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p The lives of the heroes of And Quiet Flows the Don are determined by the dramatic events of the age of the Revolution and Civil War.

p Mikhail Koshevoi, Ivan Alexeyevich Kotlyarov and many others took an active part in the struggle for a new life where poverty would be abolished and there would be fair shares for all. Kotlyarov bravely faced death at the hands of the deluded Cossacks in his own village, while Koshevoi returned to Tatarsky some years later to take part in building the new life.

p The Korshunovs and the Listnitskys took up arms in defence of their privileges. Miron Korshunov was shot for inciting the people against the Soviet government, while Yevgeny Listnitsky, already a broken man after the war against the toiling people, could not take the news of his wife’s infidelity and shot himself.

p Grigory Melekhov wavered between the two camps, and his part in the struggle against the people led him to an ignominious end. Natalya and Aksinya who had linked their fates with that of this “unfortunate man" both perished, and the whole strong Melekhov family was gradually destroyed before our very eyes.

p The life of the people changed course sharply and headed off along the new untrodden path. Of the whole Melekhov family only^Dunya was to set out on this road with little Mishatka, Grigory’s son, and Mikhail Koshevoi.

p The idea of historical necessity underlies the whole structure and composition of And Quiet Flows the Don. The onward march of history and the inevitable triumph of the Revolution finds artistic expression in the heroes’ lives. The revolutionary struggle determines both the 148 events and the characters’ lives. Sholokhov presents the relationship between the individual and the people, and man and his age in all its complexity.

p The story of the Melekhov family is one of the most important of the several plots in the novel, which opens with an account of the family and closes with the scene of Grigory’s return to the empty Melekhov house.

p The inevitable doom of the old order—one of the main ideas behind the novel—is expressed with remarkable dramatic power through the disintegration and destruction of this family of peasant toilers who clung assiduously to the past.

p An aura of prosperity hung over the Melekhov household. The firm hand of the thrifty Pantelei Prokoi’yevich made itself felt in everything.

p The hot-tempered head of the family would stand for no nonsense and was quick to take stern measures in cases of disobedience or argument even. He brings his crutch down on Grigory’s back, uses his hsts on his long-suffering wife and whips Darya with leather reins when she tries to “replace” her husband in his absence. His will was law in the family. Such was the age-old custom, encouraged by the church teaching of obedience to one’s elders. The Cossack paterfamilias was absolute ruler in his household.

p Grigory married Natalya purely on his father’s orders, and thus began the protracted family drama, from which Grigory, Natalya, Aksinya and Stepan were to suffer greatly, and which was to give Pantelei Prokofyevich many a grey hair and Ilyinichna many a premature wrinkle.

p The discontent with the existing order among the poorer Cossacks in the village, and their revolutionary conversations in Stockman’s lodgings; Grigory’s departure from his home to go into service on the Listnitsky estate; Aksinya’s courageous revolt against the slavish position of women; all this bears witness to the deep contradictions inherent in the old way of life, and to the approach of the revolutionary storm.

p For Pantelei Prokofyevich the existing order was consecrated by time and custom. He did all he could to get Grigory to return to his lawful wife, trying to appeal to Aksinya’s conscience and threatening his son with all 149 kinds of punishment. The village considered that Grigory had smeared the family name, and for Pantelei Prokofyevich what the village thought was law. He bore this misfortune heavily, and when Grigory returned to the fold crossed himself and wept for joy.

p The old man speaks with tremendous respect of the tsar and the generals. Everything the counter-revolutionary general Kaledin said at the village meeting was for him the incontrovertible truth. He is terribly proud of his two sons for having been promoted officers for their service at the front, and cannot refrain from ridiculous boasting of their merits. When Grigory returns home on leave he drives him right through the village before making for their street. “I saw my sons off’to the war as rank-andfile Cossacks, and they fought their way to officers’ rank. Don’t you think I’m proud to drive my son through the village? Let them look and be jealous! It’s balm for my heart, lad,” Pantelei Prokofyevich declares artlessly (2, 343).

p Pyotr took after his father in this respect. Cunning and rather dull, he was not averse to flattery and toadying to his superiors, and soon climbed the ranks during the war. With his officers’ epaulets he felt he had attained the highest possible happiness. They seemed to open the way for him to a free and untrammelled life. He made it into the world of the oppressors and lords of life, but with the outbreak of the Revolution all his dreams went up in smoke in the mighty class conflict.

p Unlike his brother, Pyotr was firmly for the old order. “I shan’t stumble like you, Grigory.... You couldn’t drag me to the Reds with a rope round my neck ... there’s no sense in it, it’s not in my line,” he says to Grigory (3, 29).

p Although the two brothers grew up in the same social conditions, their mentalities are very different. Sholokhov makes a profound analysis of both the social and personal motives of his heroes’ actions.

p Grigory is a searcher after the truth, with a strong sense of justice and awareness of his peasant class origins. He feels cramped in the stuffy atmosphere of the old world and suffocates under the added burden of the senseless, murderous war. He attaches little importance to ranks and medals. Many of the views instilled in him 150 from childhood onwards undergo a radical change during the war and in the Revolution. As ho says to the SocialistRevolutionary Kaparin: “Ever since 1915, when I got my first sight of war, I’ve been thinking that God doesn’t exist. Not at all! ...We front-line men have got rid of God, he’s only for the women and old men now. Let them find comfort in him. There isn’t any finger of God, and there can’t be any monarchy" (4, 629). Again and again, in the most varied circumstances, Grigory’s healthy toiler’s feelings overcame his property views and prejudices.

p Pyotr on the other hand was the man of property from head to foot. The Revolution shattered his dreams of leading a free officer’s life. He felt it encroached on the Cossacks’ privileges, on their land, and did not hesitate to take up arms against the Soviet government and the “muzhiks”. During the Civil War he sends cartloads of booty home. “Pyotr’s got a fine eye for the farm,” Pantelei Prokofyevich says with unconcealed admiration in his voice. “He gave me clothing, a horse, sugar....” (3, 117). Unlike Grigory, who not only did not pillage himself, but forbade his subordinates to do so, Pyotr was quite unscrupulous in this matter.

p Grigory never conceals his views; far from it, he voices them openly and forcefully. Pyotr on the other hand adapts himself to circumstances, biding his time. He has the same abiding hatred for the Soviet order as the kulak Ostrovnov in Virgin Soil Upturned. When the Cossacks of his regiment leave the front and rise against Krasnov, Pyotr goes with them. He worms himself into people’s confidence, making them forget he had been an officer. But at the meeting in Veshenskaya when Red Army men take the floor, Pyotr cannot contain himself and, glaring at the Cossacks, mutters to himself in impotent rage: “Scum! Blasted peasants! Bastards!" (3, 143).

p Pyotr’s death at the hands of Koshevoi was the first hard blow that the Civil War brought the Melekhov family. From then on death was a frequent visitor at the Melekhovs’ house.

p We see the influence of the revolutionary events on the nature and mentality not only of such characters as Grigory Melekhov, Mikhail Koshevoi, Kotlyarov and so on, but of people set in their way of life like Pantelei Prokofyevich.

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p The lively, quick-tempered old man of the opening chapters ages before our very eyes. The war and his anxiety for his sons’ lives, the false alarm about Grigory’s death, all this loft its mark on him. He began to go grey and “tears came too easily”. The alternation of bitter woes and unexpected joys was too much for the old man and wo see it telling on him.

p At first a stern, dignified figure, Pantelei Prokofyevich becomes a fussy old chatterbox. Though no lover of braggarts himself, he really begins to crow when Grigory is awarded the Cross of St. George. Why, the whole village is talking of his son’s exploits, and even Mokhov gives him a present for Grigory. “These are gifts to our hero. Sergei Platonovich read about his deeds in the papers and has sent him some sweets and tobacco__ Do you know, the tears came to his eyes,” the old man boasted (1, 473-474).

p Pantelei Prokofyevich’s boastfulness is revealed time and again with an unfailing sense of humour in all sorts of situations. With deep psychological penetration Sholokhov shows that this new trait in the old man’s character appeared when his life sharply changed for the worse. It was as if he took to bragging about his son so as to make up for the sorrows he had suffered, and which he knew might again descend on him at any moment. This is but one of the tragi-comic motifs which Sholokhov introduces in his portrayal of Pantelei Prokofyevich. Pantelei Prokofyevich is very hostile to the Revolution. Like Pyotr, he condemns Grigory for “fraternising” with the Bolsheviks and joining with the “muzhiks”. As a delegate to the Army Council, he votes for the election of General Krasnov, firmly believing that he is the man to defend the Don from the Bolsheviks. He takes advantage of the Civil War on the Don to enrich himself. “Why shouldn’t you take from those who’ve gone over to the Reds? It’s a sin not to take from them,” he tells the angry Grigory (3, 117-118).

p All his life Pantelei Prokofyevich had worked to get rich. To that end he spared neither himself nor his family. Ho seized whatever he could, wherever he could, for the home. But the Civil War swept through the village. First one side then the other was on top, and the government changed hands accordingly. More than once Pantelei 152 Prokofyevich had to hurriedly leave his home and hearth and “retreat”, and each time he returned it was to see further destruction and damage.

p Pantelei Prokofyevich took a grip of himself and set to repairing and restoring things, but he was fighting a losing battle. The tight-fisted old man who had formerly taught his family to go careful on the matches, and make do without a lamp in the evening (“kerosene is expensive”), ceased to worry about such things, as a form of selfdefence to ward off suffering for his losses. He tried to depreciate, at least in his own eyes, all the property he had accumulated at the cost of so much toil. More and more frequently we find him making attempts to console himself which would be amusing if they were not so pathetic: “You know that pig was nothing but trouble...” (4, 289); “It wasn’t much of a barn....” (4, 314). “Anything the old man had had to abandon was always no good at all, so he said. It was the way he had of consoling himself (4, 301).

p But material losses were only half Pantelei Prokofyevich’s woes. His strong, united family disintegrated before his very eyes, and try as he may he could not preserve the strict old order in his household.

p In his description of the changes in the Melekhov family Sholokhov shows how far-reaching the impact of the events of the Revolution was. The great storm affected the whole of the old order directly or indirectly. The bitter Civil War struggle disrupted the unity of the Melekhov family and brought about its destruction.

p The first to break away was Dunya, who combined the Melekhov stubbornness and hot temper with great feminine charm and impetuosity. Yet when the situation required it, her Melekhov tenacity and obstinacy would come to the fore. She went against the whole family in her pure love for Mikhail Koshevoi. We can easily appreciate her great courage and the strength of her feelings if we remember that the rumour was circulating in the village, that Mikhail had killed her brother Pyotr, as indeed was the case. Dunya stands up for her right to love whosoever she chooses, and she is spared Aksinya’s grief and suffering, for times had changed. The old order was collapsing and Dunya went forward to meet the new, her head held high, undismayed by Grigory’s 153 fearful threats or her father’s angry cries. “You can’t command the heart,” she said quietly but resolutely (4, 92). Knowing that she is in the right, and aware of her own strength, Dunya does not argue but shuts herself up in her own shell, loses all interest in household affairs and breaks away from the family.

p Natalya is estranged from her in-laws in her deep suffering when she learns of Grigory’s new liaison with Aksinya; and after Pyotr’s death Darya seeks every opportunity to leave the house and do as she pleases.

p Pantelei Prokofyevich could not fail no notice what was going on, but there was nothing he could do. The old order was crumbling and his authority as master of the household and head of the family had been blown to the four winds.

p Pantelei Prokofyevich is a changed man. He still chides and scolds, but he is quite aware that his authority has gone. Darya is always answering him back, Dunya is sullenly disobedient, and Ilyinichna contradicts him more and more frequently. His temper, which once terrorised the whole household, is no longer to be taken seriously and often provokes laughter.

p A rich vein of sparkling humour runs through the whole novel and brightens the darkness of the tragic concluding chapters. There are harmless and spicy jokes, funny stories, songs, and tales of yore that warm the listeners’ hearts with joy and laughter, and malicious jibes. Sholokhov captures the healthy humour and talent of the people, their ability to spot what is funny in life and derive amusement from it. Indeed laughter and tears, or joys and sorrows, are not far removed from one another in life, and laughter and joking often help people overcome their hardships and woes. During one of the hardest periods in his life Grigory thinks: “It’s a good thing we Cossacks like our fun. Jokes come to stay with us more often than sorrow. By God, if life were all serious I’d have hanged myself long ago" (4, 598).

p Sholokhov does not introduce jokes and humorous characters and situations merely to relieve the tension. The humour stands in its own right no less than the drama. Sholokhov is trying to present a complete picture of an age, and humour is as much a part of life as tragedy. Pantelei Prokofyevich is a truly tragi-comic figure, 154 due to the discrepancy between what he was and still wants to appear and what he has become. Formerly thrifty to the point of stinginess, he got into the habit of depreciating things to console himself for their loss. Whereas he had formally tyrannised the family with his violent temper, his outbursts are later impotent squawks of rage that no longer intimidate anybody, and are often even laughable.

p One such instance is a scene where all the family are gathered at the dinner table. Pantelei Prokofyevich has returned to the village after the Reds have retreated and Grigory is home on leave. Grigory angrily tells Dunya that from that day on she is to forget even to think about Mikhail Koshevoi and she quietly but resolutely replies that “you can’t command the heart”. At this Pantelei Prokofyevich flies into a rage with his disobedient daughter and roars: “Hold you tongue, you-daughter of a bitch! Or I’ll give you such a hiding that you won’t have a hair left on your head! You hussy! I’ll go this minute and get some reins....”

p The ensuing row, which promised to be like one of the violent family scenes which were such a common occurrence in life before the Revolution, turns out to be highly comical due to the way Darya turns the argument. With an arch, apparently meek way of making the most biting replies to her father-in-law’s threats, Darya shows that it is no longer so easy as it used to be to bring a disobedient daughter to heel.

p “’But, Father, we haven’t got one pair of reins left. They’ve all been taken,’ Darya interrupted him, a meek look on her face.

p “Pantelei shot a furious glance at her and, not lowering his voice, continued to unburden his soul:

p “‘I’ll get a saddle-girth, and I’ll drive all the devils out of you....’

p “’The Reds have taken the saddle-girths too,’ Darya intervened, this time in a louder voice, but still gazing at her father-in-law with innocent eyes.

p “But that was too much for Pantelei. He stared at his daughter-in-law for a second, turning livid with dumb fury, his mouth silently gaping (at that moment he looked like a pike hauled out of the water), then hoarsely shouted:

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p “‘Shut up, damn you; may a hundred devils take you! They won’t lot’me say a word. What do you call this?’" (4, 92-93).

p Darya is not afraid of the old man’s wrath; what is more, she engages him in a battle of words and makes fun of him. only maintaining an outward semblance of respect. There is a touch of irony in the word “meek”, for this “meek look" hides feelings which are far from submissive. They come more into their own in her next reply which she makes “in a louder voice”, challengingly, gazing at her father-in-law “with innocent eyes”, which are in fact as innocent as her look is meek. Darya wins this round over her father-in-law. The old man’s confusion and powerlessness are evident in his hoarse cry, “shut up, damn you" and his plaintive “what do you call this?”

p Sholokhov builds up the humour to an outburst of laughter in a masterly fashion.

p Pantelei Prokofyevich flies off the handle and again unleashes his fury on Dunya. “...Killing will be too good for you. A fine wooer she’s found! A gallows-bird has captured her soul! Is that what you call a man? Do you think I’d have such a Judas as my son-in-law? If he ever falls into my hands, I’ll put him to death myself. Only give me one more back-answer, and I’ll get a willow switch and I’ll give you....” At this point Ilyinichna staggers her husband by saying—either in all innocence or to stop the shouting:

p “‘Why, you could look all over our yard with a light in broad daylight and you’d never find a willow switch.... You can scrape out every corner of the yard and you won’t find so much as a twig to light a fire with. That’s what we’ve come to!’

p “Even in this artless remark Pantelei detected an evil intent. He looked fixedly at the old woman, then jumped up like a madman and ran out into the yard.

p “Grigory threw down his spoon, covered his face with his hand-towel, and shook with soundless laughter.... They all laughed except Dunya. Now a more cheery note reigned at the table" (4, 93).

p Only recently it would have been an unheard-of occurrence for the head of the family to be made look so ridiculous in his own house. The humour here hinges on the fact that Pantelei Prokofyevich’s behaviour is 156 anachronistic, and in laughing at him we am laughing at the old, patriarchal life which not so long ago had caused so much pain and suffering (it should suffice to remember how Pantelei Prokofyevich forced Grigory to marry Natalya, and how he had tyrannised Ilyinichna in her younger days) and the apparently unshakeable structure of which had altered radically under the impact of the Revolution.

p At the same time the author uses this cornic scene to show the damage and losses the Melekhov family have suffered. Indeed, they no longer had reins or saddle-girths, or even willow switches in their yard.

p With consummate skill Sholokhov uses local colour to build up a comic situation with far-reaching implications.

p In the scene in question the humour arises from the fact that the apparent reason why Pantelei Prokofyevich is powerless to carry out his threats is that his usual means of inflicting punishment have been destroyed or carried off. The hot-tempered old man is not used to being thwarted and his fury mounts in the face of these material obstacles. When Darya answers him back the first time he shoots a furious glance at her and continues, but when she answers him back again he is beside himself. “He stared at his daughter-in-law for a second, turning livid with dumb fury, his mouth silently gaping....” Sholokhov compares him to a pike that has just been hauled out of the water and it would surely be impossible to find a better image to describe the old man’s expression at that moment as he sits stunned and powerless, quivering with fury. This portrait detail greatly heightens the’humour of the situation. Ilyinichna’s seemingly casual remark about it being impossible to find a willow switch “with a light in broad daylight" is the last straw for Pantelei Prokofyevich and he runs berserk. He “looks fixedly at the old woman" and jumps up “like a madman”. Sholokhov deliberately exaggerates in describing Pantelei Prokofyevich in this scene in order to make his anger humourous.

p This whole comic scene, where Pantelei Prokofyevich’s rage is out of all proportion to the immediate cause, is the author’s way of showing the true reason for the old man’s powerlessness, which is the fact that he can 157 no longer expect to be the absolute master in his own house lie had been iii the past.

p Pantelei Prokofyevich is at the same time a comic and a tragic figure and leaves one with very mixed feelings.

p Old as he was, he was called up to fight when the Whites ordered general mobilisation. Although he had often upbraided the Cossacks for not wanting to fight, and to judge from his talk he was the bravest of the brave, he showed no inclination to back up his words with action and sought every opportunity to pop home from the front. “I’m no youngster to go marching forty versts a day, to dig trenches, to attack at the double, and to crawl along the ground, ducking the bullets. The devil himself couldn’t do it!" he complains to Ilyinichna when he returns home lice-ridden and ravenous. When it comes to actually fighting Pantelei Prokofyevich disassociates himself from those he himself has always said to be defending the Cossack rights against the Red Army. He deserts and hides up at home and is only saved from a shameful flogging at the hands of a Kalmyk punitive detachment bacause his son is an officer. “Well, I’ll hide myself a lot better this time!" he thinks as he makes his way home (4, 305).

p Pantelei Prokofyevich was a firm supporter of the Cossack rights and the old order until it came to doing something. He is comical because his deeds are so far from corresponding to his words.

p “Don’t you worry about the war: our men will get the better of those peasants,” Pantelei Prokofyevich says blithely with a bellicose air. Without batting an eyelid he declares: “If it wasn’t for this trouble with my leg I’d show them how to fight the enemy!" (4, 319). And this is the same Pantelei Prokofyevich who ran away from the. advancing Red Army so fast that he left a new coat behind in his haste, and later made sure he didn’t have to go back by getting a false medical certificate! He boasts about Grigory, not forgetting to put a good word or two in for yours truly in doing so. “And how could he help being a hero when you know whose son he is? When I was young I, too—I say it without boasting—I was no worse than him! My leg prevents me or I wouldn’t let him better me even now!" (4, 317).

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p The old man has become a pitiful figure with his petty vanity. It is as though forced cheerfulness and empty boasting are part of an attempt to ward off the hard blows of fate.

p Fate certainly did not spare the Melekhovs. In a very short time the formerly happy, bustling household was reduced to half its number. Natalya was the next to go after Pyotr. After Grigory’s continued infidelity she could not bear to have his child, and died after ridding herself of it. Pantelei Prokofyevich bitterly mourned her death, for he had loved her as his own daughter. When he heard there was no hope, he went off by himself and wept aloud. Less than a month later the scent of incense and cornflowers filled the Melekhov house once more. The gay, dissolute Darya drowned herself in the Don.

p Pantelei Prokofyevich shuddered at the thought of the dangers Grigory was exposed to at the front. The thought of further sorrows after all he has had to bear, was too much for him. The old man became permanently sunk in gloomy thoughts and was haunted by the fear of further misfortunes. Sholokhov gives a subtle, penetrating analysis of the old man’s state of mind. On hearing the news that Christonya and Anikushka have been brought home dead, he heads straight for the protective silence of the autumnal forest. “In one year death had struck down so many dear ones and friends that at the very thought he was oppressed, and all the world faded and seemed to be enveloped in a film of black" (4, 323).

Pantelei Prokofyevich’s perplexity at all that was going on, at the great events which were disrupting the whole old order of life that he was accustomed to, and his weariness from the hardships and losses he had suffered, left their tragic mark on him. His thoughts turn towards death. Everything reminded him of it: “...The falling leaves, and the geese flying and crying through the azure sky, and the drooping withered grass....” (4, 325). When they were burying Darya he picked a spot in the cemetery for himself. But the old man was fated to die far away from his native parts. When the Red Army drove the Whites and the interventionists out of the Don steppes Pantelei Prokofyevich retreated with them. He died of typhus in the Kuban country and was buried there, far from home, by his son and Prokhor Zykov.

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p Only Ilyinichna, Dunya and Grigory’s children remained in the Melekhov house.

p Ilyinichna is moved forward to become one of the most important figures in the last part of the novel. This sad figure of a peasant mother is among the truly immortal characters of Russian and indeed world literature.

p In the early part of the hook Ilyinichna appears as little more than a foil for Grigory and Pantelei Prokofyevich. The young Sholokhov seems to have been more interested in clear-cut, striking characters, and frequently seized upon unusual, arresting details in his characterdrawing. Thus, for example, throughout book one Sholokhov stresses the fact that the hawk-nosed, orientallooking Pantelei Prokofyevich wore an ear-ring in his ear. When the family receive the news that Grigory has been killed in action it is the old man’s grief, not Ilyinichna’s, that is described, as if the author feels that deep sorrow can be represented more dramatically through the sufferings of a broken man. Ilyinichna’s sufferings are alluded to in passing and she then fades into the background.

p Ilyinichna is the indefatigable, bustling housewife, always inconspicuously occupied with the household chores, and taking little part in events. Pantelei Prokofyevich directs all the family affairs. He might feel it necessary to discuss important matters with his wife, but he nonetheless usually acted as he himself thought fit. When Pantelei Prokofyevich drove Grigory from the house, Ilyinichna could do nothing to influence him.

p Yet later in the book this fine, courageous woman comes into her own. We learn most of what we know of her past from part seven, where the author penetrates the depths of her mother’s heart, and reveals the rich, heart-warming inner world that is concealed there and which so rarely shows on the surface.

p The great humanity of Sholokhov’s art is especially apparent in the scenes where Ilyinichna mourns the death of her son Pyotr, or is full of sadness and longing for Grigory and in the descriptions of Pantelei Prokofyevich’s sufferings. One of the finest features of this peasant couple’s nature is their love for their kinfolk. In portraying 160 the better side of the toilers’ nature Sholokhov continues Gorky’s theme of exalting labour. He shows how all that was finest in such characters as Pantelei Prokofyevich, Ilyinichna, Natalya, Grigory and Aksinya sprang from working peasant life.

p Sholokhov referred to Ilyinichna as a hard-working woman and indeed she had worked all her life with no respite. She was the first in the family to get up and the last to go to bed. Not only did she have all household chores and the children to see to, but she had to work hard in the kitchen garden and in the fields as well. No wonder her hands were coarse and callous.

p Ilyinichna’s great moral strength and fortitude are stressed again and again. Just how hard her life had been we can see from the following passage, where she is trying to console Natalya. Laying her “work-worn hand" on her daughter-in-law’s head, she says: “You’re terribly touchy, you youngsters, Gods truth! The least thing and you go into a frenzy. If you’d lived as I had to live when I was young, then what would you have done? All his life Grisha hasn’t raised a finger against you, and still you’re not satisfied, but you must go and carry on like that. You want to throw him over, and you go off into a fit, and I don’t know what you didn’t do. You even brought God into your dirty business.... Well, tell me, you poor thing, is that good? But when I was young my game-legged devil used to thrash me almost to death, and that all for nothing, all over nothing. I hadn’t done the least thing to deserve it. He himself behaved abominably, but he worked his temper off on me. He used to come home at dawn, and I would scream and cry and fling reproaches at him, and he would give his fist its sweet will.... For a month I’d go about as blue as iron all over, and yet I lived through it and brought up the children, and not once did I try to clear out" (4, 219).

p This account gives us a clear picture of the cheerless life that was a woman’s lot in a Cossack village before the Revolution. Ilyinichna was not complaining when she described her life to Natalya, she was merely trying to protect her family and Grigory’s children by appealing to her daughter-in-law to face things with courage and fortitude.

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p Sholokhov refers to Ilyinichna as a “wise and brave old woman" and again later as “the proud and brave-hearted Ilyinichna”, thereby expressing the great inner beauty and grandeur the old woman revealed throughout her hard life, her fortitude in the face of so many troubles and woes.

p Although Ilyinichna did not understand the events that were taking place before her very eyes during the Revolution and the Civil War, thanks to her experience and maternal instincts she often showed more perspicacity, wisdom and humanity than Grigory or her husband.

p When Ilyinichna hears how Grigory has cut down a number of sailors in battle, she makes no bones about upbraiding her son, and scolds him for his ruthlessness. She backs up Pantelei Prokofyevich when he drives Mitka Korshunov from the yard, having learned how Mitka had brutally put the Koshevoi family to death because Mikhail was a Communist. “Why, at that rate the Reds might have sabred me and you, and Mishatka and Polyushka, for Grisha’s doings. But they didn’t; they had mercy,” she declares indignantly to Natalya (4, 151). Dunya tells how when Darya shot the captured Communist Kotlyarov, Ilyinichna “was afraid to stay the night in the same house with her, so she went to sleep with the neighbours”. All these episodes testify to Ilyinichna’s profound humanity.

p The war did not spare the old woman. Death snatched away her husband, her son, and many of her kinfolk and dear ones. “...She lived on, broken by suffering, grown old and pitiful. Much sorrow had she known in her life, perhaps too much" (4, 453). Sholokhov is unable to repress his sympathy and love for Ilyinichna, as is evident from his sudden intrusion with “perhaps too much”. The motif of suffering becomes more and more powerful in the description of the last days of Ilyinichna’s life.

p Ilyinichna awaits the return of her youngest with great anxiety. In a near-frenzy of grief she says to Aksinya: “It can’t be that I’ve been robbed of my last son. God has no cause to punish me.... I’ve only got a little time left to live now—only a very little time left to live, and my heart’s had enough sorrow without that! Grisha’s alive! My heart has had no sign, and so my darling’s alive!" (4, 422).

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p These words convey many subtle shades of feeling. Ilyinichna’s maternal heart refuses to believe that Grigory is dead. “But I don’t believe it!" she exclaims. “It can’t be.... God has no cause to punish me.” This angry exclamation, emphasised by the repeated negations, gives way to deep sorrow, a premonition of her own approaching death. “I’ve only got a little time left to live now—only a very little time left to live....”

p The great emotion behind Ilyinichna’s words is conveyed with particular force by the rhythmic repetition which is a feature of the oral folk poetry tradition. “Grisha’s alive!" is like an invocation, and her last words—"my darling’s alive!"—are a cry of love and faith straight from the depths of her mother’s heart.

p The means Sholokhov employs to obtain this tremendously strong impact are really very simple. He uses few words and well-worn ones at that, but he chooses and organises them in such a way that the reader is deeply moved. The exclamation and repetition create language rich in intonation which perfectly expresses the sequence of emotions, from angry denial and sad meditation to the surge of feeling which she gives vent to in her defiant outburst.

p Grigory was constantly on the old woman’s mind, to the exclusion of all else, during her last days. “I’ve grown old.... And my heart is aching after Grisha,” she tells Dunya. “It’s aching so much that nothing pleases me, and it hurts my eyes to look out on the world" (4, 438).

p There can be but few examples in world literature of subtle shades of maternal feelings being expressed with such moving power, warmth and understanding.

p When Ilyinichna learned that Grigory was alive and well, she began to await his return with the utmost impatience. She imagined he might come home at any moment, and every day she cooked extra food, and after dinner always set a pot of cabbage soup on the stove, so that there would be a hot meal ready for him. Whenever Mishatka was disobedient she told him just to wait until his father came home and he’d be for it. She had Prokhor Zykov come along and have a smoke in the house, thinking: “When Grisha comes back from service, the place will smell as it should when a Cossack lives in it!" (4, 436). 163 She mentions Grigory at every possible opportunity. She gots out his old coal and peaked cap and hangs them on a nail in the kitchen. “You see them as you come in from the yard and it makes things seem more homelike—as though he was back again,” she tells Dunya, with a guilty, rather pitiful smile (4, 437).

p These touching attentions dictated by deep maternal love are infinitely moving. Ilyinicbna is overjoyed by a brief letter from Grigory in which he promises to try and get home on leave in the autumn. A new light shines in her old eyes. The artless old woman tells Dunya with unconcealed pride: “...My younger son has remembered his mother! The way he writes! He calls me by my full name too! I bow low to you, dear Mother, he writes, and also to the dear children.... (4, 455). She would drop into Aksinya’s of an evening and ask her to read the letter over again, for Ilyinichna had made peace with her neighbour: their love for Grigory had united them. Aksinya would sit in the dark and recite all the contents of the letter, which she knew by heart.

p ...In a farm-house, in a war-ravaged village in the depths of the Don country, two women sit in the dark. One of them is an old woman, sitting with her toil-worn hands folded in her lap, listening to the words uttered by the other, the mournful but still beautiful Aksinya. Their thoughts, their heartache and love, are turned far, far away, to where Grigory is fighting the White Poles in the Crimean steppe, and the question uppermost in their minds is, when will he return, if he returns at all? Sholokhov narrates Ilyinichna’s drama with wise simplicity. There is a moving grandeur about the whole section of the book that deals with her tragic last days. Her strength fails her and she falls ill, and sail Grigory has not returned. Gathering what remains of her strength, she rises one evening and crosses the yard to the threshingfloor.

p “Ilyinichna was supporting herself with both hands on the fencing, gazing out into the steppe to where a campfire lit by the mowers was glimmering like a distant, inaccessible little star. Aksinya clearly saw the old woman’s swollen face lit up by the bluish light of the moon, and the grey strand of hair breaking from under her black shawl.

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p “Ilyinichna stood long gazing into the darkling steppe, then called quietly, as though he were standing quite close to her: ’Grisha dear! My darling boy!’

p “She was silent for a moment, then in a different, low and husky voice, she said: ’Blood of my blood!"’ (4, 460-461).

p But Sholokhov does not concentrate on Ilyinichna’s yearning for Grigory to the exclusion of all else: he reveals her feelings in the most varied circumstances.

p On the very next day after his return to the village Mikhail Koshevoi calls on the Melekhovs to see Dunya. Ilyinichna greets him coldly. She has not forgotten that it was he who killed her Pyotr and Natalya’s grandfather. She considers him a murderer and tells him so. She forbids Dunya to see him, but the girl loves him and refuses to comply with her mother’s wishes, and Mikhail becomes a frequent visitor. He tries to be useful and does various men’s jobs in the yard, and also makes a toy for Mishatka. He goes down with malaria, and when Ilyinichna sees the fever shaking him, the tough old woman is finally moved to pity. She tells little Mishatka to carry a blanket to him but then sees that Dunya is already looking after him. That evening she invites him to the supper table and, watching him furtively, realises how terribly thin he has become as a result of his illness. “The more Ilyinichna observed the ‘murderer’s’ bowed figure and waxen face, the more she felt an inward discomfort, as though she were being torn apart. Suddenly an uninvited pity for this man whom she hated so much—that gripping motherly pity which subdues even strong women—awoke in Ilyinichna’s heart. Unable to master this new feeling, she pushed a plateful of milk across to Mikhail and said:

p “’Eat up, for God’s sake! You’re so thin it makes me sick to look at you.... A fine bridegroom you’d make!’" (4, 448-449).

p Only a mother could feel such a burst of heartfelt pity for a man who had caused her so much grief. But though she might pity him she could not forgive him. He remained an outsider to her. She opposed his marriage with Dunya for a long time, and when she finally gave her daughter her blessing, added in a quivering voice: “Oh, your father ought to see you now.... Do you remember what 165 he said about your groom? God knows how hard it is for me....” (4, 450).

p Ilyinichna was making a weak, desperate bid to defend the crumbling edifice of the patriarchal family when she reproached Dunya for disregarding her dead father’s wishes. But she had not the strength to prevent her daughter from going her own way.

p Ilyinichna spends her last days alone and forsaken. Dunya and Mikhail, embarking on their new life together, are far too concerned with one another and the farm to pay her much attention. Sholokhov surpasses himself in his penetrating analysis of the thoughts and feelings of the old woman whose end is approaching, in the terse, powerful narrative with its bright lyric strain.

p Ilyinichna lay alone for hours and all her life passed before her. “It was amazing how short and poor that life had turned out to be, and how much of it was oppressive and bitter, how much she had no wish to recall. For some reason, her memories and thoughts turned most of all to Grigory" (4, 458).

p As soon as she thought of Grigory, Ilyinichna would be seized by a choking sensation which only served to hasten her death, yet she could not help yearning for her “young one".

p Life was going on as usual outside and echoed in the old woman’s heart, evoking all kinds of feelings and distant memories. Sholokhov introduces a wealth of subtle psychological motifs into Ilyinichna’s last memories.

p The sun was shining brightly outside and the grasshoppers were droning monotonously. As Ilyinichna listened to their incessant chirruping, she caught the scent of the sun-warmed grass and “for a moment she had a vision of the sun-scorched August steppe...”. She saw herself young, well-grown and beautiful. It was harvest-time and she was hurrying from the field to feed her Grisha. She reached the encampment and took up the tiny, swarthy child who was crying with hunger. “‘My darling, my little son! My beautiful one!... Your mother’s famished you with hunger....’ Still sobbing offendedly, the little Grisha sucked and bit painfully at the teat with his tiny gums. And beside her stood his young, black-moustached father, whetting a scythe. From under her dropping lashes she saw his smile and the bluish whites of his 166 twinkling eyes. The heat made it difficult for her to breathe, the sweat streamed from her brow and tickled her cheeks, and the light faded, faded before her eyes....” (4, 459-460).

p The excitement these recollections caused her was too much for her sick, old heart and she lay still, occasionally sinking into a coma, which was a blissful release from the attacks of choking that she was tormented by. Ilyinichna had recalled the happiest hours of her hard life that had been so poor in joys.

Ilyinichna passed away simply and solemnly as old people who have spent a long life of toil generally die. Death did not disfigure her stern and beautiful face.

3

p Sholokhov’s account of the Melekhov family drama throws light on all sorts of aspects of the life of the people. In the story of the Melekhovs we can see all that is good in man, which is rooted in a life of toil, and all that is ugly, engendered by private-property instincts.

p Summing up the childhood and youth of Alexei Peshkov in My Universities, Gorky makes the following terse and wise remark: “...A man is made by the resistance ho presents to his surroundings.” This aesthetic criterion of Gorky’s is a humanistic approval of the strong, active individual, who cannot reconcile himself to evil and sordidness, and wages a constant struggle for a better life.

p Gorky’s aesthetic discoveries, which reflected the laws of development of life itself, -have become a permanent feature of Soviet literature, and with his understanding of the value and significance of man, Sholokhov is fundamentally a writer in the Gorky tradition.

p The courageous fighters for the Revolution, for the transformation of the world, characters like the Communists Mikhail Koshevoi, Kotlyarov, Likhachov, and Podtyolkov, embody the best characteristics of the people. Grigory Melekhov, Aksinya, and Dunya have many fine and healthy qualities. They refuse to submit to force, and proudly and fearlessly uphold their human dignity, their right to give free rein to their feelings. The morality of the old world, with all its customs and unwritten laws, is too narrow for them.

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p Grigory Melekhov did not go as far as Mikhail Koshevoi in breaking with the patriarchal Cossack way of life. The Communist Koshevoi takes up arms to overthrow the hatefully smug and soulless old world, and consciously rejects class society as a whole. With Dunya Melekhova he fearlessly marches forward into the new world. Grigory Melekhov, on the other hand, broke with the past without accepting the future. He did not go as far as to completely renounce his class views and habits, and this was his tragedy, that which led him to suffer such trials and hardships in the Civil War, where he was to lose so many of his finer qualities, and was to cause the death of Aksinya who lived for this “unfortunate man".

p Other characters, like Pyotr and Darya Melekhov, were able to adapt themselves to the existing order and gain advantage for themselves from it. Sholokhov shows how such acquiescence inevitably led to the loss of many wholesome qualities, that the triumph of the principle of private property was detrimental to the human personality. Pyotr has no scruples about pillaging during the war. With his dream of living in style, he reaches the rank of officer by fawning and flattery, wins medals without risking his life, and generally curries favour with his superiors. His wife Darya shared the common lot of women at the time, which was little better than that of a household slave, and she learned the art of clever, cynical deception to get what she wanted.

p In Darya Sholokhov has created a vivid picture of a woman formed under the stifling influence of patriarchal life. The attractive, clothes-loving Darya passes before us on many occasions, with her “easy, swinging walk”. She mocks both her dull husband and her short-tempered father-in-law. Darya is never at a loss for an excuse to avoid hard work, and Pantelei Prokofyevich is constantly warning Ilyinichna to see to it that she is not allowed to shirk. “Whip up that Darya. She’s a lazy woman, and bad. She paints her face and blackens her brows....” (1, 172).

p But it was not so easy to keep Darya in order. However vigilant her in-laws were, she always managed to give them the slip. The gay dissolute woman took pleasure and amusement in continual chance amorous adventures.

p Darya’s loss of decency leads to moral bankruptcy, cynicism and indifference. Her cynicism is sometimes 168 directly described by the author, although more often than not it is implicit in her behaviour.

p Sholokhov makes Darya’s cynicism a characteristic feature of her moral nature by frequently referring to it: “she was thinking with her native cynicism" (4, 1(54), “with her customary cynical facetiousness she added....” (4, 181).

p Darya was indifferent even towards her near ones. She recovered very quickly from the loss of Pyotr. “Pyotr’s death had had the effect of spurring her on and, as soon as she had recovered from the blow, she had grown still more greedy of life, still more attentive to her appearance" (4, 91).

p Through her usual thoughtlessness Darya did a great wrong to Natalya, who was always most amicable towards her. Aksinya asked Darya to tell Grigory to come to her, slipping her a ring for the service. “‘Is it gold?’ Darya inquired in a practical tone" (3, 426; author’s italics), betraying her avidity for possessions. After examining the ring by the window, she said: “All right, I’ll tell him. You can have him for all I care" (3, 426). The deep cynicism in Darya’s words reveals her total indifference to what might happen in Grigory’s family, and to Natalya in particular. For a ring she was prepared to deal a mortal blow to Natalya who had shared the same roof with her and eaten at the same table for so many years. When some time later she confesses everything to Natalya, she does so in order to gloat over the sufferings of this pure, loving wife.

p Although Darya is strikingly handsome, her ugly nature is not infrequently reflected in her expressions, disfiguring her fine features. “Her pale cheeks, untouched by sunburn, reflected the hot glitter of her questing eyes, arid in the wilful curl of her painted eyebrows and in the fold of her smiling lips lurked something challenging and impure" (4, 163). And again: “a firm row of small close-set teeth showed under the fine rim of her shrewish lips.”

p Sholokhov reveals the ugly side of Darya’s nature with great subtlety. It is always lurking there behind her fine appearance, her careless gaiety and sharp tongue, and every now and then it comes to the surface either in her expressions or in her behaviour towards other people. Ilyinichna has no love for her, and Pantelei Prokofyevich 169 is always cursing her. The strict, pure Natalya “always had a feeling of pity and distaste about Darya and her unclean amorous adventures" (4, 155). Aksinya says to Natalya: “Though you called me a strumpet, I’m not your Darya. In all my life I have never played about where such things are concerned" (4, 212).

p Darya’s boundless cynicism is particularly in evidence in the scene with the Communist prisoners. In order to “avenge” the death of her husband, to whom she had been unfaithful during his lifetime, let alone since, she calmly shoots down the defenceless Ivan Alexeyevich Kotlyarov, who was already terribly beaten up.

p Grigory hears about it from Dunya, who with indignant tears in her voice tells him what “the wicked crow" has done. He strode across the yard and threw open the granary door. Darya was lying there, having drunk herself unconscious. “Never before had Grigory felt such a savage desire to use his sabre. For several seconds he stood over Darya, groaning and swaying, grinding his teeth, staring with invincible loathing and contempt at the body lying at his feet. Then he took a step forward and setting the iron-shod heel of his boot on her face, on her dark arching brows, he muttered hoarsely:

p “‘You poisonous snake!’

p “Darya groaned drunkenly and muttered something. Grigory clutched his head in his hands and ran out into the yard" (4, 466).

p One has only to remember Grigory’s usual gentlemanly behaviour towards women to feel the full force of his contempt, anger and disgust at that moment. At the root of this outburst is the same healthy feeling that had made Dunya cry with indignation and Ilyinichna go to the neighbours so as not to have to sleep under the same roof as a murderess.

p Darya finally had to pay for her dissipated life. She picked up a “filthy disease" as the result of one of her amorous adventures.

p Under the weight of her sudden misfortune Darya reveals quite a new, unexpected side to her nature. She shows great strength and firmness of purpose in her decision to take her own life. She cannot bear the thought of going on disfigured by her disease, unable to live a normal life. “Who will want me in the state I am now? My beauty will 170 fade, I shall go all withered, I shall rot alive.... And I don’t want that!" (4, 179). Of course Darya is only thinking of herself as usual. She is afraid that when her beauty fades there will be no more pleasure for her. Yet there is a certain human pride one cannot help admiring in her refusal to resign herself to her fate.

p Sholokhov’s characters are always complex human beings with a rich and varied nature. They are neither wholly good nor wholly bad. Darya is no exception, although admittedly in her case her moving, human appeal only shows just before her death.

p Sholokhov conveys Darya’s pusillanimity through her attitude to nature. As if blinded by her own self, by her own attractiveness, she is generally incapable of perceiving the beauty of the surrounding world. Never once throughout the novel do we see her in contact with the world of nature, not once is she moved by a feeling of understanding or being a part of that beautiful kingdom, as Grigory, Aksinya and Natalya so often are—not once, that is, until shortly before her death.... “‘Look at the life I’ve lived. I’ve been sort of blind; but as I was coming back from Veshenskaya along by the Don, and as I thought that soon I would have to leave all this, it was as though my eyes had been opened. I looked at the Don, and it was all rippling, and in the sunlight it was pure silver, and dancing so that it made my eyes smart to look at it. I turned all round and looked.... Lord, how beautiful it was! And yet I’d never noticed it before....’ Darya smiled shamefacedly and was silent" (4, 180-181).

p There is something sweet and childish in this shamefaced smile, and we have a glimpse of Darya as a girl running down to the river with her playmates, swimming out far ahead of the others, fighting with the boys.... Yet here she is telling Natalya of her bitter trouble, a broken woman who is “fed up with it all”, and for whom “everybody’s turned horrible".

p Darya’s heart aches as she looks back over her past. The gay, easy-going Darya, who had so often poured scorn on Natalya for her purity, for being faithful to her husband, now speaks with unconcealed envy of Natalya’s love for “her man”, and cannot repress a sigh when talking of herself: “But I’ve never happened to love anyone 171 very much. I’ve loved as a dog loves, here, there and everywhere. I wish I could have my life over again, Imight live it different" (4, 187).

Darya parted with this life like a barren flower, leaving nothing behind her, not even a good memory. This was the sentence Sholokhov passed not only on her, but on the whole way of life that so corrupted human feelings.

4

p The tragic story of Grigory and Aksinya’s love, and Natalya’s hopeless love for Grigory, runs its dramatic course through the whole of the novel. It is woven into the very fabric of the epic canvas of historical events and scenes from everyday life and nature, and is an integral part of the Melckhov family drama.

p Already a married woman, Aksinya fell head over heels in love with her young neighbour, Grigory Melekhov. But neither of them were free to follow their hearts. “I’d like to marry you,” Grigory says, but knows full well it is impossible. Everything is against the lovers: “the law”, and the strict moral code of the patriarchal way of life. Aksinya can only suffer in silence as she sees her one and only love leaving her, maybe for ever, to be married to Natalya Korshunova. But in the privacy of her home, she breaks down, and her piercing anguish bursts out in a flood of choking tears.

p Natalya trustingly gave Grigory all her pure, youthful love, but met with no response from him. Before long she discovered to her horror that she was unloved, that her “lawful wedded husband" was pining for another.... Then she would run to the shed and weep convulsively for “her desecrated happiness".

p Most of the female characters in And Quiet Flows the Don are revealed first and foremost in love. In presenting a woman in love Sholokhov discloses her whole personality and rich inner world, the simplicity and charm of the Cossack peasant woman.

p Natalya’s drama is presented with remarkable psychological penetration. Her image is sombre and pure, her thoughts and emotions are revealed with a subtlety that 172 gives us an insight into the pain of love, and her passionate soul.

p Natalya fell in love with Grigory at first sight. Her father was against the proposed marriage: he did not consider the Melekhovs’ boy a good enough match for the daughter of the richest family in the village. Mitka did all he could to blacken his former schoolfellow in his sister’s eyes. But Natalya made up her mind immediately. “I like Grigory. I’ll never wed another,” she declared to her mother, and stood firmly by her decision in spite of all the attempts to persuade her otherwise (1, 113).

p But life was to play a cruel game with Natalya’s feelings, Soon after their marriage she realised that Grigory loved another. He himself made no bones about telling her how he felt: “I don’t love you, Natalya; you mustn’t be angry....” (1, 190). Life had brought her first sorrows, but she bravely kept her sufferings to herself. In the end, she attempted to fight back and defend her right to happiness, threatening to go home to her parents. But this move backfired. Instead of bringing Grigory back to her it drove him further away and into the arms of Natalya’s rival. He left home and went off to live with Aksinya.

p Natalya is a particularly touching figure because of the way she combines moral strength with a certain helplessness and defencelessness.

p She is not a fighter by nature, and her attempts to take up arms to defend her love always backfire and end in failure. She is quite incapable of dealing with life’s hardships, and retreats before her rival, punishing only herself. On receiving Grigory’s curt answer to her pleading letter she tries to commit suicide, but only succeeds in disfiguring herself for life.

p When she recovers, she makes another bid to win back her husband, who is by now away at the front, this time by going to Aksinya. She turns up at Yagodnoye, covered in dust like a tramp, her neck twisted from the wound she had inflicted on herself, and humbly asks Aksinya to give Grigory back to her. But she only gets further humiliation. Aksinya jeers at her cruelly. When Natalya looks into the cradle, the baby stares back at her with Grigory’s eyes.

p Several years later, now the mother of Grigory’s growing children, Natalya again comes to Aksinya, to learn 173 that she has taken him from her once more. “I’ve got two children, and I shall know how to stand up for them and for myself, too!" she tells Aksinya with unusual firmness. But this show of firmness was short-lived.

p Sholokhov has a way of seizing on those particular traits in characters which are unmistakably theirs and theirs alone. With Natalya they are chasteness, modesty and reserve, and they make her a singularly attractive character.

p Blushing in her confusion, Natalya made Grigory a present of a tobacco pouch during their engagement. When Grigory tried to pull her towards him to kiss her, she modestly held him off and said: “I’m ashamed to!" and even when they were married, she remained as bashful and reserved.

p When she feels she is about to give birth, she quickly slips out of the house, makes her way into a thicket of wild thorn, and lies down there. She returns home at dusk, carrying twins in her apron. “I was ashamed, so I went out,” she explains to the amazed Ilyinichna, turning pale. “I didn’t like to ... in front of Father.... I’m clean, Mother, and I’ve washed them. Take them...." (2, 74).

p Natalya never gives free rein to her feelings. Her love for her husband and children can be caught only in her shy, tender glances, and touchingly modest gestures, as in the following scene, where Grigory has returned home on leave. “She blushed, but overcoming her embarrassment, went across to him and sat down at his side. Her boundlessly happy eyes drank him in, and her hot rough hand stroked his arm....” (2, 348).

p Natalya’s delightful nature cannot fail to charm. One comes to know persons not only by what they do and think, but by the way other people respond to them. Pantelei Prokofyevich, that hot-tempered, difficult old man, doted on his daughter-in-law, and never once raised his voice to her. The stern Ilyinichna loved and cherished her as her own daughter. Dunya shared all her innocent secrets with Natalya. Even Darya turned to her in a moment of difficulty. Natalya won the hearts of everybody around her with her moral strength and purity, her rare kindness and consideration for others, and her remarkable industry.

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p Natalya’s characteristic industry is stressed time and again. Our attention is drawn to her “big, toil-roughened hands”, and to her broad “peasant" back. We see her mostly at work in the kitchen garden or on the land, carrying sheaves of hay, ploughing with Grigory, and bustling about the stove at home. While Darya is all the time trying to shirk the hard work and follow her own gay and idle pursuits, with Natalya it is quite a job to keep her from overstraining herself. By comparing these two women, who are so different both in character and behaviour, Sholokhov brings out Natalya’s hard-working nature to be the source of her moral strength and purity.

p Natalya’s character is revealed bit by bit in the most varied situations and relationships: in the Melekhov family’s approach to her, in her dramatic clashes with Aksinya, but most of all in her love for Grigory.

p When Grigory throws her over she returns to her father. “Father, my life is ruined.... Take me back,” she sobs. “Grigory’s gone away with that woman. He’s left me. Father, I’ve been crushed into the dust!" (1, 239).

p But Natalya’s love for Grigory was not killed by this first bitter blow, nor indeed by any of her numerous subsequent trials. She had given her faithful heart to him once and for all time.

p All the power of her timid, selfless love for Grigory was expressed in the letter she sent him at Yagodnoye. Her life was indeed “quite lost" without him, and she feels “crushed into the dust”. Yet she forgave him and was waiting for him.

p After her unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide, Natalya went back to live with the Melekhovs. There she yearned with pain and desire to receive the letters that came from the indifferent Grigory at the front. “A smile trembled like sunlight on her lips. She still hoped for a message from Grigory or the slightest reference to her in his letters, in reward for her dog-like devotion and fidelity" (1, 466).

p Grigory’s return home transformed Natalya. She was now the happy loving wife and mother. She had “blossomed and improved astonishingly" (2, 345).

p In Sholokhov’s works, motherhood always figures as a feature of all that is finest and best in human nature, ennobling a woman and making her more beautiful. 175 Ilyinichna’s love for her sons reveals all that is finest in her. The unknown old woman who saves the life of the captured Rod Army man long remains in our memories as a paragon of kindness and nobility. “I’m not the only one, we’re all good mothers.... We’re sorry for you poor devils, mortally sorry!" (4, 43). In these characters’ maternal love were expressed all the best and healthiest feelings that sprang from the life of the toiling masses. In this respect Sholokhov is continuing and developing the best traditions of Russian and Soviet literature, reflecting the moral development of the people.

p Motherhood brings Natalya even greater spiritual beauty. Unloved and rejected by Grigory at first, as the mother of his children she gradually wins his love. Sholokhov transmits this new image of Natalya most powerfully through an inner monologue. Grigory’s short visit is almost over and he is sitting with Natalya. “She, his wife and the mother of Mishatka and Polyushka, was at his side. For him she had decked herself out and had washed her face. In the kerchief she had hurriedly donned so that he should not see how unsightly she had become since her illness, sitting there with her head bent slightly to one side, she looked so pitiful, so uncomely, and yet so beautiful, radiant with some pure, intrinsic beauty. She always wore high collars, to hide from him the scar which disfigured her neck. It was all done for his sake.... A tremendous flood of tenderness swept over Grigory’s heart. He wanted to say something warm and kindly to her, but he could not find the words and, silently drawing her to himself, he kissed her white, lofty brow and mournful eyes" (4, 98).

p Sholokhov purposely mentions those marks of Natalya’s illness and her wound which mar her appearance in order to stress the inner beauty that radiates from the loving wife and mother. Aksinya, who had always stood between Grigory and his wife, momentarily fades into the background now that Natalya is a mother. The image we have of Natalya through Grigory’s eyes is all the stronger in that he has come home straight from several days with Aksinya in Veshenskaya. He was overwhelmed with tenderness at the sight of Natalya radiant with maternal joy.

p Yet somehow Natalya falls short of harmonious moral perfection. Her main weakness is the reserved, rather 176 selfish nature of her feelings. She is after all mainly preoccupied with herself, with her own sufferings. She is incapable of coming anywhere near to understanding Grigory’s tragedy, and, not feeling his agonising dilemma, she is unable to offer him that feminine pity which would have at least brought him the soothing balm of consolation.

p When Grigory tries to make a frank confession to her she replies with unusual roughness: “You’ve done me wrong, and you’ve admitted it. And now you’re trying to put everything on to the war. You’re all of you the same. Haven’t I had enough sorrow through you, you devil? It’s a pity I didn’t finish myself off that time....” (3, 393). She makes no attempt to understand the drama that is racking the soul of the man she loves, but merely heaps reproaches on him for the actions that result from it. Deeply wounded, Grigory bitterly concludes: “We’ve got nothing to talk about.” There is every reason to suppose that it was Natalya’s cold lack of understanding that drove Grigory back to Aksinya, sealing her fate.

p Natalya’s love for Grigory is an all-consuming, quite uncompromising emotion. She cannot forgive the man to whom she gave everything either his love for Aksinya or his casual affairs with other women. She felt his infidelities to be insults to her, the mother of his children, and her whole being revolted against them.

p Grigory’s new affair with Aksinya was too much for Natalya. It was not only a question of the wronged wife whose pride was wounded by her husband’s infidelity: Natalya suffered all the more deeply because she considered Aksinya a dissolute woman, unworthy of Grigory’s love. She told her so to her face too, in words full of bitterness and condemnation. “You don’t love him, you only hanker after him out of habit. Did you ever love him like I do? It doesn’t look like it. You played about with Listnitsky, and who haven’t you played about with, you strumpet? When a woman loves a man she doesn’t do that" (4, 211-212).

p Natalya compared Aksinya’s feelings for Grigory to her own true love for her “one and only" Grisha, seeing the former as unreal, merely a “hankering out of habit”. Yet Grigory obviously saw things differently. Father of Natalya’s children whom he loved and cherished with 177 all his heart, he nonetheless carried on with Aksinya, “the strumpet”, which, as Natalya saw it, was soiling true love.

p Natalya felt not so much the wronged wife as the insulted mother of Grigory’s children.

p In the struggle for herself and her children she lacked that inner strength which tempered Ilyinichna’s character in moments of trial, and which enabled the tough old woman not only to put up with so many hardships, but to keep the family together and bring up the children.

p For several days after her talk with Darya, from which she learned that Grigory was seeing Aksinya again, “Natalya suffered as one does in sleep, when oppressed by a bad dream and unable to awake" (4, 207). Natalya was one of those proud, independent individuals who suffer in solitude, keeping their grief to themselves. But there usually comes a moment when they can no longer surfer in silence and then all their pain bursts forth in a cri-ducoeur.

p Natalya’s grief is expressed with great tragic intensity against the background of an approaching storm in the steppe. We have already referred to the way Sholokhov frequently heightens the intensity of his characters’ feelings in the novel by contrasting them with nature in a totally different mood. But along with the principle of tragic contrast so frequently employed, we find many examples in the novel of tragic parallels, where Sholokhov achieves the highest pitch of emotional intensity by making the movements of a character’s soul coincide with the rhythm of nature. Sholokhov uses this method in the scene where Natalya breaks down and curses Grigory. At first there was nothing to suggest an approaching storm. The sun beat down on Ilyinichna and Natalya who had gone out into the steppe to weed the melons. Natalya had spent a sleepless night and was trying to forget her worries in work. When they sat down for lunch at noon Ilyinichna, who had been watching Natalya for a long time, started up a conversation about Grigory. All the suffering that Natalya has kept to herself for so long suddenly bursts forth, and in a near-frenzy of hysteria she screams out a terrible curse on Grigory.

“Unexpectedly she jumped up, pushed Ilyinichna aside, and, turning her face eastward, putting her 178 tear-stained palms together in prayer, hurriedly, sobbingly screamed:

p ,

p “’Lord! He’s tortured my soul to death! I haven t the strength to go on living like this. Lord, punish him, curse him! Strike him dead! May he live no longer, torture me no longer!’

p “A black, rolling cloud crawled onward from the east. Thunder rumbled hollowly. Piercing the precipitous cloudy masses, a burning white flash of lightning writhed and slipped over the sky. The wind bent the murmuring grass westward, sent a pungent dust flying up from the track, bowed the sunflower caps with their burden of seeds almost to the ground. It tore at Natalya’s dishevelled hair, dried her wet face, and wound the edge of her grey workaday skirt around her legs.

p “Ilyinichna stood for several seconds staring at her daughter-in-law in superstitious horror. Against the background of the black thundercloud which had climbed to the zenith Natalya seemed a strange and terrible creature" (4, 216-217).

p The storm in Natalya’s heart merges with the approaching storm to form a single tempestuous outburst of quite overwhelming power. “‘Lord, punish him! Punish him, Lord!’ Natalya screamed, fixing her frenzied eyes on the majestically and wildly gathering clouds, piled into masses by the wind, lit up by blinding flashes of lightning.

p “The thunder broke with a dry crash over the steppe....” (4, 217).

p The violent storm bursts so unexpectedly as if Natalya’s grief was so great as to provoke a response in nature. Although nothing had heralded this storm we have been prepared by Natalya’s outburst to accept it as a perfectly natural phenomenon.

p At the same time the storm adds to the intensity of Natalya’s feelings. This simple woman seems to grow in stature before our very eyes, assuming true greatness as she stands beneath the rumbling thunder, giving vent to her passionate feelings, invoking a terrible curse on the head of the man she loves.

p In this mighty burst of feelings, sounds and colours, Sholokhov gives a picture of remarkable tragic intensity and majesty. And what a burst it is! Ilyinichna’s superstitious horror as she hears the terrible curse laid on her 179 son, the boundless despair of Natalya for whom life has no meaning without Grigory’s love and fidelity, the blinding flashes of lightning, the crashes of thunder in the dark, empty steppe__

p Sholokhov has a way of presenting life’s most violent transitions. From the happiness of love and the joy of motherhood, Natalya sinks into the most hopeless despair. Natalya had kept her suffering at Grigory’s unfaithfulness locked up in the depths of her soul until it finally broke her. Premonition of the approaching catastrophe mounts in sadness and bitterness in the scenes with Natalya. Left alone with Ilyinichna and the children, she worries about Grigory who is away fighting across the Don.

p Natalya decides to go and visit her old home. Mikhail Koshevoi had set fire to the Korshunov house and farmstead, and Grandad Grishaka’s grave mound lay under the old apple-tree. “Overwhelmed by a rush of memories, Natalya silently dropped to her knees and fell face downward to the ungracious earth, with its everlasting smell of death and decay....” (4, 47).

p These poetic forebodings of the impending catastrophe are woven into all sorts of various situations.

p Home on leave, in a transport of tenderness, Grigory kissed Natalya’s “white, lofty brow and mournful eyes" and thought: “Why had she got such mournful eyes? And something secretive, elusive, kept appearing and disappearing in them. Even in her joy she was sorrowful and somehow beyond his understanding....” (4, 99).

p Natalya puts “Ilyinichna’s black three-cornered kerchief on her head" when she goes to the gate to see Grigory off. He rides off, “burdened with vague presentiments, which weighed him down with anxiety and foreboding”. At the fork, he turned back. “Only Natalya was standing at the gate, and the fresh, early morning breeze was tearing her black, mourning kerchief from her hands" (4, 104; author’s italics). In Natalya’s hands, the traditional black kerchief that was so often worn by old women, and which she had snatched up as she hurried out, becomes a “mourning” kerchief.

p This is a masterly detail, powerfully conveying Natalya’s imminent death. It was as if life was slowly slipping away, her only link with it her suffering.

p Before the storm in the steppe Natalya “fell face 180 downward on the dry, ungracious earth" just as she had when visiting Grandad Grishaka’s grave. This repetition of “ungracious” applied to the earth we walk on and on whose bounty we live, stresses Natalya’s alienation from the world around her.

p All these poetic details, which the author builds up with such emotional lyricism, culminate in the climax of the storm scene when in a frenzy of grief and suffering Natalya cries: “I haven’t the strength to go on living like this.” When they get back home, she says to Ilyinichna: “I don’t want him to die. I said that in my temper.... I can’t turn him out of my heart, but all the same, life is hard enough" (4, 220).

p The intense family drama ends in a terrible tragedy. Not wishing to bear her unfaithful husband’s child, the proud, injured Natalya dies as the result of an abortion primitively performed by an old village quack. But even when she is on the point of death, Natalya does not cease to love Grigory; she thinks of him and forgives him for everything. Well aware that her end is nigh, she tells Ilyinichna her last wish: “Mother, dress me in my green skirt, the one with the embroidery round the edges. Grisha liked me in that one....” (4, 229). Calling Polyushka to her bedside, she says with a feeble smile; “She’s the very image of her father; only her heart’s not like his, hers is softer...” (4, 234). She is terribly sorry that she will not see Grigory before she dies. “Natalya closed her eyes and said, as though delirious: ’So I shan’t see him after all....’" (4, 234). So great is her love for Grigory that she takes it with her to the grave.

Natalya had always longed for the pure joy of a love that was shared, unsullied by struggle and rivalry. Nothing mattered for her apart from her all-absorbing love for Grigory. When the family happiness she had achieved through so much hardship was destroyed, she no longer had anything to live for.

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p Sholokhov’s aesthetic judgments became noticeably more profound during his many years’ work on And Quiet Flows the Don.

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p In book four of the novel he brilliantly disclosed the splendid image of Ilyinichna as the fine, noble character she was, he brought out Natalya’s inner beauty more evocatively and filled in Aksinya’s psychological characteristics, giving her a harmonious completeness and perfection.

p The reader’s attitude to a particular character is based on a direct emotional experience, mind and feelings being inseparably involved. If we are enchanted by a character, it is important to understand what the writer is poeticising and how he evokes this feeling in us.

p Gorky said that as he got to know more about life he developed a definite moral code. &#