Paustovsky encyclopedia which volume page. Literary Encyclopedia - Paustovsky

Konstantin Georgievich - Soviet writer. Son of a railway engineer. He studied at Kiev, then at Moscow universities. He was a worker at metallurgical plants in Yuzovka, Yekaterinoslav, Taganrog, and a tram conductor in Moscow; During the imperialist war he was a nurse, a sailor, a reporter and a newspaper editor. Participated in the civil war (in the battles against Petliura). P. published his first work in 1912, and became a professional writer in 1927. P. began his literary career with a series of short stories depicting the life of sailors and the life of coastal southern cities. These early works of P. retain a number of features of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia's perception of reality. The writer is keenly interested here in the problem of the discrepancy between dreams and reality. He pays special attention to the image of a “small” person; this is for example the image of an engraver in the short story “Labels for Colonial Goods” (“Oncoming Ships”, 1928), who lived with a dream “of the ocean, of silver springs, of the yellow shine of foreign and deserted shores” and who inevitably saw the cruel reality of Tsarist Russia returned to the kingdom of poverty and tyranny. Later, this engraver “missed the revolution.” In P.'s early stories, a passive and contemplative approach to reality is revealed; in these short stories the writer admires the sea, the strength and wit of the sailors; he does not go further than the depiction of a spontaneous, individualistic rebellion against capitalist exploitation (“The Dutch Queen”, “Conversation in a Rainstorm” , "Judicial Conspiracy"). For the most part, Paustovsky’s realistic short stories are imbued with lyricism and are sometimes characterized by excessive sophistication. In their composition, these are usually first-person stories, notes, letters, diaries, etc. If in P.’s early short stories a contemplative approach to the dreamer-intellectual, who is actually excluded from social practice, is expressed, then in his subsequent works P. moves to depiction of intellectuals involved in the practice of social struggle. The writer's horizon expands, his works become sharper. In the novel “Brilliant Clouds”, intellectuals like Captain Kravchenko, writer Berg, journalist Baturin, in the fight against the enemies of the Soviet Union, cease to be people “cut off from their century” and find, albeit belatedly, a place for themselves in a new life. The plot point of the novel is the search for the drawings of an invention valuable for the Soviet Union, stolen by the enemy Pirrison. Fighting the enemy, the intellectual heroes return to life and rebuild. They feel included in the practice of revolutionary reality. The final chapter of the novel shows these people reborn. The writer Berg, summing up the successful operation, says: “If not for these searches, you would have become moldy in your skepticism.” “I began to live very widely and young.” Baturin felt like a fighter. He will call “to the fruitful land, to noisy holidays, to the joyful pupils of people, to the wisdom of every, most insignificant thing.” True, Baturin does not yet have a proletarian understanding of the tasks of the revolution. The meaning of the novel is an affirmation of the need to include the intellectual in revolutionary work as the only way to overcome the narrow-mindedness of a petty person. Despite the fact that this novel overemphasizes adventurous motives, despite the fact that the writer was unable to give a realistic interpretation of the episodes of the class struggle, to Paustovsky’s credit it is necessary to provide a psychologically convincing interpretation of the changes that the largest and best part of the intelligentsia undergoes in the conditions of the victorious struggle of the proletariat. P. wrote “Kara-Bugaz,” which was originally intended for youth and brought P. to the forefront of Soviet literature with much greater ideological and artistic maturity. In "Kara-Bugaz" P.'s characteristic ability to combine romantic pathos with a realistic depiction of the phenomena of reality comes out with full force. Kara-Bugaz is a bay of the Caspian Sea containing hundreds of millions of tons of mirabilite (Glauber's salt), millions of tons of bromine, barite, sulfur, limestone, and phosphorites. These colossal riches, which the old autocratic Russia was powerless to master, are beginning to be widely developed by the proletarian state. A powerful plant is being built in Kara-Bugaz, nomadic Turkmens are involved in the construction, the terrible waterless desert is turning into a blooming garden. P. creates a number of exciting, artistically expressive episodes; this is for example scene of the first socialist competition of the Turkmen during the digging of a tunnel. “Kara-Bugaz” includes historical information in abundance. documents (reports of Captain Zherebtsov), excerpts from speeches, digital certificates, scientific explanations, etc.; At the same time, P. is far from a factual approach to reality. “Kara-Bugaz” organically combines elements of an artistic essay, travel literature, a dramatically rich short story about the civil war, and a psychological sketch. The narrative is casually interspersed with compressed and at the same time convex character portraits. Conveying the unique flavor of the landscape of Turkmenistan and the peculiarities of the cultural and everyday features of its population, Paustovsky is free from cheap aesthetic exoticism. In Bekmet's wonderful tale about Lenin, Paustovsky provides an example of artistic recreation of the creativity of the masses. A distinctive feature of the book is that it seems to be directed to the future, inspired by a romantic sense of purpose. In the story “The Fate of Charles Lonseville” P. moves from depicting the practice of social. construction towards such a display of the past, which not only does not lead away from modernity, but even more clearly highlights its significance. The action of the story unfolds in the era of Nicholas I. It is no coincidence that P. chooses as his hero the revolutionary republican Charles Lonseville, who was captured in Russia after the retreat of Napoleonic army: it was such a person who was able to especially acutely feel the barracks reality of Nicholas Russia. The position of such a person in Russia is tragic, and only death saves Lonseville from life imprisonment in the Shlisselburg fortress. The slavish Russian reality is contrasted with forbidden memories of the formidable uprisings of serf workers. The story “The Fate of Charles Lonseville” is characterized by a laconic, strictly drawn plot, incorporating historical facts, persons, events, sharply drawn lines of class struggle, vivid characteristics, excited and courageous language. The author of a large number of essays and short stories, Paustovsky has earned high praise for his work given by the most prominent figures and writers of our era - N. K. Krupskaya, M. Gorky, R. Rolland and others. “Kara-Bugaz” and “The Fate of Charles Lonseville” have been translated into German, French and English. Bibliography: I. Minetoza, Sea Sketches, ed. “Ogonyok Library”, M., 1927; Sea Sketches, Stories, ed. Central Committee of the Union of Water Workers, M., 1927; Oncoming ships, Novels and stories, ed. "Young guard", )