Ilse’s Reviews > Onrustige jeugd: prelude op de Russische revolutie > Status Update

Once when I had nothing else to do I began to look at a crumpled old newspaper in which cheese had been wrapped. In the list of those who had fallen at the front there was printed: “Killed on the Galician front, Lieutenant of Engineers Boris Georgievich Paustovsky” and a little lower: “Killed in fighting near Riga, Ensign Vadim Georgievich Paustovsky.”

These were my two brothers. They had fallen on the same day.

I read a lot in the hospital. Everyone was interested then in Scandinavian writers — Ibsen, Strindberg, Hamsun, Bang. I read a lot of Ibsen, that great manual laborer of the human soul. Then I ran across Muratov’s Images of Italy and I grew giddy with the bitter air of Italian museums and cathedrals. I started to read Andreyev’s The Life of a Man , but I put this book aside for the simple, clean Steppe of Chekhov.

Gronsky took a small volume out of the pocket of his field jacket, tossed it in the air, and said with genuine pathos in his voice :“Eugene Onegin ! I cannot part with this. Never! Let the world fall to pieces, but these words will go on living in their own immortal glory.”

We argued most of all about Germany, and about the incredible stupidity and insolence of the Prussian army. The twirled-up ends of Wilhelm II’s mustache — the dream of all drill masters and pimps — were the symbol of Germany at that time. It had no relation with the fact that Schiller and Heine, Richard Wagner and the wonderful young writer Heinrich Mann, lived in the same country.

How could I have explained to them that my awareness of nature was something larger than just surprise at its perfection, that my feeling was not just a vague love for nature but a recognition of it as something indispensable to any man wanting to work in the full measure of his strength? People usually go to nature as to a vacation. But I felt that a life in nature should be the constant vocation of every man.

This was the summer when everyone was admiring Belgium — the little country which had taken the first blow of the German army. People sang songs everywhere about the defenders of besieged Liege. Belgium was smashed to smithereens in two or three days. The halo of martyrdom hung over the country.

I did nothing but read until I was exhausted. At first Grandmother was cross at me but then she grew used to it and left me in peace. She only commented that I was spending my time senselessly and that it would all end in galloping consumption. But what could Grandmother do with my new friends? What could she object to in Pushkin or Heine, Fet or Leconte de Lisle, Dickens or Lermontov?

The gardens of Kiev would be burning in gold outside the windows of the auditorium. Autumn in Kiev was always a protracted season. The southern summer stored up in the city parks and gardens so much sunshine, so much green, so much of the smell of flowers, that it was always sorry to abandon such wealth and make way for autumn. So almost every year, summer threw the calendar into confusion and delayed its departure.