SCARLET SAILS, Alexander Green's magic fairy tale
http://home.wanadoo.nl/scarletsails/AboutAutor.htm
Alexander Green is one of the most popular of all Russian writers in his native land. In 1965, his collected works appeared in the Soviet Union in a six-volume, hard-cover edition of which 463,000 sets were sold. In recent years repeated printings of from 100,000 to 300,000 copies of his most popular stories have sold out almost as soon as they were published. There are never enough copies available to meet the great demand for his works.
Green is adored by Russian readers. In Leningrad (now St.Peterburg ) there is a fan club in existence whose young members call themselves "The Scarlet Sails." They wear special insignia, and devote themselves to the study of Green's works and the furtherance of his literary heritage.
From his writings one does not recognize Alexander Green as a Russian. His pen name sounds un-Russian. His works, including SCARLET SAILS, are set in a mythical "Western" land where places have such un-Russian names as Caperna, Lisse, and Zurbagan, and people are called Asole, Grey, Longren, and Thomas Harvey.
The appeal of Green's writing is universal. It lies very much in the exotic, romantic, faraway atmosphere that he creates. Because of this he has been compared to Edgar Alien Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Bret Harte. Yet Alexander Green was as Russian as samovars. He was born Alexander Grinyevsky, in 1880, in the Russian backwoods town of Vyatka and lived his entire life in Russia. The only foreign country he ever visited was Egypt, where he went on shore leave for a few hours in Alexandria from a ship on which he was employed. Green aspired to travel throughout the world, but he was never able to do so. He hoped to sail the seven seas, but in this, too, he failed, except in the richness of his imagination. Until his late twenties he was a failure in everything. He tried to become a sailor but did not make the grade. He prospected for gold in the Urals and found none. He worked in the rough and tough oil town of Baku as a roustabout and nearly died of the hardships he suffered. He enlisted in the Russian army and deserted. He became a member of the anti-Tsarist revolutionary underground and was arrested, jailed, then exiled.
It was after these experiences that he began to write, and as a writer he was immediately successful. From 1906 on, he began to be widely published in Russia. When the Revolution came in 1917, he had already acquired a considerable reputation. Yet, despite his fame, he nearly died of illness and hunger in 1921, after having served in the Red Army. It was in this period that he wrote SCARLET SAILS. A model boat that he saw in the window of a toy store in Petrograd (later Leningrad, now St.Peterburg) in 1917 or early 1918 inspired the book. He carried his manuscript with him while in the army and completed it during a slow convalescence from typhus. SCARLET SAILS was published in part in 1922 and in its complete version in 1923. It became a Russian classic, beloved not only by the young but by readers of all ages. It formed the basis for a beautiful ballet created in the late thirties and was made into a motion picture in 1961.
After completing SCARLET SAILS, Alexander Green went on to write many more books. In 1923 he moved to the Crimea, where he died of cancer at the young age of fifty-two. His short stories, novels, and tales of adventure are known to nearly all Russian readers, but none of his books is quite as popular or as beautiful as SCARLET SAILS.
Alexander Green experienced at first hand all the suffering and all the poverty that were to be found in Russia, for his life was hard from beginning to end. But out of his imagination he wove rich and vivid stories filled with sunlight, gaiety, and adventure, stories that have brought joy to millions of people.
Scarlet Sails is a story of such amazing rare beauty and magic that nothing can compare to it. You don't have to take my word for granted. Read it. You won't be disappointed.
http://home.wanadoo.nl/scarletsails/ - English
http://lib.ru/RUSSLIT/GRIN/parusa.txt - Russian
Dum Spiro - Spero
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