Poet Nikolai Aseev. Biography and creative activity

Change of the social system and its cardinal transformations have become a powerful stimulus for creativity in some Russian writers, for others - the beginning of the crisis. Too impressive was the transformation of the revolutionary freedom of creativity into a strict ideological organization of Stalinist proletarian literature. Nikolai Aseev is one of those who suffered this painfully. Some researchers of the poet's work note that the official recognition required of him victims, the size of which was too great.

Hail from the hinterland

He was born June 28, 1889 in the Kursk province, in a small provincial Lgov, in a poor noble family. His father is either an insurance agent or an agronomist. Some sources indicate the surname of the poet's father as Stalbaum, others claim that his name was written as Assev. The grandfather on the maternal line had a greater influence on the future writer - Nikolai Pavlovich Pinsky, who had a young Nikolai Aseev after his mother's early loss and his father's second marriage.

Grandfather had the talent of a wonderful storyteller, he knew many folk tales and songs. He loved nature, willingly introduced his grandson to fishing and hunting, without which he could not imagine life. The story of his marriage was fascinating - he bought the future grandmother of the serf from captivity, falling in love with a young peasant woman whom he met during the hunt. The future writer Nikolai Aseev loved stories about the former times - the biography of Varvara Stepanovna's grandmother enthralled him with a romantic storyline.

To Moscow

In 1907, Nikolai graduated from the real school in the provincial Kursk and soon left for Moscow to continue his education at the University of Moscow. By that time, he had already realized that writing classes was something he wanted to devote to life. Becoming an auditor at the historical-philological faculty of Moscow University, Nikolai Aseev plunged into the stormy literary life of the Mother See. His works are published in magazines and almanacs, which appeared in plenty in Moscow: "Protalinka", "Spring", "Covenants", "Pervotsvet".

As a poet, Nikolai Aseev passed periods of fascination with symbolism, becoming one of the founders of the creative groups "Lyrics" and "Liren". In Moscow and Kharkov, where he continued his education, the young man approached with poets and writers who profess various new forms of word creation: V. Bryusov, V. Ivanov, V. Khlebnikov, D. Burliuk, B. Pasternak. In Aseev's poetry of that period, there is a clear sense of interest in national-archaic traditions, in the futuristic nature of word-making.

The turbulent time of the revolution

Since the beginning of the First World, Nikolai Aseev himself experienced the scale of social cataclysms. He was drafted into the active army, where he found himself in the thick of revolutionary events. He was elected to the Soviet of Soldiers' Deputies and took part in mass fraternization with the enemy, in abandoning the hated trenches. Aseev was in the Far East, where he continued to participate in the creative process, creating a literary and artistic association of the futuristic "Balaganchik".

In Aseev's texts - from pre-revolutionary to post-October - all the way of transforming his poetic language is visible. In the first book, published by Nikolai Aseev (Night Flute, 1914), the refinement of symbols and the shocking nature of futurism, in the collections Zor (1914) and Letoryi (1915) - the innovation of word-making, in the books Bomba (1921), The Steel Nightingale (1922), The Council of the Winds (1923) - acute expectations of social change and optimism of romantic revolutionary hopes.

"Mayakovsky begins"

Since 1922, Nikolai Nikolaevich Aseev, whose biography since 1914 - a series of crossings across the country - from Kharkov to Vladivostok - finally settles in Moscow. He was summoned from the Far East on the personal instructions of the People's Commissar of Education A. Lunacharsky. In the capital, Aseev, together with Mayakovsky, forms the core of the "Left Front of Arts" (LEF), a creative association that considered itself the only worthy representative of the new art.

Creative interaction and personal friendship with Vladimir Mayakovsky is the most important event in Aseev's life. Absorbing the revolutionary intensity of Mayakovsky's poetry, the poet created several works of a large format and a distinct ideological orientation. These include the poem "Sverdlovskaya storm" (1924), "Semyon Proskakov" (1928) and made him truly famous "Poem about the twenty-six Baku commissars" (1925).

The readers and colleagues highly appreciated the poetic memories of a friend and mentor written by Aseev 10 years after the tragic death of Vladimir Vladimirovich, in 1940 - Mayakovsky begins. It is a manifesto of fidelity to the convictions of youth, a tribute to the great contemporary.

Pros and Cons, plus and minus

In total, the poet published about 80 poetry collections, became a laureate of numerous awards and official awards. Aseev lived a seemingly serene life. But with a close examination of his work, you can find a kind of duality that could not be avoided by anyone who was engaged in such an ideologically important business as Soviet literature.

In Soviet textbooks there was a classical poet, an apologist of socialist realism, who translated poems of Mao-Tse Dong, - Nikolai Aseyev. "Simple lines" - poems of a subtle lyric poet, who is not alien to formalistic searches, is also Aseev. A venerable Soviet writer, faithful to the line of the party, whom Marina Tsvetaeva's daughter-Ariadne Efron-bluntly accused of indifference, which led her mother to commit suicide, is Stalin's laureate Aseev. A man who rushed to work for Moscow's registration for Tsvetaeva's son, fearlessly defending young poets before Khrushchev, is also Aseyev.

Arranging marks, making grades is a private matter for everyone, a matter of history ...