Sasha Chorny facts for kids
Alexander Mikhailovich Glikberg (born October 13, 1880 – died July 5, 1932) was a talented Russian writer. He is much better known by his pen name, Sasha Chorny. He wrote many poems, funny stories, and books especially for children.
Early Life and School Days
Alexander Glikberg was born in Odessa, a city in what is now Ukraine. His family worked as pharmacists. He was one of five children.
In those days, there were rules that made it hard for Jewish children to get into certain schools in Imperial Russia. To solve this, Alexander's family became Christian. After this, in 1889, he could go to the Odessa gymnasium (a type of school).
Alexander found school quite boring. When he was fifteen, he ran away from home. He lived with his aunt in Saint Petersburg for a while. But he was later asked to leave a school there because he struggled with algebra. This left him without a home or money.
Luckily, a journalist named Alexander Yablonovsky published one of Alexander's stories. A kind French-Russian man named K.K. Rochet read the story and decided to adopt the boy. Alexander then went to a school in Zhytomyr. He later left this school after a disagreement with the principal.
After school, Alexander served in the army for two years. Then he worked as a customs officer near the border with Austria-Hungary. In 1904, he went back to his adoptive family in Zhytomyr. He started working as a journalist for a magazine. When that magazine closed, he moved to Saint Petersburg to continue his writing career.
Becoming a Famous Poet
In Saint Petersburg, Sasha Chorny got a job working for the Warsaw – Saint Petersburg Railway. There, he met Maria Ivanovna Vasilieva, who became his wife. She was older and more educated than him. They had a happy marriage that lasted their whole lives.
In 1905, they went to Italy for their honeymoon. When they returned, Alexander published some poems in a magazine called Zritel. He used the name Sasha Chorny for the first time. These poems were very popular and spread quickly. Soon, Sasha Chorny became a well-known writer.
From 1906 to 1907, Sasha Chorny lived in Germany and studied at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg. In 1908, he came back to Saint Petersburg. He started writing for a popular magazine called Satirikon. People loved his work!
Many famous writers admired his poems, including Korney Chukovsky and Vladimir Mayakovsky. In 1910, Sasha Chorny published a book of poems called Satires. Another book, Satires and Lyrics, followed in 1911. He also wrote wonderful books for children, like Tuk-Tuk (Knock-Knock) in 1913 and Live ABC in 1914.
War and Moving to New Countries
During World War I, Sasha Chorny worked as a private in a hospital helping soldiers. After the October Revolution in Russia, he moved to different countries. He lived in Vilnius, then Germany, where he wrote for a magazine. Later, he moved to France and worked for a Russian newspaper in Paris.
In 1923, he published his third book of poems, Thirst. In 1927, he helped start a Russian community in a village in Provence, France.
While living abroad, he wrote a long poem and some prose stories. His book of children's poems, Children's Island, was published after he passed away.
Sasha Chorny died on July 5, 1932, from a heart attack. This happened while he was helping to put out a fire in a town in the South of France. There's a story that his dog, Micky, who was the inspiration for one of his stories, lay on his chest and died with him.
The famous writer Vladimir Nabokov said that Sasha Chorny "left only a few books and a quiet, beauteous shadow." The composer Dmitri Shostakovich even turned five of Chorny's poems into music for a song cycle.
