Konstantin Paustovsky Константин Паустовский | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Konstantin Georgiyevich Paustovsky (1892-05-31)31 May 1892 Moscow, Russian Empire |
| Died | 14 July 1968(1968-07-14) (aged 76) Moscow,Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Literary movement | Neo-romanticism |
| Signature | |
.svg) | |
Konstantin Georgiyevich Paustovsky (Russian:Константи́н Гео́ргиевич Паусто́вский,pronounced[pəʊˈstofskʲɪj]; 31 May [O.S. 19 May] 1892 – 14 July 1968) was a Soviet writer nominated for theNobel Prize in Literature in 1965, 1966, 1967, and 1968.[1]
Konstantin Paustovsky was born inMoscow. His father was a railroad statistician, and was “an incurable romantic and Protestant”. His mother came from the family of Polishintelligentsia. Paustovsky's family were of Zaporozhian Cossack, Turkish and Polish origin.[2]
As Paustovsky noted in his autobiography, his grandfather Maxim had in his youth served in the army of CzarNicholas I, was captured during a war with theOttoman Empire and held as a prisoner of war in the town ofKazanlak (now inBulgaria). During his captivity there, Maxim met a local Turkish young woman who eventually married him, accompanied him to the Russian Empire and became the mother of his children and Konstantin Paustovsky's grandmother. According to Paustovsky, his grandmother's original name was Fatma, but when she converted to Christianity she took the name Honorata.[3]
Konstantin grew up inRussian Empire, partly in the countryside and partly inKiev. He studied in “the First Imperial” classicalGymnasium of Kiev, where he was the classmate ofMikhail Bulgakov. When he was in the 6th grade his father left the family and he was forced to give private lessons in order to earn a living. In 1912 he entered the faculty of Natural History inUniversity of Kiev. In 1914 he transferred to the Law faculty of theUniversity of Moscow, butWorld War I interrupted his education.
At first he worked as a trolley-man in Moscow, then as a paramedic in a hospital train. During 1915, his medical unit retreated all the way through Poland andBelarus. After two of his brothers died on the front line, he returned to his mother inMoscow but later left and wandered around, trying his hands at many jobs, initially working in the metallurgical factories inYekaterinoslav andYuzovka. In 1916 he lived inTaganrog, where he worked at the Taganrog Boiler Factory (now: Krasny Kotelschchik).
Later he joined a cooperative association of fishermen (artel) in Taganrog, where he started his first novel Романтики ("Romantiki", Romantics) which was published in 1935. The novel, whose content and feelings are reflected in its title, described what he had seen and felt in his youth. One of the heroes, the old Oscar, was an artist who resisted all of his life being forced to become a moneymaker. He returned to the main theme of Romantics, the destiny of an artist who strives to overcome his loneliness, and his experiences in Taganrog in later works, including Разговор о рыбе (“Razgovor o ribe”, Conversation about the Fish), Азовское подполье (“Azovskoe podpolie”, Azov Underground) and Порт в траве (“Port v trave”, Seaport in The Grass).
Paustovsky began writing while still in Gymnasium. His first works were imitative poetry but he restricted his writing to prose afterIvan Bunin wrote in a letter to him: "I think that your sphere, your real poetry, is prose. It is here, if you are determined enough, that I am sure you can achieve something significant." His first stories to be published were “Na vode” (“On The Water”) and “Chetvero” (“The Four”) in 1911 and 1912. DuringWorld War I, he wrote sketches of life at the front, one of which was published. His first book,Morskiye Nabroski (“Sea Sketches”), was published in 1925, but received little attention. This was followed byMinetoza in 1927, and the romantic novelBlistaiushie Oblaka (“Shining Clouds”) in 1929. His work of this period was influenced byAlexander Grin as well as the writers of the "Odessa school", (Isaac Babel,Valentin Kataev, andYury Olesha). In the 1930s, Paustovsky visited various constructions sites and wrote in praise of the industrial transformation of the country. To that period belong the novelsKara-Bugaz (1932) andKolkhida (1934).Kara-Bugaz won particular praise. It is essentially a tale of adventure and exploration in the region around Kara-Bugaz Bay, where the air is mysteriously heavy. It begins in 1847 and moves to theRussian Civil War period when a group ofRed Guards is abandoned to near-certain death on a desolate island. Some of them, though do survive and are rescued by an explorer and stay on to help in the exploration, development and study of the natural wealth of the region.
Paustovsky continued to explore historical themes inSevernaya Povest ("Tale of the North", 1938). In this tale, after the anti-TsaristDecembrist uprising inSaint Petersburg, a wounded officer who had taken part in the uprising and a sailor try to make it by foot across the ice to Sweden but are captured in a sequence of dramatic events. Years later, inLeningrad in the 1930s, the great-grandsons of the participants unexpectedly meet. In the late 1930s, Russian nature emerged as a central theme for Paustovsky, for example, inLetniye Dni ("Summer Days", 1937) andMeshcherskaya Storona (1939) in which he treats nature was a many-faceted splendor in which man can free himself from daily cares and regain his spiritual equilibrium. This focus on nature drew comparisons withMikhail Prishvin. Prishvin himself wrote in his diary, "If I were not Prishvin, I would like to write like Paustovsky."
DuringWorld War II Paustovsky served as awar correspondent on the southern front. In 1943 he produced a screenplay for the Gorky Film Studio production ofLermontov, directed byAlbert Gendelshtein. Another work of note isTale of the Woods (1948). This story opens in a remote forest in the 1890s, wherePyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is composing a symphony. The young daughter of a local forester often brings Tchaikovsky berries. Half a century later, the daughter of this girl is alaboratory technician working in the local forest station.
From 1948 until 1955, Paustovsky taught at theMaxim Gorky Literature Institute. He also edited literary collections includingLiterary Moscow (1956) andPages from Tarusa, in which he sought to bring new writers to the public's attention and to publish writers suppressed during theJoseph Stalin years.
Other major works includeSnow,Crossing Ships (1928);The Black Sea (1936); andThe Rainy Dawn (1946). Paustovsky was also the author of several plays and fairy tales, including "Steel Ring" and of Zolotaya Rosa "The Golden Rose" (1955), in which he discusses the process of literary creation.
Perhaps Paustovsky's most famous work is his six-volume autobiography “Povest o Zhizni” (“Story of a Life”), written between 1945 and 1963. It is not a strictly historical document but rather a long, lyrical tale focusing on the internal perceptions and poetic development of the writer. It has been called a "biography of the soul" rather than a biography of events. Nonetheless, it does provide a unique view of life in Russia during the turbulent years of World War I, theRussian Civil War and rise of the Soviets, all of which Paustovsky participated in.
In 1964,Joseph Barnes translated the first three volumes for Pantheon Books under the titleThe Story of a Life. Pantheon published the fourth volume in Harari and Thomson's translation in 1969. The text of the first three volumes was reprinted in 1982.[4]
Between 1964 and 1974,Harvill Press published a complete English translation by various translators under the series titleStory of a Life.
In 2022 and 2023 respectively, Vintage Classics in the UK and New York Review Books in the US published a new translation by Douglas Smith of the first three volumes under the titleThe Story of a Life.[11][12] The translated volumes are: "The Faraway Years", "Restless Youth", and "The Dawn of an Uncertain Age". In his introduction, Smith noted that volumes five and six of the original publication werebowdlerized by Soviet editors.
In 1965, Paustovsky was nominated for aNobel Prize in Literature, the prize was awarded instead toMikhail Sholokhov.[1]
In February 1966 he was one of the 25 prominent figures from science and the arts who signed a letter to the 23rd Congress of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union, appealing against re-Stalinization in the wake of theSinyavsky–Daniel trial.
He died inMoscow on 14 July 1968.
 |
- Anticipation of happy days is sometimes much better than those days.
- A Man must be smart, unpretentious, fair, courageous and kind. Only then he can be entitled to be called a Man.
- Let's just not talk about love. We still don't know what it is.
- If we deprive man of his ability to dream, one of the greatest motives that drives culture, arts, science and desire to fight for the beautiful future will fall away.
- "From the book of dream interpretations": if a poet saw in a dream his money coming to an end -is that's for new poetry.
- Savrasov paintedThe Rooks Have Come Back quickly - he was afraid the rooks would fly away.
- The favorite theme ofChekhov: There was a wonderful and healthy forest which a forester was invited to take care of, the forest quickly withered and died.
- Assiduity is also a talent. Some writers should be photographed (from) the rear end instead of full face.
- Turgenev lacked the health ofLeo Tolstoy and the disease ofDostoevsky.
- I believe that the foundations of literature are imagination and memories, that's why I never use notebooks. When you take a phrase from your book of notes, and put it into the text that you're writing in a different moment of time and in a different mood, that phrase shrivels and dies. I recognize notebooks only as a genre.
The Paustovsky family stems from Zaporozhian Cossacks , with an admixture of Turkish and Polish blood.
{{citation}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
