A collection of ideal social studies essays. Analysis of a real Kim in Russian with an explanation Paustovsky sometimes has a problem with Uncle Kolya

Original text

(1) Sometimes the village pharmacist came to visit Uncle Kolya. (2) This pharmacist’s name was Lazar Borisovich. (3) At first glance, he was a rather strange pharmacist. (4) He wore a student jacket. (5) On his wide nose, the pince-nez on the black ribbon barely held on. (6) The pharmacist was a short, stocky and very sarcastic man.

(7) Once I went to Lazar Borisovich at the pharmacy to buy powders for Aunt Marusya. (8) She started having a migraine. (9) While grinding powders for Aunt Marusya, Lazar Borisovich talked to me.

“(10) I know,” said Lazar Borisovich, “that youth has its rights, especially when the young man graduated from high school and was about to enter the university. (11) Then there’s a carousel in my head. (12) You are a pleasant young man, but you do not like to think. (13) I noticed this a long time ago. (14) So, please, think about yourself, about life, about your place in life, about what you would like to do for people!

“(15) I’ll be a writer,” I said and blushed.

- (16)A writer? – Lazar Borisovich adjusted his pince-nez and looked at me with menacing surprise. - (17) Ho-ho? (18) You never know who wants to be a writer! (19) Maybe I also want to be Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

- (20) But I already wrote... and published.

“(21) Then,” said Lazar Borisovich decisively, “be so kind as to wait!” (22) I’ll weigh out the powders, take you out, and we’ll figure it out.

(23) We got out and walked across the field to the river, and from there to the park. (24) The sun was sinking towards the forests on the other side of the river. (25) Lazar Borisovich plucked the tops of the wormwood, rubbed them, sniffed his fingers and spoke.

- (26) This is a big deal, but it requires real knowledge of life. (27) Right? (28) And you have very little of it, not to say that it is completely absent. (29) Writer! (30) He must know so much that it’s even scary to think about. (31) He must understand everything! (32) He must work like an ox and not pursue glory! (33) Yes! (34) Here. (35) I can tell you one thing: go to the huts, to fairs, to factories, to flophouses! (36) To theaters, to hospitals, to mines and prisons! (37) Yes! (38) Be everywhere! (39) May life permeate you! (40) To get a real infusion! (41) Then you will be able to release it to people like a miraculous balm! (42) But also in known doses. (43) Yes!

(44) He talked for a long time about the vocation of a writer. (45) We said goodbye near the park.

“(46) You’re wrong to think that I’m a loafer,” I said.

– (47) No! - Lazar Borisovich exclaimed and grabbed my hand. - (48) I’m glad! (49) You see! (50) But you must admit that I was a little right, and now you will think about something. (51)Huh?

(52) And the pharmacist was right. (53) I realized that I knew almost nothing and had not yet thought about many important things. (54) And he accepted the advice of this funny man and soon went among the people, into that worldly school that no books or abstract thoughts can replace.

(55) I knew that I would never believe anyone, no matter who told me that this life - with its love, the desire for truth and happiness, with its lightning and the distant sound of water in the middle of the night - is devoid of meaning and reason. (56) Each of us must fight for the affirmation of this life everywhere and always until the end of our days.

(By K. G. Paustovsky*)

* Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky (1892–1968) - Russian Soviet writer, classic of Russian literature. Author of short stories, novellas, novels, among them “The Tale of Life”, “Golden Rose”, “Meshchera Side”, etc.

Composition

Pharmacist advice

The text proposed for analysis is an excerpt from Paustovsky’s work. The main character of the passage is the rural pharmacist Lazar Borisovich. It is he who gives the young man, on whose behalf the story is told, advice, and the young man understood this advice, accepted it, and years later remembers this advice from the village pharmacist with gratitude.

So, the text about the rural pharmacist raises the question of choosing a life path and the need to fight for the affirmation in any human life of the values of real life that elevate a person.

At first it may seem that the pharmacist, “this funny man” in a student jacket and with pince-nez on a black ribbon, “short, stocky and very sarcastic”, “grinding powder for Aunt Marusya, simply, so to speak, casually gives instructions: “youth has his rights,” “there’s a carousel in his head,” “please, think... about your place in life, about what you would like to do for people,” these are the problematic questions this sarcastic man poses to the “pleasant young man.”

Then, having learned that the young man “has already written... and been published,” Lazar Borisovich, plucking and rubbing wormwood branches, speaks about the purpose of the writer.

And at the end of the text, the pharmacist’s advice turns out to be advice suitable for anyone who wants to live their life meaningfully, not in vain.

Lazar Borisovich advised not only to think about one’s place in life, but also to live in such a way that this life itself is saturated, so that a real infusion is obtained, from which a good writer prepares a miraculous infusion for people and releases it in known doses. These words about the purpose of the writer are consonant with the words of Baratynsky that “singing heals a sick spirit,” and these words mean that the writer, like a pharmacist or doctor, heals people who are sick in spirit.

On the other hand, this infusion is the very life that you cannot learn about from books or abstract reasoning, about which, in the words of Bunin, a contemporary of Paustovsky, “they are not written, as they should be, in books.” And this infusion of life is the most important thing in the life of every person - not just a writer.

Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky believes that any person (not just a writer), if he really wants life, needs to experience life “with its love, the desire for truth and happiness, with its lightning and the distant sound of water in the middle of the night.” At the end of the text, Paustovsky directly says: “Each of us must fight for the affirmation of this life everywhere and always until the end of our days.”

Thus, we can say that in this text the author reflects not only on the purpose of the writer and the choice of life path, but also more broadly – on the purpose of human life in general.

I agree with Konstantin Georgievi, and I understand his thought this way: every person, be it a pharmacist or a writer, should strive to affirm real life, i.e. live your life intensely and interestedly, and most importantly, with a high dream, with the thought of serving people.

Talking about the pharmacist, Paustovsky notes that Lazar Borisovich is glad that the young man chose the difficult craft of writing, and, saying goodbye to the young man, he says: “But you must agree that I was a little right, and now you will think about something. A?". I also like this pharmacist with the “pince-nez on a black ribbon.” You see people like Lazar Borisovich right away: they are young, despite their years, they are passionate, despite their experience; they are wise and naive at the same time.

A literary illustration of Paustovsky’s thought that “each of us must fight for the affirmation of this life everywhere and always until the end of our days” can be Assol and Gray from Alexander Green’s extravaganza. Green called this human ability the ability to do so-called miracles with one’s own hands: do a miracle for another - and he will have a new soul... and you.

The present in life, for example, love, can make life bright and beautiful, and those who love each other can maintain a high ideal, despite poverty and everyday troubles, as in O. Henry’s Christmas story “The Gift of the Magi.”

The storm went crazy. The rains rushed across the water with terrible speed.
But we didn’t notice anything anymore.
-Aren't you cold? - Uncle Kolya shouted to us.
- No! Wonderful!
- So, still?
- Certainly!
The storm lasted five days. It ended at night; and no one noticed it.
This morning I woke up to the sound of birds clicking. The park was drowning in fog. The sun was shining through it. Obviously, a clear sky stretched above the fog - the fog was blue.
Uncle Kolya was placing a samovar near the veranda. Smoke rose from the samovar chimney. Our mezzanine smelled of burnt pine cones.
I lay and looked out the window. Miracles happened in the crown of the old linden tree. A ray of sunlight pierced the foliage and lit, swarming inside the linden tree, many green and golden lights. This spectacle could not be conveyed by any artist, let alone, of course, Lenka Mikhelson.
In his paintings, the sky was orange, the trees were blue, and people's faces were greenish, like unripe melons. All this must have been made up, just like my infatuation with Anyone. Now I'm completely free of it.
Perhaps what helped my deliverance the most was the prolonged summer storm.
I watched as the sun's ray penetrated deeper and deeper into the foliage. Here he illuminated a single yellowed leaf, then a tit sitting on a branch with his side to the ground, then a raindrop. She was shaking and was about to fall.
- Kostya, Gleb, do you hear? – Uncle Kolya asked from below.
- And what?
- Cranes!
We listened. Strange sounds were heard in the foggy blue, as if water was shimmering in the sky.

A SMALL PORTION OF POISON

Sometimes the village pharmacist came to visit Uncle Kolya. His name was Lazar Borisovich.
This was a rather strange pharmacist, in our opinion. He wore a student jacket. His wide nose barely held a crooked pince-nez on a black ribbon. The pharmacist was short, stocky, with a beard overgrown to his eyes and very sarcastic.
Lazar Borisovich was from Vitebsk, he once studied at Kharkov University, but did not complete the course. Now he lived in a rural pharmacy with his hunchback sister. According to our guesses, the pharmacist was involved in the revolutionary movement.
He carried with him Plekhanov's pamphlets with many passages boldly underlined in red and blue pencil, with exclamation and question marks in the margins.
On Sundays, the pharmacist would climb into the depths of the park with these brochures, spread his jacket on the grass, lie down and read, crossing his legs and swinging his thick boot.
Once I went to Lazar Borisovich at the pharmacy to buy powders for Aunt Marusya. She started having a migraine.
I liked the pharmacy - a clean old hut with rugs and geraniums, earthenware bottles on the shelves and the smell of herbs. Lazar Borisovich himself collected them, dried them and made infusions from them.
I have never seen such a creaky building as a pharmacy. Each floorboard creaked in its own way. In addition, all the things squeaked and creaked: chairs, a wooden sofa, shelves and the desk at which Lazar Borisovich wrote recipes. Each movement of the pharmacist caused so many different creaks that it seemed as if several violinists in the pharmacy were rubbing their bows on dry, stretched strings.
Lazar Borisovich was well versed in these creaks and caught their most subtle shades.
- Manya! - he shouted to his sister. - Don’t you hear? Vaska went to the kitchen. There's fish there!
Vaska was a mangy black chemist's cat. Sometimes the pharmacist would say to us visitors:
“I beg you, do not sit on this sofa, otherwise such music will start that you will only go crazy.”
Lazar Borisovich said, grinding powders in a mortar, that, thank God, in wet weather the pharmacy does not creak as much as in drought. The mortar suddenly squealed. The visitor shuddered, and Lazar Borisovich spoke triumphantly:
- Yeah! And you have nerves! Congratulations!
Now, grinding powders for Aunt Marusya, Lazar Borisovich made a lot of squeaks and said:
– The Greek sage Socrates was poisoned by hemlock. So! And there is a whole forest of this hemlock here, in the swamp near the mill. I warn you - white umbrella flowers. Poison in the roots. So! But, by the way, this poison is useful in small doses. I think that every person should sometimes add a small portion of poison to his food so that he can get through it properly and come to his senses.
– Do you believe in homeopathy? – I asked.
– In the field of the psyche – yes! – Lazar Borisovich stated decisively. - Do not understand? Well, let's check it out for you. Let's do a test.
I agreed. I was wondering what kind of test this was.
“I also know,” said Lazar Borisovich, “that youth has its rights, especially when a young man graduates from high school and enters university. Then there is a carousel in my head. But you still need to think about it!
- Above what?
- As if you have nothing to think about! – Lazar Borisovich exclaimed angrily. - Now you start to live. So? Who will you be, may I ask? And how do you propose to exist? Are you really going to be able to have fun, joke and brush off difficult questions all the time? Life is not a vacation, young man. No! I predict to you - we are on the eve of big events. Yes! I assure you of this. Although Nikolai Grigorievich is making fun of me, we will still see who is right. So, I'm wondering: who will you be?
“I want...” I began.
- Stop it! - shouted Lazar Borisovich. – What will you tell me? That you want to be an engineer, a doctor, a scientist or something else. It doesn't matter at all.
– What is important?
- Justice! - he shouted. - We need to be with the people. And for the people. Be whoever you want, even a dentist, but fight for a good life for people. So?
- But why are you telling me this?
- Why? At all! For no reason! You are a pleasant young man, but you do not like to think. I noticed this a long time ago. So, please, think about it!
“I’ll be a writer,” I said and blushed.
- A writer? – Lazar Borisovich adjusted his pince-nez and looked at me with menacing surprise. - Ho-ho! You never know who wants to be a writer! Maybe I also want to be Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy.
– But I already wrote... and published.
“Then,” said Lazar Borisovich decisively, “be so kind as to wait!” I'll weigh out the powders, take you out, and we'll figure it out.
He was apparently excited and, while he was weighing out the powders, he dropped his pince-nez twice.
We got out and walked across the field to the river, and from there to the park. The sun was sinking towards the forests on the other side of the river. Lazar Borisovich plucked the tops of the wormwood, rubbed them, sniffed his fingers and said:
– This is a big deal, but it requires real knowledge of life. So? And you have very little of it, not to say that it is completely absent. Writer! He must know so much that it’s even scary to think about. He must understand everything! He must work like an ox and not pursue glory! Yes! Here. I can tell you one thing - go to the huts, to fairs, to factories, to shelters. All around, everywhere - in theaters, in hospitals, in mines and prisons. So! Everywhere. So that life permeates you like valerian alcohol! To get a real infusion. Then you can release it to people like a miraculous balm! But also in known doses. Yes!
He talked for a long time about his vocation as a writer. We said goodbye near the park.
“You shouldn’t think that I’m a loafer,” I said.
- Oh, No! - Lazar Borisovich exclaimed and grabbed my hand. - I'm glad. You see. But you must admit that I was a little right and now you will think about something. After my little dose of poison. A?
He looked into my eyes without letting go of my hand. Then he sighed and left. He walked through the fields, short and shaggy, and still plucked the tops of the wormwood. Then he took a large penknife from his pocket, squatted down and began to dig some medicinal herb out of the ground.
The pharmacist's test was a success. I realized that I knew almost nothing and had not yet thought about many important things. I accepted the advice of this funny man and soon went out into the world, into that worldly school that no books or abstract thoughts can replace.
It was a difficult and real deal.
Youth took its toll. I didn’t think about whether I had the strength to go through this school. I was sure that was enough.
In the evening we all went to Chalk Hill - a steep cliff above the river, overgrown with young pine trees. A huge warm autumn night opened up from Chalk Hill.
We sat down on the edge of a cliff. The water was noisy at the dam. The birds were busy in the branches, settling down for the night. Lightning blazed above the forest. Then thin clouds, like smoke, were visible.
– What are you thinking about, Kostya? – Gleb asked.
- So... in general...
I thought that I would never believe anyone, no matter who told me that this life, with its love, the desire for truth and happiness, with its lightning and the distant sound of water in the middle of the night, is devoid of meaning and reason. Each of us must fight for the affirmation of this life everywhere and always - until the end of our days.
1946

Book two
RESTLESS YOUTH

Occasionally, the stubble on Gilyarov’s cheeks would bristle and his narrowed eyes would laugh. This is what happened when Gilyarov gave us a speech about knowing oneself. After this speech, I began to believe in the limitless power of human consciousness.
Gilyarov simply shouted at us. He ordered us not to bury our capabilities in the ground. You have to work damn hard on yourself, extract from yourself everything that is inherent in you. This is how an experienced conductor opens up all the sounds in an orchestra and forces the most stubborn orchestrator to bring any instrument to full expression.
“A person,” said Gilyarov, “must comprehend, enrich and decorate life.”
Gilyarov's idealism was tinged with bitterness and constant regret about his gradual decline. Among Gilyarov’s many expressions, I remember the words “about the last evening dawn of idealism and its dying thoughts.”
This old professor, similar in appearance to Emile Zola, had a lot of contempt for the prosperous man in the street and the liberal intelligentsia of that time.
This matched the copper plaque on his door about the insignificance of man. We understood, of course, that Gilyarov hung this plaque to spite his decent neighbors.
Gilyarov spoke about the enrichment of human life. But we didn't know how to achieve this. I soon came to the conclusion that to do this I needed to express myself most fully in my blood connection with the people. But how? What? Writing seemed to me the surest path. Thus was born the idea of him as my only path in life.
Since then, my adult life began - often difficult, less often joyful, but always restless and so varied that one can easily get confused when remembering it.
My youth began in the last grades of high school and ended with the First World War. It ended, perhaps, earlier than it should have. But my generation has experienced so many wars, coups, trials, hopes, labor and joy that all this would have been enough for several generations of our ancestors.
In a time equal to the revolution of Jupiter around the Sun, we have experienced so much that just remembering it makes our heart ache. Our descendants will, of course, envy us, participants and witnesses of great turning points in the fate of mankind.
The university was the center of progressive thought in the city. At first, like most newcomers, I was shy at the university and was confused by meeting old people, especially “eternal students.” These bearded people in shabby, unbuttoned jackets looked at us, freshmen, like mindless puppies.
In addition, after high school it took me a long time to get used to the fact that it was not at all necessary to listen to lectures and that during university class hours you could sit at home reading books or wandering around the city with impunity.
Gradually I got used to the university and loved it. But he fell in love not with the lectures and professors (there were few talented professors), but with the very character of student life.
Lectures went on in their own order in the classrooms, and student life - very stormy and noisy - also went on in its own order, regardless of the lectures, in the long and dark university corridors.
In these corridors, disputes were in full swing all day, gatherings were noisy, communities and factions gathered. The corridors were drowned in tobacco smoke.
For the first time I learned about the sharp, violent contradictions between the Bolsheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, about the Bundists, Dashnaks, “broad” Ukrainians and the Paolei Zion party. But it happened that representatives of all these parties united against one common enemy - the “White Lining” students, members of the Black Hundred Academic Union. Fights with the “white lining” quite often reached hand-to-hand combat, especially when the “Caucasian Fellowship” intervened in the matter.
In the boiling of these passions one could already feel the approach of some new times. And it seemed strange that right there, a few steps away, behind the doors of the classrooms, venerable and gray-haired professors were giving lectures in boring silence about trade customs in Hanseatic cities or comparative linguistics.
In those years, before the First World War, many foresaw the approach of a thunderstorm, but could not foresee with what force it would hit the earth. As before a thunderstorm, it was stuffy in Russia and in the world. But the thunder had not yet arrived, and this reassured short-sighted people.
Alarm beeps in the morning darkness on the outskirts of Kyiv, when factories were on strike, arrests and exiles, hundreds of proclamations - all these were the lightning of a distant thunderstorm. Only a sensitive ear could catch the grumbling of thunder behind them. And therefore, his first deafening blow in the summer of 1914, when the world war began, stunned everyone.
We high school students, when we left the gymnasium, immediately lost each other, although we swore never to do this. The war came, then the revolution came, and since then I have never met almost any of my classmates. The merry fellow Stanishevsky, the home-grown philosopher Fitsovsky, the reserved Shmukler, the slow Matusevich and the fast-as-a-bird Bulgakov have disappeared somewhere.
I lived in Kyiv alone. Mom, sister Galya and brother Dima, a student at the Technological Institute, were in Moscow. And although my elder brother Borya lived in Kyiv, we almost never met.
Borya married a short, plump woman. She wore purple Japanese kimonos with embroidered cranes. All day Borya sat over the drawings of concrete bridges. His dark room, papered with oak wood wallpaper, smelled of fixoir. My feet stuck to the painted floors. Photos of the world-famous beauty Lina Cavalieri were pinned to the wall with rusty pins.
Borya did not approve of my passion for philosophy and literature. “You have to make your way in life,” he said. - You're a dreamer. Same as dad. Entertaining people is not the point.”
He believed that literature exists to entertain people. I didn't want to argue with him. I protected my attachment to literature from an unkind eye. That's why I stopped going to Bora.
I lived with my grandmother on the green outskirts of Kyiv, Lukyanovka, in an outbuilding in the depths of the garden. My room was filled with fuchsia flowerpots. All I did was read until I was exhausted. To catch my breath, I went out into the garden in the evenings. There was sharp autumn air and the starry sky burned above the flying branches.
At first my grandmother was angry and called me home, but then she got used to it and left me alone. She only said that I was spending my time without any “sense,” in other words, without meaning, and all this would end in fleeting consumption.
But what could grandma do about my new friends? What could grandmother object to Pushkin or Heine, Fet or Leconte de Lisle, Dickens or Lermontov?
In the end, my grandmother gave up on me. She lit a lamp in her room with a pink glass shade in the shape of a large tulip and immersed herself in reading Kraszewski’s endless Polish novels. And I remembered the poems that “in the sky, like a soulful call, the golden eyelashes of the stars twinkle.” And the earth seemed to me to be a repository of many treasures, such as these golden eyelashes of the stars. I believed that life had in store for me many charms, meetings, love and sorrow, joy and shock, and in this presentiment was the great happiness of my youth. Whether this came true, the future will show.
And now, as the actors said in ancient theaters, coming out to the audience before the performance: “We will present you with various everyday incidents and try to make you think about them, cry and laugh.”

Unprecedented autumn

I was traveling from Kyiv to Moscow in a cramped room under the carriage heating. There were three of us passengers - an elderly land surveyor, a young woman in a white Orenburg scarf, and me.
The woman was sitting on a cold cast-iron stove, and the surveyor and I took turns sitting on the floor - it was impossible for the two of us to fit there.
Small coal crunched underfoot. It soon turned the woman's white scarf gray. Behind the tightly boarded window - also gray, with dried streaks from raindrops - nothing could be made out. Only somewhere near Sukhinichi I saw and remembered a huge, bloody sunset that took over the entire sky.
The surveyor looked at the sunset and said that there, on the borders, they must already be fighting with the Germans. The woman pressed her handkerchief to her face and began to cry: she was going to Tver to see her husband and did not know whether she would find her husband there, or whether he had already been sent to the front lines.
I went to say goodbye to my brother Dima in Moscow; he was also drafted into the army. I was not accepted into the army because of severe myopia. In addition, I was the youngest son in the family and a student, and according to the laws of that time, younger sons, as well as students, were exempt from military service.
It was almost impossible to get out of the heating onto the carriage platform. Those mobilized lay side by side on the roofs, hanging on the buffers and steps. The stations greeted us with the prolonged howls of women, the roar of accordions, whistles and songs. The train stopped and immediately grew to the rails. Only two locomotives could move it, and then only with a heavy jerk.
Russia has moved. The war, like an earthquake, tore it off its foundations. Bells rang alarmingly in thousands of villages, announcing mobilization. Thousands of peasant horses carried conscripts from the remotest corners of the country to the railways. The enemy invaded the country from the west, but a powerful wave of people rolled towards him from the east.
The whole country turned into a military camp. Life is mixed up. Everything familiar and established instantly disappeared.
On the long road to Moscow, the three of us ate only one petrified bun with raisins and drank a bottle of muddy water.
Therefore, it must have been that the air of Moscow, when I stepped out of the car onto the damp platform of the Bryansk station in the morning, seemed fragrant and light to me. The summer of 1914 was ending - the menacing and alarming summer of the war, and the sweet and cool smells of autumn - withered leaves and stagnant ponds - were already breaking through the Moscow air.
Mom lived at that time in Moscow, right next to such a pond on Bolshaya Presnya. The apartment windows overlooked the Zoological Garden. One could see the red brick firewalls of Presnensky houses, battered by shells back during the December uprising of the fifth year, the empty paths of the Zoological Garden and a large pond with black water. In the streaks of sun, the pond water shone the greenish color of mud.
I have never seen an apartment that was so in tune with the character of people and their lives as my mother’s apartment on Presnya. It was empty, almost without furniture, except for the kitchen tables and a few creaky Viennese chairs. The shadows of the old blackened trees fell into the rooms, and therefore the apartment was always gloomy and cold. The gray and sticky oilcloths on the tables were also cold.
Mom developed a passion for oilcloths. They replaced the old tablecloths and persistently reminded us of poverty, of the fact that my mother was struggling with all her might to somehow maintain order and cleanliness. Otherwise she could not live.
At home I found only my mother and Galya. Dima went to Gravornovo to the training ground to teach shooting to reserve soldiers.
In the two years that I had not seen her, my mother’s face had wrinkled and turned yellow, but her thin lips were still tightly compressed, as if my mother was making it clear to those around her that she would never give in to life, to the machinations of petty ill-wishers, and would come out on top. got into trouble with the winner.
And Galya, as always, wandered aimlessly through the rooms, bumped into chairs due to myopia and asked me about all sorts of trifles - how much a ticket from Kyiv to Moscow now costs and whether there were still porters at the stations, or they were all taken to the war.
On this visit, my mother seemed calmer to me than before. I didn't expect this. I couldn’t understand where this calmness came from during the war days, when Dima could be sent to the front any day now. But mom herself gave away her thoughts.
“Now, Kostya,” she said, “it’s much easier for us.” Dima is a warrant officer, officer. Receives a good salary. Now I am not afraid that tomorrow I will have nothing to pay the rent.
She looked at me worriedly and added:
– In war, not everyone is killed either. I'm sure that Dima will be left in the rear. He is in good standing with his superiors.
I agreed that, indeed, not everyone is killed in war. This fragile consolation could not be taken away from her.
Looking at my mother, I understood what the burden of everyday defenseless existence means and how a person needs reliable shelter and a piece of bread. But I felt uneasy at the thought that she was happy with this miserable prosperity that arose in the family at the expense of the danger for her son. It cannot be that she is not aware of this danger. She just tried not to think about her.
Dima returned - tanned, very confident. He unfastened and hung his brand new saber with a gilded hilt in the hallway. In the evening, when the electric light was turned on in the hallway, the hilt sparkled like the only elegant thing in my mother’s wretched apartment.
Mom managed to tell me that Dima’s marriage to Margarita was upset, since Margarita turned out to be, in my mother’s expression, “a very unpleasant person.” I said nothing.
A few days later, Dima was assigned to the Navaginsky infantry regiment. Dima got ready and left so quickly that his mother did not have time to come to her senses. It was only on the second day after he left that she cried for the first time.
Dima’s train was loading on the sidings of the Brest station. It was a windy, boring day, an ordinary day with yellow dust and a low sky. It always seems that on days like these nothing special can happen.
Farewell to Dima was fitting for this day; Dima was in charge of loading the train. He spoke to us in fits and starts and said a hasty goodbye when the train had already started moving. He caught up with his carriage, jumped onto the running board while moving, but was immediately blocked by an oncoming train. When the trains dispersed, Dima was no longer visible.
After Dima left, I transferred from Kyiv University to Moscow University. Dima’s mother rented out Dima’s room to the Moscow tram engineer Zakharov. To this day I don’t understand what Zakharov could have liked about our apartment.
Zakharov studied in Belgium, lived in Brussels for many years and returned to Russia shortly before the First World War. He was a cheerful bachelor with a graying, trimmed beard. He wore loose foreign suits and piercing glasses. Zakharov covered the entire table in his room with books. But among them I did not find almost a single technical one. Most of all there were memoirs, novels and collections of “Knowledge”.
At Zakharov’s I first saw French editions of Verhaeren, Maeterlinck and Rodenbach on the table.
That summer, everyone admired Belgium - a small country that took the first blow of the German armies. Everywhere they sang a song about the defenders of besieged Liege.
Belgium was smashed to pieces in two or three days. A halo of martyrdom shone over her. The Gothic lace of its town halls and cathedrals collapsed and ground into dust under the boots of German soldiers and the forged wheels of cannons.
I read Werhaeren, Maeterlinck, Rodenbach, trying to find in the books of these Belgians the key to the courage of their compatriots. But I did not find this solution either in the complex poems of Warharn, which denied the old world as a great evil, or in the dead and fragile novels of Rodenbach, like flowers under ice, or in the plays of Maeterlinck, written as if in a dream.

A small portion of poison

Sometimes the village pharmacist came to visit Uncle Kolya. His name was Lazar Borisovich.

This was a rather strange pharmacist, in our opinion. He wore a student jacket. His wide nose barely held a crooked pince-nez on a black ribbon. The pharmacist was short, stocky, with a beard overgrown to his eyes and very sarcastic.

Lazar Borisovich was from Vitebsk, he once studied at Kharkov University, but did not complete the course. Now he lived in a rural pharmacy with his hunchback sister. According to our guesses, the pharmacist was involved in the revolutionary movement.

He carried with him Plekhanov's pamphlets with many passages boldly underlined in red and blue pencil, with exclamation and question marks in the margins.

On Sundays, the pharmacist would climb into the depths of the park with these brochures, spread his jacket on the grass, lie down and read, crossing his legs and swinging his thick boot.

Once I went to Lazar Borisovich at the pharmacy to buy powders for Aunt Marusya. She started having a migraine.

I liked the pharmacy - a clean old hut with rugs and geraniums, earthenware bottles on the shelves and the smell of herbs. Lazar Borisovich himself collected them, dried them and made infusions from them.

I have never seen such a creaky building as a pharmacy. Each floorboard creaked in its own way. In addition, all the things squeaked and creaked: chairs, a wooden sofa, shelves and the desk at which Lazar Borisovich wrote recipes. Each movement of the pharmacist caused so many different creaks that it seemed as if several violinists in the pharmacy were rubbing their bows on dry, stretched strings.

Lazar Borisovich was well versed in these creaks and caught their most subtle shades.

Manya! - he shouted to his sister. - Don’t you hear? Vaska went to the kitchen. There's fish there! Vaska was a mangy black chemist's cat. Sometimes the pharmacist would say to us visitors:

I beg you, do not sit on this sofa, otherwise such music will start that you will only go crazy.

Lazar Borisovich said, grinding powders in a mortar, that, thank God, in wet weather the pharmacy does not creak as much as in drought. The mortar suddenly squealed. The visitor shuddered, and Lazar Borisovich spoke triumphantly:

Yeah! And you have nerves! Congratulations! Now, grinding powders for Aunt Marusya, Lazar Borisovich made a lot of squeaks and said:

The Greek sage Socrates was poisoned by hemlock, Yes! And there is a whole forest of this hemlock here, in the swamp near the mill. I warn you - white umbrella flowers. Poison in the roots. So! But, by the way, this poison is useful in small doses. I think that every person should sometimes add a small portion of poison to his food so that he can get through it properly and come to his senses.

“Do you believe in homeopathy?” I asked.

In the field of the psyche, yes! - Lazar Borisovich declared decisively. - Don’t you understand? Well, let's check it out for you. Let's do a test.

I agreed. I was wondering what kind of test this was.

“I also know,” said Lazar Borisovich, “that youth has its rights, especially when a young man graduates from high school and enters university. Then there is a carousel in my head. But you still need to think about it!

Above what?

“As if you have nothing to think about!” Lazar Borisovich exclaimed angrily. “Now you are starting to live.” So? Who will you be, may I ask? And how do you propose to exist? Are you really going to be able to have fun, joke and brush off difficult questions all the time? Life is not a vacation, young man, No! I predict to you - we are on the eve of big events. Yes! I assure you of this. Although Nikolai Grigorievich is making fun of me, we will still see who is right. So, I'm wondering: who will you be?

I want... - I started.

Stop it! - shouted Lazar Borisovich. - What do you tell me? That you want to be an engineer, a doctor, a scientist or something else. It doesn't matter at all.

What is important?

“Justice!” he shouted. “We must be with the people.” And for the people. Be whoever you want, even a dentist, but fight for a good life for people. So?

But why are you telling me this?

Why? At all! For no reason! You are a pleasant young man, but you do not like to think. I noticed this a long time ago. So, please, think about it!

“I’ll be a writer,” I said and blushed.

A writer? - Lazar Borisovich adjusted his pince-nez and looked at me with menacing surprise. - Ho-ho? You never know who wants to be a writer! Maybe I also want to be Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

But I already wrote... and published.

Then,” said Lazar Borisovich decisively, “be so kind as to wait!” I'll weigh out the powders, take you out, and we'll figure it out.

He was apparently excited and, while he was weighing out the powders, he dropped his pince-nez twice.

We got out and walked across the field to the river, and from there to the park. The sun was sinking towards the forests on the other side of the river. Lazar Borisovich plucked the tops of the wormwood, rubbed them, sniffed his fingers and said:

This is a big deal, but it requires real knowledge of life. So? And you have very little of it, not to say that it is completely absent. Writer! He must know so much that it’s even scary to think about. He must understand everything! He must work like an ox and not pursue glory! Yes! Here. I can tell you one thing - go to the huts, to fairs, to factories, to shelters. All around, everywhere - in theaters, in hospitals, in mines and prisons. So! Everywhere. So that life permeates you like valerian alcohol! To get a real infusion. Then you can release it to people like a miraculous balm! But also in known doses. Yes!

He talked for a long time about his vocation as a writer. We said goodbye near the park.

You shouldn’t think that I’m loafing,” I said.

“Oh, no!” Lazar Borisovich exclaimed and grabbed my hand. “I’m glad.” You see. But you must admit that I was a little right, and now you will think about something. After my little dose of poison. A?

He looked into my eyes without letting go of my hand. Then he sighed and left. He walked through the fields, short and shaggy, and still plucked the tops of the wormwood. Then he took a large penknife from his pocket, squatted down and began to dig some medicinal herb out of the ground.

The pharmacist's test was a success. I realized that I knew almost nothing and had not yet thought about many important things. I accepted the advice of this funny man and soon went out into the world, into that worldly school that no books or abstract thoughts can replace.

It was a difficult and real deal.

Youth took its toll. I didn’t think about whether I had the strength to go through this school. I was sure that was enough.

In the evening we all went to Chalk Hill - a steep cliff above the river, overgrown with young pine trees. A huge warm autumn night opened up from Chalk Hill.

We sat down on the edge of a cliff. The water was noisy at the dam. The birds were busy in the branches, settling down for the night. Lightning blazed above the forest. Then thin clouds, like smoke, were visible.

“What are you thinking about, Kostya?” asked Gleb.

So... in general...

I thought that I would never believe anyone, no matter who told me that this life, with its love, the desire for truth and happiness, with its lightning and the distant sound of water in the middle of the night, is devoid of meaning and reason. Each of us must fight for the affirmation of this life everywhere and always - until the end of our days.

(7) Once I went to Lazar Borisovich at the pharmacy to buy powders for Aunt Marusya. (8) She started having a migraine. (9) While grinding powders for Aunt Marusya, Lazar Borisovich talked to me.

“(15) I’ll be a writer,” I said and blushed.

- (20) But I already wrote... and published.

“(21) Then,” said Lazar Borisovich decisively, “be so kind as to wait!” (22) I’ll weigh out the powders, accompany you, and we’ll figure it out.

(44) He talked for a long time about the vocation of a writer. (45) We said goodbye near the park.

- (47) No! - Lazar Borisovich exclaimed and grabbed my hand. - (48) I’m glad! (49) You see! (50) But you must admit that I was a little right, and now you will think about something. (51)Huh?

(According to K.G. Paustovsky*)

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Very often we were asked at school: who do you want to become, what will be your profession? In this text, Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky thinks about how to find the meaning of life to the younger generation?

This question is very relevant in our time. After all, now many people graduate from institutes, universities, receive higher education and either do not work in their specialty, or are careless about their work. In his text, the author narrates in the first person and talks about a conversation with the pharmacist Lazar Borisovich, who gives him advice: ‘Be everywhere! May life permeate you! So that It turned out to be a real infusion! Then you can release it to people like a miraculous balm!’. From this conversation, the future writer understands: “I realized that I knew almost nothing and had not yet thought about many important things.”

The author claims that in order to decide on a goal life, the younger generation needs to think “about yourself, about life, about what you would like to do for people.”

Uncle Kolya was placing a samovar near the veranda. Smoke rose from the samovar chimney. Our mezzanine smelled of burnt pine cones.

I lay and looked out the window. Miracles happened in the crown of the old linden tree. A ray of sunlight pierced the foliage and lit, swarming inside the linden tree, many green and golden lights. This spectacle could not be conveyed by any artist, not to mention, of course, Lenka Mikhelson.

In his paintings, the sky was orange, the trees were blue, and people's faces were greenish, like unripe melons. All this must have been made up, just like my infatuation with Anyone. Now I'm completely free of it.

Perhaps what helped my deliverance the most was the prolonged summer storm.

I watched as the sun's ray penetrated deeper and deeper into the foliage. Here he illuminated a single yellowed leaf, then a tit sitting on a branch with his side to the ground, then a raindrop. She was shaking and was about to fall.

Kostya, Gleb, can you hear?” Uncle Kolya asked from below.

Cranes!

We listened. Strange sounds were heard in the foggy blue, as if water was shimmering in the sky,

A small portion of poison