Unlike many other writers, he left behind not so many works of Olesha Yuri Karlovich. Although his biography is sad, it is full of bright moments. Like many authors of the revolutionary period, Olesha reached the heights of fame, becoming a cult writer in a huge young country. Why, then, at the peak of popularity, he practically stopped creating and turned into a miserable beggar drunkard?
Noble parents of the future writer
Yuri Olesha (a writer whom many, by mistake, consider it childish) was born into the family of descendants of the ruined Polish nobles. Often in the biographies of this author they write that his father came from a noble family from Belarus. This is not entirely true. Indeed, Olesha is the name of the famous Belarusian noblemen of the 16th century. However, over time, they converted to Catholicism and moved to Poland. For this reason, by the beginning of the XX century. the family of Yuri Karlovich Olesha was one hundred percent Poles.
Although the mother of the future writer (Olympia Vladislavovna) and his father (Karl Antonovich) were people of noble origin, due to financial problems the family had to live modestly. Karl Olesha served as an excise official.
After the revolution, Olympia and Karl Olesha emigrated from the Russian Empire to Poland, where they lived until the end of their days. The writer himself refused to leave his homeland, but was very worried about separation from his relatives. Who knows, maybe in old age he even regretted that he refused to leave with his parents, Yuri Olesha. His biography could then have been completely different. Although, perhaps, his talent could fully reveal itself only in his homeland.
Yuri Karlovich Olesha: a brief biography of childhood
The future author of âThree Fat Menâ was born in Elizavetgrad (until 2016 - Kirovograd, now - Kropyvnytsky) in February 1899.
In the first 3 years of life, Yuri Olesha did not distinguish anything remarkable. A biography for children in textbooks, as a rule, omits the Yesavetgrad period of his life, focusing on the writer's parents moving to Odessa. After all, it was this city that became for him a real homeland, as well as a cradle for his talent.
A few years after the move, Yuri Karlovich Olesha entered the Richelieu gymnasium. Here he became interested in playing football and even participated in city competitions on the side of the gymnasium. However, due to heart problems, the young man soon had to leave his favorite hobby. But he soon found something new - poetry.
Fascinated by the works of Gumilyov, even during his years at the gymnasium, young Yuri Olesha began to write his own poems. A writer whose biography is published in all the textbooks of the country - this is how a talented gymnasium saw his future. Particularly encouraging was the fact that his Clarimond was published in the Southern Bulletin. However, the leadership of the gymnasium did not really like the hobby of their pupil, so the young man was forbidden to write poetry, and for a while he left his literary experiments.
In revolutionary 1917, Olesha successfully graduated from high school and entered the local university at the law faculty.
Participation in the Odessa "Team of poets"
However, Olesha did not become a lawyer, Yuri Karlovich. His biography was changed by the Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent changes in the social structure of the country.
Like many of his literary friends - V. Kataev, I. Ilf, E. Bagritsky, Olesha met all this with joy and hopes for the emergence of a new, more perfect and fair world. Wanting to become part of him, after 2 years of study, the young man left the university and concentrated on building his literary career. Perhaps the impetus for this was also the fact that in 1919 the future writer was ill with typhus and barely survived.
Whatever it was in reality, but having left the university, Olesha, together with Ilf, Kataev and other associates, organized the literary group The Collective Poets.
This institution lasted 2 years. During this time, about 20 well-known literary figures (including Vladimir Sosyura, Vera Ibner and Zinaida Shishova) visited his ranks.
At the meetings of the âCollective of Poetsâ, its participants read their own works, as well as recited Mayakovskyâs poems, which was their standard of modern poetry.
In addition to literary evenings, Olesha and his comrades were engaged in educational activities. In particular, they distributed books among workers and Red Army soldiers, and also created their own library.
The active and very fruitful work of the âCollective of Poetsâ was noticed in Moscow, and by 1922 many of them were invited to move to the capital of the USSR or work in other important cities of the country. Due to the fact that the main leaders of the literary group left Odessa - it broke up.
Yuri Karlovich left the city by the sea a year earlier than this event - he was invited to work in Kharkov.
Three muses of Yuri Olesha
The novice writer had several reasons to leave his hometown. One of them is a woman.
While still one of the leaders of the Writers' Team, he was in a love relationship with Serafima Gustavovna Suok Yuri Olesha.
The biography of the beloved writer clearly testifies that she was a woman of dubious moral principles. However, at that time in the bohemian sphere, such behavior seemed fashionable and even progressive.
Married to Olesha, Serafima (Sima) made a short-term affair with one of the merchants. Rumor had it that this had been done almost at the request of Olesha and Kataev himself. Allegedly, the men hoped that the beautiful Sim would be able to get grocery cards or other scarce goods from a wealthy boyfriend that were so lacking at that time of famine. However, when Suok moved to live with the "sponsor", Yuri Karlovich was afraid that he would lose his beloved forever, and took her home.
Unfortunately, after returning soon, the windy Simochka became interested in the Soviet poet Vladimir Narbut and left Olesha, becoming the wife of her new and promising chosen one.
In desperation, the abandoned writer married her sister Olga, who became his faithful companion for life.
Both sisters of Suok became the prototype of the protagonist of Three Fat Men. Moreover, if officially this work was dedicated to the wife of Olesha, then the character of the heroine was copied from the restless Simochka, who managed to be married twice more after a divorce from repressed Narbut.
In addition to the Suok sisters, Yuri Karlovich had one more muse, for which he wrote Three Fat Men. The name of this beauty is Valentina Leontyevna Grunzeid. Although when they met - she was still a girl named Valya. Olesha was fascinated by her children's grace and promised to write a fairy tale for her, which he later did. He also sometimes joked that when Grunside was growing up, she would not marry her. But having matured, Valentina became the wife of his friend - Petrov.
Feuilletonist in Hoot
After moving to Kharkov in 1921, he began to work as the author of poems and feuilleton Yuri Olesha. His biography at that time can be briefly described as: work and work again. The works of Yuri Karlovich at that time were becoming more and more popular. And in order not to think about a heart wound after breaking up with Sima, Olesha fully focuses on work - and not in vain. After a year of work in Kharkov, he was transferred to the capital of the USSR.
Here he becomes an active participant in literary life and gets acquainted with many of his idols.
Having received a position in the Gudok newspaper, the writer publishes his sharp, sparkling feuilleton, which win the love of readers throughout the country. At the same time, he uses the pseudonym "Chisel".
Success in the literary field and the recognition of the authorities makes the writer think about writing great prose.
The revolutionary romantic tale "Three Fat Men"
The first major work of Yuri Karlovich Olesha was the tale promised to Vale Grunside - âThree Fat Menâ. Although it was published in 1929, its author wrote much earlier - in 1924.
In this story about the struggle of a hardworking people with fat parasites, the writer embodied all his revolutionary ideals. This book is full of metaphors and fairy tales, although there is no place for magic in its plot.
Despite the fact that this book was written for Valentina Grunside, the main character of this tale (acrobat Suok), Yuri Karlovich named in honor of his former lover and current wife.
Although many years have passed since the creation of Three Fat Men, it is without a doubt the most optimistic work that Yuri Olesha wrote. His biography, unfortunately, after the creation of this tale, gradually began to turn into a nightmare. After all, the Soviet government gradually took up the oppression of dissenters. The tragedy of this situation also consisted in the fact that the majority of artists faced a choice: to submit to power and become an oppressor themselves or surrender and be crushed by a totalitarian machine.
In future years, many of the writerâs friends and acquaintances, to one extent or another, became victims of a new cultural policy. Yuri Karlovich described his disappointment in another major work, the novel Envy.
"Envy" by Yuri Olesha
In 1927, in Krasnaya Novi, Oleshaâs novel, Envy, was first published. Strictly speaking, this work was not the first major work of Yuri Karlovich. Since by that time Three Fat Men had already been written, but they will be published after 2 years.
The novel "Envy" was very warmly received by critics and readers. Most likely, this was due to the fact that Olesha described in him the tragedy of the fate of a contemporary intellectual who is not needed in the new Soviet society.
However, just a couple of years later, the novel Envy was harshly criticized because it did not correspond to socialist realism.
Meanwhile, Yuri Oleshaâs biography summarized not only his own, but also hundreds of other cultural figures who were not needed by the new country, but who did not have the opportunity to leave it. There were rumors that the image of Andrei Babichev was decommissioned from Mayakovsky.
This novel made a lot of noise and lifted its creator to the top. And after the publication of Three Fat Men, its author became a recognized Soviet writer. Now, in almost any textbook, a large or small biography of Yuri Olesha was found. It seemed that a long-awaited bright future awaited him - but this did not happen.
Creative Depression Olesha
As a creative person, Yuri Karlovich was quite sensitive and did not notice changes in society in the late 1920s and early 1930s. simply could not. In addition to the bitter disappointment in the ideals of the revolution, Oleshu suffered another tragedy. What he wanted to write about was not of interest to the authorities. Moreover, it was not only considered not relevant, but also gradually acquired the status of illegal.
Under the conditions of Soviet realism, it was necessary to write either what the Party expects of you, or not to write at all. But just what to live on if you donât write anything? Moreover, an unpublished author was automatically ranked as a parasite. And that was a crime already.
Disappointed in modern literature, Yuri Olesha fell into a depression and began to drink often. After a couple of years, he became a chronic alcoholic. Compounded by his state of news of the repression of his colleagues. And the suicide of Mayakovsky (who once was a beacon for the writer in literature) completely shook the health of Yuri Karlovich.
Last years
Despite health problems, chronic alcoholism, and the writerâs depression, he lived another 30 years and died in May 1960.
The most striking achievement of Olesha in this period was his diaries. They were published as a separate book âNot a day without a lineâ after the death of the author.
However, if diaries are creativity for the soul, then Yuri Karlovich made a living âfor the bodyâ by writing plays and screenplays. Most of them are adaptations of the works of Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Kuprin, as well as Three Fat Men and Envy.
There were also plays of his own composition. In particular, the Death of Zanda. In this unfinished work on the fate of the writer-communist Zanda, Olesha tried to express his views on the surrounding socialist reality.
In the last decades of his life, Olesha Yuri Karlovich was practically impoverished. The biography for children, which is presented in many textbooks, rarely pays attention to this fact. However, during this period, the writer led practically the life of a homeless person.
The fact is that he did not have his own home, and the author of Envy most often lived with someone from friends or acquaintances. In addition to rare literary earnings, banal begging on the street helped him get money for food. And it was possible to drink at the expense of more successful young Soviet writers who treated him out of respect for great talent.
Being a dandy in his youth, in his old age, Yuri Karlovich was forced to walk in rags.
The writer died from a banal heart attack.
As a former writer, he was buried in the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow. In the first row of the first section.
Even in the years of his alcohol depression, Yuri Olesha joked that he would have preferred his funeral to be much more modest than he was due for his literary merits. Moreover, during his lifetime he would like to receive in money the difference in the value of both ceremonies.
Yuri Olesha: biography, interesting facts
- This wonderful Soviet writer considered Polish his mother tongue from childhood. He learned Russian later, living in Odessa. In this he was helped by his grandmother, who at the same time taught the boy arithmetic.
- Yuri Karlovich had a sister Wanda. The girl was born two years earlier than her brother. The future writer from childhood was very attached to her, and survived her death from typhoid. The biggest blow was that Wanda became infected by Yuri, who recovered, but she didnât.
- In the book of Valentin Kataev âMy Diamond Crownâ, in addition to Yesenin, Ilf and Babel, Yuri Olesha was also depicted. His biography, however, was somewhat disguised, and the writer himself appears under the name of metaphorist Klyuchik. By the way, in the same work, Sima Suok is also rather unobtrusively described. She was given the pseudonym "Friend."
- Olga Gustavovna Suok, who became the first and only wife of the writer, at the time of his matchmaking was already married and had a son. After the marriage, Olesha took Olga with his stepson to him.
- In the period from 1936 to 1956. Olesha's works were not published. After the cancellation of this unofficial ban, he became positioned as a children's writer Yuri Olesha. A brief biography for children accompanied almost every publication of Three Fat Men. However, it rarely mentioned his depression and more serious works.
- Even the shortest biography of Yuri Karlovich Olesha contains information that since childhood he dreamed of traveling. However, in his youth he did not have money for this. Having matured and did not fit into the literature of socialist realism, the author was not visiting, and was forever deprived of the opportunity to see the world, as his friend Ilf managed. In almost all periods of his life (both at the peak of fame and during the years of depression), Olesha most of all regretted this.