Maria Andreevna Beketova ( January 12 (24), 1862 , St. Petersburg - December 2, 1938 , Leningrad , RSFSR ) - Russian writer and translator. Aunt of the poet A. A. Blok on the maternal side, his first biographer.
| Maria Andreevna Beketova | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Date of Birth | January 12 (24), 1862 |
| Place of Birth | Saint Petersburg Russian empire |
| Date of death | December 2, 1938 (aged 76) |
| Place of death | Leningrad |
| Citizenship (citizenship) | |
| Occupation | writer |
| Years of creativity | 1882-1932 |
| Direction | prose, translation into Russian |
| Language of Works | Russian |
| Debut | Translation of the story of Boleslav Prus |
Content
Biography
She was born in the family of a scientist-botanist and organizer of science, Professor Andrei Nikolaevich Beketov (1825-1902). Mother - Elizaveta Grigoryevna , nee Karelina, (1834-1902) - translator. Sister - translators and poetesses A. A. Kublitskaya-Piottukh and writer E. A. Krasnova , niece of chemist N. N. Beketov .
With a silver medal she graduated from the St. Petersburg Vasileostrovsky girls' gymnasium (1879). She seriously studied music, tried herself in composition. Under the influence of Tolstoy’s doctrine, in the 1880s. carried away by public education, entered the circle of A. M. Kalmykova . She prepared several small books for popular reading for publication; they were included in the series “Life Before and Now” and “Forces of Nature and Human Labor” published by Kalmykova. Collaborated with the children's magazines "Rodnik" and "The Sun" and "Reading School" [1] .
Maria Andreevna recalled: “The circle, founded by Alexandra Mikhailovna, consisted of democratic youth of both sexes: students, teachers and teachers, my sister Ekaterina Andreevna and I had a slightly different injury than all these boys and girls. Without being prim, we were not democratic either. Alexandra Mikhailovna gathered this society with the aim of reviewing books on folk literature, publishing again the good that had been forgotten and disappeared from the market, and writing on her own, mainly dealing with the simplified form of good books of various contents. All this was undertaken with the aim of combating popular literature ... I owe a lot to Alexandra Mikhailovna, she gave me a lot of useful directions and tips, delivered work and encouraged my work, which was very important to me, especially at first ” [2] [3] .
She died at the end of 1938 at the 77th year of life. As reported in the obituary, "already almost blind, having lost one eye, she continued to work on the multi-volume story of the Beketov family" [4] . She was buried at the Smolensky cemetery in St. Petersburg , in 1944 the ashes were transferred to the Literary bridges at the Volkovsky cemetery [5] .
Literary activity
Although music remained the main hobby of M. A. Beketova, she realized that she could make a living from literary work. In children's magazines, it is published, written in a simple language that is understandable to children, essays on Holland, England and Scotland (“What kind of land is Holland and how do the Dutch live,” “Ireland and the Irish,” “Scotland and the Scots,” etc.). For the publisher I. D. Sytin, she retold the novels of Jules Verne “The Extraordinary Adventures of Captain Hatteras” (1888, 1890), Daniel Defoe “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” (1896). In 1892, in the Pavlenkovskaya series “The Life of Wonderful People,” she published a biographical sketch about the children's writer H.K. Andersen . The book “The Life and Wanderings of Christopher Columbus” is also published there. For the Literacy Committee, she wrote the essay “Oil and Oil Business in Russia” (1915) [6] .
M.A. Beketova is engaged in retelling and translating Western European literature. In the autobiographical essay “My Editors and Publishers”, stored in the archive of A. A. Blok, she writes: “I started with translations, and I chose the Polish language, which I learned by chance. After reading the three classic poets of Mickiewicz. Slovak and Krasinsky, I began to translate Mitskevich’s minor poems, but it turned out to be difficult and bad for me. Then I set about prose. "
The first translated experiment of M. A. Beketova - the story of the Polish writer Boleslav Prus “Poet and Life” was published in 1882 by the journal “Herald of Europe ”. A year later, there was published the story of Eliza Orzeszko "Fourteenth." And in the future, she translates the stories of Prus, Ozheshko, Maria Konopnitskaya , Maria Rodzevich , Stanislav Pshibyshevsky , Stefan Zheromsky . Separate books are published by The Crusaders by Henryk Senkevich and The Case of Dolengi by Jozef Weissenhof [7] .
Starting with the Polish translation, M. A. Beketova further translates the French and German classics — Balzac , Georges Sand , Maupassant , Alfons Dodet , E.T. Hoffmann, and others for the journal Vestnik Foreign Literature.
In the Soviet years, published several small children's books - “Your Book” (1925), “Fly” (1928), “Burenushka” (1929), “Egorka” (1929) [8] .
Maria Andreevna for 10 years kept a family diary, not yet all published [9] .
Based on it, I published three books of memoirs: “A. Block. Biographical sketch ” (1922),“ Blok and his mother. Memoirs and notes ”(1925) [10] . The third book “Chess. Family Chronicle ”, although it was published in 1930, Beketova continued to work on it all her life. The full book was published only after 60 years [11] . Published articles “On Drawings of A. Blok”, “Gay and Humor of the Bloc”. As the first book about Blok was written, Maria Andreevna writes in the essay “My Editors and Publishers”:
In 1921, when Blok died, among his relatives and friends who made up a committee to perpetuate his memory, the idea arose that he needed to write at least a brief biography of Blok. This work was entrusted to Schegolev, who agreed to take on it. <...> A little later, Schegolev refused to write a biography. None of Al's friends Blok did not want to take up this matter. Just at that time, I often met with Chukovsky, who planned to publish a children's magazine. He knew my work on children's literature and asked me to write something about Blok. At first I did not dare to do this, but then I wrote several pages that Chukovsky approved. The publication of the magazine did not take place, but the experience with Chukovsky prompted me to write a biography of Blok. I shared it with Blok's mother and widow, and they encouraged me. The book was written in six months. My editor was Blok’s mother <...>. She crossed out entire pages from my manuscript, and reworked some places in her own way, since she did not like my calm and smooth style, but when she left the book, she fell in love with her, and in the last months of her life she said that she could not read anything except this book.
An important work in source study was the two-volume book “Letters of Alexander Blok to the Family” (1927-1932), prepared by M. A. Beketova, where she accompanied the poet with 635 unpublished letters. Unpublished book about his father - A. N. Beketov.
Notes
- ↑ Beketova Maria Andreevna // Russian writers. 1800-1917. Biographical Dictionary. - Soviet Encyclopedia, 1989 .-- T. 1 . - S. 204 .
- ↑ Lavrov A.V. M.A. Beketova. Milestones of life in literature . Date of treatment November 1, 2014.
- ↑ From the diary of M. A. Beketova // Literary heritage. - M. , 1982. - T. 92 , no. 3 . - S. 598 .
- ↑ Obituary: M. A. Beketova // Literary newspaper. - M. , 1938. - No. 67 .
- ↑ Grave of M. A. Beketova at the Volkovsky cemetery (Inaccessible link) . Date of treatment December 22, 2014. Archived December 22, 2014.
- ↑ Beketova Maria Andreevna // Brief Literary Encyclopedia / Ch. ed. A.A. Surkov . - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia , 1966 .-- T. 3.
- ↑ Maria Beketova. Works and translations . Date of treatment November 1, 2014.
- ↑ Soviet children's writers. Bibliographic Dictionary (1917-1957) / Comp. A.M. Wittmann, L.G. Oskina. - M .: Detgiz, 1961 .-- S. 37 .-- 431 p.
- ↑ Maria Beketova. In the chains of painful freedom // Roman-newspaper. - M. , 2005. - No. 2 .
- ↑ Beketova M.A. Alexander Blok and his mother // Memoirs of Alexander Blok / Comp. V.P. Enisherlov and S.S. Lesnevsky . - M .: True, 1990 .-- S. 205-344. - 672 p. - 300,000 copies. - ISBN 5-253-00015-1 .
- ↑ Beketova M.A. Shakhmatovo. Family Chronicle // Memoirs of Alexander Blok / Comp. V.P. Enisherlov and S.S. Lesnevsky . - M .: True, 1990 .-- S. 348-570. - 672 p. - 300,000 copies. - ISBN 5-253-00015-1 .
Literature
- Loschinskaya N.V. Blok and his relatives. Last years. According to archival materials // New World. - M. , 1980. - No. 11 .
- Dubyanskaya M. Sunset on the Pilot Island // Aurora. - L. , 1976. - No. 12 .
- Pavlovich N. Memories of the Block // Prometheus. - M. - No. 11 . - S. 219-253 .
- Novikov V.I. Alexander Blok. - M .: Young Guard, 2010 .-- 362 p. - (The life of wonderful people). - ISBN 978-5-235-03362-7 .
- Beketova M.A. Shakhmatovo. Family Chronicle // Memoirs of Alexander Blok / Comp. V.P. Enisherlov and S.S. Lesnevsky . - M .: True, 1990 .-- S. 348-570. - 672 p. - 300,000 = ind. - ISBN 5-253-00015-1 .