1
p The true realist writer sets out to give an accurate and authentic picture of man in relation to his fellow human beings and the surrounding world. Thus it is essential in the long run that he understand and explain the historical process.
p Soviet writers refused to recognise the influence of any powerful outside factors in the historical process, as was only to be expected from people who themselves fought in and won the Revolution and the Civil War. It was only natural that they should see the explanation for all that had taken place in the revolutionary struggle of the people, that is in reality itself. Indeed, one of the great innovatory features of socialist realism was this enthusiastic epic sweep which determined not only the subject-matter but also the composition and style of the works of Soviet literature.
p One of the main aims of Soviet literature was to discover the best means of depicting the historical activity of the people through the lives of individuals or groups of people, and to show the reader the grandeur of the collective achievement of the masses. The people become a leading character in the great epic.
p And Quiet Flows the Don presents the people at a turning point in history. The ten years the novel covers are full of events of momentous historical importance—the carnage of the imperialist war and the resulting 1917 Revolution in Russia which marked the beginning of a new era.
p Sholokhov’s heroes are workers and peasants, and work is an essential part of their life.
p Lev Tolstoi had condemned the idle, immoral life of the ruling classes and extolled the life of the toiling masses, seeing the highest good in work for the benefit 124 of humanity. Like the hero of his novel Resurrection, he understood that this was a new, beautiful world.
p “’Yes, a different, entirely new world,’ Nekhlyudov thought, as he looked at those dry, muscular limbs, the coarse home-spun clothes and the sunburnt faces with their expression of tenderness and suffering. He felt he was surrounded by entirely new people with their serious interests, their present joys and sorrows, their human life of toil.... And he felt the joy of the traveller who has discovered a beautiful, new, unknown world.”
p The literature of socialist realism was to be the true explorer of this beautiful, new world. For Gorky’s aesthetics, work and the capacity for revolutionary activity are inseparable categories.
p “For me work is a sphere which fires my imagination with unlimited inspiration,” Gorky wrote. “I believe that all the mysteries and tragedies of our life will only be solved through work, and that it is the only thing that can make the alluring dreams of equality and justice come true.” [124•*
p Sholokhov possesses a rare gift for penetrating the very essence of the simple working man’s character, revealing his thoughts, feelings and aspirations with warmth and understanding. Grigory Melekhov, Aksinya, Pantelei Prokofyevich, Ilyinichna and Natalya are among the immortal characters of Russian and world literature.
p Sholokhov’s heroes are peasant Cossacks whose whole life is based on hard work, and we see them in their daily round.
p Ilyinichna is “bent with toil”, and Pantelei Prokofyevich is always on the go so that it is difficult to imagine him not occupied with some task or another. We see him repairing a shoe or harness by the light of the oil lamp on a winter’s evening, or going out to see to the cows. In the spring and summer he is always out in the steppe, mowing or sowing, reaping or threshing.
p “Hard-working” figures as one of the most positive epithets in the novel. “He’s a hard-working lad”, people say approvingly of Grigory, while “hard-working Natalya" soon won the hearts of her parents-in-law.
125p The proud and beautiful Aksinya is rarely to be seen unoccupied. She fetches water from the Don, whitewashes the house, milks the cow, and gathers the hay in the wake of the mowers. During the hard years when there is hardly a man left in the village she repairs the roof and goes mowing and sowing with Dunya.
p The heroes of the novel are often described as having “skilful hands, itching for work”, “toiler’s hands”, “fingers roughened by work".
p Sholokhov’s descriptions of work are almost always concrete and visual. He shows us his heroes actually at work, the way they work. We see Pantelei Prokofyevich at the mowing, for which the whole village turned out as though for an annual holiday: “His hook-nose shone as though freshly varnished, the sweat clung to the hollows of his swarthy cheeks. He smiled, baring a closeset row of white, gleaming teeth in his raven beard, and, with his wrinkled neck bent to the right, swept the scythe through the grass. A seven-foot semicircle of mown grass lay at his feet" (1, 64). Grigory is described during the reaping: “He could hardly open his parched lips. He gripped his pitchfork closer to the prongs in order to get a better leverage on the heavy swathes, and breathed spasmodically. His dripping chest itched from sweat. From under his hat it poured down his face and stung his eyes like soap" (1, 110).
p The perspiration dripping off Grigory is a very concrete image which immediately conveys the intensity of his strenuous effort.
p Throughout the novel—in the descriptions of working people, in the succession of farming scenes, in the recollections of the Cossacks torn away by the war from the land and pining for work—we find an insistence on a life of toil as the only real life for a man.
p Sholokhov sees work as belonging to the aesthetic category of the beautiful, and this is what gives that exciting poetic quality and moving lyric power to the workaday scenes in the novel. The poetry of work is a leitmotif of And Quiet Flows the Don.
p Weary with the long war, Grigory longs “to walk along the soft furrow left by the plough-share, whistling to the bullocks; to hear the trumped call of the cranes; to brush the flying silver gossamer from his cheeks, and 126 to drink in the autumnal scent of earth raised by the plough" (3, 120-121).
p Note how the language here is not that of common, everyday speech. “The trumped call of the cranes”, “the flying silver gossamer", “to drink in the autumnal scent", are all poetic expressions, and in fact not a single detail in these lines is on the level of common speech. The passage is intended to convey the beauty inherent in the simplest everyday tasks. And indeed this scene of autumn plowing, scrupulously accurate down to the last detail, arouses a sense of beauty and gives true aesthetic pleasure.
p We find what has so often been expressed in literature in prosaic terms as gloomy and monotonous being treated as something aesthetic. Sholokhov was after all describing the hard life of the peasants in pre-revolutionary Russia, yet he managed to single out and reveal the poetry of labour. Even the most humdrum features of workaday life are full of significance and bring him pleasure.
p When Grigory was travelling home to recuperate after his wound, his heart warmed within him as he remembered his former life.
p “...When he thought that soon it would be time to get the harrows ready for spring, the willow mangers would have to be woven, and that when the earth was unclothed and dry he would be driving out into the steppe, his labour-yearning hands gripping the plough handles, feeling it pulse and jerk like a live thing; when he remembered that soon he would be breathing in the sweet scent of the young grass and the damp-smelling earth turned over by the plough-share, his heart warmed within him. He longed to clean the cattle-yard, to toss the hay, to smell the withered scent of the clover, the quitch, the pungent smell of dung" (2, 341-342).
p Sholokhov poeticises labour as a mighty constructive force giving his heroes physical vigour and moral health. Prolonged inactivity is an intolerable burden for them.
2
p While poeticising labour and the real life of toil of the Cossack farmers in contrast with the idle, hence futile life on the Listnitsky estate, Sholokhov never donned rose-coloured spectacles. He did not hesitate to 127 reveal the evil power of property instincts that had such a grip in Cossack life, showing how it disfigured human beings and dehumanised them.
p One-armed Alexei Shamil had been quarrelling with his neighbour Kashuliii over a strip of land for six years. “Alexei beat up the old man every spring, although the strip that Kashulin had grabbed was not big enough to swing a cat in anyway" (1, 196).
p The private property instinct made itself felt in the sphere of family relations too, in the idea which still persisted in village life that the paterfamilias was the indisputable lord and master. When Stepan exercised his rights and beat Aksinya with calculated brutality, the villagers merely displayed an unhealthy curiosity. As for Ilyinichna, she had borne countless beatings from her husband when both of them were young.
p It took a woman truly remarkable strength and courage to live and raise her children in these conditions where she was deprived of her true dignity as a human being and a mother.
p It was not done to freely demonstrate one’s tenderer feelings in public. The description of Grigory’s wedding with Natalya whom he does not love is truly horrifying. “Scowling, Grigory kissed his wife’s insipid lips and sent a hunted glance round the room. A crimson fever of faces. Coarse, drunkenly muddy glances and smiles" (1, 139).
p Sholokhov purposely gives a naturalistic description of the wedding, thereby adding a satirical note to the scene. He is openly sympathetic towards Grigory, the mettlesome young Cossack forced by village conventions to give up his Aksinya and marry Natalya.
p Sholokhov shows us another unpleasant side of Cossack life—the way pillage in wartime was considered quite natural and lawful, merely as a sign of Cossack bravado.
p There is a scene in book one where a Cossack who has stolen a watch belonging to an inhabitant of a village near the frontier meets with the open approval of his fellow Cossacks:
p “‘The likes of us can’t help stealing.’
p “‘Everything sticks to a Cossack’s hand.’
p “‘Let them be more careful about their things!’
p “‘A nimble fellow, that!’ " (1, 353).
128p During the Civil War the defenders of “the quiet Don" became an army of looters, pillaging the families of lied Guards and those suspected of Bolshevik sympathies and stripping prisoners naked. Pantelei Prokofyevich, always with an eye to the farm and the family interest, becomes a regular looter during the Civil War. He comes to the front to see Grigory, and carries off everything he can lay his hands on in the house of a Cossack who is away lighting for the Reds. Deaf to tears and entreaties of the Cossack’s wife, he loads everything onto his wagon, from horse-collars and clothes to the bath-house boiler.
p The predatory nature of the world of property can best be seen in the lives of the wealthy merchant, Mokhov, and the richest farmer in the village, Korshunov.
p Alarmed by the February Revolution, and feeling that a fatal blow had been struck to the world he lived in, Mokhov recalled an incident that had occurred long before at the mill, when he had ordered his scales-man not to give flour to a Cossack who had made a fuss about being given short weight. Now he was to admit to himself, “I got my money by shady means—I’ve squeezed others....”
p The Korshunovs’ house with its iron roof standing in a spacious garden surrounded by a strong high fence, was every bit as good as that of Mokhov the merchant. The tight-hsted old Miron Korshunov owned fourteen pairs of bullocks, fifteen cows, a herd of horses and broodmares, and a flock of several hundred sheep. His whole life had been spent accumulating wealth and he was a hard taskmaster who drove his seasonal and permanent labourers until they almost dropped. Both “outsiders” and poorer Cossacks went to him hat in hand. There was a strong human drama behind the inconspicuous-looking Mikhei, a regular farm-hand employed by Korshunov. Ruined by fire, he had left his family to become a labourer, had taken to drink, and was soon a wreck of what he had been.
p Sholokhov’s description of life in Tatarsky village reveals the social heterogeneity of the Cossacks, exploding the myth of the Cossacks being a solid caste.
p Korshunov can easily afford to send Mitka off to do his military service on a fine thoroughbred charger perfectly equipped, but the Melekhovs have to sell some 129 cattle to get a steed for their son. Fedot Bodovskov complains to the Bolshevik organiser Stockman whom he is driving from the railway station to the village: “I sold my bullocks and bought a horse and they rejected him.... It’s enough to ruin you!" (1, 218). In Fedot Bodovskov’s guileless chatter Stockman sees the seeds of discontent with the existing order. Discontent was mounting among the poorer Cossacks—people like the mill-hand Timofei, nicknamed “Knave”, his assistant David, the engineman Ivan Alexeyevich Kotlyarov, and the young Cossack Mikhail Koshevoi.
p The October Revolution and the Civil War toppled the old world of exploitation and injustice, the whole order based on private property relations. One of the victims of this struggle between the old and the new was that gifted man of the people Grigory Melekhov.
p Sholokhov presents history as the history of the revolutionary development of the masses. He shows the Revolution and the Civil War not as a sudden explosion of elemental forces, but as an event dictated by the laws of historical development, prepared by the existing social and economic conditions. This is why he goes to the trouble of showing the reader the life of the Cossacks before the war, revealing the class stratification and the mounting discontent and protest.
p In his account of the dramatic events of the First World War, the Revolution and the Civil War, Sholokhov attempts to depict the steady growth of the working people’s awareness, their unprecedented upsurge of creative revolutionary energy. Both in mass scenes and in the private lives of individuals Sholokhov showed that the development of the masses towards political awareness and understanding of their true interests came as a result of their participation in the revolutionary struggle and through the work of the Communists.
p We see from the activities of Stockman as early as book one how far the Party had penetrated the popular masses.
p At first sight the very fact of a Bolshevik worker turning up in an oul-of-lhe-way Cossack village may seem a bit far-fetched, but as it happens Sholokhov was showing things as they really were. Strong Party underground organisations were not confined to such proletarian centres of the Don Province as Rostov, Novocherkassk, Shakhty 130 and so on, but existed in the smaller centres too, as revealed in S. Kudinov’s recently published memoirs about the heroic underground activities carried on by the Social-Democrat organisation at Kamenskaya stanitsa.
p Stockman turns up in the small Cossack village of Tatarsky on the eve of the First World War. Despite the fact that Stockman is a pale character beside the other heroes of the novel, lacking as he does their rich inner life, we feel the strength of the Party behind his .reserved manner, seriousness of purpose and tenacity.
p Stockman sees the social heterogeneity behind the comfortable facade of Cossack life, and is able to pick out those of the villagers who are likely to be receptive to revolutionary ideas.
p Stockman first comes up against the savage aspects of the village life one day at the mill, when a brawl erupts between Cossacks and “outsiders” over some quite trivial matter. He arrives on the scene as the Cossacks are about to spring to horse and pursue the “outsiders” who have made off in their wagons. It is not purely humanitarian motives that move him to intervene. He bravely takes advantage of this tense, dangerous moment to put over a bit of useful propaganda, explaining to the Cossacks that they are descended from the Russians, and are peasants just like the “muzhiks”, Ukrainian or Russian, are. The local authorities realise that the important thing is not the fact that Stockman intervened, but what he said. This is clear from the way the inspector who arrives shortly after to examine Stockman in connection with the disturbances at the mill asks: “What did you talk to the Cossacks about on the day of the fight at the mill?”
p When he had gradually, carefully gathered a small group of poorer villagers Stockman began his work by exploding the myth that the Cossacks were a caste apart. He suggested they read a book entitled A Short History of the Don Cossacks, in which the unknown author, starting with “the free life of the past”, went on to scoff at “the tsar’s government and the Cossacks themselves who had hired themselves out to the monarchs as their henchmen".
p Stockman cleverly guided the heated arguments that broke out. It was no easy task to destroy the ideas the Cossacks had been “fed with their mothers’ milk”, but 131 he “ate into the simple understandings and conceptions like a worm into wood, instilling repugnance and hatred towards the existing system”. And the young Mikhail Koshevoi is moved to say bitterly, somewhat perplexed: “It’s not our fault such shame was brought upon the Cossacks.”
p Thus the seeds of the great truth were sown in an out-of-the-way Cossack village. They were to bear rich fruit in the years of the war and Revolution.
p Mikhail Koshevoi did not forget what he had learned from Stockman and when he was at the front he came out again and again against the senseless war. As Uryupin remarked he was always crowing about it “like a cock on the wall”. Once when the Cossacks were retreating in disorder under heavy enemy machine-gun fire, Mikhail Koshevoi cried out: “The people are swine, swine! When they’ve poured out all their blood, then they’ll learn what they’re being shot down for!" (2, 71).
p Sholokhov presents the First World War in all its grim reality, showing the bloody battles, the incompetence of the tsarist commanders which lead to enormous casualties, life in the trenches with the filth and the lice, and the mortal weariness of the Cossacks and the ordinary soldiers, among whom discontent was mounting as they began to wonder what on earth they were fighting for.
p “I haven’t been out of the trenches since 1914. Never had a home or family of my own, but I’ve got to fight for someone,” Knave complains bitterly to Ivan Kotlyarov whom he has met by chance in a village near the front. They speak of Stockman with a burst of feeling that comes somewhat unexpectedly from these rather stern men.
p “’D’you remember Stockman?’" Ivan Alexeyevich asks. “‘He was a good fellow, our Osip Davidovich! He’d tell us what it was all about. He was a man, if ever there was one....’
p “’Do I remember him!’ Knave cried, shaking his tiny fist and crinkling his little bristly face into a smile. ’I remember him better than my own father’" (2, 34).
p We see how the Bolsheviks prepared for the Revolution in the trenches, telling the people what it was all about, why they were being sent like lambs to the slaughter.
p The “bitter Ukrainian”, Bolshevik Garanzha, opens Grigory Melekhov’s eyes to the futility and pointlessness 132 of the imperialist war. Garanzha makes but a brief appearance in the novel arid then disappears for good. Yet like so many of Sholokhov’s characters he remains implanted in our memory. One senses an experienced Bolshevik agitator in this man from the people. A simple soldier, formerly a village blacksmith in the Ukraine, Garanzha is able to present the most complicated things in simple terms so that they are readily understandable. The following passage is typical of Garanzha’s terse speech, garnished with proverbs and invectives. “The tsar’s a grabber, and the tsaritsa’s a whore, and they’re both a weight on our backs.... The factory-owner drinks vodka, while the soldier kills the lice. The factory-owner takes the profit, the worker goes bare. That’s the system we’ve got. Serve on, Cossack, serve on!" (1, 512).
p Garanzha speaks in the simple front-line jargon in which the soldiers’ developing class-consciousness was expressed. It is easy to see how convincing his caustic remarks would be to the discontented front-line soldiers fed up with fighting. Why, he was speaking to them in their own language!
p The clever Bolshevik gradually destroyed all Grigory’s former ideas about the tsar, the country, and his own military duty as a Cossack, leading him to conclude that revolution was inevitable.
p Garanzha finishes a night-time conversation that Grigory was long to remember with words expressing passionate faith in the victory of the Revolution: “Away with frontiers, away with anger! One beautiful life all over the world" (1, 514).
p But Garanzha was only one of a whole host of Bolshevik soldiers, who bravely spoke out against the war and paved the way for the victory of the Revolution.
p Ilya Bunchuk was another Bolshevik working among the Cossacks in the trenches. Sholokhov emphasises the man’s fierce tenacity. “There was nothing remarkable about the man. Only the firmly pressed jaws and the direct challenging glance distinguished him from the rank-andfile Cossacks around him" (1, 562).
p Bunchuk had joined up as a volunteer in order to master the art of war and prepare himself for the coming class struggle.
133p “Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind,” he says solemnly to round off a conversation with sotnik Listnitsky in which he has made no attempt to hide his views.
p The work of the Communists at the front helped the soldiers and Cossacks understand the senselessness and disastrous nature of the war, teaching the masses that the war could not .be ended without a radical change in the existing system, that is by revolution. Their work bore fruit; even the Cossack units were “demoralised”, as the monarchist officer Listnitsky put it.
p Sholokhov follows the development of the Cossacks’ mood right through the war, showing how they gradually came to press for peace en masse.
p When the Cossacks are being mobilised for the war, a confident voice pipes up: “Pah, my friend! What country could stand up to us?" But another Cossack remembers how he had helped to put down the strikers in 1905, and suggests they’ll be sent again to do the same. He is interrupted by yet another who says: “Let them hire people for that, or let the police do it. It’s a shame for us to.”
p But both those who hoped they were being sent to put down disturbances and those who considered it shameful sang the song of The Quiet Don, marching on “in obedience to the monarch’s call".
p After a few years of war the Cossacks sang another song, with the mournful words: “He’ll ne’er come back again.”
p The February Revolution showed that the Cossacks did not want to fight. They came out openly against the continuation of the war, there were cases of refusal to obey orders, and frequent spontaneous meetings were held. The following sort of talk was heard:
p “’...If there’s been a revolution and all the people have been given their freedom, they ought to stop the war, because the people and us Cossacks don’t want war! Am I right?
p “’You’re right!...’
p “’We’re sick of it!...’
p “‘Down with the war! Let’s go back home."’
Much Cossack blood had been spilt, Cossacks had looked death in the face many many times, and others 134 besides Koshevoi and Bunchuk had tried to get them to see the truth before the Cossacks became fully aware that “the people and us Cossacks don’t want war" and that the Revolution meant freedom for all, thus attaining an understanding of the inevitability and desirability of revolutionary changes.
3
p With the Civil War and the division of the country into two armed camps, the regions with a predominantly Cossack population (such as the Don, the Kuban and the Terek) became strongholds of the counter-revolution.
p A considerable part of the Cossacks, stirred up by the counter-revolutionary officers and kulaks, rose against the Soviet government in 1918, and fought an antipopular war against Soviet Russia.
p In April 1918 “there was a great cleavage in the Don Province. The front-line Cossacks of the northern districts—those watered by the rivers Khoper, Ust-Medveditsa, and the Upper Don—withdrew with the retreating detachments of Red Guards, while the Cossacks of the lower districts drove and pressed them towards the frontiers of the province" (3, 7).
p Sholokhov shows that the causes for this great cleavage were socio-historical rather than strictly territorial. “The poorer Cossacks of the north" had long been “the main stronghold of all rebels”, while the richer Cossacks of the south had remained faithful to the establishment, defending the tsar and their privileges.
p What we see in Tatarsky was the general pattern throughout the region: the Revolution split every village into hostile camps battling to the death. On the one hand there were such inveterate enemies of Soviet power as the Korshunovs, on the other the revolutionary Cossacks—Koshevoi, Kotlyarov and so on.
p Those Cossack toilers who were led into the struggle against Soviet Russia were to follow a tortuous path. Some of them finally came round and recognised the Soviet government, while the others ended their days eking out a miserable existence in the slums of Istanbul, Paris and Belgrade, 135 Sholokhov’s dramatic account of the complicated fortunes of the Cossacks in the revolutionary struggle gives a most authentic picture of the struggle between the two worlds.
p While having his attention chiefly focussed on the lives of the main characters—Grigory Melekhov and his family, Aksinya, Natalya, Koshevoi—the reader frequently has to widen his sights for mass scenes and the appearance of numerous incidental characters, so that he has an| impressive canvas of the Civil War, a wholeT world that is bursting at the seams with life.
p The author gives a broad panorama of the revolutionary camp. He describes battles in the Don steppe, then brings Grigory into contact with Red Army prisoners of war in scenes which show the great strength and courage of the defenders of the Revolution, of the Red Army men and their commanders, and again shows the bitter fighting in which the destiny of the people is being decided. In this kaleidoscope of events and characters we are confronted by the giant image of the people, the hero of the greatest Revolution ever carried out.
p The insurgent Cossacks look on the Reds they are about to engage with “vague anxiety, akin to fear”. Grigory and his squadron watch the Red lines approaching.
p “...He and the rest of the Cossacks were astonished to see a horseman, evidently the commander, riding on a high-standing white horse in front of the first line. There were two more in front of the second line. The third line was also led by a commander; beside him fluttered a banner, like a tiny crimson patch of blood against the dirty yellow background of the field.
p “‘Their commissars go in front! That’s heroic of them!’ Mitka Korshunov laughed with admiration.
p “Meanwhile the wind brought the indistinct strains of singing to the hill-side. The lines of Red Guards wound along unevenly, and their voices came faintly, lost in the sultry, spacious steppe. Grigory felt his heart beating violently and spasmodically. He had heard that soul-gripping refrain before! He had heard the sailors singing it when he had been with Podtyolkov at Glubokaya, devoutly removing their caps, their eyes gleaming passionately" (3, 99-100).
136p The banner, looking like “a tiny crimson patch of blood" as it flutters against the dirty yellow field in the distance, and the indistinct strains of singing reminding Grigory of the sailors at Glubokaya, “devoutly removing their caps, their eyes gleaming passionately”, singing the Internationale—these inspired details bring the scene to life so that the reader is gripped by that thrilling sensation which heroism arouses.
p Such emotion-packed scenes of heroism abound in the novel. Here is a good example when Grigory leads his Cossacks to the attack against the survivors of the Red forces which had crossed the Don and now found themselves pressed to the river.
p “Not more than a hundred paces separated them from the Red Army men when, after three volleys, a tall, swarthy-faced, black-whiskered commander rose to his full height from behind the hillock. A woman dressed in a leather jacket was supporting him. The commander was wounded. Dragging his shattered leg, he stepped down from the mound, took a firm grip of his rifle with its fixed bayonet, and hoarsely commanded:
p “’Comrades! Forward! Smash the Whites!’
p “Singing the Internationale, the little handful of brave men advanced into the counter-attack, advanced to death.
p “The hundred and sixteen who were the last to fall on the bank of the Don were all Communist members of the International Company" (4, 35).
p In this epic of the people locked in mortal combat with the old world for a new, happy life, we naturally meet a whole host of incidental characters, every one of which must be impressed on the reader’s memory, however brief his appearance in the novel. This can be achieved only if these minor characters are there for a purpose, that is if their words, thoughts and actions represent some important feature of the period, help characterise a particular social group, and thereby add something to the general picture of the age the author is trying to draw.
p Likhachov, commander of a Red Army punitive detachment, is just such a character, and although he makes a very brief appearance the reader does not easily forget him.
137p Likhachov is wounded and taken prisoner by the Cossacks who rose against Soviet, power. Though in great pain, he stoically bears it and refuses to answer any questions. When the commander of the insurgent forces asks him to write to his detachment calling on them to surrender, he spits in his face. Full of hatred for his enemies, and firm in his belief that the cause he is fighting for is just and that the Revolution will ultimately be victorious, he is prepared to face anything. His character is most fully revealed in the tragic scene of his death.
p Every word in this small scene has been weighed up and chosen with loving care so that it carries a tremendous impact. Likhachov is being driven to Kazanskaya. “He walked in front of his mounted guard, lightly stepping over the snow, his eyebrows knitted.” These brief external details lead us straight to the character’s inner world. The tall, heavily built Likhachov “steps lightly" because he is not afraid of death and is full of contempt for his captors. At the same time, his knitted eyebrows betray his thoughtful mood, his premonition of death. In the forest he passes a birch tree which catches his attention. Sholokhov does not go into long details about his character’s state of mind, but expresses it through a single striking image. Likhachov sees not simply a white birch but a “deathly white birch”, and the reader, who hitherto has only been able to guess vaguely at what might happen, is suddenly gripped by a strong premonition as he sees this image through the eyes of a man whose end is near.
p Sholokhov expresses in an extremely vivid manner the fortitude and unbroken faith in the triumph of life with which Likhachov meets his death. “As he passed a deathly white birch, he smiled quickly, stopped, stretched out his sound arm, and tore off a twig. On it little buds were already swelling with the sweet March juices....”
p This almost involuntary burst of joy at the sight of the swelling birch buds is a glimpse into the soul of a man who is in love with life, and who firmly believes in its ultimate triumph over death. There is a childlike purity and beauty in this big, stern man who “thrust the buds into his mouth and chewed them, gazing with misty eyes at the trees fresh with the young spring, and smiling at the corners of his lips.
138p “He died with the black petals of the buds on his lips. Seven versts from Veshenskaya, in the grim sandy dunes, the guards cut him down with bestial fury" (3, 271-272).
p Men like Likhachov may be killed but never vanquished. He and the birch tree coming to life again after the winter merge for us into a single moving symbol of the eternal triumph of life over death.
p This poetic scene testifies to the inexhaustible store of possibilities the truly gifted artist has at his disposal for capturing the most various aspects of reality. There are many writers, past and present, who recount acts of heroism in high-flown rhetorical language which makes the general effect seem terribly forced and unnatural. Sholokhov’s description is simple, authentic and poetic, and this is why Likhachov’s heroic death transcends the strictly personal, and acquires the force of an affirmation of the great cause he was fighting for in the Don steppes.
p Sholokhov proceeds from that socialist realist concept of man the fighter which Gorky spoke of thus: “For me man is always victorious, even when he is wounded and dying.” [138•*
p Sholokhov presents the Civil War in terms of contrast, a method frequently employed by Lev Tolstoi.
p In War and Peace Tolstoi contrasts the criminal acts of the invaders with the popular war which reveals the best features of the Russian people. He uses the same method of contrast to show the emptiness of high society and the moral grandeur and courage of the true patriots. Thus, the description of the soiree at Julie Drubetskaya, where the ladies are preparing lint that will never reach the wounded, and exacting a fine for the use of French, is situated between two extremely significant chapters. The first contains the impassioned and profound conversation about Russia’s woes between Prince Andrei and Kutuzov, and the second describes the preparations for the Battle of Borodino. After a scene’in Helene’s salon, with a description of her latest affairs with two important personages, we meet Pierre, thoroughly shaken by 139 all he has seen and experienced on the day of the battle. The hungry and miserable Pierre is fed and made comfortable beside the camp fire by some soldiers. On the one hand we have the grandiose events of the life of the people, and on the other the affectation and pitiful emptiness of the life of high society.
p In And Quiet Flows the Don Sholokhov is constantly contrasting the world of the revolutionary people with the ugly world of the whiteguards and interventionists which is doomed to perish.
p The contrast is all the more dramatic and powerful in that it is often contained in a single chapter, or even in a particular episode, as in the scene with the captured Red musicians, where Sholokhov makes a perfectly ordinary situation—there were in fact cases of groups of musicians being captured—into a powerful episode reflecting the clash between two hostile worlds.
p The episode is narrated simply and straightforwardly, which makes it all the more convincing. A fat, smug Cossack officer wanted to show off his power over the prisoners and make fun of them, and ordered them to play his beloved God Save the Tsar. But it turned out that none of them knew it. When the captain threatened to have them shot immediately, “one of the bandsmen, an elderly man with a wall-eye, began pushing himself to the front of the group. Clearing his throat, he asked:
p “’Will you allow me? I can play it.’ And without waiting for permission, placed his sun-bleached flute to his trembling lips.
p “The wailing mournful sounds that rose solitarily over the spacious merchant’s yard brought a wrathful frown to the captain’s brow. Waving his arm he shouted:
p “‘Silence! Stop that beggar’s whining!... Is that what you call music?’"
p It is ironic enough that the call for the tsarist anthem was answered by “an elderly man with a wall-eye", a masterly stroke which heightens the satirical note. There is even more satirical irony in the “wailing mournful sounds" that then rose. The tsarist anthem is shown as having outlived its day, and the reader cannot help feeling that this applies to the whole White camp who dream of the day when its strains will sound once more throughout “great, indivisible" Russia.
140p The author’s aesthetic conceptions force the render to draw moral and political conclusions. Such is the nature of true art.
p It is quite another matter when the oafish officer calls on the musicians to play the Internationale.
p “And in the hush that had fallen on the yard, in the sweltering heat of noonday, the protesting trumpet blasts of the Internationale suddenly rang like a call to battle in majestic unison.
p “The captain stood with his feet apart, lowering like a bull at a fence. He stood and listened. Mis muscular neck and the bluish whites of his half-closed eyes became infused with blood.
p “It was too much for him.
p “’Stop!’ he roared frantically.
p “The band broke off as one man. Only a French horn was a moment late and its passionate strangled blast hung in the torrid air.
p “The musicians licked their parched lips and wiped them with their sleeves and dirty palms. Their faces were tired and listless. Only one dusty cheek bore the trace of a tear" (4, 72).
p This small dramatic episode packs far-reaching implications: two anthems, two worlds, two social orders.
p While the “wailing mournful sounds" of the tsarist anthem rise “solitarily over the spacious merchant’s yard”, and every detail in the description evokes a feeling of protest and suggests the weakness, loneliness and impending doom of the supporters of the old order, the Internationale rings majestically and triumphantly, and the whole description is in quite a different style, heroic and enthusiastic. The strains of the Internationale are “like a call to battle" ringing out “in the hush that had fallen on the yard, in the sweltering heat of noonday”. The “majestic unison" of the “protesting trumpet blasts" is like the triumphant march of the armies of the Revolution amid the smoke of battle, like an affirmation of the power of the people, which finally overcomes all its enemies.
p The description harmoniously combines epic grandeur with warm humanity. Sholokhov does not overlook “the lesser actors" on the stage of history. Although we are not told directly what the musicians felt as they played the Internationale surrounded by enemies—“their faces 141 were tired and listless" is all we are told—the “trace of a tear" on “one dusty cheek” and the “passionate strangled blast" of the French horn are enough to communicate the dramatic tension and indicate their true feelings.
p The situation may be a tragic one but the feeling that predominates in the passage is one of joy and the belief that in spite of temporary set-backs and defeats the revolutionary cause will triumph in the end, that victory belongs to it by right from the outset.
p Sholokhov’s aesthetic tenet that the people are the sole bearers of beauty and heroism, runs through every scene of “And Quiet Flows the Don”, uniting the most disparate elements into a compound whole.
p Sholokhov’s passionate interest in life in all its facets is apparent throughout the novel. He looks into the ferment and picks out everything that comes to view: the disciplined revolutionary cohorts, strong in their awareness of their aim; some tragic figures who are tortured by doubt and indecision; the staunch defenders of the old order, blinded with hatred for the new; and here and there people who have apparently left no mark at all on the course of events....
p This humanity, this desire to see and understand everything, is the hall-mark of truly great art.
p Incidental characters streak across the vast canvas of the epic like falling stars, gleaming for an instant and then disappearing without trace—or so it seems, for a human life always leaves something behind. Sholokhov is a truly great humanist writer in that he never disregards even what may seem insignificant at first sight.
p One such character is Maxim Gryaznov, the Veshenskaya horse-thief whose life is described in passing. Caught up in the whirlwind of the Revolution, he found himself in a Red Army unit. He procured a horse for himself—an amazingly swift horse, admired and envied by all. And then the horse was killed, and so was Gryaznov himself, now one of Bunchuk’s machine-gun crew.
p The author inserts the following brief epitaph: “Maxim Gryaznov. Tatarsky Cossack, former horse-stealer and of late a drunkard, had departed this life.”
p There is no mistaking the fact that Sholokhov’s sober words make one stop and ponder over this seemingly 142 futile life that has been so suddenly cut off. After all this was a human life.
p Sholokhov’s wise, humane gaze penetrates all the complexities of life. We feel his warm sympathy throughout the novel.
p Critics have often dwelt at some length on the young widow in the last part of the novel, and we have already mentioned how she serves to show us the new war-weary Grigory returning to his native village. But Sholokhov does not go in for purely “auxiliary” characters, that is, they are never there merely because they serve a purpose, and here too the writer’s loving, wise heart reveals a hidden drama, of which the character herself is not aware, a life broken by the war.
p At the very beginning of the description the author stresses the dissonance between the woman’s youth and beauty and the marks the unclean life she leads have left on her appearance.
p “She was certainly a very good-looking woman, and well built. Her massive breasts, out of proportion to her height, rather spoilt her figure, while a slanting scar on her round chin gave her face a hard-boiled look and seemed to age her ruddily brown face, which around the bridge of her nose was sprinkled with golden freckle; as fine as millet seed" (4, 493-494; author’s italics).
p Returning home in a quiet, sad mood, fed up with the war and longing to get down to work, to live with his children and Aksinya, and paying more attention than usual to the world around him, Grigory helps us penetrate the young broken life behind this outward appearance.
p Her husband had been killed. “We only spent a month together, and then he was taken off into the army. I manage somehow without him. It’s easier now young Cossacks have come back to the village, but before that it was hard.... So now you know, soldier! That’s my life!" (4, 496).
p Her calculated coquetry, her coarseness and cynicism, her wasted youth and unshed tears, everything about her luckless life which is all there before us in this brief scene is too much part of the tempestuous times she is living through for us to judge her harshly.
p “Poor kid!... Life has done a lot to you in twenty years,” Grigory says commiseratingly, and we feel that this is Sholokhov speaking (4, 501).
143p Sholokhov’s breadth of vision and his ability to penetrate life’s hidden dramas and passions is one of the most significant features of his talent.
p Behind all the great momentous events lie so many bitter, everyday dramas, like the seemingly quite unremarkable story of the young widow.
p It would be a long job to count up exactly how many characters there are in And Quiet Flows the Don, and I don’t intend to try, but there are somewhere in the region of eight hundred. That every one of them, however brief its appearance, is a definite individual speaks of the author’s remarkable ability to observe the essential in a character and capture it in a few short strokes.
p The incidental characters that crop up all the time, either in the orbit of the heroes’ entourage or independently, give the novel that authenticity and completeness as a picture of life which is an essential feature of realism.
p The colourful world that swarms with life on the pages of Sholokhov’s novels is as real as life itself, and the writer’s talent is as inexhaustible as his material.
p A “cheery Cossack" makes a brief appearance, just a couple of pages, at the beginning of book four. He awakes Aksinya, who has fallen asleep in tears under a full-flowering bush of hawthorn, and tries to persuade her “to have a spot of sin”. There is an abrupt transition from the preceding scene with its lyrical mood and tragic undertones (Aksinya contemplating a lily of the valley and recalling her “long life so meagre in happiness”, as if she has a premonition that her end is near) to this prosaic episode, this cynical display of raw passion. But life is full of such transitions, and the strength of true art lies in the fact that it recognises them and reproduces them. As the involuntary object of the Cossack’s pressing attention Aksinya reveals the purity and strength of her love for Grigory. Shortly before she had come to visit Stepan, her unloved husband, at the front and had suffered bitter humiliation. Yet although she had “come back" to her husband, she all the time thought of Grigory, her one and only true love.
p Despite all the compromises Aksinya was forced to make, she was rarely immoral in her behaviour, as was, for example, the dissolute Darya. Aksinya’s compromises were forced upon her, that was her drama. There was 144 no leading her into a casual “spot of sin”, as the rather coarse scene with the Cossack in the forest shows. This episode tells us a lot about Aksinya, and at the same time purges her, so to speak, of her humiliating meeting with Stepan.
p When she says: “I’m the wife of Grigory Melekhov!" it is not purely a matter of self-defence. Her words are a cri-du-cosur expressing the faith and hope of her hard, mixed-up life.
p This apparently incidental episode serves to show the reader the pure, poetic side of Aksinya’s soul. It is also a particularly good example of Sholokhov’s concise character-drawing.
p The Cossack makes an extremely brief appearance. “Beside her stood a young white-moustached and whitetoothed Cossack, holding his saddled, white-nosed horse by the rein. He was smiling broadly, shrugging his shoulders and tapping his foot, and in a rather hoarse but pleasant tenor voice singing the words of a merry song" (4, 19).
p There is a playfulness that only a writer sure of his talent permits himself in “white-nosed horse" and “white- moustached and white-toothed Cossack”. This insistence on “white” fits the picture of the merry, roguish young Cossack perfectly and at the same time links him and his horse in our minds. An inexperienced writer would hardly have been able to refrain from telling us more about the appearance of the Cossack and his horse. Yet if one tries elaborating on the description, referring to the horse’s coat or going on to describe the Cossack further, one will realise immediately that this merely encumbers the narrative and spoils the whole picture by dividing the reader’s attention. The Cossack and his horse would naturally appear to the awaking Aksinya as a single striking vision.
p On the other hand to write that he stood “holding his saddled ... horse by the rein" would be insufficient, for a truly artistic description must contain some detail, however slight, to set the reader’s imagination going. The horse’s white nose is just such a detail, creating as it does the illusion of a complete impression. Besides, Aksinya naturally saw the Cossack and the horse’s head beside him first of all and the horse’s white nose was 145 naturally immediately associated in her mind with the “cheery Cossack’s" broad smile, white moustache and white teeth.
p Thus the reader assimilates the new character without any effort, and his knowledge of human nature and the times is the richer for this glimpse of a man with his particular expression and mood.
p And Quiet Flows the Don is a battlefield where a mighty battle of ideas is being waged. Some of these ideas are rooted in the old society which is being destroyed, others are the young shoots of the new world which is being born, but behind them all stand the classes, social groups, people.
p As a man sincerely concerned for the future, Sholokhov tries to show the power of ideas to which he is inimical and which could lead certain sections of society astray and wreck the life of individuals. It would have been a pure distortion of reality to try and simplify what really happened, drawing the veil of silence over unpleasant or undesirable things that actually occurred.
p The dramatic tension of the novel lies in the fact that it tells of the fortunes of the people, of human life. It is sufficient to remember the merciless truth with which Grigory Melekhov’s life is presented.
p By bringing Grigory into contact with representatives of the different camps, Sholokhov is able to show the universal significance, the humanistic strength and beauty of Communist ideas, and the poverty and narrowness of those egoistic private-ownership views which blinded Grigory.
p Podtyolkov, a simple, uneducated Cossack like Grigory Melekhov, but raised by the Revolution to the post of chairman of the Don Council of People’s Commissars, is awaiting execution after being taken prisoner by the White Cossacks. Barefooted and half-naked as he is, he speaks to them before his death. His speech is a model of revolutionary humanism. It is full of heroic faith and love for mankind, even for those who have lost their way. His comrades are killed before his eyes, but in the last few minutes he has left on earth he turns to the deluded White Cossacks. He is unbroken, and clings 146 to his convictions even in the face of death. “...They heard Podlyolkov’s voice raised passionately. Surrounded by old men and front-line men, he was shouting:
p “’You’re blind ... ignorant! The ofiicers have tricked you, they’ve forced you to kill your blood brothers. Do you think it will end with our death? No! Today you are on top, but tomorrow it will be your turn to be shot. The rule of the Soviets will be established all over Russia. Remember my words! You are shedding the blood of others in vain! You’re a lot of fools.
p “’...On behalf of the toiling people, in their interests we have struggled against the rats of generals, not sparing our lives. And now we are perishing at your hands! But we do not curse you! You have been bitterly deceived. The revolutionary government will come, and you will realise on whose side was the truth. You have laid the finest sons of the quiet Don in that pit....’" (2, 494-496).
p Podtyolkov’s prophecy was to come true. After two years of bitter fighting, “the revolutionary government came" and the Cossacks did indeed realise “on whose side was the truth".
In And Quiet Flows the Don Sholokhov shows the triumph of Communist ideas, their acceptance by the people. It would be difficult to find anything that sums up the main idea that runs through the novel better than Gorky’s words: “The truth essential to life has always triumphed.” [146•*