Sasha Cherny, real name Alexander Mikhailovich Glikberg; October 1 (13), 1880, Odessa, Russian Empire — August 5, 1932, Bormes-les-Mimosas, Provence, France) — Russian Silver Age poet, prose writer, journalist, who became widely known as the author of popular lyrical and satirical poetic feuilletons.
Biography
Born in Odessa into a wealthy Jewish family. Father, Mendel Davidovich Glikberg (1852 — September 6, 1911), was a pharmacist, a traveling representative of a chemical company that produced triple cologne on Izmailovsky Prospekt (Mendel Glikberg received his degree as a pharmaceutical assistant on April 16, 1871 at the Faculty of Medicine of the Imperial University of St. Vladimir in Kyiv, from 1907 lived in St. Petersburg). Mother, Maryam Meerovna (also nee Glikberg, 1857—?), came from a merchant family — her brother, merchant of the 2nd guild Yankel Meerovich (Yakov Markovich) Glikberg, was engaged in the iron hardware trade. The parents got married in Odessa on July 8, 1877. The family had six children — Lydia (1879), Alexander (1880), Vladimir (1883), Olga (1885-1893) and Georgy (1893). The family lived in the Semashko house (apartment 18) on Richelieu Street.
In 1890, in order to give the child the opportunity to enter the Bila Tserkva gymnasium (where he took the exam a year earlier, but did not pass the percentage standard for Jews), his parents baptized him. He studied at the gymnasium at the same time as his older sister Lydia, then ran away from home, became a beggar, and begged. In 1895, his father enrolled him in the 2nd St. Petersburg Progymnasium, where in 1897 he was retained for the second year in the fifth grade for poor performance in algebra, for which he was left without his father’s financial support. On September 18, 1898, feuilletonist Alexander Yablonsky published an article in the newspaper “Son of the Fatherland” about the suffering of Sasha Cherny, and Zhytomyr official Konstantin Konstantinovich Roshe (member of the board of the Volyn provincial presence for peasant affairs and honorary magistrate for the Zhitomir judicial and magistrate district ), moved by this story, took the boy in and already on October 2, 1898, enrolled him in the 5th grade of the 2nd Zhytomyr gymnasium. The government apartment, in which K. K. Roche (1849–1933), who did not have his own family, lived with his stepmother, was located in the residential wing of the Mariinskaya Women’s Gymnasium on Bolshaya Berdichevskaya Street. On May 30, 1899, during his first summer vacation in Zhitomir, Alexander Glikberg, together with a gymnasium friend, went with a detachment led by his adoptive father to the Ufa province to distribute funds collected for the needs of the starving in the Belebey district. In the sixth grade, after a clash with the director, he was expelled “without the right of admission” from this gymnasium, and in the fall of 1900 he became a volunteer in the 18th Vologda Infantry Regiment of His Majesty the King of the Romanian Regiment, stationed in Novograd-Volynsky.
From 1901 to 1902, Alexander Glikberg served as a private in the training team of the 20th Galician Infantry Regiment. On October 25, 1902, he was demobilized and returned to Zhitomir to K.K. Roche, who at that time served as the censor of the city newspaper “Volyn”. For about two years he worked at customs in the town of Novoselitsa, Khotyn district, Bessarabia province, on the border with Austria-Hungary. On June 1, 1904, the Zhitomir newspaper “Volynsky Vestnik” published his “Diary of a Reasoner” with the signature “On his own.” In the fall of the same year, he moved to St. Petersburg, where he was supported by his adoptive father’s nephew Konstantin Ivanovich Dixon (1871-1942), who served as secretary of the editorial board of the Technical Review magazine, and where Glikberg began working as a taxi driver in the tax service of the St. Petersburg-Warsaw Railway. Soon he published the satirical poems that brought him fame in the magazines “Spectator”, “Almanac”, “Journal”, “Masks”, “Leshy” and others. As Chukovsky wrote: “having received the latest issue of the magazine, the reader, first of all, looked for the poems of Sasha Cherny in it.”
The first poem under the pseudonym «Sasha Cherny» — the satire «Nonsense», published on November 27, 1905, led to the closure of the magazine «Spectator». Poetry collection “Different Motives” (St. Petersburg, 1906), still under the name “A. Glickberg” was banned by censorship.
In 1906-1908 he lived in Germany, where he continued his education at the University of Heidelberg.
Returning to St. Petersburg in 1908, he collaborated with the magazine Satyricon. He published collections of poems “To All the Poor in Spirit”, “Involuntary Tribute”, “Satires”. Published in the magazines “Modern World”, “Argus”, “Sun of Russia”, “Sovremennik”, in the newspapers “Kyiv Mysl”, “Russian Rumor”, “Odessa News”. He became famous as a children’s writer: the books “Knock-Knock”, “Living ABC” and others. In 1912 he went to Capri, where he met Maxim Gorky.
During the First World War, Sasha Cherny served in the 5th Army as a private at the 13th field hospital in Pskov (together with his wife Maria Ivanovna) and worked as a prose writer.
After the February Revolution of 1917, he became deputy commissar of the Northern Front. In August 1918, Alexander Glikberg and his wife left Pskov and lived for some time at the Turmont railway station, 12 km from Dvinsk, and in December of the same year they moved to Vilno. At the beginning of 1920, using a fake birth certificate, Glickberg managed to obtain Lithuanian citizenship and in March of the same year, he and his wife left via Königsberg for Berlin.
Until the end of 1923 he lived in Berlin, then, while on vacation in Rome, he decided not to return to Germany and in early March 1924 he and his wife arrived in Paris. Here, at first, they were supported by his cousin Daniil Lvovich Glikberg (1882, Odessa — March 21, 1952, Paris), a former journalist of Exchange News, bibliophile, candidate of mathematical sciences, assistant attorney and sworn attorney (1909), and in exile — Chairman of the Paris branch of the Odessa community in exile.
In Paris, Glikberg worked in the newspapers Rul, Segodnya, in the magazines Polokhi, Volya Rossii, and was the editor of the magazine Grani. In 1925-1928 he headed the department of satire and humor “Boomerang” in the Parisian weekly “Illustrated Russia”.
In 1923, in Berlin, he published the collection “Thirst” at his own expense. He published a collection of prose “Frivolous Stories” (1928), our story “Wonderful Summer” (1929), children’s books: “Children’s Island” (1921), “The Dream of Professor Patrashkin” (1924), “The Diary of Fox Mickey” (1927), “Cat Sanatorium” (1928), “Ruddy Book” (1930). In imitation of Nekrasov, he writes the poem “Who Lives Well in Emigration” (1930-1931).
In 1929, he purchased a plot of land in the south of France, in the town of La Favière, and built his own house, where Russian writers, artists, and musicians came.
Shortly before his death, on April 14, 1932, he was initiated into Freemasonry in the Russian Parisian lodge “Free Russia” of the Grand Orient of France.
Sasha Cherny died of a heart attack on August 5, 1932. Risking his life, he helped put out a fire on a neighboring farm; when he came home, he fell ill and never rose again.
He was buried in the Le Lavandou cemetery, Var department. In 1978, a memorial plaque was installed at the cemetery.
Family
Wife — Maria Ivanovna Glikberg (née Vasilyeva, 1871-1961), noblewoman, graduate of the Smolny Institute, during the First World War — a sister of mercy.
Brother — Georgy Mikhailovich Glikberg, journalist, published under the pseudonym Georgy Gli in the magazines «Sun of Russia» (1913-1916), «Journal of Magazines» (1913-1917), «Argus» (1916), «Lukomorye» (1916), » Ogonyok (1917).
Memory
The poet’s grave was lost due to the fact that there was no one to pay for it.
In 1978, a symbolic memorial plaque dedicated to the poet was installed at the Lavandou cemetery.
In 1933, the books “Soldier’s Tales” and “Seafaring Squirrel” were published posthumously.
In the early 1960s, thanks to the efforts of Korney Chukovsky, Sasha Cherny’s one-volume books were published in the Big and Small series of the Poet’s Library.
