Cherny Sasha (1880-1932), poet

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CHERNY Sasha (real name Alexander Mikhailovich Glikberg) (1880-1932), poet, prose writer, translator, children's writer. He came to St. Petersburg in 1895; he studied at a gymnasia, but was expelled for poor progress and finally left the capital in 1898. He returned to St. Petersburg in 1905; here he acted as a contributor to Zritel. His poem Nonsense (1905) was the first to be signed by his pen-name, Sasha Cherny. In 1906 he published his first collection of poems entitled Various Motifs; it comprised satirical, civil and autobiographical works of the writer. The collection was sequestered, and Cherny was charged with political satire. It was only in 1908 that the trial was held, as Cherny went abroad in 1906. In 1908-11 he was in the head of a group of poets-contributors to the Satirikon journal; from the second half of 1911 he contributed to various periodicals. He spent the summer of 1912 on the island of Capri, in the house of M. Gorky. His major works include a book of poems Satires (1910), the collection Satires and Lyrics (1911). In 1912-14 he tried various genres, new to him; among other things, he translated H. Heine, and wrote stories. He gained renown as a children's writer (as such he contributed to the almanac Zhar-ptitsa edited by K.I. Chukovsky; issued books of poems entitled Rat-Tat, 1913, and Live Alphabet, 1914). All the works of the writer are permeated with the theme of St. Petersburg, though he appealed to it especially frequently from 1905 to1914. The poems Lunatic Asylum, Departure of a St. Petersburger, Indoor Spring, Again, The Spring of the Dead etc. take on a satirical view of the traditional elements of the "St. Petersburg text", thus structuring the central motif, which is the absurdity of St. Petersburg life. In August 1914 Sasha Cherny went to the front. His attitude towards the October Revolution of 1917 was negative. In 1918-20 he lived in Vilno and Kaunas, moved to Berlin in 1920, and finally settled in Paris and Provence.

References: Иванов А. С. Оскорбленная любовь // Черный С. Собр. соч.: В 5 т. М., 1996. Т. 1. С. 5-30; Шнейдерман Э. М. Саша Черный: Четыре жизни и еще одна: Биогр. очерк // Черный С. Стихотворения. СПб., 1996. С. 27-58.

I. E. Vasilyeva. Cherny Sasha (real name Glikberg Alexander Mikhailovich)
Chukovsky Korney Ivanovich
Gorky Maxim (Alexey Maximovich Peshkov)
Heine Heinrich
Иванов А. С. Оскорбленная любовь // Черный С. Собр. соч.: В 5 т. М., 1996
Шнейдерман Э.М. Саша Черный: Четыре жизни и еще одна: Биогр. очерк // Черный С. Стихотворения. СПб., 1996 Satirikon, journal