Aleksandr Grin

Alexander Grin (1880-1932). (His real name was Alexander Grinevsky). Prose writer. He was born in the town of Slobozk. His father was a Pole exiled to Siberia at the age of 16 due to his involvement in the Polish Uprising of 1863. His mother was Russian and passed away when Grin was 13 years old. Unfortunate, unattractive, joyless, as a child, no one understood him, like every gifted person whom those around consider strange. For this reason, he created another world—beautiful, fairy-tale-like, and fantastical. He had no friends, and his parents were alcoholics, so he ran away from home very early. He did various heavy jobs and often had nothing to eat. This is why he welcomed both the 1905 and 1917 revolutions with joy, like every poor and tormented person. He was a revolutionary himself, arrested and exiled several times. He constantly changed places of residence and lived with a forged passport. Grin created and opened up to the reader an entire invented country, inhabited by literary heroes unlike any others, with beautiful, unusual names. Critics later called this country GRINlandia. However, at that time, his works were harshly criticized for their incomprehensible romanticism and detachment from reality. He was called a "foreigner Russian," labeled as a "writer without a homeland." From 1935 to 1955, his works remained unpublished. Yet, readers loved his ideas of beauty and the often unattainable. In his poetic country, there was no place for the world's ugliness and routine. He swept entire generations away with the dream of the sea and "Scarlet Sails." Alexander Grin had telepathic abilities, predicting events in the lives of his acquaintances and rarely making mistakes in his predictions. He believed in mysticism, although religion left him rather indifferent. In his youth, blinded by jealousy, he shot his beloved and later wanted to kill Nicholas II. As a child, he dreamed of ships and seas, so as soon as he finished the four-year gymnasium in his town, he went to Odessa, where he changed many professions, from sailor, fisherman, and laborer to gold prospector in the Urals. In 1903, in Sevastopol, due to his subversive activities among sailors, he was arrested and, after an unsuccessful escape attempt, remained in isolation for two years. He was released, and in 1906, in Petersburg, he was arrested again and exiled to the Tobolsk province, from where he escaped to the city of Vyatka. There, he managed to secure a forged passport and fled to Moscow. He appeared in literature in 1907 with the short story "An Incident." He had to write several short stories before finding his "hero." In his romantic novels, events take place in imaginary, often exotic countries. Grin's brave and proud heroes died romantically and beautifully. However, he himself died from illness and hunger.