Golden Rose retelling. Golden Rose

1. The book “Golden Rose” is a book about writing.
2. Suzanne's faith in the dream of a beautiful rose.
3. Second meeting with the girl.
4. Shamet’s impulse to beauty.

The book by K. G. Paustovsky “Golden Rose” is dedicated, by his own admission, to writing. That is, that painstaking work of separating everything superfluous and unnecessary from truly important things, which is characteristic of any talented master of the pen.

The main character of the story “Precious Dust” is compared with a writer who also has to overcome many obstacles and difficulties before he can present to the world his golden rose, his work that touches the souls and hearts of people. In the not entirely attractive image of the garbage man Jean Chamet, a wonderful person suddenly appears, a hard worker, ready to turn over mountains of garbage to obtain the smallest gold dust for the sake of the happiness of a creature dear to him. This is what fills the life of the main character with meaning; he is not afraid of daily hard work, ridicule and neglect of others. The main thing is to bring joy to the girl who once settled in his heart.

The story "Precious Dust" took place on the outskirts of Paris. Jean Chamet, decommissioned for health reasons, was returning from the army. On the way, he had to take the daughter of the regimental commander, an eight-year-old girl, to her relatives. On the road, Suzanne, who lost her mother early, was silent the entire time. Shamet never saw a smile on her sad face. Then the soldier decided that it was his duty to somehow cheer up the girl, to make her journey more exciting. He immediately dismissed dice games and rude barracks songs - this was not suitable for a child. Jean began to tell her his life.

At first, his stories were unpretentious, but Suzanne greedily caught more and more details and even often asked to tell them to her again. Soon, Shamet himself could no longer accurately determine where the truth ends and other people’s memories begin. Outlandish stories emerged from the corners of his memory. So he remembered the amazing story of a golden rose, cast from blackened gold and hung from a crucifix in the house of an old fisherman. According to legend, this rose was given to a beloved and was sure to bring happiness to the owner. Selling or exchanging this gift was considered a great sin. Shamet himself saw a similar rose in the house of a poor old fisherman who, despite her unenviable position, never wanted to part with the decoration. The old woman, according to rumors that reached the soldier, still waited for her happiness. Her son, an artist, came to her from the city, and the old fisherman’s shack “was filled with noise and prosperity.” The story of the fellow traveler made a strong impression on the girl. Suzanne even asked the soldier if anyone would give her such a rose. Jean replied that maybe there would be such an eccentric for the girl. Shamet himself did not yet realize how strongly he became attached to the child. However, after he handed the girl over to the tall “woman with pursed yellow lips,” he remembered Suzanne for a long time and even carefully kept her blue crumpled ribbon, gently, as it seemed to the soldier, smelling of violets.

Life decreed that after long ordeals, Shamet became a Parisian garbage collector. From now on, the smell of dust and garbage heaps followed him everywhere. Monotonous days merged into one. Only rare memories of the girl brought joy to Jean. He knew that Suzanne had long since grown up, that her father had died from his wounds. The scavenger blamed himself for parting with the child too dryly. The former soldier even wanted to visit the girl several times, but he always postponed his trip until time was lost. Nevertheless, the girl’s ribbon was just as carefully kept in Shamet’s things.

Fate presented a gift to Jean - he met Suzanne and even, perhaps, warned her against the fatal step when the girl, having quarreled with her lover, stood at the parapet, looking into the Seine. The scavenger took in the grown-up blue ribbon winner. Suzanne spent five whole days with Shamet. Probably for the first time in his life the scavenger was truly happy. Even the sun over Paris rose differently for him than before. And like the sun, Jean reached out to the beautiful girl with all his soul. His life suddenly took on a completely different meaning.

Actively participating in the life of his guest, helping her reconcile with her lover, Shamet felt completely new strength in himself. That is why, after Suzanne mentioned the golden rose during farewell, the garbage man firmly decided to please the girl or even make her happy by giving her this gold jewelry. Left alone again, Jean began to attack. From now on, he did not throw out garbage from jewelry workshops, but secretly took it to a shack, where he sifted out the smallest grains of golden sand from garbage dust. He dreamed of making an ingot from sand and forging a small golden rose, which, perhaps, would serve for the happiness of many ordinary people. It took the scavenger a lot of work before he was able to get the gold bar, but Shamet was in no hurry to forge a golden rose from it. He suddenly began to be afraid of meeting Suzanne: “... who needs the tenderness of an old freak.” The scavenger understood perfectly well that he had long become a scarecrow for ordinary townspeople: “... the only desire of the people who met him was to quickly leave and forget his skinny, gray face with sagging skin and piercing eyes.” The fear of being rejected by a girl forced Shamet, almost for the first time in his life, to pay attention to his appearance, to the impression he made on others. Nevertheless, the garbage man ordered a piece of jewelry for Suzanne from the jeweler. However, severe disappointment awaited him: the girl left for America, and no one knew her address. Despite the fact that at the first moment Shamet was relieved, the bad news turned the unfortunate man’s whole life upside down: “...the expectation of a gentle and easy meeting with Suzanne inexplicably turned into a rusty iron fragment... this prickly fragment stuck in Shamet’s chest, near his heart " The scavenger had no reason to live anymore, so he prayed to God to quickly take him to himself. Disappointment and despair consumed Jean so much that he even stopped working and “lay in his shack for several days, turning his face to the wall.” Only the jeweler who forged the jewelry visited him, but did not bring him any medicine. When the old scavenger died, his only visitor pulled from under his pillow a golden rose wrapped in a blue ribbon that smelled like mice. Death transformed Shamet: “... it (his face) became stern and calm,” and “... the bitterness of this face seemed even beautiful to the jeweler.” Subsequently, the golden rose ended up with a writer who, inspired by the jeweler’s story about an old scavenger, not only bought the rose from him, but also immortalized the name of the former soldier of the 27th colonial regiment, Jean-Ernest Chamet, in his works.

In his notes, the writer said that Shamet’s golden rose “seems to be a prototype of our creative activity.” How many precious specks of dust does a master have to collect in order for a “living stream of literature” to be born from them? And creative people are driven to this, first of all, by the desire for beauty, the desire to reflect and capture not only the sad, but also the brightest, best moments of the life around them. It is the beautiful that can transform human existence, reconcile it with injustice, and fill it with a completely different meaning and content.

“Golden Rose” is a book of essays and stories by K. G. Paustovsky. First published in the magazine “October” (1955, No. 10). Published as a separate publication in 1955.

The idea of ​​the book was born in the 30s, but it took full shape only when Paustovsky began to put on paper the experience of his work in the prose seminar at the Literary Institute. Gorky. Paustovsky initially intended to call the book “The Iron Rose”, but later abandoned the intention - the story of the lyre player Ostap, who chained the iron rose, was included as an episode in “The Tale of Life”, and the writer did not want to exploit the plot again. Paustovsky was planning, 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. “Notes on a Cigarette Box,” written for the 100th anniversary of Chekhov, became the chapter of “Chekhov.” The essay “Meetings with Olesha” turned into the chapter “Little Rose in the Buttonhole.” The same publication includes the essays “Alexander Blok” and “Ivan Bunin”.

“The Golden Rose,” in Paustovsky’s own words, “is a book about how books are written.” Its leitmotif is most fully embodied in the story that begins “The Golden Rose.” The story of the “precious dust” that Parisian scavenger Jean Chamet collected in order to order a gold rose from a jeweler is a metaphor for creativity. The genre of Paustovsky’s book seems to reflect its main theme: it consists of short “grains” of stories about writing duty (“Inscription on a Boulder”), about the connection between creativity and life experience (“Flowers from Shavings”), about design and inspiration (“ Lightning"), about the relationship between the plan and the logic of the material ("Revolt of Heroes"), about the Russian language ("Diamond Language") and punctuation marks ("The Incident in Alschwang's Store"), about the artist's working conditions ("As if it were nothing") and artistic detail (“The Old Man in the Station Buffet”), about imagination (“The Life-Giving Principle”) and about the priority of life over creative imagination (“Night Stagecoach”).

Conventionally, the book can be divided into two parts. If in the first the author introduces the reader into the “secret of secrets” - into his creative laboratory, then the other half consists of sketches about writers: Chekhov, Bunin, Blok, Maupassant, Hugo, Olesha, Prishvin, Green. The stories are characterized by subtle lyricism; As a rule, this is a story about what has been experienced, about the experience of communication - face-to-face or correspondence - with one or another of the masters of artistic expression.

The genre composition of Paustovsky’s “Golden Rose” is in many ways unique: a single compositionally complete cycle combines fragments with different characteristics - confession, memoirs, a creative portrait, an essay on creativity, a poetic miniature about nature, linguistic research, the history of the idea and its implementation in the book, an autobiography , household sketch. Despite the genre heterogeneity, the material is “cemented” by the end-to-end image of the author, who dictates his own rhythm and tonality to the narrative, and conducts reasoning in accordance with the logic of a single theme.

Paustovsky’s “Golden Rose” evoked many responses in the press. Critics noted the high skill of the writer, the originality of the very attempt to interpret the problems of art through the 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 50s: the writer was reproached for the “limitedness of the author’s position,” “excess of beautiful details,” and “insufficient attention to the ideological basis of art.”

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

Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky is an outstanding Russian writer who glorified the Meshchera region in his works and touched upon the foundations of the folk Russian language. The sensational “Golden Rose” is an attempt to comprehend the secrets of literary creativity on the basis of one’s own writing experience and comprehension of the work of great writers. The story is based on the artist’s many years of reflection on the complex problems of the psychology of creativity and writing.

To my devoted friend Tatyana Alekseevna Paustovskaya

Literature has been removed from the laws of decay. She alone does not recognize death.

Saltykov-Shchedrin

You should always strive for beauty.

Honore Balzac

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

Much will be considered controversial.

This book is not a theoretical study, much less a guide. These are simply notes on my understanding of writing and my experiences.

Important issues of the ideological basis of our writing are not touched upon in the book, since we do not have any significant disagreements in this area. The heroic and educational significance of literature is clear to everyone.

In this book I have told so far only the little that I have managed to tell.

But if I, even in a small way, managed to convey to the reader an idea of ​​the beautiful essence of writing, then I will consider that I have fulfilled my duty to literature.

Precious Dust

I can't remember how I came across this story about the Parisian garbage man Jeanne Chamet. Shamet made a living by cleaning the workshops of artisans in his neighborhood.

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

The scavenger's shack was nestled at the foot of the northern ramparts, next to the houses of tinsmiths, 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 several more excellent stories. Perhaps they would have added new laurels to his established fame.

Unfortunately, no outsiders looked into these places except the detectives. And even those appeared only in cases where they were looking for stolen things.

Judging by the fact that the neighbors nicknamed Shamet “Woodpecker,” one must think that he was thin, sharp-nosed, and from under his hat he always had a tuft of hair sticking out, like the crest of a bird.

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

Shamet was lucky. At Vera Cruz he fell ill with a severe fever. The sick soldier, who had not yet been in a single real firefight, was sent back to his homeland. The regimental commander took advantage of this and instructed Shamet to take his daughter Suzanne, an eight-year-old girl, to France.

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

During Chamet's return to France, the Atlantic Ocean was smoking hot. The girl was silent the whole time. She even looked at the fish flying out of the oily water 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 come up with that was affectionate, a soldier of a colonial regiment? What could he do to keep her busy? A game of dice? Or rough barracks songs?

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

In these memories, Shamet could not find anything to cheer up Suzanne. But the girl, to his surprise, listened to these stories greedily and even forced him to repeat them, demanding more and more details.

Shamet strained his memory and extracted these details from it, until in the end he lost confidence that they really existed. These were no longer memories, but their faint shadows. They melted away like wisps of fog. Shamet, however, never imagined that he would need to recapture this long-gone time in his life.

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

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

Everyone in the village was surprised that the old woman was not selling her jewel. She could fetch a lot of money for it. Only Shamet’s mother insisted that selling a golden rose was a sin, because it was given to the old woman “for good luck” by her lover when the old woman, then still a funny girl, worked at a sardine factory in Odierne.

“There are few such golden roses in the world,” said Shamet’s mother. “But everyone who has them in their house will definitely be happy.” And not only them, but also everyone who touches this rose.

The boy was looking forward to making the old woman happy. But there were no signs of happiness. The old woman's house shook 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 fireman he knew from a mail boat in Le Havre told him that the old woman’s son, an artist, bearded, cheerful and wonderful, had unexpectedly arrived from Paris. From then on the shack was no longer recognizable. It was filled with noise and prosperity. Artists, they say, receive a lot of money for their daubs.

One day, when Chamet, sitting on the deck, combed Suzanne’s wind-tangled hair with his iron comb, she asked:

- Jean, will someone give me a golden rose?

“Anything is possible,” replied Shamet. “There will be some eccentric for you too, Susie.” There was one skinny soldier in our company. He was damn lucky. He found a broken golden jaw on the battlefield. We drank it down with the whole company. This is during the Annamite War. Drunk artillerymen fired a mortar for fun, the shell hit the mouth of an extinct volcano, exploded there, and from the surprise the volcano began to puff and erupt. God knows what his name was, that volcano! Kraka-Taka, I think. The eruption was just right! Forty civilian natives died. To think that so many people disappeared because of one 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 then.

– Where did this happen? – Susie asked doubtfully.

- I told you - in Annam. In Indochina. There, the ocean burns like hell, and jellyfish look like lace ballerina skirts. And it was so damp there that mushrooms grew in our boots overnight! Let them hang me if I'm lying!

Before this incident, Shamet had heard a lot of soldiers’ lies, but he himself never lied. Not because he couldn’t do it, but there was simply no need. Now he considered it a sacred duty to entertain Suzanne.

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

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

- Nothing! – Shamet said in a whisper and pushed Suzanne on the shoulder. “We, the rank and file, don’t choose our company commanders either. Be patient, Susie, soldier!

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

Mexican fever undermined Shamet's health. He was discharged from the army without the rank of sergeant. He entered civilian life as a simple private.

Years passed in monotonous need. Chamet tried a variety of meager occupations and eventually became a Parisian scavenger. Since then, he has been haunted by the smell of dust and trash heaps. He could smell this smell even in the light wind that penetrated the streets from the Seine, and in the armfuls of wet flowers - they were sold by neat old women on the boulevards.

The days merged into a yellow haze. But sometimes a light pink cloud appeared in it before Shamet’s inner gaze - Suzanne’s old dress. This dress smelled of spring freshness, as if it, too, had been kept in a basket of violets for a long time.

Where is she, Suzanne? What with her? He knew that she was now a grown girl, and her father had died from his wounds.

Chamet was still planning to go to Rouen to visit Suzanne. But each time he postponed this trip, until he finally realized that time had passed and Suzanne had probably forgotten about him.

He cursed himself like a pig when he remembered saying goodbye to her. Instead of kissing the girl, he pushed her in the back towards the old hag and said: “Be patient, Susie, soldier!”

Scavengers are known to work at night. They are forced to do this for two reasons: most of the garbage from hectic and not always useful human activity accumulates towards the end of the day, and, in addition, it is impossible to offend the sight and smell of Parisians. At night, almost no one except rats notices the work of the scavengers.

Shamet got used to night work and even fell in love with these hours of the day. Especially the time when dawn was breaking sluggishly over Paris. There was fog over the Seine, but it did not rise above the parapet of the bridges.

One day, at such a foggy dawn, Shamet walked along the Pont des Invalides and saw a young woman in a pale lilac dress with black lace. She stood at the parapet and looked at the Seine.

Shamet stopped, took off his dusty hat and said:

“Madam, the water in the Seine is very cold at this time.” Let me take you home instead.

“I don’t have a home now,” the woman quickly answered and turned to Shamet.

Shamet dropped his hat.

- Susie! - he said with despair and delight. - Susie, soldier! My girl! Finally I saw you. You must have forgotten me. I am Jean-Ernest Chamet, that private of the twenty-seventh colonial regiment who brought you to that vile woman in Rouen. What a beauty you have become! And how well your hair is combed! And I, a soldier’s plug, didn’t know how to clean them up at all!

- Jean! – the woman screamed, rushed to Shamet, hugged his neck and began to cry. - Jean, you are as kind as you were then. I remember evrything!

- Uh, nonsense! Shamet muttered. - What benefit does anyone have from my kindness? What happened to you, my little one?

Chamet pulled Suzanne towards him and did what he had not dared to do in Rouen - he stroked and kissed her shiny hair. He immediately pulled away, afraid that Suzanne would hear the mouse stink from his jacket. But Suzanne pressed herself even tighter against his shoulder.

- What's wrong with you, girl? – Shamet repeated confusedly.

Suzanne didn't answer. She was unable to hold back her sobs. Shamet realized that there was no need to ask her about anything just yet.

“I,” he said hastily, “have a lair at the shaft of the cross.” It's a long way from here. The house, of course, is empty – even if it’s a ball rolling. But you can warm the water and fall asleep in bed. There you can wash and relax. And in general, live as long as you want.

Suzanne stayed with Shamet for five days. For five days an extraordinary sun rose over Paris. All the buildings, even the oldest ones, covered with soot, all the gardens and even Shamet’s lair sparkled in the rays of this sun like jewelry.

Anyone who has not experienced excitement from the barely audible breathing of a young woman will not understand what tenderness is. Her lips were brighter than wet petals, and her eyelashes shone from her night tears.

Yes, with Suzanne everything happened exactly as Shamet expected. Her lover, a young actor, cheated on her. But the five days that Suzanne lived with Shamet were quite enough for their reconciliation.

Shamet participated in it. He had to take Suzanne's letter to the actor and teach this languid handsome man politeness when he wanted to tip Shamet a few sous.

Soon the actor arrived in a cab to pick up Suzanne. And everything was as it should be: a bouquet, kisses, laughter through tears, repentance and a slightly cracked carelessness.

When the newlyweds were leaving, Suzanne was in such a hurry that she jumped into the cab, forgetting to say goodbye to Shamet. She immediately caught herself, blushed and guiltily extended her hand to him.

“Since you have chosen a life to suit your taste,” Shamet finally grumbled to her, “then be happy.”

“I don’t know anything yet,” Suzanne answered, and tears sparkled in her eyes.

“You needn’t worry, my baby,” the young actor drawled displeasedly and repeated: “My lovely baby.”

- If only someone would give me a golden rose! – Suzanne sighed. “That would certainly be fortunate.” I remember your story on the ship, Jean.

- Who knows! – answered Shamet. - In any case, it is not this gentleman who will present you with a golden rose. Sorry, I'm a soldier. I don't like shufflers.

The young people looked at each other. The actor shrugged. The cab started moving.

Shamet usually threw out all the trash that had been swept out of the craft establishments during the day. But after this incident with Suzanne, he stopped throwing dust out of jewelry workshops. He began to secretly collect it in a bag and take it to his shack. The neighbors decided that the garbage man had gone crazy. Few people knew that this dust contained a certain amount of gold powder, since jewelers always grind off a little gold when working.

Shamet decided to sift gold from jewelry dust, make a small ingot from it, and forge a small golden rose from this ingot for Suzanne’s happiness. Or maybe, as his mother once told him, it will also serve for the happiness of many ordinary people. Who knows! He decided not to meet with Suzanne until this rose was ready.

Shamet did not tell anyone about his idea. He was afraid of the authorities and the police. You never know what will come to the minds of judicial quibblers. They can declare him a thief, put him in prison and take his gold. After all, it was still alien.

Before joining the army, Shamet worked as a farm laborer for a rural priest and therefore knew how to handle grain. This knowledge was useful to him now. He remembered how the bread was winnowed and heavy grains fell to the ground, and light dust was carried away by the wind.

Shamet built a small winnowing fan and fanned jewelry dust in the yard at night. He was worried until he saw a barely noticeable golden powder on the tray.

It took a long time until enough gold powder had accumulated that it was possible to make an ingot out of it. But Shamet hesitated to give it to the jeweler to forge a golden rose from it.

The lack of money did not stop him - any jeweler would have agreed to take a third of the bullion for the work and would have been pleased with it.

That wasn't the point. Every day the hour of meeting with Suzanne approached. But for some time Shamet began to fear this hour.

He wanted to give all the tenderness that had long been driven into the depths of his heart only to her, only to Susie. But who needs the tenderness of an old freak! Shamet had long noticed that the only desire of people who met him was to quickly leave and forget his skinny, gray face with sagging skin and piercing eyes.

He had a fragment of a mirror in his shack. From time to time Shamet looked at him, but immediately threw him away with a heavy curse. It was better not to see myself - this clumsy image, hobbling on rheumatic legs.

When the rose was finally ready, Chamet learned that Suzanne had left Paris for America a year ago - and, as they said, forever. No one could tell Shamet her address.

In the first minute, Shamet even felt relieved. But then all his anticipation of a gentle and easy meeting with Suzanne inexplicably turned into a rusty iron fragment. This prickly fragment stuck in Shamet’s chest, near his heart, and Shamet prayed to God that it would quickly pierce this old heart and stop it forever.

Shamet stopped cleaning the workshops. For several days he lay in his shack, turning his face to the wall. He was silent and smiled only once, pressing the sleeve of his old jacket to his eyes. But no one saw this. The neighbors didn’t even come to Shamet – everyone had their own worries.

Only one person was watching Shamet - that elderly jeweler who forged the thinnest rose from an ingot and next to it, on a young branch, a small sharp bud.

The jeweler visited Shamet, but did not bring him medicine. He thought it was useless.

And indeed, Shamet died unnoticed during one of his visits to the jeweler. The jeweler raised the scavenger's head, took out a golden rose wrapped in a blue crumpled ribbon from under the gray pillow, and slowly left, closing the creaky door. The tape smelled like mice.

It was late autumn. The evening darkness stirred with the wind and flashing lights. The jeweler remembered how Shamet’s face had changed after death. It became stern and calm. The bitterness of this face seemed even beautiful to the jeweler.

“What life does not give, death brings,” thought the jeweler, prone to stereotyped thoughts, and sighed noisily.

Soon the jeweler sold the golden rose to an elderly writer, sloppily dressed and, in the opinion of the jeweler, not rich enough to have the right to buy such a precious thing.

Obviously, the story of the golden rose, told by the jeweler to the writer, played a decisive role in this purchase.

We owe it to the notes of the old writer that this sad incident from the life of a former soldier of the 27th colonial regiment, Jean-Ernest Chamet, became known to someone.

In his notes, the writer, among other things, wrote:

“Every minute, every casual word and glance, every deep or humorous thought, every imperceptible movement of the human heart, just like the flying fluff of a poplar or the fire of a star in a night puddle - all these are grains of gold dust.

We, writers, have been extracting them for decades, these millions of grains of sand, collecting them unnoticed by ourselves, turning them into an alloy and then forging from this alloy our “golden rose” - a story, novel or poem.

Golden Rose of Shamet! It seems to me partly to be a prototype of our creative activity. It is surprising that no one took the trouble to trace how a living stream of literature is born from these precious specks of dust.

But, just as the golden rose of the old scavenger was intended for the happiness of Suzanne, so our creativity is intended so that the beauty of the earth, the call to fight for happiness, joy and freedom, the breadth of the human heart and the strength of the mind will prevail over the darkness and sparkle as never-setting sun."

Paustovsky Konstantin Georgievich (1892-1968), Russian writer was born on May 31, 1892 in the family of a railway statistician. His father, according to Paustovsky, “was an incorrigible dreamer and a Protestant,” which is why he constantly changed jobs. After several moves, the family settled in Kyiv. Paustovsky studied at the 1st Kyiv Classical Gymnasium. When he was in the sixth grade, his father left the family, and Paustovsky was forced to earn his own living and study by tutoring.

"Golden Rose" is a special book in Paustovsky's work. It was published in 1955, at that time Konstantin Georgievich was 63 years old. This book can only be called a “textbook for aspiring writers” only remotely: the author lifts the curtain on 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.

Conventionally, the book can be divided into two parts. If in the first the author introduces the reader into the “secret of secrets” - into his creative laboratory, then the other half consists of sketches about writers: Chekhov, Bunin, Blok, Maupassant, Hugo, Olesha, Prishvin, Green. The stories are characterized by subtle lyricism; As a rule, this is a story about what has been experienced, about the experience of communication - face-to-face or correspondence - with one or another of the masters of artistic expression.

The genre composition of Paustovsky’s “Golden Rose” is in many ways unique: a single compositionally complete cycle combines fragments with different characteristics - confession, memoirs, a creative portrait, an essay on creativity, a poetic miniature about nature, linguistic research, the history of the idea and its implementation in the book, an autobiography , household sketch. Despite the genre heterogeneity, the material is “cemented” by the end-to-end image of the author, who dictates his own rhythm and tonality to the narrative, and conducts reasoning in accordance with the logic of a single theme.

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

Much will be considered controversial.

This book is not a theoretical study, much less a guide. These are simply notes on my understanding of writing and my experiences.

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

In this book I have told so far only the little that I have managed to tell.

But if I, even in a small way, managed to convey to the reader an idea of ​​the beautiful essence of writing, then I will consider that I have fulfilled my duty to literature. 1955

Konstantin Paustovsky

"Golden Rose"

Literature has been removed from the laws of decay. She alone does not recognize death.

You should always strive for beauty.

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

Much will be considered controversial.

This book is not a theoretical study, much less a guide. These are simply notes on my understanding of writing and my experiences.

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

In this book I have told so far only the little that I have managed to tell.

But if I, even in a small way, managed to convey to the reader an idea of ​​the beautiful essence of writing, then I will consider that I have fulfilled my duty to literature.

Chekhov

His notebooks live independently in literature, as a special genre. He used them little for his work.

As an interesting genre, there are notebooks by Ilf, Alphonse Daudet, diaries of Tolstoy, the Goncourt brothers, the French writer Renard and many other records of writers and poets.

As an independent genre, notebooks have every right to exist in literature. But I, contrary to the opinion of many writers, consider them almost useless for the main work of writing.

I kept notebooks for some time. But every time I took an interesting entry from a book and inserted it into a story or story, this particular piece of prose turned out to be lifeless. It stuck out from the text like something alien.

I can only explain this by the fact that the best selection of material is produced by memory. What remains in memory and is not forgotten is the most valuable thing. What must be written down so as not to be forgotten is less valuable and can rarely be useful to a writer.

Memory, like a fairy sieve, lets garbage through, but retains grains of gold.

Chekhov had a second profession. He was a doctor. Obviously, it would be useful for every writer to know a second profession and practice it for some time.

The fact that Chekhov was a doctor not only gave him knowledge of people, but also affected his style. If Chekhov had not been a doctor, then perhaps he would not have created such scalpel-sharp, analytical and precise prose.

Some of his stories (for example, “Ward No. 6,” “A Boring Story,” “The Jumper,” and many others) were written as exemplary psychological diagnoses.

His prose did not tolerate the slightest dust or stains. “We must throw out the superfluous,” Chekhov wrote, “we must clear the phrase of “to the extent”, “with the help”, we must take care of its musicality and not allow “became” and “ceased” to be almost side by side in the same phrase.

He cruelly expelled from prose such words as “appetite”, “flirting”, “ideal”, “disc”, “screen”. They disgusted him.

Chekhov's life is instructive. He said of himself that for many years he had been squeezing a slave out of himself drop by drop. It is worth sorting out photographs of Chekhov over the years - from his youth to the last years of his life - to see with his own eyes how the slight touch of philistinism gradually disappears from his appearance and how his face and his clothes become more and more austere, more significant and more beautiful.

There is a corner in our country where everyone keeps a part of their heart. This is Chekhov's house on Outka.

For people of my generation, this house is like a window lit from the inside. Behind it you can see your half-forgotten childhood from the dark garden. And hear the affectionate voice of Maria Pavlovna - that sweet Chekhovian Masha, whom almost the whole country knows and loves in a kindred way.

The last time I was in this house was in 1949.

We sat with Maria Pavlovna on the lower terrace. Thickets of white fragrant flowers covered the sea and Yalta.

Maria Pavlovna said that Anton Pavlovich planted this lush bush and named it somehow, but she cannot remember this tricky name.

She said it so simply, as if Chekhov was alive, had been here quite recently and had only gone somewhere for a while - to Moscow or Nice.

I picked a camellia in Chekhov’s garden and gave it to a girl who was with us at Maria Pavlovna’s. But this carefree “lady with a camellia” dropped the flower from the bridge into the Uchan-Su mountain river, and it floated into the Black Sea. It was impossible to be angry with her, especially on this day, when it seemed that at every turn of the street we could meet Chekhov. And it will be unpleasant for him to hear how a gray-eyed, embarrassed girl is scolded for such nonsense as a lost flower from his garden.

To my devoted friend Tatyana Alekseevna Paustovskaya

Literature has been removed from the laws of decay. She alone does not recognize death.

Saltykov-Shchedrin

You should always strive for beauty.

Honore Balzac

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

Much will be considered controversial.

This book is not a theoretical study, much less a guide. These are simply notes on my understanding of writing and my experiences.

Important issues of the ideological basis of our writing are not touched upon in the book, since we do not have any significant disagreements in this area. The heroic and educational significance of literature is clear to everyone.

In this book I have told so far only the little that I have managed to tell.

But if I, even in a small way, managed to convey to the reader an idea of ​​the beautiful essence of writing, then I will consider that I have fulfilled my duty to literature.

Precious Dust

I can't remember how I came across this story about the Parisian garbage man Jeanne Chamet. Shamet made a living by cleaning the workshops of artisans in his neighborhood.

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

The scavenger's shack was nestled at the foot of the northern ramparts, next to the houses of tinsmiths, 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 several more excellent stories. Perhaps they would have added new laurels to his established fame.

Unfortunately, no outsiders looked into these places except the detectives. And even those appeared only in cases where they were looking for stolen things.

Judging by the fact that the neighbors nicknamed Shamet “Woodpecker,” one must think that he was thin, sharp-nosed, and from under his hat he always had a tuft of hair sticking out, like the crest of a bird.

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

Shamet was lucky. At Vera Cruz he fell ill with a severe fever. The sick soldier, who had not yet been in a single real firefight, was sent back to his homeland. The regimental commander took advantage of this and instructed Shamet to take his daughter Suzanne, an eight-year-old girl, to France.

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

During Chamet's return to France, the Atlantic Ocean was smoking hot. The girl was silent the whole time. She even looked at the fish flying out of the oily water 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 come up with that was affectionate, a soldier of a colonial regiment? What could he do to keep her busy? A game of dice? Or rough barracks songs?

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

In these memories, Shamet could not find anything to cheer up Suzanne. But the girl, to his surprise, listened to these stories greedily and even forced him to repeat them, demanding more and more details.

Shamet strained his memory and extracted these details from it, until in the end he lost confidence that they really existed. These were no longer memories, but their faint shadows. They melted away like wisps of fog. Shamet, however, never imagined that he would need to recapture this long-gone time in his life.

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

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

Everyone in the village was surprised that the old woman was not selling her jewel. She could fetch a lot of money for it. Only Shamet’s mother insisted that selling a golden rose was a sin, because it was given to the old woman “for good luck” by her lover when the old woman, then still a funny girl, worked at a sardine factory in Odierne.

“There are few such golden roses in the world,” said Shamet’s mother. “But everyone who has them in their house will definitely be happy.” And not only them, but also everyone who touches this rose.

The boy was looking forward to making the old woman happy. But there were no signs of happiness. The old woman's house shook 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 fireman he knew from a mail boat in Le Havre told him that the old woman’s son, an artist, bearded, cheerful and wonderful, had unexpectedly arrived from Paris. From then on the shack was no longer recognizable. It was filled with noise and prosperity. Artists, they say, receive a lot of money for their daubs.

One day, when Chamet, sitting on the deck, combed Suzanne’s wind-tangled hair with his iron comb, she asked:

- Jean, will someone give me a golden rose?

“Anything is possible,” replied Shamet. “There will be some eccentric for you too, Susie.” There was one skinny soldier in our company. He was damn lucky. He found a broken golden jaw on the battlefield. We drank it down with the whole company. This is during the Annamite War. Drunk artillerymen fired a mortar for fun, the shell hit the mouth of an extinct volcano, exploded there, and from the surprise the volcano began to puff and erupt. God knows what his name was, that volcano! Kraka-Taka, I think. The eruption was just right! Forty civilian natives died. To think that so many people disappeared because of one 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 then.

– Where did this happen? – Susie asked doubtfully.

- I told you - in Annam. In Indochina. There, the ocean burns like hell, and jellyfish look like lace ballerina skirts. And it was so damp there that mushrooms grew in our boots overnight! Let them hang me if I'm lying!

Before this incident, Shamet had heard a lot of soldiers’ lies, but he himself never lied. Not because he couldn’t do it, but there was simply no need. Now he considered it a sacred duty to entertain Suzanne.

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

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

- Nothing! – Shamet said in a whisper and pushed Suzanne on the shoulder. “We, the rank and file, don’t choose our company commanders either. Be patient, Susie, soldier!