November 10: writer Nikolai Teleshov's birthday
Born in Moscow Nikolay TeleshovWriter, poet. Organizer of the "Wednesday" circle and author of "Notes of a Writer."
True happiness is only in mercy, and if we are cruel, then our own happiness will be betrayed.
Nikolai Teleshov: A Merchant Family and His First Texts
When he was 10, his father, a second-guild merchant, founded the trading house "Dmitry Yegorovich Teleshov and Sons" (textiles and haberdashery). After graduating from the Moscow Practical Academy of Commercial Sciences, he joined the family business.
Later he was a member of the board of the Yaroslavl Great Manufactory (one of the largest textile enterprises of the Russian Empire) and the head of the Moscow Merchant Society.
I've been passionate about literature since childhood. I attended Pushkin readings and visited the printing house of a major publisher. Ivan Sytin, with whom he remained friends throughout his life. At 17, he began publishing his own works: first poetry, then prose. His contemporaries accused him of imitating Chekhov, whom Teleshov met at the poet's wedding Ivan Belousov.
The main theme of his early stories is merchant and bourgeois life: “The Rooster,” “Bourgeois Drama,” “The Duel,” “Name Day” (collection “On Troikas”).
Credit is harmful to relationships
In 1894, on Chekhov's advice, 27-year-old Teleshov went to Siberia and brought back a series of stories about settlers.
By the late 1890s, he had stopped contributing to the conservative press and was publishing in liberal journals. He sympathized with democratic and revolutionary ideas. He was friends with Gorky and published works with sharp social criticism (the stories "Sedition" and "The Noose").
Truth and truth are not the same thing. For the opposite of truth is falsehood, and the opposite of truth is error.
Teleshov and the "Sreda" meetings under the tsarist police
For the tsarist police, Teleshov and his "Wednesdays"—writers' gatherings held in his apartment—were considered politically unreliable elements. The "Wednesdays" were attended by Bunin, Stanyukovich, Mamin-Sibiryak, Chaliapin, Rachmaninov.
Teleshov's wife, an artist Elena Karzinkina, was from a famous merchant family (her parents are considered to be the prototypes of the characters in the painting Basil Pukireva "Unequal Marriage"). Thanks to her, people attended "Wednesdays" Vasnetsov и Levitan.
During the tsarist era, he headed a mutual aid fund for writers and scientists, published collections, and staged amateur plays featuring writers. He served as a juror in the Court of Honor of the Society of the Press and Literature.
Teleshov during the revolution and in the People's Commissariat of Education
He accepted the 1905 revolution with enthusiasm.
He was the first in Russia to organize and maintain a rural gymnasium for workers and peasants in the Moscow region. Tuition was free or reduced. During World War I, the Teleshovs opened a hospital and built a rural health center at their own expense.
In 1917, after the fall of the monarchy, he was elected to the Moscow City Duma. After the October Revolution, unlike many other members of Sreda, he remained in Russia. He joined the People's Commissariat of Education, where he worked on children's literature, publishing the "Legends and Fairy Tales" series ("Krupenichka" and "Zorenka").
There's no one around who's stronger than me. And there's no one smarter or freer than me. If I want, I whistle, if I want, I execute, if I want, I do things!
In the early 1920s, he founded and headed the Moscow Art Theater Museum. He wrote a memoir, "Notes of a Writer," about the literary life of Moscow in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
At one of the evenings in 1895, an unknown young man sang, captivating everyone with his charming tenor; his voice was exceptionally beautiful. It turned out he was a young lawyer, one of the assistants to the famous lawyer Plevako, and that his name was Sobinov. A year later, he was already performing at the Bolshoi Theater, charming the entire Moscow theater community, and quickly became a celebrity.
Teleshov's "Notes of a Writer" and Soviet censorship
"Notes" were frequently reprinted in the USSR—the portraits featured valuable autographs, which the author passionately collected. The 1948 edition of "Notes" became a striking example of Soviet censorship and the practice of "disappearing" people from photographs. In a 1902 group portrait of the "Sreda" writers, censors airbrushed out the émigré writer Yevgeny Chirikov (though they left in the Nobel Prize-winning writer Bunin and the world-famous Chaliapin).
In 1938, he received the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR. He left the Moscow Art Theater Museum at 84.
He died in Moscow in 1957, a few months short of his 90th birthday.