On the Issue of Printed Sources of the 6th Part of K.G. Paustovsky’s The Story of a Life “On Low Heat. (Book of Wanderings)”

The article reveals the main milestones of Konstantin G. Paustovsky’s creative cooperation with the editors of the journals “Znamya” and “Novyi Mir,” in which The Story of a Life was published. Identified and briefly characterized lifetime printed sources of the text of three chapters of the sixth part of The Story of a Life — “On Low Heat (The Book of Wanderings)”: “The Fourth Strip,” “January Cold” (“The Cold”) and “Night Trains.” The article identifies and characterizes the discrepancies in the named chapters and hypothesizes about the reasons for their occurrence. The novelist, having published individual chapters in periodicals and then the whole work in the journal “Novyi Mir,” continued to work on the text by expanding or clarifying the characters’ features, correcting descriptions, and adding or removing epithets. In many cases, after publication in the journal “Novyi Mir,” the preparation of which was not without editorial intervention, Paustovsky returned to the original version, sometimes making minor editorial corrections. The article introduces new sources into the scientific circulation, including letters addressed to the writer containing statements about the sixth part of The Story of a Life.