Alive as life

"Alive as life" — the main book by Chukovsky, dedicated to the Russian language, its history, and contemporary life, the laws of its development.

The author's unabashed and passionate interest in the word as the beginning of all beginnings, combined with... an objective scientific analysis of speech, is a hallmark of the book. "Alive as life" is about the Russian language, its living movement, expressiveness, and the dangers that threaten this movement. Chukovsky shows how language can come to life and die right before our eyes — it only takes to start speaking bureaucratically, with clichés, foreign words. This book is not about rules and grammar — it is about how we live in the language. And how language, in response, shapes our thinking and feelings.

The book consists of observations, analysis of real examples — newspaper headlines, official speeches, letters, essays — and is filled with the author's personal concern for the fate of the native language. Chukovsky is not afraid to be sharp and sarcastic — when it is necessary to expose the "deadness" of the language. But the main thing is that he infects with love for the word. He shows how one can speak and write vividly, how one can be clear and precise even in everyday speech.