The change of the social system and its cardinal transformations became for some Russian writers a powerful incentive in creativity, for others - the beginning of the crisis. Too impressive was the transformation of revolutionary creative freedom into a strict ideological organization of Stalinist proletarian literature.
Nikolai Aseev is one of those who painfully survived this. Some researchers of the poet's work note that official recognition required him to sacrifice, the size of which was too large.
Originally from the outback
He was born on June 28, 1889 in the Kursk province, in a small provincial Lgov, in a poor noble family. His father is either an insurance agent or an agronomist. Some sources indicate the name of the poet’s father as Shtalbaum, others claim that his name was written as Asseyev. The maternal grandfather Nikolai Pavlovich Pinsky, who had young Nikolai Aseev, after the early loss of his mother and the second marriage of his father, had a greater influence on the future writer.
Grandfather had the talent of a wonderful storyteller, he knew many folk tales and songs. He loved nature, willingly introduced his grandson to fishing and hunting, without which he could not imagine life. The story of his marriage was fascinating - he bought the future grandmother of the poet from bondage, falling in love with the young peasant woman he met during the hunt. Future writer Nikolai Aseev was very fond of hearing stories about past times - the biography of his grandmother Varvara Stepanovna fascinated him with a romantic plot.
To Moscow
In 1907, Nikolai graduated from a real school in the provincial Kursk and soon left for Moscow to continue his education at the capital's university. By that time, he had already realized that writing was what he wanted to devote his life to. Having become a volunteer at the historical and philological faculty of Moscow University, Nikolai Aseev plunged into the hectic literary life of the First See. His creations are published in magazines and almanacs, which appeared in many in Moscow: “Protalinka”, “Spring”, “Testaments”, “Primrose”.
As a poet, Nikolai Aseev went through periods of fascination with symbolism, becoming one of the founders of the creative groups "Lyric" and "Liren". In Moscow and Kharkov, where he continued his education, the young man became close to poets and writers professing various new forms of word-making: V. Bryusov, V. Ivanov, V. Khlebnikov, D. Burliuk, B. Pasternak. The verses of Aseev of that period clearly show interest in national archaic traditions, in the creation of words of a futuristic nature.
Turbulent time of revolution
Since the beginning of the First World War, Nikolai Aseev himself experienced the scale of public disasters. He was drafted into the army, where he was in the thick of revolutionary events. He was elected to the Council of Soldiers' Deputies and took part in mass fraternization with the enemy, in the abandonment of hated trenches. Aseev ended up in the Far East, where he continued to participate in the creative process, creating a literary and artistic association of the futuristic sense “Balaganchik”.
In Aseev’s texts, from pre-revolutionary to post-October, the whole path of transformation of his poetic language is visible. In the first book, published by Nikolai Aseev (The Night Flute, 1914), the sophistication of symbols and shocking futurism, in the collections of Zor (1914), Letorea (1915), the innovation of creation in the books Bomb (1921), The Steel Nightingale (1922), The Council of the Winds (1923) - sharp expectations of social change and optimism of romantic revolutionary hopes.
“Mayakovsky begins”
Since 1922, Nikolai Nikolayevich Aseev, whose biography since 1914 - a series of travels across the country - from Kharkov to Vladivostok - finally settled in Moscow. He was called from the Far East at the personal direction of the People's Commissar of Education A.V. Lunacharsky. In the capital, Aseev, together with Mayakovsky, forms the core of the Left Front of the Arts (LEF), a creative association that considered itself the only worthy representative of new art.
Creative interaction and personal friendship with Vladimir Mayakovsky is the most important event in Aseev’s life. Absorbing the revolutionary glow of Mayakovsky’s poems, the poet created several works of large format and a distinct ideological orientation. These include the poems "Sverdlovsk Storm" (1924), "Semyon Proskakov" (1928) and which made him truly famous "The Poem of Twenty-Six Baku Commissars" (1925).
Readers and colleagues praised the poetic memories of a friend and mentor, written by Aseev 10 years after the tragic death of Vladimir Vladimirovich, in 1940 - "Mayakovsky begins." This is a manifesto of fidelity to the convictions of youth, a tribute to the great contemporary.
