Sasha Cherny

Sasha Cherny (Russian: Саша Чёрный), real name Alexander Mikhailovich Glickberg, (Russian: Александр Михайлович Гликберг) (October 13, 1880 N.S.–1932) was a Russian poet, satirist and children's writer.

Early years
Alexander Mikhailovich Glikberg was born into a family of pharmacists in Odessa (currently Ukraine) on October 13 N.S. 1880. The Glikberg family was not a happy one: his mother suffered from hysteria and children were bad for her nerves; his father often became violent and severely punished his children. It so happened that among five Glikberg children there were two Alexanders (or Sashas for short), the blond Sasha was usually called White Sasha (Bely Sasha in Russian) and the brunet Black Sasha (Cherny Sasha in Russian).

The Glikberg children could not enter gymnasium because of the quota restriction for enrolment of Jews in schools in Imperial Russia. Eventually the Glikbergs solved the problem by baptizing themselves and their children. After this, in 1889 the children entered the Odessa gymnasium. Alexander found studying in the gymnasium akin to a boring bureaucratic service. At the age of fifteen he ran away from home. For some time he lived with his aunt in Saint Petersburg but after being expelled from a Saint Petersburg gymnasium for failing algebra, he was left homeless and without money. Neither his parents nor other relatives responded to his letters and pleas for help.

Fortunately for Alexander, his story was published by the journalist Alexander Yablonovsky in the popular newspaper Syn Otechestva. The article was read by a Zhitomir French-Russian K.K. Rochet, who decided to adopt the boy. Alexander entered a Zhitomir gymnasium, from which he was also eventually expelled after a conflict with the principal. Alexander served two years in the Army and then got a job as a customs officer in the village of Novosiltsy on the border with Austria-Hungary. In 1904 he returned to his adoptive family in Zhitomir and worked as a journalist for the magazine Volynsky Vestnik. The magazine went bankrupt within two months, and Alexander decided to continue his journalistic career in Saint Petersburg.


Poet
On moving to Saint Petersburg he worked on an administrative job for the Saint-Petersburg - Warsaw Railroad. There he met his wife, Maria Ivanovna Vasilieva, who was his manager at the railroad. She was a few years older than him, better educated and richer. In Cherny's verse, marriage to a co-worker was often noted as the worst fate of a human. Despite this, their marriage seems to have been a happy one and lasted all their lives.

They spent their honeymoon in Italy, in 1905. After returning to Saint Petersburg Alexander published (under the nom de plume Sasha Cherny) a collection of verse (Nonsense (Чепуха)) in the magazine Zritel. The magazine was closed by the government as a result of these verses, but their effect on the readers was huge. The verses were distributed throughout the country rewritten by hand and Cherny soon became a popular and sought after author.

Between 1906 and 1907 Sasha Cherny lived in Germany and studied at University of Heidelberg. In 1908 he returned to Saint Petersburg and wrote for the popular magazine Satirikon to wide popular acclaim. When somebody gets an issue of the magazine, at first he looks for the Sasha Cherny verses, there is no such student, physician or lawyer who does not know Cherny's lyrics by heart, wrote Korney Chukovsky, who was also a Satirikon contributor. Among the admirers of his lyrics was said to be Vladimir Mayakovsky, who knew many by heart and often recited them. In 1910 Sasha Cherny published his book of verses Satires, in 1911 another one Satires and Lyrics. He also publishes children books Tuk-Tuk1913 and Live ABC (1914).


War and emigration
During World War I Sasha Cherny served as a private at a field hospital. After the October Revolution he emigrated to Vilnius, then to Germany, where he worked for the Berlin magazine Fire-bird, then to France, where he worked for the Parisian Russian newspaper. In 1923 he published his third book of verses Thirst. In 1927 he was a founder of a Russian colony in the village La Favier in Provence.

In emigration, he wrote the poem Who lives well in emigration (Кому в эмиграции жить хорошо, 1931-1932) and prose Non-serious stories (Несерьезные рассказы, 1928) Soldiers' tales (Солдатские сказки, published in 1933). After his death his fourth book of verse Children's Island (Детский остров) was published.

He died of a heart attack while helping to put out a fire in the town of Lamandou in the South of France on July 5, 1932. Legend has it that Cherny's dog Micky, the 'author' of the Cherny story Micky the Fox Terrier's Diary, lay on the chest of Sasha Cherny and died with his owner.

Vladimir Nabokov, in his eulogy, said, "left only a few books and quiet beauteous shadow." Dmitri Shostakovich wrote music devoted to Cherny's poetry.