Read precious dust. "Golden Rose" (Paustovsky): description and analysis of the book from the encyclopedia

This book consists of several stories. In the first story main character Jean Chameté is serving in the army. By a fortunate coincidence, he never manages to find out the real service. And so he returns home, but at the same time receives the task of escorting the daughter of his commander. On the way, the little girl pays absolutely no attention to Jean and does not speak to him. And it is at this moment that he decides to tell her the whole story of his life in order to cheer her up at least a little.

And so Jean tells the girl the legend of the golden rose. According to this legend, the owner of roses immediately became the owner of great happiness. This rose was cast from gold, but in order for it to start working, it had to be given to your beloved. Those who tried to sell such a gift immediately became unhappy. Jean saw such a rose only once, in the house of an old and poor fisherman. But still, she waited for her happiness and the arrival of her son, and after that her life began to improve and began to sparkle with new bright colors.

After for long years Loneliness Jean meets his old lover Suzanne. And he decides to cast exactly the same rose for her. But Suzanne left for America. Our main character dies, but still learns what happiness is.

This work teaches us to appreciate life, enjoy every moment of it and, of course, believe in miracles.

Picture or drawing of a Golden rose

Konstantin Paustovsky
Golden Rose

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 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 justifications for our writing work are not touched upon in the book, since we do not have much disagreement in this area. Heroic and educational value 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 managed, even in a small way, to convey to the reader an idea of the beautiful essence writing work, 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 Jean Chamet. Shamet made a living by cleaning up craft workshops in his neighborhood.

Chamet lived in a shack on the outskirts of the city. Of course, it would be possible to describe this outskirts in detail and thereby take the reader away from the main thread of the story. But, perhaps, it is only worth mentioning that the old ramparts have still been preserved on the outskirts of Paris. At that 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, had a sharp nose, and from under his hat he always had a tuft of hair sticking out, like the crest of a bird.

Once upon a time Jean Chamet knew 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. It's also messy 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 funny to amuse Suzanne. But the girl, to his surprise, listened to these stories with greed and even forced him to repeat them, demanding new 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 unnecessary 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 the 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 Shamet 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 familiar fireman from the mail boat in Le Havre told him that the old woman’s son, an artist, bearded, cheerful and wonderful, unexpectedly came 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 was during the Annamite War. Drunk artillerymen fired a mortar for fun, the shell hit the muzzle 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. Just think that so many people disappeared because of a worn 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 Indo-China. 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 a pursed yellow mouth - Suzanne's aunt. The old woman was covered in black glass beads, 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!

1. Book " Golden Rose"- 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 to a talented master 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 scavenger Jean Chamet, wonderful person, 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 amazing story about a golden rose, cast from blackened gold and suspended 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 a fellow traveler produced strong impression for a 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 pushes towards this creative people, first of all, the desire for beauty, the desire to reflect and capture not only sorrowful, but also the brightest, most good moments surrounding life. It is the beautiful that can transform human existence, reconcile it with injustice, fill it with a completely different meaning and content.

The language and profession of a writer - K.G. writes about this. Paustovsky. “Golden Rose” (summary) is exactly about this. Today we will talk about this exceptional book and its benefits for both the average reader and the aspiring writer.

Writing as a vocation

"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 only be called a “textbook for aspiring writers” only remotely: the author lifts the curtain on his own creative kitchen, 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.

Unlike modern textbooks, “The Golden Rose” (Paustovsky), a brief summary of which we will consider further, has its own distinctive features: Here more biography and reflections on the nature of writing, and there are no exercises at all. Unlike many modern authors, Konstantin Georgievich does not support the idea of writing everything down, and for him writing is not a craft, but a vocation (from the word “call”). For Paustovsky, a writer is the voice of his generation, the one who must cultivate the best that is in a person.

Konstantin Paustovsky. "Golden Rose": summary of the first chapter

The book begins with the legend of the golden rose (“Precious Dust”). It talks about the scavenger Jean Chamet, who wanted to give a rose made of gold to his friend, Suzanne, the daughter of a regimental commander. He accompanied her on her way home from the war. The girl grew up, fell in love and got married, but was unhappy. And according to legend, a golden rose always brings happiness to its owner.

Shamet was a garbage man, he did not have money for such a purchase. But he worked in a jewelry workshop and thought of sifting the dust that he swept out of there. Many years passed before there were enough grains of gold to make a small golden rose. But when Jean Chamet went to Suzanne to give her a gift, he found out that she had moved to America...

Literature is like this golden rose, says Paustovsky. "The Golden Rose", a summary of the chapters of which we are considering, is completely imbued with this statement. A writer, according to the author, must sift through a lot of dust, find grains of gold and cast a golden rose that will make life individual person and the whole world is better. Konstantin Georgievich believed that a writer should be the voice of his generation.

A writer writes because he hears a call within himself. He can't help but write. For Paustovsky, writing is the most beautiful and most difficult profession in the world. The chapter “The Inscription on the Boulder” talks about this.

The birth of the idea and its development

“Lightning” is chapter 5 from the book “Golden Rose” (Paustovsky), the summary of which is that the birth of a plan is like lightning. The electric charge builds up for a very long time in order to later strike with full force. Everything that a writer sees, hears, reads, thinks, experiences, accumulates in order to one day become the idea of a story or book.

In the next five chapters, the author talks about naughty characters, as well as the origins of the idea for the stories “Planet Marz” and “Kara-Bugaz”. In order to write, you need to have something to write about - main idea these chapters. Personal experience very important for a writer. Not the one that is created artificially, but the one that a person receives while living active life, working and communicating with different people.

"Golden Rose" (Paustovsky): summary of chapters 11-16

Konstantin Georgievich reverently loved the Russian language, nature and people. They delighted and inspired him, forced him to write. The writer attaches enormous importance to knowledge of language. Everyone who writes, according to Paustovsky, has his own writer's dictionary, where he writes down all the new words that impress him. He gives an example from his life: the words “wilderness” and “swei” were very unknown to him for a long time. He heard the first from the forester, the second he found in Yesenin’s verse. Its meaning remained unclear for a long time, until a philologist friend explained that svei are those “waves” that the wind leaves on the sand.

You need to develop a sense of words in order to be able to convey its meaning and your thoughts correctly. In addition, it is very important to use punctuation marks correctly. A cautionary tale from real life can be read in the chapter "Incidents in Alschwang's store."

On the Uses of Imagination (Chapters 20-21)

Although the writer seeks inspiration in the real world, imagination plays a big role in creativity, says The Golden Rose, whose summary would be incomplete without this, is replete with references to writers whose opinions about imagination differ greatly. For example, a verbal duel with Guy de Maupassant is mentioned. Zola insisted that a writer does not need imagination, to which Maupassant responded with a question: “How then do you write your novels, having only one newspaper clipping and not leaving the house for weeks?”

Many chapters, including "Night Stagecoach" (chapter 21), are written in short story form. This is a story about the storyteller Andersen and the importance of maintaining a balance between real life and imagination. Paustovsky is trying to convey to the aspiring writer a very important thing: under no circumstances should one give up a real, full life for the sake of imagination and a fictional life.

The art of seeing the world

Can't be fed creative vein only literature - the main idea last chapters books "Golden Rose" (Paustovsky). Summary boils down to the fact that the author does not trust writers who do not like other types of art - painting, poetry, architecture, classical music. Konstantin Georgievich expressed an interesting idea on the pages: prose is also poetry, only without rhyme. Every Writer with capital letters reads a lot of poetry.

Paustovsky advises training your eye, learning to look at the world through the eyes of an artist. He tells his story of communicating with artists, their advice and how he himself developed his aesthetic sense by observing nature and architecture. The writer himself once listened to him and reached such heights of mastery of words that he even knelt before him (photo above).

Results

In this article we have discussed the main points of the book, but this is not full content. “The Golden Rose” (Paustovsky) is a book that is worth reading for anyone who loves the work of this writer and wants to know more about him. It will also be useful for beginning (and not so beginning) writers to find inspiration and understand that a writer is not a prisoner of his talent. Moreover, a writer is obliged to live an active life.

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.

Conventionally, the book can be divided into two parts. If in the first the author introduces the reader into the “secret secrets” - into his creative laboratory, then the other half consisted 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: in a single compositionally complete cycle, fragments with different characteristics are combined - confession, memoirs, creative portrait, essay on creativity, poetic miniature about nature, linguistic research, history of the idea and its implementation in the book, autobiography, everyday 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.

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 in literature independently, as special genre. He used them little for his work.

As an interesting genre, there are the notebooks of Ilf, Alphonse Daudet, the diaries of Tolstoy, the Goncourt brothers, French writer Renard and many other records of writers and poets.

How 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’s worth sorting out photographs of Chekhov by year - from his youth to recent years life - to see with your 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 tore into Chekhov's garden camellia and gave it to the 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.