Pushkin’s theme in the author’s version of the sixth part of K.G. Paustovsky’s “the story of a life” - “On a slow fire (the book of wanderings)”

K.G. Paustovsky’s interest in the work and biography of A.S. Pushkin was reflected in a number of works of the writer, both artistic and journalistic: “Mikhailovsky Groves” (1938), “Smoke of the Fatherland” (1944), “Our contemporary (Pushkin)” (1949), “On the Other Side of the Rainbow”, “The Wind of Speed” (1954) and others. A number of scientific works are devoted to the study of Pushkin’s theme, including recently published articles by I. Parchevskaya, V.G. Andreeva, N.V Mikhalenko, N.V Semenova. This article is devoted to Pushkin’s theme in the last part of “The Story of a Life, The Book of Wanderings” (1963). The study is based on a comparison of the published text and the typescript from the “Novyi Mil” collection with editorial and authorial revisions. It is established that the original volume of the text dedicated to Pushkin was larger, but some fragments the writer had to reduce at the request of the editor. In particular, the paragraphs in which Pushkin’s theme intersected with themes “undesirable” for the Soviet censorship were removed. Thanks to the reference to the author’s version we managed to find out the role of references to the poet and quotations from Pushkin’s works. In “The Book of Wanderings” the narrator learns the skills of writing, forms his own style, and finally moves from magazine work to professional writing. In the difficult 1920s and 1930s, Pushkin becomes a mentor, counselor, and a model of civil courage and inner freedom for the young writer; turning to his poems helps the narrator to survive crisis moments and find his way in literature.