Arkhangelsk writer of pisakhs. Stepan Grigorievich Pisakhov

“Raspberry” I’ve already started to forget about this. About two dark years of my life. I didn’t remember them - that’s all. But I started watching the TV series “Moscow Saga”, and as if after half a century an inexplicable feeling of anxiety returned to me. My father worked abroad all his life, where very

Stepan Mukha Appointed head of the Ukrainian KGB, Stepan Nesterovich Mukha was not a professional and was considered a “pocket chairman.” He came to the KGB of Ukraine from the apparatus of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, without being aware of the activities of the special services, without legal knowledge and operational

Although I have been living in Tomsk for a long time, I still sometimes feel sadness and longing for my native land. I miss it, I'm drawn to it. And when there are two options: either go home or touch native things and people, even virtually. But as it turned out, when I come home, I don’t get that charge and satisfaction. Life changes and native places no longer seem the same as in childhood. And I realized that I was yearning for specific people, things, settings and moods. And to recreate it, you don’t have to travel. And I began to sort through everything in my memory: what gives me the maximum feeling of comfort and joy when I think about home.
Here's the next post about this.
This man was part of my Arkhangelsk life. I grew up reading his books, with his fairy tale characters, and now I discover him as an amazing person (but more on that later). His fairy tales were an inseparable part of my childhood, and only now I understand how organically they fit into it. It’s like fairy tales - but these are not fairy tales, this is the absolute truth, people won’t let you lie.

Who doesn’t know the fairy tales of Stepan Pisakhov? Who hasn’t seen cartoons based on his fairy tales? Ice cream songs, Quail, etc...
For everyone who doesn't know here:

By the way, for my taste, it was Leonov who voiced these tales best of all. There is an opportunity to compare - below is another version of the scoring of Pisakhov's fairy tales.

http://www.skazka.mrezha.ru/frame.htm?/art/pisahov.htm
http://predanie.ru/audio/audioknigi/Stepan_Pisakhov/ - audio of Pisakhov's fairy tales from a 1978 record.

Stepan Pisakhov is immortal. It’s not just that his collections of fairy tales are published and his paintings are exhibited. Another thing is more important: every northerner who has read Pisakhov looks at his own region with Pisakhov’s eyes. Pisakh’s immortality is ensured not by a granite monument and official respect, but by his everyday presence in our lives. What seems good about our endless dark winter, but you remember how fun it is to bring home armfuls of the northern lights or exchange ice cream words of greetings on the street - and it’s not so hard to live through the winter.

Storytellers in the North have always been treated with great respect. During the fishery, the storytellers were paid two shares: one for participation in the fishery, the other for telling stories. It would probably be very difficult to survive the northern night, which lasts six months, without a fairy tale.

Answering the question about where he was born, Pisakhov explains in one of his letters: “I was born in Arkhangelsk in the very room where my workshop is now. If the old plan of Arkhangelsk is crossed out along and across, then at the crossroads, in the center, there is a house - the place where I was born."
Pisakhov is an amazing storyteller. Nothing is impossible for his hero Senya Malina. If he wants, he will brew beer using the star rain. If he wants, he will go to the sea for fish in a bathhouse. It will be necessary - he will shoot a gun from the swamp. Or he will fly to the Moon with the help of a samovar and almost die there at the hands of the feisty “moon women”.
It was unusual for Pisakhov to be accepted into the Union of Soviet Writers in 1939. Pisakh's texts ended up in the hands of Fadeev and Karavaeva. And instead of discussing, as expected, the merits and demerits of these texts, they began, interrupting each other, to read the tales one after another. We couldn't stop. And the listeners died with laughter, almost sliding to the floor.
His language is pure, pristine. Centuries breathe in this language. This is probably what the Novgorodians said, who settled on the White Sea coast four or five hundred years ago.

Previously, they say, any schoolchild could show visitors where the storyteller Pisakhov lived. The postmen unmistakably brought letters with the address “Arkhangelsk, Pisakhov”. All the guests of the city were in a hurry to first visit his house (Pomorskaya, 27). World-famous polar explorers, scientists, and writers have been here.

It is difficult to imagine a man who seems to have emerged from the depths of centuries as a rosy-cheeked youth. For him there is a familiar image - the image of an old man. But this old man often has young eyes. So it was with Pisakhov. Everyone remembers him as an old man. They remember his eyebrows - scary, disheveled, angry (and in his eyes - a sly smile, and a kind smile in his beard).

The writer's father God Peisakh, a tradesman of the Shklov society of the Mogilev province (Belarus), was baptized, became Grigory Peisakhov, and received the patronymic Mikhailovich from the godfather of the Arkhangelsk tradesman Mikhail Prokhorov. Here he got married and joined the merchant guild. Jews, enrolling in the merchant class, received the right to live everywhere, regardless of the so-called Pale of Settlement (110 km from capital cities). According to the materials of the First All-Russian Population Census of 1897, the family of the 49-year-old merchant included his wife Irina Ivanovna, 45 years old, son Stepan 17 years old and daughters Taisya, Serafima and Evpraksinya, 18, 13 and 11 years old, respectively. The merchant defined his main occupation as “gold and silversmithing,” and his secondary occupation as “trade in various household supplies.” In fact, this meant that Grigory Mikhailovich had a jewelry workshop and a small store. The merchant's family had three servants: a housekeeper, a coachman and a cook. In addition, G. Pisakhov supported an apprentice and one student.

Irina Ivanovna, Pisakhov’s mother, was the daughter of the clerk of the office above the Arkhangelsk port, Ivan Romanovich Milyukov, and his wife Khionia Vasilievna. Khionia Vasilievna was an Old Believer, “strict and correct in her faith.” The soul of the artist and storyteller S.G. Pisakhova was shaped in early childhood under the influence of two opposing elements: the aspiration for the Heavenly King of her mother's Old Believer faith and her father's thirst for a practical arrangement of a prosperous life on earth. The boy grew up in an atmosphere of Old Believer rules of life. Acquaintance with songs, psalms and hymns of religious sectarian poetry gave the mind a special direction. “The union of God with man, the earthly with the heavenly... the identification of man with God - what a wide field for imagination!” - wrote the historian of the schism I.M. Dobrotvorsky. It is not surprising that Pisakhov’s hero can move rivers and catch the wind. Pisakhov never forgot about his involvement in the “Old Believer family.”

The father tried to teach the boy to make jewelry and engraving. When, following his older brother Pavel, a self-taught artist, Stepan turned to painting, his father did not like this, who inspired his son: “Be a shoemaker, a doctor, a teacher, be a necessary person, but people will live without an artist.” “Reading was persecuted,” Pisakhov recalled. He secretly climbed under the bed with his favorite book and read there. Cervantes's book "The Cunning Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha" made a huge impression. She fueled Pisakhov’s desire to escape from his father’s care. Pisakhov himself was somewhat similar to Don Quixote. Probably, with his love for goodness and justice, rejection of untruth and human callousness. All his life he sought the kingdom of "sincere, simple relationships."

Pisakhov did not get into the gymnasium (due to his age), he only graduated from the city school, and then belatedly. Flight and wandering seemed to him the only way out of the clutches home life, and after graduating from the city school in 1899, he first rushed to Solovki, then entered the lumber mill as a hewer (“he earned 50 rubles over the summer.”). Then - Kazan, an attempt to enter an art school. The attempt was unsuccessful, in 1902 he left for St. Petersburg and entered the art school of Baron Stieglitz (school of technical drawing and applied arts, now the Mukhina School). The most capable students could receive additional training in easel painting and sculpture. Teachers highly appreciated Pisakhov’s talent, and he studied painting for several years under the guidance of Academician A.N. Novoskoltseva.

For monthly payments received from home, 10 rubles. Pisakhov has been eking out a half-starved existence for 3 years, mastering the profession of an art teacher and applied artist at school, and painting in private schools. The difficulties that he experienced in St. Petersburg can be judged by the title of the memoirs that he did not complete: “The Unwritten Book. The Hungry Academy.” But Pisakhov did not lose heart: he read a lot (he fell in love with Dostoevsky), went to museums and the theater.

In 1905, without completing the course of study, Pisakhov, together with a large group of students, left the school (for giving a speech against the autocracy, he was expelled without the right to continue his artistic education in Russia). Without a diploma in hand to hold a teaching position (the certificate was issued in 1936), deprived of all sources of livelihood, Pisakhov is ready to admit his choice of the path of an artist was erroneous. Turns to the search for “God’s truth,” first at the shrines of Novgorod, and later, in the summer of 1905, in the Arctic North (“the world has just been created”).

Novaya Zemlya, Malye Karmakuly settlement. Didn't part with the easel.

I treated the Nenets with sympathy - the kind, naive and simple-minded inhabitants of Novaya Zemlya. The writer was struck by their tales about people “who only love and know neither hostility nor malice... If they stop loving, they die right away. And when they love, they can work miracles.”

Some polar explorer wrote: “Whoever has been to the Arctic becomes like a compass needle - it always turns to the North.” Pisakhov sailed to Novaya Zemlya alone at least 10 times, the last one in 1946.

Pisakhov begins his search for divine “solar warmth”, which could revive the spiritual nature in man, in the Arctic and continues in the fall of the same 1905 in the Mediterranean countries, where he ends up with a crowd of pilgrims. “There, I thought I would see the most beautiful thing on earth!” In the fall of 1905 he arrived in Jerusalem and was left penniless. He was a clerk for the bishop in Bethlehem. Received permission from the Turkish authorities - the right to paint in all cities of Turkey and Syria. Then Egypt. Mother sent 10 rubles. per month to the next destination. Pisakhov was ascetically unpretentious and believed in people. In difficult times, they helped me out. On the ship, an old Bulgarian covered him with a cloak from the icy wind; in Alexandria, he was robbed - a Russian emigrant fed him and lent him. I spent almost the whole winter studying at the Free Academy of Arts in Paris. He exhibited his works in Rome, they shocked the audience with a silver radiance (“the north gives”).

Returned home to Arkhangelsk. “It’s as if my eyes were rinsed! Where are the trees more beautiful than our birches? ... And ... summer nights, full of light without shadows - this is so enormously beautiful...”

Three winters after traveling south 1907-1909. Pisakhov spent time in St. Petersburg in the studio of the artist Ya.S. Goldblatt. He avoided the passion for modernism (a very modest tribute: “Dreams” and “The Church, the path to which is lost”). In summer - the Kara Sea, Pechora, Pinega and the White Sea. From trips to Pinega and Pechora I brought 2 cycles: “Northern Forest” and “Old Huts”. “Old Huts” is a small part of the enormous work done by Pisakhov to perpetuate the monuments of northern architecture. Everything is in gloomy gray-brown tones. They are also supplemented by extensive ethnographic sketches.

In 1982 S.N. Markov, a writer, local historian, published a chronicle of the most famous travelers of Russia, which rightfully included Pisakhov. Pisakhov considered the most memorable trips to be the voyage in 1906 across the Kara Sea on the ship "St. Foka", participation in 1914 in the search for Georgy Sedov, exploration of the land of the Sami, presence at the founding of the first radiotelegraph stations on Yugorsky Shar, Mare-Sale and the island Vaygach. He captured everything he saw in landscapes that were exhibited in Arkhangelsk, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Rome.

I really loved visiting Kiy Island (White Sea).

In his paintings of the White Sea cycle there is a feeling of the infinity of the universe. Nature reveals itself to man and merges with his being. It seems that the main theme of these paintings is silence, which gives rise to creative concentration. The paintings are simple in subject: stones, seashore, pine trees. Special light: silver in winter and golden pearl in summer. The ability to show countless shades of white is amazing.

In 1910, the exhibition “Russian North” was held in Arkhangelsk. Pisakhov took an active part in organizing its art department and exhibited more than two hundred of his paintings. 60 works by Pisakhov were presented at the Tsarskoye Selo anniversary exhibition in 1911, dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Tsarskoye Selo. In 1912, for participation in the exhibition “The North in Pictures” in St. Petersburg, he received a large silver medal. His paintings were exhibited at the “Exhibition of Three” (J. Belsen, S. Pisakhov, I. Yasinsky) in St. Petersburg in 1914. The artist was then in the prime of his creative powers. Perhaps it was at one of these exhibitions that his conversation took place with the artist I. Repin, whom he mentions in a letter to art critic M.V. Babenchikov (1956): “At the exhibition, Ilya Efimovich (Repin) treated my works well. He especially liked “The Pine that Survived the Storm” [the painting, unfortunately, is now lost]. Ilya Efimovich persuaded me to make a large canvas. I muttered something about the size of the room: “I know: the canvas is on the wall above the bed, the paints are on the bed and it’s two steps to the wall. Come to me in Penates. And there will be enough space, and you don’t have to bring paints." My comrades congratulated me and didn’t hide their envy. But I... didn’t go, I was afraid that I wouldn’t have the strength to work from embarrassment."

First World War interrupted Pisakhov's artistic activity. In 1915 he was drafted into the army, served as a militia warrior in Finland, and in 1916 he was transferred to Kronstadt. Here he was caught by the February Revolution. From the first days he worked in the Kronstadt Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, organized the May Day demonstration (1917), and made reports to soldiers and sailors.

After demobilization in 1918, he returned to Arkhangelsk. The charge of creative energy inherent in Pisakhov from birth was so great that one passion for painting no longer seemed sufficient for the full expression of individuality. Pisakhov takes up his pen. Pisakhov began recording his stories for the first time even before the revolution, on the advice of I.I. Yasinsky - writer, journalist, known as the editor of the magazines "Conversation" and "New Word". Then this attempt ended in failure. Now Pisakhov decided to try his hand at the genre of essays (“A Samoyed Tale” and “A Dream in Novgorod”), where he recreates portraits of his contemporaries. Both of these essays were published in the Arkhangelsk newspaper "Northern Morning", which was published by the Surikov poet and journalist M.L. Leonov. In May 1918, M.L. was arrested. Leonov and the closure of the newspaper. These events could not but arouse a feeling of internal protest among the local intelligentsia.

In June 1918, Pisakhov’s personal exhibition opened in Arkhangelsk. And on August 2, the interventionists entered Arkhangelsk. “The population greeted the passing units with enthusiasm.” (From the memoirs of S. Dobrovolsky, who headed the military-judicial department of the Northern Region in those years). Among the people standing on the main pier of the Arkhangelsk port was S.G. Pisakhov. At that time, he wanted to see not a Bolshevik dictatorship in the city, but a unification of all democratic forces.

At first, the interventionists tried to flirt with the population, presenting themselves as defenders of democracy. The Provisional Government of the Northern Region was tolerant of the creative intelligentsia, whose prominent representatives were L. Leonov, B. Shergin and S. Pisakhov. They had the opportunity to organize painting exhibitions, were published in newspapers, and published a collection “In the Far North.” All three had no idea that the situation could change dramatically and their creative activity would be regarded as aiding the “whites.”

On the night of February 19, 1920, units of the Red Army entered Arkhangelsk. L. Leonov immediately left Arkhangelsk and moved to the south of Russia; B. Shergin was invited to Moscow to the Institute of Children's Reading; Pisakhov was unable to leave his home and beloved North. He felt that Arkhangelsk and the peculiarities of his native land made him a person, namely a creative person. More than anything in the world, he loved this home of his. He had only one thing left to do - to find a form of behavior that would allow him to survive and maintain his creative personality under the conditions of a government that never forgot or forgave anything. But many years later, when he was already a famous storyteller and artist, there were still people who, out of envy or for some other reason, began to write libels to all authorities and contributed to ensuring that the “White Guard” past was firmly entrenched in Pisakhov.

Then, in 1920, after the liberation of Arkhangelsk by the Red Army, Pisakhov began to work actively. In 1920 - 1921 he prepared 5 of his exhibitions. The provincial executive committee entrusts him with putting the museums of Arkhangelsk in order. On instructions from the Moscow Museum of the Revolution, he makes sketches of the sites of battles with the interventionists in the North, and for the Russian Museum - sketches of architectural monuments on the Mezen and Pinega. In the fall of 1920, he took part in a complex expedition to the Bolshezemelskaya tundra.

In 1923, Pisakhov collected materials for the ethnographic exposition of the North at the first All-Union Agricultural and Handicraft Exhibition in Moscow.

In 1927, his painting “Monument to the Victims of the Intervention on Iokanga Island” occupied a central place at the all-Union exhibition “10 Years of October”, for which he was awarded a personal exhibition held a year later in Moscow. Two of his paintings were acquired by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and placed in the office of M.I. Kalinina.

But S.G. is especially famous. Pisakhov earned a reputation as the author of amazing, truly unique fairy tales. “I started telling my fairy tales a long time ago. I often improvised and very rarely wrote them down. I wrote my first fairy tale, “Night in the Library,” when I was 14 years old.” His first published fairy tale, “If you don’t like it, don’t listen...” appeared in 1924 in the collection “On the Northern Dvina,” published by the Arkhangelsk Society of Local History. Its character was so different from traditional folklore that the compilers of the collection put it into print without a subtitle. Pisakhov decided to include the fairy tale in the collection on the advice of B. Shergin and A. Pokrovskaya, employees of the Moscow Institute of Children's Reading. It was their support that helped Pisakhov find his path in literature. The fairy tale “If you don’t like it, don’t listen” became the mother’s bed from which the famous “Ice Cream Songs”, “Northern Lights”, “Starry Rain” emerged.

Pisakhov immediately found a successful image of the storyteller (Senya Malina from the village of Uyma), on whose behalf he narrated the story in all his fairy tales. Fairy tales were also published in the provincial newspaper "Volna" and the regional newspaper "Pravda Severa".

Monument to Sena-Malina on Arkhangelsk street. Chumbarovka.

But for a long time Pisakhov failed to get onto the pages of the capital’s magazines. Only in 1935 did he manage to publish several of his fairy tales in the magazine "30 Days". They were published in the 5th issue of the magazine under the title "Munhausen from the village of Uyma." Now Pisakhov was no longer tormented by doubts about “writing or quitting.” “When fairy tales started appearing in 30 Days, I was inspired.” Behind a short time(1935 - 1938) this popular magazine of the Writers' Union published more than 30 fairy tales by Pisakhov. In a word, it was this magazine that discovered the storyteller. Publications in “30 days” accelerated the publication of Pisakhov’s first book, which was published in Arkhangelsk in 1938. And soon the second book appeared (1940). These books included 86 fairy tales. Pisakhov's fairy tales are a product of individual literary creativity. Folk in spirit, they have little in common with traditional folk tales. The miracles in Pisakhov's fairy tales have a completely different nature than the miracles in folk tales. They are generated by the writer's imagination and are fully motivated, although this motivation is not realistic, but fantastic. “In fairy tales you don’t have to restrain yourself - you have to lie with all your might,” the writer asserted, realizing that a literary fairy tale does not and cannot have any strict canons. One of Pisakhov’s favorite techniques - the materialization of natural phenomena (words freeze like ice in the cold, the northern lights are pulled from the sky and dried, etc.) becomes the impetus for the development of the author’s imagination in many fairy tales. This largely determines the special humor that is so characteristic of Pisakhov’s fairy tales: everything that is said in them may well be possible if the existence of such material phenomena is assumed at the very beginning.

In 1939, when Stepan Grigorievich was already 60 years old, he was accepted as a member of the Writers' Union. He dreamed of publishing the book in Moscow. Before the war in Moscow, a book of Pisakhov’s fairy tales was prepared at the GIZ, but it remained in manuscript. When did they start fighting, the fairy-tale theme faded into the background.

Pisakhov spent the war years in Arkhangelsk, sharing with his fellow countrymen all the hardships of life in the rear. Often, together with other writers, he was a welcome guest in hospitals. From a letter from A.I. Vyurkov - Moscow writer, permanent correspondent of S.G. Pisakhova in the 40s:
“Time doesn’t wait, I turned 65. An anniversary commission was assembled. It was necessary to sign a letter to Moscow for approval of permission for the anniversary. ... Who should have signed ... - canceled. Simply banned! And that’s all. There’s not even a teacher’s pension, not even an age pension. I’m living I'm turning over... Sometimes I want to live. I want to wait for the end of the trash - the fascists. My clothes are falling apart on me. I'm wearing out my father's coat!... And I'm still holding on, I still somehow find the opportunity to pay for lunch, mend clothes, I console myself with the thoughts: they could cross out the anniversary - they could cross me out "They can erase my works from existence - paintings, fairy tales... They're lying, sir! Don't erase them!"

After the war, Pisakhov brings to the Arkhangelsk publishing house a manuscript consisting of a hundred fairy tales he wrote. “They re-read it for two years...” and finally nine fairy tales were selected. Pisakhov sent this small book, published in 1949, to I. Ehrenburg with a request to “help push my fairy tales into publication.” But it was only in 1957 that Pisakhov’s first “Moscow” book appeared in the publishing house “Soviet Writer”. All-Union fame comes to the writer. The 80th anniversary of his birth is widely celebrated in Arkhangelsk. Central and local publications publish articles about the “northern wizard of words.”

Stepan Grigorievich also wrote interesting travel essays telling about the exploration of the Arctic, about expeditions to the Arctic, notes, diaries, most of them published after the death of the writer.

Pisakhov’s main income before and after the war was drawing lessons. He worked in Arkhangelsk schools for almost a quarter of a century. He began teaching drawing in 1928. He worked in schools three, six and fifteen. In his autobiography, dated October 23, 1939, he wrote: “My students entered art universities without additional artistic training, which I also consider to be my reward.”. From the memoirs of his former student, graphic artist Yu.M. Danilova: “First of all, he is an extraordinary person, with an extraordinary store of knowledge, with extraordinary generosity in giving everything he knew and could, with extraordinary kindness.”. They met when Yura was a student at the 3rd Arkhangelsk school, where Pisakhov taught drawing. Having noticed Yura's talent during drawing lessons, Pisakhov invited him to the studio, which he opened in his workshop. After the war, Yu. Danilov entered the Academy of Arts, Faculty of Architecture. And as soon as he arrived in his native Arkhangelsk, he met Pisakhov on the street. Stepan Grigorievich immediately invited Danilov to illustrate his book of fairy tales. Either he wanted to help yesterday’s front-line soldier financially, or he was pushing his student, a student of the Faculty of Architecture, onto the artistic path. Be that as it may, the book was published in 1949 and became Danilov’s first experience in illustration. Pisakhov himself never illustrated his fairy tales. It was modesty that did not allow him to do this. And I enjoyed other people’s illustrations from the bottom of my heart. He believed that everyone had the right to their own interpretation of his fairy tales. This is what he valued. Dozens of artists designed them, almost everyone has finds.

S.G. Pisakhov has long attracted attention. People began to write about him back in the twenties and thirties. Most of the early works about Pisakhov were written by his fellow writers - writers and journalists. Even with the paucity of facts, they managed to create such a vivid and accurate portrait that Pisakhov appears before readers as if alive. But it's surprising that no one described him as young.

Even the writer I. Brazhnin, who left Arkhangelsk in 1922, writes that Pisakhov even then “was a living historical landmark of Arkhangelsk.” And the “historical landmark” was forty-three years old. And Boris Ponomarev, a journalist, historian of northern literature, who knew Pisakhov for more than a quarter of a century, admitted that he only remembers him like this. Everyone seemed to have forgotten what Pisakhov was like before the revolution. But then he was a short, strong and healthy man, looking younger than his age, always clean-shaven and neatly dressed. Studying in St. Petersburg, acquaintance with the art collections of Russia, France, Italy, rich impressions from traveling in Central Asia and the Arab East - all this sculpted the figure of a bright, educated, intelligent and observant intellectual.

However, after the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, these virtues were not only not in demand, but also aroused suspicion. For the purpose of self-preservation, Pisakhov dramatically changes his appearance, demeanor, and style of communication with others. He puts on the carnival mask of a bahir-storyteller: he grows a beard, appears in public in worn clothes and an old-fashioned hat, and masters the vocabulary of the common people. In addition, behind an old man’s appearance it was easier to hide the poverty from which he suffered from a young age, to hide painful shyness, uneven character, sometimes too hot-tempered. He chose the image of an old man, an eccentric, a man with oddities, and thereby retained the right to mischief, spontaneity in words and deeds.

In people, Stepan Grigorievich valued sincerity most of all; he could sense a fake or selfish person a mile away. He was vulnerable and touchy, loved to grumble, although he could not seriously stand up for himself.
In the last years of his life, Pisakhov did not like to talk about age: “I’m used to being under a glass cover. It’s convenient: they support you in icy conditions, they put you on a tram. When asked what year it is, I say: on Saturday it will be 500!” (From a letter to prose writer Alexander Zuev dated September 2, 1959). Half-jokingly, half-seriously, Stepan Grigorievich said more than once that he was going to celebrate not only his centenary anniversary, but also to certainly live until the year 2000. He wrote his last fairy tale about this, although it remained unpublished. On a May day in 1960 he passed away.

How do we, his fellow countrymen, preserve his memory? Pisakhov's house. He is no longer in Arkhangelsk. Now there is a 9-story building on this site. And there is no street named after him either.

True, there is a Pisakhov museum on his native Pomorskaya street.

In the village of Uyma, where the hero of his fairy tales, Senya Malina, comes from, the “Crimson Dawns” holiday has been held since 2006.

Residents of Arkhangelsk consider S.G. Pisakhova is a symbol of the city, so they see the need for the existence of the monument. In their opinion, the monument is a tribute to the writer, which allows the townspeople not to forget about their famous countryman. Townspeople noted that the appearance of the monument corresponds to the style of the fairy tales themselves
Pisakhov and his manner of behavior, while some of the informants refer to literature about the writer: “The author of the monument to S. Pisakhov is Sergei Syukhin. The monument was made to Pisakhov’s natural height - 1m 46 cm. Stepan Pisakhov wrote to his friend A.K. Pokrovskaya: “My appearance as a centenarian often helps when meeting visitors. The locals know. And for this reason (no slander to say!) I don’t know the queues and difficulties during the “procession through the city” - one must adhere to the patriarchal style." A mystifier by nature, Pisakhov himself, even in his young years, created an old man out of himself. The first sign of this image was a mustache, beard, and long hair. Gradually, Pisakhov added to his appearance such attributes of old age as muttered speech, old-fashioned dark clothes, an old woman’s purse and a wide-brimmed hat, which the whole of Arkhangelsk remembers." I. B. Ponomareva "Chapters from the Life of Stepan Pisakhov" (Arkhangelsk, 2005 ) . (G.P.)

And there is Pisakhov himself.

In his amazing and eternal fairy tales, in his wise paintings, in the memory of his contemporaries, in the drawings of his students, in the books that he generously gave away to children by the dozen.

Op.:

If you don’t like it, don’t listen //On the Northern Dvina: Collection / Arkhang. about local lore. Arkhangelsk, 1924.- P.74-80;
Fairy tales. - Arkhangelsk, 1938;
Fairy tales. - Arkhangelsk, 1949;
Fairy tales. - M., 1957;
Fairy tales /Preface. Sh. Galimova. - Arkhangelsk, 1977;
Fairy tales / Comp., author. entry Art. and note. A.A. Gorelov. - M., 1978;
Fairy tales. Essays. Letters / Comp., author. entry Art. and comment. I.B. Ponomarev. - Arkhangelsk, 1985. - (Russian North);
If you don’t like it, don’t listen: fairy tales. - Kaliningrad, 2004.

Russian Soviet prose writers: biobibliogr. decree - L., 1964. - T.3. - P.600-606;
Sugar N.L. Stepan Grigorievich Pisakhov: biogr. essay - Arkhangelsk, 1959;
Ponomarev B.S. The riot of Pisakh’s fantasy // Aka. Literary Arkhangelsk. - Arkhangelsk, 1982.- P.55-61;
Galimov Sh. The Wizard of the Word // Belomorye.- M., 1984.- P. 404-414;
Galimova E.Sh. Fairy tale tradition in the literature of the North: (Fairy tale in the works of B. Shergin and S. Pisakhov) // History and culture of the Arkhangelsk North during the years of Soviet power: interuniversity. Sat. scientific tr. - Vologda, 1985.- P. 155-165;
Dyuzhev Yu. “Earthly and Heavenly” by Stepan Pisakhov // North.- 2000.- No. 12.- P. 117-132;
Melnitskaya L. Bizarre patterns of fate // Truth of the North. - 2004. - November 4;
Ponomareva I.B. Chapters from the life of Stepan Pisakhov /comp., author. preface and note. L.I. Levin. - Arkhangelsk, 2005.

Childhood

Stepan's father God Peisakh, a tradesman of the Shklov society of the Mogilev province, converted to Orthodoxy and became Grigory Mikhailovich Peisakhov. He received the middle name Mikhailovich from his godfather, Arkhangelsk tradesman Mikhail Prokhorov. Here he got married and joined the merchant guild. Irina Ivanovna, Pisakhov’s mother, was the daughter of the clerk of the office above the Arkhangelsk port, Ivan Romanovich Milyukov, and his wife Khionia Vasilievna. Khionia Vasilievna was an Old Believer, “strict and correct in her faith.” Grandmother's brother, grandfather Leonty, was a professional storyteller.

In the fund of the Arkhangelsk spiritual consistory in the metric book of the Nativity Church of Arkhangelsk for 1879 it is written: “Oct 13. In 1879, a son, Stefan, was born to the tradesman Grigory Mikhailovich Peysakhov and his legal wife Irina Ivanovna.” Stepan Pisakhov was baptized in the Nativity Church, which stood near the intersection of Trinity Avenue and Pomorskaya Street.

According to the materials of the First All-Russian Population Census of 1897, the family of the 49-year-old merchant included his wife Irina Ivanovna, 45 years old, son Stepan 17 years old and daughters Taisya, Serafima and Evpraksinya, respectively 18, 13 and 11 years old (the eldest son, Pavel, in the census not specified: by that time he had fled to America). The merchant defined his main occupation as “Gold and silversmithing,” and his secondary occupation as “trade in various household supplies.” This meant that Grigory Mikhailovich had a jewelry workshop and a small store. The merchant's family had three servants: a housekeeper, a coachman and a cook. In addition, Grigory Pisakhov supported an apprentice and one student.

The soul of the artist and storyteller Stepan Pisakhov was formed under the influence of two opposing elements: his mother’s Old Believer faith and his father’s thirst for practical order on earth. The boy grew up in an atmosphere of Old Believer rules of life. Acquaintance with songs, psalms and spiritual poems, folk poetry gave the mind a special direction. It is not surprising that Pisakhov’s hero can move rivers and catch the wind. Pisakhov never forgot about his involvement in the “Old Believer family” and, as a sign of respect for the religious views of his ancestors, painted a sketch from life, and then the painting “Place of the Burning of Archpriest Avvakum in Pustozersk.”

The father tried to teach the boy to make jewelry and engraving. When, following his older brother Pavel, a self-taught artist, Stepan turned to painting, his father did not like this, who inspired his son: “Be a shoemaker, a doctor, a teacher, be a necessary person, but people will live without an artist.” “Reading was persecuted,” Pisakhov recalled. He secretly climbed under the bed with his favorite book and read there. Cervantes’ book “The Cunning Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha” made a huge impression. She fueled Pisakhov’s desire to escape from his father’s care.

Independent life

Pisakhov did not get into the gymnasium (due to his age), he only graduated from the city school, and then belatedly. Flight and wandering seemed to him the only way out of the clutches of home life, and after graduating from the city school in 1899, he first rushed to Solovki, then entered a timber mill as a hewer (“he earned 50 rubles over the summer”). Then - Kazan, an attempt to enter an art school. The attempt was unsuccessful, in 1902 he left for St. Petersburg and entered the art school of Baron Stieglitz (school of technical drawing and applied arts). The most capable students could receive additional training in easel painting and sculpture. Teachers highly appreciated Pisakhov's talent, and he studied painting for several years under the guidance of academician Alexander Novoskoltsev.

The father, having come to terms with his son’s desire to study as an artist, sent money from Arkhangelsk, but not much, only ten rubles a month. With the monthly 10 rubles he received from home, Pisakhov eked out a half-starved existence for 3 years, mastering the profession of an art teacher and applied artist at school, and painting in private schools. The difficulties he experienced in St. Petersburg can be judged by the title of the memoirs that he did not complete: “The Unwritten Book. Hungry Academy." But Pisakhov did not lose heart: he read a lot, went to museums and the theater.

The revolutionary events of 1905 did not escape Pisakhov either. For a speech he made against the autocracy, Pisakhov, who had not completed his course of study, was expelled from the school. He was forbidden to study in Russia, and he needed money to study abroad. Without a diploma in hand to hold a teaching position (the certificate was issued in 1936), deprived of all sources of livelihood, Pisakhov is ready to admit his choice of the path of an artist was erroneous.

Trips. Search

He turns to the search for “God’s truth,” first at the shrines of Novgorod, and later, in the summer of 1905, in the Arctic North (“the world has just been created”). Novaya Zemlya, Malye Karmakuly settlement. Didn't part with the easel. I treated the Nenets with sympathy - the kind, naive and simple-minded inhabitants of Novaya Zemlya. The writer was struck by their tales about people “who only love and know neither hostility nor malice... If they stop loving, they die immediately. And when they love, they can create miracles.” One polar explorer wrote: “Whoever has been to the Arctic becomes like a compass needle - it always turns to the North.” Pisakhov sailed to Novaya Zemlya alone at least 10 times, the last in 1946. Pisakhov begins his search for divine “solar warmth”, which could revive the spiritual nature in man, in the Arctic and continues in the fall of the same 1905 in the Mediterranean countries, where he ends up with a crowd of pilgrims. “There, I thought I would see the most beautiful thing on earth!” In the fall of 1905 he arrived in Jerusalem and was left penniless. He was a clerk for the bishop in Bethlehem. Received permission from the Turkish authorities - the right to paint in all cities of Turkey and Syria. Then Egypt.

Pisakhov was ascetically unpretentious and believed in people. In difficult times, they helped me out. On the ship, an old Bulgarian covered him with a cloak from the icy wind; in Alexandria, he was robbed - a Russian emigrant fed him and lent him. For almost the whole winter (1909-1910) he studied at the Free Academy of Arts in Paris. However, the disdain for a realistic depiction of life preached in it contradicted his worldview. In Rome he exhibited his works, they shocked the audience with a silver radiance (“the north gives”). Returned home to Arkhangelsk. “It’s as if my eyes were rinsed! Where are the trees more beautiful than our birches? … And summer nights, full of light without shadows, are so enormously beautiful...”

After traveling to the south in 1907-1909, Pisakhov spent three winters in St. Petersburg in the studio of the artist Yakov Goldblat. Modernism, popular in those years, had almost no influence on Pisakhov (a very modest tribute: “Dreams” and “The Church to Which the Path is Lost”). In summer - the Kara Sea, Pechora, Pinega and the White Sea. From trips to Pinega and Pechora I brought 2 cycles: “Northern Forest” and “Old Huts”. “Old Huts” is a small part of the enormous work done by Pisakhov to perpetuate the monuments of northern architecture. Everything is in gloomy gray-brown tones. They are also supplemented by extensive ethnographic sketches.

Pisakhov considered his most memorable trips to be the 1906 voyage across the Kara Sea on the ship “St. Foka", participation in 1914 in the search for Georgy Sedov, exploration of the land of the Sami, presence at the founding of the first radiotelegraph stations on Yugorsky Shar, Mare-Sale and Vaigach Island. He captured everything he saw in landscapes that were exhibited in Arkhangelsk, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Rome. I really loved visiting Kiy Island. In his paintings of the White Sea cycle there is a feeling of the infinity of the universe. Nature reveals itself to man and merges with his being. The paintings are simple in subject: stones, seashore, pine trees. Special light: silver in winter and golden pearl in summer. The ability to show countless shades of white is amazing.

First exhibitions. Confession

In 1910, the exhibition “Russian North” was held in Arkhangelsk. Pisakhov took an active part in organizing its art department and exhibited more than two hundred of his paintings. 60 works by Pisakhov were presented at the Tsarskoye Selo anniversary exhibition in 1911, dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Tsarskoye Selo. In 1912, for participation in the exhibition “The North in Pictures” in St. Petersburg, he received a large silver medal. His paintings were exhibited at the “Exhibition of Three” (Jacob Belzen, Stepan Pisakhov, Hieronymus Yasinsky) in St. Petersburg in 1914. The artist was then at the peak of his creative powers. Perhaps it was at one of these exhibitions that his conversation with Ilya Repin took place, which he mentions in a letter to art critic Mikhail Babenchikov (1956): “At the exhibition, Ilya Efimovich (Repin) treated my works well. He especially liked “The Pine that Survived the Storms” [lost]. Ilya Efimovich persuaded me to make a large canvas. I muttered something about the size of the room. “I know: the canvas is on the wall above the bed, the paints are on the bed and it’s two steps to the wall. Come to me in Penates. And there will be enough space, and you don’t have to bring paints.” My comrades congratulated me and did not hide their envy. But I... didn’t go, I was afraid that I wouldn’t have the strength to work from embarrassment.” Most likely it was in Tsarskoe Selo, when Repin was working on the painting “A. S. Pushkin at the act at the Lyceum on January 8, 1815.”

Pisakhov during the First World War and Civil War and Intervention

The First World War interrupted Pisakhov's artistic activity. In 1915 he was drafted into the army, served as a militia warrior in Finland, and in 1916 he was transferred to Kronstadt. Here he was caught by the February Revolution. From the first days he worked in the Kronstadt Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, and organized the May Day demonstration (1917).

After demobilization in 1918, he returned to Arkhangelsk. Pisakhov takes up his pen. Pisakhov began recording his stories for the first time even before the revolution, on the advice of Hieronymus Yasinsky, a writer, journalist, known as the editor of the magazines “Conversation” and “New Word”. Then this attempt ended in failure. Now Pisakhov decided to try his hand at the genre of essays (“Samoyed Tale” and “Dream in Novgorod”), where he recreates portraits of his contemporaries. Both of these essays were published in the Arkhangelsk newspaper “Northern Morning”, which was published by the Surikov poet and journalist Maxim Leonov. In May 1918, M. L. Leonov was arrested and the newspaper was closed.

And on August 2, the interventionists entered Arkhangelsk. Among the people standing on the front pier of the Arkhangelsk port was Stepan Pisakhov.

On the night of February 19, 1920, Red Army units entered Arkhangelsk. Leonid Leonov immediately left Arkhangelsk and moved to the south of Russia; Boris Shergin was invited to Moscow to the Institute of Children's Reading; Pisakhov was unable to leave his home and beloved North.

1920-1940s

Beginning in the spring of 1920, immediately after the expulsion of the whites, in Arkhangelsk they began to municipalize houses whose owners were people who collaborated with the previous regime or were simply considered rich. Homeowners were allowed to keep for personal use only one house from among those previously owned. After the death of the head of the family, the merchant Grigory Mikhailovich, the Pisakhovs owned two houses: the first on Troitsky Avenue, the second on Pomorskaya Street. The first house immediately became the property of the city, and the owners of the second remained Stepan Grigorievich and Serafima Grigorievna. In 1921, tenants were moved in with them without the consent of the owners; besides, the Pisakhovs were not satisfied with the extremely low rent established by the City Council.

In 1920, after the final establishment of Soviet power in Arkhangelsk, Pisakhov began to work actively. In 1920-1921 he prepared 5 of his exhibitions. The provincial executive committee entrusts him with putting the museums of Arkhangelsk in order. On instructions from the Moscow Museum of the Revolution, he makes sketches of the sites of battles with the interventionists in the North, and for the Russian Museum - sketches of architectural monuments on the Mezen and Pinega. In the fall of 1920, he participated in a complex expedition to the Bolshezemelskaya tundra. In 1923, Pisakhov collected materials for the ethnographic exposition of the North at the first All-Union Agricultural and Handicraft Exhibition in Moscow.

In 1927, his painting “Monument to the victims of the intervention on the island. Yokanga" occupied a central place at the all-Union exhibition "10 Years of October", for which he was awarded a personal exhibition held a year later in Moscow. Two of his paintings were acquired by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and placed in the office of Mikhail Kalinin.

But Pisakhov’s daily life still remains unsettled. There wasn't enough money. Pisakhov takes up teaching painting, which for many years was his main source of income.

In 1939, Pisakhov was accepted into the Union of Soviet Writers.

Pisakhov spent the war years in Arkhangelsk, sharing with his fellow countrymen all the hardships of life in the rear. Often, together with other writers, he was a welcome guest in hospitals. From a letter to A.I. Vyurkov, a Moscow writer and constant correspondent of S.G. Pisakhov in the 1940s: “Time is running out, I turned 65. An anniversary commission was assembled. It was necessary to sign a letter to Moscow to approve permission for the anniversary. ...Who should have signed... - canceled. I just banned it! That's all. There is not even a teacher’s pension, not even an age pension. I live upside down... Sometimes I want to live. I want to wait for the end of the trash - the fascists. My clothes are falling apart. I’m wearing out my father’s coat!... And I’m still holding out, I still somehow find the opportunity to pay for lunch, mend clothes, I console myself with the thoughts: they could erase the anniversary - they can erase me from existence. Cross out my works - paintings, fairy tales... They're lying, sir! Don’t cross it out!”

last years of life

In the last years of his life, Pisakhov did not like to talk about age: “I was used to being under a glass bell. It’s convenient: they support you in icy conditions and help you get onto the tram. When asked what year it is, I say: on Saturday there will be 500!” (From a letter to prose writer Alexander Zuev dated September 2, 1959).

A few days before his 70th birthday, Pisakhov received an offer from the Arctic Institute Museum to sell notes, drafts, sketches, as well as all the paintings that he kept at home. “This proposal is very similar to a funeral one. I took up the pen, rewrote part of what I started, took the brushes - they obey... They also “feed hopes.” Perhaps, good things will come to me.”

The 80th anniversary of his birth is widely celebrated in Arkhangelsk. Central and local publications publish articles about the “northern wizard of words.”

Half-jokingly, half-seriously, Stepan Grigorievich said more than once that he was going to celebrate not only his centenary anniversary, but also to certainly live until the year 2000. He wrote his last fairy tale about this. On a May day in 1960 he passed away. He was buried at the Ilyinsky cemetery in Arkhangelsk.

The Arkhangelsk region is a vast, cold plain washed by the Onega and Northern Dvina rivers and the waters of the White (Icy, as it was called before) Sea. This is the north of Russia.

The inhabitants of this harsh region were called Pomors. They were engaged in fishing and hunting, agriculture and cattle breeding. In the White Sea, Pomors caught cod, salmon, halibut and herring, and in the rivers - whitefish, burbot and pike. It is not surprising that the action of Pomeranian tales is almost always connected with the sea.

One of the most famous storytellers of the Arkhangelsk region is Stepan Grigorievich Pisakhov. Look at his portrait. He looked like a fairy-tale character, an old man from the forest, as if he had come out onto the city street from the forest. From his tales you will learn how Arkhangelsk peasants lived, how they went to sea, fished, skated on ice floes, dried the northern lights, how bears sold milk at fairs, and how penguins came to work and walked the streets with a barrel organ.

And if you want to check what is true and what is fiction, go to the ancient city of Arkhangelsk - the capital of the region, wander the streets, visit the museum of the storyteller, do not forget to stop by Malye Korely - an open-air museum where ancient houses, bell towers, churches are collected from all over the region. Be sure to try the local delicacy – rozuli, which is similar to gingerbread. And as a souvenir, bring back from your trip unusual clay toys that have been made in the ancient city of Kargopol for centuries.

Perhaps the speech of the heroes of these fairy tales will seem unusual to you, but this is exactly what the inhabitants of the region used to say. And we carefully preserved this feature in the text.

I started writing and telling fairy tales a long time ago and rarely wrote them down.

My grandparents on my mother’s side are from the Pinega region. My grandfather was a storyteller. His name was the storyteller Leonty. It never occurred to anyone to write down grandfather Leonty’s tales. They talked about him: he was a great inventor, he told everything to the point, everything to the point. Grandfather Leonty was hired as a storyteller.

In bad weather they crowded into the fishing hut. In cramped conditions and in the dark: a smokehouse in a bowl with animal fat was shining. They didn't take any books with them. There was no nobility about radio. The storyteller begins a long fairy tale, or he starts a story with an incredible story. He talks for a long time, stops and asks:

- Fellow comrades, are you sleeping?

- No, we’re not sleeping yet, tell me.

The storyteller continues to weave a tale. If no one raised their voices, the storyteller could sleep. The storyteller received two shares: one for fishing, the other for fairy tales. I didn’t find grandfather Leonty and didn’t hear his tales. Since childhood, I have been among the rich northern word creation. When working on fairy tales, memory restores individual phrases, sayings, and words. For example:

“You’re so hot, if you touch you, you’ll burn your hands.” A girl, a guest from Pinega, talked about her life:

“Mama wakes me up in the morning, but I’m in a hurry to sleep!”

When we met, the old woman asked:

- Why haven’t you been seen for a long time, not in a sheaf, not in a handful?

They asked me where I get themes for fairy tales? The answer is simple: after all, rhymes easily live with me, two will come on their own, the third will be brought.

I often write fairy tales from life, almost from life. Much is remembered and much begs to be told in a fairy tale. It would take a long time to list what gave rise to this or that fairy tale. I'll tell you for example. One visitor asked me how long I have been living in Arkhangelsk. The secret is not great. I said:

– Since 1879.

– Tell me, how many houses were there in Arkhangelsk before?

There was something casually condescending in the tone, in the question. I answered in the tone of a visitor:

“There used to be one pillar, on the pillar there was a board with the inscription: “Arkhangelsk.” People huddled around the pillar. There were no houses, they didn’t even know about them. Some covered themselves with coniferous branches, others buried themselves in the snow, and in winter they wrapped themselves in animal skins. I had a bear. In the morning I shook the bear out of its skin and climbed into the skin myself. It’s warm to walk around in a bearskin, and the frost is a different matter. At night I gave the skin to the bear...

It was possible to weave a fairy tale. And the visitor is ready to believe. He found himself in the “wild north”. He wanted polar impressions.

I left the visitor to figure out what the city was like without houses.

I met Senya Malina in 1928. Malina lived in the village of Uyme, 18 kilometers from the city. This was the only meeting. The old man talked about his difficult childhood. In parting, he told how he and his grandfather “traveled on a ship through the Carpathians” and “how the dog Rozka caught wolves.” Malina died, it seems, in the same 1928. Honoring the memory of unknown northern storytellers - my relatives and fellow countrymen - I tell my tales on behalf of Senya Malina.

There are so many untruths and lies being said about our Arkhangelsk region that I came up with the idea of ​​saying everything as we have it.

The whole truth. Whatever I say, everything is true.

All around us are fellow countrymen, they won’t let you lie.

For example, the Dvina is thirty-five miles in its narrow place, and wider than the sea in its wide place. And we drive along it on eternal ice floes. We also have ice cream. These are the people who live by ice fishing. They fetch ice floes from the sea and rent them out to anyone who wants them.

Thrifty old women made ice holes in the eternal ice floes. How many years does the ice hole last?

In the spring, so that the ice floe with the hole would not melt in vain, they dragged it to the cellar - kvass, chilled beer.

In the old days, girls with dowries were given, first of all, an eternal floe of ice, and secondly, a fox fur coat, so that they would have something to ride across the river to visit.

In the summer many people come to us. They’ll come to the icebox and start bargaining so that they can give the ice floe half a price, but take three kopecks per person, and the tram fifteen kopecks.

Well, the glacier is okay, I agree for the sake of appearance. He’ll slip a dead ice floe into an old, needle-shaped floe that’s barely alive (even if ice floes last forever, they’ll come to an end).

Well, when you arrive from the shore, they will drive about a dozen versts, just like travellers, they will start a song, and the timid guys will be on guard (that’s why they are efficient, not first-timers). They will push against a strong ice floe, and it will begin to crumble. Those who arrive will scream: “Oh, we’re drowning, oh, save us!”

Well, the guys will now drive up on strong ice floes and surround us.

- About a ruble from the snout, otherwise there’s a bear swimming, and we’ll let in the walruses!

And the bears and walruses, whether they’re paid or paid, know their stuff. They are already floating. Well, come with a fright, they pay a ruble. Don't bargain in the future.

And we ourselves, in a good company, will hire an ice floe, first we’ll try it with an ice pick and find out how old it is. If it’s more than a hundred, we won’t take it. If you don’t have a hundred, it means you’re young and fit. We'll set up a sail for speed. And we spread our umbrellas out from the sun and twirl them around so as not to get sunburnt. In our summer the sun doesn’t set: it’s boring to stand in one place, so it moves around the sky. It will turn around fifty times a day, and if the weather is good and there is wind, then seventy. Well, if it’s raining and wet, they can rest, it’s worth it.