'Favored, celebrated, received with such great honor that even my conscience worries about the undeservedness of all this honor, I am publishing a book of my penned writings... I offer recollections of the most interesting moments of my life. We do not value them... we are even ashamed and keep silent about them. I am sketching them...' Ilya Efimovich Repin possessed an extraordinary literary gift. 'Distant Close' is a book of memoirs about his life, colleagues, and contemporaries, compiled and prepared for publication in 1915, but first published after the author's death in 1937. It has gone through more than a dozen editions and has been translated into many foreign languages.
'What a miracle this is!.. This is how one should write... And what happiness for all for whom these 'Notes' of yours will forever remain a profound page from Russian history,' said critic Vladimir Stasov in response to the first publication of Repin's article about Kramskoy in 1892. Written in a remarkably vivid, expressive, flexible and lively language, the artist's memoirs, even now, more than a century later, invariably earn enthusiastic reviews from readers.