Scarlet Sails: A Fairy Tale

Alexander Stepanovich Grin (1880-1932) - an outstanding Russian prose writer and poet, a representative of neo-romanticism. Grin is the pen name of the writer, his real surname is Grinevsky. He was born in the family of a Polish nobleman and a Russian nurse in the Vyatka province. He learned to read at the age of 6, and his first favorite book - "Gulliver's Travels" by Swift - shaped the consciousness of the future writer: his love for the sea and for fantasy. After studying at a Vyatka school, 16-year-old Grinevsky became a sailor in Odessa but did not find romance there and began to wander - he was a fisherman, a laborer, a lumberjack, a gold seeker, a miner, a soldier, and even a revolutionary Socialist-Revolutionary.
After serving time in prison and escaping from it, in 1906 Grin began to write; during his short life he became the author of four hundred works. Already in his second collection of stories, the forthcoming Grin-storyteller with his unique style is noticeable. His acquaintances with A. Tolstoy, L. Andreyev, V. Bryusov, A. Kuprin have a significant influence on him.
In 1919, drafted into the Red Army, Grin fell ill with typhus. With the assistance of Maxim Gorky, he managed to obtain an academic stipend and a room in the "House of Arts," where he lived as a gloomy hermit, but it was then that the famous fairy tale "Scarlet Sails" was born - a bright tale of an ordinary miracle, created in the cold and hungry Petrograd during winter. The tale was published in 1923. In this decade, Grin wrote the novel "The Golden Chain" ("memories of a boy's dream seeking wonders and finding them") and the new masterpiece "Running on the Waves," which was barely published. Grin does not accept the revolution, its violence and madness, and the new age also poorly accepts Grin.
."The era rushes by. I am not needed by it - as I am. And I cannot be another. And I do not want to". And indeed, since 1930, Soviet censorship has been in effect, with comments.