Quirks and eccentricities of thinking of Russian writers

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Why did Bunin look for ham at night, how much lemonade did Pushkin drink, and why did Nabokov need lined cards?

Bunin and ham

I. A. Bunin. Fragment of a portrait by V. Rossinsky. 1915 g.

“Bunin has a complicated relationship with ham. Even before the war, the doctor once told him to eat ham at breakfast in the morning. The Bunins' servants were never kept, and Vera Nikolaevna, in order not to go out for ham from early morning, decided to buy it in the evening. But Bunin woke up at night, went to the kitchen and ate ham. This went on for about a week, Vera Nikolaevna began to hide the ham in the most unexpected places - now in a saucepan, now in a bookcase. But Bunin constantly found it and ate it. Somehow, she still managed to hide her so that he could not find her. But it didn’t work.

Bunin woke Vera Nikolaevna in the middle of the night: “Vera, where is the ham? God knows what it is! I've been looking for an hour and a half, and Vera Nikolaevna, jumping out of bed, took out a ham from a secluded place outside the frame of the picture and meekly gave it to Bunin.

And from the next morning I began to get up half an hour earlier in order to have time to buy some ham before Bunin woke up”.

Pushkin and lemonade

Lines: “Let's drink, good friend of my poor youth, let's drink from grief; where is the mug? The heart will be more cheerful”are familiar even to those who do not know that they belong to the pen of“the sun of Russian poetry”. But Pushkin preferred lemonade to drunken drinks. Especially at work. It is worth noting that Alexander Sergeevich drank his favorite drink mostly at night. “It used to be like writing at night, now you put lemonade on him for the night,” recalled the poet's valet Nikifor Fyodorov. At the same time, Pushkin also loved black coffee, but, apparently, lemonade invigorated him more.

According to the recollections of Konstantin Danzas, a lyceum friend and second of Pushkin, even going to a duel with Dantes, the poet went to a pastry shop to drink a glass of lemonade.

The oddities of Gogol

Portrait of N. V. Gogol by F. A. Moller, 1840

Nikolai Vasilievich can be considered the record holder for oddities. He loved handicrafts, with the greatest diligence he cut himself scarves and straightened vests. He wrote only while standing, and slept only while sitting.

One of the writer's many quirks was his passion for rolling bread balls. The poet and translator Nikolai Berg recalled: “Gogol either walked around the room, from corner to corner, or sat and wrote, rolling balls of white bread, about which he told his friends that they help solve the most difficult and difficult problems. When he was bored at dinner, he again rolled balls and quietly tossed them into kvass or soup next to those sitting … One friend collected whole heaps of these balls and keeps them reverently …"

Chekhov in Yalta

Portrait of A. P. Chekhov by O. E. Braz, 1898

During the Yalta period of Chekhov's life, his relatives began to notice amazing inclinations and manifestations. His sister Maria Pavlovna recalled that the writer often squatted next to a heap of rubble in the garden and began methodically to break this rubble into small crumbs with a hammer. Then these pebbles were used to fill the paths in the garden and in the yard. So Anton Pavlovich could hit stones for two or three hours in a row. And the sister was worried if something had happened to her brother.

In Yalta, the writer became addicted to collecting postage stamps. “He received and sent several thousand letters each,” writes the Chekhoved. - These letters came to him not only from Russia, but also from foreign countries. Anton Pavlovich neatly removed these stamps from the envelopes, put them in bundles and tied them with white thread. Each pack contained 200 stamps, and his entire collection is several thousand!"

About Krylov's grandfather

Krylov was tall, very stout, with gray, always disheveled hair. He dressed extremely slovenly: he wore a frock coat constantly soiled, drenched in something, his waistcoat was worn at random. Krylov lived a rather dirty life, at home he wore a greasy dressing gown and rarely got up from the sofa.

According to the memoirs of Krylov's contemporaries, a painting in a massive frame hung over this very sofa. She hung heavily sideways and, it seemed, was about to fall on the head of her master. But Ivan Andreevich was in no hurry to fix it, and to those friends who persisted, he explained that he had calculated everything: even if the picture falls, the trajectory of its fall will be such that it will not touch the fabulist in any way.

I. A. Krylov. Comic drawing by A. Orlovsky. 1810s

Krylov loved to eat well and sleep well, or, as Benedict Sarnoff wrote, "emigrated into the body." Many tales are known about his gluttony. Here is one of them.

One evening Krylov went to see Senator Andrei Ivanovich Abakumov and found several people invited to dinner with him. Abakumov and his guests came to Krylov, so that he would certainly have dinner with them, but he did not give in, saying that at home he was expecting a sterlet ear. Finally they managed to persuade him on the condition that supper would be served immediately. We sat at the table. Krylov ate as much as the rest of the company together, and barely had time to swallow the last piece, as he grabbed the cap.

- Have mercy, Ivan Andreevich, but now where are you in a hurry? - shouted the host and the guests in one voice. - You have had supper.

“But how many times have I told you that sturgeon's ear awaits me at home, I’m afraid that it will not catch a cold,” Krylov answered angrily and left with all the haste of which he was capable.

Dostoevsky and casual passers-by

Portrait of F. M. Dostoevsky by V. G. Perov, 1872

Fyodor Mikhailovich's endless interest in people resulted in a strange hobby: the writer liked to talk on the street with random passers-by. Looking attentively at the interlocutor directly in the eyes, he asked him about everything in the world. Thus, Dostoevsky collected material for future works, formed the images of heroes.

When the idea matured, Fyodor Mikhailovich locked himself up and worked for a long time, forgetting about food and sleep. At the same time, he paced the room and pronounced the text aloud. Once a curious incident even happened to him. The writer worked on "Crime and Punishment" and spoke loudly about the old woman-pawnbroker and Raskolnikov. The footman, hearing this from behind the door, refused to serve Dostoevsky. It seemed to him that he was going to kill someone.

Nabokov's hobby

For Vladimir Nabokov, writing was akin to a ritual. He wrote most of his texts on rectangular cards 3 by 5 inches (7, 6 by 12, 7 cm), which were then stitched into books. Moreover, Nabokov needed only lined cards and only with sharpened corners, as well as pencils with an eraser at the end. The writer did not recognize any other tools, but you already know about his passion for butterflies.

Petrov writes letters to anyone

Evgeny Petrov, known for his works "Twelve Chairs", "Golden Calf", "Bright Personality" and others, written in collaboration with Ilya Ilf, was an outstanding personality.

The stamps were the basis of the writer's collection. At first glance, there is nothing mysterious about this, because then philately was widespread. But Evgeny Petrov expressed this in a peculiar form - he composed and sent letters to real countries, but to non-existent cities and to addresses invented by him.

As a result, about a month and a half later, his letter came back, crowned with stamps, stamps of foreign post offices and with a note: "Addressee not found." It was these marked envelopes that were of interest to the writer. Original, isn't it?