Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky golden rose. Read the book "Golden Rose" online in full - Konstantin Paustovsky - MyBook

The Golden Rose is a book of essays and stories by K. G. Paustovsky. First published in the magazine "October" (1955, No. 10). A separate edition was published in 1955.

The idea of ​​the book was born in the 1930s, but it took shape only when Paustovsky began to consolidate on paper the experience of his work in the prose seminar at the Literary Institute. Gorky. Paustovsky was originally going to call the book "The Iron Rose", but later abandoned his intention - the story of the lyre player Ostap, who forged the iron rose, was included as an episode in The Tale of Life, and the writer did not want to re-exploit the plot. Paustovsky was going to, but did not have time to write a second book of notes on creativity. In the last lifetime edition of the first book (Collected Works. T.Z.M., 1967-1969), two chapters were expanded, several new chapters appeared, mainly about writers. Written for the 100th anniversary of Chekhov, "Notes on a cigarette box", became the head of "Chekhov". The essay “Meetings with Olesha” turned into the chapter “A Little Rose in a Buttonhole”. The composition of the same edition includes the essays "Alexander Blok" and "Ivan Bunin".

"Golden Rose", according to Paustovsky himself, "a book about how books are written." Its leitmotif is most fully embodied in the story with which The Golden Rose begins. The story of the "precious dust" that the Parisian garbage man Jean Chamet collected in order to order a golden rose from a jeweler after collecting precious grains is a metaphor for creativity. The genre of Paustovsky's book seems to reflect its main theme: it consists of short "grains" - stories about writing duty ("Inscription on a boulder"), about the connection between creativity and life experience ("Flowers from shavings"), about the idea and inspiration (" Lightning"), about the relationship between the plan and the logic of the material ("Riot of Heroes"), about the Russian language ("Diamond Language") and punctuation marks ("The Case in Alschwang's Store"), about the conditions of the artist's work ("As if it were nothing") and artistic details (“The Old Man in the Station Buffet”), about imagination (“The Life-Giving Beginning”) and about the priority of life over creative imagination (“Night Stagecoach”).

The book can be conditionally divided into two parts. If in the first one the author introduces the reader into the "secret secret" - into his creative laboratory, then the other half of it was made up of sketches about writers: Chekhov, Bunin, Blok, Maupassant, Hugo, Olesha, Prishvin, Grin. The stories are characterized by subtle lyricism; as a rule, this is a story about the experience, about the experience of communication - full-time or correspondence - with one or another of the masters of the artistic word.

The genre composition of Paustovsky's "Golden Rose" is unique in many respects: in a single compositionally complete cycle, fragments of different characteristics are combined - a confession, memoirs, a creative portrait, an essay on creativity, a poetic miniature about nature, linguistic research, the history of the idea and its embodiment in the book, autobiography , household sketch. Despite genre heterogeneity, the material is "cemented" through the image of the author, who dictates his own rhythm and tonality to the narrative, conducts reasoning in accordance with the logic of a single topic.

"Golden Rose" Paustovsky caused a lot of feedback in the press. Critics noted the high skill of the writer, the originality of the very attempt to interpret the problems of art by means of art itself. But it also caused a lot of criticism, reflecting the spirit of the transitional time that preceded the "thaw" of the late 1950s: the writer was reproached for the "limited position of the author", "an excess of beautiful details", "insufficient attention to the ideological basis of art".

In the book of Paustovsky's stories, created in the final period of his work, the artist's interest in the field of creative activity, in the spiritual essence of art, noted in his early works, reappeared.

Literature is withdrawn from the laws of corruption. She alone does not recognize death.

Saltykov-Shchedrin

You should always strive for beauty.

Honore Balzac

Much of this work is expressed abruptly and perhaps not clearly enough.

Much will be debatable.

This book is not a theoretical study, much less a guide. These are just notes about my understanding of writing and my experience.

Huge layers of ideological substantiation of our writing work are not touched upon in the book, since in this area we do not have big disagreements. The heroic and educational significance of literature is clear to everyone.

In this book, I have told so far only what little I have been able to tell.

But if I have succeeded in conveying to the reader, at least in a small part, an idea of ​​the beautiful essence of writing, then I will consider that I have fulfilled my duty to literature.

I can't remember how I learned this story about the Parisian garbage man Jean Chamet. Chamet made a living by cleaning up the craft shops in his neighborhood.

Chamet lived in a shack on the outskirts of the city. Of course, one could describe this outskirts in detail and thereby divert the reader away from the main thread of the story. when the action of this story took place, the ramparts were still covered with thickets of honeysuckle and hawthorn, and birds nested in them.

The scavenger's shack nestled at the foot of the northern ramparts, next to the houses of tinkers, shoemakers, cigarette butt collectors, and beggars.

If Maupassant had become interested in the life of the inhabitants of these shacks, he would probably have written some more excellent stories. Maybe they would add new laurels to his established glory.

Unfortunately, no outsider looked into these places, except for the detectives. Yes, and those appeared only in cases where they were looking for stolen items.

Judging by the fact that the neighbors called Shamet "a woodpecker", one must think that he was thin, sharp-nosed, and from under his hat a tuft of hair, similar to a bird's crest, always stuck out from under his hat.

Jean Chamet once knew better days. He served as a soldier in the "Little Napoleon" army during the Mexican War.

Chamet was lucky. In Vera Cruz, he fell ill with a severe fever. The sick soldier, who had not yet been in any real skirmish, was sent back to his homeland. The regimental commander took advantage of this and instructed Chamet to take his daughter Suzanne, a girl of eight, to France.

The commander was a widower and therefore was forced to carry the girl with him everywhere. But this time he decided to part with his daughter and send her to her sister in Rouen. The climate of Mexico was deadly for European children. In addition, disorderly guerrilla warfare created many sudden dangers.

During the return of Chamet to France, heat was smoking over the Atlantic Ocean. The girl was silent all the time. Even at the fish flying out of the oily water, she looked 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 think of an affectionate, soldier of the colonial regiment? What could he do with her? Dice game? Or rude barracks songs?

But still, it was impossible to remain silent for a long time. Chamet increasingly caught the girl's perplexed gaze. Then he finally made up his mind and began awkwardly telling her his life, recalling to the smallest detail a fishing village on the banks of the Channel, loose sands, puddles after low tide, a rural chapel with a cracked bell, his mother, who treated her neighbors for heartburn.

In these memories, Chamet could not find anything funny to amuse Susanna. But the girl, to his surprise, listened to these stories with greed and even made them repeat them, demanding new details.

Shamet strained his memory and fished these details out of her, until he finally lost confidence that they really existed. They were no longer memories, but faint shadows of them. They melted away like wisps of fog. Shamet, however, never imagined that he would need to renew in memory this unnecessary time of his life.

One day a vague memory of a golden rose arose. Either Shamet saw this crude rose forged from blackened gold, suspended from a crucifix in the house of an old fisherwoman, or he heard stories about this rose from those around him.

No, perhaps he even saw this rose once and remembered how it shone, although there was no sun outside the windows and a gloomy storm rustled over the strait. The farther, the more clearly Shamet remembered this brilliance - a few bright lights under the low ceiling.

Everyone in the village was surprised that the old woman did not sell her jewel. She could get a lot of money for it. Shamet's mother alone assured that it was a sin to sell a golden rose, because her lover gave it to the old woman "for good luck" when the old woman, then still a laughing girl, worked in a sardine factory in Odierne.

“There are few such golden roses in the world,” said Shameta's mother. - But everyone who has them in the house will certainly be happy. And not only them, but everyone who touches this rose.

The boy Shamet was looking forward to when the old woman would become happy. But there were no signs of happiness. The old woman's house was shaking from the wind, and in the evenings no fire was lit in it.

So Shamet left the village, without waiting for a change in the old woman's fate. Only a year later, a familiar stoker from the mail steamer in Le Havre told him that an artist son, bearded, cheerful and wonderful, unexpectedly came to the old woman from Paris. Since then, the shack was no longer recognizable. She was filled with noise and prosperity. Artists, they say, get big money for their daubing.

Once, when Chamet, sitting on 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,” Shamet replied. “There’s one for you too, Susie, some weirdo. We had one skinny soldier in our company. He was damn lucky. He found a broken golden jaw on the battlefield. We drank it with the whole company. This was during the Annamite War. Drunken gunners fired mortars for fun, the shell hit the mouth of an extinct volcano, exploded there, and out of surprise the volcano began to puff and erupt. God knows what his name was, that volcano! Looks like Kraka-Taka. The eruption was just right! Forty peaceful natives perished. To think that so many people disappeared because of a worn jaw! Then it turned out that our colonel had lost this jaw. The matter, of course, was hushed up - the prestige of the army is above all. But we got really drunk back then.

– Where did it happen? Susie asked doubtfully.

“I told you, in Annam. In Indo-China. There, the ocean burns with fire like hell, and jellyfish look like lace skirts of a ballerina. And there is such dampness that mushrooms grew in our boots overnight! Let me hang if I'm lying!

Before this incident, Shamet had heard a lot of lies from soldiers, but he himself had never lied. Not because he did not know how, but simply there was no need. Now he considered it a sacred duty to entertain Susanna.

Chamet brought the girl to Rouen and handed her over to a tall woman with a pursed yellow mouth - Susanna's aunt. The old woman was all in black glass beads, like a circus snake.

The girl, seeing her, clung tightly to Shamet, to his burnt overcoat.

- Nothing! Chamet said in a whisper and nudged Susanna on the shoulder. - We, the rank and file, also do not choose our company commanders. Be patient, Susie, soldier!

Shamet is gone. Several times he looked back at the windows of the boring house, where the wind did not even move the curtains. In the cramped streets, the fussy ticking of clocks could be heard from the shops. In Shamet's soldier's knapsack lay the memory of Susie, a crumpled blue ribbon from her braid. And the devil knows why, but this ribbon smelled so gentle, as if it had been in a basket of violets for a long time.

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

Writing as a vocation

"Golden Rose" is a special book in the work of Paustovsky. She came out in 1955, at that time Konstantin Georgievich was 63 years old. This book can be called a "textbook for beginner writers" only remotely: the author lifts the veil over his own creative kitchen, talks about himself, the sources of creativity and the role of the writer for the world. Each of the 24 sections carries a piece of wisdom from a seasoned writer who reflects on creativity based on his many years of experience.

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

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

The book begins with the legend of the golden rose ("Precious Dust"). She tells about the garbage man Jean Chamet, who wanted to give a rose of gold to his friend - Suzanne, the daughter of a regimental commander. He accompanied her, returning 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 scavenger, he had no money for such a purchase. But he worked in a jewelry workshop and thought of sifting the dust that he swept out of there. Many years passed before there were enough grains of gold to make a small golden rose. But when Jean Chamet went to Suzanne to give a gift, he found out that she had moved to America...

Literature is like this golden rose, says Paustovsky. "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 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.

The writer writes because he hears the call within himself. He cannot write. For Paustovsky, a writer is the most beautiful and most difficult profession in the world. The chapter "The Inscription on the Boulder" tells 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 an idea is like lightning. The electric charge builds up for a very long time in order to hit with full force later. Everything that the writer sees, hears, reads, thinks, experiences, accumulates in order to become the idea of ​​a story or book one day.

In the next five chapters, the author tells about the disobedient characters, as well as about the origin of the idea of ​​the stories "Planet Marz" and "Kara-Bugaz". In order to write, you need to have something to write about - the main idea of ​​these chapters. Personal experience is very important for a writer. Not the one that was created artificially, but the one that a person receives by living an active life, working and communicating with different people.

"Golden Rose" (Paustovsky): a 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 great importance to knowledge of the language. Everyone who writes, according to Paustovsky, has his own writing dictionary, where he writes out all the new words that impressed him. He gives an example from his own life: the words "wilderness" and "sway" 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 incomprehensible for a long time, until a familiar philologist explained that sway are those "waves" that the wind leaves on the sand.

You need to develop a sense of the word in order to be able to convey its meaning and your thoughts correctly. In addition, it is very important to correctly punctuate. An instructive story from real life can be read in the chapter "Incidents in Alschwang's shop".

On the Benefits 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 it, 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 the writer does not need imagination, to which Maupassant replied with a question: "How then do you write your novels, having one newspaper clipping and not leaving your house for weeks?"

Many chapters, including "The Night Stagecoach" (chapter 21), are written in the form of a story. 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 novice writer a very important thing: in no case should one refuse a real, full-fledged life for the sake of imagination and a fictional life.

The art of seeing the world

One cannot feed a creative vein only with literature - the main idea of ​​the last chapters of the book "Golden Rose" (Paustovsky). The 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 letter reads a lot of poetry.

Paustovsky advises to train the eye, to learn to look at the world through the eyes of an artist. He tells his story of communication 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 the word that he even knelt before him (photo above).

Results

In this article, we have analyzed the main points of the book, but this is not the full content. "Golden Rose" (Paustovsky) is a book that should be read by anyone who loves the work of this writer and wants to learn more about him. It will also be useful for novice (and not so) writers to gain inspiration and understand that the writer is not a prisoner of his talent. Moreover, the writer is obliged to live an active life.

To my devoted friend Tatyana Alekseevna Paustovskaya

Literature is withdrawn from the laws of corruption. She alone does not recognize death.

Saltykov-Shchedrin

You should always strive for beauty.

Honore Balzac

Much of this work is expressed in fragments and, perhaps, not clearly enough.

Much will be debatable.

This book is not a theoretical study, much less a guide. These are just notes about my understanding of writing and my experience.

Important questions of the ideological substantiation of our writing work 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 what little I have been able to tell.

But if I have succeeded in conveying to the reader, at least in a small part, an idea of ​​the beautiful essence of writing, then I will consider that I have fulfilled my duty to literature.

I can't remember how I learned this story about the Parisian garbage man Jeanne Chamet. Chamet made a living by cleaning up the workshops of artisans in his quarter.

Shamet lived in a shack on the outskirts of the city. Of course, one could describe this outskirts in detail and thereby lead the reader away from the main thread of the story. But, perhaps, it is only worth mentioning that the old ramparts are still preserved on the outskirts of Paris. At the time when the action of this story took place, the ramparts were still covered with thickets of honeysuckle and hawthorn, and birds were nesting in them.

The scavenger's shack nestled at the foot of the northern ramparts, next to the houses of tinkers, shoemakers, cigarette butt collectors, and beggars.

If Maupassant had become interested in the life of the inhabitants of these shacks, he would probably have written some more excellent stories. Maybe they would add new laurels to his established glory.

Unfortunately, no outsider looked into these places, except for the detectives. Yes, and those appeared only in cases where they were looking for stolen items.

Judging by the fact that the neighbors called Shamet "Woodpecker", one must think that he was thin, sharp-nosed, and from under his hat a tuft of hair, similar to a bird's crest, always stuck out from under his hat.

Jean Chamet once knew better days. He served as a soldier in the "Little Napoleon" army during the Mexican War.

Chamet was lucky. In Vera Cruz, he fell ill with a severe fever. The sick soldier, who had not yet been in any real skirmish, was sent back to his homeland. The regimental commander took advantage of this and instructed Chamet to take his daughter Suzanne, a girl of eight, to France.

The commander was a widower and therefore was forced to carry the girl with him everywhere. But this time he decided to part with his daughter and send her to her sister in Rouen. The climate of Mexico was deadly for European children. In addition, disorderly guerrilla warfare created many sudden dangers.

During the return of Chamet to France, heat was smoking over the Atlantic Ocean. The girl was silent all the time. Even at the fish flying out of the oily water, she looked without smiling.

Chamet did his best to take care of Suzanne. He understood, of course, that she expected from him not only care, but also affection. And what could he think of an affectionate, soldier of the colonial regiment? What could he do with her? Dice game? Or rude barracks songs?

But still, it was impossible to remain silent for a long time. Chamet increasingly caught the girl's perplexed gaze. Then he finally made up his mind and began awkwardly telling her his life, recalling to the smallest detail a fishing village on the banks of the English Channel, loose sands, puddles after low tide, a rural chapel with a cracked bell, his mother, who treated her neighbors for heartburn.

In these memories, Chamet could not find anything to amuse Susanna. But the girl, to his surprise, listened to these stories with greed and even made them repeat them, demanding more and more details.

Shamet strained his memory and fished these details out of her until he finally lost confidence that they really existed. They were no longer memories, but faint shadows of them. They melted away like wisps of fog. Shamet, however, never imagined that he would need to renew in memory this long-gone time of his life.

One day a vague memory of a golden rose arose. Either Shamet saw this crude rose forged from blackened gold, suspended from a crucifix in the house of an old fisherwoman, or he heard stories about this rose from those around him.

No, perhaps he even saw this rose once and remembered how it shone, although there was no sun outside the windows and a gloomy storm rustled over the strait. The farther, the more clearly Shamet remembered this brilliance - a few bright lights under the low ceiling.

Everyone in the village was surprised that the old woman did not sell her jewel. She could get a lot of money for it. Shamet's mother alone assured that it was a sin to sell a golden rose, because her lover gave it to the old woman "for good luck" when the old woman, then still a laughing girl, worked in a sardine factory in Odierne.

“There are few such golden roses in the world,” said Shameta's mother. - But everyone who has them in the house will certainly be happy. And not only them, but everyone who touches this rose.

The boy was impatiently waiting for the old woman to be happy. But there were no signs of happiness. The old woman's house was shaking from the wind, and in the evenings no fire was lit in it.

So Shamet left the village, without waiting for a change in the old woman's fate. Only a year later, a familiar stoker from the mail steamer in Le Havre told him that the artist’s son unexpectedly came to the old woman from Paris - bearded, cheerful and wonderful. Since then, the shack was no longer recognizable. She was filled with noise and prosperity. Artists, they say, get big money for their daubing.

Once, when Chamet, sitting on 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,” Shamet answered. “There’s one for you too, Susie, some weirdo. We had one skinny soldier in our company. He was damn lucky. He found a broken golden jaw on the battlefield. We drank it with the whole company. This is during the Annamite War. Drunken gunners fired mortars for fun, the shell hit the mouth of an extinct volcano, exploded there, and out of surprise the volcano began to puff and erupt. God knows what his name was, that volcano! Looks like Kraka-Taka. The eruption was just right! Forty peaceful natives perished. To think that so many people have disappeared because of some 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 back then.

– Where did it happen? Susie asked doubtfully.

- I told you - in Annam. In Indochina. There, the ocean burns with fire like hell, and jellyfish look like lace skirts of a ballerina. And there is such dampness that mushrooms grew in our boots overnight! Let me hang if I'm lying!

Before this incident, Shamet had heard a lot of lies from soldiers, but he himself had never lied. Not because he did not know how, but simply there was no need. Now he considered it a sacred duty to entertain Susanna.

Chamet brought the girl to Rouen and handed her over to a tall woman with pursed yellow lips - Susanna's aunt. The old woman was all in black glass beads and sparkled like a circus snake.

The girl, seeing her, clung tightly to Shamet, to his burnt overcoat.

- Nothing! Chamet said in a whisper and nudged Susanna on the shoulder. - We, the rank and file, also do not choose our company commanders. Be patient, Susie, soldier!