Years of Hope

IN THE EARLIER VOLUMES of his autobiography, Konstantin Paustovsky has writer of his childhood and schooldays, of the war years and of the Revolution. In fact, because Revolution made its way slowly over the whole vast area of Russia, he can be said to have lived through it three times: in 1917 in Moscow, in 1918 in Kiev and, as here described in 1921 in Odessa – recently evacuated by the White Army and still under blockade.

Conditions were appalling. Waters ass selling at five hundred roubles a bucket, there was no electricity, the remaining sticks of furniture were highly coveted prizes for their fuel value, and those who could supplement their diet of a piece of bread and some carrots, by catching fish, were lucky.
Paustovsky avoided death from starvation owing to the enterprise of an acquaintance who had the cheek to install himself and a few chosen companions as the information Service of a recently arrived government department, the head of which, when he discovered the trick was so pleased with the work the team had done that he kept on them.
Next Paustovsky went to the editorial section of the seamen, a periodical which was just about to start publication; it was sponsored by an enthusiast who had co-opted a number of good writers: it flourished for a time. Besides these ‘good writers and a number of young poets Odessa in those days harboured a genius –Babel. Paustovsky came to know him intimately, and in several chapters gives an unforgettable picture of the great stylist who explained his methods of work to him, and even showed him the twenty-two drafts which have resulted in the fifteen page story Lyubka.
Thanks to his humanity and his intense powers of observation, Paustovsky is able to make these years of cruel hardship and vital intellectual life live again both in the stories he tells of the people he meet, and in his account of his own experiences.

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