Kovalev, Ivan Fedorovich

Born March 31, 1885 in a peasant family in the village of Shadrino, Semenovsky district of the Nizhny Novgorod province ^{[1] [3]} . He graduated from a four-year rural school ^[4] , having received a commendation sheet and the book “ Pushkin 's Works” for good study. At the end of school, he asked to study further, but his father forbade, saying that it was enough for him that his son could write and read a letter. Not even the request of the former teacher helped. Remaining in his native village when he turned 21, Ivan Kovalev decided to marry the forester’s daughter, but at the last moment, when everything was already ready for the wedding, he opposed this marriage and forcibly married his daughter with another ^[5] .

He served in the tsarist army , was a peddler , participated in the First World War ^[6] . During the war he was captured, was stolen to Germany and only after 6 years - in 1920, was able to return to his homeland ^[3] . In captivity, in order to be able to write to his relatives about food problems in the camp, what the Germans forbade to do, he came up with his own language, which, in his words, “no peoples speak”. His plan was a success, his relatives realized that they meant such strange words in his letter as chilo (bad) or sumar (bread), and soon they began to send him provisions ^[5] .

After 1920, he was a collective farm foreman, groom, was in charge of the Shadrinsky reading hut ^[7] . In 1931 he met folklorists ^[8] . In 1936 he was invited to Moscow , where his tales were recorded. There he met with Martha Semenovna Kryukova ^[9] , the famous White Sea storyteller. In 1938, Ivan Kovalev was admitted to the USSR Writers Union ^[3] . In 1941, the largest collection of fairy tales by Kovalev ^{[8] was released} .

During the Great Patriotic War, Kovalev went to the front, spoke to fighters in combat positions ^[3] .

He died on February 23, 1965 in Gorky ^[1] .

The repertoire of Ivan Kovalev was formed under the influence of various sources: the Shadrino oral-poetic tradition, the tales of his grandmother and mother, Old Believers legends and traditions, the tales of the daughter of a German manufacturer, stories of the Ural Cossacks and others. However, despite this variety of sources, its repertoire is primarily based on a single understanding of reality ^[4] .

At the same time, Kovalev’s large repertoire is not equivalent in its artistic value: it contains both highly artistic poetic tales and tasteless compositions such as “Sukhaty” or “pale” versions of traditional fairy-tale plots. These tales are not equivalent in terms of their specific weight in the repertoire of Ivan Kovalev. At the center of his work are traditional fantastic and adventurous tales, while animal tales are few in number due to the fact that he himself considered them childish and of little interest ^{[3] [4]} .

A distinctive feature of the tales of Ivan Kovalev is the presence in them of a clear motivation for the actions of all heroes. Each characteristic that he endowed with his heroes, even if insignificant, is reflected in the narrative, influencing not only the actions of the characters, but also their attitude to what is happening ^[4] . Also, the characteristic features of his tales often include multi-plot, complex composition and psychologism ^[3] .

• Tales of I.F. Kovalev Annals. Book eleven. Record and comment Hoffman E., Mintz S. / Ed. Yu.M. Sokolov - M., 1941.

• Culture and Art - Storyteller Ivan Fedorovich KOVALEV (1885 - 1965) (Neopr.) . nastyha.ru. Date of treatment September 4, 2017.