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Alexander Green is one of the
most popular of all Russian writers in Russia. There are never enough copies
available to meet the great demand for his works. Green is adored by
Russian readers for the romantic spirit that is in every of his books.
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 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. |
