Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
In this post, my entry for the Dec 2023 WEP challenge, I’ll concentrate on an old movie (and the eponymous book it’s based on) from my childhood. Both the book and the movie are called Scarlet Sails. It is not my favorite of all movies – there are other films vying for that honor – but the book has always been and still is one of my favorite pieces of fiction. Alexander Grin’s original novella Scarlet Sails was definitely my favorite book of all Russian literature. It was first published in Russia in 1923, a hundred years ago. To celebrate its centennial anniversary, I’d like to tell you about this book and its author.
Alexander Grin (1880 – 1932) was a Russian writer. Before he started writing, he was a vagabond and a laborer, a revolutionary and a jailbird. He never had a high education, never went to college. His romantic novels and short stories came straight from his heart.
Grin’s romantic visions enjoyed a significant readership in Russia in the 1920s. Later on, the communist regime tightened its stranglehold on the art and artists in the country. Everything had to be communist propaganda, but Grin’s stories wouldn’t comply. Most of them were set in an imaginary land, which Grin’s fans lovingly referred to as Grinlandia.
Grinlandia had nothing to do with the communist Russia. Instead, it vaguely resembled Europe sometime in the 19th century. Not one specific country but an amalgam of the European glamour and mystery, as seen through the eyes of the Russian writer who had never traveled to Europe.
The ambiance of Grin’s sparkling tales was far removed from the dreary, colorless reality of the post-revolutionary Russia. Grin’s heroes also didn’t mesh well with the rabid communists. They were adventurers and sailors, intrepid captains and enigmatic girls. They valued love and honor above any communist slogans.
As a result, the government-sponsored publishers in Moscow and St. Petersburg refused to publish Grin’s books. He and his wife lived in extreme poverty. His name was almost forgotten until the late 1950s, long after his passing, when his literary oeuvre suddenly experienced a revival. The print runs of his books skyrocketed from zero into millions. The movie Scarlet Sails (1961) enjoyed huge popularity. I loved it as a young girl.
There was also a ballet Scarlet Sails, an anime, and a song. Every kid in the Soviet Union knew the name of Alexander Grin and read at least one of his books, Scarlet Sails. In Feodosia, a town in Crimea, they transformed the house where Grin had lived and died into his museum.
Furthermore, in the 21st century, the authorities of St. Petersburg, Russia, started an annual Scarlet Sails festival as a prom celebration for the city’s high school graduates. Every year during the festival, a ship sails up the river Neva at night, and fireworks coruscate over the ship’s scarlet sails to the delight of thousands of teenagers. Ironically, the ship with the scarlet sails is not Russian. At least until 2021 (I don’t have any later information) it had been the Swedish brig Tre Kronor, hired for the occasion.
Despite Alexander Grin’s current acclaim in Russia, his name is almost unknown in the West. Even his most famous book, Scarlet Sails, is hard to find in the English translation, and the movie has never been translated at all.
The genre of this short book, only seven chapters, is hard to define. There is no overt magic there, so it’s not a typical fantasy. Nor it is a reality, as the action takes place in Grinlandia.
The movie follows the book so closely that my summary would fit both of them. Both are lyrical and romantic. Both proclaim the power of love and dreams, which seems, at first glance, too naïve and too idealistic for our jaded world. Both introduce the most beloved of all Grin’s characters: Assol and Gray.
Assol is a dreamer. A poor working girl in the fishing village of Kaperna, she doesn’t fit among her dull, hardworking neighbors, and they wouldn’t forgive her for being different. They mock and scorn her. Her dreams are her only refuge, and she dreams about a prince, coming for her on a magnificent ship under scarlet sails.
Gray is an heir to a fortune. He lives with his parents in a castle, with a score of tutors and servants, but he dreams too – of becoming a captain and roaming the seas. His parents don’t understand him, so as a teenager, he runs away from home and makes his dream come true.
Gray’s collision with Assol and her world seems almost inevitable, delivered in the writer’s expressive, emotional voice. Grin’s narrative is so evocative it touched your soul. You could almost see every scene, breathe in the salty air, hear the gulls scream. Every detail is like a tiny butterfly infused with radiance.
I wanted to share this book with my English-speaking friends, so I translated it into English and posted it on wattpad, for everyone to read. I hope my translation conveys to you, at least a little, my wonder and admiration of this enchanting little jewel of a story. You can read my translation for free here.
If you dare to dream, despite the bleak reality of our lives in the 21st century, you might like this story too.
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Note: I made the cover myself, based on an image by the artist 1Tamara2 from Pixabay.com.
Olga Godim writing 
