Childhood and adolescence
Alexander Green is a creative pseudonym. The author's real name is Grinevsky.
The future writer was born in the last month of summer, August 11, 1880 in the small town of Slobodskaya, which is now located in the Kirov region.
Little Sasha's family was not creative. Mother - Anna Lepkova, worked as a nurse all her life. Father - Pole Stefan Grinevsky, a fighter for justice, participated in the uprising of 1863, for which he was sent into exile. The parents met after Stefan returned from exile.
Sasha was the eldest of four Grinevsky children. At the age of 15, Alexander’s mother dies, and his father soon marries again. However, it was not possible to find a common language with his stepmother, and the boy settled separately.
The adventures about which he read so much beckoned with an invisible light, and after graduating from the Volga School, the future writer decided to become a sailor, to plow the seas and oceans, like the heroes of his favorite books.
However, life on the ship did not impress Green, and his violent temper prevented him from finding a common language with the crew and captain. In 1902, Alexander enlisted in the army, but deserted and, having contacted the revolutionaries, carried out underground activities. However, this period of his life did not last long; less than a year later, Alexander Stepanovich was arrested and exiled to Siberia.
Library-branch No. 16
Alexander Stepanovich Grinevsky (pseudonym Green) is a romantic writer whose creative destiny is inextricably linked with Sevastopol and Crimea. The pseudonym “Green,” which appeared in 1907, comes from childhood, although one of the critics of the early 20th century wrote that the writer specially shortened his last name so that it sounded in a Western, foreign manner. Green himself explained the origin of his pseudonym simply, “Green” - that’s how the kids called Sasha Grinevsky briefly at school. “Green pancake” was one of the writer’s childhood nicknames. Many ridiculous “legends” circulated about Green during his lifetime. Here is one of them, Nina Green writes about her in her memoirs, that Alexander Green is a dangerous man, he was in hard labor for the murder of his wife, and as a sailor, having escaped from hard labor, somewhere in Africa he killed an English captain and stole from him manuscripts. He knows English very well, but hides it, and gradually translates the manuscripts and passes them off as his own. But his country Greenland is the inner world of the writer, his brightest dreams and hopes, which he carried in his soul all his life.
To say that Alexander Green loved to read would be to say nothing. Even when he was wandering and in need, there were always books in his knapsack. And as soon as free money appeared, he would definitely buy something new. He loved to visit libraries, where he devoured books about adventures. Greene was a passionate and faithful fan of books and reading until the end of his days; he passed this love on to many of his heroes - Thomas Harvey, Gray, etc. The first book Green saw was a children's edition of Gulliver's Travels, from which he learned to read, and the first word he put together from letters was the word “sea.” Thus began Sasha Grinevsky’s dream of the sea, sea voyages and adventures. One of the most vivid memories of eight-year-old Sasha is a treasure, an inheritance from his uncle, three chests full of books in Russian, French and Polish. The impenetrable jungle, the endless expanses of the sea, the noble and fair heroes of the books of Fenimore Cooper, Mine Reed, Louis Jacoly simply bewitched little Sasha, he was especially fond of the novels of Dickens, Hugo, and Poe. “The rather large library of the Vyatka Zemstvo Real School, where I was sent at the age of nine, was the reason for my poor success. Instead of studying lessons, at the first opportunity, I fell into bed with a book and a piece of bread, gnawed on a piece of bread and reveled in the heroic, picturesque life in tropical countries,” this is how Green recalls his childhood years. Maybe here, in his childhood dreams, those magical countries that he would write about as an adult began to emerge. The idea of the extravaganza novel “Scarlet Sails”, this year marks the 90th anniversary of this work, probably came to the writer in 1916, and he intended to call the novel “Red Sails”. According to the initial drafts, the novel was supposed to take place during the revolution in Petrograd, engulfed in disease, famine and human drama. But then Green abandons this idea. He returned to “Scarlet Sails” already in 1920, having completed the work in rough form. In 1922, the chapter “Grey” was published in the newspaper “Evening Telegraph” (No. 1 of May 8), and the extravaganza novel was published as a separate book in 1923. “There is neither pure nor mixed fiction. A writer should use the unusual only in order to attract attention and start a conversation about the most ordinary,” - this is what Alexander Green said about his works. Remembering Sevastopol, where the writer’s wandering fate took him in 1903, Green writes in his “Autobiographical Tale” that then “it was a beautiful, thoughtfully bright autumn, full of the smell of sea waves and heated stone... I visited Istorichesky Boulevard, Malakhov Kurgan , in the particularly interesting Sevastopol market, where lateen sails stick out in a sharp corner of the embankment, and in the elevated middle of the city, where the quiet streets are overgrown with green grass. Subsequently, some shades of Sevastopol entered my cities: Liss, Zurbagan, Gel-Gyu and Gerton” (A. Green). There is nothing fabulous in the plot of “Scarlet Sails”, just ordinary life. Everything sublime and unrealizable turns out to be “essentially as feasible and possible as a country walk.” It was then that Green wrote: “...I understood one simple truth. It’s about making miracles with your own hands...” The writer colors everyday life with his imagination, making a fairy tale out of history. “Scarlet Sails” is not just a fairy tale for adults and children, it is a hymn about love and the power of dreams, and “Gray and Assol found each other on the morning of a summer day full of inevitability.” Alexander Greene is called “the last romantic.” But his romanticism of a special nature is the ability to create miracles with one’s own hands, the ability to believe that a ship with scarlet sails will also sail in your life. The release of “Scarlet Sails” was favorably received by critics. But soon they practically stopped publishing Green’s works; the romantic writer with his enchanting country of Greenland did not correspond well to the values of the new emerging system. And only in the harsh year of 1944 “Scarlet Sails” saw the light again; it turned out that faith in miracles, in the fact that good always triumphs over evil, can support a person even in the most terrible and difficult trials, such as war. Paustovsky K.G. said this about “Scarlet Sails”: “A fairy tale is needed not only for children, but also for adults. It causes excitement - a source of high and human passions. She does not allow us to calm down and always shows us new sparkling distances, a different life. It disturbs and makes you passionately desire this life.” In the 60-70s of the 20th century, “Scarlet Sails” became a symbol of a whole generation of youth. In the tents of geologists, around the campfires of tourists, in student construction brigades, songs were written and performed with a guitar with the names of Green’s favorite heroes, with the names of the seas, rivers, and cities of Greenland. Alexander Green lived a hard life, it turned out in such a way that he had to become a bilious and quarrelsome person. But through all the trials: revolution, illness, poverty, misunderstanding of his contemporaries - Green carried the amazing gift of sunny imagination, unclouded feelings and a kind look with a shy smile. Green died, but his books remain, in which we are faced with the question of whether our time needs such dreamers as HE was.
Education and upbringing
As Alexander Green recalled, he had a happy childhood; his parents raised him, alternating between pampering and strict punishment. Sasha learned to read at the age of 6, and a new magical world of books opened up for him. The story “Gulliver's Travels” made an indelible impression on the boy.
When the Grinevskys’ first-born was 9 years old, his parents sent him to school, where Sasha received his future pseudonym “Green” from his classmates. Already in the second grade, the student was expelled. The reason for this was the impudent character and restlessness of the future prose writer. In 1892, Alexander managed to enter and graduate from the Vyatka School.
Literature
Varlamov A.N.
Alexander Green. 2nd ed., rev. M.: Young Guard, 2008.
Hawthorne N.
Prophetic portraits // Hawthorne N. Novella M.; L.: Artist. lit., 1965.
Green A.S.
Collection cit.: In 6 volumes. M.: Pravda, 1980.
Kobzev N.A.
About the portrait in the novels of A. Green // Questions of Russian literature. Lvov: Vishcha school, 1975. Issue. 1 (25).
Kozlova E.A.
Principles of artistic generalization in Green's prose: Dis. ...cand. Philol. Sci. Pskov, 2004.
Lotman Yu.M.
About art. St. Petersburg: Art-SPB, 1998.
Novella of the Silver Age / Comp. and comment. T. Bereguleva-Dmitrieva. M.: Terra, 1994.
Sidelnikova M.L.
The motive of the “living” painting: the problem of the vitality of creation (based on the stories of A. Green “Fandango” and M. Weller “Everything will be settled”) // Philosophy of life in Russian literature of the XX-XXI centuries: from life-building to vitality: Monograph. Irkutsk: ISU Publishing House, 2013.
Eliade M.
Maiden Christina. M.: Criterion, 2000.
The beginning of a creative journey
In 1906, the first two stories-propaganda brochures were published, dedicated to soldiers who carried out punitive raids. Two years later the first collection was released.
It did not bring much popularity to the writer, but the next collection, published in 1910, allowed him to meet such writers as A. Kuprin, A. Tolstoy, V. Bryusov.
Published in Niva and Modern World. Another turning point in the writer’s literary life occurred after the outbreak of the First World War. The nature of the stories took on an anti-war mood.
Attitude to the revolution and Soviet power
Alexander Green can be called a Soviet writer only because he lived during this period. He did not share the values of the Soviet regime and had an extremely negative attitude towards the revolution.
In his youth, his passion for revolution led him to the royal prison and forever discouraged him from taking part in such events and joining any party. Green had a negative attitude towards the very idea of revolution, but it did not cause rage in him, unlike I. Bunin, A. Tolstoy, Z. Gippius.
Condemnation of the authorities of the Soviet Union and criticism of the revolution in the New Satyricon almost led the writer to the death penalty.
Literary activity of A. S. Green
After the revolution, the writer's most significant novels were written. From 1920 to 1924 he worked on his famous novels. During this period, “The Shining World” was written, which told about human values and human freedom, and “Scarlet Sails” - about faith and an all-conquering dream.
In 1926, A. Green wrote his main and last large-scale fantasy novel, “Running on the Waves,” which is included in the list of 100 works recommended for schoolchildren.
The author’s talent was especially evident in his stories “The Winter’s Tale”, “The Green Lamp”, “Winner”, “Someone else’s Fault”.
It is interesting that schoolchildren and students can not only read the original works, but also use a summary and even watch films based on many of Alexander Green’s works.
Alexander Green
Alexander Stepanovich Grinevsky (Green is his literary pseudonym) was born on August 23, 1880 in Slobodskoye, a district town in the Vyatka province. And in the city of Vyatka, the years of childhood and youth of the future writer passed. The first word that the first-born Sasha Grinevsky put together from letters, sitting on his father’s lap, was the word “sea”... Sasha was the son of a participant in the Polish uprising of 1863, exiled to provincial Vyatka. An accountant at the zemstvo hospital, my father could barely get by - without joy, hope or dreams. His wife, exhausted and sick, was consoled by the purring of songs - mostly obscene or thieves. So she died at the age of thirty-seven... The widower, Stefan Grinevsky, was left with four half-orphans in his arms: 13-year-old Sasha (the eldest) then had a brother and two sisters. Over time, the father of the future writer remarried, and the stepmother brought her son into the house. And to complete happiness, a common child was born in due time.
...What the family of the Polish exile was lucky with was books. In 1888, Lieutenant Colonel Grinevsky, Sasha’s uncle, died in service. They brought an inheritance from the funeral: three large chests filled with volumes. They were in Polish, French and Russian.
It was then that eight-year-old Alexander first escaped reality - into the attractive world of Jules Verne and Mine Reid. This fictional life turned out to be much more interesting: the endless expanse of the sea, the impassable thickets of the jungle, the fair power of the heroes captivated the boy forever. I didn’t want to return to reality at all...
When Sasha turned nine, his father bought him a gun - an old, ramrod gun, for a ruble. The gift cut the teenager off from food and drink and took him into the forest for whole days. But it was not only the prey that attracted the boy. He fell in love with the whisper of the trees, the smell of grass, the darkness of the thickets. No one here knocked you out of your thoughts or spoiled your dreams. And shooting is a small science. Gunpowder - from the palm of your hand, a wad - from paper, shot - by eye, without a number. And fluff and feathers flew - jackdaws, woodpeckers, pigeons... Everyone at home ate everything.
That same year, the undergrowth was sent to the Vyatka Zemstvo Real School. Acquiring knowledge is a difficult and uneven task. God's Law and History scored excellent, and Geography received an A+. My father, the bookkeeper, selflessly solved arithmetic. But for the rest of the items in the magazine there were deuces and colas...
So I studied for several years until I was kicked out. Because of his behavior: the devil tried to weave rhymes, and he made up a poem about his favorite teachers. And I paid for the verse...
Then there was a city four-year school, where Alexander’s father enrolled him in the penultimate class. Here the new student looked like a lonely encyclopedist, but over time he was expelled twice again - for good deeds...
The disobedient man was restored only by the grace of God. But in recent months, Grinevsky has studied diligently: he learned that a certificate of completion opens the way to nautical classes.
Finally, here it is, the road to a big, alluring, unknown world! Sixteen years behind me, 25 rubles in my pocket. My father gave them to me. The pilgrim also took food, a glass, a teapot and a blanket with a pillow.
The steamer set sail, heading towards the rapids. The sisters howled, the younger brother sniffled. The father squinted against the sun for a long time, following the traveler with his eyes. And he, filled with excited openness to novelty, had already forgotten about the house. All thoughts were occupied by the ocean with sails on the horizon...
Odessa shocked the young resident of Vyatka: the streets, planted with acacias or robins, were bathed in sunlight. Green terrace coffee shops and exotic thrift stores crowded each other. Below was a noisy port, stuffed with the masts of real ships. And behind all this bustle the sea breathed majestically. It separated and united lands, countries, people. And when the next ship headed into the glittering blue embrace of the distant distance, the sea seemed to transfer it to the sky - there, beyond the horizon. This effect only strengthened the impression of the involvement of both elements in the Supreme Providence.
...But it was from a distance. Up close, bitter prose prevailed. Having walked around the entire port, Alexander could not find a job on a ship anywhere. Only one assistant captain sympathetically suggested:
- I can take the cabin boy...
However, the newcomer already knew that the students were not paid - on the contrary, they were charged for food. The acquaintance with the wonderful future ended in a rooming cellar. Loaders and tramps swarmed here, but the accommodation was cheap. The boy began to ask the unemployed sailors of his neighbors about distant countries, terrible typhoons, daring pirates... But they, as if by agreement, reduced the answers to money, rations and cheap watermelons.
...Over time, the young seeker of distant wanderings developed a familiar route: a tramp canteen - a port - a boulevard bench. The boredom was relieved by swimming behind the breakwater five times a day - until one day, having forgotten, the swimmer almost drowned. God knows how the wave cleared up, and he, already exhausted, could not get out to the empty shore. Only the 99th wave mercifully threw the poor fellow onto land, taking payment for his simple clothes. So, what did my mother give birth in, and I had to sneak around the piers! Some loader took pity and lent him some cast-offs...
Two months later, he finally got lucky: Alexander was hired as a cabin boy on the steamer Platon. My father sent me eight and a half rubles for my apprenticeship by telegraph. Science began from the basics: experienced sailors advised swallowing anchor mud - it helps with seasickness. Young readily obeyed everyone, but... He never learned to tie knots, twist lines, or signal with flags. It was not even possible to “beat off the bells” due to the lack of a sharp double blow on both sides of the bell.
During the entire voyage, Sashik never once went down to the engine room - let alone the names of the sails, tackle, rigging, and spars. The guy was held captive by his own ideas about sea life...
Sailing on the Plato gave way to the previous worthless existence, complicated by the approaching cold weather. Monotonous gray weeks turned into months.
The offer to go to Kherson “as a sailor for everything” seemed like magic music in the deathly silence. The vessel is the sailing boat “St. Nicholas”; crew - the shipowner, who is also the skipper, and his son; cargo - tiles. The fee is six rubles. There was no choice.
The flight was difficult. Green cooked, chopped wood, stood watch and slept on bare boards under wet rags. And the wind whistled around us in a four-degree cold. But the sea was so close, the distance was so clear, and the dolphins, frolicking, looked so sweetly!..
In Kherson, Alexander demanded payment. It turned out that he still owed money for the tiles that were crushed in the rush. As a result, the parties parted, each to their own. Green returned to Odessa as a stowaway on some vessel.
...In early spring he was lucky: he was hired as a sailor on the ship “Tsesarevich”, owned by the Russian Society of Shipping and Trade. The flight to Alexandria turned out to be the only foreign one in his life. Alexander saw neither the Sahara nor lions in Egypt. Having reached the outskirts of the city, he stepped into a ditch with muddy water, sat on the dusty side of the road, daydreamed... And then returned to the port: time was running out. Thus ended his African epic. Green's life palette was replete with dark colors. After Odessa, he returned to his homeland, to Vyatka - again to do odd jobs. But life stubbornly skimped on a place and occupation for the unfortunate...
A year later, Alexander ended up in Baku, where the first thing he did was contract malaria. This illness stuck with the writer for a long time.
Short-term work in the oil fields gave way to long, miserable inactivity; His fishing career lasted only a week: he was overcome by fever. After sailing for a short time as a sailor, Green returned to his father again...
And in the spring he went to the Urals - for gold nuggets. But there, as elsewhere, dreams turned into harsh reality. The mountains, covered with blue forest, protected their gold veins. But we had to suffer a lot in the mines, shafts and depots.
Menial work at the domain, at logging sites and rafting. Rest on barracks bunks, where nearby, instead of the tropical sun, an iron stove glowed red...
Grinevsky decided to voluntarily join the tsarist army - it was an act of despair... In the spring of 1902, the young man found himself in Penza, in the tsar’s barracks. One official description of his appearance from that time has survived. Such data, by the way, is given in the description:
Height - 177.4. Eyes - light brown. Hair is light brown.
Special features: on the chest there is a tattoo depicting a schooner with a bowsprit and a foremast carrying two sails...
A seeker of the miraculous, delirious of the sea and sails, ends up in the 213th Orovai Reserve Infantry Battalion, where the most cruel customs reigned, later described by Green in the stories “The Merit of Private Panteleev” and “The Story of a Murder.” Four months later, “Private Alexander Stepanovich Grinevsky” escapes from the battalion, hides in the forest for several days, but is caught and sentenced to three weeks of strict arrest “on bread and water.” The obstinate soldier is noticed by a certain volunteer and begins to diligently supply him with Socialist Revolutionary leaflets and brochures. Green was drawn to freedom, and his romantic imagination was captivated by the very life of the “illegal”, full of secrets and dangers.
The Penza Social Revolutionaries helped him escape from the battalion a second time, provided him with a false passport and transported him to Kyiv. From there he moved to Odessa and then to Sevastopol. The second escape, aggravated by his connection with the Social Revolutionaries, cost Grinevsky a two-year prison sentence. And the unsuccessful third attempt to leave captivity ended in indefinite Siberian exile...
In 1905, 25-year-old Alexander escaped and reached Vyatka. There he lived with a stolen passport, under the name Malginov, until the October events.
“I was a sailor, a loader, an actor, rewrote roles for the theater, worked in gold mines, in a blast furnace, 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... "
For a long time and painfully, Alexander Stepanovich searched for himself as a writer... He began his literary career as an “everyday writer”, as the author of stories, the themes and plots of which he took directly from the reality around him. He was overwhelmed with life impressions, accumulated in abundance during the years of wandering around the world...
Green recalled with special love the Ural forest warrior Ilya, who taught him the wisdom of felling trees and forced him to tell fairy tales on winter evenings. The two of them lived in a log cabin under an old cedar tree. All around there is dense thicket, impenetrable snow, a wolf howl, the wind hums in the chimney of the stove... In two weeks, Greene exhausted his entire rich supply of fairy tales by Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Andersen, Afanasyev and began to improvise, to compose fairy tales himself, inspired by the admiration of his “regular audience.” And, who knows, maybe there, in a forest hut, under a century-old cedar tree, by the cheerful fire of a stove, the writer Green was born...
In 1907, his first book, “The Invisible Cap,” was published. In 1909, “Reno Island” was published. Then there were other works - in more than a hundred periodicals...
The author's pseudonym also crystallized: A. S. Green. (At first there were A. Stepanov, Aleksandrov and Grinevich - a literary pseudonym was necessary for the writer. If his real name had appeared in print, he would have been immediately installed in places not so remote).
In post-revolutionary Petrograd, M. Gorky obtained a room in the House of Arts and academic rations for an illegal writer... And Green was now not alone: he found a girlfriend, faithful and devoted to the end, as in his books. He dedicated to her the immortal extravaganza “Scarlet Sails” - a book that affirms the power of love, the human spirit, “illuminated through and through, like the morning sun,” love for life, for spiritual youth and the belief that a person, in a rush to happiness, is able to create with his own hands miracles…
In 1924, Green and his wife Nina Nikolaevna (we highly recommend her wonderful memoirs about Green) moved from Petrograd to Feodosia (she uses a “saving trick” to alienate her husband from the addictive bohemia: she feigns a heart attack and receives a doctor’s “conclusion” about the need change place of residence).
...He always dreamed of living in a city by the warm sea. The calmest and happiest years of his life passed here; the novels “The Golden Chain” (1925) and “Running on the Waves” (1926) were written here.
The Crimean period of Green’s work became, as it were, the “Boldino autumn” of the writer; at this time he probably created at least half of everything he wrote. His room was occupied only by a table, a chair and a bed.
And on the wall, opposite the headboard, there was a salted wooden sculpture from under the bowsprit of a certain sailing ship. The ship's maid accompanied the writer to bed and met him at dawn. Green plunged into his hard-earned fairy-tale world...
But by the end of the 1920s, publishers who had previously eagerly published Greene's books stopped accepting them altogether. There was no money, and the efforts of friends to place the already ill writer in a sanatorium did not help. Green fell ill, essentially from malnutrition and melancholy, because for the first time life seemed to him “a road to nowhere.” He didn’t know that his real glory was yet to come...
Green was not only a magnificent landscape painter and master of plot, but also a very subtle psychologist. He wrote about the unknown and power of nature, about self-sacrifice, courage - the heroic traits inherent in the most ordinary people. Finally, very few writers wrote so purely, carefully and emotionally about love for a woman, as Greene did.
Green's literary heritage is much wider and more diverse than one might assume, knowing the writer only from his romantic short stories, stories and novels. Not only in his youth, but also at the time of wide fame, Green, along with prose, wrote lyrical poems, poetic feuilletons and even fables. Along with romantic works, he published essays and stories of everyday life in newspapers and magazines. The last book the writer worked on was his “Autobiographical Tale,” where he depicts his life strictly realistically, in all its genre colors, with all its harsh details.
The writer died on July 8, 1932 in Old Crimea.
The writer’s last unfinished work was the novel “Touchy” - a novel about delicate, vulnerable and sympathetic natures, incapable of lies, hypocrisy and hypocrisy, about people who affirm goodness on earth. “Until the end of my days,” Greene wrote, “I would like to wander through the bright lands of my imagination.”
In the mountainous Old Crimean cemetery, under the shade of an old wild plum tree, lies a heavy granite slab. There is a bench and flowers near the stove. Writers come to this grave, readers come from distant places...
“When the days begin to gather dust and the colors fade, I take Green. I open it on any page. This is how the windows in the house are cleaned in the spring. Everything becomes light, bright, everything again mysteriously excites, as in childhood.”
— D. Granin
“This is a wonderful writer, getting younger with age. It will be read by many generations after us, and its pages will always breathe on the reader with the same freshness as fairy tales breathe.”
— M. Shaginyan.
“Alexander Green is a sunny writer and, despite his 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, fidelity and the feasibility of dreams victoriously runs through.”
— Vera Ketlinskaya.
In the 1960s, on the wave of a new romantic upsurge in the country, Green turned into one of the most published and revered Russian authors, the idol of young readers (before that, at the height of the campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans,” the writer’s books were crossed out from the plans of publishing houses, were not issued in libraries)... Now libraries and schools named after him were opened, Green House Museums were founded in Feodosia, Old Crimea and Vyatka...
And this love does not fade to this day... First in Crimea, and in August 2000 - on the 120th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Green - and in the writer’s homeland, in the city of Kirov (Vyatka), on the embankment bearing his name, there was The bust of the writer was solemnly unveiled.
Green’s work is the face of the era, a piece of its literature, and a special, unique piece at that... In 2000, the All-Russian Literary Prize named after Alexander Green was established, it is awarded annually “for works for children and youth, imbued with the spirit of romance and hope,” among the laureates of this Prizes - Kir Bulychev and Vladislav Krapivin. “The Country of Greenland, invented by the writer, which never existed on geographical maps, outwardly realistic and artistically perfect, also permeating almost all the main works of fantasy (in a wide spectrum - from science fiction to fantasy, gothic novel and “horror literature”) and general romantic understatement , - allow us to consider Green one of the founders of modern science fiction literature... underestimated during his lifetime..."
— A. Britikov
The works of Alexander Green are loved and have been disturbing the hearts of readers for a hundred years...
“There is neither pure nor mixed fiction. A writer should use the extraordinary only to attract attention and start a conversation about the most ordinary.”
— Alexander Green
Writer's personal life
In the author's life there were many women who admired his creativity and talent. The poet's first wife was Vera Pavlovna Abramova
, whom he met during his political imprisonment.
Vera Pavlovna’s pity and sympathy for the writer’s fate brought them closer, and soon the lovers got married. However, after living for 7 difficult years, the couple broke up, remaining good friends.
The writer's next marriage to Maria Dolidze lasted only a few months.
A. Green died in the arms of his third wife, Nina Nikolaevna Alonkina, with whom he lived happily for 11 years.
It was to her that the author dedicated his novels and poems.
After the death of her husband, Nina Nikolaevna lived for another 40 years, and it was she who initiated the opening of the writer’s museum.
Incorrigible romantic Alexander Green: interesting facts from the life of the writer
Alexander Stefanovich Grinevsky, known to everyone as Alexander Green, is an amazing writer who has never had a good life in the material world. And who managed to create his own amazing and brilliant world, a world of surreal dreams.
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August 23 marks the 138th anniversary of the birth of the talented science fiction writer and romantic Alexander Green. We have prepared interesting facts from the life of the writer.
There is hardly a representative of the middle or older generation who has not enthusiastically read the works of A. Green. His story “Scarlet Sails”, novels “The Shining World” and “Running on the Waves” have always fascinated young hearts, awakening dreams of wanderings, exploits, and discoveries.
Greene has written many interesting novels and stories for people of the older generation. They, again, talk about courageous, strong-willed people. The stories often have an unexpected romantic ending.
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His early stories are quite gloomy, full of bitter irony, and this is not surprising - life often turned to the writer on a gloomy, harsh side. And it is even more surprising that Greene managed to retain the ability not only to believe in the bright, but also to communicate this faith to others.
Green learned to read at the age of 6, and the first book he read was Swift's The Adventures of Gulliver.
In the second grade, the future writer was expelled from school for writing a poem that was offensive to teachers.
Green was an idealist and a dreamer, unable to live by orders. He made his first escape at the age of 16, leaving his native Vyatka for Odessa. Huge ships, free sea air and the endless sea beckoned him. He dreamed of being a sea captain. But Alexander Grinevsky did not make a captain. And the sailor too. Severe seasickness overwhelmed him and did not let go until the very end of the trip.
During his life, Green managed to master many different professions. He was a lumberjack, a gold miner, a fisherman, a railroad employee and a sailor.
Having become a soldier with the help of his “loving” father, Green finds no place for himself here either. He is fleeing the army. His new friends, the Socialist Revolutionaries, help in this. Thus begins a period of fascination with revolutionary ideas in Green’s life.
Green was arrested and imprisoned several times for escaping from a military unit and for promoting revolutionary ideas among sailors. He was supposed to spend 4 years in exile in Tobolsk, but escaped after three days by getting the guards drunk. He described the details in the book “Travels in the Middle Urals.”
In exile he wrote his first romantic revolutionary stories. Having read them to his cellmates, he was surprised to find tears on their dirty cheeks. “You have talent, Grinevsky!” - they exclaimed. And this is the first recognition that the chronic loser Alexander Grinevsky received, which made him a writer. He began signing his stories with his boyish nickname – Green.
In 1906, when Green arrived in Moscow with forged documents after escaping from Turinsk, his writing career began, but for radical thoughts in his works, the editions were confiscated and burned, and the author was exiled to Arkhangelsk, where he continued to write.
Green was married twice. His first wife Vera Pavlovna, the daughter of a wealthy official, remained his friend all his life, although they were only together for three years. Portraits of her and the writer’s father were always in a place of honor in the Grinevskys’ house, and after the writer’s death, Vera Pavlovna helped Green’s second wife when she was serving a 10-year sentence in the camps “for treason.” The writer married for the second time in 1921 to a 26-year-old widow, nurse Nina Mironova.
Unfortunately, the Soviet government did not accept the writer Green with his eccentric modernist style, fantasies and fairy-tale motifs, far from life. He did not respond to the call of the era, and the era took revenge on him. “Give me something on the topics of the day!” - the publishers asked. But he no longer knew how to write on the topics of the day, only on topics of the soul, which was not interesting to the Soviet government. I worked a lot, but they stopped printing.
M. Shaginyan wrote then: “Green’s misfortune and misfortune is that he writes not about the true romance of socialism, but about the romance of a fairy tale, and even with a capitalist slant.” And Green confessed to a friend: “I write about storms, ships, love, fate, the secret ways of the soul and the meaning of chance. And about carnivals and duels. By spring I will finish Running on the Waves.”
Despite his revolutionary spirit, Alexander Green did not approve of the Bolsheviks who came to power, arguing that it was impossible to destroy one type of violence with another.
In the late 1920s, Green was declared an “ideological enemy” by the Soviet authorities, and his works were blacklisted.
A hard life could not help but leave its mark on the writer’s appearance. In appearance, A. Green was gloomy, but his contemporaries noted the smiling and childlike soul characteristic of people with pure thoughts. Green himself said in his mature years that “childhood lives in a person until his gray hair.” As if he meant himself. His wife Nina Nikolaevna recalled that during the years of their happy life in Feodosia by the sea, the writer was often cheerful at home, in the circle of close people.
In 1923, the “extravaganza story” “Scarlet Sails” was published, which later became the writer’s calling card. It is believed that the prototype of the main character of the story with the fantastic name Assol was Green’s wife, Nina Nikolaevna. On their next wedding anniversary, the writer told her: “You gave me so much joy, laughter, tenderness and even reasons to approach life differently than I had before, that I stand as if in flowers and waves, and a flock of birds overhead. My heart is cheerful and light.”
In 1929, Alexander Green spent the entire summer in Old Crimea, working on the novel “The Road to Nowhere,” and in 1930 he completely moved to the city of Old Crimea. At the end of April 1931, already seriously ill, Green went to Koktebel to visit Voloshin. This route is still known and popular among tourists as the Greene Trail.
Since 1930, Soviet censorship, with the motivation “you do not merge with the era,” banned reprints of Greene and introduced a limit on new books: one per year. Green and his wife were desperately hungry and often sick. Green tried to hunt nearby birds with a bow and arrow, but was unsuccessful. The novel Touchable, begun by Greene at this time, was never completed, although some critics consider it the best in his work.
The last romantic died of transient cancer on July 8, 1932.
One of the small planets discovered in 1985, “Grinevia,” is named after Green; 4 museums and 10 streets in different cities of Russia are dedicated to him.
“Nurture your dreams,” Green liked to repeat. After all, “to prohibit a dream means not to believe in happiness, and not to believe in happiness means not to live.” And “may you see in your life a lot of not scarlet, but dirty and predatory sails,” don’t stop dreaming. Or better yet, “learn to make miracles with your own hands.”
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Znayu also wrote interesting facts from the life of Bernard Shaw.
Last years of life and death
For several years before his death, the representative of neo-romanticism A. Green practically did not publish; he lived in Crimea next to the passion of his life - the sea.
The Russian prose writer died in 1932, almost in complete poverty.
2 years after his death, the last edition of his works, “Fantastic Novels,” was published.
