Are you here: Motherhood

The article is devoted to the popular fairy tale writer - D.N. Mamin-Siberian. You will learn biographical information about the author, a list of his works, and also get acquainted with interesting annotations that reveal the essence of some fairy tales.

Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak. Biography. Childhood and youth

Dmitry Mamin was born on November 6, 1852. His father Narkis was a priest. Dima's mother paid much attention to the upbringing of Dima. When he grew up, his parents sent him to a school where the children of the workers of the Visimo-Shaitan plant studied.

Dad really wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. At first, everything went as Narkis had planned. He entered the theological seminary in Perm and studied there for a whole year as a student. However, the boy realized that he did not want to devote his whole life to the cause of the priest, and therefore decided to leave the seminary. The father was extremely dissatisfied with the behavior of his son and did not share his decision. The tense situation in the family forced Dmitry to leave home. He decided to go to St. Petersburg.

Trip to St. Petersburg

Here he wanders around the medical facilities. During the year he trained as a veterinarian, after which he moved to the medical department. Then he entered St. Petersburg University at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, after which he began to practice law.

As a result of six years of "walking" in different faculties, he never received a single diploma. During this period of time, he realizes that with all his heart he wants to become a writer.

From under his pen, the first work is born, which is called "Secrets of the Dark Forest". Already in this work one can see his creative potential and outstanding talent. But not all of his works immediately became masterpieces. His novel "In the whirlpool of passions", which was published in a small circulation magazine under the pseudonym E. Tomsky, was criticized to the nines.

Homecoming

At the age of 25, he returns to his homeland and writes new compositions under the pseudonym Sibiryak, so as not to be associated with the loser E. Tomsky.

In 1890, his divorce from his first wife followed. He marries the actress M. Abramova. Together with his new wife, Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak moves to St. Petersburg. Their happy marriage did not last long. The woman died immediately after the birth of her daughter. The girl was named Alyonushka. It was thanks to his beloved daughter that Mamin-Sibiryak opened up to readers as a charming storyteller.

It is important to note such an interesting fact: some of the works of Mamin-Sibiryak were published under the pseudonyms Onik and Bash-Kurt. He died at the age of sixty.

List of works by Mamin-Sibiryak

"Alyonushka's Tales".
"Balaburda".
"Spit".
"In the stone well".
"Wizard".
"In the mountains".
"In teaching".
"Emelya the hunter".
"Green War".
Series "From the distant past" ("The Road", "The Execution of Fortunka", "Illness", "The Story of a Sawyer", "Beginner", "Book").
Legends: "Baimagan", "Maya", "Khantygay's Swan".
"Forest fairy tale".
"Medvedko".
"On a way".
"About node".
"Fathers".
"First Correspondence".
"Hold on."
"Underground".
"Acceptant".
"Siberian stories" ("Abba", "Depeche", "Dear guests").
Fairy tales and stories for children: "Akbozat", "The rich man and Eremka", "In the wilderness", "Wintering on Studenaya".
"Grey neck".
"Stubborn goat".
"Old Sparrow".
"The Tale of the Glorious King Peas".

Annotations to the fairy tales of Mamin-Sibiryak

A real talented storyteller is Mamin-Sibiryak. Fairy tales of this author are very popular with children and adults. They feel soulfulness and special penetration. They were created for the beloved daughter, whose mother died in childbirth.

Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak; Visimo-Shaitansky plant, Sverdlovsk region; 11/06/1852 - 11/15/1912

Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak's books won love and respect for their charming descriptions of the picturesque nature of the Urals. There is an award named after the writer, which is awarded to authors whose works describe this region. But the collection "Alyonushka's Tales", which he named after his little daughter, brought him the greatest popularity. Based on some of the fairy tales of Mamin-Sibiryak, which are popular to this day, animated films were shot. And many of the writer's stories are included in the school curriculum.

Biography of Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak

Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak's biography is full of various events. The writer was born into the family of a local priest. For some time, the future writer was educated exclusively at home. But this did not affect the quality of knowledge in any way, since Dmitry's family was intelligent and educated. Later, Mamin-Sibiryak continued his studies at the Yekaterinburg School and Seminary in the city of Perm.

Initially, Dmitry planned to follow in the footsteps of his parents, but while studying at the seminary in 1872, he realized that he did not want to connect his life with the church. After that, he changed many educational institutions, as a result of which he ended up in St. Petersburg. There he trained as a veterinarian and as a lawyer. For several years the writer tried to find his place in life.

At one point, the life of the writer was complicated by a terrible diagnosis - Mamin-Sibiryak was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Because of this, he was forced to return to his father's house, where, after the death of his father, he became the sole breadwinner. The family needed money, so Dmitry went to work in Yekaterinburg, where he met his future wife Maria.

After 1880, Mamin-Sibiryak, as later and, often traveled to his native places and got acquainted with the life of ordinary people. Then he began to actively engage in writing. The first works of Mamin-Sibiryak are the stories "From the Urals to Moscow" and the novel "Privalovsky Millions", which became popular and won positive reviews from critics. In his works, the writer described the picturesque nature of his native land and the life of the Russian people during the reforms. There are many fairy tales that Mamin-Sibiryak wrote for children. They are still very popular among readers.

In 1890, Dmitry and his wife divorced, and the writer married the theater artist Maria Abramova. The young family moved to St. Petersburg, where they lived for a year until Abramova died. The couple had a little daughter, who was seriously ill with chorea. It was to her that the writer dedicated his most popular collection of works for children called Alyonushka's Tales. In this book by Mamin-Sibiryak, fairy tales are instructive and entertaining and still find a good response from young readers. Unfortunately, the writer's daughter lived a very short life, dying at the age of twenty-three from tuberculosis.

At the fifty-ninth year of his life, Mamin-Sibiryak survived an intracerebral hemorrhage, as a result of which his arms and legs were paralyzed. A year later, Dmitry fell ill with pleurisy and died in the fall of 1912. The writer was buried in St. Petersburg. After some time, in honor of Mamin-Sibiryak, whose fairy tales we can read today as part of the school curriculum, a theater in Nizhny Tagil and several streets in various cities of Russia were named.

Books by Mamin Sibiryak on the Top Books website

Tales of Mamin Sibiryak for children are popular to this day. This allowed them to get into ours. Well, the most popular collection of the writer - "Alyonushka's Tales", is presented among. And given the consistently high interest in the writer's work, we will see more than once the tales of Mamin Sibiryak among.

Mamin Sibiryak book list

Untitled
white-fronted
Fighters
Stormy stream
In the whirlpool of passion
spring thunderstorms
mountain nest
wild happiness
Zarnitsa
Gold
Birthday boy
"Muzgarka" or "Zimovye"
General public favourite.
From the Urals to Moscow
Okhonin's eyebrows
Falling stars
Along the Urals
Last hallmarks
Privalov millions

(real surname - M a m and n)
11/06/1852, Visimo-Shaitansky plant, Verkhotursky district, Perm province - 11/15/1912, St. Petersburg
Russian writer

He was like a piece of jasper,
beautiful, patterned jasper,
brought far from native mountains.

S.Ya.Elpatevsky

About Mamin-Sibiryak, especially after his death, they talked a lot and many. Some with admiration, some with obvious irritation, and some with mockery. This man gave rise to very diverse judgments.
Tall, broad-shouldered, open-faced and "wonderful, a little thoughtful eyes" He stood out in any crowd. And his "the laid-back grace of a young free-trained bear" only strengthened the general impression of some bewitching wild power. Mamin's character was to match the appearance. The same unbridled, quick-tempered. His harsh judgments, his full-bodied witticisms, his harsh assessments often offended people, giving rise to ill-wishers. But more often, Dmitry Narkisovich was forgiven for something that would not have been forgiven to someone else. So great was the charm of this big, strong, but somehow very unprotected and touching person.
His kindness and gentleness were not immediately revealed and not to everyone. Although even the pseudonym, firmly fused with the surname - "Mamin-Sibiryak" - sounded somehow warm, at home.
Strictly speaking, this pseudonym was not entirely accurate. The old wooden house of the factory priest, where the future writer was born, was located on the very border of Europe and Asia. "Watershed of the Ural Mountains" passed only 14 versts. There, in the Urals, Dmitry Narkisovich spent his childhood and youth. The best books have been written about the Urals, its extraordinary nature and people.
But what about Siberia? She was further east. And it was not the favorite theme of the writer and the main content of his works. In fairness, he should have chosen a different pseudonym. For example, Mamin-Uralsky or Mamin-Uralets. Yes, but the sound would not be the same.
Ural - the body is stone, the heart is fiery. He always stayed with Mom. Even when he moved to St. Petersburg and became a completely metropolitan resident, or went to rest with his daughter at some fashionable resort, none of the beauties and miracles there pleased him. Everything seemed dull, devoid of brightness and color.
Why, striving with all his heart to the Urals, he spent almost half of his life away from him. There was a reason. Sad reason. Daughter Alyonushka was born a weak, sickly girl. Even in infancy, she lost her mother. And all the care of her fell on the shoulders of her father. Mamin devoted the last years of his life entirely to his daughter. Doctors forbade Alyonushka to travel long distances, and Dmitry Narkisovich had to come to terms with this. But having taken the Urals from her father, Alyonushka gave him something else.
And not only to him. "Alyonushka's Tales" (1894-96) are touching, poetic, poignantly beautiful. They are written with such selfless love and tenderness that they still make young readers, the same age as little Alyonushka, laugh and cry. And Mamin-Sibiryak himself once admitted: “This is my favorite book, it was written by love itself, and therefore it will outlive everything else”.
By and large, that is what happened. More than a century has passed since the appearance of fairy tales. And although “adult” novels and short stories by Mamin-Sibiryak are still being published, for most readers he remains precisely a children’s writer, the creator of the marvelous Alyonushka Tales.

Irina Kazyulkina

WORKS OF D.N.MAMIN-SIBIRYAK

COMPLETE WORKS: in 20 volumes / D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak. - Yekaterinburg: Bank of Cultural Information, 2002-.
The publication is not finished.

COLLECTED WORKS: in 6 volumes / D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak. - Moscow: Fiction, 1980-1981.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the famous publisher Marx published a collection of works by D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak, which included about 250 (!) Works. Moreover, it did not include stories and fairy tales for children (about 150 titles) and about a hundred works, "lost" in various periodicals or not yet published by that time (publicism, essays, newspaper reports, scientific articles).
This collection of works, although it does not claim to be exhaustive, presents the work of D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak quite versatile. It includes not only novels that brought the author the fame of the most accurate everyday writer and ethnographer of the Urals, but also numerous stories, essays, articles and, of course, works for children.

SELECTED WORKS: in 2 volumes / D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak. - Moscow: Fiction, 1988.
Mamin-Sibiryak is a Uralian. He was both in life and in work. Any page of his Ural stories and essays retains the mysterious charm of this region, which is so unlike the others. At times, it seems that the resinous aroma of fir and spruce forests emanates from these pages, and the Chusovaya and Kama rivers roll out their heavy waves on them.

ALENUSHK'S TALES / D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak; artist S. Nabutovsky. - Moscow: Makhaon, 2011. - 125 p. : ill. - (For the smallest).
"Alyonushka's Tales" was first published in 1894-96 on the pages of "Children's Reading", one of the best magazines of that time. It was published by the famous Moscow teacher D.I. Tikhomirov. The fairy tales were published as a separate edition in 1897 and since then have been constantly reprinted in Russia.

MOUNTAIN NEST / D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak. - Moscow: Astrel: AST; Vladimir: VKT, 2011. - 416 p. : ill. - (Russian classics).
GOLD / Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak. - Moscow: AST: Astrel: Polygraphizdat, 2010. - 382 p. : ill. - (Russian classics).
PRIVALOV MILLIONS / D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak. - Moscow: Meshcheryakov Publishing House, 2007. - 480 p. : ill.
"Privalovsky Millions" (1883) and "Mountain Nest" (1984) are the most famous "adult" novels by Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak. They managed to step over a century, so that at the beginning of our century they again become amazingly and even frighteningly modern.

GRAY NECK / Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak; artist Ludmila Karpenko. - Moscow: TriMag, 2008. - 31 p. : ill.
GRAY NECK / D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak; [ill. V. Ermolaeva]. - Moscow: Meshcheryakov Publishing House, 2009. - 32 p. : ill.
There are books that seem to have always existed. This is one of them. Little ducks could cry over the story just as sincerely and selflessly in the distant past, as they will probably cry in the equally distant future. After all, in the soul of a person there will always be a place for pity and compassion.

FAIRY TALES. LEGENDS. STORIES / D. N. Mamin-Sibirk. - Moscow: New Key, 2003. - 368 p. : ill.
One person, recalling Mamin-Sibiryak, once said: “Children loved him and animals were not afraid”. This book includes stories and fairy tales of the writer, which he dedicated to both.

Irina Kazyulkina

LITERATURE ABOUT THE LIFE AND WORK OF D.N.MAMIN-SIBIRYAK

Mamin-Sibiryak D.N. From the distant past: [memoirs] // Mamin-Sibiryak D.N. Tales, stories, essays. - Moscow: Moscow worker, 1975. - S. 387-478.

Begak B. A. “After all, it is happiness to write for children” // Begak B. A. Classics in the country of childhood. - Moscow: Children's Literature, 1983. - S. 89-98.

Dergachev I. D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak. Personality. Creativity / I. Dergachev. - Ed. 2nd. - Sverdlovsk: Middle Ural book publishing house, 1981. - 304 p. : ill.

Green mountains, motley people: in search of connecting threads: following the travels of D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak / [authors of essays A.P. Chernoskutov, Yu.V. Shinkarenko]. - Ekaterinburg: Socrates, 2008. - 480 p. : ill.

Kireev R. Happiness dreamed of a spring thunderstorm // Science and religion. - 2003. - No. 1. - S. 36-39.

Kitainik M. G. Father and daughter: essay in letters // Mamin-Sibiryak D. N. Green mountains. - Moscow: Young Guard, 1982. - S. 332-365.

Korf O. For children about writers: the end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century. - Moscow: Sagittarius, 2006.

Kuzin N. Suffer and rejoice in a thousand hearts // Our contemporary. - 2002. - No. 10. - S. 234-241.

D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak in the memoirs of contemporaries. - Sverdlovsk: Sverdlovsk book publishing house, 1962. - 361 p.

Pospelov G. N. Life and customs of the stone belt: “Privalovsky millions” by D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak / G. N. Pospelov // Peaks: a book about outstanding works of Russian literature. - Moscow: Children's literature, 1983. - S. 54-67.

Sergovantsev N. Mamin-Sibiryak / Nikolai Sergovantsev. - Moscow: Young Guard, 2005. - 337 p. : ill. - (Life of remarkable people).

Tubelskaya G. N. Children's writers of Russia: one hundred and thirty names: a bio-bibliographic reference book / G. N. Tubelskaya. - Moscow: Russian School Library Association, 2007 - 492 p. : ill.
Biographical sketch of D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak read on p. 201-203.

Chantsev A. V. Mamin-Sibiryak D. N. // Russian Writers. 1800-1917: a biographical dictionary. - Moscow: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 1994. - T. 3. - S. 497-502.

Encyclopedia of literary heroes: Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century. - Moscow: Olimp: AST, 1997. - 768 p. : ill.
Read about the heroes of the works of D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak (including the Gray Sheika) on p. 270-275.

I.K.

SCREENSING OF THE WORKS OF D.N.MAMIN-SIBIRYAK

- ART FILMS -

In the power of gold. Based on the play "The Gold Miners". Dir. I.Pravov. Comp. E.Rodygin. USSR, 1957. Cast: I. Pereverzev, I. Kmit, V. Chekmarev and others.

Gold. Dir. A. Marmontov. Russia, 2012. Cast: S. Bezrukov, M. Porechenkov, I. Skobtseva and others.

On a golden day. TV version of the performance of the Theater. E. Vakhtangov. Dir. M. Markova, A. Remezov. USSR, 1977. Cast: Yu. Borisova, N. Gritsenko, V. Shalevich and others.

Under the linden. TV movie. Dir. S. Remmeh. USSR, 1979. Cast: N. Danilova, A. Leskov, V. Panina, I. Gorbachev and others.

Privalovsky millions. Dir. Ya. Lapshin. Comp. Y. Levitin. USSR, 1972. Cast: L. Kulagin, V. Strzhelchik, L. Khityaeva, A. Fait, L. Chursina, L. Sokolova and others.

Privalovsky millions. TV series. Dir. D.Clante, N.Popov. Comp. S. Pironkov. Germany-Bulgaria, 1983. Cast: R. Chanev, G. Cherkelov, M. Dimitrova and others.

- CARTOONS -

Ruff and sparrow. Based on "The Tale of Sparrow Vorobeich, Ersh Ershovich and Yasha the Merry Chimney Sweep". Dir. V. Petkevich. Belarus, 2000.

Once upon a time there lived the last fly. Based on "The Tale of How the Last Fly Lived". Dir. V. Petkevich. Belarus, 2009.

Gray Neck. Dir. L.Amalrik, V.Polkovnikov. Comp. Yu.Nikolsky. USSR, 1948. Roles were voiced by: V. Ivanova, F. Kurikhin, V. Telegina and others.

Tale about Komar Komarovich. Dir. V. Fomin. Comp. V.Kazenin. USSR, 1980. Roles were voiced by: Z. Naryshkina, M. Vinogradova, Y. Volintsev, B. Runge.

Tale of a brave hare. Dir. N. Pavlovskaya. USSR, 1978.

A story about a goat. Dir. V. Petkevich. Art.-post. A. Petrov. USSR, 1985. Text read by G. Burkov.

Brave Bunny. Dir. I. Ivanov-Vano. Comp. Y. Levitin. USSR, 1955. Roles were voiced by: Vitya Koval, V. Popova, V. Volodin, G. Vitsin and others.

I.K.

“Boo-bye-bye…
One eye at Alyonushka is sleeping, the other is looking; one ear of Alyonushka is sleeping, the other is listening.
Sleep, Alyonushka, sleep, beauty, and dad will tell fairy tales ... "
How many of these stories? Roughly ten:
"The Tale of the Brave Hare - long ears, slanting eyes, short tail",
"The Tale of the Kozyavochka"
“About Komar Komarovich - a long nose and about shaggy Misha - a short tail”,
"Vanka's name day",
"The Tale of Sparrow Vorobeich, Ruff Ershovich and the cheerful chimney sweep Yasha",
"The Tale of How the Last Fly Lived",
"The Tale of the Voronushka - a black little head and a yellow bird Canary",
"Smarter than everyone"
"The parable of Milk, oatmeal and gray cat Murka",
"Time to sleep".
Since 1896, when Alyonushka's Tales were first published, Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak began to consider them his best work, and himself as a children's writer. He chose the name for fairy tales not by chance - Alyonushka was the name of his daughter. Dmitry Narkisovich lovingly called her "father's daughter"- she lost her mother at birth and from the cradle was surrounded only by his care. The girl faced many trials. Almost immediately it became clear that Alyonushka was seriously and hopelessly ill. And only thanks to the great will and courage of her father, she eventually got used to it, adapted to life. And the disease, although not completely gone, receded.
Years will pass, and the grown-up Alyonushka, in turn, will take care of her paralyzed father. This closes the circle of love and self-sacrifice.
... The earth has long since reposed both father and daughter. Gone with them all their sorrows and troubles. But love remained. Every page of "Alyonushka's Tales" and "The Gray Neck" breathes with it - works in which the writer managed to forever preserve the features of his dear Alyonushka.

Portrait of father and daughter

This is one of the many joint photographs of Dmitry Narkisovich and Alyonushka. In pre-revolutionary times, they appeared more than once on the pages of children's and youth magazines.

From the latest editions:

Mamin-Sibiryak D.N. Alyonushka's tales / With forty-five pics. artistic A.Afanasiev [and others]. - Reprint. ed. - M.: IEOPGKO, 2006. - 131 p.: ill. - (B-ka spiritual and moral culture).

Mamin-Sibiryak D.N. Gray neck / Fig. S. Yarovoy. - M.: Det. lit., 2006. - 16 p.: ill.

Mamin-Sibiryak D.N. Gray neck / Art. D. Belozertsev. - M.: Aquilegia-M, 2007. - 48 p.: ill. - (Classic).

Mamin-Sibiryak D.N. Gray neck / Art. L. Karpenko. - M.: TriMag, 2008. - 31 p.: ill.

Mamin-Sibiryak D.N. "The Gray Neck" and other tales. - M.: ROSMEN-PRESS, 2009. - 80 p.: ill. - (The best storytellers of Russia).

Mamin-Sibiryak D.N. Tale of the brave Hare - long ears, slanting eyes, short tail / Art. V. Dugin. - M.: Tsentrpoligraf, 2007. - p.: ill. - (Favorite book).

Mamin-Sibiryak D.N. Tale of the brave Hare - long ears, slanting eyes, short tail / Art. S. Sachkov. - M.: AST: Astrel; Tula: Rodnichok, 2007. - 16 p.: ill.

Irina Kazyulkina

DMITRY NARKISOVICH MAMIN-SIBIRYAK

D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak

ABOUT THE BOOK

In the rosy perspective of childhood memories, not only people are alive, but also those inanimate objects that were somehow connected with the small life of a novice little person. And now I think about them as living beings, again experiencing the impressions and feelings of distant childhood.
In these mute participants in children's life, in the foreground, of course, is a children's picture book ... It was that living thread that led out of the children's room and connected it with the rest of the world. For me, until now, every children's book is something alive, because it awakens a child's soul, directs children's thoughts in a certain direction and makes a child's heart beat along with millions of other children's hearts. A children's book is a spring sunbeam that makes the dormant forces of a child's soul awaken and causes the seeds thrown on this grateful soil to grow. Thanks to this particular book, children merge into one huge spiritual family that knows no ethnographic and geographical boundaries.
<…>
As I see it now, an old wooden house, looking at the square with five large windows. It was remarkable in that on one side the windows overlooked Europe, and on the other - to Asia. The watershed of the Ural Mountains was only fourteen miles away.
“Those mountains are already in Asia,” my father explained to me, pointing to the silhouettes of distant mountains piled up to the horizon. - We live on the very border ...
For me, this "border" contained something especially mysterious, separating two completely incommensurable worlds. In the east, the mountains were higher and more beautiful, but I liked the west more, which was quite prosaically obscured by the low hill of Kokurnikova. As a child, I loved to sit at the window for a long time and look at this mountain. It sometimes seemed to me that she seemed to be consciously obscuring all those miracles that seemed to the childish imagination in the mysterious, distant west. After all, everything came from there, from the West, starting with the first children's picture book ... The East did not give anything, and in the child's soul a mysterious craving for the West woke up, grew and matured. By the way, our corner room, which was called the tea room, although they did not drink tea in it, overlooked the west and contained the cherished key to this west, and even now I think of it, as they think of a living person with whom dear ones are connected. memories.
The soul of this tearoom, so to speak, was the bookcase. In him, as in an electric battery, an inexhaustible, mysterious mighty force was concentrated, which caused the first fermentation of children's thoughts. And this closet seems to me also a living being.<…>
“These are our best friends,” my father liked to repeat, pointing to the books. - And what dear friends... You just need to think how much intelligence, talent and knowledge you need to write a book. Then it needs to be published, then it has to make a long, long journey until it gets to us in the Urals. Each book will pass through thousands of hands before it is placed on the shelf of our bookcase.<…>
Our library was made up of the classics, and in it - alas! - there was not a single children's book ... In my early childhood, I did not even see such a book. Books were obtained by a long way of writing out from the capitals or accidentally got through the mediation of the booksellers. I had to start reading straight from the classics like grandfather Krylov, Gogol, Pushkin, Goncharov, etc. I saw the first children's picture book only about ten years old, when a new factory manager from artillery officers, a very educated person, came to our factory. How now I remember this first children's book, the title of which I, unfortunately, forgot. But I clearly remember the drawings placed in it, especially the living bridge of monkeys and pictures of tropical nature. Better than this book, then, of course, I have not seen.
In our library, the first children's book was "Children's World" by Ushinsky. This book had to be ordered from St. Petersburg, and we waited for it every day for almost three months. Finally, she appeared and was, of course, eagerly read from blackboard to blackboard. This book started a new era. It was followed by the stories of Razin, Chistyakov and other children's books. Stories about the conquest of Kamchatka became my favorite book. I read it ten times and knew almost by heart. Simple illustrations were complemented by the imagination. Mentally, I did all the heroic deeds of the conquering Cossacks, swam in light Aleutian kayaks, ate rotten fish from the Chukchi, collected eiderdown on the rocks and died of hunger when the Aleuts, Chukchi and Kamchadals died. From this book, travel became my favorite reading, and my favorite classics were forgotten for a while. By this time, the reading of the "Pallas Frigate" by Goncharov belongs. I looked forward to the evening when my mother finished her day's work and sat down at the table with her treasured book. We were already traveling together, sharing equally the dangers and consequences of a trip around the world. Wherever we were, whatever we experienced, and sailed on and on, inspired by the thirst to see new countries, new people and forms of life unknown to us. Of course, there were many unknown places and incomprehensible words, but these pitfalls were managed with the help of a dictionary of foreign words and common interpretations.<…>
We are now too accustomed to the book to even approximately estimate the enormous power that it represents. More importantly, this power, in the form of a wandering book in an ofeni box, itself came to the reader at that distant time and, moreover, brought other books with it - books wander around the world in families, and their family connection is preserved between them. I would compare these wandering books to migratory birds that bring spiritual spring with them. You might think that some invisible hand of some invisible genius carried this book across the vast expanse of Russia, tirelessly sowing "reasonable, good, eternal." Yes, it is now easy to arrange a home library of the best authors, especially thanks to illustrated editions; but the book has already made its way into the darkest times, in the good old days of banknotes, tallow candles and any movement of the native "tug". Here it is impossible not to commemorate with a kind word the old bookseller, who, like water, penetrated into every well. For us children, his appearance in the house was a real holiday. He also supervised the selection of books and gave, in case of need, the necessary explanations.<…>
So ... we opened a whole warehouse of books, the container for which was a huge old chest of drawers with brass brackets. Kostya and I pounced on this treasure like mice on grits, and at the very first steps dug up Ammalat-Bek himself from the ashes of oblivion.
For several months we simply raved about this book and greeted each other with a mountain song:

<…>
"Writers" and "poeters" constituted an unsolvable riddle for us. Who are they, where do they live, how do they write their books? For some reason it seemed to me that this mysterious man who wrote books must certainly be angry and proud. This thought saddened me, and I began to feel hopelessly stupid.
“The generals write all the books,” Roman Rodionich assured. - There is no less than a general's rank, otherwise everyone will write!
To prove his words, he referred to the portraits of Karamzin and Krylov - both writers were in the stars.
Kostya and I nevertheless doubted the writing generalship and turned to Alexander Petrovich, who was supposed to know everything, to resolve the issue.
"There are also generals," he answered rather indifferently, straightening his little balls. Why shouldn't there be generals?
- All generals?
- Well, where can everyone be ... There are also very simple ones, like us.
- Simple at all, and compose?
- And they compose because they want to eat. You go into a bookstore in St. Petersburg, so your eyes will run wide. All the books are piled up to the ceiling, like we have firewood. If all the generals wrote, then there would be no aisle from them on the street. There are quite simple writers, and even often they are starving ...
The latter did not at all fit in with the idea of the writer formed in our heads. It even seemed to be ashamed: we are reading his book, and the writer is starving somewhere in St. Petersburg. After all, he tries and composes for us - and we began to feel a little guilty.
“That can't be,” Kostya decided. - Probably, they also receive their salary ...
An even more insoluble question was where reality is in the book and where fiction is.<…>
In our pantry and in Alexander Petrovich's chest of drawers, we found, by the way, many books that are completely inaccessible to our children's understanding. They were all old books, printed on thick blue paper with mysterious watermarks and bound in leather. They exuded indestructible strength, like well-preserved old men. Since my childhood, I developed a love for such an old book, and my imagination drew a mysterious person who wrote a book a hundred or two hundred years ago for me to read it now.<…>
Among the mysterious old books were those whose very title was difficult to understand: The Key to the Mysteries of Science, The Theater of Judicial Science, The Brief and Easiest Way to Pray, the work of Madame Gion, The Triumphant Chameleon, or the Image of Anecdotes and Properties Count Mirabeau”, “Three Initial Human Properties, or Image of Cold, Hot and Warm”, “Moral Letters to Lida about the Love of Noble Souls”, “Irtysh Turning into Hippocrene” (scattered books of the first Siberian magazine), etc. We tried to read these tricky mysterious books and perished in the most shameful way on the first pages. This convinced us only that these ancient books are the most intelligent, because they can only be understood by educated people, like our factory manager.
<…>
The 1960s were marked even in the remotest province by an enormous influx of new, popular scientific books. It was a clear sign of the times.<…>
I was fifteen years old when I met with a new book. The famous platinum mines were about ten versts from our plant. The manager, or, in a factory way, trusted, was a former student of Kazan University, Nikolai Fedorych, who entered there. Kostya and I had already wandered through the neighboring mountains with guns, visited the mine, met new people and found here a new book, a microscope, and completely new conversations. Another former student, Alexander Alekseevich, also lived in the mining office, who, mainly, initiated us into the new faith. In the office on the shelf were books unknown to us even by name. There were botanical conversations by Schleiden, and Moleschot, and Vogt, and Lyayel, and many other famous European names. A completely new world was opening before our eyes, immense and irresistibly beckoning to itself with the light of real knowledge and real science. We were simply stunned and did not know what to take on, and most importantly, how to take it “from the very beginning”, so that later mistakes would not come out and we would not have to return to the previous one.
It was a naive and happy faith in that science that was supposed to explain everything and teach everything, and the science itself consisted in those new books that stood on the shelf in the mine office.<…>
And now, when I accidentally come across some book published in the sixties somewhere at a second-hand book dealer, I have a joyful feeling, as if you will find a good old acquaintance.

NOTES

The essay "About the book" is given in abbreviated edition: Mamin-Sibiryak D.N. Collected works: in 8 volumes - M .: Goslitizdat, 1953-1955. - T. 8. - S. 553-570.

"Children's World" Ushinsky- "Native Word" and "Children's World" - the first Russian books for the primary education of children, published since the mid-1860s. huge circulations and therefore publicly available. They consisted of stories and fairy tales about nature and animals. The great Russian teacher, philosopher and writer Konstantin Dmitrievich Ushinsky wrote them abroad, having studied the schools of Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy and other countries and summarizing his teaching experience.

Ammalat Bek- the story of Alexander Alexandrovich Bestuzhev-Marlinsky (1797-1837). Decembrist writer, he was transferred from Siberian exile to the Caucasus, to the active army; As an ordinary soldier, he took part in battles with the highlanders and died in the same year as A.S. Pushkin. Marlinsky's romantic stories captivated readers in the late 1820s and 1830s, but later the unearthly passions and pompous language of his characters were perceived more as a parody of romanticism.

Kostya- the son of a factory employee, a childhood friend of D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak.

Stories by Razin, Chistyakov- in 1851-65. teacher and children's writer Mikhail Borisovich Chistyakov (1809-1885) published the "Magazine for Children", first together with Alexei Egorovich Razin (1823-1875), a journalist and popularizer, and then alone. The magazine published novels, stories and essays in which the author told children in a fascinating way about history, geography, literature, famous people of Russia and other countries.

Schleiden's botanical conversations- Matthias Jakob Schleiden (1804-1881), German biologist, botanist and social activist.

Moleshot - the works of the Dutch physiologist Jacob Moleschott (1822-1893) were well known in Russia in the second half of the 19th century.

Vogt - German naturalist, zoologist and paleontologist Karl Vogt (Vogt; 1817-1895).

Lyell - Charles Lyell (1797-1875), English geologist, founder of modern geology.

Russian prose writer, playwright D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak (real name Mamin) was born on October 25 (November 6), 1852, in the Visimo-Shaitansky industrial settlement of the Verkhotursky district of the Perm province, 140 km from Nizhny Tagil. This village, located in the depths of the Ural Mountains, was founded by Peter I, and the rich merchant Demidov built an iron factory here. The father of the future writer was the factory priest Narkis Matveyevich Mamin (1827-1878). There were four children in the family. They lived modestly: my father received a small salary, a little more than a factory worker. For many years he taught children at the factory school for free. “Without work, I did not see either my father or mother. Their day was always full of work,” Dmitry Narkisovich recalled.

From childhood, the writer fell in love with the magnificent Ural nature and always remembered it with love: “When I feel sad, I am carried away by thought to my native green mountains, it begins to seem to me that the sky is higher and clearer there, and the people are so kind, and I myself become better". So Mamin-Sibiryak wrote many years later, being away from his native Visim. At the same time, in early childhood, Mamin-Sibiryak's love for Russian literature was born and strengthened. “In our house, the book played a major role,” the writer recalled, “and my father used every free minute to read.” The entire Mamin family took care of the small home library.

From 1860 to 1864, Mitya studied at the Visimsk village elementary school for the children of workers, which was housed in a large hut. When the boy was 12 years old, his father took him and his older brother Nikolai to Yekaterinburg and sent them to a religious school. True, the wild student morals had such an effect on the impressionable child that he fell ill, and his father took him from the school. Mitya returned home with great joy and for two years felt completely happy: reading alternated with wanderings in the mountains, spending the night in the forest and at the houses of mine workers. Two years flew by quickly. The father did not have the means to send his son to the gymnasium, and he was again taken to the same bursa.

In the book of memoirs "From the distant past" D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak described his impressions of the teachings in the bursa. He spoke about senseless cramming, corporal punishment, ignorance of teachers and rudeness of pupils. The school did not give real knowledge, and the students were forced to memorize entire pages from the Bible, to sing prayers and psalms. Reading books was considered unworthy of a "real" student. Only brute force was valued in the bursa. The older students offended the younger ones, cruelly scoffed at the "newbies". Mamin-Sibiryak considered the years spent at the school not only lost, but also harmful. He wrote: "It took many years, a lot of terrible work to eradicate all the evil that I brought out of the bursa, and for those seeds to sprout that were abandoned a long time ago by my own family."

In the Perm Theological Seminary in the early 1860s, there was a secret revolutionary circle. Teachers and seminarians - members of the circle - distributed revolutionary literature in the Ural factories and openly called for action against the owners. At the time when Mamin entered the seminary, the circle was destroyed, many seminarians were arrested and expelled, but the underground library was saved. It kept Herzen's forbidden works, works, Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done? and books on natural science (Ch.Darwin, I.M. Sechenov, K.A. Timiryazev). Despite all the persecution, the spirit of freethinking was preserved in the Perm Seminary, and the students protested against hypocrisy and hypocrisy. In an effort to gain knowledge in order to benefit the people, Dmitry Mamin left the seminary after the 4th grade without graduating from it: he no longer wanted to be a priest. But it was to his stay at the Perm Theological Seminary that his first creative attempts relate.

In 1875, in the newspapers "Russkiy Mir" and "Novosti" he began a reporter's work, which gave, in his words, knowledge of the "insider things" of life, "the ability to recognize people and the passion to plunge into the thick of everyday life." In the magazines "Son of the Fatherland" and "Krugozor" he published action-packed stories, not without, in the spirit of P.I. Melnikov-Pechersky, ethnographic observation, stories about robbers, Ural Old Believers, mysterious people and incidents ("Elders", 1875; "The Old Man", "In the Mountains", "Red Hat", "Mermaids", all - 1876; "Secrets of the Green forests", 1877; novel "In the whirlpool of passions", author's title "Guilty", 1876, etc.).

Student Mamin studied seriously, read a lot, listened to lectures, visited museums. But, having decided to become a writer, in the fall of 1876, without completing the course of the Medico-Surgical Academy, he transferred to the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, believing that he needed to study the social sciences, which would help him better understand the life around him. In his future books, he wanted to open the Urals to people, tell about the hard work of factory workers, about the life of gold diggers and peasants. Dmitry Mamin rereads the works of his favorite writers, writes a lot, works hard on language and style. He becomes a newspaper reporter and writes short articles for various newspapers. Soon, the first stories and essays of the young writer began to appear in St. Petersburg magazines.

Leading the life of a literary bohemian, Mamin was engaged in reporting and writing stories. His first fiction work "Secrets of the Green Forest" was published without a signature in the magazine "Krugozor" in 1877 and is dedicated to the Urals. The rudiments of talent, acquaintance with nature and life of the region are seen in this work. He wants to live for everyone, to experience everything and feel everything. Continuing to study at the Faculty of Law, Mamin writes a long novel "In the whirlpool of passions" under the pseudonym E. Tomsky, a pretentious novel and very weak in all respects. He took the manuscript of the novel to the journal Domestic Notes, which was edited by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Saltykov-Shchedrin's negative assessment of this novel was a big blow for the novice writer. But Mamin correctly understood that he lacked not only literary skill, but, above all, knowledge of life. As a result, his first novel was published in only one obscure magazine.

And this time, Mamin failed to complete his studies. He studied at the Faculty of Law for about a year. Excessive work, poor nutrition, lack of rest broke the young body. He developed consumption (tuberculosis). In addition, due to financial difficulties and the illness of his father, Mamin was unable to make a contribution to the teaching fee and was soon expelled from the university. In the spring of 1877 the writer left St. Petersburg. With all his heart, the young man reached out to the Urals. There he recovered from his illness and found strength for new works.

Once in his native place, Dmitry Narkisovich collects material for a new novel from the life of the Urals. Trips in the Urals and the Urals expanded and deepened his knowledge of folk life. But the new novel, conceived back in St. Petersburg, had to be postponed. He fell ill and in January 1878 his father died. Dmitry remained the sole breadwinner of a large family. In search of work, as well as to educate his brothers and sister, the family moved to Yekaterinburg in April 1878. But even in a large industrial city, the half-educated student failed to get a job. Dmitry began to give lessons to lagging gymnasium students. The tedious work paid poorly, but Mamin's teacher turned out to be a good one, and he soon gained fame as the best tutor in the city. He did not leave in a new place and literary work; when there was not enough time during the day, he wrote at night. Despite financial difficulties, he ordered books from St. Petersburg.

In the early 1880s, St. Petersburg and Moscow magazines began to publish stories, essays and short stories by the still unknown writer D. Sibiryak. Soon, in 1882, the first collection of travel essays "From the Urals to Moscow" ("Ural stories") was published. The essays were published in the Moscow newspaper "Russian Vedomosti", and then in the magazine "Delo" his essays "In the Stones", stories ("At the turn of Asia", "In thin souls", etc.) were published. The heroes of the stories were factory workers, Ural prospectors, Chusovoy barge haulers, the Ural nature came to life in the essays. These works attracted readers. The collection quickly sold out. This is how the writer D.N. Mamin-Siberian. His works became closer to the requirements of the democratic journal Otechestvennye Zapiski, and Saltykov-Shchedrin was already willingly publishing them. So, in 1882, the second period of Mamin's literary activity begins. His stories and essays from the Urals regularly appear in the Foundations, Delo, Vestnik Evropy, Russkaya Mysl, Otechestvennye Zapiski. In these stories, one can already feel an original portrayer of the life and customs of the Urals, a free artist who knows how to give an idea of \u200b\u200bgigantic human labor, to depict all sorts of contrasts. On the one hand, marvelous nature, majestic, full of harmony, on the other hand, human turmoil, a difficult struggle for existence. Adding a pseudonym to his name, the writer quickly gained popularity, and the signature Mamin-Sibiryak remained with him forever.

The first major work of the writer was the novel Privalovsky Millions (1883), which was published in the magazine Delo for a year. This novel, begun in 1872, is the most popular of his writings today, was completely unnoticed by critics at the time of its appearance. The hero of the novel, a young idealist, is trying to get an inheritance under guardianship in order to pay the people for the cruel family sin of oppression and exploitation, but the lack of will of the hero (a consequence of genetic degradation), the utopian nature of the social project itself dooms the enterprise to failure. Vivid episodes of everyday life, schismatic legends, pictures of the mores of "society", images of officials, lawyers, gold miners, raznochintsy, relief and accuracy of writing, replete with folk sayings and proverbs, reliability in the reproduction of various aspects of the Ural life made this work, along with other "Ural" novels by Mamin-Sibiryak, a large-scale realistic epic, an impressive example of Russian socio-analytical prose.

In 1884, the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski published the next novel of the Ural cycle, The Mountain Nest, which cemented Mamin-Sibiryak's reputation as an outstanding realist writer. The second novel also depicts the mining Urals from all sides. This is a magnificent page from the history of the accumulation of capitalism, a sharply satirical work about the failure of the "tycoons" of the Ural mining plants as organizers of industry. The novel skillfully depicts the mountain king Laptev, a well-formed degenerate, "a remarkable type of all that has ever been found in our literature," according to Skabichevsky, who highly valued the novel "The Mountain Nest" and finds that "Laptev can be safely placed on a par with such age-old types like Tartuffe, Harpagon, Judas Golovlev, Oblomov".

In the novel On the Street (1886; originally called Stormy Stream), conceived as a continuation of The Mountain Nest, Mamin-Sibiryak transfers his "Ural" heroes to St. Petersburg, and, talking about the rise and fall of a certain newspaper enterprise, emphasizes the negative the nature of social selection in a "market" society, where the best (the most "moral") are doomed to poverty and death. The problem of finding the meaning of life by a conscientious intellectual is raised by Mamin-Sibiryak in the novel The Birthday Man (1888), which tells about the suicide of a zemstvo leader. At the same time, Mamin-Sibiryak clearly gravitates toward populist literature, trying to write in the style of G.I. Uspensky and N.N. Zlatovratsky - in a "fictional-journalistic", according to his definition, form. In 1885 D.N. Mamin wrote the play "Gold Miners" ("On the Golden Day"), which did not have much success. In 1886 he was accepted as a member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. The attention of the literary community was attracted by the collection of Mamin-Sibiryak "Ural Stories" (vols. 1-2; 1888-1889), in which the fusion of ethnographic and cognitive elements (as later with P.P. Bazhov) was perceived in the aspect of the originality of the writer's artistic manner, it was noted his skill as a landscape painter.

14 years of the writer's life (1877-1891) pass in Yekaterinburg. He marries Maria Yakimovna Alekseeva, who became not only a wife and friend, but also an excellent literary adviser. During these years, he made many trips around the Urals, studied literature on the history, economics, ethnography of the Urals, immersed himself in folk life, communicated with "simple" people who had vast life experience, and was even elected a member of the Yekaterinburg City Duma. Two long trips to the capital (1881-1882, 1885-1886) strengthened the literary ties of the writer: he met Korolenko, Zlatovratsky, Goltsev and others. During these years he writes and publishes many short stories and essays.

But in 1890, Mamin-Sibiryak divorced his first wife, and in January 1891 he married the talented actress of the Yekaterinburg Drama Theater Maria Moritsovna Abramova and moved with her to St. Petersburg, where the last stage of his life was taking place. Here he soon became friends with the populist writers - N. Mikhailovsky, G. Uspensky and others, and later, at the turn of the century, with the largest writers of the new generation - A. Chekhov, A. Kuprin, M. Gorky, I. Bunin, highly appreciated his work. A year later (March 22, 1892), his beloved wife Maria Moritsevna Abramova dies, leaving her sick daughter Alyonushka in the arms of her father, shocked by this death.

Over the years, Mamin is increasingly occupied with the processes of folk life, he gravitates towards novels in which the main character is not an exceptional person, but the whole working environment. The novels of D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak "Three Ends" (1890), dedicated to the complex processes in the Urals after the Peasant Reform of 1861, "Gold" (1892), describing the gold mining season in harsh naturalistic detail, and "Bread" (1895) about the famine in the Ural village in 1891 -1892. The writer worked for a long time on each work, collecting huge historical and modern material. A deep knowledge of people's life helped the author vividly and truthfully show the plight of the workers and peasants and indignantly denounce the wealthy breeders and factory owners who appropriated the natural wealth of the region and exploited the people. The gloomy drama, the abundance of suicides and catastrophes in the works of Mamin-Sibiryak, the "Russian Zola", recognized as one of the creators of the domestic sociological novel, revealed one of the important facets of the public mindset of Russia at the end of the century: the feeling of a person's complete dependence on the socio-economic circumstances that fulfill in modern conditions function of unpredictable and inexorable ancient rock.

Historical novels by Mamin-Sibiryak "The Gordeev Brothers" (1891; about Demidov's serfs who studied in France) and "Okhonin's Eyebrows" (1892; about the uprising of the Ural factory population in the Pugachev era), as well as legends from the life of the Bashkirs, are distinguished by their colorful language and major tonality. , Kazakhs, Kirghiz ("Swan Khantygal", "Maya", etc.). "Stumpy", "strong and courageous", according to the memoirs of contemporaries, a typical "Ural man", Mamin-Sibiryak since 1892, after the bitter loss of his beloved wife, who died at the birth of their daughter Alyonushka, is also put forward as an excellent writer about children and for children . His collections "Children's Shadows", "Alyonushkin's Tales" (1894-1896) were very successful and entered the Russian children's classics. The works of Mamin-Sibiryak for children "Wintering on Studenaya" (1892), "The Gray Neck" (1893), "Zarnitsa" (1897), "Across the Urals" (1899) and others became widely known. They reveal the high simplicity, noble naturalness of feelings and the love of life of their author, who inspires domestic animals, birds, flowers, insects with poetic skill. Some critics compare Mamin's fairy tales with Andersen's.

Mamin-Sibiryak took children's literature very seriously. He called the children's book "a living thread" that takes the child out of the nursery and connects with the wide world of life. Addressing writers, his contemporaries, Mamin-Sibiryak urged them to truthfully tell children about the life and work of the people. He often said that only an honest and sincere book is beneficial: "A children's book is a spring sunbeam that awakens the dormant forces of a child's soul and causes the seeds thrown on this fertile soil to grow."

Children's works are very diverse and are intended for children of different ages. The younger guys know Alyonushka's Tales well. Animals, birds, fish, insects, plants and toys live and talk merrily in them. For example: Komar Komarovich - long nose, Shaggy Misha - short tail, Brave Hare - long ears - slanting eyes - short tail, Sparrow Vorobeich and Ruff Ershovich. Talking about the funny adventures of animals and toys, the author skillfully combines fascinating content with useful information, kids learn to observe life, they develop feelings of camaraderie and friendship, modesty and hard work. The works of Mamin-Sibiryak for older children tell about the life and work of workers and peasants of the Urals and Siberia, about the fate of children working in factories, crafts and mines, about young travelers along the picturesque slopes of the Ural Mountains. A wide and varied world, the life of man and nature are revealed to young readers in these works. Readers highly appreciated the story of Mamin-Sibiryak "Emelya the hunter", marked in 1884 with an international prize.

One of the best books of Mamin-Sibiryak is the autobiographical novel-memoir of the St. Petersburg youth "Features from the Life of Pepko" (1894), which tells about Mamin's first steps in literature, about bouts of acute need and moments of dull despair. He vividly outlined the writer's worldview, the dogmas of his faith, views, ideas that formed the basis of his best works: deep altruism, disgust for brute force, love for life and, at the same time, longing for its imperfections, for "a sea of \u200b\u200bsorrow and tears where there are so many horrors, cruelties, untruths. "Is it really possible to be satisfied with one's own life. No, to live a thousand lives, to suffer and rejoice with a thousand hearts - that's where life and true happiness are!" - says Mamin in "Features from the Life of Pepko". The last major works of the writer are the novel "Shooting Stars" (1899) and the story "Mumma" (1907).

The last years of his life, the writer was seriously ill. On October 26, 1912, the fortieth anniversary of his creative activity was celebrated in St. Petersburg, but Mamin already did not perceive well those who came to congratulate him - a week later, on November 2 (15), 1912, he died. Many newspapers ran obituaries. The Bolshevik newspaper Pravda devoted a special article to Mamin-Sibiryak, in which it noted the great revolutionary significance of his works: “A bright, talented, warm-hearted writer died, under whose pen the pages of the past Urals came to life, a whole era of the procession of capital, predatory, greedy, who did not know how to restrain nothing". "Pravda" highly appreciated the writer's merits in children's literature: "He was attracted by the pure soul of a child, and in this area he wrote a number of excellent essays and stories."

D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak was buried at the Nikolsky cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra; two years later, the suddenly deceased daughter of the writer "Alyonushka", Elena Dmitrievna Mamina (1892-1914), was buried nearby. In 1915, a granite monument with a bronze bas-relief was erected on the grave (designed by I.Ya. Gintsburg). And in 1956, the ashes and monument of the writer, his daughter and wife, M.M. Abramova, were moved to the Literary bridges of the Volkovsky cemetery. On the grave monument of Mamin-Sibiryak, the words are carved: "To live a thousand lives, suffer and rejoice with a thousand hearts - this is where real life and real happiness are."

"The native land has something to thank you for, our friend and teacher ... Your books helped to understand and love the Russian people, the Russian language ..." - wrote D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak A.M. Bitter.

November 2012 marks 160 years since birth and 100 years since death
Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak (November 6, 1852 - November 15, 1912)

Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak(real name Mamin; October 25 (November 6), 1852, Visimo-Shaitansky plant, Perm province, now the village of Visim, Sverdlovsk region - November 2 (15), 1912, St. Petersburg - Russian prose writer and playwright.

It is worth pronouncing "Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak", as one recalls a famous photograph, where he looks contented with life, a respectable man, in a rich fur coat, in an astrakhan hat. According to the recollections of friends, he was the soul of the company, a cheerful person, an excellent storyteller. Like any good person, he was loved by children, old people and animals.
But in fact, the life of Mamin-Sibiryak was very difficult, only early childhood and fifteen months of a happy marriage were prosperous. There was no literary success that he deserved. Not everything was published. At the end of his life, he wrote to publishers that his writings "will be typed up to 100 volumes, and only 36 have been published."

Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin was born on November 6, 1852 in the village of Visim (Visimo-Shaitansky plant owned by the Demidovs), 40 km from Nizhny Tagil, in the family of a village priest. The family is large (four children), friendly, hard-working ("without work, I did not see either my father or mother"), reading (the family had its own library, they read aloud to children). They lived poorly. Father often said: "Fed, dressed, warm - the rest is a whim." He gave a lot of time to his own and other people's children, taught village children for free.
About his early childhood and about his parents, the writer said: "There was not a single bitter memory, not a single childhood reproach."
From 1860 to 1864, Mitya studied at the Visimsk village elementary school for the children of workers, which was housed in a large hut.

But it's time to get serious. Narkis Mamin had no money for a gymnasium for his sons. When the boy was 12 years old, his father took him and his older brother Nikolai to Yekaterinburg and sent them to a religious school. where he once studied. It was a difficult time for Dmitry. The wild bursat morals had such an effect on the impressionable child that he fell ill, and his father took him from the school. Mitya returned home with great joy and for two years felt completely happy: reading alternated with wanderings in the mountains, spending the night in the forest and at the houses of mine workers. Two years flew by quickly. The father did not have the means to send his son to the gymnasium, and he was again taken to the same bursa.
In the book of memoirs "From the distant past" D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak described his impressions of the teachings in the bursa. He spoke about senseless cramming, corporal punishment, ignorance of teachers and rudeness of pupils. The school did not give real knowledge, and the students were forced to memorize entire pages from the Bible, to sing prayers and psalms. Reading books was considered unworthy of a "real" student. Only brute force was valued in the bursa. The older students offended the younger ones, cruelly scoffed at the "newbies". Mamin-Sibiryak considered the years spent at the school not only lost, but also harmful. He wrote: "It took many years, a lot of terrible work to eradicate all the evil that I brought out of the bursa, and for those seeds to sprout that were abandoned a long time ago by my own family."

After graduating from bursa in 1868, Mamin-Sibiryak entered the Perm Seminary, a spiritual institution that provided secondary education. The seminary was not much different from the bursa. The same roughness of morals and bad teaching. Holy Scripture, theological sciences, ancient languages - Greek and Latin - these were the main things that seminarians had to study. However, the best of them aspired to scientific knowledge.
In the Perm Theological Seminary in the early 1860s, there was a secret revolutionary circle. Teachers and seminarians - members of the circle - distributed revolutionary literature in the Ural factories and openly called for action against the owners. At the time when Mamin entered the seminary, the circle was destroyed, many seminarians were arrested and expelled, but the underground library was saved. It contained the forbidden works of Herzen, the works of Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky's novel What Is To Be Done? and books on natural science (Ch.Darwin, I.M. Sechenov, K.A. Timiryazev). Despite all the persecution, the spirit of freethinking was preserved in the Perm Seminary, and the students protested against hypocrisy and hypocrisy. In an effort to gain knowledge in order to benefit the people, Dmitry Mamin left the seminary after the 4th grade without graduating from it: he no longer wanted to be a priest. But it was to his stay at the Perm Theological Seminary that his first creative attempts relate.

In the spring of 1871, Mamin left for St. Petersburg, and in August 1872 he entered the veterinary department of the Medical and Surgical Academy. He was carried away by the turbulent social movement of the 1870s, attended revolutionary student circles, read the works of Marx, and participated in political disputes. The police soon followed him. His life was difficult. I had to save on everything: on an apartment, on dinner, on clothes, books. Together with a friend, Dmitry rented a cold, uncomfortable room in a large house where students and the urban poor lived. D.N. Mamin was sympathetic to the movement of populist propagandists, but he chose a different path for himself - writing.
Since 1874, he wrote reports for newspapers on the meetings of scientific societies to earn money. In 1875, in the newspapers "Russkiy Mir" and "Novosti" he began a reporter's work, which gave, in his words, knowledge of the "insider things" of life, "the ability to recognize people and the passion to plunge into the thick of everyday life." In the magazines "Son of the Fatherland" and "Krugozor" he published action-packed stories, not without, in the spirit of P.I. Melnikov-Pechersky, ethnographic observation, stories about robbers, Ural Old Believers, mysterious people and incidents ("Elders", 1875; "Old Man", "In the Mountains", "Red Hat", "Mermaids", all - 1876, etc. .).

Leading a bohemian lifestyle, student Mamin studied seriously, read a lot, listened to lectures, and visited museums. But, having decided to become a writer, in the fall of 1876, without completing the course of the Medico-Surgical Academy, he transferred to the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, believing that he needed to study the social sciences, which would help him better understand the life around him.

His first fictional work" Secrets of the green forest"Printed without a signature in the magazine" Krugozor "in 1877 and is dedicated to the Urals. The beginnings of talent, acquaintance with nature and the life of the region are seen in this work. He wants to live for everyone in order to experience everything and feel everything. Continuing to study at the Faculty of Law, Mamin writes a long novel "In the whirlpool of passions" under the pseudonym E. Tomsky, a pretentious novel and very weak in all respects. He took the manuscript of the novel to the journal "Domestic Notes", which was edited by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. A big blow for the novice writer was negative assessment of this novel, given by Saltykov-Shchedrin. But Mamin correctly understood that he lacked not only literary skill, but, above all, knowledge of life. As a result, his first novel was published in only one little-known magazine.
And this time, Mamin failed to complete his studies. He studied at the Faculty of Law for about a year. Excessive work, poor nutrition, lack of rest broke the young body. He got pleurisy. In addition, due to financial difficulties and the illness of his father, Mamin was unable to make a contribution to the teaching fee and was soon expelled from the university. In the spring of 1877 the writer left St. Petersburg. With all his heart, the young man reached out to the Urals. There he recovered from his illness and found strength for new works.

The first major work of the writer was the novel " Privalov millions"(1883), which was published during the year in the journal Delo. This novel, begun back in 1872, is the most popular of his works today, was completely unnoticed by critics at the time of its appearance. The hero of the novel, a young idealist, trying to get the inheritance under guardianship in order to pay the people for the cruel family sin of oppression and exploitation, but the lack of will of the hero (a consequence of genetic degradation), the utopian nature of the social project itself dooms the enterprise to failure. "societies", the images of officials, lawyers, gold miners, raznochintsy, the relief and accuracy of writing, replete with folk sayings and proverbs, the reliability in reproducing various aspects of the Ural life made this work, along with other "Ural" novels by Mamin-Sibiryak, a large-scale realistic epic, an impressive example of domestic socio-analytical prose.

In 1884, the following novel of the "Ural" cycle appeared in the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski - " mountain nest", which secured Mamin-Sibiryak's reputation as an outstanding realist writer. The second novel also draws the mining Urals from all sides. This is an excellent page from the history of the accumulation of capitalism, a sharply satirical work about the failure of the "tycoons" of the Ural mining plants as organizers of industry. The novel is talented the mountain king Laptev is depicted, a uniform degenerate, "a wonderful type of all that has only been found in our literature," according to Skabichevsky, who highly rated the novel "The Mountain Nest" and found that "Laptev can be safely placed on a par with such age-old types as Tartuffe, Harpagon, Judas Golovlev, Oblomov.
In the novel conceived as a continuation of the "Mountain Nest" On the street"(1886; originally called "Stormy Stream") Mamin-Sibiryak transfers his "Ural" heroes to St. Petersburg, and, talking about the rise and fall of a certain newspaper enterprise, emphasizes the negative nature of social selection in a "market" society, where the best ( the most "moral") are doomed to poverty and death. The problem of finding the meaning of life by a conscientious intellectual is raised by Mamin-Sibiryak in the novel " Birthday boy"(1888), which tells about the suicide of a zemstvo leader. At the same time, Mamin-Sibiryak clearly gravitates towards populist literature, trying to write in the style of G.I. Uspensky and N.N. its definition, form.In 1885, D.N. Mamin wrote the play "Gold Miners" (" On a golden day"), which did not have much success. In 1886, he was admitted to the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. The attention of the literary community was attracted by the collection of Mamin-Sibiryak" Ural stories"(vols. 1-2; 1888-1889), in which the fusion of ethnographic and cognitive elements (as later with P.P. Bazhov) was perceived in the aspect of the originality of the writer's artistic manner, his skill as a landscape painter was noted.

Dmitry Narkisovich (center) and his fellow Duma members.

14 years of the writer's life (1877-1891) pass in Yekaterinburg. He marries Maria Yakimovna Alekseeva, who became not only a wife and friend, but also an excellent literary adviser. She was from Nizhny Tagil, and her father -
a major factory employee in the Demidov household. She herself could be attributed to the number of the most educated, intelligent and very brave women of the mining Urals. Despite the complex Kerzhatsky way of her father's family and the primordially priestly way of the Mamin family, she left her lawful husband with three children and entrusted her fate to the then young novice writer. She helped him become a real writer.
They lived in an illegal, civil marriage for 12 years. And in 1890 one of the largest novels of the writer "Three Ends" was published about his small homeland - Visim. It is dedicated to Maria Yakimovna.

During these years, he made many trips around the Urals, studied literature on the history, economics, ethnography of the Urals, immersed himself in folk life, communicated with "simple" people who had vast life experience. Two long trips to the capital (1881-1882, 1885-1886) strengthened the literary ties of the writer: he met Korolenko, Zlatovratsky, Goltsev and others. During these years he writes and publishes many short stories and essays. Despite the intense literary work, he finds time for social and state activities: the vowel of the Yekaterinburg City Duma, the juror of the Yekaterinburg District Court, the organizer and organizer of the famous Siberian-Ural Scientific and Industrial Exhibition ...

Mamin-Sibiryak was approaching his fortieth birthday. The publication of novels gave him the opportunity to buy a house in Yekaterinburg for his mother and relatives.

Literary and memorial house-museum of D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak. Photo 1999 Located in the writer's former home. Address: Ekaterinburg, st. Pushkin, 27.

He is married. It would seem that there is everything for a happy life. But spiritual discord began. His work was not noticed by metropolitan critics, there were few responses from readers. The writer writes to a friend: "I gave them a whole region with people, nature and all the riches, and they don't even look at my gift." The marriage was not very successful either. There were no children. I was tormented by dissatisfaction with myself. It seemed like life was ending.

But the beautiful young actress Maria Moritsevna Heinrikh arrived from St. Petersburg for the new theatrical season.

Maria Moritsovna Abramova(1865-1892). Russian actress and entrepreneur was born in Perm. Her father was a Hungarian settled in Russia
Moritz Heinrich Rotoni. They say that he was of an old noble family, participated in the uprising of the Magyars in 1848 and was wounded; a large reward was offered for his capture.
At first he lived in Orenburg for a long time, married a Siberian woman, changing his surname to Heinrich. Later he moved to Perm, where he opened a photo studio. He had a big family. Maria Moritsovna was the eldest, then ten boys, and finally, the last one, the girl Liza (1882), was my mother.
In 1880, young VG Korolenko was exiled to Perm to live. In his free time, he was engaged in teaching activities, was a teacher in the large Heinrich family.
After a quarrel with her father, Maria Moritsovna leaves Perm and moves to Kazan. There she attended paramedic courses for some time. Then he enters the theater as an actress and marries the actor Abramov. However, their life together did not last long and ended in divorce.
She played in the provinces (Orenburg, Samara, Rybinsk, Saratov, Minsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Taganrog, Mariupol).
Touring life is hard for her. “Although in the pool of the head, but the life that, involuntarily, one has to lead, is such a vulgar, dirty, ugly, garbage pit. And the people who live this life, there is nothing to say about them. Word human, good in five years never heard. It's the same off stage. Who meets actresses? First row, all kinds of womanizer who look at the actress as if she were a cocotte of the highest rank, ”she writes to V. G. Korolenko.
In 1889, having received a rich inheritance, Abramova rented the Shelaputin Theater in Moscow and organized her own under the name "Abramova Theatre". In this theater, in addition to Abramova herself, N. N. Solovtsov, N. P. Roshchin-Insarov, I. P. Kiselevsky, V. V. Charsky, N. A. Michurin-Samoilov, M. M. Glebova and etc. The theater staged: “Woe from Wit”, “Inspector”, “Dead Souls”, “Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man”.
Along with these performances, spectacular melodramas were also staged. “Newspapers glorify Abramova’s theater,” the poet Pleshcheev wrote to Chekhov, and he agreed that yes, they say, “Abramova is doing well.”
With the production of Leshy (1889), the Abramova Theater began the stage history of Chekhov's plays. The premiere took place on December 27, 1889, and it was a complete failure. “Chekhov fled from Moscow, he was not at home for several days even for close friends,” recalled one of such friends, the writer Lazarev-Gruzinsky.
The inept management of financial affairs soon brought Abramova's theater to the brink of bankruptcy. The transition of the theater from December 1889 to the position of the “Partnership”, headed by Kiselevsky and Charsky, did not help either. The theater closed in 1890.
The trouble, as you know, does not come alone: it was at this time that Abramova’s mother died, and the young woman, who had a five-year-old sister in her arms (Kuprin’s future wife), was forced to sign a contract and go to the Urals, no longer as the owner of the theater, but as an actress. In 1890-1891, Abramova played in the Yekaterinburg troupe of P. M. Medvedev. Best roles: Medea (“Medea” by A. S. Suvorin and V. P. Burenin), Vasilisa Melentyeva (“Vasilisa Melentyeva” by Ostrovsky and S. A. Gedeonov), Marguerite Gauthier (“The Lady of the Camellias” by A. Dumas-son ), Adrienne Lecouvreur (Adrienne Lecouvreur by E. Scribe and E. Legouve). “The beautiful Medea, Delilah, Vasilisa Melentyeva, Katerina, she made a strong impression on the public,” B. D. Udintsev wrote in his memoirs.
In Yekaterinburg, Maria Abramova meets the writer Dmitry Narkisovich Mamin-Sibiryak. She later recalled: “On the first day of my arrival, I said that I would like to meet him, they handed him over, and now he paid me a visit - and I really liked it, so cute, simple.”

They met and fell in love. She is 25 years old, he is 39 years old.

About the first impression that Abramova made on him, Mamin-Sibiryak writes: “The first impression of Maria Moritsovna turned out to be completely different from what I was prepared for. She didn’t seem beautiful to me, and then there was nothing in her that was assigned by the state even to little celebrities: she doesn’t break, she doesn’t look like anything, but just the way she really is. There are such special people who, at the first meeting, make such an impression as if you have known them well for a long time.

An affair begins between the actress and the writer. The passionate love of Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak and Maria Moritsovna Abramova "caused a lot of talk." A contemporary recalls: “Before my eyes, Mamin was reborn into another person ... Where did his bile-mocking look, the sad expression of his eyes and the manner of spitting words through his teeth when he wanted to express his disdain for the interlocutor go. His eyes shone, reflecting the fullness of his inner life, his mouth smiled affably. He rejuvenated before my eyes. When Abramova appeared on the stage, he completely turned into hearing and sight, not noticing anything around him. In the strong points of her role, Abramova turned to him, their eyes met, and Mamin somehow leaned forward, lighting up with inner fire, and even a blush appeared on his face. Mamin did not miss a single performance with her participation.

However, everything was very difficult, Maria's husband did not give a divorce. Gossip and gossip spread throughout the city. The lovers had no choice but to flee to St. Petersburg. On March 21, 1891, they left (Mamin-Sibiryak no longer lived in the Urals).

There they, in the words of one memoirist, made “their cozy nest on Millionnaya Street, where one felt so much warmth from the heart and where the gaze fell with love on this beautiful couple from the literary and artistic world, in front of which such a wide, bright life path seemed to unfold ".

Here he soon became friends with the populist writers - N. Mikhailovsky, G. Uspensky and others, and later, at the turn of the century, with the largest writers of the new generation - A. Chekhov, A. Kuprin, M. Gorky, I. Bunin, highly appreciated his work.

Chekhov A.P., Mamin-Sibiryak D.N., Potapenko I.N. (1894-1896)

A.M. Gorky, D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak, N.D. Teleshov, I.A. Bunin. Yalta, 1902

Writers are frequent visitors to Chekhov's house in Yalta. From left to right: I.A. Bunin, D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak, M. Gorky, N.D. Teleshov

The artist I. Repin painted from him sketches of the Cossacks for his famous painting. D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak said: “The most interesting thing is my acquaintance with Repin, in whom I was in the studio, and he painted from me for his future painting “Cossacks” for two whole hours - he had to borrow my eyes for one, and for the other eyelid for the eye and for the third Cossack, correct the nose.

The happiness of the new family in St. Petersburg was short-lived. Maria gave birth to a daughter and the next day (March 21, 1892) she died. Dmitry Narkisovich almost committed suicide from grief. From a letter to his mother: "Happiness flashed like a bright comet, leaving a heavy and bitter aftertaste. Sad, hard, lonely. Our girl remained in my arms, Elena - all my happiness."
Mamin-Sibiryak was left with two children: newborn Alyonushka and ten-year-old Liza, sister of Marusya. On April 10, 1892, he wrote to Moritz Heinrich, the girl's father, my grandfather, who by this time had fallen very low: “Your daughter Lisa remained in my arms, you write that you will arrange her with your older brother. The fact is that I, too, would like to give Liza a good education in memory of Maria Moritsovna, which is not available in the provinces. I will place her either in an institute or in a women's gymnasium.
After some time, Dmitry Narkisovich informed Lisa's father that after the death of Maria Moritsovna, he placed Lisa in a good family - to A. A. Davydova, the widow of Karl Yulievich Davydov, director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory (K. Yu. Davydov was also a composer and an excellent cellist). Davydova herself was known as a beauty and a smart girl. She was the publisher of the literary magazine God's World. Alexandra Arkadyevna had an only daughter, Lidia Karlovna, who married M.I. Tugan-Baranovsky, a well-known scientist and economist. An adopted daughter also lived in the family - Maria Karlovna, the future first wife of Kuprin, who inherited the magazine "God's World" after the death of Alexandra Arkadyevna and Lydia Karlovna. The Davydovs' house was visited by interesting and talented people of St. Petersburg.
With great sympathy, A. A. Davydova reacted to the grief of Dmitry Narkisovich.
She sheltered Alyonushka and Lisa, and when Mamin settled in Tsarskoye Selo, Davydova recommended to him the former governess Maria Karlovna, who lived with them. Olga Frantsevna Guvala to guide his house and look after the children.
Mamin-Sibiryak is still grieving for a long time. On October 25, 1892, he wrote to his mother: “Dear dear mother, today I have finally passed forty years ... The fateful day ... I consider it death, even though he died six months earlier ... Then every year will be a kind of bonus. This is how we will live.
Yes, forty years.
Looking back and summing up, I must admit that, in fact, it was not worth living, despite external success and name ... Happiness flashed like a bright comet, leaving a heavy bitter aftertaste. I thank the name of the one who brought this happiness, short, fleeting, but real.
My future is in the grave next to her.
May my daughter Alyonushka forgive me these cowardly words: when she becomes a mother herself, she will understand their meaning. Sad, hard, lonely.
Autumn has come too early. I’m still strong and maybe I’ll live a long time, but what kind of life is this: a shadow, a ghost.”
The marriage with Maria Moritsovna was not officially registered, since Abramov did not agree to a divorce, and only in 1902 Mamin was able to adopt Alyonushka. Little by little, Olga Frantsevna firmly took over the reins of government in Mamin's small family. She disliked Lisa. My mother often told me about her difficult childhood. Out of pride, she did not complain to Dmitry Narkisovich. Constantly, even in trifles, Olga Frantsevna made her feel that in fact she was a stranger and lived out of mercy. There were so many grievances that several times Liza ran away. The first time - to the editorial office of "God's World", the second time - to the circus, where she decided to enter. Mamin-Sibiryak brought her back.
Dmitry Narkisovich was madly in love with Alyonushka. She was sickly, fragile, very nervous girl. To calm her down, he told her stories before going to bed. Thus were born the lovely " Alyonushka's fairy tales».
Gradually, all the portraits of Maria Moritsovna disappeared from the office of Mamin-Sibiryak. Strict order, pedantry, prudence, bordering on stinginess - all this was deeply alien to Mamin. Scandals often broke out.
And yet he was completely under the influence of Guvale, who a few years later became his wife.
Jealousy for the deceased never left her. Even after Mamin's death, she told Fyodor Fedorovich Fidler that Mamin had lived with Marusya for only a year and a half, but that time was a living hell for him, which he recalled with horror - the character of the deceased was so unbearable: "cool, wayward, vicious and revengeful". All this clearly contradicts Mamin's letters and memoirs. He always continued to love Marusya and brought up this love in Alyonushka.
Maria Karlovna often visited her former governess. She treated Lisa like an older highly educated girl treats a little unloved orphan.
Little by little, Liza turned into a lovely girl with a rare smile. She was very small, with miniature legs and arms, proportional, like a Tanagra figurine. The face is pale matte, chiseled, with large, serious brown eyes and very dark hair. She was often told that she looked like her sister Maria Moritsovna.

Elizaveta Moritsovna Heinrich (Kuprina)

Gossip began to spread that Mamin was not indifferent to Lisa. It became even more difficult for her, since Olga Frantsevna began to be jealous for no reason. Liza decided to finally leave the house of the Mamins and entered the Evgeniev community of sisters of mercy.
Fidler recalls this event in October 1902: “Mother celebrated his name day in Tsarskoe Selo in a new apartment (Malaya st., 33), illuminated by electric light. There were many guests, but the hero of the occasion himself drank almost nothing and had an unusually gloomy appearance, probably dejected by Lisa's decisive statement that she would not leave the community of sisters of mercy.
Caring for the sick, saving people from death turned out to be Lisa's real vocation, the essence of her whole being. She dreamed of self-sacrifice.
Mamin went to the community several times, begging Lisa to return, but this time her decision was irrevocable. The Russo-Japanese War began. Lisa, as a sister of mercy, in February 1904, voluntarily asked to go to the Far East. Mamin-Sibiryak was terribly worried about her, did everything to prevent her departure, vainly begged to stay, even took to drink with grief.
Seeing off those leaving for the front was solemn: flags and music. Dmitry Narkisovich came to see Lisa off at the Nikolaevsky railway station. After his departure, he spoke of her to Fiedler with purely paternal love and touching concern.
According to short notes from my mother, it is known that the trip to the front turned out to be very difficult: the trains were overcrowded, the wagons were overloaded. And then there was a crash in the Irkutsk tunnel with the train in which Lisa was traveling: the first hard impressions, the first dead and wounded.
In Irkutsk, my mother met one of her brothers, the rest went to the Far East, some to Harbin, some to China. Then she had a long road to Baikal, then Harbin, Mukden (Port Arthur had already been surrendered). The soldiers were ill with typhus, dysentery, even the plague appeared. Trains were fired upon.
Liza behaved selflessly and was awarded several medals.
Soon she again came to Irkutsk, where she met her first love - a young doctor, a Georgian. They got engaged. All her life Lisa had firm ideas about honesty, kindness, and honor. The more terrible it seemed to her the collapse of faith in a loved one. She accidentally saw her fiancé brutally beat a defenseless soldier and immediately broke up with him, but was so shocked that she nearly committed suicide. In order not to meet with him again, Lisa took a vacation and returned to St. Petersburg to her mother's, where the atmosphere did not become easier for her.

Elena-Alyonushka was born a sick child. Doctors said "not a tenant." The frailty of Alyonushka caused constant fears, and, indeed, later doctors discovered an incurable disease of the nervous system - the dance of St. Vitus: the girl's face twitched all the time, convulsions also occurred. This misfortune further strengthened the care of the father. But the father, friends of the father, the nanny-educator - "Aunt Olya" pulled Alyonushka from the "other world". While Alyonushka was little, her father sat by her bed for days and hours. No wonder she was called "father's daughter."

When the girl began to understand, her father began to tell her fairy tales, first those that he knew, then he began to compose his own fairy tales, began to write them down, collect them.

In 1897 Alyonushka's Tales came out as a separate edition. Mamin-Sibiryak wrote: "The edition is very nice. This is my favorite book - it was written by love itself, and therefore it will outlive all the others." These words turned out to be prophetic. His Alyonushka Tales are published annually and translated into other languages. Much has been written about them, they are associated with folklore traditions, the writer's ability to present moral lessons entertainingly. Kuprin wrote about them: "These tales are poems in prose, more artistic than Turgenev's."
Mamin-Sibiryak writes to the editor during these years: "If I were rich, I would devote myself to children's literature. After all, it is happiness to write for children."

When Alyonushka grew up, due to illness she could not go to school, she was taught at home. The father paid much attention to the development of his daughter, took her to museums, read to her. Alyonushka drew well, wrote poetry, took music lessons. Dmitry Narkisovich dreamed of going to his native places and showing the Urals to his daughter. But the doctors forbade Alyonushka from long trips.

In 1900, Dmitry Narkisovich officially married Alyonushka's teacher Olga Frantsevna Guvala, to whom the girl became very attached. During this period of life (the second Tsarskoye Selo - 1902-1908), mothers paid great attention to a fragile child turning into a girl.

When Liza returned from the war, the Kuprins were absent. Their daughter Lyulusha, left to the nanny, fell ill with diphtheria. Liza, who passionately loved children, was on duty at Lyulusha's bed day and night and became very attached to her. Returning to St. Petersburg, Maria Karlovna was delighted with her daughter's affection for Lisa and invited the latter to go with them to Danilovskoye, the estate of Fyodor Dmitrievich Batyushkov. Lisa agreed, as she felt at that time restless and did not know what to do with herself.

For the first time, Kuprin drew attention to the strict beauty of Lisa at the name day of N.K. Mikhailovsky. This is evidenced by a brief note from my mother, which does not indicate the date of this meeting. She only remembers that the youth sang with the guitar, that Kachalov was still young among the guests.
In Danilovsky, Kuprin had already truly fallen in love with Lisa. I think that she had that real purity, that exceptional kindness, which Alexander Ivanovich really needed at that time. Once, during a thunderstorm, he spoke to her. Lisa's first feeling was panic. She was too honest, she was not at all coquettish. To destroy the family, to deprive Lyulusha of her father seemed completely unthinkable to her, although she, too, was born that great, selfless love, to which she later devoted her whole life.
Lisa took to flight again. Having hidden her address from everyone, she entered some distant hospital, in the department of contagious patients, in order to be completely cut off from the world.
At the beginning of 1907, it became clear to the Kuprins' friends that the spouses were unhappy and that a break was inevitable.
Kuprin was alien to secular insincerity, coquetry, and observance of the rules of salon etiquette. I remember how he kicked some unfortunate young man out of our house just because, as he thought, he looked at me with "dirty eyes." He always watched me jealously when I danced.
It is easy to imagine his furious reaction when Maria Karlovna hinted at him to understand who and how was caring for her. At the same time, Kuprin could not constantly be under the same roof with her. Judging by the memoirs of Maria Karlovna herself, it seems that her father could not work at home at all. It is strange to think that, living in the same city with his wife and child, he rented a room in a hotel or went to Lavra, Danilovskoye or Gatchina to write.
In February 1907, Kuprin left home; he settled in the St. Petersburg hotel "Palais-Royal" and began to drink heavily. Fyodor Dmitrievich Batyushkov, seeing how Alexander Ivanovich was destroying his iron health and his talent, undertook to find Liza. He found her and began to persuade, citing precisely such arguments, which alone could shake Lisa. He told her that anyway, the break with Maria Karlovna was final, that Kuprin was ruining himself and that he needed just such a person as her next to him. It was Lisa's calling to save, and she agreed, but made the condition that Alexander Ivanovich stop drinking and go to Helsingfors for treatment. On March 19, Alexander Ivanovich and Liza leave for Finland, and on the 31st the break with Maria Karlovna becomes official.

At this time, Maria Karlovna and her former governess Olga Frantsevna restored Lyubov Alekseevna, mother Kuprin, older sister Sofya Ivanovna Mozharova, and also Mamin-Sibiryak, who fell completely under the influence of his wife, against our family.
At one time, Mamin was especially ill-disposed against Kuprin, but later realized that he was unfair.
In the literary memoirs "Fragments aloud" the following statement is made by Mamin-Sibiryak: "And here is Kuprin. Why is he a great writer? Yes, because it's alive. He is alive, alive in every little thing. He has one small touch and - it's ready: here he is all here, Ivan Ivanovich. And why? Because Kuprin was also a reporter. I saw, sniffed out people as they are. By the way, you know, he has a habit of really, like a dog, sniffing people. Many, especially ladies, are offended. The Lord is with them, if Kuprin needs it ... ”F. F. Fidler writes about Mamin-Sibiryak’s attitude towards Lisa at that time:“ When Liza married Kuprin, the doors of Mamin’s house were closed for her forever. Mamin himself continued to love her as before (he raised her from 10 to 18 years of age), but "aunt Olya" could not forgive her that she was the reason for Kuprin's divorce from his first wife, Maria Karlovna Davydova, her former pupil ; besides, it set a bad example for Alyonushka.
So Olga Frantsevna herself complained to me... As the months passed, Liza continued to love Mamin, her second father, and strove to see him. The meeting did not work out, despite the fact that I offered my apartment for this. Mamin willingly agreed to my proposal, but thanks to his intimidation (“what if Aunt Olya finds out?”), The conversation ended in nothing. “Recently, Lisa was extremely careless: in a registered envelope, she sent me a card on which she was taken with her baby. I had to put the portrait in another envelope and return it to Lisa without a single word of postscript. “Why did you show it to your wife?” “She opened it without me.”
Mamin sometimes met with Kuprin in a restaurant. But he died without seeing the one to whom he was affectionately attached to his father and who, although remotely, reminded him of his "Marusya".
Despite her exceptional kindness, my mother did not forgive Olga Frantsevna her bitter childhood and the fact that she could not say goodbye to the man who loved her like a father. Alyonushka, a nervous, poetic girl, came to Gatchina and more than once tried to reconcile Lisa and Aunt Olya. But it turned out to be impossible.

from the book by Kuprina K.A. "Kuprin is my father"

Over the years, Mamin is increasingly occupied with the processes of folk life, he gravitates towards novels in which the main character is not an exceptional person, but the whole working environment. The novels of D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak " three ends"(1890), dedicated to the complex processes in the Urals after the Peasant Reform of 1861," Gold(1892), describing in harsh naturalistic detail the gold-mining season and " Bread"(1895) about the famine in the Ural village in 1891-1892. The writer worked for a long time on each work, collecting huge historical and modern material. A deep knowledge of folk life helped the author clearly and truthfully show the plight of workers and peasants and indignantly denounce the rich breeders and manufacturers who appropriated the natural wealth of the region and exploited the people.The gloomy drama, the abundance of suicides and catastrophes in the works of Mamin-Sibiryak, the "Russian Zola", recognized as one of the creators of the domestic sociological novel, revealed one of the important facets of the public mindset of Russia at the end of the century: sensation complete dependence of a person on socio-economic circumstances, which in modern conditions perform the function of unpredictable and inexorable ancient rock.
Historical novels by Mamin-Sibiryak "The Gordeev Brothers" (1891; about Demidov's serfs who studied in France) and "Okhonin's Eyebrows" (1892; about the uprising of the Ural factory population in the Pugachev era), as well as legends from the life of the Bashkirs, are distinguished by their colorful language and major tonality. , Kazakhs, Kirghiz ("Swan Khantygal", "Maya", etc.). "Dumpy", "strong and brave", according to the memoirs of contemporaries, a typical "Ural man", Mamin-Sibiryak since 1892,

One of the best books of Mamin-Sibiryak is an autobiographical novel-reminiscence of Petersburg youth " Traits from the life of Pepko"(1894), which tells about Mamin's first steps in literature, about bouts of dire need and moments of deaf despair. He clearly outlined the writer's worldview, the dogmas of his faith, views, ideas that formed the basis of his best works: deep altruism, disgust to brute force, love for life and, at the same time, longing for its imperfections, for the "sea of sadness and tears", where there are so many horrors, cruelties, untruths. "Can you really be satisfied with one's own life. No, to live a thousand lives, to suffer and rejoice in a thousand hearts - this is where life and true happiness are!" Mamin says in "Features from the Life of Pepko". The last major works of the writer are a novel " Falling stars"(1899) and the story "Mumma" (1907).

D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak. Caricature portrait by W. Carrick

The last years of Mamin-Sibiryak were especially difficult. Diseases. Fear for the fate of his daughter. Friends pass away: Chekhov, Gleb Uspensky, Stanyukovich, Garin-Mikhailovsky. It was almost out of print. March 21 (fatal day for Mamin-Sibiryak) 1910, the mother of Dmitry Narkisovich dies. It was a huge loss for him. In 1911, the writer was "smashed" by paralysis. Shortly before his departure, he wrote to a friend: "- here is the end soon - I have nothing to regret in literature, she has always been a stepmother for me - Well, to hell with her, especially since for me personally she was intertwined with bitter need, oh which even the closest friends don't say."
But the anniversary was approaching: 60 years since the birth of Mamin-Sibiryak and 40 years of his writing work. They remembered him, came to congratulate him. And Mamin-Sibiryak was in such a state that he no longer heard anything. At 60, he seemed to be a decrepit, gray-haired old man with dull eyes. The anniversary was like a memorial service. They spoke good words: "The pride of Russian literature ..", "Artist of the word", presented a luxurious album with congratulations.
But it was already too late. Dmitry Narkisovich died six days later (November 1912), and after his death there were still telegrams with congratulations and wishes.
The capital press did not notice the departure of Mamin-Sibiryak. Only in Yekaterinburg, friends gathered for a funeral evening. They buried Mamin-Sibiryak next to his wife in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg.

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