Heavenly paths

Ivan Sergeyevich Shmelev, the author of the “summer of the Lord” and “Inexhaustible Cup”, became “the most Russian” of emigrant writers, whose work went beyond the scope of national literature. His works received European fame and were translated into dozens of languages, the writer twice was nominated for the Nobel Prize. Shmelev worked on the trilogy of the “Heavenly Ways” for fifteen years. The first volume was released in 1936, the second-in 1948, work on the third book was interrupted by the death of the writer and remained incomplete. The plot is based on the “History of one wonderful life” - biographies of real people, engineer Viktor Alekseevich Vaidengammer and Daria Koroleva, who lived at the end of the 19th century near the Optina Desert. The author called his book the first experience of the Orthodox novel. “I know,” wrote Shmelev, “this was not possible either by Dostoevsky, nor Leontyev, nor Leskov, nor Gogol ...” The author saw his main task in showing “how the believers ... rationalists” and how to accept the “paths of heaven through love”