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 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 theoretical research, much less the leadership. 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. 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 to convey to the reader, even to a small extent, 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 managed to convey to the reader, even to a small extent, 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.
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, allows debris to pass 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 mountain river Uchan-Su, 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 in this area we do not have any significant disagreements. 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 managed to convey to the reader, even to a small extent, 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 lives 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.
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. Moreover, the chaotic guerrilla warfare created many sudden dangers.
During Shamet's return to France over Atlantic Ocean the heat was smoking. 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 with greed 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 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 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, was combing 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 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. 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 the 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.
Shamet brought the girl to Rouen and handed over her tall woman with pursed yellow lips - to 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 went to civil life 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 garbage dumps. 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's wrong 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 everything!
- 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 big ball. 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 away 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 noted long ago that only desire people who met him were quick to 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.
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, decisive role During this purchase, the story of the golden rose, told by the jeweler to the writer, played a role.
We owe it to the notes of the old writer that this sad incident from life became known to someone former soldier 27th Colonial Regiment - Jean-Ernest Chamet.
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! She partly seems to me 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 like golden rose 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 like the 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 a cozy hall, knitting 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 the feeling complete loneliness, eye to eye, 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.
Current page: 1 (book has 17 pages total) [available reading passage: 12 pages]
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 in this area we do not have any significant disagreements. 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 managed to convey to the reader, even to a small extent, 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 lives 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 with greed 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 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 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, was combing 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 the 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 garbage dumps. 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's wrong 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 everything!
- 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 big ball. 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 away 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 a cozy hall, knitting 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 his duty and difficult task.
What compels the writer to his sometimes painful, but beautiful 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 - of course, good Christians - 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's with touching love wrote about the Javanese, about these gullible 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 about the children, especially about the little boy with blue eyes. He was afraid that this little boy he forgot 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 variety 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 firsthand what social injustice means. He disdained cheap success.
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 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.
Unlike modern textbooks, “The Golden Rose” (Paustovsky), a brief summary of which we will consider further, has its own distinctive features: There is more biography and reflections on the nature of writing, and 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 tells about the scavenger Jean Chamet, who wanted to give a gold rose 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 the money for such a purchase. But he worked in a jewelry workshop and came up with the idea 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. The writer, according to the author, must sift through a lot of dust, find grains of gold and cast a golden rose that will make the life of an individual and the whole world 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 unknown to him for a very 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. An instructive real-life story can be read in the chapter “Incidents at 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
You can't feed your creative juices only with literature - 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 a capital W 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.