In his memoirs ‘Notes of the Writer’, Nikolai Teleshov dedicated one of the chapters to the Moscow literary group ‘Sreda’ (Wednesday). He founded it in 1899. It included many outstanding realist writers of that time: Ivan Bunin, Maxim Gorky, Aleksandr Kuprin, Boris Zaytsev, Leonid Andreyev, Vikenty Veresaev, and many others.
Not only writers, but also painters, musicians, and singers joined the ‘Sreda’ circle. The meetings were frequented by Vasily Polenov, Isaac Levitan, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Feodor Chaliapin.
The participants could easily obtain new books, usually manuscripts. In most cases, they were publicly read by the authors themselves.
Ivan Bunin joined the group in the early 1900s and did not miss a single meeting. Nikolai Teleshov remembered that he brightened up many conversations. He had great public reading skills, an excellent sense of humor and a sharp tongue. The circle had a tradition of giving participants nicknames based on Moscow streets, squares and alleys. Ivan Bunin was nicknamed ‘Zhivodyorka’ for being thin and sharp-witted. The word comes from two Russian words: ‘vividly’ and ‘tear’. Thus, Bunin could ‘vividly tear’ someone apart (or jokingly scold someone).
Ivan Bunin wrote about this photograph in his memoirs, ‘There is a famous photo of us (it’s famous because it was printed on postcards and sold in hundreds of thousands of copies at one time): Leonid Andreyev, Maxim Gorky, Feodor Chaliapin, Stepan Skitalets, Evgeny Chirikov, Nikolai Teleshov and me. We met once to have breakfast in Moscow at the German restaurant ‘Alpine Rose’, had a long and fun breakfast and suddenly decided to take a photo’.
Nikolai Teleshov also reminisced about the photo:
Not only writers, but also painters, musicians, and singers joined the ‘Sreda’ circle. The meetings were frequented by Vasily Polenov, Isaac Levitan, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Feodor Chaliapin.
The participants could easily obtain new books, usually manuscripts. In most cases, they were publicly read by the authors themselves.
Ivan Bunin joined the group in the early 1900s and did not miss a single meeting. Nikolai Teleshov remembered that he brightened up many conversations. He had great public reading skills, an excellent sense of humor and a sharp tongue. The circle had a tradition of giving participants nicknames based on Moscow streets, squares and alleys. Ivan Bunin was nicknamed ‘Zhivodyorka’ for being thin and sharp-witted. The word comes from two Russian words: ‘vividly’ and ‘tear’. Thus, Bunin could ‘vividly tear’ someone apart (or jokingly scold someone).
Ivan Bunin wrote about this photograph in his memoirs, ‘There is a famous photo of us (it’s famous because it was printed on postcards and sold in hundreds of thousands of copies at one time): Leonid Andreyev, Maxim Gorky, Feodor Chaliapin, Stepan Skitalets, Evgeny Chirikov, Nikolai Teleshov and me. We met once to have breakfast in Moscow at the German restaurant ‘Alpine Rose’, had a long and fun breakfast and suddenly decided to take a photo’.
Nikolai Teleshov also reminisced about the photo:
