Northern Tale. River Floods. The Golden Rose

14 hrs. 15 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Konstantin Paustovsky

Narrator Elena Vtorova

Description

A Northern Tale
The Bothnian Bay was locked in ice. High pines cracked from the cold. An unceasing wind brushed dry snow off the ice. At night, the bay grimly gleamed like black glass and reflected the stars.
Officers of the Kamchatka Regiment, warming themselves by crackling fireplaces, recalled Yevgeny Baratynsky’s poems about how “marvelous cold has bound the waters of the Bothnian.” Many still remembered Baratynsky. From time to time they would talk about the silent poet burdened by service in the infantry regiment in the fortress of Kymmen—about the sad “singer of Finland”—and they envied his calm, well-earned fame.
At the time, the Kamchatka Regiment was stationed on the Åland Islands, in the town of Mariehamn.
Ever since ancient times the Åland Islands were considered the homeland of sailing ships. Here, far from bustling capitals, in the solitude of a small northern archipelago, lived famous shipbuilders. They strictly preserved and passed on to their eldest sons the laws of their craft. Indifferent, they filled their pipes, watched the smoke from the first “pyroscaphs” that dirtied the clear horizons of the sea: “No matter what, the steam will never master the ocean.”
Every autumn, tall brigs and clippers, barks and brigantines returned to the islands for repairs. They came from the Caribbean Sea, from the Levant and Scotland, from all corners of the earth. They were brought by Swedish skippers—quiet, honest people.

River overflows
Lieutenant from the Tengin Infantry Regiment Lermontov was riding to the Caucasus, to exile, to the fortress of Grozny.
Spring turned out unlike ordinary Russian springs. The trees blossomed late, and late did the wild cherry bloom in deserted county gardens. And the rivers were late too and long could not enter their banks.
The overflows delayed Lermontov. He had to wait for ferries, and sometimes, if a ferry was broken or the wind whipped up waves on the floodplain, he even had to stop for a day or two in some out-of-the-way town.
Lermontov listened with indifference to complaints about travelers stuck in high water and lousy domestic roads. He was glad about the delays. Where could one gallop headlong? Under Chechen bullets?
For the first time in recent years, death began to worry him. Childhood days were gone, when early death seemed to him an alluring outcome of life. Never before had he wanted to live as much as now.
More and more often he remembered the lines: “And maybe, at my sad sunset, love will gleam with a parting smile.” He was endlessly grateful to Pushkin for these words. Perhaps he would still see in life simple and beautiful things and hear plain words, like a mother’s consolations. And then his heart would open, and he would finally understand what human happiness is.

The Golden Rose
Much in this work is expressed briefly and perhaps not clearly enough.
Much will be considered debatable.
This book is neither a theoretical study nor, even more so, a manual. It is simply notes on my understanding of writing and my experience.
Large layers of ideological justification for our writing work are not touched in the book, because in this area we don’t have major disagreements. The heroic and educational significance of literature is clear to everyone.
In this book I have told only a little of what I managed to tell.
But if I was able, even to a small degree, to convey to the reader an idea of the beautiful essence of the writer’s labor, then I will consider that I have fulfilled my duty to literature.