Teffi is a short biography of the queen of laughter. Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lokhvitskaya Teffi's biography

Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya,

married - BUCHINSKAYA

9 (21) .V.1872, Petersburg, according to other sources - in the estate in the Volyn province - 6.X.1952, Paris

Famous sisters Lokhvitskiy: the eldest Mirra wrote poetry and was awarded the title "Russian Sappho", the youngest, Nadezhda, composed humoresques and feuilletons and became the most popular "humorist" in Russia. To distinguish herself from her sister, she took a pseudonym from Kipling - Teffi.

Teffi herself explained the adoption of the pseudonym: “... Why does a Russian woman sign her works with some kind of Anglicized word? If she wanted to take a pseudonym, she could have chosen something more sonorous, or at least with a touch of ideology, like Maxim Gorky, Demyan Bedny, the Wanderer. These are all hints of some kind of poetic suffering and win over the reader ... I did not want to hide behind a male pseudonym. Cowardly and cowardly. Better to choose something incomprehensible, neither one nor the other. But what?.."

She chose Teffi. A short, sonorous word, and when it came into fashion, the perfume "Teffi" appeared in honor of the writer, with a unique original scent. Teffi began publishing in the newspapers Birzhevye Vedomosti and Rus, and then became a regular contributor to Satyricon and New Satyricon. In 1910 Teffi's poetry collection "Seven Lights" and two volumes of "Humorous Stories" were published.

As Irina Odoevtseva notes, Teffi's fame in pre-revolutionary Russia was enormous. She was read and admired. When, when compiling the jubilee collection dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the reign of the Romanov dynasty, they respectfully asked the tsar which of the modern Russian writers he would like to see included in it, Nicholas II resolutely said:

Teffi! Only her. Nobody but her is needed. One Teffi!

And with obvious displeasure, after much persuasion, the tsar agreed that the names and portraits of other poets and writers, headed by Gippius and Merezhkovsky, appear in the anniversary collection.

What took Teffi's readers with? An amazing combination of funny and sad, conjugation of anecdote and tragedy, accuracy of everyday details ("hardly the most observant of our writers" - as Teffi Georgy Adamovich estimated), graceful teasing of bourgeois manners and tastes. And also the fact that she owned, in the words of Mikhail Zoshchenko, "the secret of laughing words." And, of course, excellent Russian. So, Alexander Kuprin noted the inherent in her "the impeccability of the Russian language, ease and variety of speech turns of speech."

Two examples:

“The theme was the most original: one young girl fell in love with a young man and married him. This thing was called Sphinx Hieroglyphs "(Teffi's story" Talent ").

“... Then we sat down to dinner. They ate seriously and for a long time. They talked about some kind of chicken, which they ate somewhere with some kind of mushrooms. Ivan Petrovich was angry. Occasionally I tried to start a conversation about theater, literature, city news. They answered him casually and again returned to the familiar chicken ... "(" Vacation ").

Wrote Teffi and poetry. As Nikolai Gumilyov defined them, "authentic, elegantly simple tales of the Middle Ages." Here is Black Dwarf:

Your black dwarf kissed your feet

He was so affectionate to you and so sweet,

All your rings, your earrings, brooches -

He collected and kept in a chest.

But on a terrible day of sadness and anxiety

Your dwarf suddenly rose and grew -

Now you would kiss his feet,

And he left ... and took the chest away ...

Salon? Coyly? Yes. But Teffi also wrote on the topic of the day; so, in October 1905, she nailed General Trepov for his textbook order "Do not spare cartridges" in the poem "Cartridges and Cartridge", which at the end said:

Trepov! Not of good will

Did you have to fly off the spot?

You yourself have deigned to teach,

So as not to spare the cartridges!

And yet, the main thing in Teffi's work is not poetry, but her prose, more precisely, her humor. Before the revolution, her numerous collections were published: "Carousel", "Smoke without fire", "Miniatures and monologues", "Life-bye" and others. Teffi remained fruitful even in emigration, it is enough to name such books as "East" (Shanghai, 1920), "Quiet Backwater" (Paris, 1921), "Black Iris" (Stockholm, 1921), "Book June" (Belgrade, 1931 ), "About tenderness" (Paris, 1938), "All about love" (Paris, 1946). Memoirs (1931) about those whom the writer knew at the time of the sparkling of the Silver Age stand apart. And also the book "The Witch" (Paris, 1936) about the ancient Slavic gods - this book was highly appreciated by Bunin, Kuprin and Merezhkovsky.

Emigration did not break Teffi, but she did not manage to avoid acute nostalgia for her homeland. In 1920, Teffi left Russia. In one of the last essays, written in Odessa, she wrote: “The trickle of blood seen in the morning at the gates of the commissariat ... cuts the road of life forever. You cannot step over it. You can't go any further. You can turn and run. " Teffi and "ran" - through Constantinople to Paris. On the ship, looking at the restless waves of the Black Sea, Teffi wrote a poem, which later Alexander Vertinsky included in his repertoire:

To the cape of joy, to the rocks of sorrow,

To the islands of lilac birds,

It doesn't matter wherever we land,

Do not raise our tired eyelashes ...

Having tasted the bitterness of emigre life, Teffi made a mournful confession: “They were afraid of the Bolshevik death - and died here ... The soul turned to the east withers. We only think about what is now THERE. We are only interested in what comes from there. "

Not everything went smoothly in his personal life. In her younger years, Teffi married a lawyer Vladislav Buchinsky. After the birth of her second daughter Elena, she separated from him in 1900, that is, at the age of 28. And then alone? Here is what Irina Odoevtseva wrote about this in her memoirs "On the Banks of the Seine":

“Women's success gave Teffi no less, and perhaps more pleasure than literary success. She was extremely considerate and condescending to her fans.

Nadezhda Aleksandrovna, how can you listen to N.N.'s stupidest compliments for hours? After all, he is an idiot! - her friends were indignant.

Firstly, he is not an idiot, since he is in love with me, - she reasonably explained. “And secondly, it’s much more pleasant for me to be an idiot in love with me than the most reasonable wise guy who is indifferent to me or in love with another fool.”

This answer is all Teffi. In Paris, fate brought her to P. Tikson, with whom they lived together until his death. However, they did not register their marriage. The last man Teffi was seriously ill, and the writer tenderly looked after him and continued to write her funny stories. The audience loved the laughing Teffi. She paid money for her laugh. Teffi understood this perfectly and did not change her tone.

Galina Shakhovskaya recalls in her memoirs: “Teffi, in essence, was the only“ lady ”of literary Paris - not a“ literary lady ”, but a charming, well-educated and“ metropolitan ”lady. Maybe a little dry and extremely smart, Teffi, it seems to me, was not interested in politics or world issues. She was interested in human types, children and animals, but she not only understood the tragic fate of everything living, but also felt it on her own, first of all, experience.

Satirists and humorists (with the exception of Myatlev) are almost all hypochondriacs, from Gogol to Don-Aminado and Zoshchenko. Like all of them, Teffi laughed with a “bitter laugh”, without malice, but with the utmost vigilance, noting, and for clarity increasing them, the absurdities of life and human weaknesses.

When I knew her, her health already required pain relievers, and sometimes stimulants, and I had to see her now brilliant and witty, now completely extinct, overpowering herself and life. And suddenly, because someone was next to her, the spark hidden in her flashed again, and apt remarks, witty stories, vivid memories were scattered like fireworks.

She was very fond of N.A. balls and exits, watched her appearance, dressed as she could, elegantly, I never saw her unkempt and untidy ... "

And here is what Irina Odoevtseva recalled: “... Both then and after the war Teffi was very poor. In recent years, she was seriously ill for a long time, but even before her death she did not lose her amazing gift - a sense of humor. I turned to my friends for financial help like this: “Forgive me for the last time. I promise that I will not stay long on this earth. And you, please, give me now the money that you will still spend on flowers when you come to my funeral. "

Shortly before her death, Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Teffi, looking back at her life path, noted: “I belong to the Chekhov school, and I consider Maupassant to be my ideal. I love Petersburg, I loved Gumilyov very much, he was a good poet and a person. The best period of my career was still in Russia. "

Teffi managed to celebrate her 80th birthday and left forever, as she put it, the “island” of her “memories”. About death, as about Charon, she wrote in advance:

He will sail at night on black sails,

A silver ship with a purple border!

But people won't understand that he came after me,

And they will say: "The moon is playing on the waves" ...

Like a black seraphim three paired wings,

He will throw sails over the silence of the stars!

But people won't understand that he sailed away with me

And they will say: "Here she died today."

So, the silver ship took one of the brightest representatives of the Silver Age - Nadezhda Teffi into the silver distance ...

| | Teffi at Wikimedia Commons

Taffy(real name Nadezhda A. Lokhvitskaya, by husband Buchinskaya; April 24 (May 6) 1872, St. Petersburg - October 6, 1952, Paris) - Russian writer and poetess, memoirist, translator, author of such famous stories as "Demon woman" and "Ke fer?"... After the revolution - in exile. Sister of the poetess Mirra Lokhvitskaya and military leader Nikolai Alexandrovich Lokhvitsky.

Biography

Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya was born on April 24 (May 6), 1872 in St. Petersburg (according to other sources in the Volyn province) in the family of lawyer Alexander Vladimirovich Lokhvitsky (-). She studied at the gymnasium on Liteiny Prospect.

She was called the first Russian comedian of the early 20th century, “the queen of Russian humor,” but she was never a supporter of pure humor, she always combined it with sadness and witty observations of life around her. After emigration, satire and humor gradually cease to dominate in her work, observations of life acquire a philosophical character.

Alias

There are several variants of the origin of the pseudonym Teffi.

The first version is set out by the writer herself in the story "Alias"... She did not want to sign her texts with a man's name, as her contemporary writers often did: “I didn't want to hide behind a male pseudonym. Cowardly and cowardly. It is better to choose something incomprehensible, neither this nor that. But what? You need a name that would bring happiness. Best of all is the name of some fool - fools are always happy "... Her "I remembered<…>one fool, really excellent and, in addition, one who was lucky, therefore, recognized by fate itself as an ideal fool. His name was Stepan, and his family called him Steffi. Discarding the first letter out of delicacy (so that the fool does not become arrogant) ", writer "I decided to sign my piece" Teffi ""... After the successful premiere of this play, in an interview with a journalist, when asked about the pseudonym, Teffi replied that "This ... the name of one fool ... that is, such a surname"... The journalist noticed that he "They said it was from Kipling"... Teffi, who remembered the Kipling song "Taffy was a walshman / Taffy was a thief ..."(rus. Teffi from Wales, Teffi was a thief ), agreed with this version ..

The same version is voiced by the researcher of creativity Teffi E. Nitraur, indicating the name of a friend of the writer as Stefan and specifying the title of the play - "Women's question", and a group of authors under the general leadership of A.I. Smirnova, attributing the name Stepan to a servant in the Lokhvitskys' house.

Another version of the origin of the pseudonym is offered by the researchers of Teffi E.M. Trubilova and D.D. Nikolaev, in whose opinion the pseudonym for Nadezhda Alexandrovna, who loved hoaxes and jokes, and was also the author of literary parodies, feuilletons, became part of a literary game aimed at creating an appropriate image of the author.

There is also a version that Teffi took her pseudonym because her sister, the poet Mirra Lokhvitskaya, who was called "Russian Sappho", was printed under her real name.

Creation

Before emigration

Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya began to write as a child, but her literary debut took place almost at the age of thirty. Teffi's first publication took place on September 2, 1901 in the magazine "North" - it was a poem "I had a dream, crazy and beautiful ...".

Teffi herself spoke about her debut as follows: “They took my poem and took it to an illustrated magazine, without telling me a word about it. And then they brought the issue of the magazine where the poem was published, which made me very angry. I did not want to be published then, because one of my older sisters, Mirra Lokhvitskaya, had been publishing her poems with success for a long time. It seemed to me something funny if we all get into literature. By the way, that's how it happened ... So - I was unhappy. But when they sent me a fee from the editorial office, it made the most gratifying impression on me. " .

In emigration

In exile, Teffi wrote stories depicting pre-revolutionary Russia, all the same philistine life that she described in collections published in her homeland. Melancholic headline "This is how they lived" unites these stories, reflecting the collapse of the hopes of emigration to return the past, the complete hopelessness of an unsightly life in a foreign country. In the first issue of the newspaper "Latest News" (April 27, 1920) Teffi's story was printed "Ke fer?"(French. "What to do?"), and the phrase of his hero, the old general, who, looking around in bewilderment in the Parisian square, mutters: “This is all good ... but que faire? Fer then ke? ", has become a kind of password for those in exile.

The writer has published in many prominent periodicals of the Russian emigration (Common Cause, Renaissance, Rul, Segodnya, Link, Modern Notes, Firebird). Teffi has released a number of story books - "Lynx" (), "Book of June" (), "About tenderness"() - who showed new facets of her talent, like the plays of this period - "Moment of Destiny" , "Nothing like this"() - and the only experience of the novel - "Adventure Romance"(1931). But she considered her best book to be a collection of stories. "Witch"... The genre of the novel, indicated in the title, raised doubts among the first reviewers: it was noted that the “soul” of the novel (B. Zaitsev) did not correspond to the title. Modern researchers point to similarities with an adventurous, roguish, courtly, detective novel, as well as a mythic novel.

In the works of Teffi of this time, sad, even tragic motives are noticeably intensified. “They were afraid of the Bolshevik death - and they died here. We only think about what is there now. We are only interested in what comes from there ", - said in one of her first Parisian miniatures "Nostalgia"(). Teffi's optimistic outlook on life will only change in old age. Previously, she called her metaphysical age 13 years, but in one of the last Parisian letters, a bitter one will slip: "All my peers are dying, but I am still living for something ..." .

Teffi planned to write about the heroes of L.N. Tolstoy and M. Cervantes, who were ignored by criticism, but these plans were not destined to come true. On September 30, 1952, Teffi celebrated her name day in Paris, and just a week later she died.

Bibliography

Editions prepared by Teffi

Seven Lights - SPb .: Rosehip, 1910
Humorous stories. Book. 1. - SPb .: Rosehip, 1910
Humorous stories. Book. 2 (Anthropoid). - SPb .: Rosehip, 1911
And it became so. - SPb .: New Satyricon, 1912
Carousel. - SPb .: New Satyricon, 1913
Miniatures and monologues. T. 1. - SPb .: ed. M.G. Kornfeld, 1913
Eight miniatures. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1913
Smoke without fire. - SPb .: New Satyricon, 1914
Nothing of the kind, Pg .: New Satyricon, 1915
Miniatures and monologues. T. 2. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1915
And it became so. 7th ed. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1916
An inanimate beast. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1916
Yesterday. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1918
Smoke without fire. 9th ed. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1918
Carousel. 4th ed. - Pg .: New Satyricon, 1918
Black iris. - Stockholm, 1921
Treasures of the earth. - Berlin, 1921
Quiet backwater. - Paris, 1921
This is how they lived. - Paris, 1921
Lynx. - Paris, 1923
Passiflora. - Berlin, 1923
Shamran. Songs of the East. - Berlin, 1923
Town. - Paris, 1927
Book June. - Paris, 1931
Adventurous romance. - Paris, 1931
Witch . - Paris, 1936
About tenderness. - Paris, 1938
Zigzag. - Paris, 1939
It's all about love. - Paris, 1946
Earthly rainbow. - New York, 1952
Life and collar
Mitya

Pirate editions

Instead of politics. Stories. - M.-L .: ZIF, 1926
Yesterday. Humorous. stories. - Kiev: Cosmos, 1927
Tango of death. - M .: ZiF, 1927
Sweet memories. -M.-L .: ZIF, 1927

Collected works

Collected works [in 7 vols.]. Compiled by and prep. texts by D. D. Nikolaev and E. M. Trubilova. - M .: Lakom, 1998-2005.
Collected cit .: In 5 volumes - Moscow: TERRA Book Club, 2008

Other

Ancient history / . - 1909
Ancient history / General history, processed by "Satyricon". - SPb .: ed. M.G. Kornfeld, 1912

Criticism

The works of Teffi in literary circles were extremely positive. The writer and contemporary Teffi Mikhail Osorgin considered her "One of the most intelligent and sighted modern writers." Ivan Bunin, stingy with praise, called her "Clever and intelligent" and said that her stories, truthfully reflecting life, were written "Great, simple, with great wit, observation and wonderful derision" .

Notes (edit)

Nitraur E."Life laughs and cries ..." About the fate and work of Teffi // Teffi. Nostalgia: Short stories; Memories / Comp. B. Averina; Entry. Art. E. Nitraur. - L .: Art. lit., 1989 .-- S. 4-5. - ISBN 5-280-00930-X.
Biography of Tzffi
The women's gymnasium, opened in 1864, was located on Basseinaya Street (now Nekrasov Street), at house No. 15. In her memoirs, Nadezhda Aleksandrovna noted: “The first time I saw my work in print was when I was thirteen years old. It was an ode written by me for the anniversary of the gymnasium "
Teffi (Russian). Literary encyclopedia... Fundamental Electronic Library (1939). Archived from the original on August 25, 2011. Retrieved January 30, 2010.
Teffi. Memories // Teffi. Nostalgia: Short stories; Memories / Comp. B. Averina; Entry. Art. E. Nitraur. - L .: Art. lit., 1989 .-- S. 267-446. - ISBN 5-280-00930-X.
Don Aminado. The train is on the third track. - New York, 1954 .-- S. 256-267.
Teffi. Nickname // Renaissance (Paris). - 1931 .-- December 20.
Teffi. Nickname (Russian). Small prose of the Silver Age of Russian literature. Archived from the original on August 25, 2011. Retrieved May 29, 2011.
Literature of the Russian Diaspora ("first wave" of emigration: 1920-1940): Study guide: 2 hours, Part 2 / A. I. Smirnova, A. V. Mlechko, S. V. Baranov, etc .; Under total. ed. Dr. philol. Sciences, prof. A.I.Smirnova. - Volgograd: VolGU Publishing House, 2004 .-- 232 p.
Poetry of the Silver Age: an anthology // Foreword, articles and notes by B.S.Akimov. - M .: Rodionov Publishing House, Literature, 2005 .-- 560 p. - (Series "Classics at School"). - S. 420.

The origin of Teffi's alias remains unclear. As indicated by herself, it goes back to the household nickname of the Lokhvitsky servant Stepan (Steffi), but also to the poems of R. Kipling "Taffy was a walesman / Taffy was a thief". The stories and sketches that appeared behind this signature were so popular in pre-revolutionary Russia that there was even Teffi perfume and sweets.

As a regular author of the magazines "Satyricon" and "New Satyricon" (Teffi was published in them from the first issue, published in April 1908, until the ban of this publication in August 1918) and as the author of a two-volume collection Humorous stories(1910), which was followed by several more collections ( Carousel, Smoke without fire, both 1914, Undead beast, 1916), Teffi has earned a reputation as a witty, observant, and non-spiteful writer. It was believed that she was distinguished by a subtle understanding of human weaknesses, kindness and compassion for her unlucky characters.

Teffi's favorite genre is a miniature, based on the description of a minor comic incident. She prefaced her two-volume edition with an epigraph from Ethics B. Spinoza, who precisely determines the tonality of many of her works: "For laughter is joy, and therefore in itself is good." A short period of revolutionary sentiments, which in 1905 prompted the aspiring Teffi to collaborate in the Bolshevik newspaper Novaya Zhizn, did not leave a noticeable trace in her work. The attempts to write social feuilletons with topical issues, which were expected from Teffi by the editorial staff of the newspaper "Russkoye Slovo", where it was published since 1910, did not bring significant creative results. that "you can't carry water on an Arab horse."

At the end of 1918, together with the popular satirikon writer A. Averchenko, Teffi left for Kiev, where they were supposed to make public appearances, and after a year and a half of wandering in southern Russia (Odessa, Novorossiysk, Yekaterinodar), she reached Paris through Constantinople. In the book Memories(1931), which is not a memoir, but rather an autobiographical story, Teffi recreates the route of her wanderings and writes that she did not abandon the hope of an early return to Moscow, although she determined her attitude to the October Revolution from the very beginning of events: “Of course, I was not afraid of death. I was afraid of angry mugs with a flashlight pointed right in my face, stupid idiotic anger. Cold, hunger, darkness, knocking of butts on the floor, screams, crying, shots and someone else's death. I'm so tired of it all. I didn't want that anymore. I couldn't take it anymore.

In the first issue of the newspaper "Latest News" (April 27, 1920) Teffi's story was printed Ke - fer, and the phrase of his hero, the old general, who, looking around in bewilderment in the Parisian square, mutters: “All this is good ... but que faire? Fer-then-ke? ”, Became a kind of password for those in exile. Publishing in almost all prominent periodicals of the Scattering (the newspapers General Business, Vozrozhdenie, Rul, Segodnya, the magazines Zveno, Modern Notes, The Firebird), Teffi published a number of books of stories ( Lynx, 1923, Book June, 1931, About tenderness... 1938), which showed new facets of her talent, as well as the plays of this period ( Moment of fate, 1937, written for the Russian Theater in Paris, Nothing like this, 1939, staged by N. Evreinov), and the only experience of the novel is Adventure romance (1931).

In the prose and drama of Teffi, after emigration, sad, even tragic motives are noticeably intensified. “They were afraid of the Bolshevik death - and died a death here,” says one of her first Parisian miniatures Nostalgia(1920). - ... We only think about what is there now. We are only interested in what comes from there. " The tone of Teffi's story more and more often combines harsh and conciliatory notes. According to the writer, the difficult time that her generation is going through has not changed the eternal law, which says that "life itself ... laughs as much as it cries": sometimes it is impossible to distinguish fleeting joys from sorrows that have become habitual.

In a world where many ideals have been compromised or lost, which seemed unconditional until a historical catastrophe struck, the true values for Teffi remain childish inexperience and a natural adherence to moral truth - this theme prevails in many stories that compose Book June and collection About tenderness, - as well as selfless love. All about love(1946) is entitled one of the last collections of Teffi, in which not only the most whimsical shades of this feeling are conveyed, but a lot is said about Christian love, about the ethics of Orthodoxy, which withstood the ordeals that Russian history of the 20th century had in store for it. At the end of his career - a collection Earthly rainbow(1952) she did not have time to prepare for print herself - Teffi completely abandoned sarcasm and satirical intonations, which were quite frequent both in her early prose and in the works of the 1920s. Enlightenment and humility before fate, which did not deprive Teffi's characters of the gift of love, empathy and emotional responsiveness, define the main note of her latest stories.

Teffi survived the Second World War and the occupation without leaving Paris. From time to time she agreed to perform with the reading of her works in front of the emigre audience, which became less and less every year. In the post-war years, Teffi was busy with memoir sketches about her contemporaries - from Kuprin and Balmont to G. Rasputin.

It is difficult in pre-revolutionary Russia to find a woman writer more popular than Nadezhda Teffi. Her funny stories from the lives of ordinary people won the hearts of all segments of the population and generations. She wrote about being close. About love, infidelity, intrigues, awkward situations between friends and acquaintances, theater, advertising, family quarrels and much, much more. Readers, who recognized themselves, their relatives and friends in Teffi's characters, laughed heartily at the simple stories and looked forward to new creations of the talented comedian.

Born into the family of a successful lawyer, Nadezhda could not care about the future, but simply expect a good marriage, raise children. But there was some peculiarity in her family. The two daughters grew up very restless and talented. Most likely, a mother, Varvara Alexandrovna, nee Goyer, who had French roots, instilled in her daughters a love of literature.

The first attempts at pen by Nadezhda Tafia date back to adolescence. Having started to create while still a high school student, she gradually made writing a matter of her life. Teffi's biography is full of unexpected turns and incredible events, you can read it with the same interest as any of the stories of Nadezhda Alexandrovna. Here are some interesting facts from her life:

Hope Teffi's real name is Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya... The writer herself told the story of its origin in different ways. Either she said that the name of the local fool was somehow or somehow similar, then she correlated it with the name of the mythical robber. The pseudonym had to be taken, since by the time Nadezhda began to storm the writer's Olympus, her surname was already very well known in the country.
The famous poetess Mirra Lokhvitskaya is the native (older) sister of Teffi's hope. Mirra became famous early as the author of sensual poems. She was called the forerunner of Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva. A woman died at the age of 35. She had a bad heart. Surprisingly, the researchers were unable to establish the exact number of children in the Lokhvitsky family. Supposedly, Teffi had one brother and four sisters.
Nadezhda Tafia began her professional literary career after her divorce from her husband, as a mature woman with two, and according to some reports, three children.
During World War I, Hope Teffi worked as a nurse and was at the front. Several front-line photographs of the writer have survived, where she poses in uniform and even with a rifle in her hands.
In 1919 she emigrated to Paris. She had to travel a long way through Kiev and Odessa, and then Turkey. Apparently, the writer quickly mastered the new environment. Her first French publications date back to the beginning of 1920.
She always retouched her own photographs, hid her age and said that she felt thirteen. The researchers found that when Nadezhda Aleksandrovna emigrated, filling out the documents, she took fifteen years off herself. There is every reason to believe that no one was able to find out this before her death. Due to the fact that Nadezhda Alexandrovna always dressed with taste, looked after herself very carefully, skillfully used cosmetics and dyed her hair, the “diminished”, comfortable age for her did not cause any doubts.
Nadezhda Alexandrovna lived for 80 years and died in Paris on September 30, 1952. Just a week after their own birthday. She was buried in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.
Throughout her life, Nadezhda Alexandrovna wrote poetry, but she became famous thanks to small humorous stories. Teffi herself said that she loves poetry very much, but that she is fed by a humorist.
Teffi was very fond of cats and even dedicated poetry to them. The writer said that she is always suspicious of people who do not like cats.
Teffi was very scattered in everyday life. Relatives recalled that she could light the stove, and put the kettle on a nearby hotplate, sending money to relatives to write her own address on an envelope, and then rejoice at the unexpected receipt of a large sum.
In the last years of her life, Nadezhda Alexandrovna's health deteriorated greatly. She suffered from neuritis of the left hand, only morphine injections allowed her to relieve the pain and fall asleep. Also, Nadezhda Teffi was susceptible to attacks of angina pectoris and was afraid to die during one of them.
Teffi dreamed of writing a story or several works about the secondary characters of famous books. She especially wanted to describe the adventures of Sancho Panza.

Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Teffi had a wide circle of friends and many friends, even after she left her homeland. She never boasted of her status as a famous writer and had both famous writers (Bunin, Kuprin) and aspiring journalists and neighbors among her friends and acquaintances. She knew how to find warm words for everyone and had the habit of giving each guest something. It could be a trinket, a book, or money.

With all this, the kindest person of all whom she knew, Teffi herself considered her second husband Pavel Andreevich Tikston. The marriage was not officially registered. Texton was delighted with his beautiful and talented companion and happily remained in the shadows, providing her with a happy, comfortable existence. Unfortunately, Pavel Andreevich died quite early, unable to withstand the loss of his fortune as a result of the economic crisis of the 19030s. After his death, Nadezhda Alexandrovna never married again and even made attempts to leave literature.

Teffi met the Second World War already in old age, with undermined health. She was forced to live very hard in occupied Paris, but thanks to her friends and family, she coped with this.

The whole life of this talented woman is 80 years of intrigue, secrets and coquetry. Until now, many points regarding her personal life are not known. Teffi herself constantly "fed" different versions to fans and journalists. Like the retouched photographs that Teffi loved so much, her official life seems smooth and vibrant, but once you look behind the beautiful cover, you can see many trials, grief and even personal tragedies.

TEFFI, NADEZHDA ALEXANDROVNA(real name - Lokhvitskaya, by her husband - Buchinskaya) (1872-1952), Russian writer. She was born on May 9 (21), according to other sources - on April 27 (May 9) 1872 in St. Petersburg (according to other sources - in Volyn province). Daughter of the professor of criminalistics, publisher of the journal "Judicial Bulletin" AV Lokhvitsky, sister of the poet Mirra (Maria) Lokhvitskaya ("Russian Sappho"). The pseudonym Teffi signed the first humorous stories and the play The Woman's Question (1907). The poems with which Lokhvitskaya made her debut in 1901 were published under her maiden name.
The origin of Teffi's alias remains unclear. As indicated by herself, it goes back to the household nickname of the Lokhvitsky servant Stepan (Steffi), but also to the poems of R. Kipling "Taffy was a walesman / Taffy was a thief". The stories and sketches that appeared behind this signature were so popular in pre-revolutionary Russia that there was even Teffi perfume and sweets.

As a regular contributor to the magazines Satyricon and New Satyricon (Teffi was published in them from the first issue, published in April 1908, until this publication was banned in August 1918) and as the author of a two-volume collection of Humorous Stories (1910), followed by several more collections (Carousel, Smoke Without Fire, both 1914, Unliving Beast, 1916), Teffi has earned a reputation as a witty, observant and non-spiteful writer. It was believed that she was distinguished by a subtle understanding of human weaknesses, kindness and compassion for her unlucky characters.

Teffi's favorite genre is a miniature, based on the description of a minor comic incident. She prefaced her two-volume edition with an epigraph from B. Spinoza's Ethics, which precisely defines the tonality of many of her works: "For laughter is joy, and therefore in itself is a blessing." A short period of revolutionary sentiments, which in 1905 prompted the aspiring Teffi to collaborate in the Bolshevik newspaper Novaya Zhizn, did not leave a noticeable trace in her work. The attempts to write social feuilletons with topical issues, which were expected from Teffi by the editorial staff of the newspaper "Russkoye Slovo", where it was published since 1910, did not bring significant creative results. that "you can't carry water on an Arab horse."

At the end of 1918, together with the popular satirikon writer A. Averchenko, Teffi left for Kiev, where they were supposed to make public appearances, and after a year and a half of wandering in southern Russia (Odessa, Novorossiysk, Yekaterinodar), she reached Paris through Constantinople. In the book Memoirs (1931), which is not a memoir, but rather an autobiographical tale, Teffi recreates the route of her wanderings and writes that she did not abandon the hope of an early return to Moscow, although she determined her attitude to the October Revolution from the very beginning of events: “Of course, I was not afraid of death. I was afraid of angry mugs with a flashlight pointed right in my face, stupid idiotic anger. Cold, hunger, darkness, knocking of butts on the floor, screams, crying, shots and someone else's death. I'm so tired of it all. I didn't want that anymore. I couldn't take it anymore.

The first issue of the Poslednie Novosti newspaper (April 27, 1920) published the story of Teffi Kefer, and the phrase of his hero, an old general, who, looking around in bewilderment in the Parisian square, mutters: “All this is good ... but que faire? Fer-then-ke? ”, Became a kind of password for those in exile. Publishing in almost all prominent periodicals of the Scattering (the newspapers General Business, Vozrozhdenie, Rul, Segodnya, the magazines Zveno, Modern Notes, The Firebird), Teffi published a number of books of stories ( Lynx, 1923, Kniga June, 1931, About tenderness. 1938), which showed new facets of her talent, as well as the plays of this period (Moment of Fate, 1937, written for the Russian Theater in Paris, Nothing of the sort, 1939, staged by N. Evreinov), and the only experience of the novel is Adventure Romance (1931).

In the prose and drama of Teffi, after emigration, sad, even tragic motives are noticeably intensified. “They were afraid of the Bolshevik death - and died a death here,” says one of her first Parisian miniatures of Nostalgia (1920). –... We only think about what's there now. We are only interested in what comes from there. " The tone of Teffi's story more and more often combines harsh and conciliatory notes. According to the writer, the difficult time that her generation is going through has not changed the eternal law, which says that "life itself ... laughs as much as it cries": sometimes it is impossible to distinguish fleeting joys from sorrows that have become habitual.

In a world where many ideals have been compromised or lost, which seemed unconditional until a historical catastrophe struck, the true values for Teffi remain childish inexperience and a natural adherence to moral truth - this theme prevails in many stories that compose the Book of June and the collection On Tenderness, - and also selfless love. All About Love (1946) is entitled one of Teffi's last collections, which not only conveys the most whimsical shades of this feeling, but speaks a lot about Christian love, about the ethics of Orthodoxy, which withstood the ordeals that Russian history of the 20th century had in store for it. At the end of her career - she did not manage to prepare the collection Earthly Rainbow (1952) herself for publication - Teffi completely abandoned sarcasm and satirical intonations, which were quite frequent both in her early prose and in the works of the 1920s. Enlightenment and humility before fate, which did not deprive Teffi's characters of the gift of love, empathy and emotional responsiveness, define the main note of her latest stories.

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