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KORNEI CHUKOVSKY

p The Collected Works of Kornei Chukovsky (b. 1882), Lenin Prize winner, include the most varied types of writing—stories and verses for children, a book about children, From Two to Five, scholarly study of Nekrasov’s poetry, and brilliant pen portraits of writers, musicians and artists.

Such prominent figures as Blok, Bryusov, Repin, Gorky, Mayakovsky are described in his book Contemporaries, from which the following story, about Lunacharsky, is taken.

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I

p A scrap of paper, hurriedly affixed by a single drawing-pin, hung on the door.

p People’s Commissar for Education
A. V. LUNACHARSKY
receives visitors on Saturdays only
from 2 to 6!

p But you could see at once that it was not to be taken too seriously; it was hanging there crookedly, without any attempt at official formality, and nobody took any notice of it. People went in whenever they wanted to.

p Anatoly Vasilyevich—all Petrograd knew Lunacharsky as Anatoly Vasilyevich—was living in Manezhny Street; near Liteiny, in a small, rather ugly apartment that was every day besieged by dozens of people who sought his advice and help.

p Teachers, workers, inventors, librarians, circus people, futurists, painters of all trends and genres (from the members of the old Peripatetic Group to Cubists), philosophers, ballet dancers, hypnotists, singers, poets from the Proletcult movement, and people who were just poets, actors from the former imperial theatre—all of them came in an endless procession to Anatoly Vasilyevich up a filthy staircase to the second floor to crowd into a small room that in the end began to be called the " receptionroom".

p That was in 1918. Soon the paper on the door was replaced by another that looked very impressive.

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p People’s Commissar for Education
A. V. LUNACHARSKY
Receives visitors at the Winter Palace
(on certain days)
and at the Commissariat of Education
(on certain days)
NO VISITORS RECEIVED HERE 

p Even that did not frighten anyone; by nine in the morning the reception-room was crowded. People sat on the scraggy couch, on the window-sills and on stools brought from the kitchen.

p Among the many visitors there were some I remember particularly well.

p Vsevolod Meyerhold, still youthful-looking, unshaven, excited, impetuous as if he had just burst out of the turmoil of some wild enterprise;

p Vladimir Bekhterev, the famous psychiatrist, sleepy, bearded and flabby, with a heavy peasant face;

p Nappelbaum, the photographer, garrulous, sociable, in an artist’s loose velvet blouse;

p Mikhail Nikolayevich, the son of Chernyshevsky, taciturn, thickset, with his plump hand tenderly stroking some heavy bright-red books, the writings of his great father, which he has come to talk to the People’s Commissar about;

p Academician Oldenburg, very small, unimposing and vivacious as a small boy, in a short studenttype jacket;

p leronim leronimych Yasinsky, the novelist, a picturesque, grey-headed, impressively fine-featured old man with magnificent, thick eyebrows and tiny, cunning, oily little eyes;

p Yuri Annenkov, the artist (known to all as Yurochka), omnipresent, sprightly and talented;

p Alexander Kugel, connoisseur and fanatic of the theatre, the former king of the critics, witty, curlyheaded, untidy, with an unkind and ironical smile in his tired, aggrieved eyes.

264

p They all went to him, to Anatoly Vasilyevich, for advice and help, and he;.sat there alone in a tiny little room and greeted everyone with such eager and lively interest, as though he had long been thinking of nothing else, but an opportunity to meet this man, to discuss things and, if necessary, argue with him.

p He began arguing with me almost as soon as I opened my mouth.

p “You’re making a great mistake,” he said. “All the time you praise that Whitman of yours because he’s supposed to be the poet of democracy.  [264•*  What is democracy? Philistinism, a cunning screen to deceive the working people! A republic of petty property owners! No, Whitmtin....”

p He jumped up like a yoimg man and, striding up and down the room, began to outline his ideas on the American “bard of democracy”. His rapid and confident speech ran on without any hesitation or pauses, he improvised with the brilliance of an artist, easily and freely, and soon he would begin using such expressions as ”the illumination of the spirit”, “architecture of the universe”, “the merging of human wills”. But even this extravagant speech suited Anatoly Vasilyevich, his melodious voice and his whole poetic, elegant appearance. Without any effort of memory he quoted poetry, not only that of Walt Whitman, but also Verhaeren, Tyutchev and Jules Romains. He knew a lot of poetry, in three or four languages, and enjoyed reciting it, also in a somewhat theatrical manner.

p His voice grew louder and louder. It was as if he were making a speech from a platform to a big crowd and I began to feel uncomfortable at the idea that such eloquence should be expended on me alone.

265

p Nevertheless I found it impossible to accept completely the interpretation of Walt Whitman’s poetry that Lunacharsky offered me. I felt embarrassed as I told him so, and I remember that I was very pleased that he listened to my objections patiently, with respect and without the slightest arrogance. My objections were clumsy and incoherent but with great kindness he analysed my idea and even helped me formulate it as precisely as possible in order immediately to oppose it.

p Then suddenly he realised that it was getting late and there were still many people in the reception-room. He opened the door and invited Meyerhold into his study; with Meyerhold he would argue for hours on end, sometimes until late at night, with a few pauses in between.

p It was decided that I should come to him again in a few days to finish our argument. The end of it was that I asked Anatoly Vasilyevich to write at least a brief article for the new edition of my book on Whitman. He willingly agreed, without any ministerial provisos; he did not object to an entirely different interpretation of the American poet’s work rubbing shoulders with his own.

p “The article will be ready the day after tomorrow.” He looked at his watch. "The day after tomorrow ... at about four o’clock.”

p I knew that he often worked twenty hours a day, sometimes forgetting his meals and going short of sleep for weeks on end. Conferences, visitors, lectures, speeches at meetings (not only in Petrograd but also in Kronstadt, Sestroretsk and, I think, somewhere else) took up all his time. When I went to him at the appointed hour I was sure the article would not be ready. But I heard a typewriter rattling away behind the closed door of his study and by the already familiar words that reached my ears (“illumination of the spirit”, “architecture of the 266 universe”, “an unusual note in a single symphony”) I realised that Anatoly Vasilyevich was dictating just that article. He dictated without stopping and at a speed that aroused professional jealousy in me.

p The article would have been finished in time but for the people who kept coming into the room.

p He listened attentively to everyone and if he believed the visitor was making a sensible suggestion, the typist had each time to remove the unfinished Whitman article and at lightning speed type out Anatoly Vasilyevich’s administrative instructions, directions, orders and requests, which he signed on the spot, without further thought. But no sooner had the flood of visitors begun to abate than the typist replaced the page of the article and Anatoly Vasilyevich continued dictating from the word he had left off at, in the same rhythm and with the same intonation.

p The typist complained that lately he had been writing for the press only in this way—with interruptions during which big theoretical, ideological themes were squeezed out by petty everyday affairs.

p I could see, however, that this was no burden to him. The unusual aspect of his work at that time (Petrograd, 1918) was that, while tackling extensive problems on a national and even a world scale, he had to deal with countless petty problems such as procuring frozen cranberries for an aged actresses’ home or finding footcloths for the children’s home at Okhta.

p The cold and hungry life of a country ruined by war demanded of Anatoly Vasilyevich that he constantly combine the great and the small, and since in all his cares and worries, even in the most microscopic of them, he had before him one grand purpose—to consolidate the gains of October, to assist in one way or another the birth and growth of the new, still unknown, Soviet culture—he 267 willingly devoted his efforts to the petty things of every day and regarded it as service to the same noble cause.

p I still have a few notes from Anatoly Vasilyevich that belong to that time. Every one of them is devoted to those “petty affairs" which, despite their pettiness, had to serve (and did serve!) the huge task of building Soviet culture.

p Here is one of them that is extremely typical. On the left-hand side of the paper these weighty words are printed in a single column.

p Russian Federative Soviet Republic
— —
People’s Commissariat of the
Properties of the Republic
— —
Petersburg Division
— —
July 12, 1918
No. 1501
— —
Petersburg
Winter Palace 

p Under these words there is a rubber stamp—-Russian Republic. Workers’ and Peasants’ Government. Commissariat for Education. Department of Art.

p On the right the following was written: To Comrade Kornei Ivanovich Chukovsky. Dear Comrade,

p I beg you, as one well acquainted with Comrade Puni’s children’s tales, to give me in writing your competent opinion of whether the material is suitable for the state publishing house.

p A. Lunacharsky
People’s Commissar.

p People who have no conception of that remarkable period may perhaps wonder whether it was fitting for one of the leaders at the formidable 268 headquarters of the revolution to take an interest in some children’s tales written by an unknown youth. As can be seen from the text of the note, Anatoly Vasilyevich was here also attentive to a minor matter for the sake of the fulfilment of great tasks. If one looks more deeply into this hurried note one finds expressed there his earnest solicitude for two important instruments of the future Soviet culture; the first of them was the State Publishing House, which at that time was still embryonic and did not see the light of day for another year, and the second was literature for Soviet children, at that time also still unborn.  [268•* 

p Today, when our state publishing houses have thousands of first-class, often classic, books to their credit in all branches of technology, science and art, and our children’s literature has long since become a kingdom that has won for itself world recognition, one cannot help being moved by this paper, yellowed with age, that tells of the time when one of these giant publishing houses, Gosizdat, was nothing but a scarcely discernible speck that the first People’s Commissar for Education had to nurse in every way, and Detgiz, the Children’s Publishing House, had not yet been thought of.

p By the way, apart from the needs of the state, Anatoly Vasilyevich, an artist by nature, could easily be carried away, for no selfish reason, by a fairy-tale, a song, a drama or a jolly nursery rhyme. He welcomed every modest study by a painter, every poem, every piece of music, provided they showed talent, warmly and enthusiastically, with sincere gratitude to the author. I watched him listening to Blok when the poet recited his poem 269 Retribution, I saw how he listened to Mayakovsky and to a playwright I did not know who had written an historical play in verse. Only poets can listen to a poet in the way he listened. I loved to watch him at such moments. Even the turn of his head, the way he suddenly became youthful, straightened his rounded shoulders, nervously twisted the edges of his jacket with his thin fingers and gazed fondly at the person who was reciting bespoke the artist in him.

p Of all forms of art Lunacharsky preferred the theatre; he liked it more than painting, more than music and more than poetry. He was never indifferent in the theatre, he would be overjoyed or indignant, or wildly happy and, no matter how busy he was, he would always see any show, even a poor one, through to the end.

p When the famous musical comedy artist Monakhov, influenced by Gorky, Andreyeva and Blok, took up dramatic ides and played King Philip in Schiller’s Don Carlos (in Petrograd in 1919) with fine psychological insight, Lunacharsky hurried to him behind the scenes before he had had time to remove his make-up and kissed him on his painted cheek. Monakhov, usually cold and reserved, was greatly embarrassed and touched by the impulsive greeting of the People’s Commissar.

p If one needs a more expressive and colourful example of the expansive Anatoly Vasilyevich’s youthful enthusiasm for the theatre one has only to read his note to the dying Vakhtangov, written under the impression of the first production of Princess Turandot by that great master of stage art. Dear, dear Yevgeny Bagrationovich, 

p I have a very strange feeling at the moment. You have filled my heart with such a cloudless, lightwinged, melodious festival ... and at the same 270 time I learn that you are ill. Get well, dear, rich talent. Your gifts are so varied, so poetic, so profound that we all love you, are all proud of you. All your productions that I have seen are exciting and promise much. Give me time to think a little. I do not want to write about you in a hurry. But I shall write “Vakhtangov”. Not just a sketch, of course, but an impression of everything you have given me by giving it to the public. Get well. All the best. Congratulations on your success. I expect big and exceptional things of you.

p Yours,
Lunacharsky.

To write such youthfully ardent letters to someone connected with the stage, one has to be utterly devoted to the theatre.

II

p Lunacharsky believed that his position as a representative of state power demanded that he show a sympathetic, active and tender love for people engaged in the arts, for those who think creatively. He expressed this idea very clearly in an article in memory of Vladimir Mayakovsky. Speaking of the death of the poet, he made the following admission. “We are not all like Marx, who said that poets need many caresses. Not all of us understand this, just as not all of us understood that Mayakovsky needed countless caresses.”

p He gave Mayakovsky his “caresses” almost from the first October days; he was his herald, his defender, his interpreter and his friend. I often saw them together in 1918. Some people might have thought, superficially, that Mayakovsky needed no “caresses”; he displayed a youthful impudence, was very independent and it required the sensitivity of 271 Lunacharsky to realise that behind all that bravado there was “a great hunger for tenderness and love, a great hunger for exceedingly intimate sympathy ... a desire to be understood and at times to be comforted, caressed”. “Under that coating of metal, in which a whole world was reflected,” said Lunacharsky, “there beat a heart that was not only burning, not only tender, but also fragile and easily wounded.”

p Lunacharsky performed a great service in protecting, as far as lay within his power, that “fragile” and easily wounded heart for Soviet culture.

p The relations between the poet and the People’s Commissar were free, frank, principled and straightforward and seemed to preclude any . tenderness whatsoever (on either side). Mayakovsky, for instance, never concealed from Anatoly Vasilyevich that, although he had a high opinion of him as a brilliant critic, his opinion of his dramas and verse was very low. Somewhat later he stated this opinion of his publicly. In the Moscow House of the Press in 1920 there was a debate on these works of Lunacharsky with Kerzhentsev in the chair; the debate developed into a merciless feast of criticism. Those who spoke, Mayakovsky included, with great solidarity, one after another, condemned and reviled his plays for four solid hours on end.

p Anatoly Vasilyevich “sat on the stage and for four hours listened to absolutely destructive criticisms directed against his plays.. .” Mikhail Koltsov recalled some years later. “Lunacharsky listened to it all in silence and it was difficult to imagine what he could put up against that Mont Blanc of accusations. It was about midnight when ... Anatoly Vasilyevich took the floor. And what happened? He spoke for two and a half hours and nobody left the hall, nobody even moved. In a most amazing speech he defended his plays and routed his 272 opponents, each of them individually and all of them collectively.

p “It ended with the entire audience, including Lunacharsky’s bitterest opponents, giving him a triumphal ovation at about three o’clock in the morning such as the House of the Press had never before seen.”

p I was not present at that memorable debate, but I cannot forget how, full of admiration, Mayakovsky told me about it in Petrograd while still under the fresh impression.

p “Lunacharsky spoke like a god.” Those were Mayakovsky’s actual words. “That night Lunacharsky was a genius.”

p After that night’s debate Lunacharsky went out into the street with Mikhail Koltsov.

p “I was interested to know,” Koltsov recalled, “what he had got out of that fatiguing battle. But the only thing he said was, ’Did you notice that Mayakovsky looks sad? Do you happen to know what’s wrong with him?.. .’ Then he added in a worried voice, Til have to go and see him, and cheer him up a bit.’ " Mayakovsky, incidentally, carried away by the polemics, had made a particularly sharp attack on Lunacharsky’s plays.

p What I have just been describing took place later, when Anatoly Vasilyevich had moved to Moscow, but in 1918 in Petrograd I heard him speak in public only three or four times, no more, but even that was enough to understand and to feel his tremendous talent as propagandist, orator and master of improvised, spontaneous speech. All the speeches of his that I heard (in Petrograd and, later, in Moscow) were spontaneous in the fullest sense of the word. I remember that early in the spring of 1918 he intended going to the Petrograd District to see Gorky.

p “To Kronverksky Street!" he said to the driver.

273

p Gorky lived in Kronverksky Street and at that time Anatoly Vasilyevich went to see him very frequently, sometimes he was there several days running. While he was in the car he took some papers out of his brief-case and began reading them carefully but with the speed that was typical of him, in preparation for his conference with Gorky.

p We did not get as far as Kronverksky, however, and had to make a halt. At that time motor cars were a great rarity in the city; many people recognised Anatoly Vasiiyevich’s car and, knowing his usual route, intercepted him on the way. This time some Baltic sailors, armed from head to foot, came up to him with their independent air of being masters of the land; one of them bore an astonishing resemblance to Yesenin. They spoke for some five minutes with the People’s Commissar about some trouble in the Peter and Paul Fortress and made him promise to come there the same day. Then the car was stopped by some elderly workers of the Petersburg type I had known as a boy—gaunt, staid, taciturn, strict—who invited him to the opening of the Printers’ CluB, in Sadovaya Street, if I am not mistaken; he glanced at his notebook and said he would certainly be present.

p I remember that it was then that I first noticed what I later (especially in Moscow) noticed many more times; this connoisseur of Botticelli, this fine judge of Richard Wagner, this interpreter of Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Marcel Proust and Pirandello was perfectly at home among rank-and-file proletarians; these were really his own people and all his work and all his knowledge were devoted to them.

Translated by George H. Hanna