To be remembered. Shergin Boris Viktorovich

A book in a convenient book size (pictured next to a 20 cm doll).

In the photo in the article - the first book of 4 volumes of Boris Shergin, Bylina, fairy tales and songs. The remaining volumes of collected works could not be found for sale, and this book has already disappeared from stores, let's hope for a reprint, or choose books from other publishers.

The collected works are illustrated both by the works of famous artists of the book, and drawings by Shergin himself preserved in the writer's archive and never published. The first volume of the collection includes epics, historical songs and fairy tales of the writer.

Preface to the book.

Shergin Boris Viktorovich

This collection is the most complete edition of the works of Boris Viktorovich Shergin (1893-1973) - a remarkable Russian writer, storyteller, connoisseur of ancient Russian folk art.

Along with the well-known fairy tales and short stories by Shergin, the collection includes his early works, never reprinted, printed in newspapers and magazines and therefore difficult for the reader, as well as those that could not be published in the USSR for censorship reasons.

Some fairy tales and essays are reprinted first.

There are also recordings of epics made from the voice of Shergin in different years.

In the most complete form, the diary of B.V. Shergin, which he led for several decades.

Exceptional book, amazing edition.

Arkhangelsk song rivers...

Hard cover.

The edition is simply luxurious: coated paper, beautiful illustrations.

The richest Russian language is of rare beauty and musicality. You can read it over and over again, it's nice to read aloud.

Fairy tale and cartoon Magic ring here is called "Good Roly".

Publisher: ITs Moskvovedenie.

There is also volume 2 of a 4-volume book, 3 and 4 so far (for 2014) seem to have not yet been released.

Writer, poet

“A person lying in sorrow always wants to get up and have fun. And for your heart to cheer up, it is not at all necessary that everyday circumstances suddenly change. The bright word of a kind person can cheer up. Boris Shergin

Boris Shergin (the correct stress in his last name is on the first syllable) was born in Arkhangelsk on July 28, 1896.

Shergin's father was a hereditary navigator and shipbuilder, and his mother was a native Arkhangelsk and Old Believer.

Shergin's parents were good storytellers, my mother loved poetry. According to Boris: "Mama's craftswoman was to say ... like pearls, her word rolled out of her mouth." Shergin from childhood knew the life and culture of Pomorie well. He loved to listen to the fascinating stories of his father's friends - eminent ship carpenters, captains, pilots and hunters. He was introduced to songs and fairy tales by N. P. Bugaeva, a peasant woman from Zaostrov, a family friend and housekeeper of the Shergins. Boris also copied ornaments and headpieces from old books, learned to paint icons in the Pomeranian style, painted utensils. Shergin later wrote: “We are the people of the White Sea, the Winter Coast. Indigenous St. John's wort industrialists, we beat the seal breed. In the thirtieth year, the state offered to hunt in groups. They will also introduce an icebreaking steamer. Conditions for the people were suitable. Who went to the artel, who went to the icebreaker ... ".

While still at school, Shergin began to collect and write down northern folk tales, epics and songs. He studied at the Arkhangelsk Provincial Men's Gymnasium, later - in 1917 he graduated from the Stroganov Central Industrial Art School, where he acquired the specialty of a graphic artist and an icon painter.

During the years of study in Moscow, Shergin himself acted as a performer of ballads of the Dvina land, illustrated with his singing lectures on folk poetry at Moscow University. In 1916, he met Academician Shakhmatov and, on his initiative, was sent by the Academy of Sciences on a business trip to the Shenkur district of the Arkhangelsk province to study local dialects and record folklore works.

After returning to Arkhangelsk in 1918, Shergin worked as an artist-restorer, headed the artistic part of a craft workshop, contributed to the revival of northern crafts (in particular, the Kholmogory bone carving technique), was engaged in archeographic work (collected books of "ancient writing", ancient sailing directions , notebooks of skippers, albums of poems, song books).

Shergin's acquaintance with the Pinezh storyteller Marya Dmitrievna Krivopolenova and the folklorists the Sokolov brothers aroused a serious interest in folklore. The newspaper "Arkhangelsk" published an article by Shergin "Departing Beauty" - about Krivopolenova's performance at the Polytechnic Museum and the impression that she made on the audience.

In 1919, when the Russian North was occupied by the Americans, Shergin, mobilized for forced labor, fell under a trolley and lost his leg and toes of his left foot. This misfortune prompted Boris Viktorovich to return the word to the betrothed bride.

In 1922 Shergin moved to Moscow, where he lived in poverty. In the basement in Sverchkov lane, he wrote fairy tales, legends, instructive stories about his Russian North. He also worked at the Institute for Children's Reading of the People's Commissariat of Education, spoke with stories about the folk culture of the North, performed fairy tales and epics in front of a diverse, mostly children's, audience. Since 1934, he devoted himself entirely to professional literary work.

Shergin as a storyteller and storyteller was formed and became known earlier than Shergin as a writer. His first book "Near the Arkhangelsk city, at the ship's shelter", published in 1924, was made by him of six Arkhangelsk antiquities with notation of melodies sung by his mother, and included in the repertoire of Shergin's performances.

Adventurous witty stories about "Shish of Moscow" - "a buffoon epic about pranks on the rich and strong", rich language, grotesque caricature of representatives of the social elite connected Shergin's picaresque cycle with the poetics of folk satire. The fabulous "epopee" about Shisha began to take shape back in the years of Ivan the Terrible, when runaway serfs were called shish. The fairy-tale epic about Shisha, which was once widespread everywhere, has been preserved in its most complete form only in the North. Shergin collected more than a hundred tales about Shisha along the shores of the White Sea. In his adaptations, Shish is depicted as cheerful and cheerful, and the king, bare and officials are stupid and evil. Shish, in the form of a buffoon, joked about the rich and powerful of the world: “It was through someone else's misfortune that Shish became so evil. Cow's tears flowed through it to the wolf... Shisha has a proverb: whoever is rich is not our brother. The bars became bitter from Shisha.

"Shish of Moscow" was destined to become the most famous book of the writer. In 1932-33, Shergin's fairy tales performed by the author were broadcast on Moscow radio and were a huge success with listeners. After the release of "Shish of Moscow" Shergin became a member of the Writers' Union and a delegate to the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers.

In the third book, Arkhangelsk Novels, published in 1936, Shergin recreated the manners of the old bourgeois Arkhangelsk. The author appeared before readers as a subtle psychologist and writer of everyday life. The short stories of the collection, stylized in the style of the popular translated "histories" of the 17th-18th centuries, are dedicated to wanderings in the Overseas and the "cruel" love of characters from the merchant environment.

The first three books by Shergin (designed by the author himself in the "Pomor style") represented the entire folklore repertoire of the Arkhangelsk Territory. But the degree of the author's dependence on the folklore source decreases with each new book, and Shergin's indispensable reference to the source has become nothing more than an expression of the author's modesty.

The history of Pomorye, conveyed in the first three books of Shergin, continued in his next collection - "At Song Rivers", published in 1939. This collection included historical and biographical Pomeranian stories, folk talk about the leaders of the revolution and their legendary and fabulous biographies. In the book "At Song Rivers" the North of Russia appeared to readers as a special cultural and historical region that played a significant role in the fate of the country and occupied a unique place in its culture. Shergin's subsequent "elections" expanded and refined this image.

Due to the deteriorating state of health from the end of November 1940, Shergin found it increasingly difficult to read and write. Shergin himself called the book “Pomorshchina-Korabelshchina” published after the war in 1947 his “repertoire collection”: it combined works with which he performed during the war years in hospitals and military units, clubs and schools. The fate of this collection is tragic: it came under devastating critical articles after the infamous resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad”. The book "Pomorshchina-Korabelshchina" was called pseudo-folk and accused of "smelling of church incense and oil" from its pages.

During the Leningrad case of Akhmatova-Zoshchenko, the name of the writer was discredited, and he himself was betrayed by public obstruction for "defiling the Russian language" and could not be published for more than ten years. Shergin vegetated, abandoned by everyone, in impenetrable poverty, former friends and acquaintances turned away, passed by. The doors of all publishing houses were closed to the writer. Turning to Alexander Fadeev for help, Shergin wrote: “The environment in which I write my books is the most desperate. For twenty years I have been living and working in a dark and rotten basement. I lost 90% of my vision. Five of us fit in one room… My family is starving. I don't have the strength to continue my work."

The destruction of the wall of silence around Shergin was facilitated by the writer's recital organized in 1955 at the Central House of Writers, after which the collection "Pomorskie were legends" was published in the publishing house "Children's Literature" in 1957, and after some time the "adult" collection of favorites was published. works "Ocean - Russian Sea". The collection received a lot of rave reviews.

In the 1960s, Shergin lived in Moscow on Rozhdestvensky Boulevard. He occupied two rooms in a large communal apartment. Neighbors saw in him only a quiet pensioner and a half-blind invalid. When he got out into the yard with a wand, he froze in confusion, not knowing where to step and where to stumble. One of the boys ran up to him and led him to a bench on the boulevard. There, if the weather permitted, Shergin could sit alone until evening.

In 1967, the most complete lifetime edition of Shergin's works was published - the collection Captured Glory. In the work of Shergin, two main manners of narration were very clearly distinguished: pathetic and everyday. The first is used by the writer in describing the nature of the North and its people. The second, characteristic of Shergin's essay on morals and household tale, is clearly oriented towards skaz - phonetic, lexical, syntactic imitation of oral speech. The originality of Shergin's work consisted in the direct orientation of his texts to folk art.

In Shergin's homeland, in Arkhangelsk, a collection of his works "Gandvik - the icy sea" was first published only in 1971. But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Shergin's books were published both in the capital and in Arkhangelsk quite often and in large numbers.

Over the years, Boris Viktorovich's vision became worse and worse, and by old age he was completely blind.

Shergin died on October 30, 1973 in Moscow. He was buried at the Kuzminsky cemetery.

After his death, cartoons created based on the fairy tales of Boris Shergin (“Magic Ring”, “Martynko” and others) made his name truly famous.

Three writers who knew Shergin in the last years of his life wrote their memoirs about him.

Fedor Abramov wrote about Boris Shergin: “The room is a basement. By evening it was dark. But - light. Light from the old man on the bed. Like a candle, like a lamp. For some reason, Zosima Dostoyevsky came to mind, instructing the Karamazovs for the last time, village old men who had already “burnt” all their flesh. Incorporeal, incorporeal... Impression - goodness, holiness, unearthly purity, which is in the paintings of Vermeer of Delft. Blind old man. And everything glowed."

Yuri Koval, a writer and artist, made an expressive verbal portrait of Shergin: “Boris Viktorovich was sitting on a bed in a room behind a stove. Thin, with a fine white beard, he was still in the same blue suit as in previous years. Unusual, it seems to me, was the head of Boris Shergin. A smooth forehead, high rising, intent eyes and ears moistened with blindness, which can safely be called considerable. They stood almost at a right angle to his head, and, probably, in childhood, the Arkhangelsk children somehow teased him for such ears. Describing a portrait of a dear person, it is embarrassing to write about the ears. I dare because they gave Shergin a special appearance - a man who listens to the world with extreme attention.

Yuri Koval recalled that, looking at the portrait of Boris Viktorovich he had painted, Sister Shergin answered the blind brother’s question if the drawing turned out like this: “You look like Saint Nicholas here.”

And Koval himself remarked: “Larisa Viktorovna was mistaken. The appearance of Boris Viktorovich Shergin really reminded of Russian saints and hermits, but most of all he looked like Sergius of Radonezh.

Vladimir Lichutin noted signs of spiritual beauty in Shergin's appearance: “Remember, thirty years have passed since I met Boris Shergin, but he is all in me, like an indelible image wrapped in a shining shroud. A bent old man, completely outdated, somehow incorporeal. The ports are spaciously rinsed, the shirt is loose on the bony thin shoulders, the spacious bald patch glows like the top of an overripe melon ... I was suddenly amazed at what a beautiful face can be when it is washed with spiritual light ... that constant joy emanates from all spiritualized appearance, which instantly humbles and strengthens you. A radiant person peers with the eyes of the heart into the vast abode of the soul, inhabited by bright images, and the good feeling, flowing out, involuntarily infected me with joy. I, a young fresh man, suddenly found strength in a weak old man.

The uniqueness of Shergin, the uniqueness of his work consisted in the fact that he managed to organically combine, merge two artistic systems - literature and folklore, give the folk word a new life - in a book, and enrich literature with the treasures of folk culture. Boris Shergin's books today have remained as relevant and modern as ever, topical at the time of the loss of ideas about spiritual and cultural values, they return readers to moral values, delight and enrich. Shergin shows in his works to readers a life filled with high meaning, a life based on impeccable moral principles. In 1979, Viktor Kalugin wrote: “The more you read into this peculiar Pomor chronicle compiled by our contemporary, the more you are convinced that it belongs not to the past, but to the present and future.”

The year 2003 was celebrated in the Arkhangelsk region as "the year of Shergin".

SHERGIN'S STORIES

"Circle Help"

For centuries, a Danish ship, beaten by bad weather, took refuge in the Murmansk camp, near Tankina Bay. Russian coast-dwellers in a row began to sew and get on with the ship. The ferrying and sewing were done firmly and, for the lordship of the nights, soon. The Danish skipper asks the warden what the price of the work is. The old man was surprised:

What price! Did you, mister skipper, buy what? Or dressed up with someone?
Skipper says:
- There were no rows. As soon as my poor ship appeared in sight of the shore, the Russian coast-dwellers rushed to me on karbas with ropes, with hooks. Then began the diligent repair of my ship.

The elder says:

And so it should be. We always have this behavior. This is what the charter of the sea requires. Skipper says:
- If there is no common price, I wish to distribute by hand.

The elder smiled.

The will is not taken away from you or from us.

The skipper, wherever he sees one of the workers, shoves gifts for everyone.

People just laugh and wave their hands. The skipper says to the headman and feeders: - I think that people do not take it, because they are ashamed of each other or you, the bosses. The feeders and the headman laughed:

There was not so much work, how much trouble you have with awards. But if this is your desire, mister skipper, put your gifts in the yard, by the cross. And announce that whoever wants and when they want can take it.

The skipper liked this idea:

Not I, but you, gentlemen feeders, announce to the privates that they take it when they want, according to their conscience.

The skipper placed the boxes with the gifts on the path near the cross. The helmsmen announced over the karbas that the Danish skipper, according to his noble custom, wanted to give gifts to all who worked near his ship. The awards are stacked at the cross. Take who wants.

Until the departure of the Danish ship, boxes with gifts stood in the middle of the road. Industrial people, big and small, walked by. No one touched the awards, no one lifted a finger.

The skipper came to say goodbye to the Pomors at the meeting, which happened on Sundays.

After thanking everyone, he explained:

If you have a duty to help, then I must...

He was not allowed to finish. They began to explain:

That's right, mister skipper! You are obliged. We helped you in trouble, and by this we strongly obliged you to help us when we find ourselves in sea trouble. If not us, then help someone else. It's all the same. All of us, sailors, are connected and we all live by such mutual help. This is an age-old maritime charter. The same charter warns us: "If you took a payment or a reward for helping a sailor, then do not expect help in case of a sea disaster."

"According to the charter"

The boat went along the New Land. For the autumn time I was in a hurry to the Russian side. From the vain wind we went to the sediment in an empty gubitsa. The curious kid went to the shore. I saw, far or near, a hut. He pushed the door - a naked body at the threshold. Someone has been gone for a long time. And you can already hear that they are blowing a horn from the boat. So, the wind has fallen, the kid needs to hurry. He pulled off everything, down to the last shirt, dressed up the unknown comrade, laid him on a bench, covered his face with a handkerchief, good-honestly said goodbye and, naked to the last thread, in just boot covers, ran to the boat.

Feeder says:

You did it according to the rules. Now we should go to bury him, but time does not stand. We must rise to Rus'.

Lodya was delayed by bad weather near the Vaigatsky shores. Here she wintered. Said kid fell ill by spring. The body was numb, the legs were paralyzed, melancholy attacked. The last farewell to relatives was written. It was hard at night: everyone was sleeping, everyone was silent, only the grommet was burning and crackling, illuminating the black ceiling.

The patient lowered his legs to the floor and could not get up. And he sees through tears: the door opens, an unknown person enters, asks the patient:

Why are you crying?
- Legs don't work.

The stranger took the patient by the hand:

Get up!

The sick man got up, marveling.

Lean on me. Walk around the hut.

Embracing, they went to the door and walked into a large corner.
An unknown person stood up to the fire and said:

Now come to me alone.

Surprised and horrified, the kid stepped towards the man with a firm step:

Who are you, my good friend? Where are you from?

Unknown person says:

Don't you recognize me? Look: whose shirt is on me, whose caftan, whose handkerchief I hold in my hand?

The kid looked and was horrified:

My board, my caftan ...

Man says:

I am that same lost fisherman from the Empty Bay, whose bone you cleaned up, dressed, tidied up. You have fulfilled the charter, pardoned a forgotten comrade. For this I have come to have mercy on you. And tell the helmsman - he crossed the sea commandment, did not bury me. So they detained the boat of bad weather.

Text prepared by Andrey Goncharov

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Assignments in columns: During the teacher's story, make notes 1. What works were written by Shergin? 2. What childhood did Shergin have? What is known about his parents? 3. What talents were revealed in Shergin during life? 4. How did Shergin work during his life? 5. What did Shergin love the most? Prove it. 6. What is similar in the fate of Pisakhov and Shergin?

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Boris Viktorovich Shergin, Russian writer, storyteller, artist, was born on July 28 (16, according to the old style), 1896 (according to other sources - 1893) in Arkhangelsk, in a family of native Pomors, fishermen and shipbuilders. The Shergin family is very ancient and famous in the history of the North, most of its representatives were priests. The life of Boris Shergin's parents, his own childhood and youth are connected with the City (so - with a capital letter - the writer called Arkhangelsk in his diaries) and with the sea. His memories of his parents, of his home are covered with happiness. A life full of love for each other, righteous labors, passion for "art", forever becomes for him the standard of life. Love for the art of the North - for folk poetry and Pomeranian "books", icon painting and wood painting, for music and words, for all the richest folk culture was born here. Even in his school years, Shergin began to collect and record northern folk tales, epics, and songs. .

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From 1903 to 1912 he studied at the Arkhangelsk Provincial Men's Gymnasium. In 1913 he went to Moscow and became a student at the Stroganov Central School of Industrial Art. His life was now divided between Moscow and the North, where he came on vacation. This period was extremely important for the formation of Shergin's creative personality, for the formation of his artistic self-awareness. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Shergin was noticed. They appreciated not only his abilities as an artist, but also his excellent knowledge of the folk word, the ability to sing epics, and the talent of a storyteller. In 1915, he met the Pinega storyteller Marya Dmitrievna Krivopolenova, who was brought to Moscow by folklorists. The newspaper "Arkhangelsk" published an article by Shergin "Departing Beauty" - about Krivopolenova's speech at the Polytechnic Museum and the impression that she made on the audience. Shergin communicates with folklorists. In 1916, on the initiative of A.A. Shakhmatov, he was sent by the Academy of Sciences on a business trip to the Shenkur district of the Arkhangelsk province to study local dialects and record folklore works.

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In 1917, after graduating from college, the young man returned to Arkhangelsk and worked in the local Society for the Study of the Russian North, and then in handicraft and art workshops. His contribution to the revival of northern crafts (in particular, the Kholmogory bone carving technique) is recognized. Shergin was also engaged in archeographic work - he collected old books, albums of poems, song books, ancient sailing directions, notebooks of skippers. In 1919, a misfortune happened to him - he fell under a tram and lost his right leg and toes of his left foot. In 1922, Boris Viktorovich moved to Moscow and became an employee of the Institute for Children's Reading of the People's Commissariat for Education. He lived in the basement, poor, but gradually entered the literary life of the capital.

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In 1924, his first book was published - "Near the Arkhangelsk city, at the ship's shelter", designed by him. It contains recordings of texts and melodies of folklore northern ballads. But Shergin not only transcribes these texts and melodies, he transforms them, enhancing the poetic impression. And graceful illustrations are reminiscent of ancient Russian painting. The triple talent of the author - storyteller, writer, artist created an amazing integrity of the book. (See the presentation about the book) Already after his death, cartoons based on his fairy tales ("Magic Ring", "Martynko" and others) made Shergin's name quite popular.

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After the release of the second book - a collection of fairy tales "Shish of Moscow" (1930) - Shergin becomes a member of the Writers' Union, a delegate to the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers (1934). He switches to professional literary work, speaks in various audiences, reading both folk tales, epics, ballads, and his own works written on the basis of folklore sources, impressed by the stories of fellow Pomors, memories of childhood and youth. The collections "Arkhangelsk Novels" (1936), "At Song Rivers" (1939) are published. The book "Pomorshchina-Korabelshchina" (1947) appeared shortly after the release of the infamous party resolution on the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad and was subjected to a crushing defeat of semi-official critics. The author was accused of love for the old Pomeranian way of life, of conservatism, of lack of ties with modernity. Naturally, after that, the doors of all publishing houses closed before him. Shergin still lived in the basement, was half-blind (he could not actually read or write).

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Only in 1957 was it possible to publish another book - “Pomeranian legends were also”; it was published in Detgiz with illustrations by the famous graphic artist V. Favorsky. In 1959, one of the writer's most voluminous collections appeared - "The Russian Ocean Sea", and in 1967 - the most complete of his lifetime publications - "The Captured Glory". In Shergin's homeland, in Arkhangelsk, a collection of his works "Gandvik - the icy sea", was first published only in 1971. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Shergin's books were published both in the capital and in Arkhangelsk quite often and in large numbers. . Shergin died on October 30, 1973 in Moscow.

The last, fourth volume of the first complete collection of works by one of the most original Russian writers of the 20th century has been published

Text: Dmitry Shevarov/RG
Fragments of books provided by the publishing house "Moskvovedenie"

Boris Viktorovich Shergin. Collected works in 4 vols.

Compiled by Yu. M. Shulman.
M., Moscow Studies, 2012–2016

Dvina mother,
Sea father, blue abyss, take mine
Longing and torment
And I will go out to the sea, to the blue,
I'll look in the wide expanse:
father rules the ship.
Drink up, father!
Be quiet, human sadness.
Floating over the sea
the clouds are as wide as boat sails.
Does the father sing about the depth of the sea,
about heavenly heights.
O song, Archangel glory!

Boris Shergin.
1910s

Every old Shergin epic begins its run from the White Sea. Words, like sea spray, fly in the face. “Oh, you are the sea, the sea, the blue sea, / / ​​The blue sea, the salty sea! ..”

The heroes of Shergin fall to the sea, as to their own father:

Father blue sea, breadwinner! ..
Hear me, blue sea...

Boris Viktorovich Shergin was born to the sound of the sea and epic songs. He was born at the top of the short northern summer - July 16, 1893. In the metric book of the Solombala Cathedral of Arkhangelsk, they wrote in an old script: “In this summer, 1893, on the 16th day of July, the Arkhangelsk tradesman Viktor Vasilyev Shergin and his legal wife Anna Ioannovna had a son Boris ...”

The boy's father was the chief mechanic of the Murmansk Shipping Company, a ship master of the first article and a talented amateur artist. It was from him that both artistic taste and golden hands passed to Shergin. And the heart and faith are those from the mother.

“In the morning I will open the window, and the eternal bright sky will look into my basement. I will also open the page of the Gospel, from here the spring of eternal life will begin to flow into my wretched soul ... "

You read, and it seems that a stream of old Russian speech is simply flowing in front of you, word by word - like pearls are strung. Nothing special, but touching. So much so that you want to run with a book into the next room and read aloud paragraph by paragraph to your loved ones. And then suddenly, in the middle of the page, your eyes will fill with tears, and you will want to bury yourself in a pillow and cry like a child, cry from pity and sadness, from the thought of what we have turned our native language into.

A storyteller, a poet, an artist, an incomparable connoisseur of the Russian Word, Shergin lived in the shadows, disappeared into obscurity.

As it was said in one Pomeranian epic: “There were people - they passed, but they were called, they were called - they forgot ...”

No, lovers of national antiquity knew, of course, that an old man lives somewhere in Moscow in a basement room - legless, half-blind, sort of like a holy fool. Sometimes they came to him, asked to sing and tell something from antiquity. He sang and told, the guests marveled and left, and he remained at the low window. Passers-by and cars splashed mud through this window, the guys hit the ball many times while playing football ...

So it is up to now:

Shergin in his native literature seems to live like a bird, though not in the basement, but somewhere in the far corner, where readers and critics rarely look.

43 years have passed since the death of Boris Viktorovich, and only now the first collected works of the great Pomor are being published. This unique edition is carried out by the Moskvovedenie publishing house. Along with Shergin's well-known fairy tales and short stories, it included his forgotten early works. Some stories and essays are published for the first time. In the most complete form, the diary of Boris Viktorovich, which he kept for many years, will be released.

The collection is illustrated by the works of outstanding masters of illustration — Vladimir Favorsky, Vladimir Pertsov, Anatoly Eliseev, Viktor Chizhikov, Evgeny Monin, as well as drawings by Shergin himself, preserved in the writer's archive and never published.

Having opened this edition on any page, we will be amazed at how deeply and far Shergin saw through his poor and dusty window, how much beauty was revealed to him in God's world. Let us hope that his living word will wash our dull eyes.

“A person lying in sorrow always wants to get up and have fun. And for your heart to cheer up, it is not at all necessary that everyday circumstances suddenly change. The bright word of a kind person can cheer up ... "

This collection is the most complete edition of the works of Boris Viktorovich Shergin (1893-1973) - a remarkable Russian writer, storyteller, connoisseur of ancient Russian folk art. Along with Shergin's well-known fairy tales and short stories, the collection includes his early works, never republished, published in newspapers and magazines and therefore difficult for the reader, as well as those that could not be published in the USSR for censorship reasons. Some fairy tales and essays are reprinted for the first time. There are also recordings of epics made from the voice of Shergin in different years. In the most complete form, the diary of B.V. Shergin, which he led for several decades. The collection is illustrated both by the works of famous artists of the book and by Shergin's own drawings, preserved in the writer's archive and never published. The first volume of the collection includes epics, historical songs and fairy tales of the writer.
Illustrations in the book: Vladimir Pertsov, Anatoly Eliseev, Viktor Chizhikov, Vladimir Favorsky, Evgeny Monin.

The old folk art, along with the old way of life and way of life, has irretrievably gone from our lives. In its place came civilization and a diverse variety of fleeting topical entertainment.
Our generation still remembers the old alive. And now, losing it irrevocably, we begin to understand the loss. We did not take care of the old beauty, we did not even know it properly and did not know how to appreciate or love it. Now it is almost buried in museums and thick ethnographic works. And yet we still need it too much. In the old folk art - our homeland. Motherland is in everything: in the landscape, and in houses, and in crosses on graves, and in antiquity, and most of all in art. A man without a homeland is an orphan. Because the soul is deeply rooted in its native soil, and if you pull it out, the roots will dry out, there will be a perekatipole. We were constantly torn away from our native soil, instilled with foreign cultures. It is necessary to preserve at least the memory of past wealth - not in a mutilated and not in alcohol form, but alive and active.
If the lullabies are silent, the old women have forgotten the tales, and the old men the old ones, can't we adopt their vanishing skill? Not in a dead ethnographic record, but in an artistic book - to capture with love and reverence their full-fledged and mean language, the depth and integrity of moods, the monotonous rhythm of simple melodies, naive and strict images.
So we conceived a number of books from the field of Russian folklore.So that each book is for both the small and the old.
Folk art lived for centuries. It is not appropriate to enclose it in modern fleeting books that will be turned over and forgotten.Old people wrote their books for a long time, picking up, slowly, what suits what. Books passed from generation to generation.
And in those books, the verbal image - the text - and the facial image - the illustration - did not argue with each other and did not shout apart, but in full and strict consent affected the soul of the reader.
Today the artist and the writer are separated from the book by the lithographic stone and typesetting.But love and attention to the material fully depends on them.In this respect the author has done all that he could do under the given conditions.
Words that have been spoken for centuries in a melodious recitative are imprinted in their living dialect - hence the phonetic spelling of the book. Ancient words sound unusual to the modern reader, perhaps they make it difficult for him - and illustrations in the spirit and style of images of front books come to his aid. Words, melody and illustrations - all together gives the mood and introduces the spirit of the old art. All these old people still live in the distant seaside in the Arkhangelsk land.
Their texts in different versions can be found in many records of ethnographers and collectors of folklore. So, in Grigoriev's notes - "Arkhangelsk epics and historical songs" (three volumes), in Markov's books - "Belomorsky epics"
and Onchukov "Pechora epics", etc. But the antiquities of this collection were perceived by the author from childhood from older generations in a lively immediacy of moods. Hence the originality, authenticity and integrity of these texts, in no way touched by scientific analysis, which often deadens a living creative thought.
A. Pokrovskaya, 1924

Viktor Chizhikov talks about Boris Viktorovich Shergin and his illustrations for his books:

Anatoly Mikhailovich Eliseev talks about Boris Viktorovich Shergin and his illustrations for his books: