Vikenty Vikentievich Veresaev (Smidovich)
(1867-1945)

In 1919, Veresaev, a recognized writer and a wise man, created a charming fairy tale "Competition" - about the competition of two artists, the Twice-Crowned Master and his best student Unicorn in painting a picture "depicting the beauty of a woman."

The teacher, in search of the “highest Beauty”, traveled half the world until he found the “luminous Violet Crowned”, and the student wrote his beloved Dawn - “the most ordinary girl, of which dozens can be found everywhere”.

The portrait of Fialkovenchannaya shocked the audience - "no one has ever seen such beauty in the world ... a general sigh of sacred, great longing swept over the crowd." And the portrait of Zorka caused laughter, the artist was almost stoned, but when they looked at the picture, everyone saw that the girl was glowing from the inside - “as if the sun had risen high above the square.”

The light of this sun illuminated the faces of all people and made them beautiful. Everyone understood that beauty is next to him and in himself. And the people called the Unicorn the winner. In this story, the whole Veresaev, who saw the beauty of the earth in the common people, who is the main and only judge for every artist.

The future Russian prose writer, literary critic, poet-translator was born on January 4 (16), 1867 in a large deeply religious family of well-known Tula ascetics Vikenty Ignatievich Smidovich and Elizaveta Pavlovna, nee Yunitskaya. Father - a doctor, the son of a Polish landowner, was the founder of the Tula City Hospital and the Sanitary Commission, one of the founders of the Society of Tula Doctors; mother, a highly educated noblewoman, opened the first kindergarten in Tula in her house, and later an elementary school. Vincent had 10 brothers and sisters (3 of them died in childhood). The boy read N. Gogol, I. Turgenev, M. Lermontov, A.K. Tolstoy, M. Reed, G. Emar; in the summer he helped his mother on the estate, plowed, mowed, carried hay and sheaves; in the gymnasium, which he graduated with a silver medal, he was "the first student", was known as an expert in ancient languages; At the age of 13, he began writing poetry and translating.

For the first time, a poem by a young poet under the name V. Vikentiev - “Thought” was published in the magazine Fashion Light and Fashion Store in 1885. After 2 years, the writer’s story “The Riddle” was published in the magazine World Illustration under the pseudonym Veresaev, in which he "in an adult way" declared that true happiness is in the struggle, and the meaning of life is in faith in tomorrow.

In 1884, the young man entered St. Petersburg University, at the historical department of the Faculty of History and Philology, after which (1888) he received a candidate's degree. Carried away by the ideas of populism, the works of N. Mikhailovsky and D. Pisarev, Smidovich entered the medical faculty of the University of Dorpat, where he studied science and literary creativity for 6 years. The student correctly believed that medical practice would help him "go to the people", and medicine - to learn about a person. During the cholera epidemic of 1892, he traveled to Yekaterinoslav province, where he was in charge of the barracks at the mine; a few months later he published in the populist magazine “Books of the Week” his essays “Underground Kingdom” - about the work and life of Donetsk miners.

In his senior years, Vikenty worked in the laboratory of a therapeutic clinic, published two scientific articles. After graduating from high school (1894), the doctor practiced in Tula, and then, as one of the best graduates of the university, he was accepted as a supernumerary (without salary) intern at the St. Petersburg Barachnaya (Botkinskaya) hospital for acutely contagious patients. At the same time, Veresaev published in the journal "Russian wealth" a "bright" story about the crisis of the populist worldview "Without a Road", sympathetically met with criticism. The editors of the magazine - N. Mikhailovsky and V. Korolenko invited the novice writer to cooperate. Asking the question - "Truth, truth, where are you? .." - Veresaev found it in the combination of writing and medical work.

In the year of the famous strike of St. Petersburg weavers (1896), Veresaev, having joined the literary circle of Marxists (P. Struve and others), got along with the workers and revolutionary youth, wrote the story "Fad" about a new human type - a Marxist revolutionary.

After a series of stories, essays and short stories, incl. about the terrible life and the bleak existence of the working people (“At the turn” - an anti-Nietzschean story, “To Life”, “The End of Andrei Ivanovich”, “To Haste”, etc.) in 1901 the famous “Doctor’s Notes” came out, shocking Russian society and brought world fame to Veresaev, as well as ... exile to Tula under police supervision.

The fact is that the hero of the "Notes" came to the conclusion that only the struggle to eliminate those conditions that "make the young old people who actually shorten the already short human life" can save people. Truthfully and frankly depicting a terrifying picture of the state of medical practice in Russia, the author was forced to justify himself a year later in the article “About the Doctor's Notes”. Reply to my critics.

Veresaev, unlike L. Tolstoy, in his works did not follow the path of generalizing a multitude of disparate facts, but of typifying one particular one, its “documentation”. The attraction to conciseness and reliability over the years has shaped the writer into the ability to create compact texts; “If you want to be great, know how to shrink,” he liked to repeat Pushkin's line.

For two years, Veresaev traveled around the country and Europe (Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland), met with many famous Russian writers (A. Chekhov, L. Tolstoy, etc.), after which he settled in Moscow and entered the literary group "Sreda" , and later to the publishing house of M. Gorky - "Knowledge".

With the beginning of the war with Japan (1904-1906), Veresaev, as a reserve doctor, was called up for military service and ended up as a junior intern in a mobile field hospital in Manchuria. Returning to Moscow, the writer published notes "On the Japanese War" and "Stories about the Japanese War", in which he contrasted the people's power with autocratic power.

In 1907-1910. Veresaev wrote the optimistic story "To Life", the critical and philosophical book "Living Life", the first part of which is devoted to the analysis of the life and work of L. Tolstoy ("Long live the whole world!") And F. Dostoevsky ("The man is damned"), and the second - F. Nietzsche ("Apollo and Dionysus"); made a trip to Greece, where he decided to do translations from ancient Greek.

In 1912, Vikenty Vikentievich participated in the organization of the Book Publishing House of Writers in Moscow; as chairman of the board and editor of this Book Publishing House, he waged war on the decadents.

With the outbreak of the First World War, the writer was mobilized into the army, and from 1914 to 1917 he was a regimental doctor in the city of Kolomna, then led the military sanitary detachment of the Moscow Railway.

Having accepted both revolutions, Veresaev was the chairman of the Artistic and Educational Commission under the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies. In 1918-1921. lived near Feodosia, in the village of Koktebel. “During this time, the Crimea passed from hand to hand several times,” the writer recalled, “I had to endure a lot of hardship, was robbed six times; a sick Spaniard, with a temperature of 40 degrees, lay for half an hour under the revolver of a drunken Red Army soldier, who was shot two days later; arrested by whites; ill with scurvy." In the Crimea, Veresaev was a member of the board of the Feodosia People's Education Department, and was in charge of the department of literature and art.

In 1921, the writer returned to Moscow, where he worked in the literary subsection of the State Academic Council of the People's Commissariat of Education, edited the art department of the Krasnaya Nov magazine, and was a member of the editorial board of the almanac Our Days. Veresaev was elected chairman of the All-Russian Union of Writers; he gave lectures to young people, wrote journalism; about the events of the Civil War, wrote the novel "At a dead end" (1924).

In the late 1920s - 1930s. the writer published the novel "Sisters" - about collectivization and the problems of youth, memoirs "In Youth", documentary studies "Pushkin in Life", "Gogol in Life", "Pushkin's Companions", diary "Entries for Myself", journalism, etc. .

For many years Veresaev headed the Pushkin Commission of the Union of Soviet Writers. The last works of Veresaev were "Unfictional stories about the past"; during the Great Patriotic War he published stories and essays.

In 1943, the writer was awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree for outstanding achievements in the field of literature. The writer was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

The wife of Vikenty Vikentievich was his second cousin, Maria Germogenovna Smidovich. Veresaev described his relationship with his wife in the 1941 story "Eitimiya", which means "joyfulness". The Veresaevs had no children.

The writer died in Moscow on June 3, 1945, and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. After 13 years, a monument to the writer was erected in Tula.

Veresaev enjoyed great prestige among readers and critics, writers and authorities. “For the inviolability of his views,” he was called the “Stone Bridge” in his youth, and most of all those around him were impressed by his “writing and human honesty and integrity” of a “high standard”.

He was a very kind and sympathetic person, more than once helping writers who were in trouble (for example, he brought money home to the needy M. Bulgakov).

P.S. A conversation about Veresaev the writer would be incomplete if we did not mention his translations from ancient Greek, which became classics already when they were released: “Homeric Hymns”, “Works and Days” by Hesiod, “Iliad” and “Odyssey” by Homer, lyrics (Archilochus, Sappho and others). To illustrate the virtuoso skill of Veresaev the translator, it is enough to quote a few lines from Sappho:

God equal seems to me fortunately
The person who is so close
Before you sits, your sounding gentle
listens to the voice

And a lovely laugh.

Reviews

What a multi-talented and whole person. Not very deeply familiar with his work, but the name of the writer was well known. He knew that he was the same age and contemporary of Gorky. After reading your miniature, dear Viorel, I learned a lot of interesting things for myself, I will rummage in my rather extensive library or on the Internet
And I will definitely read it, at least selectively. As a native Crimean, it was very interesting for me to know that his life was connected with the Voloshin places of Crimea.
Thanks again and see you next time on your page.
With best wishes, dear Viorel.
Zinovy

Veresaev Vikenty Vikentievich(1867-1945), real name - Smidovich, Russian prose writer, literary critic, poet-translator. Born on January 4 (16), 1867 in a family of famous Tula ascetics.

Father, doctor V.I. Smidovich, the son of a Polish landowner, a participant in the uprising of 1830–1831, was the founder of the Tula city hospital and the sanitary commission, one of the founders of the Tula Doctors Society, and a member of the City Duma. Mother opened the first kindergarten in Tula in her house.

In 1884, Veresaev graduated from the Tula classical gymnasium with a silver medal and entered the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University, after which he received the title of candidate. The family atmosphere in which the future writer was brought up was imbued with the spirit of Orthodoxy, active service to others. This explains Veresaev's passion for years for the ideas of populism, the works of N.K. Mikhailovsky and D.I. Pisarev.

Influenced by these ideas, Veresaev entered the medical faculty of Dorpat University in 1888, considering medical practice to be the best way to know the life of the people, and medicine as a source of knowledge about a person. In 1894, he practiced for several months at home in Tula, and in the same year, as one of the best graduates of the university, he was hired at the St. Petersburg Botkin Hospital.

Veresaev began to write at the age of fourteen (poems and translations). He himself considered the publication of the story Riddle (the magazine World Illustration, 1887, No. 9) to be the beginning of his literary activity.

In 1895, Veresaev was carried away by more radical political views: the writer made close contacts with revolutionary working groups. He worked in Marxist circles, meetings of the Social Democrats were held at his apartment. Participation in political life determined the themes of his work.

Veresaev used artistic prose to express socio-political and ideological views, showing in his novels and stories a retrospective of the development of his own spiritual quest. In his works, the predominance of such forms of narration as a diary, confession, disputes of heroes on the topics of the socio-political structure is noticeable. The heroes of Veresaev, like the author, were disappointed in the ideals of populism. But the writer tried to show the possibilities of further spiritual development of his characters. So, the hero of the story Bez Road (1895), the zemstvo doctor Troitsky, having lost his former beliefs, looks completely devastated. In contrast to him, the protagonist of the story On the Turn (1902) Tokarev finds a way out of his spiritual impasse and escapes suicide, despite the fact that he did not have definite ideological views and "went into the darkness, not knowing where." Veresaev puts many theses into his mouth, criticizing the idealism, bookishness and dogmatism of populism.

Having come to the conclusion that populism, despite the democratic values it declares, has no basis in real life and often does not know it, Veresaev creates a new human type in the story Advent (1898): a Marxist revolutionary. However, the writer also sees shortcomings in Marxist teaching: lack of spirituality, blind subordination of people to economic laws.

Not limited to the artistic depiction of ideas common among the intelligentsia, Veresaev wrote several stories and stories about the terrible life and the bleak existence of workers and peasants (the stories The End of Andrei Ivanovich, 1899 and Honest Labor, another name is the End of Alexandra Mikhailovna, 1903, which he later revised into story Two ends, 1909, and the stories of Lizar, In a hurry, In a dry fog, all 1899).

At the beginning of the century, society was shocked by Veresaev's Notes of a Doctor (1901), in which the writer depicted a horrifying picture of the state of medical practice in Russia. The release of the Notes caused numerous critical reviews in the press. In response to accusations that it was unethical to bring professional medical problems to public court, the writer was forced to come up with an exculpatory article about the Doctor's Notes. Reply to my Critics (1902).

In 1901 Veresaev was exiled to Tula. The formal reason was his participation in a protest against the suppression of student demonstrations by the authorities. The next two years of his life were filled with numerous trips and meetings with famous Russian writers. In 1902, Veresaev left for Europe (Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland), and in the spring of 1903 - to the Crimea, where he met Chekhov. In August of the same year he visited Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana. After obtaining the right to enter the capital, he moved to Moscow and joined the literary group Sreda. Since that time, his friendship with L. Andreev began.

As a military doctor, Veresaev participated in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, the events of which he depicted in his usual realistic manner in stories and essays that compiled the collection On the Japanese War (published in full in 1928). He combined the description of the details of army life with reflections on the reasons for the defeat of Russia.

The events of the revolution of 1905-1907 convinced Veresaev that violence and progress are incompatible. The writer became disillusioned with the ideas of the revolutionary reorganization of the world. In 1907-1910, Veresaev turned to the understanding of artistic creativity, which he understood as protecting a person from the horrors of life. At this time, the writer is working on the book Living Life, the first part of which is devoted to the analysis of the life and work of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and the second - Nietzsche. Comparing the ideas of great thinkers, Veresaev sought to show in his literary and philosophical research the moral victory of the forces of good over the forces of evil in creativity and in life.

Since 1912, Veresaev was chairman of the board of the Writers' Book Publishing House organized by him in Moscow. The publishing house united the writers who were members of the "Wednesday" circle. With the outbreak of the First World War, the writer was again mobilized into the army, and from 1914 to 1917 he led the military sanitary detachment of the Moscow Railway.

After the revolutionary events of 1917, Veresaev completely turned to literature, remaining an outside observer of life. The range of his creative aspirations is very wide, literary activity is extremely fruitful. He wrote the novels At the Dead End (1924) and Sisters (1933), his documentary studies of Pushkin in Life (1926), Gogol in Life (1933) and Pushkin's Companions (1937) opened a new genre in Russian literature - a chronicle of characteristics and opinions. Veresaev owns Memoirs (1936) and diary entries for himself (published in 1968), in which the life of the writer appeared in all the richness of thoughts and spiritual quests. Veresaev made numerous translations of ancient Greek literature, including the Iliad (1949) and Odyssey (1953) by Homer.

Veresaev Vikenty Vikentievich (1867-1945), real name - Smidovich, Russian prose writer, literary critic, poet-translator. Born on January 4 (16), 1867 in a family of famous Tula ascetics.
Father, doctor V.I. Smidovich, the son of a Polish landowner, a participant in the uprising of 1830–1831, was the founder of the Tula city hospital and the sanitary commission, one of the founders of the Tula Doctors Society, and a member of the City Duma. Mother opened the first kindergarten in Tula in her house.

Veresaev's name was often mentioned in the critical press of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Populist and Marxist leaders used his works as a pretext for public debate on socio-political issues (the magazines Russkoe bogatstvo, 1899, No. 1–2, and Nachalo, 1899, No. 4). , Veresaev wrote several stories and stories about the terrible life and the bleak existence of workers and peasants (the stories The End of Andrei Ivanovich, 1899 and Honest Labor, another name is the End of Alexandra Mikhailovna, 1903, which he later reworked into the story Two Ends, 1909, and the stories of Lizar, In a hurry, In a dry fog, all 1899).

Publications in the Literature section

Vikenty Veresaev. Writer, military doctor, biographer, translator

In Ikentiy Veresaev became interested in literature even in his gymnasium years, he published his first poem, "Meditation", at the age of 18. Later Veresaev became a doctor. He described his doctoral experience and literary research in books, created works about the revolution and translated ancient Greek poets.

"New people" in literature

Sergey Malyutin. Portrait of Vikenty Veresaev. 1919

At the end of the 19th century, Veresaev was carried away by radical political views. He spoke in Marxist circles and gathered Social Democrats at his home. In his autobiography, Veresaev wrote: “New people have come, cheerful and believing. They pointed to a rapidly growing and organizing force in the form of the factory worker. Underground work was in full swing, agitation was going on in factories and plants, and circle classes were held with workers. Many who were not convinced by theory were convinced by practice, including myself..

In 1894, Vikenty Veresaev wrote the story "Without a Road" about two generations who have lost their "guiding star" and do not know where to go next. Three years later, the main character of the story "The Pestilence" has already found her own way. In the same place as the author of the book - in Marxist circles and at political meetings. Vikenty Veresaev sensitively responded to the events in the country. He created works about workers and peasants: the story "The End of Andrei Ivanovich", the essays "On the Dead Road" and "Lizar", - in 1904-1905 he wrote "On the Japanese War". The young writer was looking for a genre in which journalism could combine with artistic description, and he found it - this is how a journalistic story appeared.

Over time, the revolutionary fervor in the writer faded. In 1922, Veresaev published the novel "At a Dead End" about the Sartanov family. In it, the author showed how society stratified during the years of upheavals. The characters of the novel - a father, a representative of the "old" intelligentsia, and revolutionary children - are doomed to misunderstanding and endless quarrels.

Medical school writer

Peter Karachentsov. Illustration for Vikenty Veresaev's book "Doctor's Notes". Photo: russkiymir.ru

Vikenty Veresaev is a student at St. Petersburg University. 1885 Photo: russkiymir.ru

Vikenty Veresaev in the Tula province. 1902 Photo: russkiymir.ru

At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a popular joke that in Russia most writers graduated from medical universities. Vikenty Veresaev is another confirmation of this. In 1894 he graduated from the medical faculty and began working as a doctor in his native Tula, and later in the Botkin hospital in St. Petersburg.

Vikenty Veresaev wrote a book about the doctor's work, Notes of a Doctor, in 1901. The biographical story told about the practice of a young doctor, his encounter with an unromantic reality, experiments on people and medical ethics. Although the Notes shocked the public, the work quickly became popular with readers, and Vikenty Veresaev became famous in the literary environment.

"A doctor - if he is a doctor, and not an official of the medical profession - must first of all fight for the elimination of those conditions that make his activity meaningless and fruitless, he must be a public figure in the broadest sense of the word."
Vikenty Veresaev

In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, Veresaev was called up for military service and sent to Manchuria as a military doctor. He served in the most difficult conditions, more than once he had to operate literally on the front line. He served as a front-line doctor later, during the First World War.

"Editor" of characteristics and opinions

In 1910, after the death of Leo Tolstoy, Veresaev created a voluminous work about two writers of the outgoing era, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. The book "Living Life" is still popular among literary critics and biographers. Vikenty Veresaev considered it one of the most significant works in his work.

In the 1920s and 30s, Veresaev devoted almost all his time to the study of literature. During this period he wrote the books Pushkin in Life, Gogol in Life and Pushkin's Companions. Veresaev for the first time in Russian literature began to write biographies in a new genre - a chronicle of characteristics and opinions. For example, the book "Gogol in Life" had the subtitle "A Systematic Collection of Authentic Evidence from Contemporaries". The author did not give an interpretation of the events from the life of his character, did not describe them using artistic means. He created only a preface, comments and "mounted" historical facts, referring to sources.

Translator of ancient Greek poetry

Vikenty Veresaev. Photo: lr4.lsm.lv

Vikenty Veresaev and Leonid Andreev. 1912 Photo: wikimedia.org

Vikenty Veresaev. Photo: persons-info.com

Vikenty Veresaev was fond of translations. In 1919 he received the Pushkin Prize for translations of ancient Greek poetry. A few years later, Veresaev began working on new translations of Homer. He did not abandon the translation traditions of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which were created by Nikolai Gnedich, Vasily Zhukovsky and Nikolai Minsky. In the preface to the Iliad, Veresaev wrote: “Everything good, everything successful, the new translator should take with a handful from previous translations”. However, he saw shortcomings in them: Gnedich has an archaic language and an oversaturation of the text with Church Slavonic words; Minsky, as Veresaev wrote, was "sluggish and prosaic." In his text, he sought to get as close as possible to the ancient Greek original, to make the language of classical poetry closer and more understandable to the reader.

Anger, goddess, sing to Achilles, the son of Peleus,
Terrible, who did thousands of disasters to the Achaeans:
Many mighty souls of glorious heroes cast down
In gloomy Hades and spread them themselves for the benefit of carnivorous
To the surrounding birds and dogs (Zeus's will was performed), -
From that day on, as those who raised a dispute, flared up with enmity
The shepherd of the peoples Atrids and the noble hero Achilles.
An excerpt from the poem "Iliad", translated by Nikolai Gnedich

Sing, goddess, about the wrath of Achilles, the son of Peleus,
The cursed anger that brought countless suffering to the Achaeans,
Many strong souls of heroes sent to Hades,
Who gave them as prey to the greedy
Birds of the neighborhood and dogs. This was done by the will of Zeus,
Since the first time, quarreling, parted hostilely
The son of Atreus, the lord of men, and Pelid the many-lighted.
An excerpt from the poem "The Iliad", translated by Vikenty Veresaev

In 1929, Vikenty Veresaev published a collection of his works and translations. It also included poetry, including Works and Days and Hesiod's Theogony.

Vikenty Vikentievich Veresaev

Veresaev Vikenty Vikentievich (1867/1945) - Russian Soviet writer, critic, laureate of the USSR State Prize in 1943. The real name of the writer is Smidovich. V.'s artistic prose is characterized by a description of the searches and throwings of the intelligentsia in the transition from the 19th to the 20th centuries. ("Without a road", "Doctor's Notes"). In addition, Veresaev created philosophical and documentary works about a number of famous Russian writers (F.M. Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy, A.S. Pushkin and N.V. Gogol).

Guryeva T.N. New literary dictionary / T.N. Guriev. - Rostov n / a, Phoenix, 2009, p. 47.

Veresaev Vikenty Vikentievich (real name Smidovich) - prose writer, translator, literary critic. Born in 1867 in Thule in the doctor's family. He graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University and the Medical Faculty of Dorpat University.

The first publication is the story "The Riddle" (1887). Under the influence of Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, the main theme of Veresaev's work was formed - the life and spiritual quest of the Russian intelligentsia.

Author of a number of stories (Without a Road, 1895, At the Turn, 1902, the dilogy Two Ends: The End of Andrei Ivanovich and The Honest Way, 1899–1903, To Life, 1908), collections of short stories and essays, novels "At the Dead End" and "Sisters", as well as the dilogy "Living Life" ("About Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy", 1909, "Apollo and Dionysus. About Nietzsche", 1914). The greatest public outcry was caused by the publication of the book "Doctor's Notes" (1901), dedicated to the problem of professional ethics.

A special place in Veresaev's work is occupied by Biographical Chronicles dedicated to Pushkin (Pushkin in Life, 1925–1926, Pushkin's Companions, 1937) and Gogol (Gogol in Life, 1933). Known for translations of ancient Greek classics (Homer, Hesiod, Sappho).

In 1943 he was awarded the Stalin Prize.

Materials of the magazine "Roman-gazeta" No. 11, 2009 were used. Pushkin's pages .

Vikenty Veresaev. Reproduction from www.rusf.ru

Veresaev (real name - Smidovich) Vikenty Vikentievich (1867 - 1945), prose writer, literary critic, critic.

Born on January 4 (16 n.s.) in Tula in the family of a doctor who was very popular both as a doctor and as a public figure. There were eight children in this close-knit family.

Veresaev studied at the Tula classical gymnasium, teaching was easy, he was "the first student." Most of all he succeeded in ancient languages, read a lot. At the age of thirteen he began to write poetry. In 1884, at the age of seventeen, he graduated from the gymnasium and entered St. Petersburg University at the Faculty of History and Philology, went through the history department. At that time, he enthusiastically participated in various student circles, "living in a tense atmosphere of the most acute social, economic and ethical issues."

In 1888 he graduated as a candidate of historical sciences and in the same year he entered the Medical Faculty of Derpt University, which shone with great scientific talents. For six years he was diligently engaged in medical science. During his student years he continued to write: first poetry, later - stories and novels. The first printed work was the poem "Meditation", a number of essays and stories were placed in the "World Illustration" and the books of the "Week" by P. Gaydeburov.

In 1894 he received a doctor's degree and practiced for several months in Tula under the guidance of his father, then went to St. Petersburg and entered the barach hospital as a supernumerary intern. In the fall, he finishes the long story "Without a Road", published in "Russian Wealth", where he was offered permanent cooperation. Veresaev joined the literary circle of Marxists (Struve, Maslov, Kalmykova, and others), maintained close relations with workers and revolutionary youth. In 1901 he was fired from the Barachnaya Hospital on the orders of the mayor and expelled from St. Petersburg. Lived in Tula for two years. When the expulsion period ended, he moved to Moscow.

Vikenty Veresaev. Photo from www.veresaev.net.ru

Great fame to Veresaev brought created on autobiographical material "Doctor's Notes" (1901).

When the war with Japan began in 1904, Veresaev, as a reserve doctor, was called up for military service. Returning from the war in 1906, he described his impressions in "Stories about the War".

In 1911, on the initiative of Veresaev, the "Book Publishing House of Writers in Moscow" was created, which he headed until 1918. During these years, he performed literary and critical studies ("Living Life" is devoted to the analysis of the work of F. Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy). In 1917 he was chairman of the Artistic Education Commission under the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies.

Vikenty Veresaev. Reproduction from www.veresaev.net.ru

In September 1918 he leaves for the Crimea, intending to live there for three months, but is forced to stay in the village of Koktebel, near Feodosia, for three years. During this time, Crimea changed hands several times, the writer had to endure a lot of hardships. In 1921 he returned to Moscow. Completes the cycle of works about the intelligentsia: the novels "At the Dead End" (1922) and "Sisters" (1933). He published a number of books compiled from documentary, memoir sources (Pushkin in Life, 1926-27; Gogol in Life, 1933; Pushkin's Companions, 1934-36). In 1940, his "Unfictional stories about the past" appeared. In 1943 Veresaev was awarded the State Prize. Veresaev died in Moscow on June 3, 1945.

Used materials of the book: Russian writers and poets. Brief biographical dictionary. Moscow, 2000.

Vikenty Veresaev. Photo from www.veresaev.net.ru

Veresaev (real name Smidovich) Vikenty Vikentievich - writer, poet-translator, literary critic.

Born in the family of a doctor. His parents, Vikenty Ignatievich and Elizaveta Pavlovna Smidovichi, attached great importance to the religious and moral education of children, the formation of a sense of responsibility to people and themselves. Even during the years of study at the Tula classical gymnasium, Veresaev was seriously interested in history, philosophy, physiology, and showed a keen interest in Christianity and Buddhism.

After graduating from high school with a silver medal, Veresaev in 1884 entered the philological faculty of St. Petersburg University (historical department). Veresaev's first appearance in print dates back to 1885, when he (under the pseudonym V. Vikentiev) published the poem "Meditation" in the magazine Fashion Light and Fashion Store. Veresaev invariably considered the story “The Riddle” (1887) to be the beginning of his real literary work, in which the theme of overcoming loneliness, the birth of courage, the will to live and fight is touched on by a person. “Let there be no hope, we will win back hope itself!” - such is the leitmotif of the story.

After successfully completing his studies at the Faculty of Philology, Veresaev in 1888 entered the Derpt (now Tartu) University at the Faculty of Medicine. In his autobiography, he explained this decision as follows: “My dream was to become a writer, and for this it seemed necessary to know the biological side of man, his physiology and pathology; in addition, the specialty of a doctor made it possible to closely converge with people of the most diverse strata and ways. In Dorpat, the stories "Impulse" (1889), "Comrades" (1892) were written.

The most significant work of this period is the story "Without a Road" (1894), which V., according to him, entered the "great" literature. The hero of the story, zemstvo doctor Chekanov, expresses the thoughts and moods of that generation of intellectuals, who, as Veresaev believed then, “have nothing”: “Without a road, without a guiding star, it dies invisibly and irrevocably ... desperate attempts to get out of his power. One of the defining thoughts in the story should be considered the idea of the hero and the author himself about the “chasm” separating the people and the intelligentsia: “We have always been alien and far away from them, nothing connected them with us. For them, we were people of another world...” The story's finale is nevertheless ambiguous. Chekanov, a victim of the era of "timelessness", inevitably dies, having exhausted all his spiritual potential, having tried all the "recipes". But he dies with a call to the new generation to "work hard and hard", "seek the way". Despite some schematism of the narrative, the work aroused wide interest among readers and critics.

After graduating from Dorpat University in 1894, Veresaev came to Tula, where he was engaged in private medical practice. In the same year, he went to St. Petersburg and became an intern at the Botkin Hospital. At this time, Veresaev begins to take a serious interest in Marxist ideas, gets acquainted with Marxists.

In 1897, he wrote the story The Pestilence, which is based on a tense dispute-dialogue between young Marxists (Natasha Chekanova, Daev) and representatives of the populist intelligentsia (Kiselev, Dr. Troitsky). The thesis of “historical necessity”, which should not only be obeyed, but also promoted, Dr. Troitsky counters with the idea that “you can’t chase after some abstract historical tasks when there are so many pressing matters around”, “life is more complicated than any schemes” .

Following the "Freak" Veresaev creates a series of stories about the village ("Lizar", "In the dry fog", "In the steppe", "To hurry", etc.). Veresaev does not confine himself to describing the plight of the peasants, he wants to truly capture their thoughts, morals, and characters. The ugliness of poverty does not obscure or cancel his ideal of the natural and the human. In the story "Lizar" (1899), which was especially noted by Chekhov, the social theme of "reduction of man" (poor Lizar regrets the "overabundance" of people on a piece of land and stands up for "cleansing the people", then "it will become freer to live") is intertwined with the motives of the eternal triumph of natural life ("To live, to live - to live a wide, full life, not to be afraid of it, not to break and not deny yourself - this was the great secret that nature revealed so joyfully and powerfully"). In the manner of narration, Veresaev's stories about the village are close to the essays and stories of G. Uspensky (especially from the book "The Power of the Earth"). Veresaev noted more than once that G. Uspensky was his favorite Russian writer.

In 1900, Veresaev completed one of his most famous works, which he had been working on since 1892, “Doctor's Notes”. Based on his personal experience and the experience of his colleagues, Veresaev stated with alarm: “People do not have even the remotest idea either about the life of their body, or about the forces and means of medical science. This is the source of most misunderstandings, this is the reason for both blind faith in the omnipotence of medicine and blind disbelief in it. And both equally make themselves felt with very grave consequences. One of the critics, who called the book “a statement about the wonderful anxiety of the Russian conscience,” testified: “The human anthill was all stirred up and agitated before the confession of a young doctor who<...>betrayed professional secrecy and brought to the light of God both the instruments of struggle, and the psyche of the doctor, and all the contradictions that he himself was exhausted in front of. This confession reflected all the main features of Veresaev's work: observation, restless mind, sincerity, independence of judgment. The merit of the writer was the fact that many of the issues that the hero of the Notes struggles with are considered by him not only in purely medical, but also in ethical, socio-philosophical terms. All this made the book a huge success. The form of "Doctor's Notes" is an organic combination of fiction and journalism elements.

Veresaev seeks to expand the scope of artistic reflection of life. So, he writes the acutely social story "Two Ends" (1899-03) consisting of two parts. In the image of the craftsman Kolosov (“The End of Andrei Ivanovich”), Veresaev wanted to show a worker-craftsman, in the depths of whose soul “there was something noble and broad, pulling him into the open space from a cramped life.” But all the good impulses of the hero are in no way consistent with the gloomy reality, and he, exhausted by hopeless contradictions, dies.

The story "On the Turn" (1901) was another attempt by Veresaev to comprehend the Russian revolutionary movement. Here, again, the opinions of those who find the revolutionary path found seems bookish, far-fetched (Tokarev, Varvara Vasilievna), and those who recklessly believe in revolution (Tanya, Sergei, Borisoglebsky) clash again. The position of the writer himself on the eve of the first Russian revolution was characterized by doubts that people were ripe for an "explosive" reorganization of society; it seemed to him that a person is still very imperfect, the biological principle is too strong in him.

In the summer of 1904, Veresaev was drafted into the army as a doctor and until 1906 was in Manchuria, on the fields of the Russian-Japanese war. He reflected his thoughts, impressions, experiences associated with these events in the cycle "Stories about the Japanese War" (1904-06), as well as in a book written in the genre of notes - "At War" (1906-07). These were a kind of "doctor's notes", in which V. captured all the horror and suffering of the war. Everything described led to the idea that the absurdities of the social structure had reached alarming proportions. V. more and more reflects on the real ways of transforming reality and man. The result of these reflections was the story "To Life" (1908), in which Versaev's concept of "living life" found its initial embodiment. V. explained the idea of \u200b\u200bthe story this way: “In a long search for the meaning of life, at that time I finally came to firm, independent, not bookish conclusions,<...>who gave their own<...>knowledge - what is life and what is its "meaning". I wanted to put all my findings into the story...” The hero of the story, Cherdyntsev, is absorbed in the search for the meaning of life for all people. He wants to understand how the joy and fullness of human existence depend on external conditions and circumstances. Having traveled a long path of experience, searches, doubts, Cherdyntsev acquires a firm belief: the meaning of life lies in life itself, in the very natural flow of being (“All life was entirely one continuously unfolding goal, running away into the sunny clear distance”). The abnormal structure of society often deprives a person of this original meaning, but it exists, you need to be able to feel it and keep it in yourself. V. was struck by “how people are able to cripple living human life with their norms and schemes” (“Records for Myself”).

The main themes and motives of the story were developed in a philosophical and critical study, which Veresaev gave the program name - "Living Life". The first part of it is devoted to the work of L. Tolstoy and F. Dostoevsky (1910), the second - "Apollo and Dionysus" - mainly to the analysis of the ideas of F. Nietzsche (1914). Veresaev opposes Tolstoy to Dostoevsky, recognizing, however, the truth behind both artists. For Dostoevsky, Veresaev believes, a person is “a receptacle for all the most painful deviations of the life instinct”, and life is “a chaotic pile of fragments that are disconnected, not interconnected by anything.” In Tolstoy, on the contrary, he sees a healthy, bright beginning, the triumph of "living life", which "represents the highest value, full of mysterious depths." The book is of undoubted interest, but it must be borne in mind that V. sometimes "customizes" the ideas and images of writers to fit his concept.

Veresaev perceived the events of 1917 ambiguously. On the one hand, he saw the force that awakened the people, and on the other hand, the elements, the “explosion” of latent dark principles in the masses. Nevertheless, Veresaev actively cooperates with the new government: he becomes the chairman of the artistic and educational commission under the Council of Workers' Deputies in Moscow, since 1921 he has been working in the literary subsection of the State Academic Council of the People's Commissariat for Education, and is also the editor of the art department of the Krasnaya Nov magazine. Soon he was elected chairman of the All-Russian Union of Writers. The main creative work of those years was the novel "At a Dead End" (1920-23), one of the first works about the fate of the Russian intelligentsia during the Civil War. The writer was worried about the theme of the collapse of traditional humanism in the novel. He realized the inevitability of this crash, but he could not accept it.

After this novel, Veresaev moved away from the present for some time.

In May 1925, in a letter to M. Gorky, he said: "I waved my hand and started studying Pushkin, writing memoirs - the most old man's business."

In 1926, Veresaev published a 2-volume edition of Pushkin in Life, which provides rich material for studying the poet's biography. This is a collection of biographical realities gleaned from various documents, letters, memoirs.

In the early 1930s, at the suggestion of M. Bulgakov, he began to work together on a play about Pushkin; later he left this work due to creative differences with M. Bulgakov. Veresaev's further work resulted in the books Gogol in Life (1933), Pushkin's Companions (1937).

In 1929 the Homeric Hymns, collections of translations (Homer, Hesiod, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Plato, and others) were published. For these translations, Veresaev was awarded the Pushkin Prize by the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In 1928-31, Veresaev worked on the novel Sisters, in which he sought to show the real everyday life of young intellectuals and workers in the era of the first five-year plan. One of the essential laws of that time, the heroine of the novel, Lelka Ratnikova, formulated for herself as follows: “... there is some kind of general law: whoever lives deeply and strongly in public work simply has no time to work on himself in the field of personal morality, and here everything is very confusing for him ... ”The novel, however, turned out to be somewhat schematic: Veresaev mastered the new reality more ideologically than artistically.

In 1937, Veresaev began a huge job of translating Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (more than 28,000 verses), which he completed in four and a half years. The translation, close to the spirit and language of the original, was recognized by connoisseurs as a serious achievement of the author. Translations were published after the death of the writer: "Iliad" - in 1949, and "Odyssey" - in 1953.

In the last years of his life, Veresaev created mainly works of memoir genres: “Non-fictional stories”, “Memories” (about childhood and student years, about meetings with L. Tolstoy, Chekhov, Korolenko, L. Andreev, etc.), “Records for myself "(According to the author, this is "something like a notebook, which includes aphorisms, excerpts from memoirs, various recordings of interesting episodes"). They clearly manifested that “connection with life”, to which Veresaev always gravitated in his work. In the preface to “Unfictional stories about the past”, he wrote: “Every year, novels, stories become less and less interesting to me, and more and more interesting - live stories about the really former ...” Veresaev became one of the founders of the genre of “non-fictional” stories-miniatures in Soviet prose.

Stubbornly seeking the truth in matters that worried him, Veresaev, completing his career, could rightfully say about himself: “Yes, I have a claim to this, to be considered an honest writer.”

V.N. Bystrov

Used materials of the book: Russian literature of the XX century. Prose writers, poets, playwrights. Biobibliographic dictionary. Volume 1. p. 365-368.

Read further:

Russian writers and poets (biographical guide).

Pushkin's pages. "Roman-gazeta" No. 11, 2009.

Compositions:

PSS: in 12 t. M., 1928-29;

SS: in 5 t. M., 1961;

Works: in 2 vols. M., 1982;

Pushkin in life. M., 1925-26;

Pushkin's Companions. M., 1937;

Gogol in life. M, 1933; 1990;

Uninvented stories. M., 1968;

At a dead end. Sisters. M., 1990.

Literature:

Vrzhosek S. Life and work of VV Veresaev. P., 1930;

Silenko A.F. VV Veresaev: Critical and biographical essay. Tula, 1956;

Geyser I.M.V. Veresaev: Writer-physician. M., 1957;

Vrovman G.V. VV Veresaev: life and work. M., 1959;

Babushkin Yu.V.V.Veresaev. M., 1966;

Nolde V.M. Veresaev: life and work. Tula, 1986.