Lidiya Alekseevna Charskaya
BOLD LIFE
PART ONE
Inhabitants of the old gardenBig, old garden Sarapul mayor Andrei Vasilyevich Durov is brightly illuminated. Multi-colored paper lanterns - red, yellow and green - stretch in colorful garlands between giant trees, half stripped of foliage by the merciless hand of the old woman-autumn.
The flaming bowls, scattered here and there in the dry autumn grass, seem like grandiose fireflies, complementing beautiful picture illumination. And above the old garden, impenetrable and mysterious, the black-eyed beauty - the autumn night of the Kama region - silently glides under her starry cover...
The wall clock in the mayor's house struck eleven.
And instantly old house trembled and perked up. A whole crowd of girls in light white dresses trimmed with lace, ruffles and blondes, like early XIX centuries, according to the fashion of that time, our great-grandmothers wore it, poured out onto the porch.
What a night! Miracle! Just like in summer! - a young voice rang with sonorous tints, and one of the white figures stretched out her arms, bare to the elbows, to the dark sky and gentle stars.
It wouldn’t be a sin to take a ride along the Kama on a night like this, would it, Klena? - the second voice joined the first, chesty and low, with pleasant velvety notes.
The one called Klena turned her face to the speaker. She was a real fourteen-year-old beauty. No one, not only county town Sarapul, but also in the whole province, did not have such a snow-white face, such dark blue eyes, similar to two magnificent sapphires, nor golden bones of that inimitable red tint that the second daughter of the Sarapul mayor, Cleopatra, possessed. And fourteen-year-old Klena was more aware than anyone of the irresistible charm of her extraordinary beauty and was very proud of it.
Well, you can make it up, Ustenka! - she said in a dissatisfied voice. - What could be interesting on Kama at night! At least I’m not drawn there at all.
Indeed, the blond beauty Klena is not attracted to Kama. What's good about it? Cold, damp, dark. And in the green thickets, what’s more, there are mermaids. And she - blond Maple - is afraid of dampness and mermaids most of all in the world. She's not Nadya. Nadya is another matter. She’s not afraid of anything, she’s kind of desperate! She will run not only to the Kama, but to the cemetery at night. After all, last spring she went to see a drowned man washed ashore. And she, Klena, is different. She is a sedate, well-bred young lady, and not a “hussar pupil”, not a “Cossack girl,” as everyone calls her older sister.
Oh, by the way, where is she? The illumination goes out, the guests are getting ready to leave, and there is no trace of Hope. Nice birthday girl! This evening is organized for her, lanterns and bowls are lit, friends are invited, but she doesn’t even listen. Dear hostess, nothing to say!..
And pretty Klena looked around with concern at the white crowd of girls: that’s right - Nadya is not there. She disappeared.
Vasya,” the girl excitedly addresses the plump, stocky boy, who was sharply separated by his dark uniform from the elegant light dresses of the young guests, “do you know where Nadezhda is?”
Eleven-year-old Vasya, who was blithely telling one of the young ladies at that time about what large crucian carp the butler Potapych caught today in their pond, immediately fell silent and stopped short.
No, he didn’t see Nadya. Where is she? And the boy began to peer anxiously into the dark thicket of the garden, where there were no lights and where it was mysterious and creepy.
Nadya! Hope! Where are you? - his childish voice rang, rushing into the darkness towards the quickly approaching night.
Leave it, Vasya! - Anna Gorlina, tall, stopped him, black-haired girl with an arrogant expression on her face, the daughter of the richest Sarapul merchant. -Or don't you know your sister? How can we please her with our company? Of course not. After all, we don’t know how to command on the parade ground and wave sabers like boys. We were not raised by soldiers.
Yes, yes,” plump Ustenka Prokhorova picked up, “we also cannot ride in wild Karabakh like simple Cossacks, like Nadya. We are young ladies and we must remember this...
And, coyly pursing her lips, she turned her back to the taken aback boy.
However, Vasya’s confusion did not last long. The boy realized in an instant that these stupid, in his opinion, pompous girls wanted to offend and humiliate his sister Nadya, the sister whom he, Vasya, idolized and worshiped from the very beginning. early childhood. All the blood flared up in the veins of the insulted boy. With a flaming face and burning eyes, he approached the dark-haired Anna and spoke, barely restraining himself from powerless tears:
How disgusting you are, Anna!.. And you, Ustenka, and all of you are evil... evil... bad! Why don't you like Nadya? Oh, she’s better than all of you, she never says anything bad about anyone, doesn’t quarrel with anyone... She doesn’t scold anyone... And why did you come to her if she’s unworthy of your company? You are disgusting, disgusting, bad! I don't love anyone! And leave us if so! Leave... if you abhor Nadya's company so much!
And before anyone could restrain or stop him, Vasya in one minute ran down the steps of the porch and rushed like an arrow along the long oak alley, illuminated by the dying lights of the illumination.
The boy ran so fast, as if all these elegant, proud young ladies were chasing on his heels. And only at the end of the alley, where at the turn there stood a tiny garden house with a lighted window, Vasya stopped.
She's there! - he said quietly. - There is my Nadya... dear... darling! And how dare they, how dare they offend you! Disgusting, worthless girls! And Klena is good too! At least I would stand up for my sister. Nasty Maple! He also probably gossips about Nadya to his mother. What will happen then?
And Vasya’s heart froze with fear for her sister. He knew how strictly she was punished for every slightest offense. Neither he nor Klena had ever suffered such severe punishments as she, Nadya, had to endure...
And this eleven-year-old boy with big gray eyes, full of good nature and warmth, loved his sister Nadya more than anything in the world. Order him, it seems, Nadya to throw herself into the pond, into this very pond on the shore of which he now stands, and he will fulfill her wish without words, without words or hesitation. This is how it has always been and will always be. And this icy Maple laughs at him, teases him for his boundless love for his sister, for the girl! Is his Nadya a girl like the others? Is she a weak creature who needs support and constant supervision from her elders? Oh, Nadya is a special, very special girl!
Nadya, Nadya! Where are you finally? - almost burst out from the child’s chest with a cry.
Before the last sound had time to die out in the silence of the night, the coastal sedge bushes parted and a white creature appeared on the shore of the pond, very close to the water.
Who's calling me? Are you, Vasily? - And Nadya stepped into the light strip from her dark ambush.
Nadya's voice was harsh and a little rough, like the voice of a teenage boy. But with her thin and slender and at the same time strong figure, all shrouded in a white cloud of blonde hair and flounces, now, in the darkness of the night, she seemed like a mysterious night fairy of this oak alley and green pond. However, her face is not the airy, gentle face of a fairy. Swimming out from behind a dark cloud silver moon brightly illuminates this dark face, with traces of smallpox on it, with a large mouth and sharply defined eyebrows. The only decoration of this young, almost baby face There are only one eyes, huge, dark: now gloomy and melancholy, now glowing with humor, now sadness, now brave, now timid, they are at times miraculously beautiful. And these eyes speak, say so much to everyone who looks into their bottomless, abyss-like depths!
Now these magnificent eyes glow with the most genuine sparkling fun. There is merriment in the eyes, and in the folds of the mouth there is something touchingly sad, almost bitter.
Have they left? - Her strong, not a girlish voice is heard, and she nods in the direction where at that moment the last lights of the illuminations burned out and went out and where silence fell at once.
“Gone,” Vasya answers for some reason in a whisper. -Where have you been, Nadya?
He wants to tell her everything, without concealment, about the nasty girls and his quarrel with them. But he is sorry to worry Nadya. Today is the day of her angel, and this day needs to end smoothly and carefree. And, instead of any complaint, he repeats:
Where have you been, Nadya?
“At Alcides,” her sweet, muffled voice answers. - On the occasion of today's celebration, Yefim forgot to pour him the usual nightly portion of oats. It’s good that I arrived on time and my poor horse did not remain hungry. And I have to admit, I completely forgot about the guests! - she unexpectedly concluded and laughed.
Lidiya Alekseevna Charskaya
Brave Life
Historical story
“Ride, my horse, at full speed...”
Look, look: man walking on the way. There's a bag on your back, but what's in the bag? Countless wealth: gold, jewelry. Emeralds, rubies, sapphires...
Yes, the rich man's bag has a flaw: a hole. Not too big. Or rather, a hole. And either the sapphire will dive into the hole, or the emerald will fall out. Which one will roll into the ditch, which one will disappear in the dust, they will trample underfoot.
But at least I'm rich. Small losses are not a problem for countless wealth. God be with him, he thinks, I will not become poor. Doesn't bother me.
Who would believe that such stupid rich people exist in the world? Don't believe me? But this is you and me. Yes, yes, we are.
On our historical path, we did exactly this with a significant part of our national culture.
Only recently, it seems, have they come to their senses. We are collecting donations for the destroyed temple; we take canvases from artists cursed by us from storage; We are returning old names to streets and towns. Values that were easily neglected are found in the dirt.
And so... we are republishing Charskaya again. After many years. In that distant year of 1918, the magazine “Sincere Word” ceased publication, and remained unprinted - oh, the despair of young readers! - her last story"Butterfly". The four tiny little books that she published in the 1920s under the pseudonym N. Ivanova, I think, don’t count. Volumes and volumes of her works disappeared from the shelves - only single copies of them remained in the country, a rarity, a rarity. No matter who you ask, no one has it. Several generations have grown up for whom Charskaya is an empty phrase. And throughout the first third of the 20th century there was no children's writer more popular.
Well, the wind of merciless time carried away even other names. And now these days" Pioneer truth” published an excerpt from the story “A Brave Life”. Letters came to the editor with questions: where to buy, how to read in full?... And one grandmother, who regularly reads a children's newspaper (!), began to thank him warmly. It turns out that for the first time she found out who wrote favorite piece. She had a book when she was a child, but it was tattered and had no cover. And then she disappeared completely. And although the grandmother retold the adventures to her children and grandchildren, she could not name the author. And now she can, and that makes her infinitely happy. Happy. Sometimes you need very little to be happy.
Charskaya. The actress put this name on the cover of her first book (“Notes of a College Girl,” 1902) Alexandrinsky Theater Lidiya Alekseevna Churilova. Maybe she knew in advance what would fascinate us? A maiden name Churilova - Voronova. Born - when and where? Either in 1878 in St. Petersburg, or three years earlier in the Caucasus. (More precisely unknown. Additional research is needed.)
She was left without a mother early. She loved her father very much. She had a hard time with the appearance of her stepmother. She ran away with the gypsies, but was robbed in the camp, and she returned home. This is described in her story “For What?”, which represents the experience of a free, fictionalized autobiography - believe it or not. By the age of ten she was composing poetry; Charskaya's mature poetry is addressed to children:
Ride, my horse, at full speed
Into the expanse of living meadows,
Where the lush carpet spreads
From rainbow flowers!..
Charskaya graduated from the Pavlovsk Women's Institute in St. Petersburg. From 1898 to 1924 she worked in the theater. IN Civil War lost her son who served in the Red Army. She died in Leningrad in 1937; buried at the Smolensk cemetery.
She has many books, more than eighty. “Princess Javakha”, “Luda Vlassovskaya”, “Second Nina”, “Big John”, “Lesovichka”, “For the Family”, “Sibirochka”, “The Crown Princess’s Page”, “Notes of an Orphan”, “Gymnasium Students”, “Bichodzhan. Adventures Caucasian boy", "Evfemia Staritskaya", "Gazavat. Thirty years of the mountaineers’ struggle for freedom”, “Guilty, but...” - it’s impossible to list everything! Novels, stories, plays...
She loved “Hero of Our Time” by M. Yu. Lermontov, and was influenced by writers I. I. Lazhechnikov, A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky. Some pages indicate that I closely read Walter Scott, the creator of the genre historical novel. Luda Vlassovskaya, having become a governess, immediately offers her pupil, the princess, so that she can learn to read, Cooper’s “St. John’s Wort”. In the 1890s, critics saw the merit of Charskaya’s works in the entertaining nature of the story, extraordinary adventures and outstanding characters. Knowing Russian history well, she found - now in one environment, now in another, now in one era, now in another - a hero to her taste: an extraordinary, attractive, magical personality. And she gave free rein to her imagination and imagination. “She invented it boldly and generously” (Vera Panova).
The reader will be mistaken if he decides that we will be afraid of the topic “Charskaya and Chukovsky”. In her sharp, poisonous article “Lydia Charskaya” (1912, now also our page literary history), he, despite the delight of the readers, focused attention on the costs of her often affected style, on the abundance extreme situations. On theatricality. On linguistic absurdities. But his main conclusion- the author is insincere - did not bring us any closer to understanding how Charskaya, with all these shortcomings, managed to captivate so many hearts. And today the magic of Charskaya, officially banned for so long, was withdrawn from public libraries, however - contrary to the state will and the legislators of literary taste - recklessly loved by those who read it in childhood, remains undiscovered. And if we didn’t know Pushkin’s assessment of one historical novel by the writer Zagoskin: “...the situations, although strained, are entertaining... the conversations, although false, are alive... everything can be read with pleasure...” (and this happens!) - we would only throw up our hands.
The canvas for “A Brave Life” (1905) was “Notes of a Cavalry Maiden” by N. A. Durova (1783–1866). The life and fate of Nadezhda Durova is a passionate and active desire to avoid the female, at that time slave, fate, to prove the self-worth and uniqueness of one’s personality. Thirst for freedom. Since childhood, on the whim of chance, brought up like a boy, for the sake of freedom she put on a man's dress and left, or rather, galloped away from home, joining the Cossack regiment: “Freedom, the precious gift of heaven, has finally become my lot forever!.. I jump for joy, imagining that in my entire life I will never hear the words again: “You, girl, sit down.” It’s indecent for you to go for a walk alone!” The participation of the “cavalry maiden” in military operations, including in the Battle of Borodino, where she was shell-shocked, was distinguished first by extravagant courage, and then by the courage of a disciplined warrior, defender of the Fatherland. She steadfastly endured the hardships of the campaign and endured loneliness.
Of course, Charskaya’s story is certainly not a document. Let's just say the most important things. Some pages may give the impression that Alexander I directed the military operations of the Russian troops. It was different: this smart, educated, but indecisive and painfully proud monarch turned out to be a bad commander. And under pressure public opinion he appointed Kutuzov as commander-in-chief, and left the army himself. But Alexander I has Charskaya (“childish good nature and gentle tenderness”, “pure, clear gaze”, “ great soul“, “proud beautiful eagle,” etc.) is not so much a genuine face as a popular print, a naive utopian dream about a good father of the nation, personifying the Fatherland itself. Charskaya, for many reasons far from the political opposition, wrote “A Brave Life” against the backdrop of the troubled sea of the approaching first Russian revolution of 1905, which threatened to drown the country in waves of popular anger. As a teenage girl, she may have witnessed the monarch's ceremonial visit ( Alexander III) of the institute where she studied, and unwittingly united the loyal feelings of the “cavalry maiden” with her own.
What is the value of a book opened by a reader? Let us answer in the words of the writer Boris Vasiliev: “If Grigory Petrovich Danilevsky first presented history to me not as a list of dates, but as a chain of actions of long-dead people, then another Russian writer managed to turn these dead into living, understandable and close to me compatriots. The name of this writer was once known to the children of all reading Russia, but now it is firmly forgotten, and if ever remembered, it is certainly with a tinge of mocking disdain. I'm talking about Lydia Alekseevna Charskaya, whose historical stories - for all their naivety! - not only presented Russian history in a popular way, but also taught them to admire it. And delight in history home country there is an emotional expression of love for her. And I received the first lessons of this love from “The Terrible Squad,” “The Savage,” “Princess Javakha” and other stories by the children’s writer Lydia Charskaya.”
Sometimes legend can be more alluring and integral than contradictory, confusing reality. And we will repeat after Charskaya:
Ride, my horse, at full speed,
Into space...
Vladimir Prikhodko
Brave Life
Part one
Inhabitants of the old garden
The large old garden of the Sarapul mayor Andrei Vasilyevich Durov is brightly illuminated. Multi-colored paper lanterns - red, yellow and green - stretch in colorful garlands between giant trees, half stripped of leaves by the merciless hand of the old woman of autumn.
The flaming bowls, scattered here and there in the dry autumn grass, seem like grandiose fireflies, complementing the beautiful picture of illumination. And above the old garden, impenetrable and mysterious, the black-eyed beauty, the autumn night of the Kama region, silently glides under her starry cover...
The wall clock in the mayor's house struck eleven.
And instantly the old house trembled and came to life. A whole crowd of girls in light white dresses, trimmed with lace, ruffles and blondes, such as our great-grandmothers wore at the beginning of the 19th century, according to the fashion of that time, poured out onto the porch.
-What a night! Miracle! Just like in summer! - a young voice rang with sonorous tints, and one of the white figures stretched out her arms, bare to the elbows, to the dark sky and gentle stars.
“It wouldn’t be a sin to take a ride along the Kama on a night like this, would it, Klena?” – the second voice joined the first, chesty and low, with pleasant velvety notes.
The one called Klena turned her face to the speaker. She was a real fourteen-year-old beauty. No one, not only in the provincial town of Sarapul, but in the whole province, had such a snow-white face, such dark blue eyes, like two magnificent sapphires, or golden bones with that inimitable red tint that the second daughter of Sarapul possessed. mayor, Cleopatra. And fourteen-year-old Klena was more aware than anyone of the irresistible charm of her extraordinary beauty and was very proud of it.
- Well, you’ll make it up, Ustenka! – she said in a dissatisfied voice. – What could be interesting on Kama at night! At least I’m not drawn there at all.
Indeed, the blond beauty Klena is not attracted to Kama. What's good about it? Cold, damp, dark. And in the green thickets, what’s more, there are mermaids. And she, blond Maple, is afraid of dampness and mermaids most of all in the world. She's not Nadya. Nadya is another matter. She’s not afraid of anything, she’s kind of desperate! She will run not only to the Kama River, but to the cemetery at night. After all, last spring she went to see a drowned man washed ashore. And she, Klena, is different. She is a sedate, well-bred young lady, and not a “hussar pupil”, not a “Cossack girl,” as everyone calls her older sister.
Oh, by the way, where is she? The illumination goes out, the guests are getting ready to leave, and there is no trace of Hope. Nice birthday girl! This evening is organized for her, lanterns and bowls are lit, friends are invited, but she doesn’t even listen. Dear hostess, nothing to say!..
And pretty Klena looked around with concern at the white crowd of girls: that’s right - Nadya is not there. She disappeared.
“Vasya,” the girl excitedly addresses the plump, stocky boy, who was sharply separated by his dark uniform from the elegant light dresses of the young guests, “do you know where Nadezhda is?”
Eleven-year-old Vasya, who was blithely telling one of the young ladies at that time about what large crucian carp the butler Potapych caught today in their pond, immediately fell silent and stopped short.
No, he didn't see Nadya. Where is she? And the boy began to peer anxiously into the dark thicket of the garden, where there were no lights and where it was mysterious and creepy.
- Nadya! Hope! Where are you? – his childish voice rang, rushing into the darkness towards the quickly approaching night.
- Leave it, Vasya! - Anna Gorlina, a tall black-haired girl with an arrogant expression on her face, the daughter of the richest Sarapul merchant, stopped him. – Or don’t you know your sister? How can we please her with our company? Of course not. After all, we don’t know how to command on the parade ground and wave sabers like boys. We were not raised by soldiers.
“Yes, yes,” picked up the plump Ustenka Prokhorova, “we also cannot ride in wild Karabakh like simple Cossacks, like Nadya.” We are young ladies and we must remember this...
And, coyly pursing her lips, she turned her back to the taken aback boy.
However, Vasya’s confusion did not last long. The boy instantly realized that these stupid, in his opinion, pompous girls wanted to offend and humiliate his sister Nadya, the sister whom he, Vasya, idolized and worshiped from early childhood. All the blood flared up in the veins of the insulted boy. With a flaming face and burning eyes, he approached the dark-haired Anna and spoke, barely restraining himself from powerless tears:
- How disgusting you are, Anna!.. And you, Ustenka, and all of you are evil... evil... bad! Why don't you like Nadya? Oh, she’s better than all of you, she never says anything bad about anyone, doesn’t quarrel with anyone... She doesn’t scold anyone... And why did you come to her if she’s not worthy of your company? You are disgusting, disgusting, bad! I don't love anyone! And leave us if so! Leave... if you abhor Nadya's company so much!
And before anyone could restrain or stop him, Vasya in one minute ran down the steps of the porch and rushed like an arrow along the long oak alley, illuminated by the dying lights of the illumination.
The boy ran so fast, as if all these elegant, proud young ladies were chasing on his heels. And only at the end of the alley, where at the turn there was a tiny garden house with a lighted window, Vasya stopped.
“Ride, my horse, at full speed...”
Look, look: a man is walking along the road. There's a bag on your back, but what's in the bag? Countless wealth: gold, jewelry. Emeralds, rubies, sapphires...
Yes, the rich man's bag has a flaw: a hole. Not too big. Or rather, a hole. And either the sapphire will dive into the hole, or the emerald will fall out. Which one will roll into the ditch, which one will disappear in the dust, they will trample underfoot.
But at least I'm rich. Small losses are not a problem for countless wealth. God be with him, he thinks, I will not become poor. Doesn't bother me.
Who would believe that such stupid rich people exist in the world? Don't believe me? But this is you and me. Yes, yes, we are.
On our historical path, we did exactly this with a significant part of our national culture.
Only recently, it seems, have they come to their senses. We are collecting donations for the destroyed temple; we take canvases from artists cursed by us from storage; We are returning old names to streets and towns. Values that were easily neglected are found in the dirt.
And so... we are republishing Charskaya again. After many years. In that distant year of 1918, the magazine “Sincere Word” ceased publication, and remained unprinted - oh, the despair of young readers! – her latest story “The Moth”. The four tiny little books that she published in the 1920s under the pseudonym N. Ivanova, I think, don’t count. Volumes and volumes of her works disappeared from the shelves - only single copies of them remained in the country, a rarity, a rarity. No matter who you ask, no one has it. Several generations have grown up for whom Charskaya is an empty phrase. And throughout the first third of the 20th century, there was no more popular children’s writer in Russia.
Well, the wind of merciless time carried away even other names. And now, today, “Pionerskaya Pravda” has published an excerpt from the story “A Brave Life.” Letters came to the editor with questions: where to buy, how to read in full?... And one grandmother, who regularly reads a children's newspaper (!), began to warmly thank her. It turns out that for the first time she found out who wrote her favorite work. She had a book when she was a child, but it was tattered and had no cover. And then she disappeared completely. And although the grandmother retold the adventures to her children and grandchildren, she could not name the author. And now she can, and that makes her infinitely happy. Happy. Sometimes you need very little to be happy.
Charskaya. The actress of the Alexandrinsky Theater Lidiya Alekseevna Churilova put this name on the cover of her first book (Notes of a College Girl, 1902). Maybe she knew in advance what would fascinate us? And Churilova’s maiden name is Voronova. Born - when and where? Either in 1878 in St. Petersburg, or three years earlier in the Caucasus. (More precisely unknown. Additional research is needed.)
She was left without a mother early. She loved her father very much. She had a hard time with the appearance of her stepmother. She ran away with the gypsies, but was robbed in the camp, and she returned home. This is described in her story “For What?”, which represents the experience of a free, fictionalized autobiography - believe it or not. By the age of ten she was composing poetry; Charskaya's mature poetry is addressed to children:
Ride, my horse, at full speed
Into the expanse of living meadows,
Where the lush carpet spreads
From rainbow flowers!..
Charskaya graduated from the Pavlovsk Women's Institute in St. Petersburg. From 1898 to 1924 she worked in the theater. During the Civil War, she lost her son, who served in the Red Army. She died in Leningrad in 1937; buried at the Smolensk cemetery.
She has many books, more than eighty. “Princess Javakha”, “Luda Vlassovskaya”, “Second Nina”, “Big John”, “Lesovichka”, “For the Family”, “Sibirochka”, “The Crown Princess’s Page”, “Notes of an Orphan”, “Gymnasium Students”, “Bichodzhan. The Adventures of a Caucasian Boy", "Evfemia Staritskaya", "Gazavat. Thirty years of the mountaineers’ struggle for freedom”, “Guilty, but...” - it’s impossible to list everything! Novels, stories, plays...
She loved “Hero of Our Time” by M. Yu. Lermontov, and was influenced by writers I. I. Lazhechnikov, A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky. Some pages indicate that I was closely reading Walter Scott, the creator of the historical novel genre. Luda Vlassovskaya, having become a governess, immediately offers her pupil, the princess, so that she can learn to read, Cooper’s “St. John’s Wort”. In the 1890s, critics saw the merit of Charskaya’s works in the entertaining nature of the story, extraordinary adventures and outstanding characters. Knowing Russian history well, she found - now in one environment, now in another, now in one era, now in another - a hero to her taste: an extraordinary, attractive, magical personality. And she gave free rein to her imagination and imagination. “She invented it boldly and generously” (Vera Panova).
The reader will be mistaken if he decides that we will be afraid of the topic “Charskaya and Chukovsky”. In his sharp, poisonous article “Lydia Charskaya” (1912, now also a page in our literary history), he, despite the delight of the reader, focused attention on the costs of her often affected style, on the abundance of extreme situations. On theatricality. On linguistic absurdities. But his main conclusion - the author is insincere - did not bring him any closer to understanding how Charskaya, with all these shortcomings, managed to captivate so many hearts. And today, the magic of Charskaya, officially banned for so long, removed from public libraries, however - contrary to the state will and the legislators of literary taste - recklessly loved by those who read it in childhood, remains unrevealed. And if we didn’t know Pushkin’s assessment of one historical novel by the writer Zagoskin: “...the situations, although strained, are entertaining... the conversations, although false, are alive... everything can be read with pleasure...” (and this happens!) - we would only throw up our hands.
The canvas for “A Brave Life” (1905) was “Notes of a Cavalry Maiden” by N. A. Durova (1783–1866). The life and fate of Nadezhda Durova is a passionate and active desire to avoid the female, at that time slave, fate, to prove the self-worth and uniqueness of one’s personality. Thirst for freedom. Since childhood, on the whim of chance, brought up like a boy, for the sake of freedom she put on a man's dress and left, or rather, galloped away from home, joining the Cossack regiment: “Freedom, the precious gift of heaven, has finally become my lot forever!.. I jump for joy, imagining that in my entire life I will never hear the words again: “You, girl, sit down.” It’s indecent for you to go for a walk alone!” The participation of the “cavalry maiden” in military operations, including in the Battle of Borodino, where she was shell-shocked, was distinguished first by extravagant courage, and then by the courage of a disciplined warrior, defender of the Fatherland. She steadfastly endured the hardships of the campaign and endured loneliness.
Pushkin published “Notes” of N. Durova with his preface, characterizing the author’s talent in this way: “Tender fingers, which once clutched the bloody hilt of a Uhlan saber, also wield a pen, fast, picturesque and fiery.”
Many readers decided that this was a hoax of Pushkin, among them the critic V. G. Belinsky. But this was not a hoax. Belinsky wrote: “My God, what a wonderful, what a wondrous phenomenon moral world the heroine of these notes, with her youthful prankishness, chivalrous spirit, aversion to women's dress and women’s activities, with her deep poetic feeling, with her sad, melancholy rush to the expanse of military life...”
Encouraged by success, Durova continued to compose, and again not without success.
Today it is known (and it was probably known to Charskaya) that there is still no sign of equality between the heroine of “Notes” and the author, her autobiography is not a document, because the artist’s instinct told Durova: the legend has its own truth, which does not necessarily coincide with the questionnaire. So, in reality, she left not her father and mother, but her husband and child, and not at sixteen, but... But we will not continue, so as not to spoil the pleasure for the young reader. Charskaya followed the lyrical legend created by Durova, turning the spare episodes of “Notes” into adventures in her usual spirit, spreading a lush carpet of rainbow romantic flowers.
Of course, Charskaya’s story is certainly not a document. Let's just say the most important things. Some pages may give the impression that Alexander I directed the military operations of the Russian troops. It was different: this smart, educated, but indecisive and painfully proud monarch turned out to be a bad commander. And under the pressure of public opinion, he appointed Kutuzov as commander-in-chief, and left the army himself. But Charskaya’s Alexander I (“childish good nature and meek tenderness”, “pure, clear gaze”, “great soul”, “proud beautiful eagle”, etc.) is not so much a genuine face as a popular print, a naive utopian dream of the good father of the nation, personifying the Fatherland itself. Charskaya, for many reasons far from the political opposition, wrote “A Brave Life” against the backdrop of the troubled sea of the approaching first Russian revolution of 1905, which threatened to drown the country in waves of popular anger. As a teenage girl, she may have witnessed the solemn visit of the monarch (Alexander III) to the institute where she studied, and unwittingly united the loyal feelings of the “cavalry maiden” with her own.
What is the value of a book opened by a reader? Let us answer in the words of the writer Boris Vasiliev: “If Grigory Petrovich Danilevsky first presented history to me not as a list of dates, but as a chain of actions of long-dead people, then another Russian writer managed to turn these dead into living, understandable and close to me compatriots. The name of this writer was once known to the children of all reading Russia, but now it is firmly forgotten, and if ever remembered, it is certainly with a tinge of mocking disdain. I'm talking about Lydia Alekseevna Charskaya, whose historical stories - for all their naivety! - not only presented Russian history in a popular way, but also taught them to admire it. And admiration for the history of one’s native country is an emotional expression of love for it. And I received the first lessons of this love from “The Terrible Squad,” “The Savage,” “Princess Javakha” and other stories by the children’s writer Lydia Charskaya.”
Sometimes legend can be more alluring and integral than contradictory, confusing reality. And we will repeat after Charskaya:
Ride, my horse, at full speed,
Into space...
Vladimir Prikhodko
Part one
Chapter I
Inhabitants of the old garden
The large old garden of the Sarapul mayor Andrei Vasilyevich Durov is brightly illuminated. Multi-colored paper lanterns - red, yellow and green - stretch in colorful garlands between giant trees, half stripped of leaves by the merciless hand of the old woman of autumn.
The flaming bowls, scattered here and there in the dry autumn grass, seem like grandiose fireflies, complementing the beautiful picture of illumination. And above the old garden, impenetrable and mysterious, the black-eyed beauty, the autumn night of the Kama region, silently glides under her starry cover...
The wall clock in the mayor's house struck eleven.
And instantly the old house trembled and came to life. A whole crowd of girls in light white dresses, trimmed with lace, ruffles and blondes, such as our great-grandmothers wore at the beginning of the 19th century, according to the fashion of that time, poured out onto the porch.
-What a night! Miracle! Just like in summer! - a young voice rang with sonorous tints, and one of the white figures stretched out her arms, bare to the elbows, to the dark sky and gentle stars.
“It wouldn’t be a sin to take a ride along the Kama on a night like this, would it, Klena?” – the second voice joined the first, chesty and low, with pleasant velvety notes.
The one called Klena turned her face to the speaker. She was a real fourteen-year-old beauty. No one, not only in the provincial town of Sarapul, but in the whole province, had such a snow-white face, such dark blue eyes, like two magnificent sapphires, or golden bones with that inimitable red tint that the second daughter of Sarapul possessed. mayor, Cleopatra. And fourteen-year-old Klena was more aware than anyone of the irresistible charm of her extraordinary beauty and was very proud of it.
- Well, you’ll make it up, Ustenka! – she said in a dissatisfied voice. – What could be interesting on Kama at night! At least I’m not drawn there at all.
Indeed, the blond beauty Klena is not attracted to Kama. What's good about it? Cold, damp, dark. And in the green thickets, what’s more, there are mermaids. And she, blond Maple, is afraid of dampness and mermaids most of all in the world. She's not Nadya. Nadya is another matter. She’s not afraid of anything, she’s kind of desperate! She will run not only to the Kama River, but to the cemetery at night. After all, last spring she went to see a drowned man washed ashore. And she, Klena, is different. She is a sedate, well-bred young lady, and not a “hussar pupil”, not a “Cossack girl,” as everyone calls her older sister.
Oh, by the way, where is she? The illumination goes out, the guests are getting ready to leave, and there is no trace of Hope. Nice birthday girl! This evening is organized for her, lanterns and bowls are lit, friends are invited, but she doesn’t even listen. Dear hostess, nothing to say!..
And pretty Klena looked around with concern at the white crowd of girls: that’s right - Nadya is not there. She disappeared.
“Vasya,” the girl excitedly addresses the plump, stocky boy, who was sharply separated by his dark uniform from the elegant light dresses of the young guests, “do you know where Nadezhda is?”
Eleven-year-old Vasya, who was blithely telling one of the young ladies at that time about what large crucian carp the butler Potapych caught today in their pond, immediately fell silent and stopped short.
No, he didn't see Nadya. Where is she? And the boy began to peer anxiously into the dark thicket of the garden, where there were no lights and where it was mysterious and creepy.
- Nadya! Hope! Where are you? – his childish voice rang, rushing into the darkness towards the quickly approaching night.
- Leave it, Vasya! - Anna Gorlina, a tall black-haired girl with an arrogant expression on her face, the daughter of the richest Sarapul merchant, stopped him. – Or don’t you know your sister? How can we please her with our company? Of course not. After all, we don’t know how to command on the parade ground and wave sabers like boys. We were not raised by soldiers.
“Yes, yes,” picked up the plump Ustenka Prokhorova, “we also cannot ride in wild Karabakh like simple Cossacks, like Nadya.” We are young ladies and we must remember this...
And, coyly pursing her lips, she turned her back to the taken aback boy.
However, Vasya’s confusion did not last long. The boy instantly realized that these stupid, in his opinion, pompous girls wanted to offend and humiliate his sister Nadya, the sister whom he, Vasya, idolized and worshiped from early childhood. All the blood flared up in the veins of the insulted boy. With a flaming face and burning eyes, he approached the dark-haired Anna and spoke, barely restraining himself from powerless tears:
- How disgusting you are, Anna!.. And you, Ustenka, and all of you are evil... evil... bad! Why don't you like Nadya? Oh, she’s better than all of you, she never says anything bad about anyone, doesn’t quarrel with anyone... She doesn’t scold anyone... And why did you come to her if she’s not worthy of your company? You are disgusting, disgusting, bad! I don't love anyone! And leave us if so! Leave... if you abhor Nadya's company so much!
And before anyone could restrain or stop him, Vasya in one minute ran down the steps of the porch and rushed like an arrow along the long oak alley, illuminated by the dying lights of the illumination.
The boy ran so fast, as if all these elegant, proud young ladies were chasing on his heels. And only at the end of the alley, where at the turn there was a tiny garden house with a lighted window, Vasya stopped.
- She's there! – he said quietly. “There’s my Nadya... dear... darling!” And how dare they, how dare they offend you! Disgusting, worthless girls! And Klena is good too! At least I would stand up for my sister. Nasty Maple! He also probably gossips about Nadya to his mother. What will happen then?
And Vasya’s heart froze with fear for her sister. He knew how strictly she was punished for every slightest offense. Neither he nor Klena had ever suffered such severe punishments as she, Nadya, had to endure...
And this eleven-year-old boy with big gray eyes, full of good nature and warmth, loved his sister Nadya more than anything in the world. Order him, it seems, Nadya to throw herself into the pond, into this very pond on the shore of which he now stands, and he will fulfill her wish without words, without words or hesitation. This is how it has always been and will always be. And this icy Maple laughs at him, teases him for his boundless love for his sister, for the girl! Is his Nadya a girl like the others? Is she a weak creature who needs support and constant supervision from her elders? Oh, Nadya is a special, very special girl!
- Nadya, Nadya! Where are you finally?! - the child almost burst out crying from the chest.
Before the last sound had time to die out in the silence of the night, the coastal sedge bushes parted, and a white creature appeared on the shore of the pond, very close to the water.
-Who is calling me? Are you, Vasily? – And Nadya stepped into the light strip from her dark ambush.
Nadya's voice was harsh and a little rough, like the voice of a teenage boy. But with her thin and slender and at the same time strong figure, all shrouded in a white cloud of blonde hair and flounces, now, in the darkness of the night, she seemed like a mysterious night fairy of this oak alley and green pond. However, her face is not the airy, gentle face of a fairy. The silver moon emerging from behind a dark cloud brightly illuminates this dark face, with traces of smallpox on it, with a large mouth and sharply defined eyebrows. The only adornment of this young, almost childish face is only one eyes, huge, dark, sometimes gloomy and melancholy, sometimes glowing with humor, sometimes sadness, sometimes brave, sometimes timid, they are at times miraculously beautiful. And these eyes speak, say so much to everyone who looks into their bottomless, abyss-like depths!
Now these magnificent eyes glow with the most genuine sparkling fun. There is merriment in the eyes, and in the folds of the mouth there is something touchingly sad, almost bitter.
-Have they left? - Her strong, not a girlish voice is heard, and she nods in the direction where at that moment the last lights of the illuminations burned out and went out and where silence fell at once.
“Gone,” Vasya answers for some reason in a whisper. -Where have you been, Nadya?
He wants to tell her everything, without concealment, about the nasty girls and his quarrel with them. But he is sorry to worry Nadya. Today is the day of her angel, and this day needs to end smoothly and carefree. And, instead of any complaint, he repeats:
- Where have you been, Nadya?
“At Alcides,” her sweet, muffled voice answers. – On the occasion of today’s celebration, Yefim forgot to pour him the usual nightly portion of oats. It’s good that I arrived on time and my poor horse did not remain hungry. And I have to admit, I completely forgot about the guests! – she unexpectedly concluded and laughed.
Her laughter was young, sonorous, the real laughter of a child who has nothing to worry about or care about yet. And this laughter did not fit in with her young face, but full of non-childish thoughtfulness.
- Nothing! Klena took care of them,” Vasily said with the importance of an adult and suddenly unexpectedly added, hugging his sister: “Oh, Nadya, I wanted to see you, and... and... How I love you, if you only knew!”
- That's it! – she laughed even louder. – Why is this suddenly, all at once?
“I don’t know, Nadya,” answered the boy, not at all embarrassed by her laughter, “but I love you very, very much, more than dad and mom, more than this old garden... More than anything, everything in the whole world... You are so fearless, brave, so brave, Nadya!.. How can I not love you?... There is no thing that you would be afraid of... When you ride on your Alcide, so fearless and brave, it seems to me that you are not even my dear sister, not Nadya, but what - something very, very special... Do you remember, you read to me about the ancient Amazons or about that famous French peasant girl who saved her homeland from the British... They were probably the same as you, they were not afraid of anything, brave, courageous. Only they didn’t have to suffer so much... Oh, Nadya, I feel so sorry for you when your mother scolds you!.. Don’t tell this to anyone, Nadya, but, would you believe it, then I want to cry, and I begin to dislike my mother and be angry with her. And then, what a wonderful heart you have...
-Are you angry, Nadya? – a frightened expression escaped the boy’s lips. -Are you unhappy with me?
But Nadya definitely doesn’t hear his question. She stands motionless and silent, like a white statue, in the silvery strip of the moon. The moon plays with its gentle rays on the girl’s dark face and her dark blond thick braid thrown over her shoulder onto her chest. Large dark eyes, sparkling with the golden stars of the distant sky, seem so sad and beautiful at this moment...
"God! – the dark-skinned girl says mentally. “How he loves me and how hard it will be for him until he gets used to the upcoming separation!..”
And, quickly turning to her brother, she said in a new, seemingly softened voice, full of love and caresses:
- Whatever happens, Vasily, whatever happens, do you hear, you shouldn’t judge me!.. Don’t forget me... and love... love your Nadya more deeply!
Before he had time to come to his senses, answer her, say that he would never forget her and would stand like a mountain for her everywhere, she again disappeared where she had appeared, elusive and strange, like a mysterious fairy of a green pond.
