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p Bending low over a small table, Leonov is scraping something with a file, carefully and painstakingly, while I loll on the sofa in the next room with a book. This is his dining room and at the same time his cactus garden. Leonov has the finest collection of cacti in the U.S.S.R. and he is very proud of the fact. The setting sun draws a radiant outline of the thick-lipped, hairy monsters.

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p Leonov comes in to show me the thing he has just finished making: this is a birch burl from which he has carved a vague, mysterious face.

p “Not bad, eh?" he says. “How do you like my echini? This fat one with the prickles pointing in every direction I got from Germany a short while ago. It’s the rarest thing in Moscow. None of the botanical gardens has one.” After a thoughtful pause, he adds: “Can anyone understand the nature of such lines, their laws?”

p Over the top of my book I watch Leonov hanging his wood carving on the wall. ...

p He remained young-looking for a long time: a broad-shouldered chap with a healthy Russian face and a shock of brown hair. Now that he is past sixty, he has grown a moustache. Some pretty tough material has gone into the making of him. He wrinkles his eyes up a little as he looks from under his overhanging brows. This is how a peasant looks from his window at a stranger coming down the village street: it is not exactly a cunning look, but rather a measuring glance to decide what sort of man he is.

p Leonov is clever with his hands, he loves making things and wants to get to the bottom of everything by himself. He has the hands of a working man, the skin on the fingers is rough and hard to clean. In the summertime, which he spends at his Peredelkino home, he is always pottering with his green “pets”, transplanting them from place to place. When he was younger he was fond of singing in the company of friends. He would put his whole heart into those little-known folk ballads and thieves’ songs, and then kiss his listeners. But he was always very sober.

p For a long time he had some sort of Brazilian liana standing in a pot under a glass bell on his desk—a feeble dwarf with thin little leaves, pining away in the Moscow flat. Leonov liked to finger those leaves before getting down to work. He would have a neat stack of paper before him which he would cover with a very neat writing, as fine and minute as those tiny leaves.

p Leonov is a hard-working man. For more than forty years now, since 1922 when his first book came out, he has begun his day by sitting down at this desk to write, study and read: to learn English and the art of writing, and to read about everything under the sun, from his own profession to cybernetics.

p He has a new book out nearly every year. And every new work seems more talented than the last. The whole fifty-year history of the Soviet Union is reflected in them as truthfully as the banks of a river are reflected in its clear waters.

p Leonid Maximovich Leonov (b. 1899) was born into the family of a little-known writer. He began with romance, playing a game of words and rendering folk tales and legends. This had its social 182 sense. In the years immediately following the Revolution the small, puny character who eventually walked through many of Leonov’s books had not yet taken shape.

p His first stories: Buryga, Yegomshka’s Death, Tuatamur, Exit Ham, Halil, The Petushikhino Breakthrough and The End of the Little Man all came out within a single year—a most impressive harvest.

p Buryga is a sort of fairy tale, an intricate wood carving, a rendering of a superstition, a game played with bookish words, a drawing of the old-world village.

p Halil is a Persian qasida, Exit Ham is a stylised Biblical novelette, and Tuatamur is also a stylised, dramatic story about the sinister Mongol, not as contrived as Kazimir Edshmidt’s but done in the same literary traditions.

p Yegorusbka’s Death is a fantastic tale about a Pomor. The Petushikhino Breakthrough describes post-revolutionary events in an old moss-grown village beside an ancient monastery. The End of the Little Man is a shriek of the old intelligentsia appalled by the Revolution. Professor Likharev, a paleonthologist, who is the principal character of this story, cannot accept the Revolution because he sees in it a return to pre-historic times, and goes mad.

p In early Leonov we see two features common to a large number of authors writing in the nineteen-twenties. First, on the surface, is his romantically elevated, intricate style. Below the surface, there lies his individualistic concern for the right to live of every man, even the most insignificant. It is the theme of Pushkin’s Bronze Horseman. To put it in other words: the rights of an individual do not always correspond to the interests of the state. It may be a new, revolutionary state, but it is still a state, and therefore practices coercion.

p In Kovyakin’s Notes (1924) the hero of the story says: “The more individuals there are the worse it is. Each individual demands his drop of blood. And to my mind, a drop of human blood is worth more than any individual with all his innards.”

p One is reminded of Dostoyevsky’s words that all the efforts to remake the world are not worth a single tear shed by a ruined girl.

p “Look out, don’t touch me,” cries the little man. He runs, getting in the way of history which, like the raging Neva in Pushkin’s Bronze Horseman, sweeps the solitary people away.

p As a writer Leonid Leonov has travelled from the psychological blind alleys of a suffering and pettily individualistic little man to where the streets are seething with life, where men are busy building a new world, where people and things clash, and the struggle is going on in the open. At times the struggle grows fierce, a fight to the death for the interests of the working people.

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p The new character in Leonov’s books, even when he did make his appearance, did not assert himself at once. The Badgers (1924), Leonov’s first novel, deals with the main theme of the time—the struggle for socialism. The world is rent in two. The story tells of two brothers—Semyon and Anton, both of them peasants. Semyon joins an anti-Soviet band and hides out in the forest, burrowing into the ground like a badger. His brother Anton is a Communist, and a commissar. Anton comes out the winner, scoring a moral and, what is more important, a spiritual victory. His is the rightful cause. The conflict between town and village is rendered by Leonov as a conflict between the rural private-ownership mentality of the “badgers” and the straightness of the victorious urban proletariat.

p In Leonov’s next works—the play Untilovsk (1926), the novels Thief (1927), A Provincial Story (1927), and Extraordinary Stories About Peasants (i927-i928)-we see that the struggle is by no means over, and that inwardly, philosophically and creatively the rebellious petty-bourgeois individual now posing as a “little man”, now hiding behind the gorgeous samite of legend, now donning a sumptuous literary attire, has not yet been completely vanquished.

p However, the achievements of the first five-year plan which so aggravated the class struggle in the country—or rather the struggle itself—brought clarity and ideological freshness into all these apparently eternal, Dostoyevsky-like themes. At the time it was still difficult to sum up all those enormous historical upheavals and their effect on the work of Soviet writers. But one thing can be said now: the effect was much greater than might appear on the surface. The events which took place in the U.S.S.R. in those years led not only to an acceleration in the rate of socialist construction and a fresh upsurge of energy in the working class, but also to an acceleration of the “psychological and ideological processes" in the minds of men under the influence of the time’s tremendous social tensions. Like in a vessel filled with liquid warmed up from below, some particles floated to the surface, others sank to the bottom, more and more quickly. Deep-lying concepts that once seemed fundamental and immutable, were shaken up and ejected, while much which had hitherto gone either unappreciated or unnoticed now emerged. This explains what in Leonov’s work may, on the surface of it, appear an unreasonable ideological zigzag, a “ misappropriation" of yet unripe creative thoughts, whereas in actual fact it is all perfectly justified.

p The novel The River Sott (1929) and the short story Saranchuki (1930) placed Leonov among the leading writers of revolutionary Soviet Russia. He says in The River Sott: “The village split, and from that cleft a new human growth appeared, pushing it wider and wider apart.”

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p In a sense, the Sott symbolises socialist construction as a whole, but as seen by an onlooker, someone who is not yet directly involved in it. The scene is set in the back of beyond, where there is nothing but forest and marshes and the only habitation is an ancient monastery with its collection of weird human freaks. This is a corner of “picturesque” Russia with its bears, pre-Petrine beards, snows, vodka, and the “Slav soul”. Advancing on it is an army of Bolshevik builders, headed by Uvadyev, a man cast in “red iron”. They have arrived to build a paper mill on the bank of the Sott River. The tremendous psychological, social and ideological turmoil caused by the arrival of socialism in this world is splendidly presented by Leonov. The characters—peasants, engineers and monksare not so much painted with a brush as meticulously carved out of wood. The central figure is the communist worker, a symbol of inflexible strength, whom the author compels us to believe in and respect.

p Ideologically, however, this book is not without its faults. In certain instances Leonov does not yet see the world exactly as the Communists do. But what matters far more is that he does see and appreciate the main thing in the great struggle for communism, and does not simply recreate the atmosphere but actually takes part in the struggle himself.

p For their artistic merits, The Badgers, The River Sott and Saranchuki are certainly Leonov’s best books.

p Leonov is extremely quick in his choice of themes, and every turn of history is immediately reflected by him. For instance, the contradictions of the NEP period were reflected in the novel Thief (192.7) which, by the way, was thoroughly revised by the author a few years ago; he turned to the theme of rural backwardness in Extraordinary Stories About Peasants, the theme of industrialisation in The River Sott; the participation of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia in socialist construction in the novel Skutarevsky (1932); and, last but not least, the victories scored by socialism in the second five-year plan period in The Way to the Ocean (1935), a novel which reaches far into the future, to battles for world socialism, and which has for one of its heroes the figure of a Bolshevik, a leader in every respect.

p Leonov has written a number of plays on the war theme—Invasion, Lenushka and others. The latest of his major works, the novel Russian Forest, gives a comprehensive picture of Russian life from before the Revolution to long after the Second World War.

p Still, it would be wrong to suppose that Leonov is led by his theme, as is the case with many writers of the descriptive genre. No, Leonov is less given to descriptions and does not stick closely to his theme as much as other writers. On the contrary, he is more 185 given to thinking. His books are perhaps the most intellectual in modern Soviet literature. But the intellectual nature of his writing, always based on philosophical thought and the study of human relations, is to a certain extent screened by the fancifulness of his plots, and the intricacy of his somewhat rhetorical style.

p Leonov could be called a labyrinthologist. His talent acquires a peculiar brilliance when he describes scenes or phenomena that remind us of those labyrinths of the human spirit through which walked a man with the tortured expression of a convict and the psychological chisel of a ruthless and brilliant artist—Dostoyevsky. Leonov is in his element when he plunges into the elements, if you’ll excuse the pun. His manner of writing—and this refers in equal measure to his novels and his publicistic writings—is so rhetorical and even high-flown that at times it may tire the reader. It must be said frankly that Leonov is not easy to read at one go. Every theme and even a phrase just begun becomes immediately overgrown with incidental images and metaphors which snowball into something extremely involved. For instance, we do not have simply a train crash but: “the twisted frames of the coaches, twined together by the terrible force of the impact, made the base of this barbaric altar. The sacrifice on this altar was still smoking. . . . The creeping red of tragedy cast a miserly film over it all.” And so on. (From The Way to the Ocean.} The plot develops slowly, with dozens of motifs, complementing the main theme or leading away from it, pouring into it as it flows on. All these ornaments are painted with skill, excellent taste and sincerity. It is not the psychological ornamentation of Marcel Proust. Leonov’s ornamentation overflows with his uncontainable sense of colour, smell, shading and line. Sometimes his intricate carving of word patterns makes one think that he simply takes delight in the game he is playing with the Russian language, just like the Chinese craftsmen love the superhumanly patient work of carving a nest of lacy blackwood balls, an amazing feat of manual skill.

p In those places where the canvas allows, Leonov weaves his words to form pictures with exquisite artistry, and we no longer find his style rhetorical. This is, for instance, how in The River Sott he describes the dark, impenetrable world of the monks, which is a symbol counterposed to the new world: “Seated along the low, windowless timber wall were about twelve old men, the leaders and rocks of this human desert. The souls of all of them were distorted in some way, which was what had driven them here. Susanna looked in amazement at the men’s noses with the distended nostrils, at their heavy-lobed ears, their eyes that either blazed with fire or were so icy that they could quench the fire in the eyes of the others, their huge scorbutic mouths, rent by a silent scream, their swollen 186 hands, or again hands so eloquent in their thinness that they may have been purposely moulded thus by an ironic artist.”

p As a painter of psychological portraits Leonov succeeds best with people whose souls have their blind alleys and labyrinths. Take his novel Thief for example. Leonov gives a brilliant picture of Moscow in the NEP period, or rather of Moscow’s underworld: drink-ruined circus acrobats, thiefs, prostitutes, speculators, shady dealers and people “with no fixed occupation”. The hero of the novel Dmitry Vekshin is an ex-Communist, who has rolled downhill and become a thief, and yet has retained a peculiar pathos of “truth” even in the “lower depths" of life. Firsov, a writer, tells Vekshin that a certain “high-standing” person has advised him to describe the whales and not bother with the small fry. But Firsov does not heed this advice because he is fascinated by the labyrinths of the human mind which he investigates in these people of the lower depths, among the “anarchy of the conquered”. And then Firsov says: “But what if I am too curious, what if I want to discover everything about a person, down to his most deeply hidden roots? What if every person appears to me to have a pimple, and what if it is these pimples that I am curious about. . . what then?”

p In early Leonov this curiosity about “human pimples" was closely bound up with his “little man" motifs. Little by little these motifs were pushed into the background by the new Soviet themes and new material with which the “little man”, with his inferiority complex and spiritual tangles, came into inevitable conflict. Already in Skutarevsky and The Way to the Ocean he has become a character of secondary importance. But though relegated to his true place in society, he is still able to take revenge on the author by influencing the character of his word-painting which, being excessively concerned with “pimples” renders the form superior to the content.

p However, it would be a mistake to let Leonov’s rhetorical or complicated style obstruct our view of his deep reflections on certain themes of lasting importance. For instance, the philosophy of Vissarion, a monk in The River Sott, is echoed in the views of a large number of apocalyptic philosophers in the West today with their technophobia (see Hubscher’s Denker unserer Zeit for instance). Vissarion says: “The world is on the decline, such as has never been known yet, it is based on hatred and vengeance, its laws are made for scoundrels, its machines are for the debilitated, its art is for the insane. .. . Civilisation is the road, degeneration is the finish. I am unwell, my words will run together. . .but try to understand me. It is not thought, not ideas that shape the mind, but things. It is not God who robbed mankind, but things—the evil master of the world.”

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p In the novel The Russian Forest, Leonov has created such impressive characters as Vikhrov, his daughter Polya, and Professor Gratsiansky.

p Polya Vikhrova, a Moscow student, represents the new Soviet intelligentsia whose interests are centred on ethical problems. The basic idea of the novel is the power of life, and the forest itself is a symbol of this life, a source of water, a source of beauty. Vikhrov whom the author calls a “deputy of the forests" is actually a messenger of life.

p Gratsiansky, on the contrary, is irritated by everything that shines with cleanliness, life and light. It is not surprising that he thrusts a stick into a forest spring which for Vikhrov is a symbol of the forest’s primordial purity. Gratsiansky is a complex character, and we can divine that he serves as a vehicle for Leonov’s polemicising with his former idol Dostoyevsky. The debate on the future of the Russian forest is a debate on the future between Vikhrov and Gratsiansky. The latter appears to be bound by invisible threads to Vissarion Bulanin who dreamed of a naked man on a naked earth. Gratsiansky also wants to denude the Russian rivers, to clear away the forests and deprive them of their life-giving source. Vissarion is a former White officer who has put on the guise of a monk. Gratsiansky has a Niet2schean, even a fascist psychology, but he appears in the guise of a Soviet man, a professor.

I think that in his novels—as huge as cathedrals and as full of tiny cogs and wheels as a watch—Leonov does finally find his way to the essential problems of our day: to problems of life and death, the roads of history, the role of technical progress, and mankind’s prospects for the future. He clothes his thoughts in forms which do not always allow one to see it at first glance. His novels, like some homes, are overcrowded with furniture so that it is often not easy to find one’s way about them. Maybe living in them is not always easy either. But even if a desk is piled high with books one can still find whatever it is one is looking for, provided one is prepared to search. It is the same with Leonov. In his novels, sooner than anywhere else, we can find the thing that interests all of us: searching thought.