I love to be surprised. Diaries and letters 1938-1957

The diaries of Eugene Schwartz have long taken their place in a huge and diverse layer of literature. It would seem, for him, the playwright -fairy -carrier, the description of the unsuccessful is a departure from the nature of his gift. But it turned out differently - new colors appeared in his gift. In the 1950s, in the records of E. Schwartz, another narrative was formed in parallel: Memories. The past in his diaries was intertwined with the present: In them you feel the living human being of the author, as he was the day when he wrote.
The diaries have become for E. Schwartz a real creative laboratory. He seemed to write sketches from nature, created sketches for portraits with an indispensable condition not to correct himself, to maintain the immediacy of the first impressions, the acuteness of the emotional reaction. We are not allowed to penetrate the innermost depths of the writer’s personality, but his records make it possible to touch her. Letters help this. Those who are published in this book are addressed to people creatively connected with Schwartz: director Nikolai Akimov, poets Samuel Marshak and Korney Chukovsky, film director Grigory Kozintsev and many others.

The diaries of Eugene Schwartz are an opportunity to touch the depths of the writer’s personality, visit his creative laboratory and plunge into the life of this wonderful playwright