Nature's Diary

by Mikhail Prishvin, L. Navrozov (Translator), John Updike (Introduction)

A lyrical description of the natural history of the far corners of Russia. To those who had followed that secluded path through Prishvin's green world, filled with light and wind, the earth will never again seem motionless or dull.

The feeling of life was so strong in Prishvin that his briefest records, the notes in his Nature's Diary, became lyric poetry, and his short stories - poems. He had the rare gift of combining accurate, businesslike observations of life in nature with romantic flights of fancy, with a wealth of imagination that was daring and individual.

In addition to Prishvin's wealth of information in botany, phenology, ethnology, agronomy, zoology, folklore, ornithology, geography, meteorology and other sciences, he had the happy gift of seeing nature and nature's phenomena in their most romantic aspect.

Genres: Fiction, Russia

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin (Russian: Михаил Михайлович Пришвин) (4 February 1873 - January 16, 1954) was a Russian/Soviet writer.

Mikhail Prishvin was born in the family mansion of Krutschevo, near the city of Yelets in what is now Lipetsk Oblast into the family of a merchant. In 1893-1897, he studied at a polytechnic school in Riga and was once arrested for his involvement with Marxist circles. In 1902, Prishvin graduated from the University of Leipzig with a degree in agronomics. During World War I, he worked as a military journalist. After the war, Prishvin was employed as a publicist and then a rural teacher. He began writing for magazines in 1898, but his first short story, "Sashok," was published in 1906. Prishvin's works are full of poetics, exceptional keenness of observation, and descriptions of nature. Many of his works were translated into different languages and became part of the gold fund of the Soviet children's literature. Mikhail Prishvin was awarded two orders.