Nadezhda A. Teffi

The twentieth century was full of personalities, which left a truly indelible mark in the history of the development of society as a whole. Great discoveries, achievements of science and technology ... Wireless mobile Internet and unlimited tariffs for cellular communications are a direct result of such research. But at the dawn of the twentieth century, emphasis was placed not only on technology. The cultural component of society was also important. Therefore, the development of literature, of course, in its turn, really developed due to the most talented names left in the memory of those who admire the prose and poetry of the beginning of the 20th century.

One and such personalities was Nadezhda Alexandrovna Teffi, nee Lokhvitskaya, and her husband - Buchinskaya. She was born May 9 (and according to other sources - April 27) in 1872 in the city of St. Petersburg (here the data are also different, since there are allegations that she appeared in the light in the province of Volhynia). There was a future writer daughter of the then famous professor of criminalistics, and in addition, also the publisher of the magazine "The Court Herald" A.V. Lokhvitsky. Also Hope is the sister of the rather widely known poetess Mirra (nee Maria) Lokhvitskaya (it was once called "Russian Sappho").

The very first humorous stories were signed by the alias "Teffi", as well as the play "The Women's Question", which appeared in 1907. But the poems, which in the distant 1901 and debuted Lokhvitskaya, yet, were printed under her real maiden name.

The very origin of this pseudonym "Teffi" is still undiscovered. As she herself pointed out, he directly goes back to the house nickname of the old servant of the Lokhvitskys - Stepan (his family was called Steffi), but also to the poems of Rudyard Kipling himself, which sounded like "Taffy was a walesman / Taffy was a thief". But the stories and skits that appeared behind this signature were incredibly popular in prerevolutionary Russia, so at one time there were even spirits and sweets called "Teffi".

Teffi was published in the magazines "Satyricon", as well as "New Satyricon" from the very first issue, published in April 1908, right up to the prohibition of this edition in August 1918, therefore as the author of a two-volume collection of Humorous stories, published in 1910, Followed by several more collections ("Carousel", "Smoke without Fire", which appeared in 1914, as well as "Animate the Beast", written in 1916), Teffi already from the very beginning gained the reputation of a non-malicious, witty and very observant writer. Everyone thought that from other writers she was distinguished by a subtle understanding of all human weaknesses, her kindheartedness and incredible compassion for her unlucky characters.

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

Quite a short period of revolutionary sentiments, which as early as 1905 prompted Teffi to begin to write with the Bolshevik newspaper Novaya Zhizn, did not leave any noticeable trace in her work. Nor did she bring significant creative results and her attempts to write social satires on topical issues, which the newspaper Russkoye Slovo expected from Teffi. There she was published, beginning in 1910. At that time, headed by the newspaper "the king of satirical articles" - himself V. Doroshevich, of course, considering the originality of the gift of Teffi, it was rightly noted that "it's not good to carry water on an Arab horse".

Together with the popular satiric writer A. Averchenko, at the end of 1918, Teffi left for some time in Kiev, where public performances were supposed to be held first, and then, after a year and a half of wandering in the south of Russia (through Odessa, Novorossiysk and Ekaterinodar), they Reached finally, through Constantinople itself right up to Paris. In her book "Memoirs" (published in 1931), which is not a memoir in the literal sense of the word, but rather an autobiographical novel, Teffi was able to brightly and completely recreate the entire route of her wanderings and wrote that she never gave up hope for an early Return to pain in his native Moscow.

As in prose, and in drama in Teffi after her emigration, some sad, even slightly tragic motives are markedly amplified. Which is not surprising, because longing for one's native land is one of the strong emotional problems for many emigrants. And not only them. What do you do when you do not call your relatives and relatives for a long time, do not know what is happening to them? Correctly, you will be upset and even depressed, you will not find yourself a place.

The tone of stories Teffi increasingly combines some tough and immediately conciliatory notes. According to the writer herself, the hard time that her generation is going through still did not succeed in changing the eternal law, in which, at times, it was impossible to distinguish between fleeting joys and sorrows that had long since become commonplace.

Later, the whole World War II and the subsequent occupation of Teffi survived, never leaving Paris. However, from time to time, she still agreed to speak with her own works in front of a diverse emigrant audience, which was getting smaller every year. Well, in her post-war years, Teffi was quite busy memoir essays about her original contemporaries - from Alexander Kuprin himself and Konstantin Balmont to Grigory Rasputin.

From life, Teffi left in Paris on October 6, 1952, leaving behind a great sprout of culture, which blossomed for a long time, until finally it was completely woven into the crown of true talents of literature.