Kobrin – Kobryn, Belarus
Kremenchug – Kremenchuk, Ukraine
Kreshchatik – Khreschatyk, Kyiv, Ukraine
Kuyalnik – Kuyalnyk, Ukraine
Lodz – Łódź, Poland
Loev – Loyeŭ, Belarus
Lipki – Lypky, Ukraine
Lugansk – Luhansk, Ukraine
Lvov – Lviv, Ukraine
Lyubartov – Lubartów, Poland
Melets – Mielec, Poland
Mirgorod – Myrhorod, Ukraine
Mogilëv – Mahilioŭ, Belarus
Molodechno – Maladzyechna, Belarus
Mukden – Shenyang, China
Nesvizh – Nyasvizh, Belarus
Odessa – Odesa, Ukraine
Peking – Beijing, China
Petrograd – St Petersburg, Russia
Pilipchi – Pylypcha, Ukraine
Pishchats – Pisczcac, Poland
Plevna – Pleven, Bulgaria
Pochaev – Pochayiv, Ukraine
Podol – Podil, Ukraine
Pomoshnaya – Pomichna, Ukraine
Port Arthur – Lüshunkou, China
Priluki – Pryluky, Ukraine
Pshemysl – Przemyśl, Poland
Rybnitsa – Rîbniṭa, Moldova
Sedltse – Siedlce, Poland
Siam – Thailand
Simbirsk – Ulyanovsk, Russia
Skarzhisko – Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland
Smela – Smila, Ukraine
Solomenka – Solomyanka, Ukraine
Svyatoshino – Svyatoshyn, Ukraine
Tiflis – Tbilisi, Georgia
Trebizond – Trabzon, Turkey
Tripolie – Trypillya, Ukraine
Tsaritsyn – Volgograd, Russia
Tyasmin (river) – Tyasmyn, Ukraine
Uralsk – Oral, Kazakhstan
Vasilkov – Vasylkiv, Ukraine
Vepsh (river) – Wieprz, Poland
Vinnitsa – Vynnitsya, Ukraine
Vitebsk – Vitsebsk, Belarus
Voditsa – Vodytsya, Ukraine
Vyatka – Kirov, Russia
Vyshnitsa – Vyzhnytsia, Ukraine
Yasinovataya – Yasynuvata, Ukraine
Yekaterinoslav – Dnipro, Ukraine
Yuzovka – Donetsk, Ukraine
Zamirie – Haradzeya, Belarus
Zhitomir – Zhytomyr, Ukraine
Zhmerinka – Zhmerynka, Ukraine
Zlatopol – Zlatopil, Ukraine
Znamenka – Znamyanka, Ukraine
VINTAGE – home to the world’s greatest authors and books. Where new writers are discovered, bestselling books are found and yesterday’s classics revived for a new generation of readers.
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Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
This translation first published in Great Britain by Vintage Classics in 2022
Copyright © Konstantin Paustovsky 1945, 1946, 1955, 1957
English translation copyright © Douglas Smith 2022
Book I: The Faraway Years first serialised as ‘Dalëkie gody: povest’ o detstve’ in Russia in 1945 in Novyi mir. First published with the title Dalëkie gody: povest’ o detstve i iunosti in Russia in 1946 by Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo detskoi literatury Ministerstva Prosveshcheniia. Book II: Restless Youth first serialised as ‘Bespokoinaia iunost” in Russia in 1955 in Novyi mir. First published with the title Povest’ o zhizni in Russia in 1955 by Sovetskii pisatel’. Book III: The Dawn of an Uncertain Age first published as ‘Nachalo nevedomogo veka’ (together with Books I and II) in Vol. 3 of Sobranie sochinenii in Russia in 1957 by Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover illustration © Juan Bernabeu
Design © Suzanne Dean
ISBN: 978-1-473-54924-1
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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.