Konstantin Paustovsky wrote, “he wish his prose has added people some sharpness of sight”

May 31, 2017 marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky (1892-1968), one of the most important writers of the post-war period, a continuer of the best traditions of classical Russian literature, who created in his prose his exceptional style and expressiveness. The Presidential Library invites to get familiar (or to have another read of) the writings of this master, which belongs to its fund.

A future writer was born in Moscow in Granatny Alleyway, in a family of railway statistician who, in spite of his prosaic occupation, was a cureless dreamer. They are loved the theater in the family, was singing a lot, and playing the piano. The younger Paustovsky was a non-stop reader, despite the fact that still remaining a high school student at the Kiev university preparatory school, where teachers of Russian literature, history, and psychology taught at the highest level, he for family reasons had to make a living as a tutor.

After graduating from the university preparatory school in 1912, Konstantin Paustovsky entered the Faculty of Natural History of Kiev University, and then got transferred to the Law School of Moscow University. Nevertheless, remaining in the last class of the gymnasium, after published his first story Paustovsky decided to become a writer, realizing that he has for this “to get a real life” in order “to figure everything out, to feel and to understand all the things” – “there was no way to writing without this life experience.”

The first book of Paustovsky was a collection of shorts named “Crossing Ships,” following with a story about “The Kara-Bugaz” (a lake of the black bay, Turkmen) a lagoon in the bay area, featured a beginning novelist to the nation’s reading community. After this story’s release, followed by the release of “Colchis,” Paustovsky leaves the service forever: writing becomes his only occupation and a personal demand.

During the Great Patriotic War Konstantin Georgievich served as a military correspondent.

There is an electronic copy of the 1942-year story of K. Paustovsky entitled An appointment on the Presidential Library website. Just look how much can Paustovsky communicate even in a small excerpt from his story: “Varvara Yakovlevna – a paramedic in the tuberculosis sanatorium – felt shy, apart from professorate, even with the patients. They were mostly all from Moscow - the demanding and restless people. They were so tired of the heat, the dusty garden of the sanatorium, medical procedures – of everything in a word.” And then the elderly nurse went to the execution of a pilot, captured by the fascists, who happened to be her nephew: “She looked choking, holding her breath, swallowing her tears. That was him. Vanya - all the same sunburnt, cute, but very thin and with small bitter wrinkles around the lips. Suddenly the hands of Varvara Yakovlevna trembled more, and she dropped her purse. She saw how the people in the crowd began to take off their hats before Vanya.

This story is an expressive illustration of the dissertation of Elena Likhoto dedicated to The artistic world of 1940-1960 years flash fiction of K. G. Paustovsky, digitized by the Presidential Library, in the author's abstract to which the author writes: “The small prose of K. G. Paustovsky, which includes the works in such genres as the novelettes, short stories, essays, and the tales is a semantic and artistic unity. Laying in its conception writer's idea of the world as a unity of the nature-man-creativity phenomena is largely came out of the influence of the ideas of Russian cosmopolitan philosophers (N. A. Berdyaev, V. I. Vernadsky, K. E. Tsiolkovsky) and in its artistic value was the continuation of initial literary tradition (I. S. Turgenev, A. P. Chekhov).”

The author of the dissertation reveals one more essential: “A meaning of the world and a man were inherited by K. G. Paustovsky from the existing literary tradition, both romantic and realistic. This influence of various types of philosophical and aesthetic reflection of reality determined the originality of the artist’s style (choice of characters, an imagery, and the language means). This is particularly clearly manifested in the story “The creeks, where trout splashes” and other most cherished works of the writer.

Paustovsky wrote a series of books about prominent creative figures: “Orest Kiprensky,” “Isaak Levitan,” “Taras Shevchenko,” “Tale of the Woods,” “Golden Rose” - a novel about literature, the “a beauty of writer’s work.” In the last years of his life he worked on a great autobiographical epic, “The Story of a Life.”

At the end of his days, Konstantin Georgievich was so sad by the fact that there was no a museum of Alexander Blok in Leningrad. And he frequented the northern capital city, arguing in writers' circles, as in communists’, so in the public ones, that at least the memorial apartment in the house on Pryazhka River should open. And this surprisingly attractive in its authenticity museum was finally opened! This was observed in newspapers and in publishing in Moscow “Mir Paustovskogo” (Paustovsky world) magazine, which has been circulating for more than a decade – so Paustovsky world is broad, multicolored and boundless.