Message on the topic of the golden rose Paustovsky. Konstantin Paustovsky - golden rose
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Konstantin Paustovsky
Golden Rose
To my devoted friend Tatyana Alekseevna Paustovskaya
Literature has been removed from the laws of decay. She alone does not recognize death.
Saltykov-Shchedrin
You should always strive for beauty.
Honore Balzac
Much in this work is expressed fragmentarily and, perhaps, not clearly enough.
Much will be considered controversial.
This book is not a theoretical study, much less a guide. These are simply notes on my understanding of writing and my experiences.
Important issues of the ideological basis of our writing are not touched upon in the book, since we do not have any significant disagreements in this area. The heroic and educational significance of literature is clear to everyone.
In this book I have told so far only the little that I have managed to tell.
But if I, even in a small way, managed to convey to the reader an idea of the beautiful essence of writing, then I will consider that I have fulfilled my duty to literature.
Precious Dust
I can't remember how I came across this story about the Parisian garbage man Jeanne Chamet. Shamet made a living by cleaning the workshops of artisans in his neighborhood.
Shamet lived in a shack on the outskirts of the city. Of course, it would be possible to describe this outskirts in detail and thereby lead the reader away from the main thread of the story. But perhaps it’s only worth mentioning that the old ramparts are still preserved on the outskirts of Paris. At the time when this story took place, the ramparts were still covered with thickets of honeysuckle and hawthorn, and birds nested in them.
The scavenger's shack was nestled at the foot of the northern ramparts, next to the houses of tinsmiths, shoemakers, cigarette butt collectors and beggars.
If Maupassant had become interested in the life of the inhabitants of these shacks, he would probably have written several more excellent stories. Perhaps they would have added new laurels to his established fame.
Unfortunately, no outsiders looked into these places except the detectives. And even those appeared only in cases where they were looking for stolen things.
Judging by the fact that the neighbors nicknamed Shamet “Woodpecker,” one must think that he was thin, sharp-nosed, and from under his hat he always had a tuft of hair sticking out, like the crest of a bird.
Jean Chamet once saw better days. He served as a soldier in the army of "Little Napoleon" during the Mexican War.
Shamet was lucky. At Vera Cruz he fell ill with a severe fever. The sick soldier, who had not yet been in a single real firefight, was sent back to his homeland. The regimental commander took advantage of this and instructed Shamet to take his daughter Suzanne, an eight-year-old girl, to France.
The commander was a widower and therefore was forced to take the girl with him everywhere. But this time he decided to part with his daughter and send her to her sister in Rouen. Mexico's climate was deadly for European children. Moreover, the chaotic guerrilla warfare created many sudden dangers.
During Chamet's return to France, the Atlantic Ocean was smoking hot. The girl was silent the whole time. She even looked at the fish flying out of the oily water without smiling.
Shamet took care of Suzanne as best he could. He understood, of course, that she expected from him not only care, but also affection. And what could he come up with that was affectionate, a soldier of a colonial regiment? What could he do to keep her busy? A game of dice? Or rough barracks songs?
But it was still impossible to remain silent for long. Shamet increasingly caught the girl’s perplexed gaze. Then he finally made up his mind and began awkwardly telling her his life, remembering in the smallest detail a fishing village on the English Channel, shifting sands, puddles after low tide, a village chapel with a cracked bell, his mother, who treated neighbors for heartburn.
In these memories, Shamet could not find anything to cheer up Suzanne. But the girl, to his surprise, listened to these stories greedily and even forced him to repeat them, demanding more and more details.
Shamet strained his memory and extracted these details from it, until in the end he lost confidence that they really existed. These were no longer memories, but their faint shadows. They melted away like wisps of fog. Shamet, however, never imagined that he would need to recapture this long-gone time in his life.
One day a vague memory of a golden rose arose. Either Shamet saw this rough rose, forged from blackened gold, suspended from a crucifix in the house of an old fisherman, or he heard stories about this rose from those around him.
No, perhaps he even saw this rose once and remembered how it glittered, although there was no sun outside the windows and a gloomy storm was rustling over the strait. The further, the more clearly Shamet remembered this brilliance - several bright lights under the low ceiling.
Everyone in the village was surprised that the old woman was not selling her jewel. She could fetch a lot of money for it. Only Shamet’s mother insisted that selling a golden rose was a sin, because it was given to the old woman “for good luck” by her lover when the old woman, then still a funny girl, worked at a sardine factory in Odierne.
“There are few such golden roses in the world,” said Shamet’s mother. “But everyone who has them in their house will definitely be happy.” And not only them, but also everyone who touches this rose.
The boy was looking forward to making the old woman happy. But there were no signs of happiness. The old woman's house shook from the wind, and in the evenings there was no fire lit in it.
So Shamet left the village, without waiting for a change in the old woman’s fate. Only a year later, a fireman he knew from a mail boat in Le Havre told him that the old woman’s son, an artist, bearded, cheerful and wonderful, had unexpectedly arrived from Paris. From then on the shack was no longer recognizable. It was filled with noise and prosperity. Artists, they say, receive a lot of money for their daubs.
One day, when Chamet, sitting on the deck, combed Suzanne’s wind-tangled hair with his iron comb, she asked:
- Jean, will someone give me a golden rose?
“Anything is possible,” replied Shamet. “There will be some eccentric for you too, Susie.” There was one skinny soldier in our company. He was damn lucky. He found a broken golden jaw on the battlefield. We drank it down with the whole company. This is during the Annamite War. Drunk artillerymen fired a mortar for fun, the shell hit the mouth of an extinct volcano, exploded there, and from the surprise the volcano began to puff and erupt. God knows what his name was, that volcano! Kraka-Taka, I think. The eruption was just right! Forty civilian natives died. To think that so many people disappeared because of one jaw! Then it turned out that our colonel had lost this jaw. The matter, of course, was hushed up - the prestige of the army is above all. But we got really drunk then.
– Where did this happen? – Susie asked doubtfully.
- I told you - in Annam. In Indochina. There, the ocean burns like hell, and jellyfish look like lace ballerina skirts. And it was so damp there that mushrooms grew in our boots overnight! Let them hang me if I'm lying!
Before this incident, Shamet had heard a lot of soldiers’ lies, but he himself never lied. Not because he couldn’t do it, but there was simply no need. Now he considered it a sacred duty to entertain Suzanne.
Chamet brought the girl to Rouen and handed her over to a tall woman with pursed yellow lips - Suzanne's aunt. The old woman was covered in black glass beads and sparkled like a circus snake.
The girl, seeing her, clung tightly to Shamet, to his faded overcoat.
- Nothing! – Shamet said in a whisper and pushed Suzanne on the shoulder. “We, the rank and file, don’t choose our company commanders either. Be patient, Susie, soldier!
Shamet left. Several times he looked back at the windows of the boring house, where the wind did not even move the curtains. On the narrow streets the bustling knocking of clocks could be heard from the shops. In Shamet's soldier's backpack lay a memory of Susie - a crumpled blue ribbon from her braid. And the devil knows why, but this ribbon smelled so tenderly, as if it had been in a basket of violets for a long time.
Mexican fever undermined Shamet's health. He was discharged from the army without the rank of sergeant. He entered civilian life as a simple private.
Years passed in monotonous need. Chamet tried a variety of meager occupations and eventually became a Parisian scavenger. Since then, he has been haunted by the smell of dust and trash heaps. He could smell this smell even in the light wind that penetrated the streets from the Seine, and in the armfuls of wet flowers - they were sold by neat old women on the boulevards.
The days merged into a yellow haze. But sometimes a light pink cloud appeared in it before Shamet’s inner gaze - Suzanne’s old dress. This dress smelled of spring freshness, as if it, too, had been kept in a basket of violets for a long time.
Where is she, Suzanne? What with her? He knew that she was now a grown girl, and her father had died from his wounds.
Chamet was still planning to go to Rouen to visit Suzanne. But each time he postponed this trip, until he finally realized that time had passed and Suzanne had probably forgotten about him.
He cursed himself like a pig when he remembered saying goodbye to her. Instead of kissing the girl, he pushed her in the back towards the old hag and said: “Be patient, Susie, soldier!”
Scavengers are known to work at night. They are forced to do this for two reasons: most of the garbage from hectic and not always useful human activity accumulates towards the end of the day, and, in addition, it is impossible to offend the sight and smell of Parisians. At night, almost no one except rats notices the work of the scavengers.
Shamet got used to night work and even fell in love with these hours of the day. Especially the time when dawn was breaking sluggishly over Paris. There was fog over the Seine, but it did not rise above the parapet of the bridges.
One day, at such a foggy dawn, Shamet walked along the Pont des Invalides and saw a young woman in a pale lilac dress with black lace. She stood at the parapet and looked at the Seine.
Shamet stopped, took off his dusty hat and said:
“Madam, the water in the Seine is very cold at this time.” Let me take you home instead.
“I don’t have a home now,” the woman quickly answered and turned to Shamet.
Shamet dropped his hat.
- Susie! - he said with despair and delight. - Susie, soldier! My girl! Finally I saw you. You must have forgotten me. I am Jean-Ernest Chamet, that private of the twenty-seventh colonial regiment who brought you to that vile woman in Rouen. What a beauty you have become! And how well your hair is combed! And I, a soldier’s plug, didn’t know how to clean them up at all!
- Jean! – the woman screamed, rushed to Shamet, hugged his neck and began to cry. - Jean, you are as kind as you were then. I remember evrything!
- Uh, nonsense! Shamet muttered. - What benefit does anyone have from my kindness? What happened to you, my little one?
Chamet pulled Suzanne towards him and did what he had not dared to do in Rouen - he stroked and kissed her shiny hair. He immediately pulled away, afraid that Suzanne would hear the mouse stink from his jacket. But Suzanne pressed herself even tighter against his shoulder.
- What's wrong with you, girl? – Shamet repeated confusedly.
Suzanne didn't answer. She was unable to hold back her sobs. Shamet realized that there was no need to ask her about anything just yet.
“I,” he said hastily, “have a lair at the shaft of the cross.” It's a long way from here. The house, of course, is empty – even if it’s a ball rolling. But you can warm the water and fall asleep in bed. There you can wash and relax. And in general, live as long as you want.
Suzanne stayed with Shamet for five days. For five days an extraordinary sun rose over Paris. All the buildings, even the oldest ones, covered with soot, all the gardens and even Shamet’s lair sparkled in the rays of this sun like jewelry.
Anyone who has not experienced excitement from the barely audible breathing of a young woman will not understand what tenderness is. Her lips were brighter than wet petals, and her eyelashes shone from her night tears.
Yes, with Suzanne everything happened exactly as Shamet expected. Her lover, a young actor, cheated on her. But the five days that Suzanne lived with Shamet were quite enough for their reconciliation.
Shamet participated in it. He had to take Suzanne's letter to the actor and teach this languid handsome man politeness when he wanted to tip Shamet a few sous.
Soon the actor arrived in a cab to pick up Suzanne. And everything was as it should be: a bouquet, kisses, laughter through tears, repentance and a slightly cracked carelessness.
When the newlyweds were leaving, Suzanne was in such a hurry that she jumped into the cab, forgetting to say goodbye to Shamet. She immediately caught herself, blushed and guiltily extended her hand to him.
“Since you have chosen a life to suit your taste,” Shamet finally grumbled to her, “then be happy.”
“I don’t know anything yet,” Suzanne answered, and tears sparkled in her eyes.
“You needn’t worry, my baby,” the young actor drawled displeasedly and repeated: “My lovely baby.”
- If only someone would give me a golden rose! – Suzanne sighed. “That would certainly be fortunate.” I remember your story on the ship, Jean.
- Who knows! – answered Shamet. - In any case, it is not this gentleman who will present you with a golden rose. Sorry, I'm a soldier. I don't like shufflers.
The young people looked at each other. The actor shrugged. The cab started moving.
Shamet usually threw out all the trash that had been swept out of the craft establishments during the day. But after this incident with Suzanne, he stopped throwing dust out of jewelry workshops. He began to secretly collect it in a bag and take it to his shack. The neighbors decided that the garbage man had gone crazy. Few people knew that this dust contained a certain amount of gold powder, since jewelers always grind off a little gold when working.
Shamet decided to sift gold from jewelry dust, make a small ingot from it, and forge a small golden rose from this ingot for Suzanne’s happiness. Or maybe, as his mother once told him, it will also serve for the happiness of many ordinary people. Who knows! He decided not to meet with Suzanne until this rose was ready.
Shamet did not tell anyone about his idea. He was afraid of the authorities and the police. You never know what will come to the minds of judicial quibblers. They can declare him a thief, put him in prison and take his gold. After all, it was still alien.
Before joining the army, Shamet worked as a farm laborer for a rural priest and therefore knew how to handle grain. This knowledge was useful to him now. He remembered how the bread was winnowed and heavy grains fell to the ground, and light dust was carried away by the wind.
Shamet built a small winnowing fan and fanned jewelry dust in the yard at night. He was worried until he saw a barely noticeable golden powder on the tray.
It took a long time until enough gold powder had accumulated that it was possible to make an ingot out of it. But Shamet hesitated to give it to the jeweler to forge a golden rose from it.
The lack of money did not stop him - any jeweler would have agreed to take a third of the bullion for the work and would have been pleased with it.
That wasn't the point. Every day the hour of meeting with Suzanne approached. But for some time Shamet began to fear this hour.
He wanted to give all the tenderness that had long been driven into the depths of his heart only to her, only to Susie. But who needs the tenderness of an old freak! Shamet had long noticed that the only desire of people who met him was to quickly leave and forget his skinny, gray face with sagging skin and piercing eyes.
He had a fragment of a mirror in his shack. From time to time Shamet looked at him, but immediately threw him away with a heavy curse. It was better not to see myself - this clumsy image, hobbling on rheumatic legs.
When the rose was finally ready, Chamet learned that Suzanne had left Paris for America a year ago - and, as they said, forever. No one could tell Shamet her address.
In the first minute, Shamet even felt relieved. But then all his anticipation of a gentle and easy meeting with Suzanne inexplicably turned into a rusty iron fragment. This prickly fragment stuck in Shamet’s chest, near his heart, and Shamet prayed to God that it would quickly pierce this old heart and stop it forever.
Shamet stopped cleaning the workshops. For several days he lay in his shack, turning his face to the wall. He was silent and smiled only once, pressing the sleeve of his old jacket to his eyes. But no one saw this. The neighbors didn’t even come to Shamet – everyone had their own worries.
Only one person was watching Shamet - that elderly jeweler who forged the thinnest rose from an ingot and next to it, on a young branch, a small sharp bud.
The jeweler visited Shamet, but did not bring him medicine. He thought it was useless.
And indeed, Shamet died unnoticed during one of his visits to the jeweler. The jeweler raised the scavenger's head, took out a golden rose wrapped in a blue crumpled ribbon from under the gray pillow, and slowly left, closing the creaky door. The tape smelled like mice.
It was late autumn. The evening darkness stirred with the wind and flashing lights. The jeweler remembered how Shamet’s face had changed after death. It became stern and calm. The bitterness of this face seemed even beautiful to the jeweler.
“What life does not give, death brings,” thought the jeweler, prone to stereotyped thoughts, and sighed noisily.
Soon the jeweler sold the golden rose to an elderly writer, sloppily dressed and, in the opinion of the jeweler, not rich enough to have the right to buy such a precious thing.
Obviously, the story of the golden rose, told by the jeweler to the writer, played a decisive role in this purchase.
We owe it to the notes of the old writer that this sad incident from the life of a former soldier of the 27th colonial regiment, Jean-Ernest Chamet, became known to someone.
In his notes, the writer, among other things, wrote:
“Every minute, every casual word and glance, every deep or humorous thought, every imperceptible movement of the human heart, just like the flying fluff of a poplar or the fire of a star in a night puddle - all these are grains of gold dust.
We, writers, have been extracting them for decades, these millions of grains of sand, collecting them unnoticed by ourselves, turning them into an alloy and then forging from this alloy our “golden rose” - a story, novel or poem.
Golden Rose of Shamet! It seems to me partly to be a prototype of our creative activity. It is surprising that no one took the trouble to trace how a living stream of literature is born from these precious specks of dust.
But, just as the golden rose of the old scavenger was intended for the happiness of Suzanne, so our creativity is intended so that the beauty of the earth, the call to fight for happiness, joy and freedom, the breadth of the human heart and the strength of the mind will prevail over the darkness and sparkle as never-setting sun."
Inscription on a boulder
For a writer, complete joy comes only when he is convinced that his conscience is in accordance with the conscience of his neighbors.
Saltykov-Shchedrin
I live in a small house on the dunes. The entire Riga seaside is covered in snow. It constantly flies from tall pines in long strands and crumbles into dust.
It flies away because of the wind and because squirrels are jumping on the pines. When it's very quiet, you can hear them peeling the pine cones.
The house is located right next to the sea. To see the sea, you need to go out the gate and walk a little along a path trodden in the snow past a boarded-up dacha.
There are still curtains on the windows of this dacha from the summer. They move in a weak wind. The wind must be penetrating through imperceptible cracks into the empty dacha, but from afar it seems as if someone is lifting the curtain and cautiously watching you.
The sea is not frozen. The snow lies all the way to the water's edge. The tracks of hares are visible on it.
When a wave rises on the sea, what is heard is not the sound of the surf, but the crunch of ice and the rustle of settling snow.
The Baltic is deserted and gloomy in winter.
Latvians call it the “Amber Sea” (“Dzintara Jura”). Maybe not only because the Baltic throws out a lot of amber, but also because its water has a slightly amber yellow tint.
Heavy haze lies in layers on the horizon all day. The outlines of the low banks disappear in it. Only here and there in this darkness white shaggy stripes descend over the sea - it is snowing there.
Sometimes wild geese, which arrived too early this year, sit on the water and scream. Their alarming cry carries far along the shore, but does not evoke a response - there are almost no birds in the coastal forests in winter.
During the day, life goes on as usual in the house where I live. Firewood crackles in multi-colored tiled stoves, a typewriter hums muffledly, and the silent cleaning lady Lilya sits in the cozy hall and knits lace. Everything is ordinary and very simple.
But in the evening, pitch darkness surrounds the house, the pine trees move close to it, and when you leave the brightly lit hall outside, you are overcome by a feeling of complete loneliness, face to face, with winter, sea and night.
The sea goes hundreds of miles into black and leaden distances. Not a single light is visible on it. And not a single splash is heard.
The small house stands like the last beacon on the edge of a foggy abyss. The ground breaks off here. And therefore it seems surprising that the lights are calmly burning in the house, the radio is singing, soft carpets muffle the steps, and open books and manuscripts lie on the tables.
There, to the west, towards Ventspils, behind a layer of darkness lies a small fishing village. An ordinary fishing village with nets drying in the wind, with low houses and low smoke from chimneys, with black motorboats pulled out on the sand, and trusting dogs with shaggy hair.
Latvian fishermen have lived in this village for hundreds of years. Generations replace each other. Blonde girls with shy eyes and melodious speech become weather-beaten, stocky old women, wrapped in heavy scarves. Ruddy-faced young men in smart caps turn into bristly old men with imperturbable eyes.
But just like hundreds of years ago, fishermen go to sea for herring. And just like hundreds of years ago, not everyone comes back. Especially in the fall, when the Baltic is furious with storms and boils with cold foam, like a damn cauldron.
But no matter what happens, no matter how many times you have to take off your hats when people learn about the death of their comrades, you still need to continue to do your job - dangerous and difficult, bequeathed by grandfathers and fathers. You cannot give in to the sea.
There is a large granite boulder in the sea near the village. A long time ago, fishermen carved the inscription on it: “In memory of all who died and will die at sea.” This inscription can be seen from afar.
When I learned about this inscription, it seemed sad to me, like all epitaphs. But the Latvian writer who told me about it did not agree with this and said:
- Vice versa. This is a very courageous inscription. She says that people will never give up and, no matter what, will do their job. I would put this inscription as an epigraph to any book about human labor and perseverance. For me, this inscription sounds something like this: “In memory of those who have overcome and will overcome this sea.”
I agreed with him and thought that this epigraph would be suitable for a book about writing.
Writers cannot give up for a minute in the face of adversity or retreat in the face of obstacles. Whatever happens, they must continuously do their job, bequeathed to them by their predecessors and entrusted to them by their contemporaries. It is not for nothing that Saltykov-Shchedrin said that if literature falls silent for even a minute, it will be tantamount to the death of the people.
Writing is not a craft or an occupation. Writing is a calling. Delving into some words, into their very sound, we find their original meaning. The word “vocation” was born from the word “call”.
A person is never called upon to be a craftsman. They call him only to fulfill a duty and a difficult task.
What compels the writer to his sometimes painful, but wonderful work?
He is not a writer who has not added at least a little vigilance to a person’s vision.
A person becomes a writer not only at the call of his heart. We most often hear the voice of the heart in our youth, when nothing has yet muffled or torn to pieces the fresh world of our feelings.
But the years of maturity come - we clearly hear, in addition to the calling voice of our own heart, a new powerful call - the call of our time and our people, the call of humanity.
At the behest of his calling, in the name of his inner motivation, a person can perform miracles and endure the most difficult trials.
One example confirming this was the fate of the Dutch writer Eduard Dekker. He published under the pseudonym Multatuli. In Latin it means "Long-suffering."
It is possible that I remembered Dekker here, on the shores of the gloomy Baltic, because the same pale northern sea stretches off the coast of his homeland - the Netherlands. He said about her with bitterness and shame: “I am a son of the Netherlands, a son of a country of robbers, lying between Friesland and the Scheldt.”
But Holland, of course, is not a country of civilized robbers. They are a minority, and they do not express the face of the people. This is a country of hardworking people, descendants of the rebellious "Gezes" and Till Eulenspiegel. Until now, “the ashes of Klaas knock” on the hearts of many Dutch people. He also knocked on Multatuli’s heart.
Coming from a family of hereditary sailors, Multatuli was appointed a government official on the island of Java, and a short time later - even a resident of one of the districts of this island. Honors, rewards, wealth, a possible post of viceroy awaited him, but... “the ashes of Klaas knocked on his heart.” And Multatuli neglected these benefits.
With rare courage and tenacity, he tried to explode from within the centuries-old practice of enslaving the Javanese by the Dutch authorities and merchants.
He always spoke out in defense of the Javanese and did not give them offense. He severely punished bribe-takers. He mocked the viceroy and his associates - good Christians, of course - citing Christ's teaching about love for one's neighbor to explain his actions. There was nothing to object to him. But it could have been destroyed.
When the Javanese rebellion broke out, Multatuli took the side of the rebels because "the ashes of the Class continued to knock on his heart." He wrote with touching love about the Javanese, about these trusting children, and with anger about his compatriots.
He exposed the military infamy invented by the Dutch generals.
The Javanese are very clean and do not tolerate dirt. The Dutch calculation was based on this property.
The soldiers were ordered to throw human feces at the Javanese during attacks. And the Javanese, who met the fierce rifle fire without flinching, could not stand this type of war and retreated.
Multatuli was deposed and sent to Europe.
For several years he sought justice for the Javanese from the Dutch parliament. He talked about it everywhere. He wrote petitions to ministers and the king.
But in vain. They listened to him reluctantly and hastily. Soon he was declared a dangerous eccentric, even crazy. He couldn't find work anywhere. His family was starving.
Then, obeying the voice of his heart, in other words, obeying the calling that lived in him, but until then still unclear, Multatuli began to write. He wrote an exposé about the Dutch in Java: Max Havelaar, or The Coffee Merchants. But this was only the first try. In this book, he seemed to be groping for the still shaky ground of literary mastery.
But his next book, Letters of Love, was written with amazing power. This strength was given to Multatuli by a frenzied belief in his own rightness.
Individual chapters of the book resemble either the bitter cry of a man clutching his head at the sight of monstrous injustice, or caustic and witty parables, pamphlets, or tender consolations to loved ones, tinged with sad humor, or the last attempts to revive the naive faith of his childhood.
“There is no God, or he must be good,” wrote Multatuli. “When will they finally stop robbing the poor!”
He left Holland, hoping to earn a piece of bread on the side. His wife stayed with the children in Amsterdam - he didn’t have an extra penny to take them with him.
He begged through the cities of Europe and wrote, wrote continuously, this inconvenient for decent society, a mocking and tortured man. He received almost no letters from his wife, because she did not even have enough money for stamps.
He thought about her and the children, especially the little boy with blue eyes. He was afraid that this little boy would forget how to smile trustingly at people, and begged adults not to make him cry prematurely.
No one wanted to publish Multatuli’s books.
But it’s finally happened! A major publishing house agreed to buy his manuscripts, but on the condition that he would not publish them anywhere else.
An exhausted Multatuli agreed. He returned to his homeland. They even gave him some money. But the manuscripts were bought simply to disarm this man. The manuscripts were published in so many copies and at such an unaffordable price that it was tantamount to their destruction. Dutch merchants and authorities could not feel calm until this powder keg was not in their hands.
Multatuli died without receiving justice. And he could have written many more excellent books - those that are usually said to be written not with ink, but with the blood of the heart.
He fought as hard as he could and died. But he “overcame the sea.” And maybe soon in independent Java, in Jakarta, a monument to this selfless sufferer will be erected.
Such was the life of a man who merged two great callings.
In his fierce devotion to his work, Multatuli had a brother, also a Dutchman and his contemporary, the artist Vincent Van Gogh.
It is difficult to find an example of greater self-denial in the name of art than the life of Van Gogh. He dreamed of creating a “brotherhood of artists” in France - a kind of commune where nothing would separate them from the service of painting.
Van Gogh suffered a lot. He plumbed the depths of human despair in The Potato Eaters and Prisoners' Walk. He believed that the job of an artist is to resist suffering with all his might, with all his talent.
The job of an artist is to create joy. And he created it with the means that he knew best - paints.
On his canvases he transformed the earth. He seemed to wash it with miraculous water, and it was illuminated with colors of such brightness and density that every old tree turned into a work of sculpture, and every clover field into sunlight, embodied in a multitude of modest flower corollas.
He stopped with his will the continuous change of colors so that we could be imbued with their beauty.
Is it possible to say after this that Van Gogh was indifferent to people? He gave him the best he had - his ability to live on earth, shining with all possible colors and all their subtlest tints.
He was poor, proud and impractical. He shared the last piece with the homeless and learned first-hand what social injustice means. He disdained cheap success.
1. The book “Golden Rose” is a book about writing.
2. Suzanne's faith in the dream of a beautiful rose.
3. Second meeting with the girl.
4. Shamet’s impulse to beauty.
The book by K. G. Paustovsky “Golden Rose” is dedicated, by his own admission, to writing. That is, that painstaking work of separating everything superfluous and unnecessary from truly important things, which is characteristic of any talented master of the pen.
The main character of the story “Precious Dust” is compared with a writer who also has to overcome many obstacles and difficulties before he can present to the world his golden rose, his work that touches the souls and hearts of people. In the not entirely attractive image of the garbage man Jean Chamet, a wonderful person suddenly appears, a hard worker, ready to turn over mountains of garbage to obtain the smallest gold dust for the sake of the happiness of a creature dear to him. This is what fills the life of the main character with meaning; he is not afraid of daily hard work, ridicule and neglect of others. The main thing is to bring joy to the girl who once settled in his heart.
The story "Precious Dust" took place on the outskirts of Paris. Jean Chamet, decommissioned for health reasons, was returning from the army. On the way, he had to take the daughter of the regimental commander, an eight-year-old girl, to her relatives. On the road, Suzanne, who lost her mother early, was silent the entire time. Shamet never saw a smile on her sad face. Then the soldier decided that it was his duty to somehow cheer up the girl, to make her journey more exciting. He immediately dismissed dice games and rude barracks songs - this was not suitable for a child. Jean began to tell her his life.
At first, his stories were unpretentious, but Suzanne greedily caught more and more details and even often asked to tell them to her again. Soon, Shamet himself could no longer accurately determine where the truth ends and other people’s memories begin. Outlandish stories emerged from the corners of his memory. So he remembered the amazing story of a golden rose, cast from blackened gold and hung from a crucifix in the house of an old fisherman. According to legend, this rose was given to a beloved and was sure to bring happiness to the owner. Selling or exchanging this gift was considered a great sin. Shamet himself saw a similar rose in the house of a poor old fisherman who, despite her unenviable position, never wanted to part with the decoration. The old woman, according to rumors that reached the soldier, still waited for her happiness. Her son, an artist, came to her from the city, and the old fisherman’s shack “was filled with noise and prosperity.” The story of the fellow traveler made a strong impression on the girl. Suzanne even asked the soldier if anyone would give her such a rose. Jean replied that maybe there would be such an eccentric for the girl. Shamet himself did not yet realize how strongly he became attached to the child. However, after he handed the girl over to the tall “woman with pursed yellow lips,” he remembered Suzanne for a long time and even carefully kept her blue crumpled ribbon, gently, as it seemed to the soldier, smelling of violets.
Life decreed that after long ordeals, Shamet became a Parisian garbage collector. From now on, the smell of dust and garbage heaps followed him everywhere. Monotonous days merged into one. Only rare memories of the girl brought joy to Jean. He knew that Suzanne had long since grown up, that her father had died from his wounds. The scavenger blamed himself for parting with the child too dryly. The former soldier even wanted to visit the girl several times, but he always postponed his trip until time was lost. Nevertheless, the girl’s ribbon was just as carefully kept in Shamet’s things.
Fate presented a gift to Jean - he met Suzanne and even, perhaps, warned her against the fatal step when the girl, having quarreled with her lover, stood at the parapet, looking into the Seine. The scavenger took in the grown-up blue ribbon winner. Suzanne spent five whole days with Shamet. Probably for the first time in his life the scavenger was truly happy. Even the sun over Paris rose differently for him than before. And like the sun, Jean reached out to the beautiful girl with all his soul. His life suddenly took on a completely different meaning.
Actively participating in the life of his guest, helping her reconcile with her lover, Shamet felt completely new strength in himself. That is why, after Suzanne mentioned the golden rose during farewell, the garbage man firmly decided to please the girl or even make her happy by giving her this gold jewelry. Left alone again, Jean began to attack. From now on, he did not throw out garbage from jewelry workshops, but secretly took it to a shack, where he sifted out the smallest grains of golden sand from garbage dust. He dreamed of making an ingot from sand and forging a small golden rose, which, perhaps, would serve for the happiness of many ordinary people. It took the scavenger a lot of work before he was able to get the gold bar, but Shamet was in no hurry to forge a golden rose from it. He suddenly began to be afraid of meeting Suzanne: “... who needs the tenderness of an old freak.” The scavenger understood perfectly well that he had long become a scarecrow for ordinary townspeople: “... the only desire of the people who met him was to quickly leave and forget his skinny, gray face with sagging skin and piercing eyes.” The fear of being rejected by a girl forced Shamet, almost for the first time in his life, to pay attention to his appearance, to the impression he made on others. Nevertheless, the garbage man ordered a piece of jewelry for Suzanne from the jeweler. However, severe disappointment awaited him: the girl left for America, and no one knew her address. Despite the fact that at the first moment Shamet was relieved, the bad news turned the unfortunate man’s whole life upside down: “...the expectation of a gentle and easy meeting with Suzanne inexplicably turned into a rusty iron fragment... this prickly fragment stuck in Shamet’s chest, near his heart " The scavenger had no reason to live anymore, so he prayed to God to quickly take him to himself. Disappointment and despair consumed Jean so much that he even stopped working and “lay in his shack for several days, turning his face to the wall.” Only the jeweler who forged the jewelry visited him, but did not bring him any medicine. When the old scavenger died, his only visitor pulled from under his pillow a golden rose wrapped in a blue ribbon that smelled like mice. Death transformed Shamet: “... it (his face) became stern and calm,” and “... the bitterness of this face seemed even beautiful to the jeweler.” Subsequently, the golden rose ended up with a writer who, inspired by the jeweler’s story about an old scavenger, not only bought the rose from him, but also immortalized the name of the former soldier of the 27th colonial regiment, Jean-Ernest Chamet, in his works.
In his notes, the writer said that Shamet’s golden rose “seems to be a prototype of our creative activity.” How many precious specks of dust does a master have to collect in order for a “living stream of literature” to be born from them? And creative people are driven to this, first of all, by the desire for beauty, the desire to reflect and capture not only the sad, but also the brightest, best moments of the life around them. It is the beautiful that can transform human existence, reconcile it with injustice, and fill it with a completely different meaning and content.
Paustovsky Konstantin Georgievich (1892-1968), Russian writer was born on May 31, 1892 in the family of a railway statistician. His father, according to Paustovsky, “was an incorrigible dreamer and a Protestant,” which is why he constantly changed jobs. After several moves, the family settled in Kyiv. Paustovsky studied at the 1st Kyiv Classical Gymnasium. When he was in the sixth grade, his father left the family, and Paustovsky was forced to earn his own living and study by tutoring.
"Golden Rose" is a special book in Paustovsky's work. It was published in 1955, at that time Konstantin Georgievich was 63 years old. This book can be called a “textbook for beginning writers” only remotely: the author lifts the curtain on his own creative cuisine, talks about himself, the sources of creativity and the role of the writer for the world. Each of the 24 sections carries a piece of wisdom from a seasoned writer who reflects on creativity based on his many years of experience.
Conventionally, the book can be divided into two parts. If in the first the author introduces the reader into the “secret of secrets” - into his creative laboratory, then the other half consists of sketches about writers: Chekhov, Bunin, Blok, Maupassant, Hugo, Olesha, Prishvin, Green. The stories are characterized by subtle lyricism; As a rule, this is a story about what has been experienced, about the experience of communication - face-to-face or correspondence - with one or another of the masters of artistic expression.
The genre composition of Paustovsky’s “Golden Rose” is in many ways unique: a single compositionally complete cycle combines fragments with different characteristics - confession, memoirs, a creative portrait, an essay on creativity, a poetic miniature about nature, linguistic research, the history of the idea and its implementation in the book, an autobiography , household sketch. Despite the genre heterogeneity, the material is “cemented” by the end-to-end image of the author, who dictates his own rhythm and tonality to the narrative, and conducts reasoning in accordance with the logic of a single theme.
Much in this work is expressed abruptly and, perhaps, not clearly enough.
Much will be considered controversial.
This book is not a theoretical study, much less a guide. These are simply notes on my understanding of writing and my experiences.
Huge layers of ideological justification for our work as writers are not touched upon in the book, since we do not have major disagreements in this area. The heroic and educational significance of literature is clear to everyone.
In this book I have told so far only the little that I have managed to tell.
But if I, even in a small way, managed to convey to the reader an idea of the beautiful essence of writing, then I will consider that I have fulfilled my duty to literature. 1955
Konstantin Paustovsky
"Golden Rose"
Literature has been removed from the laws of decay. She alone does not recognize death.
You should always strive for beauty.
Much in this work is expressed abruptly and, perhaps, not clearly enough.
Much will be considered controversial.
This book is not a theoretical study, much less a guide. These are simply notes on my understanding of writing and my experiences.
Huge layers of ideological justification for our work as writers are not touched upon in the book, since we do not have major disagreements in this area. The heroic and educational significance of literature is clear to everyone.
In this book I have told so far only the little that I have managed to tell.
But if I, even in a small way, managed to convey to the reader an idea of the beautiful essence of writing, then I will consider that I have fulfilled my duty to literature.
Chekhov
His notebooks live independently in literature, as a special genre. He used them little for his work.
As an interesting genre, there are notebooks by Ilf, Alphonse Daudet, diaries of Tolstoy, the Goncourt brothers, the French writer Renard and many other records of writers and poets.
As an independent genre, notebooks have every right to exist in literature. But I, contrary to the opinion of many writers, consider them almost useless for the main work of writing.
I kept notebooks for some time. But every time I took an interesting entry from a book and inserted it into a story or story, this particular piece of prose turned out to be lifeless. It stuck out from the text like something alien.
I can only explain this by the fact that the best selection of material is produced by memory. What remains in memory and is not forgotten is the most valuable thing. What must be written down so as not to be forgotten is less valuable and can rarely be useful to a writer.
Memory, like a fairy sieve, lets garbage through, but retains grains of gold.
Chekhov had a second profession. He was a doctor. Obviously, it would be useful for every writer to know a second profession and practice it for some time.
The fact that Chekhov was a doctor not only gave him knowledge of people, but also affected his style. If Chekhov had not been a doctor, then perhaps he would not have created such scalpel-sharp, analytical and precise prose.
Some of his stories (for example, “Ward No. 6,” “A Boring Story,” “The Jumper,” and many others) were written as exemplary psychological diagnoses.
His prose did not tolerate the slightest dust or stains. “We must throw out the superfluous,” Chekhov wrote, “we must clear the phrase of “to the extent”, “with the help”, we must take care of its musicality and not allow “became” and “ceased” to be almost side by side in the same phrase.
He cruelly expelled from prose such words as “appetite”, “flirting”, “ideal”, “disc”, “screen”. They disgusted him.
Chekhov's life is instructive. He said of himself that for many years he had been squeezing a slave out of himself drop by drop. It is worth sorting out photographs of Chekhov over the years - from his youth to the last years of his life - to see with his own eyes how the slight touch of philistinism gradually disappears from his appearance and how his face and his clothes become more and more austere, more significant and more beautiful.
There is a corner in our country where everyone keeps a part of their heart. This is Chekhov's house on Outka.
For people of my generation, this house is like a window lit from the inside. Behind it you can see your half-forgotten childhood from the dark garden. And hear the affectionate voice of Maria Pavlovna - that sweet Chekhovian Masha, whom almost the whole country knows and loves in a kindred way.
The last time I was in this house was in 1949.
We sat with Maria Pavlovna on the lower terrace. Thickets of white fragrant flowers covered the sea and Yalta.
Maria Pavlovna said that Anton Pavlovich planted this lush bush and named it somehow, but she cannot remember this tricky name.
She said it so simply, as if Chekhov was alive, had been here quite recently and had only gone somewhere for a while - to Moscow or Nice.
I picked a camellia in Chekhov’s garden and gave it to a girl who was with us at Maria Pavlovna’s. But this carefree “lady with a camellia” dropped the flower from the bridge into the Uchan-Su mountain river, and it floated into the Black Sea. It was impossible to be angry with her, especially on this day, when it seemed that at every turn of the street we could meet Chekhov. And it will be unpleasant for him to hear how a gray-eyed, embarrassed girl is scolded for such nonsense as a lost flower from his garden.
To my devoted friend Tatyana Alekseevna Paustovskaya
Literature has been removed from the laws of decay. She alone does not recognize death.
Saltykov-Shchedrin
You should always strive for beauty.
Honore Balzac
Much in this work is expressed fragmentarily and, perhaps, not clearly enough.
Much will be considered controversial.
This book is not a theoretical study, much less a guide. These are simply notes on my understanding of writing and my experiences.
Important issues of the ideological basis of our writing are not touched upon in the book, since we do not have any significant disagreements in this area. The heroic and educational significance of literature is clear to everyone.
In this book I have told so far only the little that I have managed to tell.
But if I, even in a small way, managed to convey to the reader an idea of the beautiful essence of writing, then I will consider that I have fulfilled my duty to literature.
Precious Dust
I can't remember how I came across this story about the Parisian garbage man Jeanne Chamet. Shamet made a living by cleaning the workshops of artisans in his neighborhood.
Shamet lived in a shack on the outskirts of the city. Of course, it would be possible to describe this outskirts in detail and thereby lead the reader away from the main thread of the story. But perhaps it’s only worth mentioning that the old ramparts are still preserved on the outskirts of Paris. At the time when this story took place, the ramparts were still covered with thickets of honeysuckle and hawthorn, and birds nested in them.
The scavenger's shack was nestled at the foot of the northern ramparts, next to the houses of tinsmiths, shoemakers, cigarette butt collectors and beggars.
If Maupassant had become interested in the life of the inhabitants of these shacks, he would probably have written several more excellent stories. Perhaps they would have added new laurels to his established fame.
Unfortunately, no outsiders looked into these places except the detectives. And even those appeared only in cases where they were looking for stolen things.
Judging by the fact that the neighbors nicknamed Shamet “Woodpecker,” one must think that he was thin, sharp-nosed, and from under his hat he always had a tuft of hair sticking out, like the crest of a bird.
Jean Chamet once saw better days. He served as a soldier in the army of "Little Napoleon" during the Mexican War.
Shamet was lucky. At Vera Cruz he fell ill with a severe fever. The sick soldier, who had not yet been in a single real firefight, was sent back to his homeland. The regimental commander took advantage of this and instructed Shamet to take his daughter Suzanne, an eight-year-old girl, to France.
The commander was a widower and therefore was forced to take the girl with him everywhere. But this time he decided to part with his daughter and send her to her sister in Rouen. Mexico's climate was deadly for European children. Moreover, the chaotic guerrilla warfare created many sudden dangers.
During Chamet's return to France, the Atlantic Ocean was smoking hot. The girl was silent the whole time. She even looked at the fish flying out of the oily water without smiling.
Shamet took care of Suzanne as best he could. He understood, of course, that she expected from him not only care, but also affection. And what could he come up with that was affectionate, a soldier of a colonial regiment? What could he do to keep her busy? A game of dice? Or rough barracks songs?
But it was still impossible to remain silent for long. Shamet increasingly caught the girl’s perplexed gaze. Then he finally made up his mind and began awkwardly telling her his life, remembering in the smallest detail a fishing village on the English Channel, shifting sands, puddles after low tide, a village chapel with a cracked bell, his mother, who treated neighbors for heartburn.
In these memories, Shamet could not find anything to cheer up Suzanne. But the girl, to his surprise, listened to these stories greedily and even forced him to repeat them, demanding more and more details.
Shamet strained his memory and extracted these details from it, until in the end he lost confidence that they really existed. These were no longer memories, but their faint shadows. They melted away like wisps of fog. Shamet, however, never imagined that he would need to recapture this long-gone time in his life.
One day a vague memory of a golden rose arose. Either Shamet saw this rough rose, forged from blackened gold, suspended from a crucifix in the house of an old fisherman, or he heard stories about this rose from those around him.
No, perhaps he even saw this rose once and remembered how it glittered, although there was no sun outside the windows and a gloomy storm was rustling over the strait. The further, the more clearly Shamet remembered this brilliance - several bright lights under the low ceiling.
Everyone in the village was surprised that the old woman was not selling her jewel. She could fetch a lot of money for it. Only Shamet’s mother insisted that selling a golden rose was a sin, because it was given to the old woman “for good luck” by her lover when the old woman, then still a funny girl, worked at a sardine factory in Odierne.
“There are few such golden roses in the world,” said Shamet’s mother. “But everyone who has them in their house will definitely be happy.” And not only them, but also everyone who touches this rose.
The boy was looking forward to making the old woman happy. But there were no signs of happiness. The old woman's house shook from the wind, and in the evenings there was no fire lit in it.
So Shamet left the village, without waiting for a change in the old woman’s fate. Only a year later, a fireman he knew from a mail boat in Le Havre told him that the old woman’s son, an artist, bearded, cheerful and wonderful, had unexpectedly arrived from Paris. From then on the shack was no longer recognizable. It was filled with noise and prosperity. Artists, they say, receive a lot of money for their daubs.
One day, when Chamet, sitting on the deck, combed Suzanne’s wind-tangled hair with his iron comb, she asked:
- Jean, will someone give me a golden rose?
“Anything is possible,” replied Shamet. “There will be some eccentric for you too, Susie.” There was one skinny soldier in our company. He was damn lucky. He found a broken golden jaw on the battlefield. We drank it down with the whole company. This is during the Annamite War. Drunk artillerymen fired a mortar for fun, the shell hit the mouth of an extinct volcano, exploded there, and from the surprise the volcano began to puff and erupt. God knows what his name was, that volcano! Kraka-Taka, I think. The eruption was just right! Forty civilian natives died. To think that so many people disappeared because of one jaw! Then it turned out that our colonel had lost this jaw. The matter, of course, was hushed up - the prestige of the army is above all. But we got really drunk then.
– Where did this happen? – Susie asked doubtfully.
- I told you - in Annam. In Indochina. There, the ocean burns like hell, and jellyfish look like lace ballerina skirts. And it was so damp there that mushrooms grew in our boots overnight! Let them hang me if I'm lying!
Before this incident, Shamet had heard a lot of soldiers’ lies, but he himself never lied. Not because he couldn’t do it, but there was simply no need. Now he considered it a sacred duty to entertain Suzanne.
Chamet brought the girl to Rouen and handed her over to a tall woman with pursed yellow lips - Suzanne's aunt. The old woman was covered in black glass beads and sparkled like a circus snake.
The girl, seeing her, clung tightly to Shamet, to his faded overcoat.
- Nothing! – Shamet said in a whisper and pushed Suzanne on the shoulder. “We, the rank and file, don’t choose our company commanders either. Be patient, Susie, soldier!
Very briefly About writing and the psychology of creativity
Precious Dust
Scavenger Jean Chamet cleans up craft workshops in a Parisian suburb.
While serving as a soldier during the Mexican War, Shamet contracted a fever and was sent home. The regimental commander instructed Shamet to take his eight-year-old daughter Suzanne to France. All the way, Shamet took care of the girl, and Suzanne willingly listened to his stories about the golden rose that brings happiness.
One day, Shamet meets a young woman whom he recognizes as Suzanne. Crying, she tells Shamet that her lover cheated on her, and now she has no home. Suzanne moves in with Shamet. Five days later she makes peace with her lover and leaves.
After parting with Suzanne, Shamet stops throwing away rubbish from jewelry workshops, in which a little gold dust always remains. He builds a small winnowing fan and winnows the jewelry dust. Shamet gives the gold mined over many days to a jeweler to make a golden rose.
Rose is ready, but Shamet finds out that Suzanne has left for America, and her trace has been lost. He quits his job and gets sick. Nobody takes care of him. Only the jeweler who made the rose visits him.
Soon Shamet dies. The jeweler sells a rose to an elderly writer and tells him the story of Shamet. The rose appears to the writer as a prototype of creative activity, in which, “like from these precious specks of dust, a living stream of literature is born.”
Inscription on a boulder
Paustovsky lives in a small house on the Riga seaside. Nearby lies a large granite boulder with the inscription “In memory of all who died and will die at sea.” Paustovsky considers this inscription a good epigraph for a book about writing.
Writing is a calling. The writer strives to convey to people the thoughts and feelings that concern him. At the behest of the call of his time and people, a writer can become a hero and endure difficult trials.
An example of this is the fate of the Dutch writer Eduard Dekker, known under the pseudonym “Multatuli” (Latin for “long-suffering”). Serving as a government official on the island of Java, he defended the Javanese and took their side when they rebelled. Multatuli died without receiving justice.
The artist Vincent Van Gogh was equally selflessly devoted to his work. He was not a fighter, but he contributed his paintings glorifying the earth to the treasury of the future.
Flowers made from shavings
The greatest gift remaining to us from childhood is a poetic perception of life. A person who has retained this gift becomes a poet or writer.
During his poor and bitter youth, Paustovsky writes poetry, but soon realizes that his poems are tinsel, flowers made from painted shavings, and instead writes his first story.
First story
Paustovsky learns this story from a resident of Chernobyl.
The Jew Yoska falls in love with the beautiful Christa. The girl loves him too - small, red-haired, with a squeaky voice. Khristya moves into Yoska’s house and lives with him as his wife.
The town begins to worry - a Jew lives with an Orthodox woman. Yoska decides to be baptized, but Father Mikhail refuses him. Yoska leaves, cursing the priest.
Upon learning of Yoska's decision, the rabbi curses his family. For insulting a priest, Yoska goes to prison. Christia dies of grief. The police officer releases Yoska, but he loses his mind and becomes a beggar.
Returning to Kyiv, Paustovsky writes his first story about this, in the spring he rereads it and understands that the author’s admiration for Christ’s love is not felt in it.
Paustovsky believes that his stock of everyday observations is very poor. He gives up writing and wanders around Russia for ten years, changing professions and communicating with a variety of people.
Lightning
The idea is lightning. It arises in the imagination, saturated with thoughts, feelings, and memory. For a plan to appear, we need a push, which can be everything happening around us.
The embodiment of the plan is a downpour. The idea develops from constant contact with reality.
Inspiration is a state of elation, awareness of one’s creative power. Turgenev calls inspiration “the approach of God,” and for Tolstoy, “inspiration consists in the fact that suddenly something is revealed that can be done...”
Riot of Heroes
Almost all writers make plans for their future works. Writers who have the gift of improvisation can write without a plan.
As a rule, the heroes of a planned work resist the plan. Leo Tolstoy wrote that his heroes do not obey him and do as they want. All writers know this inflexibility of heroes.
The story of one story. Devonian limestone
1931 Paustovsky rents a room in the city of Livny, Oryol region. The owner of the house has a wife and two daughters. Paustovsky meets the eldest, nineteen-year-old Anfisa, on the river bank in the company of a frail and quiet fair-haired teenager. It turns out that Anfisa loves a boy with tuberculosis.
One night Anfisa commits suicide. For the first time, Paustovsky witnesses immense female love, which is stronger than death.
The railway doctor Maria Dmitrievna Shatskaya invites Paustovsky to move in with her. She lives with her mother and brother, geologist Vasily Shatsky, who went crazy in captivity among the Basmachi of Central Asia. Vasily gradually gets used to Paustovsky and begins to talk. Shatsky is an interesting conversationalist, but at the slightest fatigue he begins to delirium. Paustovsky describes his story in Kara-Bugaz.
The idea for the story appears in Paustovsky during Shatsky’s stories about the first explorations of the Kara-Buga Bay.
Studying geographical maps
In Moscow, Paustovsky takes out a detailed map of the Caspian Sea. In his imagination, the writer wanders along its shores for a long time. His father does not approve of the hobby of geographical maps - it promises a lot of disappointments.
The habit of imagining different places helps Paustovsky to correctly see them in reality. Trips to the Astrakhan steppe and Emba give him the opportunity to write a book about Kara-Bugaz. Only a small part of the collected material is included in the story, but Paustovsky does not regret it - this material will be useful for a new book.
Notches on the heart
Every day of life leaves its marks in the writer’s memory and heart. A good memory is one of the foundations of writing.
While working on the story “Telegram,” Paustovsky manages to fall in love with the old house where the lonely old woman Katerina Ivanovna, the daughter of the famous engraver Pozhalostin, lives, for its silence, the smell of birch smoke from the stove, and the old engravings on the walls.
Katerina Ivanovna, who lived with her father in Paris, suffers greatly from loneliness. One day she complains to Paustovsky about her lonely old age, and a few days later she becomes very ill. Paustovsky calls Katerina Ivanovna’s daughter from Leningrad, but she is three days late and arrives after the funeral.
Diamond tongue
Spring in low forest
The wonderful properties and richness of the Russian language are revealed only to those who love and know their people and feel the charm of our land. In Russian there are many good words and names for everything that exists in nature.
We have books by experts on nature and folk language - Kaigorodov, Prishvin, Gorky, Aksakov, Leskov, Bunin, Alexei Tolstoy and many others. The main source of language is the people themselves. Paustovsky talks about a forester who is fascinated by the kinship of words: spring, birth, homeland, people, relatives...
Language and nature
During the summer Paustovsky spent in the forests and meadows of Central Russia, the writer relearned many words that were known to him, but distant and unexperienced.
For example, “rain” words. Each type of rain has a separate original name in Russian. The stinging rain is pouring vertically and heavily. A fine mushroom rain falls from the low clouds, after which mushrooms begin to grow wildly. People call blind rain falling in the sun “The princess is crying.”
One of the beautiful words in the Russian language is the word “zarya”, and next to it is the word “zarnitsa”.
Piles of flowers and herbs
Paustovsky fishes in a lake with high, steep banks. He sits near the water in dense thickets. Above, in a meadow overgrown with flowers, village children are collecting sorrel. One of the girls knows the names of many flowers and herbs. Then Paustovsky finds out that the girl’s grandmother is the best herbalist in the region.
Dictionaries
Paustovsky dreams of new dictionaries of the Russian language, in which it would be possible to collect words related to nature; apt local words; words from different professions; garbage and dead words, bureaucracy that clogs the Russian language. These dictionaries should have explanations and examples so that they can be read like books.
This work is beyond the power of one person, because our country is rich in words that describe the diversity of Russian nature. Our country is also rich in local dialects, figurative and euphonious. The maritime terminology and spoken language of sailors is excellent, which, like the language of people of many other professions, deserves a separate study.
Incident at Alschwang's store
Winter 1921. Paustovsky lives in Odessa, in the former ready-to-wear store Alschwang and Company. He serves as a secretary at the newspaper "Sailor", where many young writers work. Of the old writers, only Andrei Sobol often comes to the editorial office, he is always an excited person about something.
One day Sobol brings his story to The Sailor, interesting and talented, but torn and confused. No one dares to suggest that Sobol correct the story because of his nervousness.
Corrector Blagov corrects the story overnight, without changing a single word, but simply by placing the punctuation marks correctly. When the story is published, Sobol thanks Blagov for his skill.
It's like nothing
Almost every writer has his own kind genius. Paustovsky considers Stendhal his inspiration.
There are many seemingly insignificant circumstances and skills that help writers work. It is known that Pushkin wrote best in the fall, often skipped places that were not given to him, and returned to them later. Gaidar came up with phrases, then wrote them down, then came up with them again.
Paustovsky describes the features of the writing work of Flaubert, Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Andersen.
Old man in the station cafeteria
Paustovsky tells in great detail the story of a poor old man who did not have money to feed his dog Petya. One day an old man walks into a cafeteria where young people are drinking beer. Petit starts begging them for a sandwich. They throw a piece of sausage to the dog, insulting its owner. The old man forbids Petya to take a handout and buys her a sandwich with his last pennies, but the barmaid gives him two sandwiches - this will not ruin her.
The writer discusses the disappearance of details from modern literature. Detail is needed only if it is characteristic and closely related to intuition. Good detail evokes in the reader a true picture of a person, event, or era.
White Night
Gorky is planning to publish a series of books “The History of Factories and Plants.” Paustovsky chooses an old plant in Petrozavodsk. It was founded by Peter the Great to cast cannons and anchors, then produced bronze castings, and after the revolution - road cars.
In the Petrozavodsk archives and library, Paustovsky finds a lot of material for the book, but he never manages to create a single whole from scattered notes. Paustovsky decides to leave.
Before leaving, he finds in an abandoned cemetery a grave topped by a broken column with the inscription in French: “Charles Eugene Lonseville, artillery engineer of Napoleon's Grand Army...”.
Materials about this person “consolidate” the data collected by the writer. A participant in the French Revolution, Charles Lonseville was captured by the Cossacks and exiled to the Petrozavodsk plant, where he died of fever. The material was dead until the man who became the hero of the story “The Fate of Charles Lonseville” appeared.
Life-giving principle
Imagination is a property of human nature that creates fictional people and events. Imagination fills the voids of human life. The heart, imagination and mind are the environment where culture is born.
Imagination is based on memory, and memory is based on reality. The law of associations sorts memories that are intimately involved in creativity. The wealth of associations testifies to the richness of the writer’s inner world.
Night stagecoach
Paustovsky plans to write a chapter on the power of imagination, but replaces it with a story about Andersen, who travels from Venice to Verona by night stagecoach. Andersen's traveling companion turns out to be a lady in a dark cloak. Andersen suggests turning off the lantern - the darkness helps him invent different stories and imagine himself, ugly and shy, as a young, lively handsome man.
Andersen returns to reality and sees that the stagecoach is standing, and the driver is bargaining with several women who are asking for a ride. The driver demands too much, and Adersen pays extra for the women.
Through the lady in the cloak, the girls try to find out who helped them. Andersen replies that he is a predictor, he can guess the future and see in the dark. He calls the girls beauties and predicts love and happiness for each of them. In gratitude, the girls kiss Andersen.
In Verona, a lady who introduces herself as Elena Guiccioli invites Andersen to visit. When they meet, Elena admits that she recognized him as a famous storyteller, who in life is afraid of fairy tales and love. She promises to help Andersen as soon as necessary.
A long-planned book
Paustovsky decides to write a book-collection of short biographies, among which there is room for several stories about unknown and forgotten people, unmercenaries and ascetics. One of them is the river captain Olenin-Volgar, a man with an extremely eventful life.
In this collection, Paustovsky also wants to mention his friend - the director of a local history museum in a small town in Central Russia, whom the writer considers an example of dedication, modesty and love for his land.
Chekhov
Some stories of the writer and doctor Chekhov are exemplary psychological diagnoses. Chekhov's life is instructive. For many years he squeezed the slave out of himself drop by drop - this is exactly what Chekhov said about himself. Paustovsky keeps a part of his heart in Chekhov's house on Outka.
Alexander Blok
In Blok’s early little-known poems there is a line that evokes all the charm of foggy youth: “The spring of my distant dream...”. This is an insight. The entire Block consists of such insights.
Guy de Maupassant
Maupassant's creative life is as swift as a meteor. A merciless observer of human evil, towards the end of his life he was inclined to glorify love-suffering and love-joy.
In his last hours, it seemed to Maupassant that his brain was being eaten away by some kind of poisonous salt. He regretted the feelings he had rejected in his hasty and tiresome life.
Maksim Gorky
For Paustovsky, Gorky is all of Russia. Just as one cannot imagine Russia without the Volga, one cannot imagine that there is no Gorky in it. He loved and knew Russia thoroughly. Gorky discovered talents and defined the era. From people like Gorky, one can begin the chronology.
Victor Hugo
Hugo, a frantic, stormy man, exaggerated everything he saw in life and wrote about. He was a knight of freedom, its herald and messenger. Hugo inspired many writers to love Paris, and for this they are grateful to him.
Mikhail Prishvin
Prishvin was born in the ancient city of Yelets. The nature around Yelets is very Russian, simple and sparse. This property of hers lies the basis of Prishvin’s literary vigilance, the secret of Prishvin’s charm and witchcraft.
Alexander Green
Paustovsky is surprised by Green's biography, his hard life as a renegade and restless vagabond. It is not clear how this withdrawn and suffering from adversity man retained the great gift of a powerful and pure imagination, faith in man. The prose poem “Scarlet Sails” ranked him among the wonderful writers seeking perfection.
Eduard Bagritsky
There are so many fables in Bagritsky’s stories about himself that sometimes it is impossible to distinguish the truth from the legend. Bagritsky's inventions are a characteristic part of his biography. He himself sincerely believed in them.
Bagritsky wrote magnificent poetry. He died early, without having achieved “a few more difficult peaks of poetry.”
The art of seeing the world
Knowledge of areas adjacent to art - poetry, painting, architecture, sculpture and music - enriches the writer’s inner world and gives special expressiveness to his prose.
Painting helps a prose writer to see colors and light. An artist often notices something that writers don't see. Paustovsky sees for the first time all the variety of colors of Russian bad weather thanks to Levitan’s painting “Above Eternal Peace.”
The perfection of classical architectural forms will not allow the writer to create a ponderous composition.
Talented prose has its own rhythm, depending on the sense of language and a good “writer's ear”, which is connected with a musical ear.
Poetry enriches the language of a prose writer most of all. Leo Tolstoy wrote that he would never understand where the border between prose and poetry is. Vladimir Odoevsky called poetry a harbinger of “that state of humanity when it will stop achieving and begin to use what has been achieved.”
In the back of a truck
1941 Paustovsky rides in the back of a truck, hiding from German air raids. A fellow traveler asks the writer what he thinks about during times of danger. Paustovsky answers - about nature.
Nature will act on us with all its strength when our state of mind, love, joy or sadness comes into full harmony with it. Nature must be loved, and this love will find the right ways to express itself with the greatest strength.
Parting words to yourself
Paustovsky finishes the first book of his notes on writing, realizing that the work is not finished and there are many topics left that need to be written about.
