The writer Mikhail Prishvin said that he found the very feathers that the princess threw so that Ivan Tsarevich could find her. Perhaps there was no other such idealist and romantic in the world. He dreamed of ideal love and waited for it, but he knew well that all this, as he himself called it, “physical romanticism” grew from his early youth, from the story with the maid Dunyasha.

When Prishvin was still a teenager, in the house of his father, a wealthy landowner, there was a mischievous maid Dunyasha. She flirted with Misha, and at the moment when they could have had physical intimacy, the young man got scared: “It’s impossible!” He will describe this moment in his frank diary, and he will understand that all his writing grows from this “impossible”. If he had not stopped then, he would have become a different person.

After the “episode with Dunyasha” Prishvin was looking for unearthly, platonic love. And at the same time, he desperately wanted a dear, close woman next to him. When Prishvin studied at the Faculty of Agronomy in Leipzig, he was often told:

You look so much like Prince Myshkin!

He was such an idealist.

Varenka

At the age of 29, Prishvin met his first love, Varenka Izmalkova. It was in Paris, Varya studied at the Sorbonne. There was no doubt - it was She, he had been waiting for her for so many years. Varya understood Prishvin with all his quirks and fell in love with him. They spent happy student holidays together, and broke up on Prishvin’s initiative.

“I made demands on the one I once loved that she could not fulfill.

I could not humiliate her with animal feelings - this was my madness. But she wanted an ordinary marriage.

The knot tied over me for the rest of my life,” he admitted in his diary.

Travel writer

After this separation, Prishvin led an ordinary life until he was 33; from the outside, it was the same as everyone else’s. To those he knew, he seemed like a cheerful, sociable extrovert. He successfully graduated from the university, worked at the Petrovsky (later Timiryazevsky) Academy, was interested in social activities, began to engage in journalism... And then he abandoned everything, bought a gun and went on foot to the North, to the “land of unafraid birds.” He wrote his first book about this journey. Traveling and writing - this has been his life since then. It spread throughout the North, Kazakhstan, the Far East, and Central Russia. He wrote books so beautiful that Gorky, during his first meeting with him, said:

“I’m happy that I live on the same planet with you!”

Euphrosyne

Prishvin was already over forty when he met Efrosinya, a young peasant woman with beautiful and sad eyes. Frosya was left alone with a one-year-old child, and Prishvin decided to marry her. Mikhail Mikhailovich thought that he could transform a rude and uneducated girl into the woman of his dreams. And, of course, I couldn’t. Mikhail Mikhailovich and Efrosinya had three more boys. But the marriage was unhappy. Prishvin was always eager to travel to distant lands. For “long journeys” he equipped a truck, the body of which was divided into four parts: a study, a bedroom, a darkroom and a nook for dogs.

One

That's how life went. The writer never forgot his first love, in his diary he called himself a “great monogamous man”: more than 30 years passed, and he still dreamed of his first bride.

“Many years later I realized that poets call it Muse.”

By the age of seventy, Mikhail Mikhailovich finally got an apartment and lived in Moscow separately from his family, however, helping his wife and children with money. He was an absolutely, completely lonely man. There were never other than two dogs near him.

“Here is the desired apartment, but there is no one to live with. Only I. He lived a long married life as a “half-monk.”

When Prishvin was 67 years old, he decided to put his diary entries in order and began looking for a secretary. He asked his acquaintances to recommend him a sensitive woman who could be trusted with candid recordings without fear of condemnation and slander.

This is how he met Valeria Dmitrievna Liorko. Valeria Dmitrievna was over forty, she married unsuccessfully twice. In her life there were years in the settlement in Siberia, she had to hide her noble origin. She came to Prishvin with a frostbitten leg wrapped in cotton wool. At their first meeting, they really didn’t like each other.

But very soon the writer realized: 36 years of waiting for a miracle were not in vain. A savior came and cast a spell on his sick soul.

“After we got together, I finally stopped thinking about traveling. You squandered the gifts of your love, and I, as the darling of fate, accepted these gifts...”

Divorce

Efrosinya did not give Prishvin a divorce, she fought for her position as a writer’s wife and for an inheritance for the children. She complained to the Writers' Union and demanded that Mikhail Mikhailovich be returned to the family. It simply killed Prishvin, he could not bear all this kitchen child of life. One day I came to the Writers' Union:

Take everything, just leave love.

Efrosinya received a Moscow apartment and agreed to a divorce.

Happiness

The last 14 years of Prishvin's life were the happiest for him. He has long come to terms with loneliness, with the fact that his Friend, his Close One is some kind of ideal reader. And so his life was shared by a woman who understood everything just like he did, loved what he loved...

They, adults and middle-aged people, kept a common “Love Diary,” describing their feelings for each other and not being embarrassed by their crazy passion.

We settled in a dacha near Zvenigorod. They walked, read, worked, received guests. On Prishvin’s birthday, Valeria Dmitrievna baked a cake and decorated it with a fresh flower. They also annually celebrated the day of their meeting, “frostbitten foot day.”

Love, thank you for being there.

Biography, Prishvin Mikhail Mikhailovich (1873 - 1954) - famous Soviet writer, prose writer, publicist. Author of a large number of works for children, stories about nature and hunting.

Brief biography - Prishvin M. M.

Option 1

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin is a famous naturalist writer. In 1873, on February 4, a man was born into a merchant family who made a great contribution to Russian literature and became the author of many works for children.

Mikhail did not show any talent for writing as a child, and was not gifted with any knowledge at all - he stayed in the second year several times, and with difficulty graduated from the school to which he transferred after being expelled from school. After college, he entered the Polytechnic Institute and was exiled to the city of Yelets for his passion for the ideas of Marxism.

The year 1906 brought great changes to Prishvin, becoming a turning point for him - he went on a trip to Karelia, where he discovered his interest and talent for literature. Already this year he published his first story, and in 1907 a book was published, which collected all the travel notes and essays about the nature and life of the northerners.

All the writer’s work is permeated with love for nature and admiration for it. Prishvin’s most famous works are “”, “”, and also the diaries that he kept on his many travels became his property.

He was married twice - from his first marriage to the peasant woman Efrosinya he had three sons. In 1940, he married Valeria Liorko, who became Prishvin’s faithful companion until the end of his life and after his death worked with her husband’s archives and headed the museum named after him.

In addition to writing, he worked for some time as a correspondent and agronomist.

The writer's life ended in 1954. A monument was erected in 2015. An asteroid is also named after the writer.

Option 2

Russian, and later Soviet writer, prose writer, publicist, author of many essays about nature, stories for children - this is how Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin appears before us. An interesting, unique person whose personal life organically merged with his creativity. A man who spent his entire adult life writing one main work about himself, his place in the natural world - his Diaries. Let's take a closer look at the life and creative heritage of this unique person.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin born in 1873, February 4 (January 23, old style) in the Oryol province (now the Lipetsk region of the Russian Federation), in the village of Khrushchevo-Levshino in the family of a merchant. In 1882 Mikhail was assigned to a local school, where he studied for one year. Further, in 1883 followed by studying at the gymnasium. Prishvin was not particularly diligent and knowledgeable; he loved to misbehave.

Having studied for six years, he was able to complete his education in only four classes, because he repeated the second year twice. Due to a conflict with a teacher, he was expelled from the gymnasium. His mother sent Mikhail to Siberia, to his uncle. And already living with his uncle, he graduated from the Tyumen real school. In 1893 studies at the Riga Polytechnic Institute. As a student, like many young people at that time, he became interested in the ideas of Marxism and participated in various organizations. For agitation and distribution of prohibited literature, in 1897. was convicted and spent one year in Mitau prison.

After this, he spent some time in exile in the city of Yelets. But over time, politics becomes uninteresting to him. He received permission to leave and in 1900. leaves to study in Leipzig. There the writer masters the profession of an agronomist. In 1902 returns home. At first he works as a zemstvo agronomist, working in the laboratory of the Agricultural Academy. Then he became a personal secretary for a major St. Petersburg official, writing books on agricultural topics.

In 1906 decides to quit his main job as an agronomist and take up literary activity. And at the same time, the first of the writer’s stories, “Sashok,” was published in the Rodnik magazine. The writer began working as a correspondent. As a person keenly interested in folklore and ethnography, he leaves for the North (to Karelia). His travel essays, containing observations of the lives of ordinary people and nature, served as the basis for the book “In the Land of Unfrightened Birds.” It was she who brought wide fame to the writer, and he also received an honorary award from the Imperial Geographical Society - a silver medal. The second essay, “Behind the Magic Kolobok,” was the result of his research in the Murmansk region, Norway. In these works, the author combines elements of a fairy tale and strict documentary presentation. Mikhail Prishvin also keeps his own Diary, which he will continue to work on throughout his life.

In 1912 The first 3-volume collected works of the writer were published. In the 20s, he began working on the autobiographical novel “Koshcheev’s Chain.” In the 1930s he traveled a lot around the Soviet Union. He publishes books filled with wonderful descriptions of nature, as well as children's stories, works about animals - “The Pantry of the Sun”, “Fox Bread”, “The Chipmunk Beast”, etc. All these creations are written in an unusually beautiful, bright and colorful language. The main idea of ​​the author, which can be seen in all his works, and in particular in the Diaries, is to learn to live in harmony with the world around us, to appreciate everything good and bright that there is in life.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin died on January 16, 1954 from stomach cancer in Moscow. He was buried at the Vvedenskoye Cemetery in Moscow.

Option 3

The writer Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin was called the “singer of Russian nature.” He spent his childhood in his grandfather’s house in Khrushchevo-Levshino, Oryol region. The boy did poorly at school. For disrespecting the teacher, he was expelled. Interest in studying appeared in Tyumen, where Prishvin was sent to a relative, merchant Ivan Ignatov. At the age of 20 he graduated from the Aleksandrovsky Real School. Then he entered the Polytechnic Institute in Riga.

For his passion for Marxist teaching, he comes under investigation and spends one year in Mitau prison. After his release, he completed two courses at the Faculty of Agronomy in Leipzig, Germany. Returning to his homeland, he works as an agronomist, writes articles and scientific books. Having become an assistant to a major St. Petersburg official, he gains experience in compiling agricultural literature. Before the start of the revolution, he was listed as a correspondent for the printed publications Russkie Vedomosti, Morning of Russia, Rech, and Den. During the First World War he worked as both a front-line correspondent and a nurse.

After the revolution of 1917 he taught at the Yeletsk gymnasium. The story “Sashok”, published in 1906, is considered the beginning of Prishvin’s literary activity. Traveling around Karelia, he becomes imbued with local folklore and customs. This is how his famous work “In the Land of Unfrightened Birds” appeared, for which the writer was awarded the Medal of the Imperial Geographical Society. From the pen of Prishvin came such works as “Behind the Magic Kolobok”, “Black Arab”, “Shoes”, “Springs of Berendey”, “Zhen-Shen”.

Mikhail's story was written in 1935 and tells about the amazing friendship between a man and a small animal.

Prishvin's stories and fairy tales for children are lyrical and wise. Year after year, his creative piggy bank is replenished with the books “Pantry of the Sun”, “Fox Bread”, “The Chipmunk Beast”. During the Great Patriotic War he lived in Yaroslavl. After returning to Moscow in 1943, the books “Forest Drops” and “Phacelia” appeared. In 1954, Mikhail Mikhailovich died after a serious illness. He was buried at the Vvedensky cemetery in Moscow.

Biography of M. M. Prishvin by year

1873 (January 23, old) Birth of M. M. Prishvin in the Khrushchev estate of the Yelets district of the Ordov province, which belonged to his parents: Mikhail Dmitrievich and Maria Ivanovna (nee Ignatova); both are of merchant rank.

1880 Death of father.

1882 Graduated from rural school.

1883 Entered the first grade of the Yeletsk classical gymnasium.

1884 Remained for the second year in 1st class, escaped to “America” on a boat with comrades. “There is despair in my soul that there is no America” (diary of 1918).

1888 Expelled from the 4th grade of the gymnasium for insolence to the teacher V.V. Rozanov. “Escape to America, expulsion from the gymnasium are two major events of my childhood that determine much in the future” (diary of 1918).

1889 M. M. Prishvin moved to Tyumen to his uncle I. I. Ignatov, a major Siberian industrialist.

1892 Graduated from six classes of the Tyumen Real School.

1893 He leaves alone for Yelabuga, where he takes exams for the 7th grade as an external student. In the fall he enters the Riga Polytechnic (chemical and agronomic department).

1894 Trip to the Caucasus in Gori to work in the vineyards.

1896 Work in Marxist circles.

1897 Arrest for revolutionary activities and solitary confinement in Mitau prison.

1898-1900 Deportation to his homeland, Yelets.

1900 Trip abroad. Germany. Admission to the University of Leipzig. Summer semesters at the University of Jena. Passion for the music of R. Wagner.

1902 Graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy. Trip to Paris. Meeting with V.P. Izmalkova, which had a decisive influence on the life and work of the writer. Return to Russia: Khrushchev, St. Petersburg, Moscow. He works as an agronomist on the farm of Count Bobrinsky in the Bogoroditsky district of the Tula province.

1903 Works as an agronomist in the Klin district zemstvo of the Moscow province. Meeting with E. P. Smogaleva and the beginning of family life with her and stepson Yakov (died during the Civil War in the Red Army).

1904 Works in the vegetation laboratory of Professor D.N. Pryanishnikov at the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy. Moving to St. Petersburg. Works as a secretary for a major St. Petersburg official V.I. Filipev. The first (unpublished) story “House in the Fog.”

1905 Works as an agronomist in Luga at the Zapolye experimental station and at the same time in the journal Experimental Agronomy. Compiles agricultural books: “Potatoes in field and garden crops,” etc. Dismissal from the experimental station. Beginning of work as a correspondent for the newspapers “Russian Vedomosti”, “Rech”, “Morning of Russia”, “Den”, etc., which continued until the October Revolution.

1906 St. Petersburg, Malaya Okhta. Birth of son Leo. Meeting the ethnographer N. E. Onchukov. A trip to the Olonets province for ethnographic materials. The first published story “Sashok” (in the magazine “Rodnik”). Work on the book “In the Land of Unfrightened Birds” (published in 1907, St. Petersburg, Devrien Publishing House).

1907 Trips to Karelia and Norway. In winter, work on the book “Behind the Magic Kolobok” (published in 1908, St. Petersburg, Devrien Publishing House).

1908 Spring in Khrushchev. A trip to the Kerzhensky forests of the Nizhny Novgorod province, to Svetloe Lake. Summer in the village of Shershnevo, Smolensk province. Winter in St. Petersburg, working on the book “At the Walls of the Invisible City.” Acquaintance with St. Petersburg writers (A. A. Blok, A. N. Tolstoy, etc.).

1909 Spring in Khrushchev. Summer in St. Petersburg. A trip to the steppes beyond the Irtysh. "Adam and Eve" and "Black Arab" are written. Birth of son Peter.

1910 For the book “In the Land of Unfrightened Birds” he was elected a full member of the Imperial Geographical Society. Spring in Khrushchev. Summer in the Bryansk forests. The fire described in the story “My Notebooks.” Petersburg. Zolotonoshskaya street. Work on the stories “The Krutoyarsky Beast”, “Bird Cemetery”, etc.

1911 Beginning of correspondence with. Life in the Novgorod province (villages of Laptev, Mshaga, Pesochki) until 1915. Hunting in the Novgorod forests. In St. Petersburg, life is on and off, on Ropshinskaya Street. Works in three volumes published by the publishing house “Znanie” (the last volume was published in 1914).

1913 Collection “Zavoroshka”. Trip to Crimea. The story “Glorious are the Tambourines” was written.

1914 Death of mother.

1915-1916 Petrograd, Yelets, Khrushchev. A trip to the front as a nurse and war correspondent. Publication of correspondence from the front in newspapers.

1917 Petrograd, Yelets, Khrushchevo. In Petrograd he worked as a secretary in the Ministry of Trade. In Khrushchev, along with the peasants, he had a plot of land and worked it individually. He finally left Petrograd for his homeland at the beginning of 1918.

1918-1919 Yelets, works as an organizer of local history, a teacher of the Russian language in the former Yelets gymnasium (from which he was expelled as a child), and an instructor of public education.

1920, Left with his family from Yelets to his wife’s homeland on June 18 in the village of Sledovo, Smolensk province. He worked in the village of Aleksino, Dorogobuzh district, as a teacher and director of a second-level school. He organized a museum of estate life in the former estate of Baryshnikov and took part in the organization of a museum in Dorogobuzh. He worked at Engelhardt's Batishchev experimental station.

1922-1924 Moves with his family to the Taldomsky district near Moscow (the villages of Dubrovka and Kostino). Work on the book “Shoes”. He began working on the autobiographical novel “Kashcheev’s Chain,” hunting stories and short stories about nature.

1925 Move to Pereslavl-Zalessky, life on the “Botik” (Peter the Great Palace). Local history work. Book "Springs of Berendey".

1926 Move to Zagorsk, Moscow region. Continuation of work on “Kashchei’s chain.” Start of work on "Crane's Homeland".

1927-1930 Publication of collected works in seven volumes.

1931 Spring, trip to the Urals on a business trip for the editors of the magazine “Our Achievements”. Autumn A trip to the Far East on a business trip for the editorial office of the newspaper Izvestia.

1932 Work on the book “The Golden Horn” and the story. "Zhen-shay."

1933 Book “My Essay” with a foreword by M. Gorky. Trip to the North: White Sea Canal, Khibiny, Solovki. Based on the materials from this trip, the essays “Fathers and Sons” were written. The magazine “Krasnaya Nov” (1933. No. 3) published the story “The Root of Life” (“Ginseng”).

1934 Trip to Gorky to study automotive engineering. Work on the film script “The Hut of Old Lou-wen.”

1935 Trip to the northern forests: Vologda - Arkhangelsk and along the Pinega River. . Essays on "Berendeev's Thicket". Collection "The Chipmunk Beast" for children.

1936 Trip to Kabarda on instructions from the editors of the newspaper Izvestia. Work based on materials from the trip: the story “Happy Mountain” (not finished).

1937 Spring and summer work on the topic of forest protection (near Zagorsk), reflected in the “Forest Drop”.

1938 A trip by car (“Home on Wheels”) to Kostroma during the spring flood to get materials for the novel “Osudareva Road.” Work on the first part of the novel (“Padun”) and on the book “Grey Owl”.

1939 Awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor. “Undressed Spring” and the “Fox Bread” cycle were written.

1940 Marriage to V. D. Lebedeva. Summer in the village of Tyazhino near Bronnitsy, Moscow region. “Phacelia”, “Forest Drops” and the cycle “Grandfather’s Felt Boots” were written.

1941 In early spring, a trip to the Vesyegon military-hunting reserve on a business trip for the editorial office of the newspaper “Red Star”. Spring - early summer In the village of Staraya Ruza, Moscow region. In August, evacuation from Moscow to the village of Usolye, Yaroslavl region.

1942 Work begins on the third part of “The Kashchey Chain”.

1943 “Stories about Leningrad Children” was written. Awarding the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in connection with his seventieth birthday. Return from evacuation to Moscow.

1944 The Tale of Our Time is completed.

1945 Summer life near Moscow in Pushkin, where “Pantry of the Sun” was written.

1946 Work on “Osudareva Road”. Since March, life has been living in the Porechye rest home in the Zvenigorod district of the Moscow region. In May, buying a house in the village of Dunino near Porechye. Preparation of materials for the book “Eyes of the Earth” (published posthumously).

1947 The script “The Gray Landowner” was completed.

1948 Collection “Golden Meadow”. Collection “My Country” with new author’s texts - prefaces to sections of the book. Summer trip to the villages of Khmelniki and Novoselki, Pereslavl district, Yaroslavl region, where the first recordings for “The Ship Thicket” were made.

1950 “Polar Honey” was written.

1952 Work on the third part of “Kashcheev’s Chain”, which began in 1942, was resumed: “You and I” (not finished).

Full biography - Prishvin M. M.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin was born on January 23 (February 4), 1873 in the Oryol province near Yelets. He himself talks about his family in one of his letters like this: “I was born in the very district about which Bunin, my fellow countryman, wrote a lot - Yeletsky district of the Oryol province. My parents, my father, are from a native merchant family from the city of Yelets, and this very strange surname Prishvin comes from the word prishva, part of a loom, right, I think, my grandfathers were turners or traded in these sews.

My father ran a farm on a small estate, which he got under division in the village of Khrushchev (“Khrushchev’s landowners”), he was a cheerful man, he was interested in horses, gardening, floriculture, hunting, played cards, lost the estate and left it to his mother with a double mortgage, and there are five of us: I was eight years old when he died... My mother was also a native of the Old Believer merchant family of the Ignatovs from Belev (the literary critic from Russkie Vedomosti Ilya Nikolaevich Ignatov is my cousin). It was she, a powerful woman, who remained a widow at the age of 35–40, who brought us all into the public eye, and what a wonderful hostess! bought the estate..."

“She died at the age of seventy-five in 1914 and left me 30 acres on the mountain. I gathered my strength, built myself a house on my plot of land, started a farm, but then the revolution came, I had to give up everything, they say, now a new village is sitting on my plot of land. But I’m not grieving, because I only loved my garden, and for some reason I wanted to live in the forests...

I started studying at the Yeletsk gymnasium, and at first it seemed so terrible to me that from the very first grade I tried to escape with three comrades by boat along the Sosna River to some Asia (not to America). Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov (writer) was our geography teacher at the time and saved me from expulsion, but he himself later expelled me from the fourth grade for a trifle. With this exception he inflicted such a wound on me that I carried it unhealed and unsutured until Vasily Vasilyevich, after reading one of my books, recognized me! Talent, in front of many witnesses, repented and asked for my forgiveness (“However,” he said, “it did you good, my dear Prishvin”).”

“Our Eletsk black soil was still fertile: I was in the first grade, and then they kicked me out of the fourth grade, S.N. Bulgakov graduated from the eighth - these are writers, and you can’t count the number of otherwise busy people, for example, People’s Commissar Semashko was my classmate, my first friend (and to this day he helps out of every trouble, just a little - to him, a very good person, honest to the last detail). You. Rozanov managed to kick me out with a wolf ticket, so I had to end up in Siberia in Tyumen, a real school at the expense of my uncle Ignatov, a rich man, the owner of a steamship on the West Siberian rivers.”

A sixteen-year-old high school student was expelled from the gymnasium for impudent behavior, and in 1889 his mother sent him to Tyumen, to her brother, the owner of a shipbuilding plant, merchant I. Ignatov. The future writer studied at the Tyumen Alexander Real School, the director of which in those years was the outstanding scientist of Siberia Ivan Slovtsov. Mathematician, archaeologist, geographer, vice-president of the III International Congress of Oriental Studies in St. Petersburg, he was one of the founders of the West Siberian department of the Russian Geographical Society in Omsk. Thanks to him, the Tyumen real school in a fairly short period of time turned into a hotbed of everything advanced, humanistic and progressive, and later Mikhail Prishvin described in detail the images of Slovtsov and Ignatov in the autobiographical novel “Kashcheev’s Chain”.

Tyumen at the turn of the two centuries, XIX and XX, was, of course, a provincial city. But a provincial city in the context of those years is a city in which there has always been a layer of civically and socially active, educated and responsible business people. They were the engine of development of the city itself, and industry in it, and education, as well as public life and culture in their city. Usually this layer consisted of intellectuals of various ranks and the advanced part of the merchant class. The merchant class provided the lion's share of patrons of art in post-reform Russia, and Tyumen merchants were no exception to this rule.

Merchant Andrey Tekutyev stood at the origins of the first professional theater in Tyumen. In 1892, with his funds, a stone building was built for the theater, within the walls of which soon works by Ostrovsky, Gogol and Gorky were staged for the first time in those parts. The townspeople, whose only entertainment had previously been playing dice and cards, poured into the theater, so that there were not enough seats for everyone, they stood in the aisles throughout the entire performance, without moving, watching with bated breath. For 26 years A.I. Tekutyev, in love with the theater, maintained the theater. In 1916, before his death, he bequeathed the theater building to the city, with the indispensable condition that after his death the building would also house a theater. Gorodskaya fulfilled the will of the philanthropist, and the theater was named after him, newspaper announcements notified townspeople about performances not just at the Tekutyev Theater, but at the City Theater named after A.I. Tekutyev.

Merchant Chukmaldin took an active part in the opening of the first museum in Tyumen. Musical evenings were regularly held at the clerks' club, opened on his initiative. He was also a patron of the artist I. Kalganov.

So the cultural life in Tyumen was in full swing and, in all likelihood, was no poorer than the cultural life of the district city of Yelets or, for example, Simbirsk, especially if we remember that V.V. Rozanov also taught at the Simbirsk gymnasium. What was the value, for example, of the rich library of the Alexander Real School, collected by Slovtsov, to which any realist had free access... Or the museum of the school, created by the same Slovtsov. The museum had everything - from unique archaeological and natural science exhibits collected by archaeological and ethnographic expeditions from almost all regions of Siberia and which later became the basis of the collection of the Tyumen Museum of Local Lore, to an art gallery in which one could see the works of the Russian nugget from Turinsk Ivan Kalganov, the “Russian Hogarth”, as many of his contemporaries assessed him.

“... Then I studied in Riga at the Polytechnic as a chemist for four years, and then I believed in Marxism through Beltov’s (Plekhanov) book, was involved in organizing the training of proletarian leaders, translated (Meringa -?), read “Capital” six times with the workers. I was an ordinary, believing Marxist-maximalist (like almost a Bolshevik), spent a year in solitary confinement, was deported to my homeland, here, to Yelets, Semashko was deported at the same time, we united and, it seems, in two years we read six more times “ Capital".

After the expulsion period ended, I went to Germany, studied everything here and completed a course in agronomy in Leipzig. After completing the course I ended up in Paris...

Marxism, after all, possessed me for only ten years; it began to dissolve unconsciously when I met the diversity of European life (philosophy, art, dancing zucchini, etc.), and that sense of selfhood that overwhelmed me when, after several years of agronomic activity in Russia I found my calling in literature at the age of 30.”

Returning from Europe, the young agronomist Mikhail Prishvin served for some time in the Klin zemstvo. Then he studied with Professor Pryanishnikov at the Moscow Agricultural Academy and tested his theoretical developments at the experimental station in Luga. He contributed to agronomic journals and even wrote a scientific book about potatoes. But something did not quite suit him in this active and useful activity.

By luck, at this time Mikhail Prishvin met the famous Russian linguist Academician Shakhmatov. He persuaded Prishvin to go with a folklore and ethnographic expedition to the North of Russia, to the Olonets province to collect folklore materials from folk life.

The last quarter of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, not only in Russia, but throughout Europe, was marked by acute interest in folklore. Against the backdrop of the growing acute crisis of Christian culture, an increased interest in the folklore of other, non-Christian cultures - in Arabic culture, in Japanese and Chinese, in Hinduism - grew as a search for a way out of this crisis. Shamanic rituals were studied, the secrets of Sufism and the rites of the dervishes were comprehended, the Indian Vedas were translated, occultism, spiritualism and belief in all kinds of magic - black and white - developed. Everyone was looking for secret knowledge about life. Nicholas Roerich moved to India, Nikolai Gumilyov spent years in Africa and brought from there a lot of ethnographic materials that formed the basis of the ethnographic museum of St. Petersburg. Against this background, the lack of knowledge of Russian folk life gave many people hope that it was the freshness of the Russian folk world and folk values ​​that could provide a way out of the crisis for the fading forces of European civilization.

The Russian north of those times was completely virgin. The natural world breathed and lived according to ancient natural laws, untouched by civilization and pragmatism. Virgin nature, the world of animals and birds that people had never seen - everything was the same as when the world was created. And huge layers of national life, both in language and in the way of life, were original and untouched. These were real ancient springs of life, unclouded by anything.

A young academician, the founder of the historical study of the Russian literary language, Shakhmatov invited a young agronomist, who writes about potatoes, but has an excellent understanding of the deep layers of language, to go to the Olonets region on a folklore expedition to collect legends. It is not surprising that Prishvin greedily began to absorb all this pure and unadulterated originality.

The expedition turned out to be very successful both for Shakhmatov and for the future singer of Russian nature Prishvin. A.A. Shakhmatov managed to supplement and verify the results of theoretical assumptions about his new, comparative-historical method of studying the genesis of language with observations of living Great Russian dialects.

For M. M. Prishvin, the trip to the expedition was the impetus that awakened his true calling. The Russian north became for him the starting point of self-knowledge and self-discovery: “Only here for the first time did I understand what it means to live on my own and be responsible for myself. I returned to my childhood, when they teased me that I had fled to Asia and came to the gymnasium, began to travel, and my native Russia became to me that very reserved Asia to which I once wanted to escape.” Prishvin M.M. returned from the expedition with a book that brought him fame and opened the doors of all the literary circles of the country for him.

“In the Land of Unfrightened Birds” - travel essays compiled from observations of nature, life and speech of northerners. This book got everyone talking about a new literary name - Mikhail Prishvin. A. Blok, A. Remizov, D. Merezhkovsky meet him. A year after the publication of “In the Land of Unfrightened Birds,” the Imperial Geographical Society awarded him a silver medal and the title of full member of the Russian Geographical Society for this book. After the first, such a dizzying success, Prishvin suffered - every year, then a new book:

* 1908 - “Behind the Magic Kolobok.”
* 1909 - “Bright Lake” about the legendary Kitezh;
* “Adam and Eve” - essays about Crimea.
* 1910 - “Black Arab” about the Aral Sea;
* 1911 - “The Krutoyarsky Beast” and “Bird Cemetery”
* 1913 - “Glorious are the tambourines”

But in August of the following year, 1914, the First World War began. Three times war invaded Prishvin’s life. After the First World War, civil war broke out, and then the Second World War. And each time he regarded the war as a catastrophe equal to a cosmic one. During the First World War, he was at the front as a war correspondent, publishing his essays in various newspapers. After the October Revolution and during the Civil War, and after Prishvin M.M. for some time he taught in the Smolensk region, with his wife’s relatives, lived in Yelets, in the Moscow region, and everywhere he was interested in the history of the region and the customs of the inhabitants of the local forest. He absorbed the world of nature with all his eyes and all his soul, and the life of all living things interested him as if he were his own.

Gradually, his geographical essay turned into a new literary genre - a philosophical and poetic celebration of the natural world, as a unique and amazing particle of the vast Universe. In the 1920s, he began to write a series of surprisingly kind, intelligent and humane, very short hunting and children's stories. Subsequently, in 1935, they were included in the book “Calendar of Nature”. These short stories are written in such a way that you can’t help but read them, and while reading, you can’t help but become kinder and more tolerant of the natural world, the life of animals and birds, and in general, existence as such.

During the Great Patriotic War M.M. Prishvin refused to be evacuated to the rear and lived in the village of Usolye near Pereslavl-Zalessky. One of the entries in his diary dated December 9, 1942: “And now, after a new historical catastrophe, I came here with a firm determination to start something new for the third time in my life.”

It was here and during this period that he compiled earlier sketches into the first book after the revolution, “The Springs of Berendey,” later revised and known as the “Calendar of Nature.”

During the Great Patriotic War, the writer created “Stories about Leningrad Children” (1943), “The Tale of Our Time” (1945), and the fairy tale “The Pantry of the Sun.” In the last years of his life, he devoted a lot of energy and time to diaries (the book “Eyes of the Earth”, 1957).

18 interesting facts from the life of Prishvin M. M.

The famous prose writer Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin left his mark on history thanks to the soulful works that came from his pen. His stories are full of deep philosophy and reflections on the connection between human life and the nature around us, and they are addressed more to deep feelings than to logical thinking.

Interesting facts from the life of Prishvin

• Prishvin's parents, a wealthy married couple who lived on the family estate, had 5 children. Mikhail was the youngest of them.
• His father was a horse breeder, received prizes for his horses and loved hunting. Then his luck turned away from him - he lost big, sold his horses and mortgaged the estate. He soon died, paralyzed and overcome with grief.
• Mother Prishvina, left alone with her children and her twice-mortgaged estate, was able to overcome all difficulties and give her children a good education.
• The future great writer completed only 4 classes of the gymnasium in six years of study. He was just about to be left for the second year again when the boy quarreled with the teacher and was expelled from the school for insolence.
• Having moved to his uncle, a successful merchant, Prishvin finally began to demonstrate success in his studies. The uncle offered to transfer his business to his nephew, but he refused, preferring to study at a university instead of working in trade.
• Prishvin was arrested for his interest in the ideas of Marxists. During the investigation, he spent a year in solitary confinement. Upon his release, Prishvin immediately went abroad.
• After living for several years in Leipzig, Prishvin became a certified agronomist. Returning to his homeland, he successfully practiced this profession and became the author of several books about agricultural crops, for example, about potatoes.
• The writer's first story, which had nothing to do with vegetables and fruits, was published in 1907. After that, he left farming and took a job with several newspapers.
• Having become interested in ethnography and folklore, Prishvin went on a long trip to the northern regions. During his trip, he collected 38 folk tales.
• For a book of essays written based on the results of the northern voyage, Prishvin was awarded a medal from the Russian Geographical Society.
• Having gained fame in the literary community, Prishvin communicated closely with Alexei Tolstoy and Gorky. The latter helped with the publication of Prishvin's collected works.
• During the war, Prishvin was a correspondent at the front, submitting essays to several newspapers.
• For just over six months, Prishvin was the editor of the newspaper of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and published articles in it directed against the Bolsheviks. For this activity he was again arrested - this time for several weeks.
• Fearing a new arrest, he left for a provincial estate, inherited from his mother, and took up peasant labor. Just a couple of months later the estate was requisitioned by the Bolsheviks.
• Having lost his property, Prishvin got a job in a rural library, and then as a school teacher.
• Prishvin's story “The Worldly Cup” was published only 60 years after it was written. When the magazine publisher refused him, the writer sent his work to Leon Trotsky for review. He recognized the author's talent, but called the story counter-revolutionary and unacceptable for publication.
• In the 1930s, Prishvin bought a van for traveling around the country, which he lovingly called “Mashenka”.
• Prishvin was not only a writer, but also a gifted photographer. He photographed nature to illustrate his books, paying attention to details that a professional photographer would miss. Prishvin photographed not only landscapes - for example, he made a photo report about the destruction of the Lavra bells in Sergiev Posad.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin is a talented writer, master of classical prose, philosopher. In each of his works, Prishvin immerses the reader not only in the wonderful world of nature, but also in the hidden corners of human consciousness, drawing a fine line of reflection on the meaning of existence. And Prishvin’s biography is varied and full of surprises.

The childhood and youth of Mikhail Prishvin

Mikhail Prishvin was born on February 4, 1873 in the family estate of Khrushchevo-Levshino into a wealthy family. The huge house was inherited by the Prishvin family from their rich and successful grandfather Dmitry Ivanovich, who was the richest Yelets merchant. Mother, Maria Ivanovna, was a decent Old Believers and a quiet housewife raising five children. The writer's father, Mikhail Dmitrievich, "became famous" throughout the area as an avid hunter, horse racing player and adventurer. He became the person who radically changed the life of little Prishvin and all his loved ones.

The bad habit of the father of the family played a cruel joke on him. Mikhail Dmitrievich lost not only his entire fortune and family business (stud farm), but also his grandfather’s family estate. Unable to cope with difficult times, my father was seized with paralysis, from which he soon died. As a result, Maria Ivanovna was left without a livelihood with small children in her arms. It is worth paying tribute to this strong woman, she was able not only to raise everyone to their feet, but also to give a good education to everyone.

Little Misha studied for a year of primary school in an ordinary village school. In 1883, he was enrolled in the first class of the Yeletsk classical gymnasium. Unfortunately, Mikhail Mikhailovich’s studies did not work out. He kept repeating the second year and clashed with teachers. For six years, the future writer completed only 4 classes. In 1889, Mikhail Prishvin was expelled from the gymnasium; the last straw was a conflict with a geography teacher. Surprisingly, Mikhail’s brothers, on the contrary, found their studies easy (the eldest became a financial official, the other two became doctors).

Life of Mikhail Prishvin

Young Prishvin is sent to his mother’s childless brother, merchant Ignatov, in Tyumen. Here, under the close guidance of his uncle, the author came to his senses and eventually graduated from the Tyumen Alexander Real School. After which he entered the Riga Polytechnic. But here again Mikhail Prishvin’s character played a cruel joke on him. Not wanting to continue his uncle’s work, the writer Prishvin joined a student Marxist circle, for which he ultimately paid. Arrest for a year and two years of exile - this is such a sad result.

Abroad, Prishvin finally in 1902 received a diploma from the agronomic department of the University of Leipzig, specializing in land management engineer. Then he returned to his homeland and married his first wife, Efrosinya Pavlovna. This marriage gave Prishvin three children (one of whom, unfortunately, died in infancy).

Immersed in the profession, Mikhail Mikhailovich worked as an agronomist in Luga until 1905. And then, at the same time, he begins to write stories and notes on scientific topics. But it doesn't stop there. And already in 1906, the first story “Sashok” came out from his pen, which was immediately published in the magazine.

Works of Mikhail Prishvin

Prishvin is so captivated by writing that he decides to leave his agricultural activity and completely immerse himself in creativity. Mikhail Mikhailovich is hired as a newspaper correspondent. But nature still attracts the writer Prishvin, so he begins to travel around the North. This is where Prishvin's famous fairy tales are born (). The author has visited the shores of the White Sea, conquered many islands, as well as the Arctic Ocean.

Having received significant importance and recognition in literary circles, he became friends with and, as well as with. But they had a tense relationship because they did not agree on political views.

During the First World War, the Revolution and the Civil War, Mikhail Mikhailovich worked as a war correspondent. Honestly reflecting the events taking place at the front. Afterwards, the writer worked as an ordinary rural teacher, and in the 30s he decided to try himself as an auto mechanic. He is so interested in this activity that he buys a “Mashenka” van and starts traveling again.

During the years of evacuation in 1945, his famous fairy tale came out from the pen of Prishvin. It is worth noting that many of Prishvin’s works were published during the author’s lifetime. Some of them are illustrated with personal archival photographs taken by Mikhail Mikhailovich with his camera. More than 2,000 of his photographs have survived to this day.

Death of Mikhail Prishvin and memory

The writer died from a fatal disease (ventricular cancer). This happened on January 16, 1954. Prishvin was buried in Moscow; his grave can be found at the Vvedensky cemetery.

Many note that Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin had a subtle skill in conveying living nature. Reading his works, you are immersed in a fabulous world of sounds, light, and smell. You know exactly what surrounds you and what you see with your own eyes. It was not for nothing that he said that “Prishvin is a singer of the Russian breed.”

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin. Born on February 4, 1873 in the village. Khrushchevo-Levshino, Yelets district, Oryol province - died on January 16, 1954 in Moscow. Russian Soviet writer, prose writer.

Mikhail Prishvin was born on February 4, 1873 on a family estate in the village of Khrushchevo-Levshino, Yelets district, Oryol province.

Grandfather Dmitry Ivanovich Prishvin was a successful Yelets merchant.

Mother - Maria Ivanovna (1842-1914, nee Ignatova).

Father - Mikhail Dmitrievich Prishvin (1837-1873). After the family division, he took possession of the Konstandylovo estate and money, drove Oryol trotters, won prizes at horse racing, was engaged in gardening and flowers, and was a passionate hunter.

The father lost at cards and had to sell the stud farm and mortgage the estate. He died, paralyzed. In the novel “Koshcheev’s Chain,” Prishvin tells how his father, with his healthy hand, drew him “blue beavers” - a symbol of a dream that he could not achieve. The mother of the future writer, Maria Ivanovna, who came from the Old Believer Ignatov family and was left after the death of her husband with five children in her arms and with an estate pledged under a double mortgage, managed to straighten out the situation and give the children a decent education.

The family had five children: Alexander, Nikolai, Sergei, Lydia and Mikhail.

In 1882, Mikhail was sent to study at an elementary village school, in 1883 he was transferred to the first grade of the Yeletsk classical gymnasium, in 6 years of study he reached only the fourth grade and was once again supposed to stay for the second year, but due to a conflict with the teacher Geography V.V. Rozanov was expelled from the gymnasium “for insolence to the teacher.”

Mikhail's brothers studied successfully and received an education: the eldest, Nikolai, became an excise official, Alexander and Sergei became doctors. Subsequently, M. Prishvin, living with his uncle, the merchant I. I. Ignatov in Tyumen, fully demonstrated the ability to learn.

He completed his studies at the Tyumen Alexander Real School (1893). Not giving in to the persuasion of his childless uncle to inherit his business, he continued his education at the Riga Polytechnic.

For his participation in the activities of a student Marxist circle, he was arrested and imprisoned in 1897. While under investigation, he was placed in solitary confinement in Mitau prison for a year. After his release he went abroad.

In 1900-1902 he studied at the agronomic department of the University of Leipzig, after which he received a diploma as a land surveyor. Returning to Russia, he served as an agronomist until 1905, and wrote several books and articles on agronomy - “Potatoes in garden and field crops” and others.

Prishvin's first story "Sashok" was published in 1907. Leaving his profession as an agronomist, he became a correspondent for various newspapers. A passion for ethnography and folklore led to the decision to travel around the European North. Prishvin spent several months in the Vygovsky region (the vicinity of Vygozero in Pomorie). Thirty-eight folk tales that he recorded then were included in the collection of ethnographer N. E. Onchukov “Northern Tales”.

In May 1907, Prishvin traveled along the Sukhona and Northern Dvina to Arkhangelsk. Then he traveled around the shore of the White Sea to Kandalaksha, crossed the Kola Peninsula, visited the Solovetsky Islands and in July returned to Arkhangelsk by sea. After this, the writer set off on a fishing boat to travel across the Arctic Ocean and, having visited Kanin’s Nose, came to Murman, where he stopped at one of the fishing camps.

Then he left for Norway by boat and, having rounded the Scandinavian Peninsula, returned to St. Petersburg. Based on impressions from a trip to the Olonets province, Prishvin created in 1907 a book of essays “In the Land of Unfrightened Birds (Sketches of the Vygovsky Region)”, for which he was awarded a silver medal of the Russian Geographical Society. While traveling around the Russian North, Prishvin became acquainted with the life and speech of the northerners, wrote down tales, conveying them in a unique form of travel sketches (“Behind the Magic Kolobok”, 1908).

Having become famous in literary circles, he became close to Remizov and, as well as A.N. Tolstoy. He was a full member of the St. Petersburg Religious and Philosophical Society.

In 1908, the result of a trip to the Volga region was the book “At the Walls of the Invisible City.” The essays “Adam and Eve” and “Black Arab” were written after a trip to Crimea and Kazakhstan. Maxim Gorky contributed to the appearance of the first collected works of Prishvin in 1912-1914.

During the First World War he was a war correspondent, publishing his essays in various newspapers.

During the revolutionary events and the Civil War, he managed to survive imprisonment, publish a number of articles close in views to the ideology of the Socialist Revolutionaries, and enter into controversy with the reconciliation of the creative intelligentsia with the Bolsheviks (the latter came out on the side of Soviet power).

Ultimately, Prishvin accepted the victory of the Soviets: in his opinion, the colossal victims were the result of the monstrous rampant of the lower human evil that the world war unleashed, but the time is coming for young, active people, whose cause is just, although it will not win very soon. After the October Revolution, he taught for some time in the Smolensk region.

His passion for hunting and local history (he lived in Yelets, the Smolensk region, and the Moscow region) was reflected in a series of hunting and children’s stories written in the 1920s, which were later included in the book “Calendar of Nature” (1935), which glorified him as a narrator about the life of nature, singer of Central Russia. During these same years, he continued to work on the autobiographical novel “Kashcheev’s Chain,” which he began in 1923, on which he worked until his last days.

In the 1930s, he studied car manufacturing at the Gorky Automobile Plant and purchased a van in which he traveled around the country. He affectionately called the van “Mashenka”. And in the last years of his life he owned a Moskvich-401 car, which is installed in his house-museum.

In the early 1930s, Prishvin visited the Far East, as a result of which the book “Dear Animals” appeared, which served as the basis for the story “Zhen-shen” (“Root of Life”, 1933). The journey through the Kostroma and Yaroslavl lands is written in the story “Undressed Spring”. In 1933, the writer again visited the Vygovsky region, where the White Sea-Baltic Canal was being built. Based on the impressions of this trip, he created the fairy tale novel “Osudareva Road”.

In May-June 1935, M. M. Prishvin made another trip to the Russian North with his son Peter. The writer traveled from Moscow to Vologda by train and sailed on steamships along Vologda, Sukhona and Northern Dvina to Upper Toima. From Upper Toima on horseback, M. Prishvin reached the Upper Pinega villages of Kerga and Sogra, then reached the mouth of the Ilesha by rowing boat, and by an aspen boat up the Ilesha and its tributary the Koda. From the upper reaches of the Koda, on foot through the dense forest, together with guides, the writer went to look for the “Berendey Thicket” - a forest untouched by an axe, and found it.

Returning to Ust-Ilesha, Prishvin went down the Pinega to the village of Karpogory, and then reached Arkhangelsk by boat. After this trip, a book of essays “Berendey's Thicket” (“Northern Forest”) and a fairy tale “The Ship Thicket” appeared, on which M. Prishvin worked in the last years of his life. The writer wrote about the fairy-tale forest: “The forest there is a pine tree for three hundred years, tree to tree, you can’t cut down a banner there! And the trees are so straight and so clean! One tree cannot be cut down; it will lean against another and not fall.”

In 1941, Prishvin evacuated to the village of Usolye, Yaroslavl region, where he protested against the deforestation around the village by peat miners.

In 1943, the writer returned to Moscow and published the stories “Phacelia” and “Forest Drops” in the publishing house “Soviet Writer”. In 1945, M. Prishvin wrote the fairy tale “The Pantry of the Sun.”

In 1946, the writer bought a house in the village of Dunino, Zvenigorod district, Moscow region, where he lived in the summer of 1946-1953.

Almost all of Prishvin’s works published during his lifetime are devoted to descriptions of his own impressions from encounters with nature; these descriptions are distinguished by the extraordinary beauty of their language. Konstantin Paustovsky called him “the singer of Russian nature,” Maxim Gorky said that Prishvin had “the perfect ability to give a flexible combination of simple words almost physical perceptibility to everything.”

Prishvin himself considered his main book "Diaries", which he wrote for almost half a century (1905-1954) and the volume of which is several times larger than the most complete, 8-volume collection of his works. Published after the abolition of censorship in the 1980s, they allowed us to take a different look at M. M. Prishvin and his work.

Constant spiritual work, the writer’s path to inner freedom can be traced in detail and vividly in his diaries, rich in observations (“Eyes of the Earth”, 1957; fully published in the 1990s), where, in particular, a picture of the process of “de-peasantization” of Russia and the Stalinist model is given socialism, far from the far-fetched ideology; the writer’s humanistic desire to affirm the “holiness of life” as the highest value is expressed.

However, even from the 8-volume edition (1982-1986), where two volumes are entirely devoted to the writer’s diaries, one can get a sufficient impression of the writer’s intense spiritual work, his honest opinions about his contemporary life, reflections on death, what will remain after him on earth, about eternal life.

His notes from the time of the war, when the Germans were near Moscow, are also interesting; there, sometimes, the writer reaches complete despair, and says in his hearts that “it would be quicker, everything is better than this uncertainty,” he writes down the terrible rumors spread by village women . All this is in this publication, despite the censorship. There are also phrases where M. M. Prishvin even calls himself a communist in his worldview, and quite sincerely shows that his whole life has led him to this understanding of the lofty meaning of communism.

Mikhail Prishvin - photographer

Prishvin illustrated his first book, “In the Land of Unfrightened Birds,” with his photographs taken in 1907 during a hike in the North using a bulky camera belonging to a fellow traveler.

In the 1920s, the writer began to seriously study the technique of photography, believing that the use of photographs in the text would help supplement the author’s verbal image with the author’s visual image: “To my imperfect verbal art I will add photographic invention.”

His diary contained entries about ordering a Leica pocket camera in Germany in 1929.

Prishvin wrote: “Light painting, or photography as it is commonly called, differs from the great arts in that it constantly breaks off what is desired as impossible and leaves a modest hint of a complex plan remaining in the artist’s soul, and also, most importantly, some hope that that someday life itself in its original sources of beauty will be “photographed” and everyone will get “my visions of the real world.”

Prishvin wrote that from the moment he got a camera, he began to “think photographically,” called himself an “artist of light,” and became so carried away by hunting with a camera that he could not wait for “the bright morning to come again.” While working on the cycles of “photo recordings” “Cobwebs”, “Drops”, “Buds”, “Spring of Light”, he took close-up photographs in different lighting conditions and angles, accompanying each photograph with comments. Assessing the resulting visual images, Prishvin wrote in his diary on September 26, 1930: “Of course, a real photographer would take better pictures than me, but a real specialist would never even think of looking at what I’m photographing: he’ll never see it.”

The writer did not limit himself to filming outdoors. In 1930, he made a series of photographs about the destruction of the bells of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.

In November 1930, Prishvin entered into an agreement with the publishing house “Young Guard” for the book “Hunting with a Camera,” in which photography was to play a major role, and addressed the People’s Commissariat of Trade of the USSR with the statement: “In view of the fact that currently in general order it is impossible to obtain permission to import a camera from Germany, I draw your attention to the special circumstance of my literary work at the present time and ask you to make an exception for me in obtaining a non-currency license to receive a camera... My photo works were noticed abroad, and the editors of Die Grüne Post , in whose hunting department I collaborate, is ready to provide me with the most advanced Lake camera with three variable lenses. I need such a device all the more because my device has become completely unusable due to intense work...” Permission was given and on January 1, 1931, Prishvin had the desired camera with numerous accessories.

For more than a quarter of a century, Prishvin never parted with his cameras. The writer’s archive contains more than two thousand negatives. In his memorial office in Dunino there is everything necessary for a home darkroom: a set of lenses, an enlarger, cuvettes for developer and fixer, frames for cropping photographs.

The knowledge and experience of photographic work were reflected in some of the innermost thoughts of the writer, who wrote in his diary: “Our republic is like a photographic dark room, into which not a single ray is allowed from the outside, and everything inside is illuminated by a red flashlight.”

Prishvin did not hope to make most of his photographs public during his lifetime. The negatives were stored in separate envelopes, glued together by the writer himself from tissue paper, in boxes of sweets and cigarettes. After the writer's death, his widow Valeria Dmitrievna kept the negatives along with the diaries.

The writer died on January 16, 1954 from stomach cancer and was buried at the Vvedensky cemetery in Moscow.

Mikhail Prishvin (documentary film)

The asteroid (9539) Prishvin, discovered by astronomer Lyudmila Karachkina at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory on October 21, 1982, is named in honor of M. M. Prishvin.

The following were named in honor of the writer: Prishvin Peak (43°46′N 40°15′E HGЯO) with a height of 2782 m in the spurs of the Main Caucasus Range and a nearby mountain lake; Cape Prishvina on the eastern tip of Iturup Island in the Kuril ridge; Prishvina streets in Donetsk, Kyiv, Lipetsk, Moscow and Orel.

On September 2, 1981, by decision of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, the name of M. M. Prishvin was assigned to the Oryol Regional Children's Library.

On February 4, 2015, on the writer’s birthday, a monument dedicated to him was unveiled in the Skitskie Prudy park in the city of Sergiev Posad.

Personal life of Mikhail Prishvin:

Was married twice.

The first wife is Smolensk peasant Efrosinya Pavlovna (1883-1953, nee Badykina, in her first marriage - Smogaleva). In his diaries, Prishvin often called her Frosya or Pavlovna. In addition to her son from her first marriage, Yakov (died at the front in 1919 during the Civil War), they had three more children: son Sergei (died as an infant in 1905), Lev (1906-1957) - a popular fiction writer of his time who wrote under pseudonym Alpatov, member of the literary group "Pereval", and Peter (1909-1987) - game warden, author of memoirs (published on the 100th anniversary of his birth - in 2009).

The second wife is Valeria Dmitrievna Liorko, in her first marriage - Lebedeva (1899-1979). They got married in 1940. After the writer’s death, she worked with his archives, wrote several books about him, and headed the Prishvin Museum for many years.

Bibliography of Mikhail Prishvin:

“In the Land of Unfrightened Birds” (1907; collection of essays);
"Behind the Magic Kolobok" (1908; collection of essays);
“At the Walls of the Invisible City” (1909; collection);
"Adam and Eve" (1910; essay);
"The Black Arab" (1910; essay);
"Glorious are the tambourines" (1913);
"Shoes" (1923);
"Springs of Berendey" (1925-1926);
"Ginseng" (first title - "Root of Life", 1933; story);
"Calendar of Nature" (1935; phenological notes);
"Spring of Light" (1938; story);
"Undressed Spring" (1940; story);
"Forest Drops" (1940; lyrical and philosophical book of diary entries);
"Phacelia" (1940; prose poem);
"My Notebooks" (1940; story);
"Grandfather's felt boots" (first publication - 1941, in the magazine "October"; a cycle of stories);
"Forest Drops" (1943; cycle of miniatures);
"Stories about Leningrad children" (1943);
"Pantry of the Sun" (1945; story, "fairy tale");
"The Tale of Our Time" (1946);
"Undressed Spring" (story);
"Ship Thicket" (1954; story-fairy tale);
"Osudar's Road" (publication - 1957; fairy tale novel);
"Kashcheev's Chain" (1923-1954, publication - 1960; autobiographical novel).

Screen adaptations of Mikhail Prishvin's works:

1935 - “The Hut of Old Louvain” (the film has not survived)
1978 - “Wind of Wanderings”

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin was born January 23 (February 4), 1873 in the Khrushchev estate of the Yelets district of the Oryol province in a merchant family, whose fortune was squandered by the father, who left the family without a livelihood. It took a lot of effort and labor of the mother of the future writer to give her children an education.

In 1883 enters the Yeletsk gymnasium. Prishvin was expelled from the Yelets gymnasium for “free-thinking.” He studied at the Tyumen Real School. A student at the Riga Polytechnic, Prishvin was arrested for participating in Marxist circles ( 1897 ). In 1902 Graduated from the agronomic department of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Leipzig. He served as an agronomist in the zemstvo (Klin, Luga). He has published several books and articles on agriculture.

Prishvin's first story "Sashok" was published in 1906 in the magazine "Rodnik". Having left his profession, Prishvin became interested in folklore and ethnography. Prishvin's birth as a writer is connected with his travels around the North (Olonets, Karelia, Norway). Observations of nature, life and speech of the northerners, recordings of fairy tales resulted in a unique form of travel notes and essays: the books “In the Land of Unfrightened Birds” ( 1907 ) and “Behind the Magic Kolobok” ( 1908 ). Finding himself at the center of literary life, Prishvin became close to the St. Petersburg decadents (A. Remizov, D. Merezhkovsky, etc.). Their influence is palpable in the stories “The Krutoyarsky Beast”, “Bird Cemetery” and the story-essay “At the Walls of the Invisible City” ( 1909 ). The result of trips to Crimea and Kazakhstan were the essays “Adam and Eve” ( 1909 ), "Black Arab" ( 1910 ), “Glorious are the tambourines” ( 1913 ) etc. The appearance of the first collected works of Prishvin ( 1912-1914 , publishing house "Knowledge") contributed to M. Gorky.

Prishvin believed that a person’s personal life should work out. He married at the age of 25 a simple peasant woman from the Smolensk region, from whose marriage he had three sons, two of whom also gained fame in literature.

During the First World War, Prishvin was a front-line correspondent; his essays were published in the newspapers Birzhevye Vedomosti, Rech, and Russkie Vedomosti.

After the October Revolution, Prishvin spent some time teaching; he was passionate about hunting and local history (he lived in Yelets, in the Smolensk region, in the Moscow region). Published the essay “Shoes” ( 1923 ), hunting and children's stories, phenological notes “Springs of Berendey” ( 1925 ), released with additions called “Nature Calendar” ( 1935 ). The writer teaches in them “kindred attention” to nature, calls to recognize “... the face of life itself, be it a flower, a dog, a tree, a rock, or even the face of an entire region.” In parallel with this line, Prishvin develops another: essays connected by a single hero (most often the writer’s lyrical “I”), his philosophical and moral quests, become chapters of a story or novel. In the 20s The autobiographical novel “Kashcheev’s Chain” was begun, on which Prishvin worked until the last days of his life ( 1923-1954 ). The romantic quest of the protagonist Alpatov, developing against the backdrop of life in Russia and Germany at the end of the 19th century, turns into a story of the growth of a creative personality and an analysis of the essence of creative activity in general. Poetically specific images of the novel simultaneously act as the personification of myth (Second Adam, Marya Morevna, etc.). Adjacent to the novel is a story about creativity “Crane Homeland” ( 1929 ) introduces the reader to the artist's laboratory.

During these years, Prishvin constantly published in the magazines “New World”, “Krasnaya Nov” and others. The writer looked for live material on trips to the Far East, North and Caucasus. He advocates the essay genre (“My Essay”, 1933 ). And again he moves from scientific knowledge and folklore to artistic prose, creating poetic stories and novellas. Thus, the essay about deer “Dear Animals” preceded the story “Ginseng” (the first title was “The Root of Life”, 1933 ), one of Prishvin’s best works, in which the “root of life” acts as a multifaceted metaphor, symbolizing the search for the “creativity of life”, and the power of passion, and the pain of loss. Realistic and romantic elements, the experienced and the unprecedented, truth and fairy tales, merging, give an alloy of Prishvin’s bright worldview. Talking about a journey through Kostroma and Yaroslavl land in the story “Undressed Spring” ( 1940 ), Prishvin strives to capture the unique features of the changeable face of nature. He creates a genre of diary entries - poetic miniatures. The cycle of such miniatures was made up of the prose poem “Phacelia” ( 1940 ), about which the writer said: “This is my song of songs.” Adjacent to it is the cycle “Forest Drops” ( 1940 ).

In September 1941 M. Prishvin's family moved with him to the remote village of Usolye near the city of Pereslavl Zalessky and remained there until the end of the war. In 1943 Mikhail Prishvin was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. During the Great Patriotic War, the writer creates “Stories about Leningrad Children” ( 1943 ), "The Tale of Our Time" ( 1945 , published in full 1957 ). In the fairy tale there was “The Pantry of the Sun” ( 1945 ), plot-related to the fairy tale “Ship Thicket” ( 1954 ), Prishvin again strives to “... search and discover the beautiful sides of the human soul in nature.” He shows how the will of people turns into action, how the truth merges with a fairy tale.

From 1946 to 1954 Mikhail Mikhailovich lives at his dacha near Zvenigorod, where the M.M. Museum now operates. Prishvina. In the last years of his life, Prishvin, as always, devoted a lot of energy to his diaries (the book “Eyes of the Earth” was published posthumously, 1957 ). In 1957 The fairy tale novel “Osudareva Road” (begun in the 30s) was published, in which history and modernity meet.

The accuracy of the artist's and naturalist's observations, the intensity of philosophical quests, a high moral sense, a language nourished by the juices of folk speech - all this gives Prishvin's prose an irresistible charm.