A very brief retelling of the story “How I became a writer.”
According to the narrator, he became a writer “unintentionally.” As a child, his nanny called him a “babbler” for his long tongue. From an early age, he remembered her prayer babble, old songs, toys and a live birch branch in the crib near the icon.
All household utensils seemed alive to the boy. In his fantasies, he played with objects, inventing incredible stories and adventures.
The author includes the gymnastic years in the “preliterate age of his writing.” The first class was remembered by the nickname “Roman orator”, probably received for chatter in class.
In the third grade, the narrator's imagination is completely absorbed by the influence of Jules Verne, in whose adventure charms the first author's work about the teachers' journey to the moon is born. The students liked the story, but the class teacher did not. The mentor saw in the lines disrespect for the teaching staff, for which the young writer was severely punished with a bad grade and, as a result, left for the second year.
The sad event turned out to be successful in the literary career of the young talent. The narrator ended up in a class with a good-natured teacher, who in every possible way contributed to the discovery and development of his talent. The mentor motivated the flight of the writer's imagination, for which the narrator is very grateful to him.
The author himself calls the third stage of starting writing “own experience.” Before graduating from high school, he spends the summer fishing near a ruined mill, where his old and deaf grandfather lives. Holidays in the village make a lasting impression on the narrator. Trying to reveal his feelings to the world, during exams he writes the story “At the Mill.”
With a trembling hand, he gives his first manuscript to the editorial office of the Russian Review magazine. A respectable man with graying temples accepts the notebook and asks to come back in two months. After the appointed period has expired, the author again receives a promise to look within two months. But the period of passing final exams captures the young man’s attention, and he forgets about the manuscript.
Unexpectedly, the writer receives a letter from the editor of Russian Review, where he is informed that the “description of nature” was excellent and offers cooperation.
In June, the narrator already holds in his hands a copy of the magazine with his story and his first fee. In his words, it is this moment that becomes decisive in order to “prepare to become a writer.”
The meaning of the story “How I became a writer” by Shmelev
The work “How I Became a Writer” is autobiographical in nature, since Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev shows the formation of himself as a publicist and writer. He describes how he came to his profession, starting from his earliest years until his student life. The author also turned to the experience of creating one of his first stories, “At the Mill,” which presents a picture of folk life.
The work was written in 1895. The genre is classified as a short story because the number of characters is limited and one main problem is posed - the difficult path to a future as a writer.
The path to creativity in the story goes through stages. Initially, the hero did not write at all, but he talked indefatigably a lot about everything in the world, for which he received the nickname “balabolka” from his nanny. It seemed to her, like most adults, that the child was talking absolute nonsense, talking to everyone around him. However, it spoke of a gift, a destiny that initially found such a way to express itself. It’s quite natural, because the boy has not yet learned to write. At school, the boy was nicknamed the “Roman orator” and was often left behind after classes as a punishment for being talkative.
When the author mastered writing, the second stage of his creativity began. He was so fascinated by the works of Jules Verne that they inspired him to write a whole poem about the journey of all the teachers in a hot air balloon to the Moon. His work turned out to be popular among high school students, but the school inspector Batalin, being callous and harsh, reacted sharply to such writings, for which the little poet also received a punishment. Moreover, this reaction was not the last and their confrontation ended with the narrator staying for a second year. But it is known that everything is being done for the better, and the second-year student ended up with another wordsmith with a completely different spiritual content - Tsvetaev, who was more lenient. Tsvetaev noticed talent in the boy and allowed him to engage in writing, without applying strict censorship and a set of inflexible rules of the gymnasium to him, but only encouraging him with good grades.
The third stage can be described as printing. The author was already a high school graduate and moved from simple writing to serious things. Without hesitation and long adjustments, he created his first story, “At the Mill.” Full of doubts, he went to the editor and left his manuscript. And after a while, he receives the approval of the editors along with an enviable fee of 80 rubles. The author was euphoric from the feelings that overwhelmed him. When he saw the publication with his story and signed with his last name, his perception of himself changed radically. He realized that he had become different, he now had a duty, an obligation to do something, moving along the mainstream of his life.
The main theme of the work was the process of becoming a writer on the difficult path. I.S. Shmelev is convinced that a person’s gift and destiny is given to him at birth and fate leads him by all means and paths straight to the goal. The problem is a completely ordinary thing: during the period of self-discovery, especially for creative people, it is very important to find support, a person who will see, believe and help reveal the talent bestowed by fate.
Walking towards your calling alone is very difficult. Mentors who are accustomed to moving along one line and harshly criticize any deviations are able to completely discourage the desire for creativity. With such teachers it is impossible to achieve success, achieve recognition and receive proof in the form of approval from more seasoned and experienced professionals. That is why Batalin evokes feelings of hostility, and the death of the spiritual Tsvetaev evokes sincere tears of regret.
The image of Batalin is the totality of everything that wants to ruin, crush and prevent him from rising to his feet. Batalin tore out the individuality of the young writer, like a weed from a smooth and weeded bed. The image of Tsvetaev, on the contrary, opposes murder, he gives hope, faith in one’s own strength and sets goals that will help climb to the top of his personal Everest. If the meeting with Tsvetaev had not happened, then there is a high probability that the storyteller’s fate would have turned out differently, he would not have become a writer, but would have worked in a factory, rhyming poems to the sounds of the engine of a working machine. This story is like an attempt to rethink my writing path and remember its origins.
Minor characters and their characteristics:
- Batalin Nikolai Ivanovich is presented as a narrow-minded wordsmith with a limited worldview and an overly arrogant character. Described by a teacher who does not love children and a mediocre teacher.
- Tsvetaev Fedor Vladimirovich is the author’s favorite teacher, who contributed to the discovery of his talent. A sensitive and interesting teacher who perfectly understands children's needs and stimulates students' interest in subjects.
- Anatoly Alexandrov is an editor from the Russian Review magazine, who believed in the literary gift of the young student.
How I became a writer
The narrator remembers how he became a writer. It turned out simply and even unintentionally. Now it seems to the narrator that he has always been a writer, only “without a press.”
In early childhood, the nanny called the narrator “babalabolka.” He retained memories of early infancy - toys, a birch branch near the image, “the babble of an incomprehensible prayer,” snatches of old songs that the nanny sang.
Everything for the boy was alive - living, toothy saws and shiny axes were chopping down living boards in the yard, crying with tar and shavings. The broom “ran around the yard collecting dust, froze in the snow and even cried.” The floor brush, which looked like a cat on a stick, was punished - it was put in a corner, and the child consoled it.
Everything seemed alive, everything told me fairy tales - oh, how wonderful!
The thickets of burdocks and nettles in the garden seemed to the narrator like a forest where real wolves lived. He lay down in the thickets, they closed overhead, and the result was a green sky with “birds” - butterflies and ladybugs.
The narrator remembers the first years at school, the old teacher Anna Dmitrievna Vertes. She spoke other languages, which is why the boy considered her a werewolf and was very afraid of her.
I knew what “werewolf” meant from the carpenters. She is not like every baptized person, and therefore she says things like sorcerers.
Then the boy learned about the “pandemonium of Babylon,” and decided that Anna Dmitrievna was building the Tower of Babel, and her languages were confused. He asked the teacher if she was scared and how many languages she spoke. She laughed for a long time, but she only had one tongue.
Then the narrator met a beautiful girl Anichka Dyachkova. She taught him to dance and kept asking him to tell stories. The boy learned from the carpenters many fairy tales, not always decent ones, which Anichka really liked. Anna Dmitrievna caught them doing this and scolded them for a long time. Anichka did not pester the narrator anymore.
A little later, the older girls learned about the boy’s ability to tell fairy tales. They sat him on their laps, gave him candy and listened. Sometimes Anna Dmitrievna came up and also listened. The boy had a lot to tell. The people in the large courtyard where he lived were changing. They came from all provinces with their fairy tales and songs, each with their own dialect. For his constant chatter, the narrator was nicknamed “The Roman Orator.”
This was, so to speak, the pre-literate age of the history of my writing. The “written one” soon came for him.
In the third grade, the narrator became interested in Jules Verne and wrote a satirical poem about the teachers' trip to the moon. The poem was a great success, but the poet was punished.
Then came the era of essays. The narrator, in the teacher’s opinion, revealed the topics too freely, for which he was retained for the second year. This only benefited the boy: he ended up with a new vocabulary book that did not interfere with the flight of his imagination. To this day, the narrator remembers him with gratitude.
Then came the third period - the narrator moved on to “his own.” He spent the summer before eighth grade “on a remote river, fishing.” He was fishing in a pool near a non-working mill in which a deaf old man lived. These holidays made such a strong impression on the narrator that while preparing for his matriculation exams, he put everything aside and wrote the story “At the Mill.”
I saw my pool, a mill, an excavated dam, clay cliffs, rowan trees showered with clusters of berries, and my grandfather. Alive - they came and took it.
The narrator did not know what to do with his essay. There were almost no intelligent people in his family or among his acquaintances, and he had not yet read newspapers, considering himself above this. Finally, the narrator remembered the “Russian Review” sign that he saw on the way to school.
A summary of the story “How I became a writer” in detail.
The story by A. S. Shmelev “How I became a writer” is the author’s true memoirs about the events preceding the start of his writing career.
As the prose writer himself says, “it started unintentionally.” It seemed to him that he was not trying to be a writer, he was one, but “without the writer’s seal.”
Author: Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev
In early childhood, due to excessive talkativeness, the nanny called the narrator a “babbler.” From early childhood, the author remembers images with a birch branch, toys, incomprehensible babble of prayer and old nanny songs in fragments. Then, like a child, all things seemed alive to him. The boy talked for a long time with various objects and toys. While playing, he involuntarily animated and fantasized fairy tales with the participation of motionless “friends.”
Upon entering the gymnasium, the narrator received a second nickname from older children who noticed his talkative feature - “Roman orator.” The talkative boy was often punished for his talkativeness, so the label of “speaker” was attached to him for a long time.
From the third grade of the gymnasium, the boy became interested in the works of Jules Verne. The Frenchman's adventure novels literally blew up the schoolchild's imagination, rich in fantasy, and a story about the teachers' lunar journey was born. Unexpectedly for the author himself, the readers of the gymnasium liked the manuscript. Only one person was dissatisfied with the excitement that arose. The evil and callous inspector Batalin, the narrator’s class teacher, punished the young author of the “lunar” story for disrespect for the teachers.
But the literary impulse was difficult to contain, and the narrator’s writer’s ego seethed in his school essays. The works of the young author with incredibly deep lyrical introductions terribly infuriated someone who was used to living according to the rules of a meticulous class inspector.
One day the narrator attempted to defend his personal opinion in front of him, for which he received a C-minus. Then a stake and an insult. The grades played a fatal role - they lowered the average score, and the boy became a repeat student.
The sad episode turned out to be a harbinger of fateful luck. The little writer ended up in F.V.’s class. Tsvetaev, a good-natured teacher who gave the young talent complete freedom of expression. The mentor deftly fueled the boy’s literary passion with cool essays with a lyrical slant.
Tsvetaev gave the narrator “fat fives with three crosses”, and even said that he had, as they say, “a certain lump”, that talent needed to be developed. In the memory of the young hero, Fyodor Vladimirovich remained the first person who turned out to be a receptive listener and admirer of his early work.
With the end of high school, the narrator begins his “independent” time. He spends the summer in the village, where he fishes for days on end near a dilapidated mill. A deaf old man lives in a musty building; nearby, “cliffs beaten by the winds and split by thunderstorms” and “bottomless pools with catfish” descend into the river. The young man describes his feelings from this place as “something woke up, but went away.”
“Something” quickly and powerfully takes over the mind of the writer when passing the final exams. Throwing his textbooks aside, during the evening he writes a story about his fishing trip, “At the Mill.”
This turning point occurred in March 1894. But the narrator is embarrassed by his work - there are “few intellectuals” among the writer’s family, and there is no one to consult with on what to do next.
Recalling that he once saw an advertisement for the magazine “Russian Review,” the narrator goes to the editorial office of the publication. Noticeably timid, he enters the office and sees editor Anatoly Alexandrov. He warmly greets the young man, takes the manuscript from him and offers to “come back in two months.”
After the allotted time, the young author is again politely advised to come back “in two months.” The exams are just about to begin, and the young writer forgets about the story.
A letter from Aleksandrov that soon arrived with an offer to “talk” was an unexpected surprise. Arriving at the editorial office, the young man learns that the editor liked “his description of nature” in the story. Alexandrov offers the student cooperation.
In June, the narrator receives a fresh copy of Russian Review, where his story is published. Alexandrov gives the writer “eighty rubles” - the first fee, and calls art “reverence and a religious prayer song.”
The young man leaves the editor's office in emotional confusion and realizes that he is now a different person.
Summary Shmelev How I became a writer
The work “How I Became a Writer,” written by Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev, tells about the events that took place before the revolution. In this story, Ivan Shmelev shares memories of his creative journey.
The narrator believes that he has always been a writer. The nanny scolded the boy for talking so much and compared him to a balabolka. I was surprised how the boy’s tongue didn’t hurt from constant talking.
And the narrator was an impressionable child. And many childhood memories were imprinted in his memory for a long time. These memories are about simple things: children's toys, tattered blocks, the alphabet with letters. And beautiful pictures of the past constantly appear in the narrator’s memory: a sunbeam on the wall, birch branches with green leaves and cockroaches on the floor. These wonderful phenomena helped the narrator imagine the smell of paint on a tin toy pipe and porridge in a saucepan. I also remembered the faces of saints on the icons, hanging lamps and the words of a prayer that was incomprehensible in childhood.
As a child, the narrator talked to toys, shavings and logs of wood that smelled like the forest. All the objects told wonderful stories to the boy. The boards piled up in the yard seemed alive; saws that gnawed logs; a broom that ran around the yard in summer collecting dust and froze in the yard in winter. The narrator stroked the broom and tried to console.
In the gymnasium, the boy was called an orator for his constant chatter. Teachers constantly punished him for talking in class. And in the third grade, the narrator created his first work about a trip to the moon by gymnasium teachers. They flew in a hot air balloon made from a Latin teacher's oversized pants. The high school students liked this poem, but soon fell into the hands of the authorities. Naturally, the boy was punished for his prank. The pedagogical council, at which the narrator’s offense was discussed, decided to leave the boy in the gymnasium on his day off for six whole hours.
The boy loved to write essays and poems. In them he described all his impressions from reading books. But the literature teacher did not like these opuses. The boy received bad grades for his creations, due to which he was unable to move to the next grade.
But it turned out to be not so bad. Now the high school student’s teacher was a man who loved and knew his subject. The teacher allowed the boy to write the essays he wanted.
After graduating from high school, the narrator wrote his first story and submitted it to a magazine for verification. There was no response from the publisher for several months. During this time, the narrator graduated from high school, entered the university and did not think that he would wait for an answer from the magazine. What a surprise the young man was when his creation was published. Then the publisher himself invited the narrator, gave the fee and advised the young man to continue writing. The man said that the work was very good and it was worth creating more.
Ivan Shmelev's story states that if a person likes something, then he needs to develop this ability.
You can use this text for a reader's diary
