. Remizov.<…>Klychkov's novels are not rich in action, they are composed of individual scenes, associative, filled with images from the world of reality and the world of dreams and spirits; the story is told from the perspective of a peasant who loves to talk about various topics, the rhythm of this prose is often very good. The city, cars, iron and factory chimneys as symbols of the proletarian revolution turn for Klychkov, with his attachment to the metaphysical world of the village and forest, into tools of Satan.

Wolfgang Kazak

>>S. A. Klychkov. Biography. Creation

Sergei Antonovich Klychkov is a younger contemporary of N. Klyuev, born in the Tver province in 1889. If Klyuev’s poetry is densely, concentratedly saturated with difficult-to-perceive metaphors, stylistic devices of ancient Russian literature, and colored with verbal archaism, then in Klychkov’s poems one is struck by the simplicity of the poetic form and the simplicity of the plot , transparency of content. In its clarity and serenity, Klychkov’s early lyrics are reminiscent of works of calendar ritual poetry. Just as in the folk lyrical song, the poet’s highest ideal of beauty is nature. He knows her well and strives to recreate in poetry the magical, mysterious landscapes of his native Poshekhonye that are closest to his heart. In the thickets of the forest, goblins and mermaids voice their voices, some unknown birds beckon and frighten with their voices. Some literary scholars called Klychkov Yesenin's predecessor. This statement is not unfounded. Judge for yourself:

And in the fog over the meadows
The herd huddled together
And the bull butts the cloud
Red horns.

You read about a playful bull and perceive it not as an artistic allegory, but as a direct image of a naive and cute calf. He is as touching and artless as that little Yesenin maple tree that “sucks the green udder of the uterus.” Poeticization of rural nature, peasant labor, folk festivals - the most characteristic Klychkov's poetry. Moreover, holiday and work are not opposed to him, they continue each other, the more successful the work, the more joyful the holiday. This idea is most consistently expressed in the collection “Ring of Lada” (1913). There are two main characters in this book - Grandfather and Lada. A grandfather is a collective, conventionally generalized image of a worker, the keeper of the wisdom, labor and moral experience of his ancestors. This is more of a mythological image than a real one. Lada is an image that also comes from pagan Slavic myths, a bride girl, a dream girl. So, the poet interweaves two lyrical storylines in the book, makes two musical themes sound alternately - Grandfather’s and Lada’s: “Grandfather’s plowing” - “Lada is bathing”, “Grandfather selected” - “Lada in the garden”, “Lada in a round dance” - "Grandfather from the mowing." Klychkov voices pictures of his native nature and scenes of peasant labor with the magical music of the fabulous Lel:

Lel decorated the whole field with flowers,
I removed all the trees with leaves.
I heard him spinning yesterday
I played outside the village for a long time...

In poems of the 20-30s. Klychkov’s folklore-idyllic romanticism becomes more restrained, motifs of unrequited love and betrayal appear, and the range of experiences becomes more complex lyrical hero. The tonality of landscape sketches changes:

The praying dawn bled,
And you won’t recognize your birthplaces:
The village burned down, near the road
There are stumps and, like a poor man,
The windmill extends its pole.

One can look for the reasons for the intensely dramatic sound of the poems included in the poet’s last collection, “Visiting the Cranes” (1930), in the complexities of the poet’s personal life.

But most likely the main reason is different.

The process of de-peasantization and the struggle against “patriarchal-feudal” remnants that had begun in the country required the abandonment of peasant motifs in poetry. Sergei Klychkov, who did not want to submit to this “demand of the time,” found himself under merciless fire from Rappov’s criticism. “His name was pronounced along with the names of Klyuev, Yesenin, Oreshin. Inferior to them in originality of talent and emotional richness, Klychkov, like them, was full of old-village conservatism and mysticism,” wrote one of the leaders of RAPP G. Lelevich about the poet.

“Visiting the Cranes” was the last original poetry collection by Sergei Klychkov. The poet was forced to do translations. In separate publications in the 30s. his transcriptions of epic works of the peoples of the USSR are published.

The collection of selected translations by Klychkov “Saraspan” includes Mari folk songs, works by G. Leonidze, V. Pshavela, A. Tsereteli and other poets.

In July 1937, Sergei Antonovich Klychkov was arrested and soon (in October of the same year) executed.

Russian literature of the 20th century. 11th grade Textbook for general education institutions. L.A. Smirnova, O.N. Mikhailov, A.M. Turkov and others; Comp. E.P. Pronina; Ed. V.P. Zhuravleva - 8th ed. - M.: Education - JSC "Moscow Textbooks", 2003.

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Sergey Antonovich Klychkov. Biography

Poet, prose writer, translator.

Born into an Old Believer peasant family engaged in handicraft shoemaking. He connects the origins of his creativity with the talent of his parents: “... I owe my language to the forest grandmother Avdotya, the eloquent mother Fekla Alekseevna and my father Anton Nikitich, who is often wise in his tongue-tied constructions...” (Autobiography // Klychkov S. Gray gentleman. Kharkov, 1927 ), as well as with the “forest” nature where he spent his childhood. It is symbolic that Klychkov was born in the forest (the young mother, not understanding the timing due to her inexperience, went on the day of birth with a basket to the forest to pick raspberries...). As a “child of nature,” Klychkov was a playground of wonderful, fatal forces: animals understood him, he was not bitten by bees, and a lucky chance constantly helped him out; born under the constellation Cancer, which predisposes to sleepwalking, he was indeed susceptible to this mysterious illness in childhood, just as Klychkov’s lyrics are largely susceptible to it. Klychkov was also distinguished by his expressive appearance - slender, tall, with large gypsy features, he made an irresistible impression on women. A. Akhmatova spoke of him as “a unique poet. And a man of dazzling beauty" (Glekin G. What was given to me... // RO RNL. Unpublished memories of A. Akhmatova). Dr. a contemporary later wrote about the young Klychkov: “With his bright appearance and generous soul, Sergei attracted and enchanted. He was then bright and joyful. He was one of a kind” (P. Zhurov). Having studied at the Taldom zemstvo school, Klychkov entered the Moscow real school of I.I. Fidler in 1900, where he studied until 1906.

He begins to write poetry (“more about brownies and goblin” - Autobiography) while still in rural school; the first publications - in the journal of Moscow University "At the Crossroads" - are dedicated to the revolution ("The Man Has Rose", "Hymn to Freedom", etc.). Klychkov himself in 1905 was a member of a fighting squad that performed on the Arbat.

In 1907 he published in the almanac “Flashes”, “White Stone”, “Bulletin of the Self-Education Society” (poetry and prose).

In 1908, with the assistance of M.I. Tchaikovsky (the composer’s brother), he left for Italy for a short time, where he met with M. Gorky and A. Lunacharsky in Capri. In the autumn of the same year he entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University, which, however, was not possible to graduate both due to financial insecurity and because of creative obsession, which distracted the aspiring poet from systematic studies.

At the end of the 1910s (with the indication - 1911), Klychkov’s first collection “Songs” was published (M., Alcyone Publishing House), to which N. Gumilev, V. Bryusov, M. Voloshin, S. Gorodetsky responded.

In 1911, 7 more of his new works were published in the Moscow almanac “Anthology”. By this time, he was already familiar with I. Bunin (who highly appreciated his poetry), S. Solovyov, made friends with B. Sadovsky, L. Stolitsa, S. Gorodetsky, visited the symbolist circle of Ellis with the sculptor K. Kracht.

In Aug. 1913 The second book of Klychkov’s lyrics, “The Hidden Garden,” is published, which, together with the first, gives a solid reason to talk about the originality of his poems. Klychkov's poetry is imbued with a feeling of deep harmony between man and nature, not yet disturbed by the cataclysms of the tragic and cruel 20th century. This is precisely what was noted primarily in critical reviews: “Klychkov is a charming and gentle poet. He has an impeccable rhyme, a melodious lightness of verse, a relaxed songlike meter... All this is young, fresh, joyful and so strange against the backdrop of our gray days"(Vyach Polonsky. S. Klychkov. “The Hidden Garden” [rec.] // New life. 1913. No. 12); “The healthy aroma of the village expanse and black earth fields wafts from the simple and clear lines of Sergei Klychksva” (Smelsky V.S. Klychkov. “The Secret Garden” (rec.) // Day. 1913. September 23). The same reviewer wrote that not only an understanding of nature, “but an almost spontaneous, primitive fusion with it” is revealed by the poet here. Klychkov's poems are published in the magazine " Modern world", "Northern Notes", "New Wine", "Monthly Magazine", "Testaments", "Our Dawn".

In July 1914 (with the beginning of general mobilization for the war with Germany), Klychkov was drafted into the army and sent first to Helsingfors (Helsinki), and then, after graduating from the ensign school there, to the active army. As a poet, Klychkov responds to the war mainly only with “desert of the soul,” lyrical silence. It will become the material for his work later - in prose. In absentia, he is already familiar with Klyuev and Yesenin and, together with them, forms the core of new peasant poetry; Oct 25 1915, in the absence of the author, S. Gorodetsky read his poems at an evening of the literary group “Krasa” (Petrograd).

He met the Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd together with other poets of the “peasant merchant”, with whom he would henceforth be connected by great personal friendship and a common tragic fate. Together with them, he is published here in the Socialist Revolutionary newspaper Delo Naroda.

Having moved to Moscow in 1918, he entered the service of the office of the Moscow Proletkult, which occupies the Morozov mansion on Vozdvizhenka, where there is a corner for himself and where Yesenin, who had arrived from Petrograd, moved in with him. In the same year, together with S. Yesenin, A. Bely, P. Oreshin, he created the book publishing house “Moscow Labor Artel of Artists Word” (MTAHS), which published four collections of his poems: “The Secret Garden” (reprint), “Bova” ", "Dubravna" (1918, published again in 1919), "Ring of Lada" (1919). A. Voronsky in those years advised his contemporary to listen to Klychkov’s poems in order to feel “how Rus' speaks in the sixteenth century” (Zelinsky K. At the turn of two eras. M., 1962. P.182). Klychkov's poems of this period are distinguished by the richness of elements of calendar, ritual and play poetry of the pagan past. Klychkov’s turning point book is the collection of poems from the mid-1910s. "Dubravna". Here the poet said goodbye to the enchanted world of peasant life before the invasion of urbanization (“It’s foggy, foggy over the field...”, 1914). Long before Yesenin, these verses contained the motif of a memorial service for the Russian village: “Listen, heart, in the evening listen / The funeral song of the birches!..” (“The forest is noisy and noisy, falling...”, 1914). Yesenin in his treatise “The Keys of Mary” (1918) called Klychkov “a truly wonderful folk poet.” Speaking about a kind of global farewell of man and everything living on earth to their original habitat, Yesenin used “farewell” images from the collection “Dubravna”.

In 1922, Klychkov became secretary of the prose department in the Krasnaya Nov magazine, headed by A. Voronsky.

1923 - A new book lyrics "Home Songs". If in previous works Klychkov appeared as a refined, detached from everyday routine, a poet of dreams, then in “Home Songs” he appears as a strong village guy. Instead of romances with mermaids and Ladas, his lyrics include true earthly love with all the vicissitudes of its joys and sorrows. The saving harmony with nature, in which the poet lived before, now becomes, on the contrary, just a dream, a hope for refuge from the bustle of life (“I put on a white silk dress...”, 1922). Rus' itself turns out to have departed into the world of the same dream (“I Ulyus”, 1922).

During these years, Klychkov intensely reflected on the meaning of what was happening in Russia, linking it with the eternal questions of existence: life, death, art. In particular, his note to A. Bely has been preserved with the questions that tormented the poet scribbled on it: “What is more important now, life or art? What is dying now, life (old, new or even, perhaps (already in advance), future), or art (the same)?.. What needs to be saved, yourself, maternity leave or art? (TSGALI. F. 53). In “Home Songs,” as in the poet’s subsequent books, the result of such reflections turned out to be pessimistic: “Like a dress for a dead woman, / The shadow of the scaffold fell on the ground” (“I’m afraid to live among people...”, 1922). Sad thoughts deepen in the poet’s next book, “The Talisman” (1927), partly consisting of poems from previous books, and partly from new ones. With the strengthening of the poet’s realistic view of the environment, the motive of the conflicting state of the world (impoverishment of nature and the human soul, environmental threat) also intensifies.

In 1930, Klychkov’s last lyrical book, “Visiting the Cranes,” was published. Klychkov contrasts everything complex, contradictory and unstable that exists in life with the great truth of nature (“We have departed from the paths of nature...”, 1926).

In the 1930s, Klychkov created (no longer for publication, but only “for the table”) the most tragic cycle - “The Spell of Death”. It was dedicated to the fate of the Russian peasantry and the general lot of human existence. The cycle “The Spell of Death”, like other poems by Klychkov of the 1930s, in particular love lyrics(“I don’t know, friend, whether it’s out of melancholy or laziness...”, “How not to love a fresh blush...”, 1931), represent the pinnacle of his philosophical poetry. Klychkov is the heir to the poetry of E. Baratynsky, F. Tyutchev, A. Fet.

In the mid-1920s, Klychkov created the novels “The Sugar German” (1925), “The Chertukhinsky Balakir” (1926) and “The Prince of Peace” (1928) - as part of the planned pentateuch about the “life and death” of the Russian people. They bring the author great fame and authority as a first-class master of fairy tale prose, following the line of Gogol, Leskov, Melnikov-Pechersky. However, they are the ones who are significantly to a greater extent, rather than lyrics, become a reason (despite positive reviews about them by A. Voronsky, V. Polonsky, A. Lunacharsky and, to a certain extent, M. Gorky) to persecute Klychkov from Rapp’s criticism as a “class enemy.” In the vulgar articles “Russians” (1928), “Singers of the Kulak Village” (1930) and in the book “Kulak fiction"(1930), an employee of the Communist Academy O. Beskin even constitutes a special “specificum of the class person of S. Klychkov,” according to which his work was defined “as a diversion of reactionary (idealistic, nationalist, kulak, etc.) ideology into the worldview of his contemporary - the builder of socialism.” In these articles, according to the writer himself, the role of a “literary suicide bomber” was already fully defined for him. Klychkov’s attempts to defend himself in two articles published in Literary Newspapers - “About a hare lighting matches” (1929) and “Fierce illness” (1930) - are in vain.