(1880, Odessa - 1932, La Lavender, France)
Glikberg Alexander Mikhailovich was born in 1880 in Odessa. He was born in the family of a pharmacist - a family, one can say, well-to-do, but uncultured. Sasha's childhood is not a happy one. Mother, sick, hysterical woman, children annoyed. The father, distinguished by a tough temper, did not enter the proceedings, he punished them. There were 5 children in the family, two of whom were named Sasha. The blonde was called "White", "Brunette" and "Black". Hence the alias.
Sasha could not enter the gymnasium because of the percentage rate for Jews. His father was already going to give him training in some craft, but changed his mind and at once decided to baptize all children, thereby equalizing them in civil rights with other Russian subjects of the Christian faith. After that Sasha Glickberg 9 years old, finally entered the gymnasium.
The dream has come true... However, soon the study turned into a kind of state service, new fears and punishments, which were added to the domestic yoke. Is it any wonder that at the age of fifteen he ran away from home, following the example of his older brother?
At first, the fugitive was sheltered by his aunt, his father’s sister, took him to St. Petersburg, where he continued his studies as a boarder in the local gymnasium. But when he was expelled from the gymnasium for two in algebra, he actually found himself without means of subsistence. The father and mother stopped answering the prodigal son’s letters for help.
The further turn of events can hardly be called another word, like a miracle. Having learned by pure chance about the fate of the unfortunate young man abandoned by his family, aspiring journalist Alexander Yablonovsky told about his sad fate on the pages of the Son of the Fatherland - one of the largest newspapers of that time. The article caught the eye of Zhytomyr official K.K. Roche, and he decided to take him to his house. So Sasha Glikberg at the end of 1898 found himself in Zhytomyr - the city that became his second homeland.
Konstantin Rocher belonged to the Russified French family. His grandfather, a professor at the Military Engineering Academy, is known as the inventor of the cement on which the forts of Kronstadt were built. His father is a teacher at the Military Engineering School. And Rocher himself went along the official line and can be attributed to the serving aristocracy. In Zhytomyr he held a rather high post - the chairman of the Peasant Presence. This dignitary was distinguished by lively participation in various philanthropic activities. One of these actions was the participation he took in the fate of a long-suffering young man abandoned by his family.
The gymnasium in Zhytomyr could not be completed due to a conflict with the director. Yes, to tell the truth, it was too late to study - the time for conscription came. After serving two years as a freedeterminer, A. Glickberg finds himself in the town of Novoselitsy on the border with Austria-Hungary, where he enters the service at the local customs. Upon his return to Zhytomyr, Glikberg began to cooperate in the newspaper Volyn Herald, which opened on June 1, 1904. However, he did not have a feuilleton here for long: only two months later the newspaper ceased to exist. Driven by ambitious dreams, he decides to move to St. Petersburg.
At first, the newly-minted St. Petersburger had to do clerical work - at the Warsaw Railway Tax Service. And although at first he was sheltered by Rocher’s relatives, a provincial in the northern capital felt uncomfortable and lonely. His immediate superior in the service was M. I. Vasilyeva, who showed his participation. Soon they tied their fates to the knot of marriage. The union was strong, despite the difference in age (Maria Ivanovna was several years older), in position and education.
The wedding trip in the summer of 1905, the newlyweds spent in Italy. Upon his return, Sasha Cherny decides to leave the hated office service in order to devote himself entirely to literary activity.
The first poem published under this unknown literary name in the magazine “The Spectator” (“The Spectator”) was like a bomb exploded and went viral throughout Russia. Sasha Black immediately became a welcome guest in satirical magazines. After the cancellation of preliminary censorship, a lot of them appeared like mushrooms after the rain. Sasha Cherny’s sarcastic and angry invectives against those who personified the slightly shaken but still solid state regime appear one after another.
The fact that Sasha Black took place as a poet, and the fact that 1908-1911 became his “star hour”, is the greatest merit of the “Satiricon”. The poet did not have to humiliate the editorial thresholds, he was immediately given the opportunity to reach a wide, truly all-Russian reader. Since 1908 - one of the leading poets of the magazine "Satiricon". His sarcastic, but by no means devoid of tenderness poems, which appeared in Satyricon (1908), immediately brought him popularity and, of course, influenced early Mayakovsky. Mayakovsky knew by heart almost all of Black’s poems and often recited them. Sasha Cherny at the insistence of Chukovsky wrote 25 poems for children.
In 1910, came "Satires" - the first book of poems by Sasha Cherny. "Satires" end with a section of the book - "Lyrical satires"", already by its very name transmitting the baton to the next book of poems - "Satires and lyrics".
In 1914-1917 he was a soldier in the field infirmary. In the 20s he emigrated, worked in the Berlin magazine “Firebird”, then in Paris he collaborated in the “Russian newspaper”. In 1927, a group of emigrants on shares acquired a land plot and founded a Russian colony of emigrants in the village of La Favier in Provence. Among them was Sasha Black.
Here, in the south of France, he spent the last period of his life. Wrote the poem “Who in emigration to live well” (1931-1932), prose “Soldiers’ Tales” (1933).
In total, two more books by Sasha Black were published: “Thirst”, “Children’s Island”.
At 52, Sasha Black died, helping to extinguish a fire, in Provence: overstretched heart. It is said that when he died, his dog Mickey lay on his chest and died of a broken heart.
V. Nabokov in his farewell speech said with sadness and tenderness: “There are several books left and a quiet charming shadow.”
The highest point of posthumous recognition of the talent of Sasha Cherny is the creation of music by Shostakovich for the cycle of his poems.