Biography of Nadezhda Teffi. Nadezhda Teffi biography and creativity

😉 Greetings to dear readers and visitors of the site! Gentlemen, in the article "Teffi: biography, interesting facts and videos" - about the life of the Russian writer and poetess, who was adored by Emperor Nicholas II.

It is unlikely that any of the Russian writers or female writers of the beginning of the last century could boast that they enjoyed the taste of chocolates with their own name and a colorful portrait on the wrapper.

It could only be Teffi. Nee Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya. She had a rare gift for noticing funny moments in the everyday life of people and playing them talentedly in her miniature stories. Teffi was proud to be able to give people laughter, which in her eyes was equivalent to a piece of bread given to a beggar.

Teffi: short biography

Nadezhda Aleksandrovna was born in the northern capital of the Russian Empire in the spring of 1872 in a noble family who is fond of literature. From a young age she wrote poetry and stories. In 1907, to attract good luck, she took the pseudonym Teffi.

The ascent to the literary Olympus began with an ordinary poem published in the Sever magazine in 1901. And all-Russian fame fell upon her after the publication of two volumes of "Humorous stories". Emperor Nicholas II himself was proud of such a nugget of his empire.

From 1908 to 1918 in each issue of the magazines "Satyricon" and "New Satyricon" appeared the sparkling fruits of the work of the writer-humorist.

From the personal life of the writer, biographers know little. Teffi has been married twice. The first legal spouse was the Pole Buchinsky. As a result, she broke up with him, despite three children together.

The second alliance with the former banker Tikston was civil and lasted until his death (1935). Teffi sincerely believed that readers were only interested in her work, so she did not cover her personal life in her memoirs.

After the 1917 revolution, the noblewoman Teffi tried to adapt to the new Bolshevik way of life. She even met with the leader of the world proletariat -. But the trickle of blood seen during the summer tour, flowing out of the gates of the commissariat in Odessa, cut her life in two.

Caught up in a wave of emigration, Teffi ended up in Paris in 1920.

A life split in two

In the capital of France, Nadezhda Alexandrovna was surrounded by many talented compatriots: Bunin, Merezhkovsky, Gippius. This brilliant environment fueled her own talent. True, a lot of bitterness was already mingled with humor, which poured into her work from the joyless emigre life around her.

Abroad, Teffi was in great demand. Her creations were published in Paris, Rome, Berlin.

She wrote about emigrants, nature, domestic animals, and a distant homeland. She compiled literary portraits of Russian celebrities with whom she had ever met. Among them: Bunin, Kuprin, Sologub, Gippius.

In 1946, Teffi was offered an offer to return to her homeland, but she remained faithful. To support the elderly and sick writer, one of her millionaire admirers was assigned a small pension.

In 1952, her last book, Earthly Rainbow, was published in the USA, where Teffi summed up life.

Nadezhda Alexandrovna lived to be 80 years old. She left the world, in her perception funny and at the same time tragic, on October 6, 1952. The writer left to posterity a huge number of amazing poems, stories, plays.

Video

In this video additional and interesting information "Teffi: biography of the writer"

Teffi is a writer who has worked in a wide variety of literary genres. Her works were read both by the last Russian tsar and the leader of the world proletariat. Modern readers recognize themselves and their friends in the shopping bourgeoisie and the noblemen suffering from love. The biography of a writer, whose language and characters have not become obsolete for 100 years, is full of mysteries and hoaxes.

Childhood and youth

Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya (the real name and surname of the most successful "satirist in a skirt") was born in the city on the Neva in the spring of 1872. There are debates about the exact date of birth, as well as about how many children there were in the family. It is documented that Nadia had one younger (Lena) and three older (Varya, Lida and Masha) sisters and one older brother (Kolya).

The father of the future writer was a specialist in constitutional law and successfully combined the roles of a lawyer, professor, literary popularizer of jurisprudence, that is, he occupied approximately the same position as 120 years later or. Mother had French roots. When Nadya was 12 years old, the father of the family passed away.

Teffi during the First World War / "Argus" magazine, LiveJournal

Nadine's great-grandfather Konrad (Kondraty) Lokhvitsky wrote mystical poems, and the family legend told about a magical gift that is transmitted only through the male line, and if a lady takes possession of it, she will pay for it with personal happiness. From an early age, the girl loved books and even tried to change the fate of the characters: in her youth, Nadya went to the city and asked the writer not to take his life. The first poems were born to Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya while studying at the gymnasium.

The girl was not a beauty and married the first applicant. The marriage with Vladimir Buchinsky brought Nadezhda two daughters - Leru and Lena and a son, Janek, but the mother of the "demonic woman" turned out to be unfriendly. Having lived to be 28 years old, Lokhvitskaya left her husband. Buchinsky, in revenge, deprived Nadia of communication with children.

Books

Separated from her offspring, Lokhvitskaya, in contrast, did not rush under the train, but returned to her youthful dream of literature and in 1901 made her debut in the magazine "Sever" with the poem "I had a crazy and beautiful dream." By the time the work was published, the sister of the novice writer, Maria, was already a famous poetess who worked under the pseudonym Mirra Lokhvitskaya. Nadezhda thought about the original literary name.

The Lokhvitskys did not accept the October Revolution. Brother Nicholas became an associate, and Nadezhda Aleksandrovna immigrated to Paris through Odessa and Constantinople. Life in a foreign land was not sweet, but Teffi's foresight and decisiveness probably saved the writer from death in the Bolshevik dungeons.

Personal life

The writer tried to remain a mystery and limited journalists' access to their personal lives, and when asked about age, she answered that she felt like 13 years old. It is known that the woman was fond of mysticism and was very fond of cats, especially the last pet, suffering from obesity. In adulthood, Teffi tried to establish communication with grown-up children, but of the three offspring, only the eldest Valeria made contact.

Documentary "Women in Russian History: Teffi"

Readers, eager to meet the queen of Russian-language humor, were disappointed when communicating with Teffi - the idol had a melancholic and irritable character. However, with her fellow writers, the writer was kind and generous. The literary salon, created by Teffi in the French capital, became the center of attraction for Russian emigrants, its regulars were the witty Don Aminado and the prose writer.

The second spouse, the son of the former Kaluga manufacturer Pavel Alexandrovich Tikston, managed to get along with a lady who knew her worth and was very absent-minded in everyday life. Nadezhda Alexandrovna considered her second husband the best man on earth, and when the illness immobilized him, she touchingly looked after her husband. In the last years of the writer's life, philanthropist S. S. Atran took care of her material support.

Death

Rumors about the death of Teffi, who survived the fascist occupation of France, had been floating around long before Nadezhda Alexandrovna passed away. In the 40s of the 20th century, Mikhail Tsetlin published an obituary in memory of the writer. But Teffi died only in 1952, having managed to create essays about familiar celebrities and a cycle of stories about animals before going into eternity.

Wikipedia

The cause of death was an attack of angina pectoris. The grave of Hope Teffi is located in the Parisian cemetery of Saint Genevieve.

Bibliography

• 1910 - Seven Lights
• 1912 - "And it was so"
• 1913 - Eight Miniatures
• 1914 - "Smoke Without Fire"
• 1920 - "This is how they lived"
• 1921 - "Treasures of the Earth"
• 1923 - “Shamran. Songs of the East "
• 1926 - "Instead of Politics"
• 1931 - "Adventure Romance"
• 1931 - Memories
• 1936 - The Witch
• 1938 - "About tenderness"
• 1946 - "All About Love"
• 1952 - "Earthly Rainbow"

Taffy(real name Nadezhda A. Lokhvitskaya, by husband Buchinskaya; April 24 (May 6) 1872, St. Petersburg - October 6, 1952, Paris) - Russian writer and poetess, memoirist, translator, author of such famous stories as "Demon woman" and "Ke fer?"... After the revolution - in exile. Sister of the poetess Mirra Lokhvitskaya and military leader Nikolai Alexandrovich Lokhvitsky.

Biography

Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya was born on April 24 (May 6), 1872 in St. Petersburg (according to other sources in the Volyn province) in the family of lawyer Alexander Vladimirovich Lokhvitsky (-). She studied at the gymnasium on Liteiny Prospect.

She was called the first Russian comedian of the early 20th century, “the queen of Russian humor,” but she was never a supporter of pure humor, she always combined it with sadness and witty observations of life around her. After emigration, satire and humor gradually cease to dominate in her work, observations of life acquire a philosophical character.

Alias

There are several variants of the origin of the pseudonym Teffi.

The first version is set out by the writer herself in the story "Alias"... She did not want to sign her texts with a man's name, as her contemporary writers often did: “I didn't 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. Best of all is the name of some fool - fools are always happy "... Her "I remembered<…>one fool, really excellent and, in addition, one who was lucky, therefore, recognized by fate itself as an ideal fool. His name was Stepan, and his family called him Steffi. Discarding the first letter out of delicacy (so that the fool does not become arrogant) ", writer "I decided to sign my piece" Teffi ""... After the successful premiere of this play, in an interview with a journalist, when asked about the pseudonym, Teffi replied that "This ... the name of one fool ... that is, such a surname"... The journalist noticed that he "They said it was from Kipling"... Teffi, who remembered the Kipling song "Taffy was a walshman / Taffy was a thief ..."(rus. Teffi from Wales, Teffi was a thief ), agreed with this version ..

The same version is voiced by the researcher of creativity Teffi E. Nitraur, indicating the name of a friend of the writer as Stefan and specifying the title of the play - "Women's question", and a group of authors under the general leadership of A.I. Smirnova, attributing the name Stepan to a servant in the Lokhvitskys' house.

Another version of the origin of the pseudonym is offered by the researchers of Teffi E.M. Trubilova and D.D. Nikolaev, in whose opinion the pseudonym for Nadezhda Alexandrovna, who loved hoaxes and jokes, and was also the author of literary parodies, feuilletons, became part of a literary game aimed at creating an appropriate image of the author.

There is also a version that Teffi took her pseudonym because her sister, the poet Mirra Lokhvitskaya, who was called "Russian Sappho", was printed under her real name.

Creation

Before emigration

Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya began to write as a child, but her literary debut took place almost at the age of thirty. Teffi's first publication took place on September 2, 1901 in the magazine "North" - it was a poem "I had a dream, crazy and beautiful ...".

Teffi herself spoke about her debut as follows: “They took my poem and took it to an illustrated magazine, without telling me a word about it. And then they brought the issue of the magazine where the poem was published, which made me very angry. I did not want to be published then, because one of my older sisters, Mirra Lokhvitskaya, had been publishing her poems with success for a long time. It seemed to me something funny if we all get into literature. By the way, that's how it happened ... So - I was unhappy. But when they sent me a fee from the editorial office, it made the most gratifying impression on me. " .

In emigration

In exile, Teffi wrote stories depicting pre-revolutionary Russia, all the same philistine life that she described in collections published in her homeland. Melancholic headline "This is how they lived" unites these stories, reflecting the collapse of the hopes of emigration to return the past, the complete hopelessness of an unsightly life in a foreign country. In the first issue of the newspaper "Latest News" (April 27, 1920) Teffi's story was printed "Ke fer?"(French. "What to do?"), and the phrase of his hero, the old general, who, looking around in bewilderment in the Parisian square, mutters: “This is all good ... but que faire? Fer then ke? ", has become a kind of password for those in exile.

The writer has published in many prominent periodicals of the Russian emigration (Common Cause, Renaissance, Rul, Segodnya, Link, Modern Notes, Firebird). Teffi has released a number of story books - "Lynx" (), "Book of June" (), "About tenderness"() - who showed new facets of her talent, like the plays of this period - "Moment of Destiny" , "Nothing like this"() - and the only experience of the novel - "Adventure Romance"(1931). But she considered her best book to be a collection of stories. "Witch"... The genre of the novel indicated in the title raised doubts among the first reviewers: it was noted that the “soul” of the novel (B. Zaitsev) did not correspond to the title. Modern researchers point to similarities with an adventurous, roguish, courtly, detective novel, as well as a mythic novel.

In the works of Teffi of this time, sad, even tragic motives are noticeably intensified. “They were afraid of the Bolshevik death - and they died here. We only think about what is there now. We are only interested in what comes from there ", - said in one of her first Parisian miniatures "Nostalgia"(). Teffi's optimistic outlook on life will only change in old age. Previously, she called her metaphysical age 13 years, but in one of the last Parisian letters, a bitter one will slip: "All my peers are dying, but I am still living for something ..." .

Teffi planned to write about the heroes of L.N. Tolstoy and M. Cervantes, who were ignored by criticism, but these plans were not destined to come true. On September 30, 1952, Teffi celebrated her name day in Paris, and just a week later she died.

Bibliography

Editions prepared by Teffi

• Seven Lights - SPb .: Rosehip, 1910
• Humorous stories. Book. 1. - SPb .: Rosehip, 1910
• Humorous stories. Book. 2 (Anthropoid). - SPb .: Rosehip, 1911
• And it became so. - SPb .: New Satyricon, 1912
• Carousel. - SPb .: New Satyricon, 1913
• Miniatures and monologues. T. 1. - SPb .: ed. M.G. Kornfeld, 1913
• Eight miniatures. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1913
• Smoke without fire. - SPb .: New Satyricon, 1914
• Nothing of the kind, Pg .: New Satyricon, 1915
• Miniatures and monologues. T. 2. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1915
• And it became so. 7th ed. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1916
• An inanimate beast. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1916
• Yesterday. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1918
• Smoke without fire. 9th ed. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1918
• Carousel. 4th ed. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1918
• Black iris. - Stockholm, 1921
• Treasures of the earth. - Berlin, 1921
• Quiet backwater. - Paris, 1921
• This is how they lived. - Paris, 1921
• Lynx. - Paris, 1923
• Passiflora. - Berlin, 1923
• Shamran. Songs of the East. - Berlin, 1923
• Town. - Paris, 1927
• Book June. - Paris, 1931
• Adventurous romance. - Paris, 1931
• Witch . - Paris, 1936
• About tenderness. - Paris, 1938
• Zigzag. - Paris, 1939
• It's all about love. - Paris, 1946
• Earthly rainbow. - New York, 1952
• Life and collar
• Mitya

Pirate editions

• Instead of politics. Stories. - M.-L .: ZIF, 1926
• Yesterday. Humorous. stories. - Kiev: Cosmos, 1927
• Tango of death. - M .: ZiF, 1927
• Sweet memories. -M.-L .: ZIF, 1927

Collected works

• Collected works [in 7 vols.]. Compiled by and prep. texts by D. D. Nikolaev and E. M. Trubilova. - M .: Lakom, 1998-2005.
• Collected cit .: In 5 volumes - Moscow: TERRA Book Club, 2008

Other

• Ancient history / . - 1909
• Ancient history / General history, processed by "Satyricon". - SPb .: ed. M.G. Kornfeld, 1912

Criticism

The works of Teffi in literary circles were extremely positive. The writer and contemporary Teffi Mikhail Osorgin considered her "One of the most intelligent and sighted modern writers." Ivan Bunin, stingy with praise, called her "Clever and intelligent" and said that her stories, truthfully reflecting life, were written "Great, simple, with great wit, observation and wonderful derision" .

see also

Notes (edit)

1. Nitraur E."Life laughs and cries ..." About the fate and work of Teffi // Teffi. Nostalgia: Short stories; Memories / Comp. B. Averina; Entry. Art. E. Nitraur. - L .: Art. lit., 1989 .-- S. 4-5. - ISBN 5-280-00930-X.
2. Biography of Tzffi
3. The women's gymnasium, opened in 1864, was located on Basseinaya Street (now Nekrasov Street), at house No. 15. In her memoirs, Nadezhda Aleksandrovna noted: “The first time I saw my work in print was when I was thirteen years old. It was an ode written by me for the anniversary of the gymnasium "
4. Teffi (Russian). Literary encyclopedia... Fundamental Electronic Library (1939). Archived from the original on August 25, 2011. Retrieved January 30, 2010.
5. Teffi. Memories // Teffi. Nostalgia: Short stories; Memories / Comp. B. Averina; Entry. Art. E. Nitraur. - L .: Art. lit., 1989 .-- S. 267-446. - ISBN 5-280-00930-X.
6. Don Aminado. The train is on the third track. - New York, 1954 .-- S. 256-267.
7. Teffi. Nickname // Renaissance (Paris). - 1931 .-- December 20.
8. Teffi. Nickname (Russian). Small prose of the Silver Age of Russian literature. Archived from the original on August 25, 2011. Retrieved May 29, 2011.
9. Literature of the Russian Diaspora ("first wave" of emigration: 1920-1940): Study guide: 2 hours, Part 2 / A. I. Smirnova, A. V. Mlechko, S. V. Baranov and others; Under total. ed. Dr. philol. Sciences, prof. A.I.Smirnova. - Volgograd: VolGU Publishing House, 2004 .-- 232 p.
10. Poetry of the Silver Age: an anthology // Foreword, articles and notes by B.S.Akimov. - M .: Rodionov Publishing House, Literature, 2005 .-- 560 p. - (Series "Classics at School"). - S. 420.

Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya was born 9th May(according to other sources - April 26, 1872 in St. Petersburg (according to other sources - in the Volyn province.). The exact date and place of birth of N.A. Teffi are unknown.

Father, Alexander Vladimirovich Lokhvitsky, was a famous lawyer, professor, author of many scientific works on criminalistics and jurisprudence, publisher of the journal "Judicial Bulletin". All that is known about her mother, Varvara Aleksandrovna Goyer, is that she was a Russianized Frenchwoman, from a family of "old" emigrants, 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 very famous poetess of the Silver Age. Teffi studied at the Foundry Women's Gymnasium, which she graduated from in 1890 year... Since childhood, she was fond of classical Russian literature. Her idols were A.S. Pushkin and L.N. Tolstoy, she was interested in modern literature and painting, was friends with the artist Alexander Benois. Also, Teffi was greatly influenced by N.V. Gogol, F.M.Dostoevsky and her contemporaries F. Sologub and A. Averchenko.

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, separated from her husband and moved to St. Petersburg, where she began her literary career.

It is hard to imagine, but "the pearl of Russian humor", sparkling, unlike anyone else Teffi modestly debuted as a poetess in the magazine "Sever". September 2, 1901 her poem "", signed by her maiden name - Lokhvitskaya, appeared on the pages of the magazine. In 1907 To attract good luck, she took the pseudonym Teffi.

In 1910 in the publishing house "Rosehip" published the first book of poems "Seven Lights" and the collection "Humorous stories", thanks to which the writer fell on the all-Russian glory. Emperor Nicholas II himself was proud of such a nugget of his empire.

But Teffi went down in 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 loved by the reader.

Since 1904 Teffi announced herself as a writer in the capital's "Stock Exchange". “This newspaper scourged mainly the fathers of the city, who ate from the public pie. I helped to scourge, ”she will say about her first newspaper feuilletons.

In 1905 her stories were published in the supplement to the Niva magazine.

Satire Teffi often had a very original character: for example, the poem "From Mickiewicz" 1905 year based on a parallel between the well-known ballad by Adam Mitskevich "Voivode" and a specific recent event of the day. Teffi's stories were systematically published by such authoritative Parisian newspapers and magazines as "Coming Russia", "Link", "Russian Notes", "Modern Notes".

During the First Russian Revolution ( 1905-1907) Teffi writes topical poems for satirical magazines (parodies, feuilletons, epigrams). At the same time, the main genre of all her work was determined - a humorous story. First, Teffi's literary feuilletons were published in the Rech newspaper, then in Birzhevye Novosti, which soon brought her all-Russian love.

The pseudonym Teffi was the first to sign the one-act play "", staged at the St. Petersburg Maly Theater in 1907.

The origin of Teffi's alias remains unclear. As indicated by herself, it goes back to the household nickname of the Lokhvitsky servant Stepan (Steffi), but also to the poems of R. Kipling "Taffy was a walesman / Taffy was a thief". The stories and sketches that appeared behind this signature were so popular in pre-revolutionary Russia that there was even Teffi perfume and sweets.

In the pre-revolutionary years, Teffi was very popular. As a regular author of the magazines "Satyricon" and "New Satyricon" (Teffi was published in them from the first issue, published in April 1908 , prior to the banning of this publication in August 1918) and as the author of a two-volume collection of Humorous Stories ( 1910 ), which was followed by several more collections ("And it became so" 1912 , "Carousel", 1913 , "Smoke without fire", 1914 , in 1916- "Life-bye", ""), Teffi has earned a reputation as a writer of witty, observant and good-natured. It was believed that she was distinguished by a subtle understanding of human weaknesses, kindness and compassion for her unlucky characters.

Developments 1917 year are reflected in the essays and stories "The Petrograd Life", "The Heads of Panic" ( 1917 ), "Torgovaya Rus", "Reason on a String", "Street Aesthetics", "In the Market" ( 1918 ), feuilletons "Dog time", "A little about Lenin", "We believe", "Wait", "Deserters" ( 1917 ), "Seeds" ( 1918 ). At the suggestion of Lenin, stories 1920s, which described the negative aspects of emigrant life, were published in the USSR in the form of pirated collections until the writer made a public accusation.

After closing in 1918 newspaper "Russkoe slovo", where Teffi worked, she went with A. Averchenko Teffi to Kiev, where their public performances were to take place, and after a year and a half of wandering in the Russian south (Odessa, Novorossiysk, Yekaterinodar), she reached Paris through Constantinople. Judging by the book "Memoirs", Teffi was not going to leave Russia. The decision was taken spontaneously, unexpectedly for herself: “The trickle of blood seen in the morning at the gates of the commissariat, a trickle slowly creeping across the sidewalk, cuts the road of life forever. You cannot step over it. You can't go any further. You can turn and run. "

Teffi recalls that she was not left with the hope of an early return, although she had defined her attitude to the October Revolution long ago: “Of course, I was not afraid of death. I was afraid of angry mugs with a flashlight pointed right in my face, stupid idiotic anger. Cold, hunger, darkness, knocking of butts on the floor, screams, crying, shots and someone else's death. I'm so tired of it all. I didn't want that anymore. I couldn't take it anymore.

Autumn 1919 she was already in Paris, and in February 1920 two of her poems appeared in a Parisian literary magazine, in April she organized a literary salon ... In 1922-1923 lived in Germany.

Since mid 1920s lived in a de facto marriage with Pavel Andreevich Tikston (d. 1935).

Teffi's books continued to be published in Berlin and Paris, and an exceptional success accompanied her until the end of her long life. In emigration, she published more than a dozen books of prose and only two collections of poetry: "Shamram" (Berlin, 1923 ) and "Passiflora" (Berlin, 1923 ). Depression, melancholy and confusion in these collections are symbolized by the images of a dwarf, a hunchback, a crying swan, a silver death ship, a yearning crane.

In exile, Teffi wrote stories depicting pre-revolutionary Russia, all the same philistine life that she described in collections published in her homeland. The melancholic title "This is how they lived" unites these stories, reflecting the collapse of the emigration's hopes of returning the past, the complete hopelessness of an unsightly life in a foreign country. In the first issue of the newspaper "Latest News" ( April 27, 1920) was published Teffi's story "Ke fer?" (French “What to do?”), and the phrase of his hero, the old general, who, looking around in bewilderment in the Parisian square, mutters: “All this is good ... but que faire? Fer-then-ke? ”, Became a kind of password for those in exile.

The writer was published in many prominent periodicals of the Russian emigration (Common Cause, Renaissance, Rul, Segodnya, Link, Modern Notes, Firebird). Teffi has published a number of books of stories - "Lynx" ( 1923 ), "Book of June" ( 1931 ), "About tenderness" ( 1938 ) - who showed new facets of her talent, as well as the plays of this period - "Moment of Destiny" 1937 , "Nothing like this" ( 1939 ) - and the only experience of the novel is "Adventure Romance" ( 1931 ). The genre of the novel indicated in the title raised doubts among the first reviewers: it was noted that the “soul” of the novel (B. Zaitsev) did not correspond to the title. Modern researchers point to similarities with an adventurous, roguish, courtly, detective novel, as well as a mythic novel. But she considered her best book to be the collection of stories "The Witch" ( 1936 ).

In the works of Teffi of this time, sad, even tragic motives are noticeably intensified. “They were afraid of the Bolshevik death - and they died here. We only think about what is there now. We are only interested in what comes from there, ”says one of her first Parisian miniatures“ Nostalgia ”( 1920 ).

World War II found Teffi in Paris, where she stayed due to illness. She did not collaborate in any publications of collaborators, although she was starving and in poverty. From time to time she agreed to perform with the reading of her works in front of the emigre audience, which each time became less and less.

In the 1930s Teffi turns to the genre of memoirs. She creates autobiographical stories "First Visit to the Editor" ( 1929 ), "Alias" ( 1931 ), "How I Became a Writer" ( 1934 ), "45 years" ( 1950 ), as well as art sketches - literary portraits of famous people with whom she happened to meet. Among them:

Grigory Rasputin;
Vladimir Lenin;
Alexander Kerensky;
Alexandra Kollontai;
Fedor Sologub;
Constantin Balmont;
Ilya Repin;
Arkady Averchenko;
Zinaida Gippius;
Dmitry Merezhkovsky;
Leonid Andreev;
Alexey Remizov;
Alexander Kuprin;
Ivan Bunin;
Igor Severyanin;
Misha Sespel;
Vsevolod Meyerhold.

Teffi planned to write about the heroes of L.N. Tolstoy and M. Cervantes, who were ignored by criticism, but these plans were not destined to come true. September 30, 1952 in Paris, Teffi celebrated her name day, and just a week later - 6 october passed away. Two days later, she was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris and was buried in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.

She was called the first Russian comedian of the early 20th century, “the queen of Russian humor,” but she was never a supporter of pure humor, she always combined it with sadness and witty observations of life around her. After emigration, satire and humor gradually cease to dominate in her work, observations of life acquire a philosophical character.

Bibliography

Editions prepared by Teffi

• Seven lights. - SPb .: Rosehip, 1910
• Humorous stories. Book. 1. - SPb .: Rosehip, 1910
• Humorous stories. Book. 2 (Anthropoid). - SPb .: Rosehip, 1911
• And it became so. - SPb .: New Satyricon, 1912
• Carousel. - SPb .: New Satyricon, 1913
• Miniatures and monologues. T. 1. - SPb .: ed. M.G. Kornfeld, 1913
• Eight miniatures. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1913
• Smoke without fire. - SPb .: New Satyricon, 1914
• Nothing of the kind, Pg .: New Satyricon, 1915
• Miniatures and monologues. T. 2. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1915
• An inanimate beast. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1916
• And it became so. 7th ed. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1917
• Yesterday. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1918
• Smoke without fire. 9th ed. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1918
• Carousel. 4th ed. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1918
• This is how they lived. - Paris, 1920
• Black iris. - Stockholm, 1921
• Treasures of the earth. - Berlin, 1921
• Quiet backwater. - Paris, 1921
• Lynx. - Berlin, 1923
• Passiflora. - Berlin, 1923
• Shamran. Songs of the East. - Berlin, 1923
• Evening day. - Prague, 1924
• Town. - Paris, 1927
• Book June. - Paris, 1931
• Adventurous romance. - Paris, 1931
• Memories. - Paris, 1931
• Witch. - Paris, 1936
• About tenderness. - Paris, 1938
• Zigzag. - Paris, 1939
• It's all about love. - Paris, 1946
• Earthly rainbow. - New York, 1952
• Life and collar
• Mitya
• Inspiration
• Ours and others

Publications in the USSR

• Instead of politics. Stories. - M.-L .: ZIF, 1926
• Yesterday. Humorous. stories. - Kiev: Cosmos, 1927
• Tango of death. - M .: ZiF, 1927
• Sweet memories. - M.-L .: ZIF, 1927

Collected works

• Collected works [in 7 vols.]. Compiled by and prep. texts by D. D. Nikolaev and E. M. Trubilova. - M .: Lakom, 1998-2005.
• Collected cit .: In 5 volumes - Moscow: TERRA Book Club, 2008

Other

• Ancient history / General history, processed by "Satyricon". - 1909
• Ancient history / General history, processed by "Satyricon". - SPb .: ed. M.G. Kornfeld, 1912.

Keywords: Nadezhda Teffi, Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Teffi, Lokhvitskaya, biography, detailed biography, criticism of works, poetry, prose, free download, read online, Russian literature, 19th century, teffi, life and work

(Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lokhvitskaya, by her husband - Buchinskaya) - 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 poet Mirra Lokhvitskaya (known as "Russian Sappho") and Lieutenant General Nikolai Aleksandrovich Lokhvitsky, a military leader, one of the leaders of the White movement in Siberia.

Family and early years

The exact date of birth of N.A. Teffi is unknown. Until now, some biographers tend to consider her birthday on May 9 (21), 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 said 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 in by her hand, both 1880 and 1885 years of birth appear. With the birthplace of N.A. Teffi-Lokhvitskaya is not clear either. According to some sources, she was born in St. Petersburg, according to others - in the Volyn province, where her parents' estate was located.

Father, Alexander Vladimirovich Lokhvitsky, was a famous lawyer, professor, author of many scientific works on criminalistics and jurisprudence, publisher of the journal "Judicial Bulletin". All that is known about her mother, Varvara Aleksandrovna Goyer, is that she was a Russianized Frenchwoman, from a family of "old" emigrants, 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 very famous poetess of the Silver Age.

No documentary sources have survived about the childhood of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya. We can only judge about him by the many funny and sad, but surprisingly bright literary stories about children that fill Teffi's work. Perhaps one of the favorite heroines of the writer - the touching liar and dreamer Liza - carries 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 Khamovniki to ask him not to kill Prince Bolkonsky, to make the 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 dared only to give Lev Nikolayevich a photo for an autograph.

It is known that the Lokhvitsky sisters, each of whom showed early creativity, 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 unexpectedly quick, overwhelming success. In 1896, the first collection of poems by the poetess was published, which was awarded the Pushkin Prize.

According to the testimony of contemporaries, at the end of the 90s of the XIX 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, possessing what would later be called "commercial potential." Collections of her poems were not stale in bookstores, but were snapped up by readers like hot cakes.

With such success, the younger Lokhvitskaya would only have to “bask in the shadows” 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. Teffi'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 had already two daughters (Valeria and Elena) and a son Yanek, Nadezhda Alexandrovna separated from her husband on her own initiative 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 magazine "Sever". 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 opening. Mirra was also published for a long time in the "North", and two poetesses under the same name - too many not only for one magazine, but also for one Petersburg ...

In 1910, after the death of her famous sister, Nadezhda Aleksandrovna, under the name Teffi, published a collection of poems "Seven Lights", which is usually referred to only as a fact in the biography of the writer or as her creative failure.

V. Bryusov wrote a devastating review of the collection, calling Mrs. Teffi's "Seven Stone-Lights" 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 went down in 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 loved by the reader.

Since 1904, Teffi has declared herself as a writer in the capital's "Stock Exchange". “This newspaper scourged mainly the fathers of the city, who ate from the public pie. I helped to scourge, ”she will say about her first newspaper feuilletons.

The pseudonym Teffi was the first to sign the one-act play "The Women's Question", staged at the St. Petersburg Maly Theater in 1907.

There are several versions about the origin of the alias. Many are inclined to believe that Teffi is just the name of a girl, a character in the famous fairy tale by R. Keepling "How the first letter was written." But the writer herself in the story "Pseudonym" in great detail, with her inherent humor, explained that she wanted to hide the authorship of "women's needlework" (play) under the name of a certain fool - fools, they say, are always happy. The "ideal" fool, according to Nadezhda Aleksandrovna, turned out to be her acquaintance (presumably the servant of the Lokhvitskys) Stepan. The family called him Staffy. The first letter has been discarded out of delicacy. After the successful premiere of the play, the journalist preparing the interview with the author inquired about the origin of the pseudonym and suggested that it was from a poem by Kipling ("Taffy was a Walesman / Taffy was a thief ..."). The writer happily agreed.

Teffi's hot and witty publications 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 sketches and poems in the Bolshevik newspaper Novaya Zhizn delighted Lunacharsky and Lenin. However, Teffi parted with the “leftists” rather quickly. Her new creative rise was associated with work in the "Satyricon" and "New Satyricon" A. Averchenko. Teffi was published in the magazine from the first issue, published in April 1908, until the banning of this publication in August 1918.

However, it was not newspaper publications or even humorous stories in the best satirical magazine in Russia that allowed Teffi to "wake up famous" one day. The real fame came to her after the release of the first book "Humorous stories", which had a stunning success. The second collection raised Teffi's name to new heights and made her one of the most widely read Russian writers. Until 1917, new collections of stories were regularly published ("And it became so ...", "Smoke without fire", "Nothing of the kind", "Dead Beast"), already published books were reprinted several times.

Teffi's favorite genre is a miniature, based on the description of a minor comic incident. She prefaced her two-volume edition with an epigraph from B. Spinoza's Ethics, which precisely defines the tonality of many of her works: "For laughter is joy, and therefore in itself is good."

On the pages of his books, Teffi presents many different types: high school students, students, small employees, journalists, eccentrics and muddies, adults and children - a small person completely absorbed in his inner world, family troubles, and small things in everyday 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 minor domestic troubles. The person in her stories really suffers from these important "little things", and everything else remains for him ghostly, elusive, sometimes just incomprehensible. But, sneering at the natural weaknesses of a person, Teffi never humiliates him. She has earned a reputation as a witty, observant and non-spiteful 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 Teffi's signature were so popular that Teffi perfumes and sweets existed in pre-revolutionary Russia.

At the turning point

Teffi, like the majority of the Russian liberal-democratic intelligentsia, took 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 the post-revolutionary Soviet reality - in every line of Teffi's humorous works of the period 1917-1918. In June-July 1917 Teffi wrote feuilletons "A Little About Lenin", "We Believe", "Wait", "Deserters" and others. Teffi's feuilletons are consonant with "Untimely Thoughts" by M. Gorky and "Cursed Days" by I. Bunin. They contain 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 sees as "A great triumphal procession of illiterate fools and conscious criminals."

She does not spare the Provisional Government, depicting a 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 at which Zinoviev, Kamenev and five horses were, will say:" There were eight of us. "

And so it happened.

Until the closure of "New Satyricon" Teffi continues to collaborate in its editorial office. One of her last poems in the magazine is called "The Good Red Guard." It is accompanied by an epigraph: “One of the people's commissars, speaking about the valor of the Red Guards, told the case when the Red Guards met an old woman in the forest and did not offend her. From newspapers. "

Needless to say, for such "works" in Soviet Russia one could pay 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 by chance, succumbing to general panic, left revolutionary Petrograd and ended up in white territory. Then, just as accidentally and thoughtlessly, she boarded a steamer in one of the Black Sea ports and set off for Constantinople.

In fact, like for most emigrants, the decision to flee the “Bolshevik paradise” was for Teffi-Lokhvitskaya not so much an accident as a necessity. After the authorities closed the New Satyricon magazine, in the fall of 1918, N.A. Teffi, together with A. Averchenko, left Petrograd for Kiev, where their public performances were to take place. After a year and a half of wandering in the Russian south (Kiev, Odessa, Novorossiysk, Yekaterinodar), the writer with great difficulties evacuated to Constantinople, and then reached Paris.

Judging by her book "Memories", Teffi was not going to leave Russia. But who of the one and a half million Russians, who were suddenly thrown into a foreign land by the wave of revolution and the Civil War, really realized that they were going into lifelong exile? The poet and actor A. Vertinsky, who returned in 1943, very insincerely explained his decision to emigrate with his “youthful frivolity,” a desire to see the world. There was no need for Teffi to play it. “The trickle of blood seen in the morning at the gates of the commissariat, a slowly creeping trickle across the sidewalk, cuts the road of life forever. You cannot step over it. You can't go any further. You can turn and run ... "

Of course, Teffi, like tens of thousands of refugees, did not give up hope of an early return to Moscow. Although Nadezhda Alexandrovna defined her attitude to the October Revolution long ago: “Of course, I was not afraid of death. I was afraid of angry mugs with a flashlight pointed right in my face, stupid idiotic anger. Cold, hunger, darkness, knocking of butts on the floor, screams, crying, shots and someone else's death. I'm so tired of it all. I didn't want that anymore. I couldn't take it anymore "

A feeling of nagging pain permeates those pages of Teffi's "Memories", where she talks about her farewell to her homeland. On the ship, during quarantine (transports with Russian refugees were often kept on the Constantinople roadstead for several weeks), the famous poem "To the Cape of joy, to the rocks of sorrow ..." was written. Poem by N.A. Teffi later became widely known as one of the songs performed by A. Vertinsky, and was almost the anthem of all Russian exiles:

Emigration

Teffi was extremely successful 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, continued to laugh through her tears at the greatest Russian tragedy. Perhaps this laughter allowed many of 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 "Ke fer?" The phrase of his hero, an old refugee general, who, looking around in bewilderment in the Parisian square, mutters: “All this is good ... but que faire? Fer something - ke? ”, For a long time became a catch phrase, a constant refrain of emigre 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 Poslednie novosti, Obshchee Delo, Vozrozhdenie, in the magazines Coming Russia, Link, Russkie Zapiski, Sovremennye Zapiski, etc. her stories and books: "Lynx", "On Tenderness", "Town", "Adventure Novel", "Memories", collections of poems, plays.

In the prose and drama of Teffi of the period of emigration, sad, even tragic motives 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 only think about what is there now. We are only interested in what comes from there. "

The tone of Teffi's story increasingly combines harsh and conciliatory notes. Nostalgia and Sadness are the main motives of her work in the 1920s and 40s. According to the writer, the difficult time that her generation is going through has not changed the eternal law, which 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 the Russian emigration found their expression in the poignant stories "May Beetle", "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. "Fetid ulcers of emigration." The writer did not receive a dime for the Soviet editions of her works. This provoked a sharp rebuke - Teffi's article "Attention to 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 her popularity only grew.

Even during the general crisis of publishing in the mid-to-late 1920s, Russian publishers willingly accepted Teffi's works, without fear of commercial failures: her books were always bought. Before the war, Nadezhda Aleksandrovna 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 recollections of V. Vasyutinskaya-Markade, 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 lordly leg, in Petersburg style. There were always flowers in vases, in all cases of life she kept the tone of a society lady. "

ON. Teffi not only wrote, but also in the most active way helped her compatriots, famous and unknown, thrown by the wave onto a foreign shore. Collected money for the fund in memory 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 spoke at the "evenings of help" to fellow feathers living in poverty. She did not like public speaking in front of a large audience, for her it was a torment, but when asked, she did not refuse anyone. It was a holy principle - to save not only yourself, but others as well.

In Paris, the writer lived for about ten years in a civil marriage with Pavel Andreevich Tyxton. Half Russian, half English, 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, as much as a person can be, cut off from his native soil, torn out of the element of his native language. Pavel Andreevich had money, but it disappeared when the global crisis broke out. He could not survive this, he suffered a stroke, and Nadezhda Alexandrovna patiently looked after him until the last hour.

After the death of Teakston, Teffi seriously thought about leaving literature and taking up sewing dresses or starting making hats, as her heroines from the story "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 print. In 1943, even an obituary appeared in the New York "New Journal": the literary death of the writer was mistakenly rushed to replace the physical death. Subsequently, she 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 this time I ate Portuguese sardines and went to the cinema "... Good humor did not leave her even 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 in many respects coincide with those 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. On its pages, a variety of female characters and different types of love coexist. According to Teffi, love is the choice of the cross: "What will fall to whom!"... Most often, she depicts a deceiving love, which flashes for a moment with a bright flash, and then plunges the heroine into a dreary hopeless loneliness for a long time.

Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Teffi, indeed, completed her career in need and loneliness. The war separated her from her family. The eldest daughter, Valeria Vladislavovna Grabowskaya, translator, member of the Polish government in exile, lived with her mother in Angers during the war, but then had to flee to England. Having lost her husband in the war, she worked in London and herself was in dire need. The youngest, Elena Vladislavovna, a dramatic actress, stayed 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". All 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. Panteleimonov, N. Evreinov, quarreled with Don-Aminado, received A. Kerensky. She continued to write a book of memoirs about her contemporaries (D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius, F. Sologub, and others), published in Novoye Russkiy Slovo and Russkiye Novosti, but she felt worse and worse. The rumor that Teffi had taken Soviet citizenship was annoyed by the rumor that Teffi had started up by the staff of Russkaya Mysl. After the end of World War II, she was indeed called to the USSR, and even, congratulating her on the New Year, they wished her success in "activities for the good of the Soviet Motherland."

Teffi refused all offers. Recalling her flight from Russia, she once bitterly joked that she was afraid: in Russia she might be greeted by a poster “Welcome, Comrade Teffi,” and Zoshchenko and Akhmatova would hang on the pillars 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 life pension to four elderly writers. Among them was Teffi. Nadezhda Alexandrovna sent her autographed books to Sedykh for sale to wealthy people in New York. For the book, in which the author's dedication was pasted, they paid from 25 to 50 dollars.

In 1951, Atran died and the payment of the pension ceased. The Americans did not buy books with the autographs of the Russian writer; the elderly woman was not able to speak at evenings, earning money.

“Due to an incurable illness, I must surely die soon. But I never do what I have to. So I live, ”- Teffi admits with irony in one of his letters.

In February 1952, her last book, Earthly Rainbow, was published in New York. In the latest collection, Teffi completely abandoned the sarcasm and satirical intonations that are common in her early prose and in the works of the 1920s. There is a lot of "autobiographical", present in this book, which allows us to call it the last confession of the great humorist. She once again rethinks the past, writes about her earthly sufferings of the last years of her life and ... smiles at last:

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 she once brought from the Solovetsky Monastery and which she ordered to be put in the coffin with her. Teffi is buried next to Bunin in the Russian cemetery in Sainte-Genevieve-de-Bois.

In the USSR, her works were not published or republished until 1966.

Elena Shirokova

Materials used:

Vasiliev I. Anecdote and tragedy // Teffi N.A. Living-Bye: Stories. Memories.-M.: Politizdat, 1991.- S. 3-20;