Paustovsky konstantin biography sample

A Story of a Life, Konstantin Paustovsky

:  “… my generation was fated to experience enough wars, coups, trials, hopes, troubles and joys to last several generations of our forefathers. In the amount of time it takes Jupiter to orbit the sun, we had experienced so much that just thinking about it makes my heart ache.”

So writes Konstantin Paustovsky in his memoir The Story of a Life (1945,1946, 1955, 1957) (English Translation, Vintage Douglas Smith, 2022), a work which takes the reader from the author’s childhood in Ukraine at the turn of the 19 century,  through to the formation of the Soviet system, Paustovsky is likely to be the most famous Russian author you have never heard of.

This is not one single book, but three books in one volume written across decades: Book One, The Faraway Years, Book Two, Restless Youth and Book Three, The Dawn of an Uncertain Age.     There are three more books that have yet to be translated.  I hope it happens quickly because I am queueing up to read them.

This six part-memoir was originally published in the Soviet Union between 1945 and 1963.

Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky was born in Moscow in 1892, he died in 1968 at the age of 76.   It is hard to exaggerate Paustovsky’s stature in the 1960s.  There is a story told in the introduction to the book that  Marlene Dietrich alighted from her plane in Moscow for a concert tour in June 1964.  Mobbed by reporters, she said: tell me all you know about Konstantin Paustovsky.  A few days later she gave a concert for a gathering of writers which – unknown to Dietrich –  Paustovsky attended.  At the end of the performance he slowly progressed to the stage to meet her.   This was only a few years before his death and the  author was very ill.  Writing in her memoir,  Dietrich recalled that she was so overcome with emotion she was unable to speak.  All she could do to express her admiration was to fall at his feet and bow

Paustovsky's first story was published in 1912. Over the years, he developed into an extremely fine stylist and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1965. He wrote many tales, novels, and plays and managed to escape being totally bound by the straightjacket of socialist realism even during the Stalin era. Black Gulf (1932), for example, which deals with the theme of industrialization, is an adventure novel. He is especially known for his short stories, in which a sharp eye for detail combines with depictions of protagonists who escape from reality into dreams. A Story of a Life (1947--60), his reminiscences of more than 50 years, is often considered his best work and contains a great deal of interesting material. Paustovsky was very popular during the post-Stalin period and had a great impact on younger writers. In 1966 he made an appeal for the newly convicted Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, an action that won him widespread admiration within the Russian intelligentsia.