Book about life. book of wanderings

The lake is noisy

Stories of Karelian-Finnish writers

Foreword

The poetic glory of Karelian storytellers, rune singers, folk masters-architects - the creators of Kizhi, the beautiful northern nature of Karelia in its originality, the centuries-old history of the region - all this could not fail to attract the attention of poets, artists and composers different peoples and times.

The world famous "Kalevala", consisting of fifty runes (22795 verses), the best part of which was recorded from the Karelian peasant from Ladvozero Arkhip Perttunen and other Karelian rune singers of the first half of XIX century on the territory of the present Kalevalsk region of the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, brought world fame to its compiler, the Finnish scientist Elias Lennrot. Karelia is sung in the odes of Gavriil Derzhavin and the verses of Fyodor Glinka. The appeal to Karelia gave flavor and artless freshness to the first geographical essays “In the land of fearless birds” by M. Prishvin, written at the beginning of the 20th century. The Karelian land fascinated the "poet in prose" - K. Paustovsky, when in the thirties he, carried away by the Gorky plan of "The History of Factories and Plants", traveled around our northern republic. According to the writer himself, since then, as soon as he sat down at the table, took a pen and wrote a few words about Karelia, he immediately began to smell pine and juniper ... such strength that it was difficult for me to restrain myself from jumping up from my seat, from throwing myself into northern forests and spend at least two or three hours in them, suffocating from their charm ... "

The very air of Karelia, its countless lakes and forests, coastal cliffs and waterfalls breathe real poetry. It is natural, therefore, that Karelia appears in many works of art like the edge of ancient gray antiquity, where poetry, as it were, in all nature.

Poetry also breathes everything new that is being established in Karelia, which is creating communism in the fraternal family of socialist nations. Soviet Russian, Ukrainian, Tatar, Belarusian, Kabardian and other writers sang of Karelia as a young, full of strength republic. One of the poems dedicated to Karelia by the poet A. Shogentsukov is called “Dawn Land”;

Forest riot gives inspiration,
Like a song, blood and heart are cheerful.
Always in work, in striving, in motion
Karelia dawn land.

(Translated into Russian by V. Zvyagintseva)

One of the remarkable phenomena in the new socialist Karelia was the birth of written literature. After the October Revolution next to the oral folk art- "Kalevaloy" - Karelian literature appeared. Her complex path from mass agitation poetry and the first stories stylized as a fairy tale to modern developed bilingual (in Russian and Finnish) literature was a process that was striking in its novelty, reflecting the socio-historical changes in the region.

Today Karelian literature is part of the huge multinational literature of the USSR. Karelian writers have their representatives both on the Board of the Union of Writers of the RSFSR and on the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR. They have two printed organs - the monthly magazines "Punalippu" ("Red Banner") and "North".

The works of Karelian literature, which show the deeds of our people, the patriotic feat of the defenders of Soviet Motherland to civil and Great Patriotic war, the feelings and attitude of the Soviet people are poeticized.

On the basis of a keen interest in a contemporary worker, works were created that reflect a new stage in the life of the Karelian people, such as the novels "Native Paths" and "Mirya" by A. Timonen, "The Price of a Man" by D. Gusarov, "Sprouts of the Future" by T. Huuskonen , the novels “A Cart of Birch Firewood” and “Our Stars Above Us” by F. Trofimov, essays “Among the Blue Lakes” by P. Boriskov. The social processes caused by the communist transformation of the region determined the creative searches and achievements of the poets Nikolai Laine, Jaakko Rugoev, Marat Tarasov, Alexander Ivanov, Alexei Titov, Boris Schmidt, laureate of the Karelian Komsomol Prize Taisto Sumanen.

A contribution to the revolutionary historical genre of Karelian literature was the tetralogy "Watershed" by N. Yakkol, the trilogy "White Sea" by A. Linevskiy, laureate of the State Prize of the Karelian ASSR, and "Suomi on Fire" by U. Wikstrom, the novel "We are Karelians" by A. Timonen , the play "In the Ring of Fire" by P. Boriskov, the poem-dilogue "The Tale of the Karelians" by Y. Rugoev.

Children's literature, folklore, literary criticism and translation activities are developing in the republic. The publishing business in Karelia reached a huge scale.

There is a record of the Danish writer Martin Andersen-Nekse, who visited Karelia in 1922, when the young republic - the Karelian Labor Commune - had just begun socialist transformations: “Karelia is a forest with lakes scattered in it ... Cultural development almost did not budge for centuries ... I sincerely felt sorry for my comrade and friend Gylling, who took on such a seemingly impossible task as the creation of an ultra-modern society from this mixture of the Middle Ages and deep antiquity ... "But years passed, and everything changed.

The historical movement of the people, the change in their worldview during the years of the revolution and subsequent Soviet years- one of the main internal themes of Karelian literature. Already in the 30s, she received development in the genre of the novel and story. This is evidenced by the dilogy “The Leaf Turns Over” by Hilda Tichli, “Inhabitants of Ümüvaara” by Emeli Parras, “Steel Whirlwind” by Oskari Johansson, “The Invincibles” by S. Kankaanpää, “Red Life” by A. Visanen, “Znamenny March” by L. Kosonen. It also received its artistic embodiment in other genres - the poem "Two Lives" by Ivan Kutasov, the poems of Yalmari Virtanen, Fedor Isakov, Lea Helo, Mikael Rutanen, in the essays "Blown Up Mountains" by Sergei Norin and in the genre of the story that had developed by that time in the Karelian literature.

The stories of the twenties presented in this collection by Arvi Nummi "The Taiga Wolf" and Tobias Guttari (Lea Helo) "Boots", differing from each other both in characters, and in language, and in the inner tone of the narration, convey to the reader the dramatic intensity and significance of the most acute period of the struggle for Soviet power. In both cases, the narrators focus on the idea of revolutionary ethics. However, if in Arvi Nummi the hero is written in the manner of one-dimensionality characteristic of the first Karelian stories (Yurie is the embodiment of an iron will, class ruthlessness that excludes any other living feeling), then in T. Guttari, on the contrary, the image of Sakari is not devoid of a deep vital beat, charm, the story is colored with unexpectedly subtle, clever humor.

The process of searching in the literature for a specific person with his individual traits on the material civil war and the fight against intervention in Karelia led Karelian storytellers in the second half of the thirties to new artistic solutions.

The heroism of struggle and labor in the first years of revolutionary transformations was intertwined with unexpected everyday collisions, reflecting the peculiarity of the process of the offensive of the new on the old. The reader will be able to feel the time and color of local life, freed from the stagnant forms of the rural way of life that reigned here before the Great October Socialist Revolution, by reading the story “To the Rooster for Judgment” by A. Linevsky. Using conciseness and capacity, heartfelt sincerity, expressiveness of the folk language, the author achieved great artistic persuasiveness.

The tendency outlined in the Karelian stories of the late thirties found its bright development in the subsequent periods of Karelian literature. Penetration into the psychological world of a Karelian woman, who has seen and experienced a lot in her life, is distinguished by the recently written story of Lidia Denisova “Red Sun”.

The feeling of socio-historical changes in the life of oneself and one's own people in the heroine of this story, the old Karelian woman, is so strong that it breaks out with unaccountable enthusiasm. The story is colorful and picturesque, rich in shades from dramatic and tragic intonations to light self-irony and pride of a person whose fate is organically connected with the main thing in the life of her people - the struggle for a better future. A man has found his happiness, found his free life in socialist reality, which is rapidly changing the face of Karelia, its way of life and culture.

The reader can compare the life of people in pre-revolutionary times and in the Soviet era, having also read the story "The Sixth Discovery" by F. Trofimov.

For a number of reasons, the genre of the story during the war years and for the first time in the post-war years in Karelian literature did not receive worthy development. The war temporarily deprived the Union of Writers of Karelia of its literary and art magazines. The war scattered Karelian writers on all fronts. Many of them did not return, having died the death of the brave: F. Isakov, S. Norin, I. Kutasov, P. Sokolov, E. Haltsonen and others. Hilda Tichla died during the war years.

This state was not a dream. It was like a half-life. It took me to the deaf clearings of Karelia or to a weak splash, or rather, a splash, of its lakes always silvering near the shore.

I lived, as it were, inside the material from which the book was born. I was sick of them. Longing for a breath of lake air, for the feeling of coolness on my face from birch leaves reached such strength that it was difficult for me to restrain myself from jumping up, rushing to the station and not returning to the northern forests and spending at least two or three hours in them, choking on their charm and listening to the cry of the cuckoo, similar to the ringing dripping of tears.

“Let the Olonets stillest dawn slowly die out,” I thought. One minute of this dawn is enough to enchant a person for life.

I left Petrozavodsk for Leningrad, and from there I returned to Moscow via the Mariinsky system.

At the Okhtenskaya pier in Leningrad, I boarded a small "lake" steamer.

There were almost no passengers. There was only one gloomy man in the salon - a purveyor of resin for turpentine and rosin production - and persistently drank black beer - ale - from small bottles. Then ale first appeared on sale.

And the purveyor and all the other passengers - very silent people - almost did not look around - they must have been here often. Meanwhile, along the banks of the Neva, they passed a continuous strip of forest. Here and there they parted to give way to a neglected park with the remains of a magnificent palace or a granite staircase descending to the very water. Crimson fireweed bloomed in the cracks of the stairs.

After Shlisselburg, the ship entered Lake Ladoga. The sky merged with the water into a grayish and warm haze. Amid this rare haze, an old striped lighthouse slowly emerged from the water.

My foolish dreams returned to me again to give up everything and become a lighthouse keeper. I was sure that I could endure loneliness, especially if I kept a library of selected books on the lighthouse. And from time to time, of course, I will write.

I peered into the lighthouse and followed it with my eyes for a long time. The captain, also a taciturn northern “eye-eyed” person, gave me binoculars covered in black leather. I tried to see through these binoculars what was happening at the lighthouse. But there must have been nothing out of the ordinary.

From the lighthouse balcony, where a large green bell hung, flags were signaled to us, and we answered. It turns out that we were asked to transfer Sviritsa to the passing pier, so that diesel fuel and more Cannon cigarettes would be sent to the lighthouse (there were such cigarettes at that time - very thick and really similar to the barrels of small cannons).

I liked that in the window of the lighthouse, high above the water's edge, everyone's favorite geranium bloomed in a box. Obviously, a woman lived at the lighthouse, but I did not see her.

Then, closer to dusk, a mysterious movement of airspaces began. There were no clouds. The haze dissipated, but in its place some kind of pink layered glow lay on the surface of the water and began to slowly flare up until the entire western half of the sky and water was filled with the reddish glow of sunset.

I have never seen such a long sunset - it did not go out, remained in the sky until morning and, as it were, lowered silence onto the lake.

In the quiet twilight, the ship's side lights were lit, which, in my opinion, were completely unnecessary, since everything was clearly visible in the distance for a good five miles.

We were lucky. Daytime calm turned into night, even more calm. Not a single wave broke. Only the water gurgled softly behind the stern.

The captain told me that I was obviously a happy person, since such weather rarely happens on Ladoga. Sometimes it is so stormy that it fits the Barents Sea.

On the stormy Svir we met a rapids, where we climbed with a double draft. Our ship was exhausted, working full swing against the stream. He was assisted by a powerful tugboat.

I remember the long fishing villages of the Svir stretched along the river, boats with prows curved like swan necks (as on the ancient Novgorod boats), the singing of women who beat laundry on rafts with rollers.

I often looked from the deck to the north, towards Olonets - a wooded, poor and, as they used to say in the old days, "forgotten by people and God" land.

I have wanted to go there for a long time. For some reason, it always seemed to me that it was there that something very good would happen to me.

Over the years, there have been more and more such places where something good must happen. In the end, I felt like an old-timer in many places in my imagination.

In every region, in every region, I looked for the most attractive corner and, as it were, "left it behind me." For the most part, these were little-known places: in the north - Olonets and Kargopol, Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery and Central Russia- a nice city named Sapozhek, Zadonsk, Narovchat, in Belarus - Bobruisk, in the north-west - Gdov and Ostrov and many other places. So many that I wouldn't have enough life to go everywhere.

The Olonets land now lay before me, shy, meager. The wind, rising in the evening and carrying the chilly air of rain, bent the coastal willow bushes and rustled impetuously in them.

In the city of Voznesenye on Lake Onega, we, the passengers, boarded a very small so-called "ditch" steamer named "Writer". He went around Lake Onega along the bypass canal to the city of Vytegra and further - along the Mariinsky system.

The steamer was so old that it did not have not only electric lighting, but even kerosene lamps. Paraffin candles burned in tin lanterns in the cabins.

From these candles, the nights immediately became thicker and more impenetrable, and the places where we sailed became more muffled, roadless and deserted. Yes, it really was.

I went out on deck at night, sat for a long time on a bench near a hoarse chimney, looked into the darkness, where endless invisible forests rustled, where not a single thing was visible, and it seemed to me that by some miracle I had come from the twentieth century to the time of Ivan Kalita and that if you get off the ship, you will immediately disappear, get lost, you will not meet a single person for hundreds of kilometers, you will not hear a human voice, but only the barking of foxes and the howl of wolves.

The wilderness began outside the town of Vytegra.

This log town, overgrown with ants, like a rich green carpet, was the key to the Mariinsky system. Everywhere the water roared evenly, merging from the mud-covered dams. White, severe cathedrals stood on the slopes. Birch trees grew in the gardens. By dusk, old women in black kerchiefs were sitting on benches near the gates, weaving lace and waiting for the cows. The streets smelled of fresh milk. On the old stone house with vaults, which now housed the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, hung a crimson mailbox with a white inscription: "Box for complaints against persons who are dismissive of the proletariat."

The answers to tasks 1–24 are a word, a phrase, a number or a sequence of words, numbers. Write your answer to the right of the task number without spaces, commas or other additional characters.

Read the text and do tasks 1-3.

(1) Getting into such environmental conditions in which the continuation of life processes is impossible, some organisms may fall into anabiosis, that is, a state characterized by a sharp decrease or even temporary cessation of metabolism. (2) ______ suspended animation is an important adaptation of many species of living beings to adverse environmental conditions. (H) Deep freezing of eggs of especially valuable farm animals for long-term storage and subsequent wide use - an example of the use of suspended animation in practical activities of people.

Which of the following sentences correctly conveys the MAIN information contained in the text?

1. In the process of practical activity, people have learned to use the state of suspended animation, which is characteristic of some organisms.

2. The state of anabiosis allows some species of animals to adapt to adverse conditions in which the continuation of life processes is impossible.

3. People in their practical activities can use the state of suspended animation, which allows some animals to adapt to adverse living conditions.

4. The state of anabiosis is caused by the entry of organisms into such conditions under which the continuation of life processes is difficult or impossible.

5. The state of anabiosis, which allows some animals to adapt to adverse environmental conditions, can be used in practical human activities.

Which of the following words (combinations of words) should be in place of the gap in the second (2) sentence of the text? Write down this word (combination of words).

1. Despite this,

3. So

5. Because

Read the fragment of the dictionary entry, which gives the meaning of the word CONDITION. Determine the meaning in which this word is used in the first (1) sentence of the text. Write down the number corresponding to this value in the given fragment of the dictionary entry.

CONDITION, -i, cf.

1. The circumstance from which sth. depends. Self-demanding - success.

2. A claim made by one of the contracting parties. State your terms. Armistice terms.

3. An oral or written agreement about something, an agreement (outdated). Conclude, break u.

4. pl. what. The rules established in some areas of life and activity. On preferential terms. Conditions of residence in the hostel.

5. pl. The setting in which something happens. Good working conditions. natural conditions. Living conditions. Operate under favorable conditions.

6. usually pl. Data, requirements from which to proceed. Conditions of the problem.

In one of the words below, a mistake was made in setting the stress: the letter denoting the stressed vowel is highlighted INCORRECTLY. Write out this word.

waited

started

In one of the sentences below, the underlined word is WRONGLY used. Correct the mistake and write the word correctly.

1. The best pulp and newsprint, charcoal, acetic acid are produced from softwood.

2. Professional RESCUE services arose where a person was in particular danger - on the water and in the mountains.

3. The singer showed RARE artistry in the Countess's aria from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.

4. This amazing, MAJESTIC, unique temple is an adornment of our city and all of Russia.

5. I have warm MEMORIES about trips to the zoo with my grandmother and parents.

In one of the words highlighted below, a mistake was made in the formation of the word form. Correct the mistake and write the word correctly.

absolutely chilled

in THEIR class

THE MOST DELICIOUS ice cream

THREE Hundreds of books

several FABLES

Establish a correspondence between the sentences and the grammatical errors made in them: for each position of the first column, select the corresponding position from the second column.

GRAMMATICAL ERRORS	SUGGESTIONS
A) violation of the construction of a sentence with participial turnover	1) When you read the poems and stories of Viktor Astafiev, many questions arise.
B) an error in constructing a sentence with homogeneous members	2) According to research, Finland has the cleanest tap water in the world.
C) violation in the construction of a sentence with an inconsistent application	3) Divided into sections by breakwaters, the beach stretches for two kilometers.
D) violation of the connection between the subject and the predicate	4) The painting by Borisov-Musatov “Spring” depicts branches of cherry blossoms and dandelions ready to fly around.
E) incorrect use of the case form of a noun with a preposition	5) Literature, of course, purifies and ennobles a person with the power of the artistic word.
	6) Since ancient times, people have watched and admired sunsets.
	7) In the story "Gooseberries" by A. P. Chekhov, we see another version of the "case" existence.
	8) It seems that the cloud has turned into a monster looking at you from a height.
	9) None of those present even knew about the impending conspiracy.

Write your answer in numbers without spaces or other characters.

Determine the word in which the unstressed alternating vowel of the root is missing. Write out this word by inserting the missing letter.

accentuate

deputy... chat

keep...warm

shortened...

folding

Find a row in which the same letter is missing in both words. Write these words out with the missing letter.

inter...tiered, p...esa

oh ... mind you, and ... fled

pr ... shamed, successor ... successor (traditions)

(without) pr ... beautiful, pr ... acquired

p..nickname (in spirit), pos...yesterday

Write down the word in which the letter E is written in place of the gap.

dance...

weighty ... shy

vague ... th

gracious...

Write down the word in which the letter I is written in place of the gap.

sweep ... sh

saw ... who

unimaginable ... my

nailed ...

Identify the sentence in which NOT with the word is spelled CONTINUOUSLY. Open the brackets and write out this word.

1. The unusual disappearance of Likhodeev was joined by the (UN) FORESEEED disappearance of the administrator Varenukha.

2. The man even (NOT) MOVED at the entrance of the doctor.

3. The professor (UN)EXPECTEDLY mysteriously beckoned both friends closer to him.

4. Nothing (NOT) SAYS about this in any newspapers.

5. Now he was already (NOT) AIR, but ordinary, carnal.

Determine the sentence in which both underlined words are written SEPARATELY. Open the brackets and write out these two words.

1. He instantly retired (FOR) TO (WOULD) indulge in sad thoughts alone.

2. I THAT (SAME) knew how to praise things that I (NO) did not like.

3. It seemed that everything AS (AS IF) smiled at me, at WHAT (WHATEVER) I looked at.

4. (B) AS A CONSEQUENCE of illness, he had to take medicine for some time (B) FORM of syrup.

5. (AT) THE MEETING we came across rare fishermen who (NOT) LOOKING at the rain continued to fish.

Indicate all the numbers in the place of which one letter H is written.

There are no villages, no mixed (1) fields, rye (2) s, barley (3) s, buckwheat, clover and oats (4) s, there are no paths, no driving (5) s roads between these fields .

Set up punctuation marks. Indicate the numbers of sentences in which you need to put ONE comma.

1. The deep silence in nature was broken only by a monotonous noise and the buzzing of insects.

2. After long rains, the leaves and grasses and flowers were full of moisture.

3. Deep in the pond, the shore and the evening sky and white stripes of clouds were reflected.

4. For many years I have not been to my homeland, and each new visit fills my heart with joy and sadness.

5. Twilight was approaching and we had to hurry home.

The dew (1) that falls in the evening (2) is so abundant that it even shines at night (3) reflecting the light of the stars (4) and thus predicting a hot day for tomorrow.

Place punctuation marks: indicate all the numbers in the place of which commas should be in the sentences.

Listen to (1) buddy (2) you (3) say (4) sing great master.

Place punctuation marks: indicate all the numbers in the place of which commas should be in the sentence.

The longing for a breath of lake air reached such strength (1) that it was difficult for me to restrain myself (2) so as not to rush to the station (3) and not return to the northern forests (4) to spend two or three hours in them.

Place punctuation marks: indicate all the numbers in the place of which commas should be in the sentence.

A few hours later (1) Ivan became exhausted (2) and (3) when he realized (4) that he could not cope with the papers (5) he wept quietly and bitterly.

Edit the sentence: correct the lexical error by replacing the incorrectly used word. Write down the chosen word, observing the norms of modern Russian literary language.

Throughout Earth's history, the atmosphere has played a large role in the weathering process.

Read the text and complete tasks 21-26.

(1) In order to feel at ease in an intelligent environment, in order not to be a stranger among it and not to be burdened by it yourself, you need to be educated in a certain way. (2) Educated people, in my opinion, must satisfy the following conditions.

(3) They respect human personality, and therefore they are always condescending, soft, polite, compliant ... (4) They do not rebel because of a hammer or a missing gum; living with someone, they do not do a favor out of this, and when they leave, they do not say: "It is impossible to live with you!" (5) They forgive noise, and cold, and overcooked meat, and sharpness, and the presence of strangers in their homes.

(6) They are compassionate not only to beggars and cats. (7) They are sick of the soul and from what you cannot see with a simple eye. (8) So, for example, if Peter knows that his father and mother are turning gray from longing and do not sleep at night due to the fact that they rarely see Peter, then he will hasten to them. (9) Educated people do not sleep at night to help their loved ones, pay for student brothers, dress their mother ...

(10) They respect other people's property, and therefore pay debts.

(11) They are sincere and afraid of lies, like fire. (12) They do not lie even in trifles. (13) A lie is offensive to the listener and vulgarizes the speaker in his eyes. (14) They don’t show off, they keep themselves on the street just like at home, they don’t throw dust in the eyes of the smaller brethren ... (15) They are not talkative and do not climb with frankness when they are not asked. (16) Out of respect for other people's ears, they are more often silent.

(17) They do not humiliate themselves in order to arouse sympathy in another. (18) They do not play on the strings of other people's souls, so that in response they sigh and nurse them. (19) They don’t say: “They don’t understand me!” or: “I exchanged for a small coin!”, because all this has a cheap effect, it’s vulgar, old, false.

(20) They are not vain. (21) They are not interested in such fake diamonds as dating celebrities. (22) Doing for a penny, they do not rush about with their folder for a hundred rubles and do not boast that they were allowed to go where others were not allowed. (23) True talents always sit in the dark, in the crowd, away from the exhibition. (24) Even Krylov said that an empty barrel is more audible than a full one.

(25) If they have talent in themselves, then they respect him. (26) They sacrifice peace, women, wine, vanity for him. (27) They are proud of their talent. (28) In addition, they are squeamish.

Murmansk smelled of frozen potatoes and weak anise mixture. This sweetish and unpleasant odor obviously came from the Barents Sea.

The dark and heavy waves of this inhospitable sea shone with an iron sheen. I did not envy those people who for the first time in their lives saw this particular sea, while they should have seen the Black Sea, or at least the Sea of Azov.

People are often unfair not only in relation to their own kind, but also to natural phenomena, in particular to the seas. The Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov is considered to be a puddle and a swamp. Meanwhile, it is very warm and fishy, and in its western part it is distinguished by greenish water of a bright and beautiful tone. This color of the Azov water is especially noticeable, when steep waves rise with a transparent crest to fall on shell beaches, and the sun shines through the water.

But the Barents Sea did not please. From his proximity, the face was reduced by a cutting chill, although it was already May and the white nights were established under these latitudes. But they were completely different from the white nights of Leningrad. The ghostliness and thoughtfulness disappeared from them. Only the hard light remained, as cold as melted water.

Murmansk at that time (in the spring of 1932) was log, littered with wood chips and disorderly.

In the new, freshly cut down hotel, the guests stuck to the resinous walls.

I ended up in Murmansk without much need. If this city did not stand on the edge of the earth, on the polar ocean, and it would not end Railway, then I could say that I hit it in passing.

I went north, to Karelia, to write the history of the Onega plant. This plant was located in Petrozavodsk, and I did not have to go further than this city. But indestructible curiosity made me first call 9 Murmansk. And I don't regret it.

I saw the Barents Sea, stone shores overgrown with stone lichen, and tundra beyond the Arctic Circle. It looked like gigantic military cemeteries after the First World War. But instead of crosses, frail birch trunks with broken tops stuck out on it, or rather, rotten birch poles. The tops of birches in the tundra dried up and fell off on their own.

I saw a huge fishing fleet and the northern mountains near Lake Imandra, I saw deer, which had something in common with rabbits, since it is difficult to consider both of them as real, full-fledged animals, they seemed to me so weak.

I saw the edge of the gray ocean, the island of Kildin, and the leaden sky, smoothed by incessant winds.

Yes, great courage and endurance were needed to voluntarily doom oneself to a permanent life in these places. All the time I lacked warmth - the ordinary warmth from the most ordinary Russian stove, the meager comfort that would be expressed in a cup of strong coffee, the latest issue of Ogonyok and in the motionless glossy ficus leaves.

In the end, after living in Murmansk for several days, I fled south to cute, hospitable and leisurely Petrozavodsk.

I was offered to write the history of the Onega Plant by the Editorial Board on the History of Factories and Plants, invented by Gorky.

From a large list of plants, due to my somewhat boyish disposition, I chose the Onega Plant in Petrozavodsk, because the plant was very old, founded by Peter the Great, first as a cannon and anchor plant, then as an iron casting plant (fences for St. Petersburg embankments and gardens), and in the thirties he made road cars - graders, which was a necessary and noble thing in roadless Russia.

In Petrozavodsk, I took up the history of this plant. In his machine tools, machines, in buildings and in the factory mores themselves, there was an amazing mixture of different times - from Peter to the beginning of the twentieth century.

I wandered around the city a lot without any purpose and, one might say, “wandered” in Petrozavodsk the idea of my book “The Fate of Charles Lonsevil”.

I wrote about this in detail in the same "Golden Rose". I refer to this book too often because it is autobiographical through and through and could be one of the parts of the Tale of Life.

If I were given a lot of free time in the future, I would certainly write the history of many books.

The fact is that each book written is, as it were, the core of some kind of nebula raging in a person, a star that was born from this nebula and acquires its own light.

Perhaps we bring only one hundredth of our life into the narrow framework of our books, and ninety-nine hundredths remain outside the books and are preserved only in our memory as a fruitless, but, despite this, still significant and precious burden.

Powerless regret about what we could have done and what we did not do out of laziness, due to our amazing ability to kill time for small worldly necessities and worries, comes to us, as a rule, too late.

How many interesting things we could write if we did not waste time on trifles!

Somehow, the writer Alexander Stepanovich Green decided to calculate how much time a person spends during his life asking “what time is it?”. By his calculations, this question alone takes us several days. If we collect all the unnecessary and mechanical words that we pronounce, then we get whole years.

In mechanics, there is the concept of "utility factor". So, for a person, this “utility factor” is negligible. We were horrified when we learned that the locomotive blew almost 80 percent of the steam that it produced, without any benefit, but we are not afraid that we ourselves “release” nine-tenths of our life without any benefit and joy for ourselves and surrounding.

But these passing thoughts also interfere and lead away from the narrative. Let's get back to him.

From Petrozavodsk, I went to the Kivach waterfall and saw this, in the words of Derzhavin, "a diamond rolling mountain."

I saw many lakes with tin-colored water, breathed the smell of bark that permeated all of Karelia, listened to the old storyteller from Zaonezhye, whose songs were born from the northern night and northern female longing, saw our wooden Florence - churches and monasteries, swam on Lake Onega and still I still cannot get rid of the impression that it is enchanted and left to us from those times when the primordial silence of the earth was not yet broken by a single powder explosion.

I never for a moment lost the feeling of this country, immersed in the scattered northern light.

Life in Petrozavodsk at that time was unsettled and rather hungry. I lived and ate in the dining room of the Peasant's House steamed turnips without salt and boiled vendace mashed into a greenish porridge. The food was nauseating.

The peasant's house was built by the best lumberjacks. They decorated its walls with magnificent northern carvings. In the evenings, dances were held in a large hall that smelled of wax. Each time, tall and strong fair-haired Karelian girls in tight bodices and light flying skirts appeared on them.

I once made up my mind and danced with one of them, and for a long time I could not forget her pale, swooning face, half-lidded blue eyes, and the warmth of her strong thigh. When she finished dancing, she playfully squeezed my face with her thin palms and ran away. I couldn't find her anymore.

In the working settlement of Golikovka, a regional museum was arranged in the former church. There, next to huge fragments of pink and golden mica, were exhibited lace and samples of heavy and magnificent cast iron.

In this museum, where I was completely alone (except for the old watchman, there was almost never anyone there), I realized that until then I had behaved in museums, like most visitors, unreasonable and tedious. I tried to cover everything as much as possible. Half an hour later, a dull headache began, and I left broken and devastated.

Ridiculous was my most sincere desire to learn in two or three hours everything that had been created for centuries and accumulated by people over many, many years.

After my first acquaintance with the Hermitage, and then with the Louvre and other art galleries and museums, I came to the conclusion that museums in the form in which they exist, as countless collections of human masterpieces and natural rarities, are of little use. They accustom to superficiality, to superficial knowledge and to fleeting - the most fruitless - impressions.

I thought that it was most reasonable to organize small museums dedicated to just a few artists, or even one (like the Rodin Museum in Paris, Golubkina in Moscow), or a certain and not very long time in our history, or, finally, one of some area of knowledge and the geographical area of the country - the North or the Volga region, the Caucasus or the Far East.

A much more vivid impression remains, say, from the ruins of ancient cities than from the collections of things associated with these ruins and displayed in shop windows.

The wind blowing over the remains of ancient basilicas, the constant bitterness of wormwood, rough warm lichen, stupid blackbirds trying to peck at small lizards carved by ancient masters on darkened marble columns, the blue of the desert sky flowing overhead - all this plunges into the world of majestic poetry, into the region distant past, which suddenly turns out to be very close. It is easier to understand the past in the open air than in halls with shiny parquet floors.

I experienced this feeling in Pompeii, Chersonese, Tauride, in the ruins of Nikopolis in Bulgaria and in St. Remy in Provence, where frogs jump from under their feet into the bottomless Roman cisterns of black water.

In Petrozavodsk, having briefly examined the museum, I chose mica for study - transparent, layered and flexible, and therefore strange - a mineral that shimmers with a variety of lively brilliance.

At first, I spent a lot of time looking at different grades of mica - from black to gold and from purple and dark green to smoky white. Inside the thinnest mica plates, one could see many hairline cracks formed according to some unknown laws.

The next day I went to a certain institution - I do not remember its intricate name - which was in charge of the extraction of mica. They were surprised, but they gave me all the mica "literature" and generously gave me several pieces of multi-colored mica.

It easily split into the thinnest, almost microscopic plates. The most surprising thing was that these plates, separated from a large and heavy piece of completely black mica, turned out to be white and transparent.

I read everything I could get my hands on about mica, about all its wonderful and even mysterious properties. This knowledge in itself pleased me, although at first I did not intend to use it.

True, acquaintance with mica added several poetic features to the appearance of Karelia. I saw the mother-of-pearl luster of mica in everything - in the water of Lake Onega, in the granite "lamb foreheads" (it shone finely in them, as if it had been scattered millions of years ago and it was soldered into an impenetrable stone), in the very air, whitish from bright nights, in the starry sky over Karelia - it sparkled and refracted, as if through black mica. Even the occasional rainfall that spring was like countless mica flakes falling.

Then I decided to write a book about mica. At that time, many were fond of the books of the French writer Pierre Ampa. He published pictorial novels about various industries, such as the manufacture of perfumes in the south of France.

I wanted to write a similar book about mica. And I would have written it - in my youth everything is possible, if I had not started writing two small books that were born in my imagination in the north - The Fate of Charles Launseville and The Lake Front.

While working on these books, I experienced a strange state. Much later, I read about him in an article by some researcher of literature.

As soon as I sat down at the table, took a pen and wrote a few words about Karelia, I immediately began to smell the pine and juniper. It penetrated into the room from somewhere, although there were no pines or junipers around, but only lindens were in full bloom (this was in Solotch).

Sometimes I sat for a long time at the table, thinking, in a stupor, then suddenly came to my senses, as if shaking off an obsessive dream, and for a long time tried to remember what had happened to me in those few minutes when, putting down my pen and resting my head in my hands, I sat over with his manuscript.

And suddenly I remembered. I, on the other hand, sat crouched on the side of the forest road and tried very carefully to unfold the spiral shoot of a young fern. What for? To inhale a sip of coolness tightly locked in it. Everything smelled like pine. The last year's shriveled berries, plucked from the juniper, also smelled of pine and smelled of black grouse plumage, the wild smell of impassable thickets and swamps. This happened several times.