my work. The idea of writing this novel originated in 1937, after I had
met a man whom I have portrayed in Two Captains under the name of
Sanya Grigoriev. This man told me the story of his life-a life filled with
hard work, self-dedication and love of his country. I made it a rule from
the very first page not to invent anything, or hardly anything. In fact,
even such a curious detail as the muteness of little Sanya has not been
invented by me. His mother and father, his sister and friends have been
described exactly as they first appeared to me in the narrative of my
chance acquaintance, who afterwards became my friend. Of some of the
personages of my future book I learned from him very little. Korablev,
for example, was sketchily described in his narrative as a man with a
quick searching eye, which invariably made the schoolchildren speak the
truth; other characteristics were a moustache and a walking stick and a
habit of sitting over a book late into the night. This outline had to be
filled in by the author's imagination in order to create a character study
of a Soviet schoolteacher.
The story, as told to me, was really a very simple one. It was the story
of a boy who had had a cheerless childhood and was brought up by
Soviet society, by people who had taken the place of his dead parents
and had sustained in him the dream he had cherished in his ardent and
honest heart since early childhood.
Nearly all the circumstances of this boy's life, and later of his youth
and manhood, have been retained in the novel. His childhood years,
however, were spent on the Volga and his school years in Tashkent-
places with which I am not very familiar. I have therefore transferred
the early scene of my book to my own hometown, which I have named
Ensk. No wonder my fellow townsmen have so easily deciphered the
town's real name. My school years (the senior forms) were spent in
Moscow, and I have been able to describe in my book a Moscow school
of the early twenties with greater authenticity than I could have
achieved with a Tashkent school.
I might mention another question which my correspondents ask me,
namely, to what extent the novel Two Captains is autobiographical. To
a considerable extent everything, from the first to the last page, that
Sanya Grigoriev has seen has been seen by the author with his own eyes.
6
Our two lives ran parallel, so to speak. But when Sanya Grigoriev's
profession came into the book I had to drop the 'personal' material and
make a study of the life of pilots, of which I had known very little until
then.
Invaluable assistance in studying aeronautics was given me by Senior
Lieutenant S. Y. Klebanov, who died the death of a hero in 1943. He was
a talented pilot, a brave officer and a fine, upright man. I was proud of
his friendship. During my work on the second volume I came across
(among the materials of the War Study Commission) testimonials of
Klebanov's brother-officers showing that my high opinion of him was
shared by his comrades.
It is difficult, well nigh impossible, to give any complete answer to the
question of how one or another character of a literary work is created,
especially if the narrative is in the first person. Apart from those
observations, reminiscences, and impressions which I have mentioned,
my book contains thousands of others which had no direct bearings on
the story as told to me and which served as the groundwork for Two
Captains. Imagination, as everyone knows, plays a tremendous role in a
writer's work. And it is on this that one must speak before passing to the
story of my second principal character Captain Tatarinov.
Don't look for his name in encyclopaedias or handbooks. Don't try to
prove, as one pupil did at a geography lesson, that it was Tatarinov and
not Vilkitsky who discovered Novaya Zemlya. For the older of my two
captains I used the story of two brave explorers of the Arctic. One of
them supplied me with the courageous character of a man pure in
thought and clear in aim-qualities that bespeak a noble soul. This was
Sedan. From the other I took the actual story of his voyage. This was
Brusilov. The drift of my St. Maria repeats exactly the drift of Brusilov's
St. Anne. The diaries of Navigating Officer Klimov quoted in my novel
are based on the diary of Albanov, Navigating Officer of the St. Anne,
one of the two surviving members of that tragic expedition. The
historical material alone, however, did not seem enough to me. I knew
that there lived in Leningrad a painter and writer by the name of Nikolai
Pinegin, a friend of Sedov's and one of those who had brought his
schooner the St. Phocas back to the mainland after the death of Sedov.
We met, and Pinegin not only told me a lot more about Sedov and gave
me a vivid picture of the man, but explained the tragedy of his life, the
life of a great explorer slandered and refused recognition by reactionary
circles of society in tsarist Russia. Incidentally, during one of my
meetings with Pinegin the latter treated me to some tinned food which
he had picked up at Cape Flora in 1914, and to my amazement I found it
excellent. I mention this trivial detail because it is characteristic of
Pinegin and of the range of interests into which I was drawn during my
visits to this 'Arctic home'.
Later, when the first volume had already appeared, Sedov's widow
gave me a lot of interesting information. The summer of 1941 found me
working hard on the second volume, in which I intended to make wide
use of the story of the famous airman Levanevsky. My plan was thought
out, the materials were studied and the first chapters written. V. Y. Vize,
the well-known scientist and Arctic explorer, approved the contents of
the future 'Arctic' chapters and told me many interesting things about
the work of search parties. But the war broke out and I had to dismiss
for a long time the very idea of finishing the novel. I wrote front-line
7
reportage, war sketches and short stories. However, the hope of being
able to take up the novel again apparently did not leave me, otherwise I
would not have found myself asking the editor of Izvestia to send me to
the Northern Front. It was there, among the airmen and submarines of
the Northern Fleet that I realised that the characters of my book would
