“Days” are memories and a documentary chronicle—vivid portraits of contemporaries and philosophical reflections, literary criticism, and letters. The main feature of this work is autobiographicality, expressed in the author’s actively present “I”: his emotionally colored attitude toward what is described.
Boris Konstantinovich Zaitsev is a classic of Russian literature at home and a prominent figure of the Russian Diaspora. A true master of prose—poetic, colorful, and subtle. At one time, all of Russia admired him, but decades of the Soviet regime became an era of oblivion for Zaitsev’s name. Born in the heart of Russia, since 1924 Boris Konstantinovich lived in exile in Paris.
The writer himself admitted that, thanks to the upheavals of revolution and exile, he discovered a previously unfamiliar “Russia of Holy Rus’” for himself—one that took the central place in his work. Zaitsev’s works continued the literary traditions laid down by Turgenev and Chekhov, and reflected a religious perception of the world. Dislike of the race for material goods, unwillingness toward a calm, well-fed life, and sympathy for wanderers and emigrants—including those forced to leave—this is what most of the books coming from his pen were filled with.