Ilf and Petrov on the Soviet era. "envelope", real surnames of Ilf and Petrov, as well as amazing stories See what "Ilf and Petrov" is in other dictionaries

Ilf I. and Petrov E. - Russian Soviet satirical writers; coauthors who worked together. In the novels "Twelve Chairs" (1928) and "The Golden Calf" (1931), they created the adventures of a talented swindler and adventurer, showing satirical types and Soviet customs of the 1920s. Feuilletons, the book "One-story America" ​​(1936).

Ilya Ilf (pseudonym; real name and surname Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg) was born on October 15 (October 3, old style), 1897, in Odessa, in the family of a bank employee. Was an employee of Yugrost and the newspaper "Moryak". In 1923, having moved to Moscow, he became a professional writer. In the early essays, stories and feuilletons of Ilya, it is easy to find thoughts, observations and details that were later used in the joint works of Ilf and Petrov.
Evgeny Petrov (pseudonym; real name and surname Evgeny Petrovich Kataev) was born on December 13 (November 30, old style), 1903, in Odessa, in the family of a history teacher. He was a correspondent for the Ukrainian Telegraph Agency, then an inspector of the criminal investigation department. In 1923, Zhenya moved to Moscow and became a journalist.

In 1925, the future co-authors met, and in 1926 their joint work began, at first it consisted of composing themes for drawings and feuilletons in the Smekhach magazine and processing of materials for the Gudok newspaper. The first significant joint work of Ilf and Petrov was the novel "Twelve Chairs", published in 1928 in the magazine "30 Days" and in the same year published as a separate book. The novel was a great success. It is notable for many brilliantly executed satirical episodes, characteristics and details that were the result of topical life observations.

The novel was followed by several short stories and novellas (The Bright Personality, 1928, 1001 Days, or New Scheherazade, 1929); at the same time, the systematic work of writers began on feuilletons for Pravda and Literaturnaya Gazeta. In 1931, Ilf and Petrov's second novel, The Golden Calf, was published, the story of the further adventures of Ostap Bender, the hero of The Twelve Chairs. The novel presents a whole gallery of small people, overwhelmed by acquisitive motives and passions and existing "parallel to the big world in which big people and big things live."

In 1935 - 1936, the writers traveled to the United States, the result of which was the book "One-Story America" ​​(1936). In 1937 Ilf died, and the "Notebooks" published after his death were unanimously evaluated by critics as an outstanding literary work. After the death of his co-author, Petrov wrote a number of screenplays (together with G. Moonblit), the play The Island of Peace (published in 1947), and The Front Diary (1942). In 1940 he joined the Communist Party and from the first days of the war became a war correspondent for Pravda and the Information Bureau. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and a medal.

Biography of I. Ilf

Ilya Arnoldovich Ilf (Iehiel-Leib Fainzilberg; the pseudonym "Ilf" can be an abbreviation on his behalf Ilya? Fainzilberg. (October 3 (15), 1897, Odessa - April 13, 1937, Moscow) - Soviet writer and journalist. Leib) Feinsilberg was born on October 4 (16), 1897 in Odessa, the third of four sons in the family of a bank employee Arye Benyaminovich Feinsilberg (1863-1933) and his wife Mindl Aronovna (nee Kotlova; 1868-1922), originally from the town of Boguslav, Kiev province (the family moved to Odessa between 1893 and 1895.) In 1913 he graduated from a technical school, after which he worked in a drawing bureau, at a telephone exchange, at a military plant.After the revolution, he was an accountant, journalist, and then editor in humorous magazines.

Essays

Twelve Chairs
Golden calf
Unusual stories from the life of the city of Kolokolamsk
A thousand and one days, or
New Scheherazade
Bright personality
One-story America
A day in Athens
Travel Sketches
Start of the hike
Tonya
Vaudeville and screenplays
Stories
The past of the registrar
Under the dome of the circus
He was a member of the Odessa Union of Poets. In 1923 he arrived in Moscow, became an employee of the newspaper "Gudok". Ilf wrote materials of a humorous and satirical nature - mostly feuilletons. In 1927, the creative collaboration of Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov (who also worked for the Gudok newspaper) began with joint work on the novel "The Twelve Chairs".

In 1928, Idya Ilf was dismissed from the newspaper due to the reduction in the staff of the satirical department, followed by Evgeny Petrov. Soon they became employees of the new weekly magazine "Chudak" Subsequently, in collaboration with Evgeny Petrov, they wrote (see Ilf and Petrov):

fantastic story "Bright personality" (filmed)
documentary story "One-story America" ​​(1937).

In 1932-1937 Ilf and Petrov wrote feuilletons for the newspaper Pravda. In the 1930s, Ilya Ilf was fond of photography. Photos of Ilya Arnoldovich, many years after his death, were accidentally found by the daughter of Alexander Ilinichna Ilf. She has prepared the book "Ilya Ilf - Photographer" for publication. Photo album. About 200 photographs taken by Ilf and his contemporaries. Articles by A.I. Ilf, A.V. Loginova and L.M. Yanovskaya in Russian and English - Moscow, 2002 .. While traveling by car across the American states, Ilf developed long-standing tuberculosis, which soon led to his death in Moscow on April 13, 1937.

The elder brothers of I. Ilf are the French cubist artist and photographer Sandro Fazini, also known as Alexander Fazini (Srul Arievich Fainzilberg (Saul Arnoldovich Fainzilber), December 23, 1892, Kiev - 1942, the Auschwitz concentration camp, deported on July 22, 1942 from Paris with his wife) and the Soviet graphic artist and photographer Mikhail (Moishe-Arn) Arievich Fainzilberg, who used the pseudonyms MAF and Mi-fa (December 30, 1895, Odessa - 1942, Tashkent). The younger brother - Benjamin Arievich Fainzilberg (January 10, 1905, Odessa - 1988, Moscow) - was an engineer-topographer.

Biography of E. Petrov

Evgeny Petrov (pseudonym of Evgeny Petrovich Kataev, 1903-1942) - Russian Soviet writer, co-author of Ilya Ilf.

Brother of the writer Valentin Kataev. Father of cameraman Pyotr Kataev and composer Ilya Kataev. Wife - Valentina Leontievna Grunzaid, from the Russified Germans.

He worked as a correspondent for the Ukrainian Telegraph Agency. For three years he served as an inspector of the Odessa Criminal Investigation Department (in the autobiography of Ilf and Petrov (1929) it says about this period of life: “His first literary work was the protocol of the examination of the corpse of an unknown man”). In 1922, during a chase with a firefight, he personally detained his friend Alexander Kozachinsky, who was the leader of a band of raiders. Subsequently, he achieved a revision of his criminal case and replacement of A. Kozachinsky with the highest measure of social protection - execution by shooting for imprisonment in a camp. In 1923, Petrov arrived in Moscow, where he became an employee of the Red Pepper magazine. In 1926 he came to work for the newspaper "Gudok", where he arranged for A. Kozachinsky as a journalist, who had been released by that time under an amnesty. Evgeny Petrov was greatly influenced by his brother Valentin Kataev. Valentin Kataev's wife recalled: I have never seen such affection between brothers as Vali and Zhenya had. Actually, Valya made his brother write. Every morning he started with a call to him - Zhenya got up late, began to swear that he had been woken up ... "Okay, swear further," Valya said and hung up. In 1927, the creative collaboration between Evgeny Petrov and Ilya Ilf (who also worked for the Gudok newspaper) began with the joint work on the novel "The Twelve Chairs". Subsequently, in collaboration with Ilya Ilf, they wrote:

The novel "Twelve Chairs" (1928);
the novel The Golden Calf (1931);
short stories "Unusual stories from the life of the city of Kolokolamsk" (1928);
the fantastic story "Bright Personality" (filmed);
short stories "1001 days, or New Scheherazade" (1929);
the story "One-Story America" ​​(1937).

In 1932-1937 Ilf and Petrov wrote feuilletons for the Pravda newspaper. In 1935-1936, they traveled to the United States, the result of which was the book "One-Story America" ​​(1937). The books of Ilf and Petrov were repeatedly staged and filmed. The creative collaboration of the writers was interrupted by the death of Ilf in Moscow on April 13, 1937. In 1938 he persuaded his friend A. Kozachinsky to write the story "The Green Van". In 1939 he joined the CPSU (b).

Petrov made a lot of efforts to publish Ilf's notebooks, he conceived a large work "My friend Ilf". In 1939-1942, Petrov worked on the novel A Journey to the Land of Communism, in which he described the USSR in 1963 (excerpts were published posthumously in 1965). During the Great Patriotic War, Petrov became a front-line correspondent. He died on July 2, 1942 - the plane on which he returned to Moscow from Sevastopol was shot down by a German fighter over the territory of the Rostov region, near the village of Mankovo. A monument is erected at the site of the plane's crash.

Compositions (solo)

Joy of Megas, 1926
No report, 1927
Front diary, 1942
Air cab. Screenplays, 1943
The island of peace. Play, 1947
The unfinished novel "A Journey to the Country of Communism" // "Literary Heritage", vol. 74, 1965

Ilf Ilya & Petrov Evgeniy

Collection of memoirs about I Ilf and E Petrov

Collection of Memories

about I. Ilf and E. Petrov

COMPOSITORS G. MUNBLIT, A. RASKIN

Evgeny Petrov. From memories of Ilf

Yuri Olesha. About Ilf.

In memory of Ilf

Lev Slavin. I knew them

Sergey Bondarin. Sweet old years

T. Lishina. Cheerful, naked, thin

Konstantin Paustovsky. Fourth lane

Mikhail Shtikh (M. Lvov). In the old "Whistle"

S. Hecht. Seven steps

A. Ehrlich. The beginning of the way

B. Belyaev. Letter

G. Ryklin. Episodes from different years

Igor Ilyinsky. "One summer"

Bor. Efimov. Moscow, Paris, Vesuvius crater

Ilya Ehrenburg. From book

V. Ardov. Miracles

G. Moonblit. Ilya Ilf. Evgeny Petrov

Evgeny Shatrov. Consultation

A. Raskin. Our strict teacher

Evgeny Krieger. In the days of war

Ore. Bershadsky. Editor

Konstantin Simonov. War correspondent

I. Isakov. Last hours

Evgeny Petrov. On the fifth anniversary of the death of Ilf

In 1962, twenty-five years have passed since the death of Ilya Arnoldovich Ilf and twenty years since the death of Yevgeny Petrovich Petrov.

A lot of people all over the world read and love their books and, as it always happens, would like to know about the authors - what they were, how they worked, with whom they were friends, how they started their writing career.

We tried to the best of our ability to answer these questions, telling about Ilf and Petrov everything we knew about them.

We dedicate this book to the blessed memory of our friends.

EUGENE PETROV

FROM MEMORIES OF Ilf

Once, while traveling across America, Ilf and I had a falling out.

It happened in the state of New Mexico, in the small town of Gallope, on the evening of that very day, the chapter about which in our book "One-Story America" ​​is called "The Day of Misfortune."

We passed the Rocky Mountains and were very tired. And then I still had to sit down at a typewriter and write a feuilleton for Pravda.

We sat in a boring hotel room, discontentedly listening to the whistles and bells ringing of shunting locomotives (in America, railway tracks often pass through the city, and bells are attached to locomotives). We were silent. Only occasionally did one of us say, "Well?"

The typewriter was opened, a sheet of paper was inserted into the carriage, but the matter did not move.

As a matter of fact, this happened regularly throughout our ten years of literary work - the most difficult thing was to write the first line. These were agonizing days. We were nervous, angry, urged each other on, then fell silent for whole hours, unable to squeeze out a word, then suddenly began to chat lively about something that had nothing to do with our topic, for example, about the League of Nations or the poor work of the Union writers. Then they fell silent again. We seemed to ourselves the most disgusting lazy people that can exist in the world. We seemed to ourselves infinitely mediocre and stupid. It was disgusting for us to look at each other.

And usually, when such a painful state reached its limit, the first line suddenly appeared - the most ordinary, in no way remarkable line. One of us pronounced it rather hesitantly. Another sourly corrected it a little. The line was written down. And immediately all the torment ended. We knew from experience - if there is the first phrase, it will work.

But in Gallope, New Mexico, things didn’t move forward. The first line was not born. And we had a falling out.

Generally speaking, we rarely quarreled, and then for purely literary reasons - because of some kind of speech or epithet. And then a terrible quarrel happened - with shouts, curses and terrible accusations. Either we were too nervous and overworked, or Ilf's fatal illness, which neither he nor I at that time knew about, had an effect here, we only quarreled for a long time - two hours. And suddenly, without saying a word, we began to laugh. It was strange, wild, incredible, but we laughed. And not with some hysterical, shrill, so-called alien laughter, after which you have to take valerian, but the most ordinary, so-called healthy laughter. Then we confessed to each other that at the same time we thought about the same thing - we shouldn't quarrel, it's pointless. After all, we still cannot go our separate ways. After all, a writer who has lived a ten-year life and composed half a dozen books cannot disappear just because his constituent parts quarreled like two housewives in a communal kitchen over a primus.

And the evening in the city of Gallope, which began so horribly, ended with a most intimate conversation.

It was the most frank conversation in many years of our friendship, which had never been darkened by anything. Each of us laid out to the other all our most secret thoughts and feelings.

For a very long time, around the end of the work on "Twelve Chairs", we began to notice that sometimes we say a word or phrase at the same time. Usually we refused such a word and began to look for something else.

If a word occurred to two at the same time, - said Ilf, it means that it can come to the head of three and four - it means that it was too close. Don't be lazy, Zhenya, let's look for something else. It's difficult. But who said composing works of art was easy?

Somehow, at the request of one editorial office, we composed a humorous autobiography, in which there was a lot of truth. There she is:

"It is very difficult to write together. One must think it was easier for the Goncourts. After all, they were brothers. And we are not even relatives. And not even the same age. And even of different nationalities: while one is Russian (a mysterious Slavic soul), the other is a Jew (mysterious Jewish soul).

So, it is difficult for us to work.

The hardest thing to achieve is that harmonious moment when both authors finally sit down at the writing table.

It would seem that everything is fine: the table is covered with a newspaper so as not to stain the tablecloths, the inkwell is full to the brim, behind the wall one finger is tapping on the piano with one finger, "Oh, these black ones," the dove is looking out the window, the summons for various meetings are torn up and thrown away. In short, it's okay, sit and compose.

But then it begins.

While one of the authors is full of creative vigor and is eager to give humanity a new work of art, as they say, a wide canvas, the other (oh, mysterious Slavic soul!) Lies on the couch, legs raised, and reads the history of naval battles. At the same time, he declares that he is seriously (most likely fatally) ill.

It also happens otherwise.

The Slavic soul suddenly rises from the bed of illness and says that it has never felt such a creative upsurge in itself. She is ready to work all night long. Let the phone ring - do not answer, let the guests pound at the door - get out! Write, just write. We will be diligent and ardent, we will be careful with the subject, we will cherish the predicate, we will be gentle to people and strict with ourselves.

- Ilya, do you think we should keep Bender alive?
- Yes of course. But it's better to kill. Or keep it alive.
- Or kill? Or keep it alive?
- Yes. Keep alive. Or kill.
- Zhenya, you are a dog optimist. Zhenya, don't cling to this line like that. Cross it out.
- I'm not sure…
- Lord, it's so simple! (grabs the pen from his hands, crosses out the word)
- You see! And you suffered.

This is how the work on each fragment of the book progressed. Any of them caused a dispute to the point of hoarseness, apparently, therefore, until now, that the "Golden Calf", that "12 chairs" are a success. Because every word is weighed and thought out. Here is what Petrov wrote about this:

A terrible quarrel in the evening in the city of Gallope. They shouted for two hours. Carried each other with the most terrible words that only exist in the world. Then they started laughing and confessed to each other that they thought the same thing - after all, we cannot quarrel, this is nonsense. After all, we cannot disperse - the writer will perish - and since we still cannot disperse, then there is no need to quarrel.

Although what is really there, if we speak objectively, then "IlfPetrov" left the reader's diet. There are many reasons, one of them is that the older generation knows novels by heart. And few people like to reread what you already know. Therefore, no one rereads "Crime and Punishment" together with "Eugene Onegin". On the other hand, the novel deviated very much from the realities of that time. Although, having read this masterpiece at the age of 14, immediately upon receiving a passport, I was impressed first of all by humor, cautious cynicism and all this timid charm of the Russian-Jewish tandem.

By the way, about the author. It is rather difficult to compose an autobiography of the author of The Twelve Chairs. The fact is that the author was born twice: in 1897 and in 1903. The first time - under the guise of Ilya Ilf, and the second - Evgeny Petrov. Although what is already there, we will speak directly: under the guise of Ilya Arnoldovich Faizilberg and Evgeny Petrovich Kataev. Both Odessans, both wrote feuilletons for "Crocodile" and "Pravda", both possessed an incredibly sharp mind and syllable, and ... this, perhaps, is where the similarity of two personalities within one great author ends.

For example, an older friend, Faizilberg, comes from that wonderful people, shrouded in myths, tales and stereotypes, who, in fact, created that mythical and witty glory of the original Odessa. Calm quiet talent, or, as they say “in our Odessa,” the Poz could not have connected his life with authorship, but would have continued to work in a drawing bureau, or at a telephone exchange, or at a military plant. But he began directly to dirty paper in Odessa newspapers, where, thanks to his innate wit and observation, he wrote materials of a humorous and satirical nature - mostly feuilletons. Its end was sad, but the dawn of a career delighted to the point of impossibility. Just like the characters he created: Panikovsky, Bender and those others whose names have become household names. The tragic end overtook his equally talented brothers. One of them - Srul (no need to laugh at foreign names, it's indecent) - became a world famous photographer and cubist artist, delighting the capricious audience with his works. But, alas, the pseudonym Sandro Fazini did not hide his origin, for which he was ruined in Auschwitz. Another brother, the Soviet graphic artist and photographer Mikhail (aka Moishe), died during the evacuation in Tashkent. Only the humble Benjamin remained, who continued the glorious talented family.

By the way, the surname is an abbreviation of his Jewish name. Perhaps it will seem to some stunted mind that the author has mentioned the word "Jewish" too much. But firstly, you cannot throw out the words from the song, and secondly, is there anything bad in this? In the novel itself, there is much more Jewish than it might seem.

But Evgeny Kataev was younger, but he lived more interesting, although he took risks at every step. His first literary work was the protocol of the examination of the corpse of an unknown man. This is because Petrov worked for 3 years in the Odessa Criminal Investigation Department, where one very strange story happened. Zhenya Kataev had one old friend - Sasha Kozachinsky. An ordinary daredevil, a daring puss with big ambitions. Go to Odessa and ask who Kozachinsky was before the revolution. He was a simple noble criminal investigation officer and continued to look for himself in life. And then our Sasha became a simple noble bandit. They hunted well, but the trouble is, they were covered by the valiant security officers led by Kataev. Kozachinsky surrendered to a friend, and for good reason. An old Odessa trick: please a person, especially if he works for the authorities. Here Kataev, already in Moscow, put his missing friend on the "whistle", and then forced him, already a leading venerable journalist, to write the story "Green Van", which tells about their Odessa affairs. You probably watched the old film with Kharatyan, shot according to this script.

After so many adventures, the scattered units finally managed to meet in Moscow in 1923. The two talented scribblers quickly became friends and discovered a similar range of interests and a desire to work with each other. Here they wrote feuilletons in co-authorship. Why not encroach on large forms? Moreover, Petrov ... By the way, the reader will probably ask, why Petrov, if he is Kataev? And everything is very simple: not only Ilf's brothers were talented. So Evgeny had a brother, Valentin, a student of Bunin, who became a venerable writer, who lived a stormy life in revolutions and wrote such works as "The Son of the Regiment" and "The Lonely Sail Gleams White". So Petrov thought that there could not be two Kataevs and changed a simple Russian surname for an even more, just to the point of disgrace, Russian "Petrov". It was Brother Valentin who gave two authors the idea of ​​such incorruptible as "12 chairs". Everything is very simple: the elder brother, already a well-known writer by that time, decided to use his brother and his best friend as literary blacks and by no means for the "golden weights". Like, write, and I will correct. But when after a while Ilf and Petrov showed him the fruits of their labors, he realized that it was at least unethical to take away such a masterpiece from, as it turned out, such talented authors. And the book caught on with the first sentence:

In the county town of N, there were so many hairdressing establishments and funeral procession bureaus that it seemed that the townspeople were born only to shave, cut their hair, freshen their heads with a veg, and die right away.

Although Ilf himself described his impressions of writing like this:

We sit down to write "12 chairs".
Evenings at the empty Labor Palace. We did not understand at all what would come of our work. Sometimes I fell asleep with a feather in my hand. I woke up with horror - in front of me were several huge crooked letters on paper. Such, probably, wrote Chekhov's Vanka, when he wrote a letter "to the village of grandfather." Ilf paced the narrow room of the fourth strip. Sometimes we wrote to the professional department.
Will the moment come when the manuscript will be finished and we will carry it on a sled. It will snow. What a wonderful feeling, probably, - the work is finished, nothing else needs to be done.
Ostap Bender was conceived as a minor figure. For him, we had one phrase - "The key to the apartment, where the money is." We heard it from one of our acquaintances, who was further removed in the form of Iznurenkov. But Bender gradually began to protrude from the framework prepared for him, acquiring more and more importance. Soon we could no longer cope with him.
Dispute over whether to kill Bender or not. Lottery. Then we took pity on our hero. It was somehow ashamed to revive him later in The Golden Calf.
When the novel was finished, we put it in a neat folder and pasted a note on the back of the cover: "The finder is asked to return to such and such an address." It was a fear for the work on which so much effort had been expended. After all, we put everything we knew into this first book. Generally speaking, we both did not attach any literary significance to the book, and if one of the writers we respect had said that the book was bad, we probably would not have thought of sending it to print.

However, critics and readers with great love accepted the acutely social masterpieces, calling the author's style "a blow with a broadsword on the vye" (who does not know, vye was called the neck in the old days).

And it started. The script for the film "Circus", and then the adventures of the Great Combinator in the company of the Rogue Panikovsky and Shura Balaganov in the monumental "Golden Calf". The moral of all the works was such that even the omnipotent fables of Krylov had not seen. Such morality was very necessary for the young Soviet state. Although, all the same, these were the most anti-Soviet books of all anti-Soviet ones. Ilf and Petrov were journalists, and therefore all their heroes had prototypes. They collected images and stories and, thanks to an elegant style, put everything in its place, making a filigree masterpiece of literature. Even Mayakovsky, presented in the form of the poet Lyapis-Trubetskoy, fell under their sharp syllable. Yes, Lyapis Trubetskoy is also from here. Even in Fascist Germany, the image of the Great Combinator was filmed in its own way. No wonder the authors argued over each fragment.

However, the most anti-Soviet book of the main Soviet journalists was "One-Story America" ​​- a kind of diary of travel across the United States from one region to another and back. Delighted with the factories of "Ford" and with some regret watching the mass automation, they met personally with Roosevelt, talked with Russian immigrants and such important personalities as Hemingway and Henry Ford. It is not known who aroused more interest in whom - Russian reporters from the Americans or the Americans from Ilf and Petrov. Not everyone liked the essays, because there are always commentators dissatisfied with the work of writing. But everyone liked the photographs taken by Ilf. Yes, yes, he filmed before it became main ... well, you get the idea. But nowadays Posner was inspired to repeat the path of journalists in his second homeland (the first is France).

But they didn't care about the reviews, they had to write a third book about Ostap. Moreover, a lot of ideas literally burst your head. The book promised to be better than the previous ones, but the villainous fate decreed otherwise. Ilf even in America noticed that he was coughing up blood. Upon his return, his tuberculosis exceeded all limits of decency. As Petrov recalled:

Travel to America. How "One-Story America" ​​was written. Ilf's disease. Everyone convinced Ilf that he was healthy. And I convinced. And he was angry. He hated the phrase "You look great today." He understood and felt that it was all over.

Every day Petrov ran to his fading friend, in order to compose with him in eternal disputes at least a couple of lines of a new novel, for time was running out. But not destiny: in 1937, Ilf was gone.

“Back in Moscow. The conversation that it would be nice to die together during some disaster. At least a survivor would not have to suffer. " - Evgeny Petrov.

Life has changed dramatically. It became somehow immediately not amusing. I wanted to write something more serious, but the audience demanded wit and humor.

Difficulties of working in a newspaper. Many did not understand. They asked - why are you doing this? Write something funny. But everything that was released to us in the life of the funny, we have already written.

Longing for an old friend, Petrov decided to write a monumental work on the basis of Ilf's notebooks - "My friend Ilya Ilf". This required a lot of long work, but again a harsh life intervened in the writer's plans. The war began, and Petrov went as a front-line correspondent, at the same time receiving the assignment to write a monumental work about the heroes of the war. But for the third time, something interfered with the creative plans of a well-known writer. Death again, but this time Petrov himself. In July 1942, the plane on which he was returning to Moscow from Sevastopol was shot down by a German fighter over the territory of the Rostov region, near the village of Mankovo. The German pilot would have known whom he had just shot down! This is not just a writer, but the last subtle observer of the human soul in a mess. Such was Zoshchenko, such was Kharms, and such were they - Ilf and Petrov. They have written works that either love or have not read. And novels are a feast for the eyes. Everyone loves good humor. He is also in feuilletons, which are also worth reading in order to enjoy the author's style, humor and better understand how people of that dreary era lived.

- No, this is not Rio de Janeiro! This is much worse!
- In white pants.
- Here I am a millionaire. The idiot's dreams have come true!
- On a silver platter.
- No applause! The Count of Monte Cristo did not come out of me. We'll have to retrain as a house manager.
- Kefir. It helps well from the heart.
- Office "Horns and Hooves".
- Saw, Shura, saw!
- Do not knock your bald head on the parquet.
- Panikovsky will sell you all, buy and sell again ... but at a higher price.
- Abortion victim.
“I ought to bump your snout, but Zarathustra will not allow it.
- A giant of thought and the father of Russian democracy.
- I think that bargaining is inappropriate here!
- Locksmith-intellectual with secondary education.
- Maybe you still have to give the key to the apartment, where the money is?
- To whom and the mare's bride.
- The office writes!
- Moo-oo-mustache! Ready to goo-oo-tendril?
- Give back the sausage, you fool, I will forgive everything!
- I have all the moves written down!
- Not for the sake of self-interest, but only by the will of the wife who sent me.
- A sultry woman, a poet's dream.
- Whoever says that this is a girl, let him be the first to throw a stone at me.
- Money in the morning - chairs in the evening!
- The ice is broken, gentlemen of the jury!
- I will command the parade!
- Do you know who this powerful old man is?
- Monsieur, it's not a mange pas sis zhur (the only phrase from the French language that is completely hammered into memory).
- How much is opium for the people?
- Be rude, lad!
- Well, to hell with you! Get lost here with your chair! And my life is dear to me as a memory!

And do you remember all of them?

"How do you two write this?"

Ilf and Petrov argued that this was a standard question, with which they were endlessly asked.

At first they laughed it off. "How do we write together? Yes, and we write together. Like the Goncourt brothers. Edmond runs around the editions, and Jules guards the manuscript so that acquaintances do not steal," they announced in the preface to The Golden Calf. "Authors are usually asked how they write together. For those interested, we can point to the example of singers who sing duets and feel great at the same time," they explained in "Double Autobiography". "We said. We thought. In general, we had a headache ..." - Ilf remarked in one of his notebooks.

And only in the memoirs written after Ilf's death did E. Petrov lift the curtain over the peculiar technique of this work. The writers V. Ardov, who often visited Ilf and Petrov, and G. Moonblit, co-author of E. Petrov on scripts, added vivid details to their memoirs (E. Petrov strove to introduce the principles that he had once worked out together with Ilf in his work with Moonblit).

Now it is not difficult for us to imagine the external picture of the work of Ilf and Petrov.

Evgeny Petrov is sitting at the table (it was believed that he had better handwriting, and most of the common works of Ilf and Petrov were written by his hand). A tablecloth, an unfolded newspaper on it (so that the tablecloth does not get dirty), a non-pouring inkwell and an ordinary student's pen. Ilf sits nearby or walks excitedly around the room. First of all, a plan is made. Violently, sometimes with noisy arguments, shouting (E. Petrov was quick-tempered, and courtesy was put aside at the writing table), with caustic, ironic attacks on each other, each plot twist, the characteristics of each character is discussed. Sheets with sketches have been prepared - individual expressions, funny names, thoughts. The first phrase is pronounced, it is repeated, turned over, rejected, corrected, and when a line is written on a piece of paper, it is no longer possible to determine who invented it. Dispute becomes a habit, becomes a necessity. When a word is pronounced by both writers at the same time, Ilf says harshly: "If a word occurred to two at the same time, then it can come to the head of three and four, it means it was too close. Don't be lazy, Zhenya, let's look for something else. It's difficult. , but who said that composing a work of fiction is an easy matter? .. "And later, working with G. Moonblit, E. Petrov was indignant if Moonblit hurriedly agreed with some invention, was indignant and repeated Ilf's words:" We'll be you after work. Now let's argue! Is it difficult? Work must be difficult! "

The manuscript is ready - a pack of neat large sheets, covered with even Petrov's lines (narrow letters, correct slope). E. Petrov reads aloud with pleasure, and Ilf listens, moving his lips, pronouncing the text to himself - he knows it almost by heart. And again doubts arise.

"- Seems to be wow. Huh? Ilf grimaces.

You think?"

Once again, certain places are highly controversial. "- Zhenya, don't cling to this line so much. Cross it out.

I hesitated.

Geez, ”he says irritably,“ it's so easy.

He took the quill from my hand and struck out a line decisively.

You see! And you were tormented "(E. Petrov." My friend Ilf ") *.

* (Notes by E. Petrov to the unrealized book "My friend Ilf". The manuscript is kept in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art (TsGALI).)

Everything written together belongs to both, the veto is unlimited ...

This is the external picture of the work of Ilf and Petrov. And the essence of their co-authorship? What did each of the writers contribute to the common creativity, what did literature receive as a result of such a peculiar fusion of two creative individuals? E. Petrov did not pose such a question to himself and, naturally, did not give an answer to it. You can answer this question if you turn to the prehistory of the work of Ilf and Petrov, by the time when two writers arose and existed separately: the writer Ilya Ilf and the writer Yevgeny Petrov.

Ilf (Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg) was born in 1897 in Odessa, in the family of a bank employee. After graduating from a technical school in 1913, he worked in a drafting bureau, at a telephone exchange, at an aircraft plant, at a hand grenade factory. After that he was a statistician, editor of the comic magazine "Syndetikon", in which he wrote poetry under a female pseudonym, was an accountant and a member of the presidium of the Odessa Union of Poets.

The Odessa "Collective of Poets", at whose evenings Ilf appeared in 1920, was a rather motley gathering of literary youth, but Eduard Bagritsky reigned here, L. Slavin, Yu. Olesha and V. Kataev performed. Here they eagerly followed the work of Mayakovsky and, in the words of Kataev and Olesha, fiercely read poetry and prose.

Ilf attracted the attention of his comrades with his keen observation, well-aimed speech, the ability to be sharp and irreconcilable. He performed little. V. Kataev and Yu. Olesha say: “We felt that there was an extremely mysterious, silent listener among us. He disturbed us with his probingly attentive look of the judge ... Sometimes he made short remarks, most often ironic and deadly with his accuracy He was a clear and strong critical mind, a sober voice of great literary taste. He was truly a judge, whose verdict was always just, although not always pleasant "*.

* (Literaturnaya Gazeta, 12 / IV 1947.)

The first works of Ilf were poems. He rarely read them, and later did not remember them. There is an opinion (it is refuted, however, by the mention of a "female pseudonym" in "Double Autobiography") that they did not appear in print. What were these verses? They say that they were sublime, strange in shape and incomprehensible. “There were no rhymes, there was no size,” writes Y. Olesh in the article “About Ilf.” in Odessa, he well remembers individual lines from two satirical epigrams of Ilf, dating from about 1920. In one of them, a certain young poet, Ilf's friend, was compared with the narcissistic Narcissus, reflected in his own boots. The observation was accurate and evil, and the form of the verse was lively and correct, with rhythm and rhymes. Mitnitsky does not consider these epigrams to be accidental for Ilf of those years, believing that it was in this kind that Ilf wrote his first poems.

In 1923, Ilf, following Kataev, Olesha, almost simultaneously with E. Petrov, about whom he did not know anything yet, moved to Moscow. Why? “It happens so,” writes Vera Inber in the story “A Place in the Sun”, “that one thought of some kind conquers many minds and many hearts at the same time. In such cases, they say that this thought“ is in the air. ” and thought about Moscow.Moscow was work, the happiness of life, the fullness of life.

Those traveling to Moscow could be recognized by the special sparkle of their eyes and by the boundless tenacity of the browbones. And Moscow? It was filled with newcomers, expanded, it accommodated, it accommodated. Already settled in sheds and garages - but this was only the beginning. They said: Moscow is overcrowded, but these were just words: no one had any idea about the capacity of human housing. "

Ilf went to work in the newspaper "Gudok" - a librarian and settled in the dormitory of the editorial office together with K). Olesha. His dwelling, limited by a half window and three partitions of the purest plywood, was very much like the pencil cases of the hostel "named after the monk Berthold Schwarz", and it was difficult to study there. But Ilf was not discouraged. In the evenings he appeared in the "night office" at the printing house and read, sitting in a corner. Ilf's reading was so peculiar that almost everyone who met Ilf remembers it. He read the works of historians and military leaders, pre-revolutionary magazines, memoirs of ministers; becoming a librarian in a railway newspaper, he became interested in reading various railway directories. And everywhere Ilf found something that fascinated him, which he then retold sharply and figuratively, which was useful to him in his satirical artistic work.

He soon became a literary contributor to Gudok.

In the mid-1920s, "Gudok" was a militant, truly party newspaper, widely connected with the masses, which raised a detachment of first-class journalists - "Gudkovites". Many of them became famous writers. The names of Yu. Olesha are associated with "Gudok" (in the 1920s one of his masks was widely popular among worker readers: the feuilletonist Zubilo), V. Kataev, M. Bulgakov, L. Slavin, S. Gekht, A. Erlikh ... Vladimir Mayakovsky sometimes appeared in the editorial office of Gudok, and his poems appeared on the pages of the newspaper.

The most fervent, most lively part of the newspaper was the "fourth page" section, in which Ilf worked as a "ruler". Here were processed for the last page of the newspaper (in 1923-1924 it turned out to be more often the sixth page) letters from Rabkorovskoe, received "from the line", from the most remote corners of the vast country, where only the threads of the railways penetrated. Long, often illiterate, often illegible, but almost always strictly factual and irreconcilable, these letters under the pen of Ilf and his comrades (apart from Ilf, the "rulers" were M. Shtikh and B. Pereleshin) turned into short, several lines, prosaic epigrams. There is no Ilf's name under these epigrams. They were signed by worker correspondents, mostly conditionally: worker correspondent number such and such, "Eye", "Tooth", etc.

This work brought the future satirist closer to the life of the country, repeatedly revealed to him the shadow sides of everyday life, taught ruthlessness and brought up a careful, economical attitude to a sharp word. There, in an atmosphere of adherence to principles, open, comradely sharpness and wit, Ilf's pen was sharpened and sharpened.

In fact, Ilf wrote little during these years and was published very sparingly. For a long time I could not find a permanent pseudonym. He signed himself like this: Ilf (without initials) *, If, I. Falberg, sometimes with the initials of I. F. There were pseudonyms: A. Nemalovazhny, I. A. Pseldonimov, etc.

* (The pseudonym "Ilf" was coined early. He was mentioned in Gudok already in August 1923. But the writer used it only on rare occasions before collaborating with Petrov.)

In 1923-1924. Ilf was far from sure that his calling was a satire. He tried to write stories and essays on heroic themes - about the civil war. Among them there was a story about a soldier who sacrificed his life to warn his comrades about the danger ("Fisherman of the Glass Battalion"), and a story about an Odessa gamen, a boy Stenka, who captured a Hungarian occupying officer ("Little Scoundrel"), and an essay about revolutionary events in Odessa ("The country where there was no October"). These works are carefully signed with one letter I., as if Ilf himself was thinking: is this? Indeed, this is not Ilf yet, although individual features of the future Ilf are not difficult to catch even here: in the phrase from The Fisherman of the Glass Battalion, later repeated on the pages of The Golden Calf (“In the wheat the little bird screeched and cried”); in a satirically outlined portrait of a German occupier who stupidly did not understand what some simple old woman understood well: that he would be thrown out of Odessa anyway ("The Country in Which There Was No October"); or in a funny detail of a touching story about Stenka (Stenka disarmed the officer by beating him in the face with a freshly stolen live cock).

Among the first topics raised by the young satirist Ilf were not only everyday, but also current political ones (twenty-five years later, there were critics who accused Ilf of those years of being apolitical). In one of his early feuilletons - "October Pays" ("Red Pepper", 1924, No. 25), he passionately opposes the imperialists, who still hoped to receive tsarist debts from revolutionary Russia, sarcastically promises to pay in full for the intervention, the blockade, and the destruction , and provocations, and imperialist support for the counter-revolution.

In the very first Gudkov's notes Ilf sounded soft, lyrical intonations, those smiling, admiring and shy intonations, unexpected for people accustomed to consider Ilf to be certainly harsh and merciless, which later appeared so charmingly in the third part of The Golden Calf. They are heard, for example, in his correspondence describing the demonstration on November 7, 1923 in Moscow, about how young tractor drivers, old agronomists, Chinese from the Eastern University and stranded passers-by ", about the cavalry, which is greeted with enthusiasm by the crowd, about how they pull the confused cavalryman off the horse in order to swing him. "" Don't, comrades! - he shouts. - Comrades, it's uncomfortable! There are many of us behind there! "And then smiling happily, flying into the air." Hurray, red cavalry! "- shout in the crowd." Hurray, workers! " ").

In 1925, on a business trip "Gudok", Ilf traveled to Central Asia and published a series of essays about this trip. In these essays, filled with a fervent interest in the shoots of the new, confidently making their way through centuries of inertia, for the first time was manifested the attention so characteristic of Ilf to the vivid details of life. He enthusiastically collects these details, as if collecting, making up a motley mosaic picture that captivates with the brilliance of colors.

Throughout the entire "Gudkovo" period (1923-1927), Ilf's satirical pen was noticeably gaining strength, and in his work a satirical feuilleton took an increasing place, so far most often built on the concrete material of Rabkorov's letters. A number of such feuilletons he published in 1927 in the magazine "Smehach" signed by IA Pseldonimov ("The Banker-Buzoter", "The Story of the Innocent", etc.).

Almost simultaneously with the name of Ilf, the name of E. Petrov appeared in print.

Evgeny Petrov (Evgeny Petrovich Kataev) was six years younger than Ilf. He was also born and raised in Odessa. In 1920 he graduated from high school, for a short time he was a correspondent for the Ukrainian Telegraph Agency, then for three years (1920-1923) he enthusiastically worked in the criminal investigation department near Odessa. "I survived the war, civil war, many coups, famine. I stepped over the corpses of people who died of hunger and made inquiries about seventeen murders. I conducted investigations, since there were no court investigators. Cases went straight to the tribunal. simply - "In the name of the revolution" ... "(E. Petrov." My friend Ilf ").

Petrov, like many young people of that time, was attracted by Moscow, but he had not yet thought about literary work. He did not think about his future at all ("... I thought that I had three or four days left to live, well, a maximum of a week. I got used to this idea and never made any plans. I had no doubt that no matter what began to die for the happiness of future generations "). He came to be transferred to the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department, and he had a revolver in his pocket. But the Moscow of the incipient NEP struck him: "... Here, in NEP Moscow, I suddenly saw that life had acquired stability, that people eat and even drink, there is a casino with a roulette wheel and a golden room. The cabbies shouted" Please, your Excellency! I'll pump it on the frisky one! "The magazines published photographs depicting meetings of the synod, and in the newspapers - announcements of balyks, etc. I realized that there was a long life ahead, and began to make plans. For the first time I began to dream."

On Bolshaya Dmitrovka, in the basement of the Rabochaya Gazeta building, the editorial office of the satirical magazine Red Pepper was located. It was a perky and politically poignant magazine. Witty youth collaborated in it - poets, feuilletonists, artists. L. Nikulin, one of the active participants in the magazine, recalls that the unsightly basement of the editorial office was the funniest place where people were constantly refined in their wit, where materials for the next issues of the magazine were heatedly discussed *. The closest collaborator of "Red Pepper" was Vladimir Mayakovsky, who not only posted his poems here, but also took part in the collective invention.

* (L. Nikulin. Vladimir Mayakovsky. M., "Pravda", 1955.)

The young humorist and satirist Yevgeny Petrov, who sometimes appeared under the pseudonym "Foreigner Fedorov", began publishing for the first time in "Red Pepper". Here he also went through his first school of editorial work: he was first the publisher, and then the secretary of the editorial office of the magazine.

Evgeny Petrov wrote and published a lot. Before starting cooperation with Ilf, he published more than fifty humorous and satirical stories in various periodicals and released three independent collections.

Already in his earliest works, you can find strokes typical of the prose of Ilf and Petrov. Take, for example, E. Petrov's story "Ideinny Nikudykin" (1924), directed against the then sensational leftist "slogan" "Down with shame!" The originality is here and in some expressions (in that, say, that Nikudykin with a "fallen voice" declared his adamant determination to go out naked into the street, just as Panikovsky later said in a "fallen voice" to Koreika: "Hands up!"); and in Nikudykin's dialogue with a passer-by, to whom he began to indistinctly talk about the need to renounce clothes and who, busily thrusting a dime into Nikudykin's hand, muttered quick, edifying words: "You have to work. Then the pants will be." and in the very desire to expose the inner absurdity, meaninglessness of the idea by means of external characteristics (for example, Nikudykin, who went out into the street naked to preach the beauty of the human body, "the most beautiful thing in the world," pimple on the side).

A humorous story, distinguished by a lively narrative manner, a fast pace of dialogue and the energy of a plot, was the genre most characteristic of the young E. Petrov. "Evgeny Petrov had a wonderful gift - he could give birth to a smile", - wrote I. Orenburg after the death of Petrov *.

* ("Literature and Art", 1 / VII 1944.)

This property - to give birth to a smile - was natural for Petrov and was already distinguished by his first works. But his stories were not only humorous. They were inherent - and the further, the more - accusatory fervor, turning in stories of 1927, such as "Merry" and "All-encompassing bunny", in accusatory and satirical pathos. True, being carried away by the topic, young Petrov was sometimes verbose, made verbal inaccuracies.

In 1926, after serving in the Red Army, E. Petrov came to "Gudok".

When and where did Ilf and Petrov first meet? This could have happened in the editorial office of "Red Pepper", where Ilf brought his feuilletons in 1924; and in "Gudka", where E. Petrov was with his older brother (V. Kataev) and until 1926 they had many common acquaintances. "I can't remember how and where we met Ilf. The very moment of our acquaintance completely disappeared from my memory," wrote E. Petrov. And Ilf left no memories. In "Double Autobiography" writers name 1925: as the year of their first meeting, in the essays "From Memories of Ilf" E. Petrov confidently transfers it to 1923 and even gives details: "I remember that when we met him (in 1923 g.), he completely charmed me, unusually vividly and accurately describing to me the famous battle of Jutland, which he read about in Corbett's four-volume book, compiled from the materials of the English Admiralty. "

It seems to me that the second testimony is closer to the truth, although it is further in time from the fact and belongs to one side, and not to both: it is difficult to imagine that with so many possible points of contact, young journalists have never met in a year and a half or two. Since 1925, a friendship began to develop between Ilf and Petrov.

E. Petrov kept fond memories of the letter he received from Ilf while in the Red Army for the rest of his life. It seemed to him contrasting with the whole atmosphere of the unsettled, breaking life of the mid-20s, unsteady, unstable relations, when everything outdated was so despised, and often simple human feelings were attributed to the outdated, when they were so eagerly drawn to the new, and for the new they often took the crackling , transient: "The only person who sent me a letter was Ilf. In general, the style of that time was this: to spit on everything, writing letters is stupid ..." (E. Petrov. "My friend! Ilf").

The "fourth stripe" of "Gudok" brought future co-authors even closer together. Actually, in the "fourth page", in "The famous merciless", as she was proudly called, E. Petrov did not work (he was an employee of the professional department), but in the room of the "fourth page" he soon became his own man. This room was a kind of club for journalists, artists, editorial staff, not only of Gudka, but also of many other trade union publications located in the same building of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions on Solyanka.

"The famous merciless." Employees of the "Rabochaya Zhizn" department of the "Gudok" newspaper at work. From left to right: head of department I. Ovchinnikov, Y. Olesha (feuilletonist Zubilo), artist Fridberg, "ruling officials" Mikhail Shtikh, Ilya Ilf, Boris Pereleshin

"In the room of the fourth page," Petrov recalled later, "a very pleasant atmosphere of wit was created. They were joking here incessantly. A person who got into this atmosphere began to joke himself, but, mainly, was a victim of ridicule. Employees of other sections of the newspaper were afraid of these desperate witches. ".

On the brightly whitewashed spacious walls hung terrible sheets on which, usually even without comment, all kinds of newspaper blunders were glued: incompetent headlines, illiterate phrases, unsuccessful photographs and drawings. One of these sheets was titled "Snot and Screams". The other bore a more solemn, albeit no less caustic, title: "Decent Thoughts." These last words were ironically extracted from the Literary Page, an appendix to Gudok: "In general, it is written (as for you - a novice writer) in a light syllable and there are decent thoughts in it!" - consoled the "Literary Page" of one of its correspondents, an unlucky poet *.

* ("Whistle", 23 / III 1927.)

E. Petrov left an expressive portrait of Ilf of that period: “It was an extremely mocking twenty-six-year-old (in 1926 Ilf was twenty-nine years old - L. Ya.) A man in pince-nez with small naked and thick glasses. face with a blush on the cheekbones. He sat with his legs stretched out in front of him in sharp-nosed red shoes, and wrote quickly. After finishing another note, he thought for a minute, then wrote the title and rather casually threw the sheet to the head of the department, who was sitting opposite ... "

Let's try to imagine, next to Ilf, his twenty-three-year-old future co-author: tall, handsome, thin, with an elongated face, to whom the expression of a sly grin came so features were zealously emphasized in their later friendly cartoons by Kukryniksy. Then he combed his hair slightly on the forehead and to the side and the characteristic triangle had not yet been bared (descending to the middle of the forehead.

In the summer of 1927, Ilf and Petrov went to the Crimea and the Caucasus.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this trip in their creative biography. Ilf's diaries and notebooks of those days are dotted with cartoons, funny drawings, jokes in poetry and prose. It is felt that friends enjoyed not only the nature and the abundance of impressions, but also the discovery of common tastes and common assessments, that sense of contact and mutual understanding, which later became a distinctive feature of their co-authorship. Here their ability to look together began to take shape. Probably, here there also appeared (perhaps, not yet realized?) An urge to write together. It is no coincidence that the impressions of this trip, in stages, in whole chapters, were included in the novel "The Twelve Chairs".

It seemed that only a push was needed for the writer Ilf and Petrov to speak. Once (this was at the end of the summer of 1927) Valentin Kataev jokingly suggested opening a creative combine: "I will be Dumas-father, and you will be my negroes. I will give you themes, you will write novels, and I will edit them later. I’ll go through your manuscripts once or twice with the hand of a master and you're done ... "Ilf and Petrov liked his story with chairs and jewels, and Ilf invited Petrov to write together. "- How together? By chapters, or what? - No, - said Ilf, - let's try to write together, at the same time, each line together. Do you understand? One will write, the other will sit next to each other at this time. In general, compose together. "(E. Petrov." From memories of Ilf ") *.

* (I. I. Ilf, E. Petrov. Collected works in five volumes, p. 5.M., 1961.)

On the same day, they had lunch in the dining room of the Palace of Labor (in the building of which the "Whistle" was located) and returned to the editorial office to compose a plan for the novel.

The beginning of the joint work of Ilf and Petrov on "The Twelve Chairs" not only did not lead to the leveling of their talents, but this first novel, which showed the brilliant capabilities of young artists, revealed their features, and in the subsequent separately written works of 1928-1930. the difference in their individual creative manners became even more pronounced.

Speaking separately, Ilf and Petrov often created works that were close in theme and even in plot. So, for example, in No. 21 of the Chudak magazine for 1929, Ilf's feuilleton "Young Ladies" appeared, and in No. 49 - Petrov's story "The Day of Madame Belopolyakina". At the center of both is the same social type: the petty bourgeois wives of some Soviet employees, a kind of cannibalistic Ellochka. In Ilf's story "The Broken Tablet" ("Eccentric", 1929, No. 9) and Petrov's story "Uncle Silantiy Arnoldych" ("Laughter", 1928, No. 37), the plot is almost identical: a resident of a huge communal apartment, a squabbler by vocation, accustomed to harass neighbors by regulations at all switches, he feels unhappy when he is moved to a small apartment, where he has only one neighbor.

But the writers approach the solution of the topic in different ways, with different artistic techniques inherent in their creative individuals.

Ilf gravitates towards feuilleton. Petrov prefers the genre of a humorous story.

Ilf's image is generalized, almost unnamed. We would never have learned the name of the "young lady" if the author did not see her as a subject for ridicule in the very name. Her name is Brigitte, Mary or Zheya. We do not know her appearance. Ilf writes about these "young ladies" in general, and the facial features or hair color of one of them is unimportant here. He writes that such a young lady loves to appear at family evenings in blue pajamas with white cuffs. And then "blue or orange" trousers appear. Individual details are not of interest to the author. He selects only species. The image of the grumpy neighbor in the story "The Broken Tablet" is almost the same generalized. True, here the hero is provided with a funny surname - Marmelamadov. But the surname remains on its own, almost not connecting with the character. It seems that the author has forgotten what he called his hero, because further on he invariably calls him "he", "neighbor" and other descriptive terms.

E. Petrov tends to give a typical phenomenon or character in a concrete, individualized form. "The Day of Madame Belopolyakina", "Uncle Silantiy Arnoldych" are called his stories. Not a "young lady" in general, namely Madame Belopolyakin with a fat forehead and a cropped mane. Not a generalized apartment squabbler, but a very definite uncle Silantiy Arnoldych with gray eyelashes and a frightened look. E. Petrov describes in detail both Madame's morning, and her scores with the housekeeper, and the confused trampling of this housekeeper in front of the mistress. We will find out exactly what things and how the quarrelsome "uncle" dragged them into the new apartment.

E. Petrov loves the plot; The humorous and satirical material in his stories is usually organized around action or a change of situations ("Restless Night", "Meeting in the Theater", "David and Goliath", etc.).

Ilf, on the other hand, seeks to embody his satirical thought in sharp comic detail, sometimes highlighting a funny plot position instead of a plot and action. In characteristic detail, Ilf looked for the manifestation of the essence of things. This can be seen in the feuilleton "Lane", and in the essay "Moscow from dawn to dawn", and in the satirical essay "For my heart". Delightingly following the onset of the new, he at the same time observes the old with keen interest - in the alleys of Moscow, in its "Persian" and Asian bazaars, crowded by the new way of life. This old, leaving for the margins of life and at the same time still mixing with the new, did not escape the attention of the satirist Ilf.

Petrov's stories are full of dialogues. Instead of dialogue, Ilf has one or two remarks, as if weighing and separating the found word. For Petrov, the most important thing was what to say. Ilf was extremely interested in - how to say. He was distinguished by more intent than E. Petrova, attention to the word. It is no coincidence that Ilf's records contain such an abundance of synonyms, terms that are interesting for a satirist, etc.

These very different features of the talents of young writers, when combined, gave one of the most valuable qualities of the joint style of Ilf and Petrov - the combination of the fascination of the narrative with the precise finishing of every replica, every detail.

There were other differences in the creative personalities of Ilf and Petrov. It can be assumed that Ilf, with his attention to detail, mainly satirical and unusual, with his interest in the unusual, in which the ordinary is sometimes manifested, the desire to think out an everyday situation to an incredible end, was closer to that grotesque, hyperbolic beginning, which is so vividly in the "History of a city" by Shchedrin, in the satire of Mayakovsky, in such works of Ilf and Petrov as "The Bright Personality" and "Extraordinary Stories from the Life of the City of Kolokolamsk". And in later years it was Ilf who retained his attraction to such satirical forms. Suffice it to point to the plans for two satirical novels preserved in his notebooks. One of them was supposed to tell about how they built a film city on the Volga in the archaic ancient Greek style, but with all the improvements in American technology and how two expeditions went in this regard - to Athens and to Hollywood. In another, the writer intended to depict the fantastic invasion of the ancient Romans into NEP Odessa. According to his comrades, Ilf was very keen on this last plan, dating back to 1936-1937, but Petrov stubbornly objected to it.

On the contrary, E. Petrov, with his humorous narrative and detailed interest in everyday life, was closer to the Gogolian style, the style of the author of "Dead Arcs" and "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich." The style and design of his later work - "My friend Ilf" - confirm this assumption. However, even with such a division, one can only speak of Ilf's predominant hobby for, say, grotesque: elements of such grotesque are evident in E. Petrov's play "The Island of Peace".

Ilf and Petrov did not just complement each other. Everything they wrote together, as a rule, turned out to be more significant, artistically more perfect, deeper and sharper in thought than what was written by writers separately. This is obvious if we compare Ilf's feuilleton "The Source of Fun" (1929), created on approximately the same material, and the joint feuilleton of the writers "The Merry Unit" (1932), or E. Petrov's story "The Valley" with the chapter from the novel "The Golden Calf" "Baghdad", where the plot of this story was used.

The last example is especially expressive, because there is not even any significant period of time: the story "The Valley" appeared in "The Eccentric" in 1929; Ilf n Petrov worked on the corresponding chapter of The Golden Calf in 1930. This is not the only case when writers used previously written works for a novel. So they reworked the essays "Caution! Covered for centuries", "Noble Bukhara". The story "Charles-Anna-Hiram" is almost literally reproduced in the chapter about Heinrich-Maria Zauz in "The Golden Calf". The outward appearance of Portishchev's underground kulak (Portishchev's Double Life) became the hallmarks of Koreiko's “underground millionaire”. In all these cases, Ilf and Petrov dealt with works written by them in 1929 and 1930. Together, and almost without changes, at least without serious changes in ideological and semantic meaning, they took from them entirely large pieces suitable for the novel. The story was different with the story "The Valley".

In essence, "Valley" and the chapter "Baghdad" retell the same plot with a slightly different local flavor: in the story, travelers in a Caucasian town were looking for exotic things, but found a modern way of life, in the chapter "Baghdad" - Bender and Koreiko in a Central Asian town among the sands instead of exotic Baghdad with oriental-style cellars, cymbals, tympans and maidens in patterned shalvars, they find a modern city under construction with a kitchen factory and a philharmonic society. Almost the same for both works and the character - a voluntary guide-enthusiast, only he changed his cap to a skullcap and began to answer more confidently. But if in the story the thought is not clear (the aroma of local life has changed, but is it good? Maybe it's a pity that exoticism, mysterious cellars, colorful bazaars, the romance of the East have disappeared?), Then the chapter from The Golden Calf is remarkable for the fact that it is ideologically clear, ideologically dynamic, even polemical. Merry, funny, at the same time, she convinces hotly and passionately, like journalism. In the first work, two writers, Soviet people, were looking for the exoticism of oriental cellars. In the second - Bender and Koreiko, two crooks of different models, but both rejecting socialism and dreaming of a bourgeois world dominated by the golden calf. In the first case, an amusing anecdote is told; in the second, we laugh with pleasure at millionaires who fail to live in our country the way they want, and who, willy-nilly, have to submit to our way of life. Ilf and Petrov did not stint on a few straightforward remarks, which added clarity and sharpness. For example, in "Valley": - "And what about zucchini? .. You know, those in the local style ... With music ..." - asked the writer Poluotboyarinov. - "Oh, we managed to get rid of them", - a little man in a cap answered him vaguely. - "Of course, it was difficult, but nothing, we coped." And then with the same readiness he reported that they also managed to get rid of dancing.

In "The Golden Calf": "And how are you with such ... with zucchini in the Asian genus, you know, with tympans and flutes?" Asked the great strategist impatiently.

Have outlived, - the young man answered indifferently, - it was long ago necessary to exterminate this infection, a breeding ground of epidemics.

In the spring, the last nativity scene was strangled. "

What a wonderful native market! Baghdad!

On the seventeenth, we will begin to demolish, - said the young man, - there will be a hospital and a co-center.

And don't you feel sorry for this exotic? After all, Baghdad!

Very nice! sighed Koreiko.

The young man got angry:

It is beautiful for you, for visitors, but we have to live here. "

For ten years of joint work, Ilf and Petrov were under the continuous, strong and ever-growing influence of each other. Not to mention the fact that they spent many hours every day together, worked together on manuscripts (and they wrote a lot), walked around the city together, made long journeys (E. Petrov says that in the early years they even wrote business papers together and the two of them went to the editorial offices and publishing houses), not to mention these external forms of communication, Ilf and Petrov were very close to each other creatively. The valuable in the creative principles, views, tastes of one was certainly assimilated by the other, and that which was recognized as unnecessary, false, was gradually etched away.

E. Petrov tells how, having first written one chapter of "One-Story America" ​​on their own, he and Ilf began to read with excitement what they had written to each other. Naturally, both were worried about this kind of experiment.

"I read and could not believe my eyes. Ilf's chapter was written as if we had written it together. Ilf had long taught me to harsh criticism and was afraid and at the same time thirsted for my opinion, just as I thirsted and feared it. dryish, sometimes angry, but completely accurate and honest words. I really liked what he wrote. I would not like to add or subtract anything to what he wrote.

“So it turns out,” I thought with horror, “that everything that we have written together so far has been composed by Ilf, and I, obviously, was only a technical assistant.”

But Ilf took Petrov's manuscript.

"I am always worried when someone else's eye looks at my page for the first time. But never, neither before nor after, have I experienced such excitement as then. Because it was not someone else's eye. And it was still not my eye. Probably, such a feeling is experienced by a person when, in a difficult moment for himself, he turns to his conscience. "

But Ilf also found that Petrov's manuscript fully corresponds to his, Ilf's, idea. “Obviously,” Petrov notes further, “the style that Ilf and I developed was an expression of the spiritual and physical characteristics of both of us. Obviously, when Ilf wrote separately from me or I separately from Ilf, we expressed not only each of us, but also both together. " (E. Petrov. "From memories of Ilf").

It is curious that Ilf and Petrov did not tell by whom and what was written in "One-Story America": apparently, the writers deliberately did not leave material to their literary heirs that would make it possible to divide them in their work. Yevgeny Petrov noted with satisfaction that one "extremely intelligent, sharp and knowledgeable critic" analyzed "One-Story America" ​​in the firm belief that he could easily determine who wrote which chapter, but could not do it.

You can determine who wrote this or that chapter in "One-Story America" ​​- by the handwriting of the manuscripts. True, in the manuscripts of Ilf and Petrov, the handwriting in itself is not proof of the belonging of this or that thought or phrase to one or another of the co-authors. Much in their works, written by Petrov's hand, belongs to Ilf; preparing for work, for example, on the "Golden Calf", Petrov often, with his neat handwriting, regardless of where - whose, wrote out notes, names, jokes - made "blanks", which were then used in the process of joint work. Perhaps Ilf put in front of Petrov the sketches he had made at home so that, copied by Petrov's hand, they would become common. Maybe he sketched them right there, during the conversation. Some of these drafts, repeated by Petrov interspersed with new notes, have survived.

On the other hand, we cannot assert that everything written by Ilf's hand and the so-called Notebooks that compiled it belongs only to him and was done without the participation of E. Petrov. It is known that Ilf did not use other people's witticisms and would never repeat someone else's phrase in the novel without ironically rethinking it. But his notebooks were not intended for printing. They were compiled for themselves. They recorded everything that seemed interesting, witty, and funny to the writer. And often among this interesting was not invented, but heard. So, for example, Ilf did not give the name of the dining room "Fantasy". In 1926, he cut out from the newspaper an advertisement for the "Fantasy" restaurant - "the only restaurant where food is tasty and cheap", and then transferred it to his notebook. It was not Ilf who invented the name "Popolamov". M. L. Shtikh, comrades of Ilf and Petrov in "Gudok", advised them to use such a pseudonym, since they write "in half." The pseudonym was not used, but it ended up in Ilf's notebook. Ilf also wrote down the words that went around in the circle of his and Petrov's comrades. "I came to you as a man to a man" - in "Gudok" it was a common wit, a repetition of the line that one of the employees seriously uttered when trying to beg an advance payment from the editor. These are other people's phrases. But Petrov was not a stranger to Ilf. Who will seriously prove that there are no Petrov's remarks among these records, there are no common finds, there are no expressions polished together?

Of course, sometimes it is not difficult to guess that, say, it was Ilf who recalled the blankets with the frightening indication of "Legs" while working on the "Twelve Chairs", and during the work on the "Golden Calf" he also extracted the name of the watchmaker Glasius from his notes: and about both, he cheerfully wrote to his wife from Nizhny Novgorod back in 1924. But the names "great schemer", "golden calf", "Kolokolamsk"? Or the lexicon of the cannibal Ellochka? We see that this lexicon is found in Ilf's notes. Maybe it was all composed by Ilf. Or maybe it was formed during one of the joint walks of Ilf and Petrov, which both writers loved so much, got into Ilf's notes and was used in the process of joint work. We have no parallel books by E. Petrov, and. therefore, we cannot verify which of Ilf's records would have met in them. And many would certainly have met.

The book "One-Story America" ​​was written in special conditions. A seriously ill Ilf then lived at the Kraskovo station, among the pine trees. The common typewriter was with him (his notebooks from this period are written on a typewriter). Petrov lived in Moscow and wrote his chapters by hand. About half of the chapters in the surviving manuscript of the book are written in Petrov's handwriting. The rest were typed on a typewriter - the same typewriter purchased in America with a characteristic small print, on which Ilf's "Notebooks" of recent years were also printed. There are slightly more than half of these chapters, apparently because some of them were written together, and it is possible to single out what was written together. E. Petrov said that twenty chapters were written separately and seven more - together, in the old way. It can be assumed that these seven chapters should correspond to the seven essays about the trip, published in Pravda.

Mostly E. Petrov wrote the chapters "Appetite goes away with eating", "America cannot be taken by surprise", "The world's best musicians" (no wonder: E. Petrov was perfectly musically educated), "The Day of Misfortunes", "The Desert" , "Young Baptist". Mainly Ilf owns the chapters: "On the road", "Small town", "Soldier of the Marine Corps", "Meeting with the Indians", "Pray, weigh yourself and pay." And the chapters written together include: "Normandy", "Evening in New York", "Big Small City", "American Democracy".

But having determined in this way the authorship of most of the chapters of "One-Story America", we still cannot divide it into two parts, and not only because we still do not know and will remain unknown to whom this or that amendment by hand belongs (after all not necessarily entered by the person who wrote it in), this or that successful word, image, turn of thought (born in the brain of one of the co-authors, they could get into a chapter written by another). The book cannot be divided because it is whole; written by writers separately, each line belongs to both. Even Yu. Olesha, who knew Ilf back in Odessa, who lived with him in the same room during the "Gudkovsky" period, acutely felt the individual peculiarity of his humor, and he, citing in his article "About Ilf" the only excerpt from "One-Story America" characterizing, in his opinion, Ilf, quoted lines from the chapter "Negroes", lines written by Yevgeny Petrov.

Ilf I. and Petrov E.

Ilf I. and Petrov E.

Ilf I. and Petrov E.
Russian prose writers, co-authors. Ilf Ilya (real name Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg; 1897, Odessa - 1937, Moscow), was born into the family of a bank employee. In 1913 he graduated from a technical school. He worked in a drawing bureau, at a telephone exchange, at an aircraft plant, was an employee of the newspaper "Moryak", editor of the comic magazine "Sindetikon". Since 1923 - in Moscow; publ. feuilletons, essays and reviews in newspapers and magazines ("Smehach", "Soviet Screen", "Evening Moscow"). In 1925, in the editorial office of the Gudok newspaper, he met his future co-author. Petrov Evgeny (real name - Evgeny Petrovich Kataev; 1903, Odessa - 1942, died at the front). Brother of V.P. Kataev. After graduating from a classical gymnasium in 1920, he became a correspondent for the Ukrainian Telegraph Agency, then - an inspector of the criminal investigation department. Since 1923 - in Moscow; worked in the satirical magazine "Red Pepper", published in "Komsomolskaya Pravda" and "Gudok" feuilletons and humorous stories under the pseudonym "Foreigner Fedorov".

The joint activity of Ilf and Petrov began in 1926 by composing themes for drawings and feuilletons in the Smekhach magazine. The first significant work, the novel "Twelve Chairs" (1928), was enthusiastically received by the reader and, in fact, at his request, was continued by the novel "The Golden Calf" (1931). Trivial at first glance, the story of the hunt for Madame Petukhova's jewels and the money of the underground millionaire Koreiko has become, under the pen of talented satirists, a brilliant panorama of the life of the country in the 1920s. A working day in the editorial office of the newspaper "Stanok", a hostel named after the monk Berthold Schwartz, a communal "Crow Slobodka", a shy thief Alkhen, a former leader of the district nobility, and now a frightened employee Kisa Vorobyaninov, a roguish father Fyodor, the wife of an employee Elloedka Shchukin's answer almost all episodes and images of this dilogy, recognizable, vivid, memorable and at the same time generalized and typified, have become common nouns. Like N.V. Gogol in the poem "Dead Souls", Ilf and Petrov, with the help of a fascinating story about the adventures of the protagonist, an enterprising seeker of quick wealth and charming swindler Ostap Bender, with shrewd accuracy captured the destructive vices not only of their time, but of the entire system : bureaucracy, carelessness, theft, idleness, official idle talk, Manilov dreams of a quick and easy economic take-off, etc. , firmly entered the Russian. speech (“abroad will help us,” “the rescue of drowning people is the work of the drowning themselves,” “the ice has broken,” and many others). Among other works of writers: the story "The Bright Person" (1928), the cycle of satirical short stories "1001 Days, or New Scheherazade" (1929); feuilletons and satirical stories, published mainly in the newspaper Pravda, where the writers have worked since 1932 (including The Laughing Unit, Armored Place, Kloop); the book of travel essays "One-story America" ​​(1936); movie scripts. Ilf also left "Notebooks" (published in 1939), Petrov - scripts for the films "Air Carrier" (together with GN Moonblit), "Musical History", "Anton Ivanovich is Angry", as well as caused by the impressions of the diary "(1942).

Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. - M .: Rosman. Edited by prof. A.P. Gorkina 2006 .

See what "Ilf I. and Petrov E." in other dictionaries:

Ilf I. And Petrov E., Russian writers, co-authors: Ilf Ilya (real name and surname Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg) (1897 1937); Petrov Evgeny (real name and surname Evgeny Petrovich Kataev) (1902 42), died at the front, brother V.P. Kataeva. V… … Modern encyclopedia

ILF I. AND PETROV E. Russian writers, co-authors. Ilf Ilya (real name and surname Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg; 1897 1937), Petrov Eugene (real name and surname Evgeny Petrovich Kataev; 1902 42; died at the front). In the novels Twelve Chairs (1928) and ... ...

Russian Soviet satirist writers who worked together. Ilf Ilya (pseudonym; real name and surname Fainzilberg Ilya Arnoldovich), was born into the family of a bank employee. Was an employee ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Ilf I. and Petrov E.- I. Ilf and E. Petrov at work. Ilf I. AND PETROV E., Russian writers, co-authors: Ilf Ilya (real name and surname Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg) (1897 1937); Petrov Evgeny (real name and surname Evgeny Petrovich Kataev) (1902 42), died on ... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

Ilf I. and Petrov E. Russian writers, co-authors. Ilf Ilya, real name and surname Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg (1897 1937), Petrov Eugene, real name and surname Evgeny Petrovich Kataev (1902 1942), died at the front. In the novels "Twelve ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Ilf I. and Petrov E.- ILF I. AND PETRÓV E., rus. writers, co-authors: Ilf Ilya (real name and surname Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg; 1897–1937), Petrov Eugene (real name and surname Evgeny Petrovich Kataev; 1902–42; died at the front). In rum. Twelve Chairs (1928) and ... Biographical Dictionary

- - Russian satirist writers, co-authors. Ilf I. (real name and surname. Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg; 1897-1937); Petrov E. (real name and surname. Evgeny Petrovich Kataev; 1902-1942). Born in Odessa, I. - in the family of a bank employee, P. - in the family ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary of Aliases

ILF I. AND PETROV E., Russian writers, co-authors. Ilf Ilya (real name and surname Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg; 1897 1937), Petrov Eugene (real name and surname Evgeny Petrovich Kataev; 1902 42; died at the front). In the novels "Twelve Chairs" (1928) and ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Ilf Ilya and PETROV Evgeniy- Ilf Ilya (real name and surname. Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg) (1897-1937) and PETROV Eugene (real name and surname. Evgeny Petrovich Kataev) (1902-1942, died at the front; member of the CPSU since 1940), Russians Soviet writers. Rum. "Twelve Chairs"… … Literary encyclopedic dictionary

Ilya Ilya and Evgeny Petrov, Russian writers, co-authors: Ilya Ilya (real name and surname Ilya Arnoldovich Fainzilberg; 1897 1937), Petrov Evgeny (real name and surname Evgeny Petrovich Kataev; 1902 1942; died at the front). In novels ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Books

• Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov. Collected Works. In 5 volumes. Volume 3. Laughing Unit, Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov. The second volume of the Collected Works of Ilf and Petrov includes the novel The Golden Calf, as well as essays, feuilletons and stories written in 1929-1931. As a preface, ...