The Story of a Life

Footnotes

Introduction

fn1 Marlene Dietrich, My Life, translated by Salvator Attanasio (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), 135–6, 221, 227; interview with Galina Arbuzova, Tarusa, Russia, 8 Sep. 2019; Desert Island Discs, BBC Home Service, 5 Jan. 1965, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y4dy, accessed 11 Jan. 2021.

fn2 ‘Konstantin Paustovsky: lyrical writer of Russia’, The Times, 16 July 1968. On Paustovsky’s popularity in the USSR, see Lev Lobov and Kira Vasil’eva, ‘On otdal svoë serdtse Rossii’, Kul’tura, 25:7638 (2008), http://www.peredelkino-land.ru/HTML/press_stroenie_stoyaschee_otdelno.shtml, accessed 11 Jan. 2021.

fn3 Interview with Galina Arbuzova, Tarusa, Russia, 8 Sep. 2019.

fn4 Konstantin Paustovskii, ‘Neskol’ko otryvochnykh myslei. Vmesto predisloviia,’ in Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1967), 1:5–17.

fn5 Konstantin Paustovskii, Vremia bol’shikh ozhidanii: povesti, dnevniki, pis’ma (Nizhnii Novgorod: Dekom, 2002), 1:8.

fn6 Ibid., 1:11; ‘Iz dnevnikov’, Mir Paustovskogo, 15 (2000).

fn7 Paustovskii, Vremia bol’shikh ozhidanii, 1:11; ‘Put’ k masterstvu’, letter dated 24 Jul. 1929, Mir Paustovskogo, 25 (2007).

fn8 S. Olivier, ‘Paustovskii v nachale XXI veka’, in V. A. Pimneva et al. (eds), Literaturnoe nasledie K. G. Paustovskogo i mirovaia kul’tura (Moscow: Moskovskii literaturnyi muzei-tsentr K. G. Paustovskogo, 2013), 18.

fn9 Maksim Gorkii, Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1953), 27:108; Konstantin Paustovskii, Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1957), 1:644–5. Kara-Bugaz appeared in English as The Black Gulf (London: Hutchinson, 1946).

fn10 Konstantin Paustovskii, ‘Neskol’ko grubykh slov’, Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Collection 617, Inventory 1, Folder 58; ‘Na puti k masterstvu’, letters dated 2 Sep. 1929 and 28 Nov. 1931, Mir Paustovskogo, 25 (2007).

fn11 Konstantin Paustovskii, ‘Zhizn’’, Ogonëk, 26 (1945), 5; A. Muravinskaia and V. Ashcheulov, ‘Paustovskii na Altae’, Altai, 4 (1982), 110–13.

fn12 Konstantin Paustovskii, Povest’ o zhizni (Moscow: TERRA, 2017), 1:550.

fn13 Paustovskii, Vremia bol’shikh ozhidanii, 1:16.

fn14 Bunin’s postcard, dated 15 Sep. 1947, is in the collection of the K. G. Paustovsky Museum in Moscow.

fn15 Novyi mir, 3 (1955), 3.

fn16 Oktiabr’, 3 (1959), 3.

fn17 Paustovskii, Povest’ o zhizni, 1:550–52.

fn18 Epigraph to Living to Tell the Tale (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).

fn19 Kornei Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 1901–1969 (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1994), 245.

fn20 Mir Paustovskogo, 30 (2012), 8–10.

fn21 Mir Paustovskogo, 30 (2012), 22–3; Paustovskii, Vremia bol’shikh ozhidanii, 1:19.

fn22 Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Collection 1128, Inventory, 645, Folder 1 contains some of the many edits demanded of Paustovsky to volume five by Oktiabr’ prior to publication.

fn23 John Sendy, ‘In Memory of Paustovsky’, Australian Left Review (April–May 1969), 72.

fn24 Galina Burlaeva, ‘Literaturnyi arkhiv K. G. Paustovskogo v Moskovskom muzei-tsentre pisatelia’, in Pimneva et al. (eds), Literaturnoe nasledie, 488; Mir Paustovskogo, 23 (2005), 66–7.

fn25 Mir Paustovskogo, 21 (2004), 97–100; also Olivier, ‘Paustovskii v nachale XXI veka’, 14–15.

fn26 Joseph Brodsky, ‘A Commencement Address’, New York Review of Books, 16 Aug. 1984.

fn27 Mir Paustovskogo, 23 (2005), 7–23.

fn28 V. A. Bobkov, ‘Zhizn’ i deiatel’nost’ N. G. Vysochanskogo na Brianskoi zemle’, Vestnik Brianskogo gosuniversiteta, 2 (2009), 6–11; Mir Paustovskogo, 15 (2000), 47–53.

fn29 Vera Lindsay, ‘Childhood under the Tsars’, Sunday Times, 29 Jan. 1961.

fn30 Raymond Mortimer, ‘“The greatest living Russian author” in England’; Vera and John Russell, ‘A lifetime in revolution’, Sunday Times, 27 Sep. 1964; ‘Russian Proust’, Times Literary Supplement, 1 May 1969; Observer quotes from advertisements in the TLS, 16 Feb. 1967, 125 and The Times, 8 Oct. 1964, 15.

fn31 Jeremy Rundall, ‘Draught of the South’, Sunday Times, 16 Mar. 1969; ‘Konstantin Paustovsky: lyrical writer of Russia’; Lesley Branch, ‘Jackals among the azaleas’, The Times, 15 Mar. 1969; ‘Paustovsky when young’, The Times, 8 Oct. 1964; ‘Self-portrait of an artist in years of revolution’, The Times, 4 Nov. 1965; Iverach McDonald, ‘Russia going red’, The Times, 9 Feb. 1967.

fn32 The manuscripts are in Moscow’s Russian State Archive of Literature and Art.

fn33 ‘A Russian Soul’, New York Review of Books, 20 Aug. 1964.

fn34 Orville Prescott, ‘Books of the Times: A Magnificent Surprise from Russia’, New York Times, 1 Jul. 1964. See also Harrison E. Salisbury, ‘Through the Tumult and the Thaw’, New York Times. 3 May 1964.

fn35 Piotr Rawicz, ‘Une grande chronique de la révolution russe’, Le Monde, 26 Mar. 1966.

fn36 Mir Paustovskogo, 30 (2012), 33.

fn37 A. M. Blokh, Sovetskii Soiuz v inter’ere nobelevskikh premii: fakty, dokumenty, razmyshlenniia, komentarii (St Petersburg: Gumanistika, 2001), 678–9, 724–8; Kjell Espmark, The Nobel Prize in Literature: A Study behind the Criteria of the Choices (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991), 186; Paustovskii, Vremia bol’shikh ozhidanii, 1:21, 23; Mir Paustovskogo, 23 (2005), 65; Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 381.

fn38 F. D. Reeve, Robert Frost in Russia (Brookline, MA: Zephyr Press, [1964] 2001), 40, 45, 47–53.

fn39 Paustovskii, Vremia bol’shikh ozhidanii, 1:14, 19–24; Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 333, 502–3; Lobov and Vasil’eva, ‘On otdal svoë serdtse Rossii’, 46–76; ‘Russians ask for review of trial’, The Times, 16 Feb. 1968; ‘Konstantin Paustovsky: lyrical writer of Russia’.

fn40 On Paustovsky and Grin, see K. G. Paustovskii, ‘Aleksandr Grin’, God XXII, 15 (1939); ‘Zhizn’ Aleksandra Grina’, Konstantin Paustovsky website, http://paustovskiy-lit.ru/paustovskiy/public/zhizn-aleksandra-grina.htm, accessed 25 Feb. 2021; ‘Uchastie Paustovskogo v izdanii sochinenii A. Grina’, Konstantin Paustovsky website, http://paustovskiy-lit.ru/paustovskiy/bio/uchastie-paustovskogo-v-izdanii-grina.htm, accessed 11 Jan. 2021.

fn41 Literaturnaia Moskva: literaturno-khudozhestvennvyi sbornik Moskovskikh pisatelei (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1956); Tarusskie stranitsy: literaturno-khudozhestvennyi illiustrirovannyi sbornik (Kaluga: Kaluzhskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1961); Paustovskii, Vremia bol’shikh ozhidanii, 1:18, 20; Blokh, Sovetskii Soiuz v inter’ere nobelevskikh premii, 730.

fn42 Chukovskii, Dnevnik, 444.

fn43 Paustovskii, Vremia bol’shikh ozhidanii, 1:24.

1: The Death of My Father

fn1 A verst (versta) was equal to 1.06 kilometres or 0.66 miles.

fn2 A book of poems published in 1840 by Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko (1814–61).

fn3 Countess Alexandra Branitskaya (1754–1838), niece of Prince Grigory Potëmkin.

fn4 Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), Polish poet and dramatist and national hero.

fn5 Mikhail Skobelev (1843–82), famous Russian general and victor of the Siege of Plevna (1877) against the Ottoman Turks.

2: My Grandfather Maxim Grigorievich

fn1 The Zaporozhian Sich, a loose, semi-autonomous political structure created by Cossacks on the lower reaches of the river Dnieper, lasted for several hundred years until it was absorbed into the Russian Empire in 1775.

5: A Trip to Chenstokhov

fn1 Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916), Polish novelist and journalist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1905).

6: Pink Oleanders

fn1 ‘Lel’ refers to mythical Slavic pagan goddesses of love or marriage.

fn2 Mikhail Vrubel (1856–1910), painter and sculptor particularly remembered for his series of ‘Demon’ paintings.

fn3 Vasily Vereshchagin (1842–1904), realist painter well known for his depictions of war.

7: Elderwood Balls

fn1 Nikolai Przhevalsky (1839–88), famous geographer and explorer of central and eastern Asia.

fn2 Paul Kruger (1825–1904), president of the South African Republic 1883–1900.

fn3 Grigory Grum-Grzhimailo (1860–1936), entomologist and lepidopterist, made numerous voyages to collect in central Asia and the Russian Far East; Vladimir (1864–1928), his younger brother, a noted metallurgist.

fn4 Menelik II (1884–1913), negus of Shewa 1866–89, emperor of Ethiopia 1889–1913.

fn5 Paustovsky’s uncle called his servant ‘Sam Pyu-chai’, which can be translated literally as ‘Drink tea myself’, an expression of a then rather common – and clearly xenophobic – punning on what were for Russians strange-sounding Chinese names and words.

9: Winter Scenes

fn1 In fact, Yekaterina Desnitskaya (b. 1886) lived until 1960. She married Prince Chakrabongse Bhuvanath (1883–1920) in 1906 and returned with him to Bangkok. They had one son, and then divorced in 1919.

fn2 Alexander Suvorov (1729–1800), celebrated general and field marshal; Edmond Rostand (1868–1918), French dramatist and poet.

fn3 Anton Rubinstein (1829–94), pianist and composer.

fn4 George Stephenson (1781–1848), British engineer known as the ‘Father of Railways’.

fn5 Marie François Carnot (1837–94), statesman and French president, assassinated while in office by an Italian anarchist.

10: The Midshipman

fn1 Semën Nadson (1862–87), popular poet at the turn of the twentieth century.

11: What Paradise Looks Like

fn1 Imam Shamil (1797–1871), political and spiritual leader of the northern Caucasus who led the military resistance to Russian expansion.

13: The Swarm

fn1 Nikolai Pirogov (1810–81), pioneering physician and surgeon.

fn2 The Department for Protecting Public Security and Order, the tsarist secret police, known by the acronym Okhranka or Okhrana.

fn3 Dmitry Bagrov (1887–1911), anarchist revolutionary as well as undercover agent for the Okhranka, hanged for the assassination of Prime Minister Pëtr Stolypin.

14: Water from the Limpopo

fn1 Nikolai Miklukho-Maklai (1844–88), anthropologist and explorer, lived among and wrote about the people of New Guinea.

16: Lime Blossoms

fn1 Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli (1700–71), Italian architect chiefly active in Russia; works include the Winter Palace in St Petersburg.

fn2 Afanasy Fet (1820–92), influential and beloved lyric poet.

17: Just a Little Boy

fn1 Nikolai Nekrasov (1821–78), poet and critic popular with the liberal intelligentsia.

fn2 The Black Hundreds were a collection of anti-revolutionary, anti-Semitic and pro-autocracy groups.

fn3 Alexei Kuropatkin (1848–1925), imperial minister of war 1898–1904; Anatoly Stessel (1848–1915), general and commander of the Port Arthur garrison during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5).

18: The Red Lantern

fn1 Lieutenant Pëtr Schmidt (1867–1906), one of the leaders of the uprising in Sevastopol during the revolution of 1905, for which he was executed.

19: Deserted Tauris

fn1 Pavel Nakhimov (1802–55), Russian admiral killed in the Crimean War.

22: Kean, the Great Tragedian

fn1 Pavel Orlenev (1869–1932), famed actor of the stage and early silent films.

fn2 Alexandre Dumas’s Kean (1836), on the life of the famed English actor Edmund Kean (1787–1833).

25: Autumn Battles

fn1 Leonid Andreev (1871–1919), writer and playwright known for his dark pessimism.

26: ‘Living’ Languages

fn1 Henry IV of France (1553–1610), reigned 1589–1610.

fn2 Arkady Golikov (pen name Gaidar) (1904–41), writer chiefly of children’s stories.

fn3 Peter Altenberg (1859–1919), influential Viennese writer and poet.

27: ‘Gentlemen Schoolboys’

fn1 Mikhail Semënovich Sobakevich, an ursine, unsentimental landowner in Gogol’s Dead Souls; Tartarin de Tarascon, the naïve and slightly ridiculous hero of Alphonse Daudet’s eponymous novel (1872).

fn2 Valentin Serov (1865–1911) and Isaak Levitan (1860–1900), painters; Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915), composer; Vera Komissarzhevskaya (1864–1910), actress.

fn3 Georgy Plekhanov (1856–1918) and Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1828–89), radical Russian thinkers and writers.

fn4 Alexander Herzen (1812–70), Pëtr Kropotkin (1842–1921) and Sergei Stepnyak-Kravchinsky (1851–95), also radical Russian thinkers and writers.

fn5 Nikolai Ge (1831–94), realist painter known for his works on religious and historical themes.

fn6 Abraham Manievich (1881–1942), Jewish artist born in Ukraine, later emigrated to the United States.

fn7 Yelena Polevitskaya (1881–1973), actress of stage and screen in Russia and Europe, spent time in the Gulag in the early 1940s.

29: Wasting Time

fn1 Generals Vladimir Sukhomlinov (1848–1926), Vladimir Dragomirov (1862–1928), Alexei Kuropatkin (q.v.) and Paul von Rennenkampf (1854–1918).

fn2 Famous line spoken by Pavel Famusov in Alexander Griboedov’s Woe from Wit (1823).

fn3 Opening lines of ‘Autumn Elegy’ (1900) by Alexander Blok (1880–1921).

30: The Inn on the Braginka

fn1 Grigory Danilevsky (1829–90), author of novels on the history of Ukraine, including this, his first novel (1862).

31: My Grandmother’s Garden

fn1 Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812–87), prolific Polish novelist, historian and journalist; Vladimir Korolenko (1853–1921), Ukrainian-Russian writer and political activist; Eliza Orzeszkowa (née Elžbieta Pawłowska) (1841–1910), noted Polish writer and social activist.

fn2 Friedrich Spielhagen (1829–1911), German novelist whose works were popular in Russia; Aleksander Głowacki (1847–1912) (pen name Bolesław Prus), Polish novelist and short story writer.

fn3 Henryk Wieniawski (1835–80), Polish composer and violinist.

33: Instructors of the Humanities

fn1 Valery Bryusov (1873–1924), Symbolist poet and writer.

fn2 Kondraty Ryleev (1795–1826), poet and leader of the Decembrist Revolt of 1825.

fn3 Konstantin Balmont (1867–1942), Symbolist poet, translator of Poe’s ‘The Raven’.

35: Razgulyai Square

fn1 From ‘Moscow’ (1840) by Fëdor Glinka (1786–1880).

fn2 Emile Verhaeren (1855–1916), Belgian Symbolist poet.

fn3 Painting from 1890 by Mikhail Nesterov (1862–1942) depicting a scene from the life of Sergei Radonezhsky (born Bartholomew), also Sergius of Radonezh, the great fourteenth-century holy man.

fn4 The opening line of Afanasy Fet’s verse epistle ‘A. L. Brzhevskaya’ (1879).

40: ‘Here Lives Nobody’

fn1 The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) (1870–1924), and the Mensheviks, led by Yuly Martov (1873–1923), were the two main Marxist parties. The Socialist Revolutionary Party’s programme of agrarian socialism was popular among the Russian peasantry. The two main Jewish parties were the General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland and Russia (known as the Bund) and Paole Zion (‘Workers of Zion’), both of which were Marxist-socialist but were divided over the question of Zionism. The Dashnaks refers to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, a nationalist-socialist organisation.

fn2 From Fet’s 1864 poem ‘By Life Tormented’.

41: An Unprecedented Autumn

fn1 Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949), Symbolist playwright, poet, essayist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1911); Georges Rodenbach (1855–98), journalist, poet and novelist remembered for his writings on life in Belgium.

fn2 Respectively, the country estates of the princes Yusupov and the counts Sheremetev.

42: The Copper Line

fn1 Fëdor Chaliapin (1873–1938), famed opera singer; Savva Mamontov (1841–1918), industrialist and arts patron.

fn2 Anastasia Vyaltseva (1871–1913), popular mezzo-soprano known as the ‘Queen of the Gramophone’.

fn3 From ‘Champagne Polonaise’ (1912) by Igor Lotarëv (pen name Severyanin) (1887–1941), one of the Ego-Futurist poets. The line ‘What tenderness ineffable’ on page 318 comes from his ‘Trait upon Trait’ (1914).

43: To One Side of the War

fn1 Alexei Tolstoy (1882–1945), prolific writer, distant relation of Leo Tolstoy, later supporter of the Soviet regime; Ivan Shmelëv (1873–1950), writer and publisher, emigrated in 1922; Boris Zaitsev (1881–1972), writer and dramatist, also emigrated in 1922.

fn2 Ivan Sytin (1851–1934), prominent Moscow publisher.

fn3 Alexei Savrasov (1830–97), painter, member of the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers) group.

fn4 Konstantin Korovin (1861–1939), Russian Impressionist painter.

46: Medical Orderly

fn1 An organisation created in 1914 by private citizens and groups to aid the government in the war effort.

47: Russia in Snow

fn1 Opening lines of an untitled poem by Balmont from his cycle Southern Cross (1914).

fn2 Gavrila Derzhavin (1743–1816), poet and statesman, born in Kazan.

48: Paper Scraps and the Bugler

fn1 Pëtr Gnedich, author of The History of Art from Ancient Times (1885).

fn2 Painters known for their works on military themes: Jan Matejko (1838–93), Bogdan Willewalde (1819–1903), Ernst Meissonier (1815–91) and Antoine-Jean Gros (1771–1835).

52: The Great Swindler

fn1 Popular Moscow restaurant in the early 1900s known for its Gypsy choir.

fn2 Oft-quoted line from Griboedov’s Woe from Wit.

53: The Ocean Liner Portugal

fn1 From Nadson’s ‘By the Sea’ (1885). Several of his works were set to music by Sergei Rachmaninoff and César Cui.

fn2 Vera Kholodnaya (1893–1919), silent film star.

fn3 Ivan Aivazovsky (1817–1900), Russian-Armenian painter especially known for his romantic seascapes.

fn4 Mark Antokolsky (1843–1902), Jewish-Lithuanian sculptor who created many works of famous historical figures.

fn5 The Portugal was sunk on 30 March 1916 by a German submarine. Of the 273 people on board, more than 100 did, in fact, survive.

55: The Little Knight

fn1 Reflections on the Siege of Paris during the Franco–Prussian War (1871), by Francisque Sarcey (1827–99).

fn2 Opening lines of ‘The Nighttime Review’ (1836) by Vasily Zhukovsky (1783–1852).

58: Treason

fn1 Juliusz Słowacki (1809–49), Romantic poet and dramatist.

61: The Bulldog

fn1 Final lines of Blok’s ‘For you, there is no name, my distant one’ (1906).

62: A Dank Winter

fn1 The Constitutional Democratic Party (known as the Kadets) was a liberal political party composed chiefly of professionals and the educated elite. Yevgeny Kedrin (1851–1921), lawyer and political figure, later emigrated.

fn2 Mykhailo Tuhan-Baranovskyi (1865–1919), Ukrainian economist, professor and political figure; Pëtr Struve (1870–1944), political economist and Marxist, later critic of the Soviet state; Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–64), German philosopher, socialist organiser and activist.

fn3 Zemgor was an acronym for the United Committee for the Union of Zemstvos and Towns, created in 1915 to assist the government in the war effort.

fn4 A reference to the Polish uprising against Russian rule in 1830–31.

fn5 Pavel Muratov (1881–1950), art historian, critic, author of three-volume Images of Italy.

fn6 Vasily Svarog (born Korochkin) (1883–1946), Russian-Soviet painter.

fn7 Ivan Goremykin (1839–1917), prime minister of Russia 1914–16.

63: A Grievous Commotion

fn1 Dmitry Shchepkin (1879–1937), lawyer, economist, political figure, executed under Stalin.

fn2 Konstantin Flavitsky’s (1830–66) best-known painting, which depicts the legendary death of the eighteenth-century pretender to the Russian throne (1864).

64: The Suburb of Chechelevka

fn1 Alexander Yakubovich (1792–1845), among the Decembrists sentenced to death, later commuted. Pëtr Karatygin’s 1825 portrait of Yakubovich shows him with a dark bandage over his forehead.

fn2 Mikhail Kozlovsky (1753–1802), Neoclassical sculptor.

65: One Day

fn1 The battleship Empress Maria sank after a fire on board led to a magazine explosion in October 1915, killing hundreds of sailors. The precise cause of the explosion remains unknown.

fn2 An ancient fortified cave city, now in ruins, possibly dating back to the fifth century CE.

fn3 Konstantin Fofanov (1862–1911), popular and widely imitated poet; Mirra Lokhvitskaya (1869–1905), poet, known as the ‘Russian Sappho’.

66: The Hotel Great Britain

fn1 John Hughes (1814–89), a Welsh ironmaster, created the town of Yuzovka – Hughesovka – in the second half of the nineteenth century. London businessman and merchant Archibald Balfour lived in Russia and built himself a large estate in Yuzovka.

fn2 Popular traditional Russian card game for up to six players using thirty-six cards of a standard fifty-two-card pack.

67: Notebooks and Memory

fn1 Nikolai Shcherbina (1821–69), Russian poet of Ukrainian and Greek parents, best known for his Greek Verses (1850).

fn2 Khivrya is Cherevik’s unfaithful wife in Gogol’s short story ‘The Fair at Sorochyntsi’ from his Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka (1832).

fn3 Ignaty Potapenko (1856–1929), a former friend of Chekhov’s at whom, after their falling out, Chekhov poked fun with the figure of Trigorin in The Seagull; Ivan Leontiev (pen name Shcheglov) (1856–1911), author of short pieces of humour, stories on military life and several plays; Alexander Ertel (1855–1908), author of two large novels and a number of short stories; Alexander Izmailov (1779–1831), poet and publisher; Kazimir Barantsevich (1851–1927), prolific author of tales chiefly chronicling the lives of Russia’s lower-middle classes; Viktor Muyzhel (1880–1924), short-story writer and novelist whose works focused mostly on Russian peasant life.

fn4 Lines from Lermontov’s ‘In Memory of A. I. Odoevsky’ (1839); Pushkin’s ‘It’s Time, My Friend …’ (1834); Fëdor Tyutchev’s (1803–73) ‘Spring Storm’ (1828[?], completed early 1850s); Fet’s ‘Another May Night’ (1857).

fn5 José-Maria de Heredia (1842–1905), Cuban-born French poet.

fn6 Lev Mei (1822–62), Russian poet and dramatist.

fn7 First stanza of an untitled poem from Blok’s cycle ‘Invocation by Fire and Darkness’ (1907).

68: The Art of Whitewashing

fn1 A line from ‘For the Album of K. Sh ….’ (1865) by the late Romantic poet Yakov Polonsky (1819–98).

69: A Raw February

fn1 Titular character of a story by Gogol (1835, revised in 1842) about a Cossack warrior and his two sons.

fn2 Alexander Kuprin (1870–1938), writer of short fiction, novelist, friend of Chekhov and Bunin.

fn3 Vladimir Gilyarovsky (1853–1935), poet, actor, raconteur, journalist and memoirist, known for his writings on Moscow.

fn4 The ‘Time of Troubles’ was a period of political instability, famine and foreign invasion between 1598 and 1613.

fn5 Turgenev’s winged words of 1882 on ‘the great, mighty, true and free Russian language that could have been given only to “a great people”’.

fn6 Nikolai Vtorov (1866–1916), immensely wealthy entrepreneur and banker, known as the ‘Russian Morgan’.

fn7 A reference to the story ‘Kasyan of the Beautiful Lands’ in Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches (1852).

fn8 An official seventeenth-century registry, bound in red velvet, of Russia’s aristocratic elite.

fn9 Sergei Sergeev-Tsensky (1875–1958), prolific writer, poet and author of this 1909 work on the plight of rural Russia.

70: Whirlpool

fn1 Alexander Kerensky (1881–1970), lawyer, member of the SRs, served as minister of justice, minister of war and then last prime minister of the Provisional Government.

fn2 Nicholas Roerich (1873–1947), artist, writer, theosophist known for his paintings of Russia’s distant past.

fn3 Lines from a poem by Olga Belyaevskaya (active in the early 1900s), used by the Russian Symbolist Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949) as an epigraph to his poem ‘Under the Birch Tree’ (1906).

fn4 A failed military coup d’état led by General Lavr Kornilov against the Provisional Government in September 1917.

71: Blue Torches

fn1 In November, a few hundred cadets (also known as Iunkers) from local military academies took to the streets to resist the Bolshevik seizure of power in Moscow.

fn2 Nikolai Dobrolyubov (1836–61), poet, literary critic and fierce opponent of tsarist autocracy.

fn3 Gleb Uspensky (1843–1902), writer who explored themes of the peasantry and working class; Nikolai Leskov (1831–95), highly esteemed writer of many works including Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk; Ivan Nikitin (1824–61), poet, largely of the Russian landscape and peasant life.

72: The Journalists’ Café

fn1 Cossack Stenka Razin (1630–71) led a major rebellion against tsarist Russia; Yemelyan Pugachëv (1742–75), ataman of the Yaik Cossacks, waged a bloody insurrection in the reign of Catherine the Great; ‘releasing the red cock’ is a peasant term for arson.

fn2 Andrei Bely (1880–1934), poet and novelist, best known for his Symbolist novel Petersburg; Lev Chërny (1878–1921), revolutionary and prominent Russian anarchist; Maria Petrovskaya (stage name Roxanova) (1874–1958), actress best known for her work with the Moscow Art Theatre.

fn3 Nikolai Agnivtsev (1888–1932), poet, playwright and prolific children’s author.

fn4 François Élie Jules Lemaître (1853–1914), French poet, dramatist and influential critic.

fn5 Mikhail Prishvin (1873–1954), nature writer and author of children’s books.

fn6 An international language created by a German priest, Johann Martin Schleyer, in 1880, later supplanted by the rise of Esperanto.

fn7 Anatoly Lunacharsky (1875–1933), writer, critic and Soviet commissar of enlightenment.

fn8 Major Persian poets and writers: Abū Muhammad Muslih al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shiīrāzī, known as Saadi of Shiraz (1210–91); Omar Khayyam (1048–1131); Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī, better known as Hafiz or Hafez (1315–90).

fn9 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (1844–1921), born ‘Abbás in Tehran, leader of the Bahá’í faith 1892–1921.

73: The Hall with a Fountain

fn1 A minority faction broke from the Socialist Revolutionaries in 1917 to form the Left SRs, who abandoned support of the Provisional Government in favour of the Bolsheviks and a radicalisation of the revolution. The Left SRs themselves split with the Bolsheviks after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

fn2 Yakov Sverdlov (1885–1919), early Bolshevik and chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

fn3 Fëdor Dan (1871–1947), a founder of the Menshevik Party, opponent of the Bolshevik coup.

75: Revolt

fn1 Maria Spiridonova (1884–1941), longtime revolutionary, key figure in the Left SRs, imprisoned by the Bolsheviks in 1918, executed under Stalin.

76: Material for a History of Russian Houses

fn1 Nestor Makhno (1888–1953), Ukrainian anarchist and commander of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine during the civil war.

77: A Few Explanations

fn1 Pavlo Skoropadskyi (1873–1945), Ukrainian aristocrat, general in the Russian Imperial Army, hetman of Ukraine in 1918.

78: The Riga–Orël Goods Wagon

fn1 A derogatory name for the early Soviet state from the Russian Sovet Narodnykh Deputatov – the Soviet of People’s Deputies.

fn2 First stanza of Lermontov’s poem ‘I walk out Alone on to the Road’ (1841), set to music by composer Yelizaveta Shashina (1805–1903) in 1861.

80: Our Rag-Tag Hetman

fn1 Symon Petlyura (1878–1926), Ukrainian independence leader, supreme commander (ataman) of the Ukrainian army, president of the Ukrainian People’s Republic 1918–21.

fn2 Reference to Pushkin’s 1830 drama of the same name.

fn3 Popular 1913 play by the Russian writer Mikhail Artsybashev (1878–1927), best known for his scandalous novel Sanin (1907).

fn4 Alexander Vertinsky (1889–1957), famous cabaret artist, actor, poet and composer.

fn5 Common anti-Semitic slur of the time with reference to three Jews: Vulf Vysotsky (1824–1904), successful tea merchant; Israel Brodsky (1823–88), founder of one of Russia’s largest sugar manufactories; and Bolshevik Leon Trotsky (1879–1940).

81: The Violet Ray

fn1 The Haidamaki (Haidamaks) were Ukrainian Cossack military groups that arose in the early eighteenth century.

fn2 Volodymyr Vynnychenko (1880–1951), Communist revolutionary, writer, head of the Ukrainian government 1917–18, died in exile.

fn3 Opening line of a poem by Glafira Mamoshina (1873–1942, pen-name Galina Galina) written in response to state suppression of a radical Kievan university movement.

fn4 Ivan Nikiforovich Dovgochkhun, one of the petty noble landowners in Gogol’s ‘The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich’ (1834).

fn5 Shevchenko’s epic historical poem from 1841 that tells the story of a bloody eighteenth-century Ukrainian rebellion known as the Koliivshchyna.

82: The Bolshevik and the Haidamachka

fn1 Varvara Panina (1872–1911), popular singer of Gypsy songs and early recording star.

fn2 Mikhail Koltsov (1898–1940), Bolshevik, powerful Soviet journalist, arrested and executed as an enemy of the people; Yefim Zozulya (1891–1941), journalist and war correspondent killed covering World War II.

fn3 Anton Denikin (1872–1947), former tsarist general, leader of the Volunteer Army against the Bolsheviks.

83: Crimson Riding Breeches

fn1 The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combatting Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (known by the abbreviation Cheka), the Soviet secret police, forerunner of the KGB.

fn2 From ‘A Prisoner’s Song’ (1826) by Fëdor Glinka, set to music by Nikolai Devitte (1811–44).

85: A Cry in the Night

fn1 Vasily Shulgin (1878–1976), prominent nationalist and conservative politician in the last years of tsarist Russia, publisher, ideologue of the White Movement.

87: Firinka, Running Water and a Bit of Danger

fn1 Dmitry Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky (1853–1920), noted linguist, literary scholar and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

fn2 Mishka Yaponchik (1881–1919, b. Moisei Volfovich Vinnitsky), legendary Jewish gangster, revolutionary and Soviet military commander, killed in the civil war.

fn3 Osip Runich (1889–1947, b. Osip Fradkin), early silent film star who acted alongside Vera Kholodnaya. Runich left Russia after her death in 1919 for Europe and then Africa.

fn4 Vera Inber (1890–1972), poet and translator, especially remembered for her diary of the Leningrad blockade.

fn5 Opening stanza of an untitled poem from 1830 by Pushkin.

Note on the Translation

fn1 Barnes’s publication comprises only the first three volumes of Paustovsky’s Story.

fn2 See the thorough discussion in Munir Sendich, ‘Problems of Literary Translations: Inaccuracies in Rendering from Russian – Joseph Barnes’ Translation The Story of a Life of Konstantin Paustovsky’s Povest’ o zhizni’, Russian Language Journal/Russkii iazyk, 25:91 (1971), 21–40. Similar complaints were made by Helen Muchnic in her review for the New York Review of Books, ‘A Russian Soul’, 20 Aug. 1968. Nevertheless, Barnes was awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize in 1965.

fn3 Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts: The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen, translated by Constance Garnett, revised by Humphrey Higgins, abridged by Dwight Macdonald, introduction by Isaiah Berlin (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973); Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, translated by Thomas P. Whitney and Harry Willetts, abridged by Edward E. Ericson Jr (New York: Harper & Row, 1985).

fn4 Author’s note, Novyi mir, 3 (1955), 3; Konstantin Paustovskii, Povest’ o zhizni (Moscow: TERRA, 2017), 1:551–2.

fn5 Paustovskii, Povest’ o zhizni, 1:554.