I am a literary giant in Russia

Chapter 41: The Poor

As a poor man who is currently striving to have enough food and clothing, it is difficult for Mikhail to say that he can do much for others. After all, in the face of the suffering of the times, there is always too little that an individual can do.

But no matter what, doing something for others as much as possible is always a kind of somewhat sad comfort.

Tomorrow will have its own sufferings, but at least I hope that others will have a better life now.

And precisely because he knows that he can't do much, Mikhail is actually more or less avoiding having too deep a connection with some people.

Because of this, even though Mikhail had seen the little beggar several times in a row, he still did not ask about the other party's situation. First, he was worried that the child would recall some bad memories again. Second, Mikhail was really worried that after listening to him, his life, which had not yet escaped from debt, would become even more complicated.

As for the child, he probably remembered that Mikhail was a kind-hearted master, and as long as he could see him, it meant that he would definitely gain something today.

But even so, Mikhail still saw this child very rarely. It seemed that Mikhail could only see him when the child was so hungry that he could not bear it anymore or had to come for other reasons.

Once, before leaving, the child gave Mikhail a worn-out wooden sculpture and immediately ran away, as if he was afraid that Mikhail would refuse or throw it away in front of him.

Mikhail just accepted it silently. After scratching his hair for a long time, Mikhail finally made a difficult decision in his heart, which was to wait until the financial situation improved a little, and maybe ask about the situation of this quite polite child.

Damn it, I just hope this won't turn me from a well-off life into poverty again.
In fact, if Mikhail just wrote normally, he would not earn that much money. The royalties of Russian writers are indeed very high, but considering the amount of articles Mikhail remembered in his mind, to some extent, it is indeed one less article to use.

After all, if you carefully study a writer's life-long creations, you will find that in addition to those representative works, they often produce a lot of literary garbage, and there are almost no writers who produce excellent works.

But Mikhail is different. Each of his articles is a masterpiece among masterpieces, a classic among classics. Moreover, some of them are indeed not useful now and we have to wait for the right time.

Therefore, if you want to get started in a short period of time, you still have to rely on all your efforts in publishing a series of collections of essays, and then take over the "Modern Man" magazine if possible. Only then can you truly be said to have no worries about food and clothing.

Among the key figures in the "Petersburg Anthology", in addition to the great poets and writers and some minor poets and authors, there is another person who can be called the core.

That is Dostoyevsky's "Poor People".

When Lao Tuo was young, he was also a literary youth chasing his dreams. He gave up a good job and quit his job to make a living by writing. At that time, he was just a novice writer. The reason for making such a choice is as he wrote in the letter:
"I'm resigning because, I swear to you, I can no longer hold this position. What's the fun in life when the best years are taken away in vain? The problem is that I never planned to hold this position for a long time, so why waste my youth?" Although he became famous overnight, there was a gap of nearly half a year in between. In addition to relying on work to make a living, Lao Tuo of course relied more on his brother's help, cough cough
And as time went by, finally, after nearly three months, Mikhail's new novel was about to appear in a literary magazine again.

The article "Thirsty" went through many twists and turns, but the other work went much more smoothly. After all, this work did not have too many intense things, but more of a flash of human nature.

Well, after a big article, I always have to write a gentle one to cool down some people, so that they don't get too upset and really put Mikhail on the blacklist.
When the 25th of this month finally arrived, as major bookstores and cafes opened, young people began to come in one after another. As before, some of them came up and asked, "Has the 'Chronicle of the Motherland' arrived?"

But if before they paid more attention to the critic named Belinsky, now they start looking for the name of an author as soon as they get the magazine.

This author only appeared once, but he undoubtedly left a very deep impression on people, so much so that many people remembered his name.

But there is an obvious problem. If the debut work is so amazing, can the subsequent articles really be of the same quality as the previous ones?

Given these two good articles, can the author really write another article as good as the others?

Some people had doubts, but more people were full of expectations. Among these people, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was the one who was full of expectations, and perhaps his expectations were even greater than others.

This was of course because the neurotic young man gained more from those two novels than from many works he had read before, so that when he started writing his new works, he actually felt it was particularly easy, as if he had learned the secret of creation from them.

But recently he has encountered a bottleneck, so when the latest issue of "Chronicles of the Motherland" came out, this thin man couldn't wait to walk into the bookstore, took out the little money left in his pocket, and wanted to grab the magazine as soon as possible.

But there were so many young people who had the same idea as him. After a long time, Dostoevsky finally squeezed out of the crowd. Looking at those young people who had already started reading magazines or sharing their opinions, Dostoevsky wanted to join them, but after thinking about his recent financial situation, he could only harden his heart and turn away.

After arriving at his residence, the neurotic man hurriedly opened the magazine in his hand, his fingers trembling slightly, and his eyes soon fell on the name of the first novel: "The Poor".

In a fisherman's hut, the fisherman's wife, Sanna, sat under the lamp, mending an old fishing sail. The wind howled and wailed in the yard, and the waves crashed against the shore, making a rustling sound.
The day was dark and cold, but inside the fisherman's hut, it was warm as spring, and the fire was still burning. Five children slept soundly on beds draped with white mosquito nets, amid the roar of the sea. Sanna's husband had gone out to sea early in the morning and had not yet returned. She listened to the roar of the waves and the howling of the wind, feeling uneasy.

(End of this chapter)