The Golden Rose

2 It was long ago, perhaps in my childhood, that I heard the story of a Paris dustman who earned his bread by sweeping the small shops of artisans. At the end of the day he threw out all the refuse he collected —except the sweepings from the jewelers’’. These he sifted carefully for he knew that they contained gold dust from the jeweler’s file. After many years he found himself in possession of a sufficient amount of this gold dust to make a mould of it and to shape it into a golden rose, ‘'Every minute, every chance word and glance, every thought —profound or flippant—the imperceptible beat of the human heart and, by the same token, She fluff dropping from the. poplar, the starlight gleaming in a pool—all are grains of gold dust, Over the years, we writers subconsciously collect millions of these little grains and keep them stored away until they form into a mould out of which we shape our own particular golden rose—a story, a novel or a poem. And from these precious little particles a stream of literature is born.” The Golden Rose, a book about literature in the making, I have conceived as a series of sketches on subject-matter, language, nature descriptions, rhythm in prose, writers’ journals, intuition and inspiration; on the sister arts, such as poetry, painting and music, and their influence on prose; and finally on the writing habits of many world-famous writers and poets, among them Chekhov, Blok, Maupassant, Gorky, Hu- go, Prishvin, Flaubert, Alexander Green and Andersen. This book is not a theoretical investigation into the subject of creative writing, nor is it in any way a guide to literary craftsmanship. It contains merely some of my own personal experiences and desultory thoughts on the making of literature. 3 And if, even to a small degree, this book enables the reader to grasp the essential beauties of creative writing I feel more than justified in having written it. Konstantin Paustovsky 4 5 6 LIBRARY OF SELECTED SOVIET LITERATURE Konstantin Paustovsky THE GOLDEN ROSE Orignial title: Zolotaya Roza FOREIGN LANGUAGES PUBLISHING HOUSE Moscow 7 TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY SUSANNA ROSENBERG EDITED BY DENNIS OGDEN DESIGNED BY L. LAMM AND K. SIROTOV 8 CONTENTS PRECIOUS DUST INSCRIPTION ON A ROCK ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS MY FIRST SHORT STORY LIGHTNING CHARACTERS REVOLT THE STORY OF A NOVEL THE HEART REMEMBERS TREASURY OF RUSSIAN WORDS VOCABULARY NOTES INCIDENT AT "ALSHWANG STORES" SOME SIDELIGHTS ON WRITING ATMOSPHERE AND LITTLE TOUCHES "WHITE NIGHTS" FOUNTAIN-HEAD OF ART THE NIGHT COACH A BOOK OF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES THE ART OF PERCEIVING THE WORLD 9 IN A LORRY A WORD TO MYSELF 10 To my devoted friend Tatyana Alexeysvna Paustovskaya Literature is not subject to the laws of decay. It is deathless." Saltykov-Shchedrin "One must always aspire to the beautiful." Honore de Balzac Much in this work is desultory and perhaps lacking in clarity. Much is open to question. This book is not a theoretical investigation, nor is it in any way a guide to literary craftsmanship. It contains merely my own thoughts and personal experiences in the sphere of literature. The vast realm of the ideological foundations of Soviet literature is not touched upon in the book since no differences of opinion exist among us on that score. That our literature must be a literature of great educational value is clear to all of us. In this work I have but dealt with the little that opportunity afforded me to relate. And if, even to a small degree, this work enables the reader to grasp the essential beauties of creative writing, it will more than 11 repay the author for the labour expended upon it. Konstantin Paustovsky PRECIOUS DUST I cannot remember how I came to hear the story of Jean Chamette, the Paris dustman who earned his living by sweeping the shops of the artisans of his quarter. Chamette lived in a shanty on the outskirts of the city. To describe his neighbourhood at length would lead the reader away from the main trend of the story. I would point out, however, that to this day the outskirts of Paris are surrounded by fortifications which, at the time this story unfolds, teemed with birds and were covered with honeysuckle and hawthorn. Chamette's shanty lay at the foot of a northern rampart, in a row with the shacks of tinkers, cobblers, garbage pickers and beggars. If Maupassant had shown an interest in the inhabitants of these shacks I am sure he would have written many more splendid stories. Perhaps he would have added more laurels to his immortal crown. But outsiders rarely-peered into these places—that is, except detectives, and these only when in search of stolen goods. 12 His neighbours nicknamed Chamette Woodpecker, from which it may be supposed that he was a lean, hatchet-faced fellow, perhaps with a tuft of hair, like a bird's comb, protruding from under his hat. As a private in the army of Napoleon le Petit during the Mexican War, Jean Chamette had known better days. He had been lucky then, too; for at Vera Cruz he had had a bout of fever and was ordered home without having fought in a single real skirmish. The officer in command of Chamette's regiment took this opportunity to send his eight-year-old daughter Suzanne back to France. This officer was a widower who took his little daughter with him wherever he went. But the Mexican climate was fatal for European children, and the fitful guerrilla warfare was fraught with unforeseen perils. And so for once he decided to part with the little girl and send her to his sister in Rouen. The heat hung in a haze over the Atlantic during Chamette's crossing. Little Suzanne brooded, even the fishes darting in and out of the shimmering water failed to elicit a smile from her. Chamette looked after the child as best he could. He felt, however, that she needed not just care, but affection. But what affection could he, ex-private of a Colonial Regiment, show to a little girl? How to entertain her? Play a game of dice? Sing a smutty soldier's song? Yet the ice had to be broken. Every now and then Chamette caught the child's bewildered glances on himself. At last he plucked up courage 13 and embarked on a rambling tale of his own life, recalling every detail of the fishing village on the shore of the Channel where he had lived; the quicksands, the pools left by the tide, the village chapel with its cracked bell, and his mother, attending a neighbour's heart-burns. In these recollections Chamette saw nothing that could amuse Suzanne or make her laugh. But the girl, to his surprise, hung on his every word, even pleading with him to repeat the stories and recall fresh details. In search of these details Chamette would strain his memory until he was no longer sure that they were true. These were not really recollections, but the faint shadows of memory, melting like wreaths of mist. It had never occurred to Chamette that he would have to dig into his dull, long-buried past. One day faint memories of the golden rose crossed his mind. Had he actually seen that rudely carved rose of blackened gold hanging above the crucifix in the house of an old fisherwoman or heard a story about it he could not tell. Now, as he began to relate Suzanne about it, he felt almost certain that he had indeed caught a glimpse of the rose. It had glittered, he remembered, though the sun was not shining and a storm raged over the Channel. The more he thought of this rose the more distinctly he recalled how the gold gleamed beneath the low ceiling. Everybody in the village was puzzled why the fisher-woman refused to sell her treasure, which was worth a large sum. Chamette's mother alone 14 argued that it would be sinful to sell the golden rose. It had been given to the old woman "for luck" by her sweetheart. That was long ago— when the old woman, then a happy young girl, worked in the sardine cannery at Audierne. "Golden roses are few in this world," Chamette's mother used to say. "But the people lucky enough to possess them are sure of happiness. And not only the owners, but all who touch the rose." As a boy Chamette had longed for the day when fortune would smile on the old fisherwoman. But in vain. Her cottage still shook in the gales and no light relieved the sombre gloom of evening. Chamette left the village without having seen any change in the old woman's circumstances. But in Havre a year later when he met a fellow- villager, a stoker on a mail steamer, he learnt that the old woman's son, a cobearded jolly painter, had turned up unexpectedly from Paris. His presence had transformed the cottage, filling it with gaiety and plenty. Artists, they say, get lots of money for their daubing. Once while they were sitting on deck and Chamette was combing her tousled hair with his metal comb, Suzanne asked: "Jean, will anyone ever give me a golden rose?" "You can never tell, Susie," replied Chamette. "Maybe some loon or other will turn up and present you with one. We had an old soldier in our company who had all the luck in the world. He once picked up gold teeth on the battlefield and treated the whole company to drinks.

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