Do we know everything about the classics of world literature?

... "and genius, paradoxes friend" - a genius can indeed be a friend of the paradoxes of his biography ... As soon as the writer is ranked to the host of classics, a casual miracle occurs: a living person is replaced by an icon in the form of a portrait in the office of literature, and everything that is all that is all that is all that is It does not fit into the canon, as if was erased from his biography with an eraser. But it does not fit so little. Pushkin - "Sun of Russian Poetry" - in life there was a heart -eater who destroyed many female destinies, and in personal correspondence - sometimes a vulgar. You can be touched by bright excerpts from the recently introduced into the school program "The Summer of the Lord" of Ivan Shmelev, but how to forget that at the same time he wrote fiery odes in support of Hitler? The school bypass these difficulties, offering children a convenient myth, a "textbook gloss" instead of a living person. This book has not too attracted details from the biographies of Russian classics. There are enough of them to shake off the granite -core overcoat of an official icon from their bodies. When writers become much more alive than on the pages of textbooks, their positive impact on us gains great value