In Praise of 'Crimson Sails'

Those who know me, know of my love for those imagined lands that nestle within our real world, places exemplified by 'Ruritania', the setting for Anthony Hope's dazzling The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) and its mundane sequel Rupert of Hentzau (1898). Other examples include George Barr McCutcheon's 'Graustark,' Leonard Wibberley's 'Grand Fenwick' and of course my own invention: 'The Principality,' dominated by the eponymous castle of the ruling family, 'The Green Redoubt.'

The Science Fiction Encyclopaedia (SFE) summarises the essential qualities of such places:-

• They must provide a fairy-tale enclave (or polder), located both within and beyond normal civilisation;
• They must be infused by an air of nostalgia.

Which, by a roundabout route, brings me to probably the greatest fantasy writer that Russia has ever produced - Aleksandr Stepanovich Grinevsky a.k.a. Alexander Grin (1880 - 1932). Of course, one should qualify such a claim. The greatest Russian fantasy work of all is unquestionably Pushkin's Russlan and Ludmila (1820), which is heavily rooted in Russian folklore. But for original fantasy, Grin, for me, takes the gong.

One might ask, well where are all the Russian fantasy writers of modern times? Of course there are a few, but even the best (the genre-king Sergei Lukyanenko and the more literary Victor Pelevin spring to mind), are still building their reputation - it would seem that the fall of the Soviet Union, almost thirty years ago now, kick-started a lot of careers. I can imagine that fantasy writing of the kind that was blossoming in the west by the mid-twentieth century, would not have been one of the Soviet era's most favoured art forms.

So what about Grin? From the beginning of this article you might guess that his works are located in an imagined land, and you'd be right. But Grin, regrettably, at least from a modern marketing point of view, never gave a name to the homeland of his cities of Liss, Kaperna and Zurbagan. Grin aficionados, of which I an now firmly one, refer to it affectionately as 'Grinland' or 'Grinlandia.'

The first thing you notice about Grin, when you start to pull together material for an article, is just how huge a following he has in many other countries. The number of German editions of his works, for example, is staggering. But so far as I can tell, the one significant English translation of Grin is the collection from Progress Publishers The Seeker of Adventure (1978), which includes two of Grin's most celebrated novellas Fandango and Crimson Sails. It appears that none of his longer works (The Glittering World and The Golden Chain, to name but two) have been translated into English.

I've just read Crimson Sails. It's a truly wonderful story, of the type that is probably the most difficult of all for a writer to pull off successfully. It's an unabashed feelgood tale: the joyful ending telegraphed almost from the beginning, the reader deriving his or her entertainment from the journey, rather than the suspense of the uncertainty. Fortunately, there's plenty to enjoy.

Assol, the young daughter of shunned toy maker Longren, encounters an enigmatic storyteller in the woods, while chasing along the riverbank after her crimson-sailed toy boat. He predicts her future. Meanwhile, a world away, Arthur Grey, the unworldly son of minor nobility, runs away to sea. Both are delightfully quirky characters: the former ending each day with the curt prayer 'Goodnight God'; the latter with a habit of daubing the nail wounds on crucifixes with blue paint, to cover up the pain.

Grin's doesn't fall into the trap of over-egging the privations of Assol and her father, nor of over demonising the venal Menners family (for we all know where the story is heading), and he punctuates the action with some satisfyingly deep philosophical musings.

The early scene where Longren watches as Menners senior is swept away, without going to his aid, is brilliantly conceived. Longren is ostracised by the community afterwards, not for his inaction, but because he looked on in cold-blooded silence as the man responsible for his wife's death is taken by the sea, rather than having the 'normal' reaction of crowing and jeering at him.

And in the end, the story goes just where it should and Grin, knowing full well that you shouldn't overstay your welcome in such situations, completes the tale with satisfying economy and you put the book down with a smile on your face and a tear in your eye. And when you pick the book up again later to thumb through it, you notice that Crimson Sails comes with its own particular dedication: Presented and dedicated to Nina Nikolayevna Grin by the AUTHOR, Petrograd, Nov. 23rd, 1922.

Update: 08/10/2019

It’s often the case with works in translation, that they can collect, over time, more than one name, depending on the inclination of the translator. Thus, I now discover that Crimson Sails has also often been known as Scarlet Sails, and if I research the work under that name, I get a much clearer picture of its enduring popularity in Russia. In 1942, for example, a ballet version was created by little-known composer Vladimir Yurovsky. It was staged at the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre of the USSR in December 1943.

In St. Petersburg, Scarlet Sails has become the centrepiece of the annual White Nights summer celebrations. The tradition dates from 1968, when the first show was put on there (in then Leningrad) by schoolchildren celebrating the end of the school year. Scarlet Sails was deemed apt for two reasons. In the first place, Grin was regarded at the time as a children’s author, because he included fantasy in his works. He isn’t of course, though it is fair to say that much of his output can be enjoyed by children and adults alike. Several other writers of the era had a similar fate – M.M. Prishvin, for example, who wove folklore into his nature stories. And secondly, Scarlet Sails had become associated with St. Petersburg, because an earlier draft of the work, penned before Grin conceived Grinland, was set there (in then Petrograd).