(Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya, Buchinskaya by her husband) - Russian writer, author of humorous stories, poems, feuilletons, employee of the famous humorous magazine "Satyricon" (1908-1913) and "New Satyricon" (1913-1918) white emigrant, memoirist; sister of the poetess Mirra Lokhvitskaya (known as the "Russian Sappho") and Lieutenant General Nikolai Alexandrovich Lokhvitsky, a military figure, one of the leaders of the White movement in Siberia.
Family and early years
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The exact date of birth of N.A. Taffy is unknown. Until now, some biographers tend to consider May 9 (21) as her birthday, others on April 24 (May 6), 1872. Initially, on the tombstone at the grave of the writer (Paris, Sainte-Genevieve de Bois cemetery), it was indicated that she was born in May 1875. Nadezhda Alexandrovna herself, like many women, during her lifetime was inclined to deliberately distort her age, therefore, in some official documents of the emigrant period, filled out by her hand, both 1880 and 1885 years of birth appear. With the birthplace of N.A. Teffi-Lokhvitskaya is also not clear. According to some sources, she was born in St. Petersburg, according to others - in the Volyn province, where the estate of her parents was located.
Father, Alexander Vladimirovich Lokhvitsky, was a well-known lawyer, professor, author of many scientific works on forensic science and jurisprudence, publisher of the Judicial Bulletin magazine. About the mother, Varvara Alexandrovna Goyer, it is only known that she was a Russified Frenchwoman, from a family of "old" emigrants, she loved poetry and knew Russian and European literature perfectly. The family remembered well the great-grandfather of the writer - Kondraty Lokhvitsky, a freemason and senator of the era of Alexander I, who wrote mystical poems. From him, the family "poetic lyre" passed to Teffi's older sister, Mirra (Maria) Lokhvitskaya (1869-1905), now completely forgotten, but once a very famous poetess of the Silver Age.
No documentary sources have been preserved about the childhood of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya. We can only judge him by the many funny and sad, but surprisingly bright literary stories about children that fill Teffi's work. Perhaps one of the writer's favorite heroines, the touching liar and dreamer Lisa, bears the autobiographical, collective features of the Lokhvitsky sisters.
Everyone in the family was fond of literature. And little Nadia was no exception. She loved Pushkin and Balmont, read Leo Tolstoy and even went to him in Khamovniki with a request "not to kill" Prince Bolkonsky, to make appropriate changes to "War and Peace". But, as we learn from the story “My First Tolstoy”, when she appeared before the writer in his house, the girl was embarrassed and only dared to hand Lev Nikolaevich a photo for an autograph.
It is known that the Lokhvitsky sisters, each of whom showed creative abilities early, agreed to enter literature by seniority in order to avoid envy and rivalry. Mary was the first to do it. It was assumed that Nadezhda would follow the example of her older sister after she completed her literary career, but life decreed a little differently. The poems of Mirra (Maria) Lokhvitskaya had an unexpectedly quick, stunning success. In 1896, the first collection of poems by the poetess was published, awarded the Pushkin Prize.
According to contemporaries, in the late 90s of the 19th century, Mirra Lokhvitskaya acquired the status of perhaps the most prominent figure among the poets of her generation. She turned out to be practically the only representative of the poetic community of her time who possessed what would later be called "commercial potential". Collections of her poems were not stale in bookstores, but snapped up by readers like hot cakes.
With such success, the younger Lokhvitskaya would only have to "bask in the shadow" of her sister's literary glory, so Nadezhda was in no hurry to fulfill the youthful "contract".
According to the few testimonies about the life of N.A. Teffy's biographers managed to establish that the future writer, having barely finished her studies at the gymnasium, immediately got married. Her chosen one was a graduate of the Faculty of Law Vladislav Buchinsky, a Pole by nationality. Until 1892, he served as a judge in Tikhvin, then left the service, and the Buchinsky family lived on his estate near Mogilev. In 1900, when the couple already had two daughters (Valeria and Elena) and a son, Janek, Nadezhda Alexandrovna, on her own initiative, separated from her husband and left for St. Petersburg to start her literary career.
The beginning of the creative path
It is hard to imagine, but the "pearl of Russian humor", sparkling, unlike anyone else, Teffi modestly debuted as a poetess in the Sever magazine. On September 2, 1901, her poem "I had a dream, crazy and beautiful ..." appeared on the pages of the magazine, signed by her maiden name - Lokhvitskaya.
Almost no one noticed this debut. Mirra also published for a long time in the Sever, and two poetesses under the same last name are too many not only for one magazine, but also for one St. Petersburg ...
In 1910, after the death of her famous sister, Nadezhda Alexandrovna, under the name of Teffi, published the collection of poems "Seven Lights", which is usually mentioned only as a fact in the biography of the writer or as her creative failure.
V. Bryusov wrote a murderous review on the collection, calling Mrs. Teffi's "Seven Fire Stones" a "fake necklace":
However, as noted by some foreign researchers of N.A. Teffi, the first collection of poetry is very important for understanding the ideas and images of all subsequent work of the writer, her literary and later philosophical searches.
But Teffi entered the history of Russian literature not as a symbolist poet, but as the author of humorous stories, short stories, feuilletons, which outlived their time and remained forever beloved by the reader.
Since 1904, Teffi has declared herself as a writer in the capital's "Birzhevye Vedomosti". “This newspaper castigated mainly the city fathers, who ate from the public pie. I helped scourging,” she says about her first newspaper feuilletons.
The pseudonym Teffi was first signed by the one-act play The Women's Question, staged at the Maly Theater in St. Petersburg in 1907.
There are several versions about the origin of the pseudonym. Many tend to believe that Teffi is just the name of a girl, a character in R. Kipling's famous fairy tale "How the First Letter Was Written." But the writer herself in the story “Pseudonym” explained in great detail, with her usual humor, that she wanted to hide the authorship of “female needlework” (the play) under the name of a certain fool - fools, they say, are always happy. The “ideal” fool, according to Nadezhda Alexandrovna, was her friend (presumably the servant of the Lokhvitskys) Stepan. The family called him Steffy. The first letter was dropped out of delicacy. After the successful premiere of the play, a journalist who was preparing an interview with the author inquired about the origin of the pseudonym and suggested that it was from Kipling's poem ("Taffy was a Walesman / Taffy was a thief ..."). The writer happily agreed.
The topical and witty publications of Teffi immediately fell in love with the reading public. There was a time when she collaborated at once in several periodicals with a directly opposite political orientation. Her poetic feuilletons in Birzhevye Vedomosti evoked a positive response from Emperor Nicholas II, and humorous essays and poems in the Bolshevik newspaper Novaya Zhizn delighted Lunacharsky and Lenin. However, Teffi parted ways with the "leftists" rather quickly. Her new creative take-off was associated with work in the "Satyricon" and "New Satyricon" by A. Averchenko. Teffi was published in the magazine from the first issue, published in April 1908, until the publication was banned in August 1918.
However, it was not newspaper publications and not even humorous stories in the best satirical magazine in Russia that allowed Teffi to “wake up famous” one day. Real fame came to her after the release of the first book, Humorous Stories, which was a resounding success. The second collection raised the name of Teffi to new heights and made her one of the most widely read writers in Russia. Until 1917, new collections of short stories were regularly published (“And it became so ...”, “Smoke without fire”, “Nothing of the kind”, “Inanimate beast”), already published books were repeatedly reprinted.
Teffi's favorite genre is a miniature based on a description of a minor comic incident. She sent an epigraph from B. Spinoza's "Ethics" to her two-volume edition, which accurately defines the tone of many of her works: “For laughter is joy, and therefore good in itself.”
On the pages of his books, Teffi represents a wide variety of types: high school students, students, small employees, journalists, eccentrics and bunglers, adults and children - a small person, completely absorbed in his inner world, family troubles, and the little things of life. No political cataclysms, wars, revolutions, class struggle. And in this, Teffi is very close to Chekhov, who once noticed that if the world perishes, it will not be from wars and revolutions at all, but from petty domestic troubles. The person in her stories really suffers from these important “trifles”, and everything else remains for him illusory, elusive, sometimes simply incomprehensible. But, ironically over the natural weaknesses of a person, Teffi never humiliates him. She earned a reputation as a witty, observant, and good-natured writer. It was believed that she was distinguished by a subtle understanding of human weaknesses, kindness and compassion for her unlucky characters.
The stories and humorous scenes that appeared under the signature of Teffi were so popular that in pre-revolutionary Russia there were Teffi spirits and sweets.
At the turning point
Teffi, like the majority of the Russian liberal-democratic intelligentsia, perceived the February Revolution with enthusiasm, but the events that followed it and the October Revolution left the most difficult impressions in the writer's soul.
Rejection, if not complete rejection of the harsh realities of post-revolutionary Soviet reality - in every line of Teffi's humorous works of the period 1917-1918. In June-July 1917, Teffi wrote the feuilletons “A Little Bit About Lenin”, “We Believe”, “We Waited”, “Deserters”, etc. Teffi feuilletons are consonant with “Untimely Thoughts” by M. Gorky and “Cursed Days” by I. Bunin. They have the same concern for Russia. She, like most Russian writers, had to very quickly become disillusioned with the freedom that the February Revolution brought with it. Everything that happens after July 4, 1917, Teffi considers how "a great triumphal procession of illiterate fools and conscious criminals."
She does not spare the Provisional Government, depicting the complete collapse of the army, chaos in industry, the disgusting work of transport and post offices. She is convinced that if the Bolsheviks come to power, arbitrariness, violence, rudeness will reign, and horses will sit with them in the Senate. "Lenin, talking about the meeting, which was attended by Zinoviev, Kamenev and five horses, will say: - There were eight of us."
And so it happened.
Until the closing of the New Satyricon, Teffi continues to collaborate on its editorial board. One of her last poems in the magazine is called "Good Red Guard". It is accompanied by an epigraph: “One of the people's commissars, speaking of the valor of the Red Guards, told an incident when a Red Guard met an old woman in the forest and did not offend her. From newspapers.
Needless to say, such “works” in Soviet Russia could have paid not only with freedom, but also with life.
“To the cape of joy, to the rocks of sorrow ...”
In some of the first biographies of Teffi, written by Russian researchers in the era of “perestroika”, it is very shyly said that the writer allegedly accidentally, succumbing to general panic, left revolutionary Petrograd and ended up on the territory of the Whites. Then, just as accidentally and thoughtlessly, she boarded a steamer in one of the Black Sea ports and went to Constantinople.
In fact, as for most emigrants, the decision to flee from the “Bolshevik paradise” was for Teffi-Lokhvitskaya not so much an accident as a necessity. After the closure of the magazine "New Satyricon" by the authorities, in the fall of 1918, N.A. Teffi, together with A. Averchenko, left Petrograd for Kyiv, where their public performances were to take place. After a year and a half of wandering in the Russian south (Kyiv, Odessa, Novorossiysk, Yekaterinodar), the writer evacuated with great difficulty to Constantinople, and then reached Paris.
Judging by her book "Memoirs", Teffi was not going to leave Russia. But who among the one and a half million Russians, suddenly thrown into a foreign land by a wave of revolution and the Civil War, was truly aware of the fact that he was going into lifelong exile? The poet and actor A. Vertinsky, who returned in 1943, very insincerely explained his decision to emigrate by “youthful frivolity”, a desire to see the world. There was no need for Taffy to prevaricate: “The trickle of blood seen in the morning at the gates of the commissariat, slowly creeping a trickle across the sidewalk, cuts off the road of life forever. You can't get over it. You can't go any further. You can turn around and run…”
Of course, Teffi, like tens of thousands of refugees, did not leave hope for a speedy return to Moscow. Although Nadezhda Alexandrovna determined her attitude to the October Revolution long ago: “Of course, I was not afraid of death. I was afraid of angry mugs with a lantern aimed directly at my face, stupid idiotic malice. Cold, hunger, darkness, the clatter of rifle butts on the parquet floor, screams, crying, shots and someone else's death. I'm so tired of all this. I didn't want it anymore. I couldn't take it anymore"
Those pages of Teffi's Memoirs, where she talks about her farewell to her homeland, are permeated with a feeling of nagging pain. On the ship, during quarantine (transports with Russian refugees were often kept on the roadstead of Constantinople for several weeks), the famous poem “To the Cape of Joy, to the Rocks of Sadness…” was written. Poem by N.A. Teffi subsequently became widely known as one of the songs performed by A. Vertinsky, and was almost the anthem of all Russian exiles:
Emigration
Exceptional success accompanied Teffi almost to the end of her long life. Her books continued to be published in Berlin and Paris, the writer delighted readers with new works, and continued to laugh through her tears at the greatest Russian tragedy. Perhaps this laughter allowed many yesterday's compatriots not to lose themselves in a foreign land, breathed new life into them, gave them hope. After all, if a person is still able to laugh at himself, then all is not lost ...
Already in the first issue of the Russian Parisian newspaper Latest News (April 27, 1920), Teffi's story "Kefer?" was published. The phrase of his hero, an old refugee general, who, looking around in confusion at a Parisian square, mutters: “All this is good ... but que faire? Fer-to-ke? ”, For a long time became a catch phrase, a constant refrain of emigrant life.
In the twenties and thirties, Teffi's stories did not leave the pages of the most prominent emigre publications. It is published in the newspapers Latest News, Common Cause, Vozrozhdenie, in the journals Coming Russia, Link, Russian Notes, Modern Notes, etc. Annually, until 1940, collections of her stories and books: “Lynx”, “About tenderness”, “Town”, “Adventurous romance”, “Memoirs”, collections of poems, plays.
In the prose and dramaturgy of Teffi during the period of emigration, sad, even tragic motifs are noticeably intensified. “They were afraid of the Bolshevik death - and died a death here,- said in one of her first Parisian miniatures "Nostalgia" (1920). - ... We think only about what is now there. We are only interested in what comes from there.”
The tone of Teffi's story increasingly combines hard and reconciled notes. Nostalgia and Sorrow are the main motifs of her work in the 1920s and 40s. In the view of the writer, the difficult time that her generation is going through has not changed the eternal law that says that “life itself ... laughs as much as it cries”: sometimes it is impossible to distinguish fleeting joys from sorrows that have become habitual.
The tragedy of both the "older" and "younger" generations of Russian emigration found expression in the poignant stories "May Beetle", "The Day", "Lapushka", "Markita" and others.
In 1926, Teffi's collections Life and Collar, Daddy, In a Foreign Land, Nothing Like It (Kharkov), Parisian Stories, Cyrano de Bergerac, and others were published in the USSR.
Reprinting Teffi's stories without her permission, the compilers of these publications tried to present the author as a humorist, entertaining the layman, as a writer of everyday life. "the fetid ulcers of emigration." For Soviet editions of works, the writer did not receive a penny. This caused a sharp rebuff - Teffi's article "Attention of thieves!" (“Renaissance”, 1928, July 1), in which she publicly forbade the use of her name in her homeland. After that, in the USSR, Teffi was forgotten for a long time, but in the Russian Diaspora its popularity only grew.
Even during the general crisis of the publishing industry in the mid-late 1920s, Russian publishers willingly took Teffi's works without fear of commercial failures: her books were always bought. Before the war, Nadezhda Alexandrovna was considered one of the highest paid authors, and, unlike many of her colleagues in the literary workshop, she did not live in poverty in a foreign land.
According to the memoirs of V. Vasyutinskaya-Marcade, who knew well about Teffi's life in Paris, she had a very decent apartment of three large rooms with a spacious entrance hall. The writer was very fond of and knew how to receive guests: “The house was put on a master's foot, in St. Petersburg. There were always flowers in the vases, in all cases of life she kept the tone of a secular lady.
ON THE. Teffi not only wrote, but also in the most active way helped her compatriots, known and unknown, thrown by the wave onto a foreign shore. Collected money for the memory fund of F.I. Chaliapin in Paris and to create a library named after A.I. Herzen in Nice. I read my memoirs at the evenings in memory of the departed Sasha Cherny and Fyodor Sologub. She performed at the “evenings of help” for fellow writers living in poverty. She did not like public speaking in front of a large audience, for her it was torment, but when she was asked, she did not refuse anyone. It was a holy principle - to save not only yourself, but also others.
In Paris, the writer lived for about ten years in a civil marriage with Pavel Andreevich Tikston. Half Russian, half English, the son of an industrialist who once owned a factory near Kaluga, he fled Russia after the Bolsheviks came to power. Nadezhda was loved and happy, how happy a person can be, torn from his native soil, torn from the elements of his native language. Pavel Andreevich had money, but they disappeared when the world crisis broke out. He could not survive this, he had a stroke, and Nadezhda Alexandrovna patiently looked after him until the last hour.
After the death of Theakston, Taffy seriously considered leaving literature and taking up sewing dresses or starting to make hats, as her heroines from the story “The Town” did. But she continued to write, and creativity allowed her to "stay afloat" until the Second World War.
last years of life
Throughout the war, Teffi lived without a break in France. Under the occupation regime, her books ceased to be published, almost all Russian publications were closed, there was nowhere to be printed. In 1943, even an obituary appeared in the New York "New Journal": the writer's literary death was erroneously rushed to be replaced by physical death. She later joked: “The news of my death was very strong. They say that in many places (for example, in Morocco) memorial services were served for me and wept bitterly. And at that time I ate Portuguese sardines and went to the cinema ". Good humor did not leave her in these terrible years.
In the book "All about love" (Paris, 1946). Teffi finally goes into the sphere of lyrics, colored with light sadness. Her creative searches largely coincide with the searches of I. Bunin, who in the same years worked on the book of stories "Dark Alleys". The collection "All About Love" can be called an encyclopedia of one of the most mysterious human feelings. A variety of female characters and different types of love coexist on its pages. According to Teffi, love is the choice of the cross: “Which one will fall out to!”. Most often, she portrays a love-deceiver that flashes for a moment with a bright flash, and then for a long time plunges the heroine into dreary hopeless loneliness.
Nadezhda Alexandrovna Teffi, indeed, completed her career in need and loneliness. The war separated her from her family. The eldest daughter, Valeria Vladislavovna Grabovskaya, a translator, a member of the Polish government in exile, lived with her mother in Angers during the war, but then was forced to flee to England. Having lost her husband in the war, she worked in London and was in great need herself. The youngest, Elena Vladislavovna, a dramatic actress, remained to live in Poland, which at that time was already part of the Soviet camp.
The appearance of Teffi in recent years is captured in the memoirs of A. Sedykh "N.A. Teffi in letters." Still the same witty, graceful, secular, she tried her best to resist illnesses, occasionally attended emigrant evenings and opening days, maintained close relations with I. Bunin, B. Panteleymonov, N. Evreinov, quarreled with Don Aminado, hosted A. Kerensky. She continued to write a book of memoirs about her contemporaries (D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, F. Sologub, etc.), published in the New Russian Word and Russkiye Novosti, but felt worse and worse. Irritated by the rumor started by the employees of Russian Thought that Teffi had accepted Soviet citizenship. After the end of World War II, they really called her in the USSR and even, congratulating her on the New Year, wished her success in "activities for the good of the Soviet Motherland."
Teffi refused all offers. Remembering her flight from Russia, she once bitterly joked that she was afraid: in Russia, she could be met by a poster “Welcome, Comrade Teffi”, and Zoshchenko and Akhmatova would hang on the poles supporting him.
At the request of A. Sedykh, a friend of the writer and editor of the New Russian Word in New York, the Parisian millionaire and philanthropist S. Atran agreed to pay a modest lifetime pension to four elderly writers. Among them was Taffy. Nadezhda Alexandrovna sent Sedykh her autographed books for sale to wealthy people in New York. For a book in which the writer's dedicatory autograph was pasted, they paid from 25 to 50 dollars.
In 1951, Atran died, and the payment of the pension ceased. Books with the autographs of the Russian writer were not bought by the Americans; the elderly woman was unable to perform at the evenings, earning money.
“Due to an incurable disease, I must certainly die soon. But I never do what I have to. Here I live, ”Teffi admits with irony in one of his letters.
In February 1952, her last book, Earth's Rainbow, was published in New York. In the last collection, Teffi completely abandoned the sarcasm and satirical intonations that were frequent both in her early prose and in the works of the 1920s. There is a lot of "autobiographical", real in this book, which allows us to call it the last confession of a great humorist. She once again rethinks the past, writes about her earthly sufferings of the last years of her life and ... finally smiles:
N.A. Teffi died in Paris on October 6, 1952. A few hours before her death, she asked to bring her a mirror and powder. And a small cypress cross, which I once brought from the Solovetsky Monastery and which I ordered to put with me in the coffin. Teffi is buried next to Bunin in the Russian cemetery in Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.
In the USSR, her works were not printed or republished until 1966.
Elena Shirokova
Materials used:
Vasiliev I. Anecdote and tragedy// Teffi N.A. Life-life: Stories. Memoirs.-M.: Politizdat, 1991.- S. 3-20;
Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya (1872-1952) appeared in the press under the pseudonym "Teffi". Father is a well-known St. Petersburg lawyer, publicist, author of works on jurisprudence. Mother is a connoisseur of literature; sisters - Maria (poetess Mirra Lokhvitskaya), Varvara and Elena (wrote prose), the younger brother - all were literary gifted people.
Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya began to write as a child, but her literary debut took place only at the age of thirty, according to a family agreement to enter literature “in turn”. Marriage, the birth of three children, moving from St. Petersburg to the provinces also did not contribute to literature.
In 1900 she separated from her husband and returned to the capital. She first appeared in print with the poem "I had a dream ..." in 1902 in the journal Sever (No. 3), followed by stories in the supplement to the journal Niva (1905).
During the years of the Russian Revolution (1905-1907) he composed topical poems for satirical magazines (parodies, feuilletons, epigrams). At the same time, the main genre of Teffi's work was determined - a humorous story. First, in the newspaper Rech, then in Exchange News, Teffi's literary feuilletons are published regularly - almost weekly, in every Sunday issue, which soon brought her not only fame, but also all-Russian love.
Teffi had the talent to speak on any topic easily and gracefully, with inimitable humor, she knew the "secret of laughing words." M. Addanov admitted that "people of various political views and literary tastes converge on the admiration of Teffi's talent."
In 1910, at the height of his fame, Teffi's two-volume stories and the first collection of poems, Seven Lights, were published. If the two-volume edition was reprinted more than 10 times before 1917, then the modest book of poems remained almost unnoticed against the backdrop of the resounding success of prose.
Teffi's poems were scolded by V. Bryusov for being "literary", but N. Gumilyov praised them for the same. “The poetess speaks not about herself and not about what she loves, but about what she could be and what she could love. Hence the mask that she wears with solemn grace and, it seems, irony,” Gumilev wrote.
The languid, somewhat theatrical poems of Teffi seem to be designed for melodic declamation or created for romance performance, and indeed, A. Vertinsky used several texts for his songs, and Teffi herself sang them with a guitar.
Teffi perfectly felt the nature of stage conventions, she loved the theater, worked for it (she wrote one-act and then multi-act plays - sometimes in collaboration with L. Munstein). Finding herself in exile after 1918, Teffi most of all regretted the loss of the Russian theater: “Of everything that fate deprived me of when it deprived me of my homeland, my biggest loss is the Theater.”
Teffi's books continued to be published in Berlin and Paris, and exceptional success accompanied her until the end of her long life. In exile, she published about twenty books of prose and only two poetry collections: Shamram (Berlin, 1923), Passiflora (Berlin, 1923).
Teffi (real name Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lokhvitskaya, by her husband Buchinskaya; May 09 (21), 1872, St. Petersburg - October 6, 1952, Paris) - Russian writer and poetess, memoirist, translator, author of such famous stories as "Demonic Woman "and" Kefer ". After the revolution, she emigrated. Sister of the poetess Mirra Lokhvitskaya and military figure Nikolai Alexandrovich Lokhvitsky.
Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya was born on May 9 (21), 1872 in St. Petersburg (according to other sources, in the Volyn province) in the family of a lawyer Alexander Vladimirovich Lokhvitsky (1830-1884). She studied at the gymnasium on Liteiny Prospekt.
French obscenity is piquant, while Russian is offensive to the ear.
Teffi Nadezhda Alexandrovna
In 1892, after the birth of her first daughter, she settled with her first husband Vladislav Buchinsky in his estate near Mogilev. In 1900, after the birth of her second daughter Elena and son Janek, she separated from her husband and moved to St. Petersburg, where she began her literary career.
Published since 1901. In 1910, the publishing house "Shipovnik" published the first book of poems "Seven Lights" and the collection "Humorous Stories".
She was known for satirical poems and feuilletons, she was a member of the permanent staff of the Satyricon magazine. Taffy's satire often had a very original character; Thus, the poem "From Mickiewicz" of 1905 is based on the parallel between Adam Mickiewicz's well-known ballad "The Voyevoda" and a specific topical event that took place recently. Teffi's stories were systematically printed by such authoritative Parisian newspapers and magazines as "The Coming Russia", "Link", "Russian Notes", "Modern Notes". Teffi's admirer was Nicholas II, sweets were named after Teffi. At the suggestion of Lenin, the stories of the 1920s, which described the negative aspects of emigre life, were published in the USSR in the form of pirated collections until the writer made a public accusation.
After the closure of the Russian Word newspaper in 1918, where she worked, Teffi went to Kyiv and Odessa with literary performances. This trip took her to Novorossiysk, from where she went to Turkey in the summer of 1919. In the autumn of 1919 she was already in Paris, and in February 1920 two of her poems appeared in a Parisian literary magazine, and in April she organized a literary salon. In 1922-1923 she lived in Germany.
From the mid-1920s, she lived in a de facto marriage with Pavel Andreevich Tikston (d. 1935).
She died on October 6, 1952 in Paris, two days later she was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris and buried in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.
For an inexperienced reader, the name of Nadezhda Teffi does not say much. Unfortunately, the literary knowledge of the majority is limited by the school curriculum, and Nadezhda Alexandrovna was undeservedly not included in it.
Although at one time she was considered the most popular writer, she was dubbed the “queen of Russian humor”, perfumes and sweets were named after this woman, and among her admirers were prominent political figures - Grigory Rasputin, Vladimir Lenin and even Emperor Nicholas II. So, once he was asked which of the Russian writers he would like to see in the anniversary collection in honor of the 300th anniversary of the reign of the Romanov dynasty, to which the sovereign exclaimed: “One Teffi!”
In honor of the fool
From an early age, Nadia knew that she would connect her life with literary work. When she was 13, she went to Leo Tolstoy. The girl wanted to ask the writer to make changes to the novel "War and Peace" - not to let Andrei Bolkonsky die. At the meeting, however, she was confused and could not voice her request.All the children in the Lokhvitsky family wrote. So, the elder sister of Nadezhda Alexandrovna became famous at the turn of the century, the poetess Mirra Lokhvitskaya, she also opened the way to the world of literature for Nadia, who also began with poetry. Her first poem was published in 1901, still under her real name.
But Nadezhda Alexandrovna became famous thanks to her humorous stories and feuilletons, and under the mysterious pseudonym Teffi.
Where did this surname come from? It turned out that the writer approached the choice of a creative name with humor.
Nadezhda Aleksandrovna became famous under the pseudonym Teffi. Photo: Public Domain
“I wrote a one-act play, but I didn’t know at all what to do in order for this play to get on stage. Everyone around said that it was absolutely impossible, that one must have connections in the theatrical world and one must have a major literary name, otherwise the play would not only not be staged, but would never be read. Here is where I thought about it. I did not want to hide behind a male pseudonym. Cowardly and cowardly. It is better to choose something incomprehensible, neither this nor that. But what? You need a name that would bring happiness. The best name is some fool - fools are always happy.
For fools, of course, it was not. I knew a lot of them. But if you choose, then something excellent. And then I remembered one fool, really excellent, and in addition one who was lucky. His name was Stepan, and his family called him Steffi. Having discarded the first letter out of delicacy (so that the fool would not be conceited), I decided to sign my little piece “Teffi” and sent it directly to the directorate of the Suvorinsky Theater.
Fed up with glory
Teffi also treated her fame with irony. She recalled how they brought her a box of newly released chocolates with her name.“I immediately rushed to the phone - showing off to my friends, inviting them to try Teffi sweets. I called and called on the phone, calling guests, in a fit of pride, pissing sweets. And she came to her senses only when she emptied almost the entire three-pound box. And then I got confused. I gorged myself on my fame to the point of nausea and immediately recognized the other side of her medal.
Nadezhda Teffi is considered the first Russian humorist, but she demonstrated a great sense of humor not only in her works, but also in life.
Contemporaries told how once Ivan Bunin allowed himself an indiscreet phrase addressed to her: “Nadezhda Alexandrovna! I kiss your hands and other things! To which Teffi, without thinking for a second, briskly replied: “Ah, thank you, Ivan Alekseevich. Thanks for the stuff! No one has kissed them for a long time!”
Dogs on the Seine
Nadezhda Teffi in exile. Photo: Public Domain / P. Shumov
However, Nadezhda Alexandrovna herself was against laughter in its purest form. Her satire has always coexisted with sadness. Here is how she herself explained her work: “I was born in St. Petersburg in the spring, and, as you know, our St. Petersburg spring is very changeable: sometimes the sun shines, sometimes it rains. Therefore, I, like on the pediment of the ancient Greek theater, have two faces: laughing and crying.
Tragic notes appear in her works more and more during emigration - in 1919 Teffi fled from Soviet Russia to Paris.
“Of course, I was not afraid of death. I was afraid of angry mugs with a lantern aimed directly at my face, stupid idiotic malice. Cold, hunger, darkness, the clatter of rifle butts on the parquet floor, screams, crying, shots and someone else's death. I'm so tired of all this. I didn't want it anymore. I couldn't take it anymore."
She was very upset by the break with her homeland.
“The ship is trembling, black smoke is spreading. With my eyes wide, to the cold in them, I look open. And I won't leave. I broke my taboo and looked back. And now, like Lot's wife, she froze, dumbfounded forever and forever I will see how quietly, quietly my land is leaving me ”(“ Memoirs ”, 1932).
“They were afraid of the Bolshevik death - and died a death here ... We only think about what is now there. We are only interested in what comes from there” (“Nostalgia”, 1920).
Teffi is buried in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve des Bois near Paris. Photo: Public Domain
In Paris, Teffi is also quickly becoming popular among Russian emigrants. One after another, her books are included - “So We Lived”, “Town”, “Witch”, “On Tenderness” and others - about 30 in total.
Remaining true to herself and her sense of humor, Nadezhda Alexandrovna, nevertheless, jokes not at all cheerfully.
“A river flowed through the town. In ancient times, the river was called Sekvana, then Seine, and when the town was founded on it, the inhabitants began to call it "their Nevka." But they still remembered the old name, as indicated by the existing saying: “we live like dogs on the Seine - it’s bad!”
Teffi survived the occupation of Paris by the Nazis in the city on the Seine - she could not leave due to illness. The writer had to starve and live in poverty, but she refused to cooperate with collaborators.
In the post-war years, Teffi took up writing memoirs about her famous contemporaries, whom she happened to meet. Among them are Merezhkovsky, Balmont, Sologub, Repin, Kuprin, Severyanin…
Ideas about Russian literature are most often formed in a person by the course of the school curriculum. It cannot be argued that this knowledge is so completely wrong. But they reveal the subject far from fully. Many significant names and phenomena remained outside the school curriculum. For example, an ordinary schoolchild, even having passed an exam in literature with an excellent mark, is often completely unaware of who Teffi Nadezhda Alexandrovna is. But quite often these so-called second-line names deserve our special attention.
View from the other side
The versatile and bright talent of Nadezhda Alexandrovna Teffi is of great interest to everyone who is not indifferent to the turning point in Russian history in which she happened to live and create. This writer can hardly be attributed to the literary stars of the first magnitude, but the image of the era without her would be incomplete. And of particular interest to us is the view of Russian culture and history from the side of those who found themselves on the other side of its historical divide. And outside of Russia, in a figurative expression, there was a whole spiritual continent of Russian society and Russian culture. Nadezhda Teffi, whose biography turned out to be split into two halves, helps us to better understand those Russian people who consciously did not accept the revolution and were its consistent opponents. They had good reasons for this.
Nadezhda Teffi: biography against the background of the era
The literary debut of Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya took place at the beginning of the twentieth century with short poetic publications in the capital's periodicals. Basically, these were satirical poems and feuilletons on topics that worried the public. Thanks to them, Nadezhda Teffi quickly gained popularity and became famous in both capitals of the Russian Empire. This literary fame acquired in his younger years turned out to be surprisingly stable. Nothing could undermine the public's interest in Teffi's work. Her biography includes wars, revolutions and long years of emigration. The literary authority of the poetess and writer remained indisputable.
Creative alias
The question of how Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya became Nadezhda Teffi deserves special attention. The adoption of a pseudonym was a necessary measure for her, since it was difficult to publish under her real name. Nadezhda's older sister, Mirra Lokhvitskaya, began her literary career much earlier, and her surname has already become famous. Nadezhda Teffi herself, whose biography is widely replicated, mentions several times in her notes about her life in Russia that she chose the name of a familiar fool, whom everyone called "Steffy", as a pseudonym. One letter had to be shortened so that a person would not have an unreasonable reason for pride.
Poems and humorous stories
The first thing that comes to mind when getting acquainted with the creative heritage of the poetess is the famous saying of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - "Brevity is the sister of talent." The early works of Teffi fully correspond to him. Poems and feuilletons of the regular author of the popular magazine "Satyricon" were always unexpected, bright and talented. The public constantly expected a sequel, and the writer did not disappoint the people. It is very difficult to find another such writer, whose readers and admirers were such different people as the Sovereign Emperor Autocrat Nicholas II and the leader of the world proletariat Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. It is quite possible that Nadezhda Teffi would have remained in the memory of her descendants as the author of light humorous reading, if not for the whirlwind of revolutionary events that covered the country.
Revolution
The beginning of these events, which changed Russia beyond recognition for several years, can be seen in the stories and essays of the writer. The intention to leave the country did not arise at one moment. At the end of 1918, Teffi, together with the writer Arkady Averchenko, even makes a trip around the country, blazing in the fire of civil war. During the tour, performances in front of the public were planned. But the scale of the unfolding events was clearly underestimated. The trip dragged on for about a year and a half, and every day it became more and more obvious that there was no turning back. The Russian land under their feet was rapidly shrinking. Ahead was only the Black Sea and the way through Constantinople to Paris. It was done together with the retreating units by Nadezhda Teffi. Her biography later continued abroad.
Emigration
Existence far from the Motherland turned out to be simple and problem-free for few people. However, cultural and literary life in the world of Russian emigration was in full swing. In Paris and Berlin, periodicals were published and books were printed in Russian. Many writers were able to develop at full power only in exile. The socio-political upheavals experienced have become a very peculiar stimulus for creativity, and the forced separation from their native country has become a constant theme of emigre works. The work of Nadezhda Teffi is no exception here. Memories of the lost Russia and literary portraits of the figures of the Russian emigration for many years become the dominant topics of her books and articles in periodicals.
Curious can be called the historical fact that the stories of Nadezhda Teffi in 1920 were published in Soviet Russia on the initiative of Lenin himself. In these notes, she spoke very negatively about the mores of some emigrants. However, the Bolsheviks were forced to consign the popular poetess to oblivion after they got acquainted with her opinion about themselves.
Literary portraits
Notes dedicated to various figures of Russian politics, culture and literature, both those who remained in their homeland, and who, by the will of historical circumstances, found themselves outside it, are the pinnacle of Nadezhda Teffi's work. Memories of this kind always attract attention. Memoirs about famous people are simply doomed to success. And Nadezhda Teffi, whose brief biography is conditionally divided into two large parts - life at home and in exile, was personally acquainted with very many prominent figures. And she had something to say about them to descendants and contemporaries. The portraits of these figures are interesting precisely because of the personal attitude of the author of the notes to the depicted persons.
The pages of Teffi's memoir prose give us the opportunity to get acquainted with such historical figures as Vladimir Lenin, Alexander Kerensky. With outstanding writers and artists - Ivan Bunin, Alexander Kuprin, Ilya Repin, Leonid Andreev, Zinaida Gippius and Vsevolod Meyerhold.
Return to Russia
The life of Nadezhda Teffi in exile was far from prosperous. Despite the fact that her stories and essays were willingly published, literary fees were unstable and ensured an existence somewhere on the verge of a living wage. During the period of the fascist occupation of France, the life of Russian emigrants became much more complicated. Many well-known figures faced the question of Nadezhda Alexandrovna Teffi belonged to that part of the Russian people abroad who categorically rejected cooperation with collaborationist structures. And such a choice doomed a person to complete poverty.
The biography of Nadezhda Teffi ended in 1952. She was buried in the suburbs of Paris at the famous Russian cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois. She was destined to return to Russia only in her own. They began to be massively published in the Soviet periodical press in the late eighties of the twentieth century, during the period of perestroika. The books of Nadezhda Teffi were also published in separate editions. They were well received by the reading public.
