Two Captains
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
I recall a spring day in 1921, when Maxim Gorky first invited to his home a group of young Leningrad writers, myself among them. He lived in Kronwerk Street and the windows of his flat overlooked Alexandrovsky Park.
We trooped in, so many of us that we took quite a time getting seated, the bolder ones closer to the host, the more timid on the ottoman, from which it was a job getting up afterwards-it was so soft and sagged almost to the floor. I shall always remember that ottoman of Gorky's. When I lowered myself on to it I saw my outstretched feet encased in shabby soldier's boots. I couldn't hide them away. As for getting up-it was not to be thought of. Those boots worried me until I noticed a pair just as bad, if not worse, on Vsevolod Ivanov, who was sitting next to Gorky.
Alice in her wonderland underwent strange transformations on almost every page of Carroll's book. At one moment she becomes so small that she freely goes down a rabbit's hole, the next so tall that she can speak only with birds living in the tree-tops. Something like that was happening to me at Gorky's place. At one moment I thought I ought to put in a word of my own in the conversation that had started between Gorky and my older companions, a word so profound that it would make them all sit up. The next minute I shrank so small on that low uncomfortable ottoman that I felt a sort of Tom Thumb, not that brave little fellow we all know, but a somewhat timorous Tom Thumb, at once timorous and proud.
Gorky began to speak with approval about Ivanov's latest short story
"The Brazier of Archangel Gabriel". It was this that started me on my transformations. Ivanov's story was far removed from anything that interested me in literature, and I took Gorky's high opinion of it as a harsh verdict on all my hopes and dreams. Gorky read the story out aloud.
His face softened, his eyes grew tender and his gestures betrayed that benign mood so familiar to everyone who had seen Gorky in moments of pure rapture.
He dabbed his eyes with his handkerchief and began to speak about the story. His admiration for it did not prevent him from seeing its shortcomings. Some of his remarks applied even to the choice of words.
"What is the work of a writer?" he asked, and for the first time I heard some very curious things. The work of a writer, it appeared, was simply work, the daily, maybe hourly work of writing, writing on paper or in one's mind. It meant piles of rough copies, dozens of crossed-out versions.
It meant patience, because talent imposed upon the writer a peculiar pattern of life in which patience was the most important thing of all. It was the life of Zola, who used to strap himself to his chair; of Goncharov, who took about twenty years writing his novel Obryv (Precipice); of Jack London, who died of fatigue, whatever his doctors may have said. It was hard life of self-dedication, full of trials and disappointments. "Don't you believe those who say that it is easy bread," Gorky said.
To describe a writer's work in all its diversity is no light task. I may get nearest to doing this by simply answering the numerous letters I have received in connection with my novel Two Captains and thus telling the story of how this one novel at least came to be written.
The questions my correspondents ask chiefly concern the two heroes of my novel-Sanya Grigoriev and Captain Tatarinov. Many of them ask whether it was my own life that I described in Two Captains. Some want to know whether the story of Captain Tatarinov was invented by me. Others search for the name in books of geography and encyclopedias and are surprised to find that the activities of Captain Tatarinov have left no visible traces in the history of Arctic exploration. Some want to know where Sanya Grigoriev and Katya Tatarinova are living at present and what rank Sanya was promoted to after the war. Others ask the author's advice as to what job they should devote their lives. The mother of a boy, known as the terror of the town, whose pranks often verged on hooliganism, wrote me that after reading my novel her son had become a different person, and shortly afterwards I received a letter from Alexander Rokotov himself which showed that the boy was intelligent and talented as well as mischievous. Some years have passed since then, and student Rokotov of the Aviation Institute has acquired expert knowledge in aircraft construction.
It took me about five years to write this novel. When the first book was finished the war started, and it was not until 1944 that I returned to my work. The idea of writing this novel originated in 1937, after I had met a man whom I have portrayed in Two Captains under the name of Sanya Grigoriev. This man told me the story of his life-a life filled with hard work, self-dedication and love of his country.I made it a rule from the very first page not to invent anything, or hardly anything. In fact, even such a curious detail as the muteness of little Sanya has not been invented by me.
His mother and father, his sister and friends have been described exactly as they first appeared to me in the narrative of my chance acquaintance, who afterwards became my friend. Of some of the personages of my future book I learned from him very little. Korablev, for example, was sketchily described in his narrative as a man with a quick searching eye, which invariably made the schoolchildren speak the truth; other characteristics were a moustache and a walking stick and a habit of sitting over a book late into the night.
This outline had to be filled in by the author's imagination in order to create a character study of a Soviet schoolteacher.
The story, as told to me, was really a very simple one. It was the story of a boy who had had a cheerless childhood and was brought up by Soviet society, by people who had taken the place of his dead parents and had sustained in him the dream he had cherished in his ardent and honest heart since early childhood.
Nearly all the circumstances of this boy's life, and later of his youth and manhood, have been retained in the novel. His childhood years, however, were spent on the Volga and his school years in Tashkent-places with which I am not very familiar. I have therefore transferred the early scene of my book to my own hometown, which I have named Ensk. No wonder my fellow townsmen have so easily deciphered the town's real name. My school years (the senior forms) were spent in Moscow, and I have been able to describe in my book a Moscow school of the early twenties with greater authenticity than I could have achieved with a Tashkent school.
I might mention another question which my correspondents ask me, namely, to what extent the novel Two Captains is autobiographical. To a considerable extent everything, from the first to the last page, that Sanya Grigoriev has seen has been seen by the author with his own eyes. Our two lives ran parallel, so to speak. But when Sanya Grigoriev's profession came into the book I had to drop the "personal" material and make a study of the life of pilots, of which I had known very little until then.
Invaluable assistance in studying aeronautics was given me by Senior Lieutenant S. Y. Klebanov, who died the death of a hero in 1943. He was a talented pilot, a brave officer and a fine, upright man. I was proud of his friendship. During my work on the second volume I came across (among the materials of the War Study Commission) testimonials of Klebanov's brother-officers showing that my high opinion of him was shared by his comrades.
It is difficult, well nigh impossible, to give any complete answer to the question of how one or another character of a literary work is created, especially if the narrative is in the first person. Apart from those observations, reminiscences, and impressions which I have mentioned, my book contains thousands of others which had no direct bearings on the story as told to me and which served as the groundwork for Two Captains. Imagination, as everyone knows, plays a tremendous role in a writer's work. And it is on this that one must speak before passing to the story of my second principal character Captain Tatarinov.
Don't look for his name in encyclopedias or handbooks. Don't try to prove, as one pupil did at a geography lesson, that it was Tatarinov and not Vilkitsky who discovered Novaya Zemlya. For the older of my two captains I used the story of two brave explorers of the Arctic. One of them supplied me with the courageous character of a man pure in thought and clear in aim-qualities that bespeak a noble soul. This was Sedov. From the other I took the actual story of his voyage. This was Brusilov. The drift of my St.
Maria repeats exactly the drift of Brusilov's St. Anne. The diaries of Navigating Officer Klimov quoted in my novel are based on the diary of Albanov, Navigating Officer of the St. Anne, one of the two surviving members of that tragic expedition. The historical material alone, however, did not seem enough to me. I knew that there lived in Leningrad a painter and writer by the name of Nikolai Pinegin, a friend of Sedov's and one of those who had brought his schooner the St. Phocas back to the mainland after the death of Sedov. We met, and Pinegin not only told me a lot more about Sedov and gave me a vivid picture of the man, but explained the tragedy of his life, the life of a great explorer slandered and refused recognition by reactionary circles of society in tsarist Russia. Incidentally, during one of my meetings with Pinegin the latter treated me to some tinned food which he had picked up at Cape Flora in 1914, and to my amazement I found it excellent. I mention this trivial detail because it is characteristic of Pinegin and of the range of interests into which I was drawn during my visits to this "Arctic home".
Later, when the first volume had already appeared, Sedov's widow gave me a lot of interesting information. The summer of 1941 found me working hard on the second volume, in which I intended to make wide use of the story of the famous airman Levanevsky. My plan was thought out, the materials were studied and the first chapters written. V. Y. Vize, the well-known scientist and Arctic explorer, approved the contents of the future "Arctic" chapters and told me many interesting things about the work of search parties. But the war broke out and I had to dismiss for a long time the very idea of finishing the novel. I wrote front-line reportage, war sketches and short stories. However, the hope of being able to take up the novel again apparently did not leave me, otherwise I would not have found myself asking the editor of Izves-tia to send me to the Northern Front. It was there, among the airmen and submarines of the Northern Fleet that I realised that the characters of my book would appear blurred and sketchy if I did not describe how, together with all the Soviet people, they had borne the dreadful ordeals of the war and won it.
I had known from books, reports and personal impressions what peacetime life was like among those people, who had worked to turn the Northern Country into a smiling hospitable land, who had tapped the incalculable resources that lay within the Arctic Circle, who had built towns, docks, mines and factories there. Now, during the war, I saw all this prodigious energy dedicated to the defence of this land and of these gains. I might be told that the same thing happened in every corner of our land. Of course it did, but the severe conditions of the North gave to it a special, expressive touch.
I don't think I have been able to answer all the questions of my correspondents. Who served as the prototype of Nikolai Antonich? Where did I get Nina Kapitonovna? What truth is there in the story of Sanya's and Katya's love?
To answer these questions I would have to ascertain, if only approximately, to what extent one or another figure was an actor in real life. As regards Nikolai Antonich, for instance, no such effort on my part would be needed. I have changed only a few outward features in my portrait of the real headmaster of the Moscow school which I finished in 1919. The same applies to Nina Kapitonovna, who could but recently be met in Sivtsev Vrazhek, wearing the same green jacket and carrying the same shopping bag.
As for the love of Sanya and Katya, I had had only the youthful period of this story told to me. Exercising the prerogative of the novelist, I drew from this story my own conclusions, which seemed to me only natural for the hero of my book.
One schoolboy, by the way, wrote telling me that exactly the same thing had happened to him-he had fallen in love with a girl and kissed her in the school grounds. "So that now that your book Two Captains is finished, you can write about me," the boy suggested.
Here is another incident which, indirectly, answers the question as to what truth there is in the love of Sanya and Katya. One day I received a letter from Ordzhonikidze (Northern Caucasus) from a lady named Irina N. who wrote, "After reading your novel I feel certain that you are the man I have been looking for these last eighteen years. I am persuaded of this not only by the details of my life given in the novel, which could be known to you alone, but also by the places and even the dates of our meetings in Triumfalnaya Square and outside the Bolshoi Theatre..." I replied that I had never made any dates with my correspondent in Triumfalnaya Square or outside the Bolshoi Theatre, and that I would have to make inquiries of the Arctic pilot who had served as the prototype for my hero. But the war started and this strange correspondence broke off.