p When Ivan Arzhanov is discussing what different people will be doing if “a fire" breaks out in the village, he puts Andrei Razmyotnov “in charge of the job”. “It’ll be us, the collective farmers, who’ll do the putting out. Some with a bucket, some with a hook, and some with an axe.... And the man in charge will be Razmyotnov, there’s no one else fit for the job" (2, 65).
p During “the fire" everyone gets his job according to the way he lives, according to his character, and Arzhanov’s appraisals are very shrewd.
p Andrei Razmyotnov is fond of a joke and a bit of light bantering. He is one of Grandad Shchukar’s most grateful listeners. He is also fond of “occasions”. When Ippolit Shaly is presented with a gift at a big general meeting as a reward for good work Andrei says in his artless way: “Take a deep breath now and speak up. Please, Sidorovich, make us a good speech, with plenty of learning in it. You’re the hero of the occasion, you know, you’ve got to make a proper speech, a real lengthy one" (1, 245).
p But we would indeed have a very poor understanding of Andrei Razmyotnov’s real, essential nature if our knowledge of him were confined to these rather sweet human weaknesses.
p Right from the outset Sholokhov stresses Andrei’s essential humanity. Absolute implicit faith in others comes as natural to him as breathing. When the poor peasant Borshchov refuses to vote for dispossessing Frol Damaskov, a grasping kulak, Razmyotnov asks: “‘Did he ask you to stand up for him? Did he bribe you with money or grain? You can admit it, don’t be afraid!... Tell us what he promised you.’ And ashamed of the man and of his own blunt questions, he smiled awkwardly" (1, 40, author’s italics).
293p After a conversation with members of the regional GPU administration, who told him of their suspicion that Polovtsev, the ex-whiteguard officer they were looking for, was hiding up in Gremyachy, Andrei sat deep in thought for a long time.
p “Who of the villagers could be mixed up with that damned Polovtsev? He went over all the men of Gremyachy Log in his mind and could attach no real suspicion to any of them" (2, 318-319).
p He was unable to believe that a Soviet man could possibly be mixed up with the enemy. He was trusting to the point of credulity. Yet he was not as na’ive as might at first appear. It was he who refused to believe that the purveyance officials’ documents were real, and from certain things he saw that they were frauds.
p We feel we know a lot about Andrei, and then well on in Book Two comes the description of how a pair of wild rock-pigeons settled in his yard.
p In folk poetics pigeons embody pure joy, peace and the imperishable beauty of true love.
p At first sight such poetic symbolism appears totally absent from Sholokhov’s account. His description of the arrival of the two pigeons and the early stages of their mating game is told in a matter-of-fact manner, very circumstantially and without any elements of romanticism and poetisation: “The hen was mincing hurriedly on dainty legs round the edge of a puddle of thaw water, pecking at something as she went. The cock would take a short run after her, then stop for a little while, go round in a circle bowing and almost touching the ground with his beak and crop, coo energetically, and once again set off in pursuit, fanning out his tail and pressing his body to the damp and still wintry earth.”
p The eternal song of triumphant love rings out as simply as if played on a shepherd’s reed pipe....
p The two pigeons reminded Andrei of his youth and marriage. During the Civil War he was at the fighting fronts. When he finally returned home, it was to learn of his wife’s death by her own hand. She had been raped by a whiteguard Cossack, and could not bear to live with the shame of it. His small son had died a few weeks later.
p The pigeons billing and cooing made Andrei’s heart sore....
294p “Smiling wistfully with misty eyes he watched the beautiful young hen-pigeon greedily pecking at the wheat while her sturdy mate kept running round in circles in front of her, displaying tireless energy without pecking a single grain himself.
p “Twenty years ago he, Andrei, as young and sturdy as this cock-pigeon, had preened himself before his sweetheart. Then had come marriage, service in the army, the war__ With what terrible and disappointing haste had life swept by! Thinking of his wife and son, Razmyotnov murmured sadly: ’I didn’t see much of you when you were alive, my dear ones, and I don’t visit you often now.’
p “The cock-pigeon had no time for food that brilliant April day. And neither had Andrei Razmyotnov. His eyes were no longer misty but blinded with tears as he stared out of the window and saw not the pigeons, not the tender blue undertones of spring beyond the windowframe but the sad image of the one woman whom he had really loved, more than life itself, it seemed, without ever knowing the fulness of that love, and from whom black death had parted him twelve years ago on just such a sparkling April day as this" (2, 321).
p We often engage in senseless violent arguments over which is more important in art: the personal or the general, and what the connection between the two should be.
p This is surely a case where there can be no question of argument, when we’re dealing with truly great art, that is. Man can be cognised perfectly well through small details. It obviously all boils down to the writer’s ability to feel and think.
p Sorrow can make an empty shell of a man, or break him like a straw. One might have expected Andrei’s heart to contain nothing but the hot embers of hatred for the people who had taken away his family and his happiness.
p Andrei Razmyotnov always reminds me of Andrei Sokolov in The Fate of a Man. The one drank the cup of sorrow to the full in the Civil War, the other in the war against the nazi invaders.
p Our gratitude is due to the writer who revealed so well the modest greatness of the Russian man who came 295 through incredible suffering and deprivation spiritually unscathed, without losing his kindness, responsiveness, and compassion.
p Andrei preserved his love for his wife and his memory of his son throughout his life. It was as if these two casual victims of the harsh class struggle had bequeathed him love and concern for all the people in the world.
p Andrei’s spiritual richness, fused with sorrow, is especially in evidence in the graveyard scene. He had come to his dear ones in answer to the voiceless call of love.
p The desolate glumness of the graveyard makes a striking contrast with the pigeon’s billing and cooing.
p “In those difficult years the dead were not in favour with the living. The old blackened crosses were crooked or fallen, some lay face downwards, others face upwards. Not a single grave was tended and the east wind sadly stirred dead weeds on the clayey mounds and ran caressing fingers through the strands of wilted colourless wormwood. A mingled scent of decay, rotting grasses, and thawed black earth hung persistently over the graves....
p “Why had Andrei come here on this spring day of brilliant sunshine, filled to the brim with awakening life? To stand clenching his short strong fingers and gritting his teeth and to stare with half-closed eyes beyond the misty rim of the horizon, as though striving to discern in that hazy distance his unforgotten youth and shortlived happiness? Perhaps so. The dead but beloved past can always be seen well from a graveyard or in the dumb shadows of a sleepless night" (2, 322-323).
p Sholokhov uses contrast to the maximum of psychological tension, to the point where feelings burst forth into the open. He makes it a sad generalisation about the power of memory of “the beloved past".
p The skill with which the sad melody of feeling and thought and the essential objective narrative elements like pictures of the setting, portraits and so on, are combined in one period of the author’s narration is further evidence of the perfect conciseness of Sholokhov’s prose.
p The introductory question: “Why had Andrei come...” is a way of addressing the reader directly, which is typical of Sholokhov’s prose. Very often Sholokhov seems to be reflecting together with his heroes, sharing their hopes 296 and sorrows, everything that happens to them. This lyrical note of concern on the part of the author is an important stylistic element of Book Two.
p Sholokhov addresses Andrei as a dear friend. But since this is a question from the author it can be continued without any strain on the reader’s imagination and feelings, and can automatically lead straight into a description of the situation in which the hero found himself at that moment: “on this spring day of brilliant sunshine...” and so on.
p The suppositions as to the true reasons that had brought Andrei to the graveyard gradually reveal his mood perfectly naturally and unconstrainedly.
p “To stand clenching his short strong fingers and gritting his teeth and to stare with half-closed eyes beyond the misty rim of the horizon...” is like a continuation of the author-and-friend’s question.
p It is only later that the actual nature of Andrei’s feeling is disclosed as memory of his unforgotten youth and short-lived family happiness.
p Sholokhov seems to be employing a very widespread form of speech, the rhetorical question, a question normally asked purely in order to attract attention. But Sholokhov infuses it with his own sincere feeling of deep concern.
p He expresses a whole wealth of feelings in Andrei’s sufferings: undying love and yearning for his dead wife and son, woeful regret at his lost youth, and sad anticipation of approaching old age. There is much down-toearth beauty and fermenting tenderness, faithfulness and inerasable sadness of heart wounded for ever. The triumph of Andrei’s undying love for his dead wife and son over death and decay speaks for the whole man. In it we have the very essence of Andrei Razmyotnov.
p It renders any description of his activities as chairman of the Soviet quite superfluous. We already know that he is not one to hurt a man unnecessarily, that he will help an old woman who comes to him to complain about some injustice or other, and we are sure that he will be happy to receive a young couple come to register their marriage. In big things and little things he will always be a man, a man working in the interests of the people.
297p Once again we see the persistence with which Sholokhov returns again and again to speculation on the real meaning of humanity, on true beauty that ennobles man, awakening in the reader’s heart a moving sensation of moral perfection.
p However, the artistic solutions Sholokhov adopts in Book Two are not always so successful and striking. It is difficult to explain, for example, what follows the passage about Andrei and the pigeons. After this episode, which is perfect for its poetry and emotional intensity and the classical precision of its words and tone, there comes an episode where Andrei’s “childish” enthusiasm for the pigeons leads this no longer young and by all appearances self-respecting man to declare war on the village cats. The slanging match between Andrei and old mother Chebakova goes beyond the borderline separating humour from buffoonery. Where is the humour in Andrei’s demanding that an old woman hand over her cat for capital punishment as being a threat to his pigeons? The “flicker of youthful Cossack mischief" Andrei still retained, the “miraculously preserved spark of bluff humour" would hardly have found satisfying food in baiting old women over cats. Yet we are told that the chairman of the village Soviet found “great pleasure, even delight" in such verbal battles.
p This strange war declared on cats and the altercation with old women is out of tune with Andrei’s character and with the mounting tension of the class struggle.
p Ivan Arzhanov’s confession ends up with an important remark about “kinks”.
p “‘Suppose you’ve got a cherry-tree with a lot of different branches. I come along and cut one to make a whiphandle—cherry-wood makes a good strong whip-handle. When it was growing, it had all kinds of kinks in it, with its knots and leaves. Beautiful it was in its own way. And now I’ve whittled it down, here it is....’ Arzhanov pulled his whip out from under the seat and showed Davidov the brown gnarled cherry-wood whip-handle. ’Here it is! Nothing to look at! And it’s the same with a man. Without a kink, he’s bare and wretched like this whip here. Take Nagulnov—he’s learning some strange language—that’s his kink; old man Kramskov has been collecting all kinds of match-boxes for twenty years— 298 that’s his kink; you’ve got yourself mixed up with Lushka Nagulnova—that’s your kink; a drunk goes down the street, trips up and rubs his back on the fence—that’s another kink. Yes, dear chairman, and if you take a man’s kink away from him, he’ll be as bare and flat as this whip-handle here’" (2, 78).
p Arzhanov makes a rather sly dig at Davidov, telling him to think it over and “mebbe you’ll see things clearer...".
p Obviously this is what the writer is advising us, his faithful companions, to do. He is also addressing men of letters, protesting against the gloomy monotony of paragons of virtue in art and suggesting that wo examine man more carefully and seek the causes for his oddities, not neglecting even seemingly insignificant details in trying to understand man.
p While we can accept Sholokhov’s advice, we feel bound to recall that there are kinks and kinks. Nagulnov’s interest in learning a “strange language" disclosed something extremely important in his character, his longing for the world revolution, which, nai’ve and even amusing though it was, was nonetheless an organic part of his personality and experience. This “kink” deepens our understanding of Nagulnov. The fascination with cocks crowing which brought Makar and Grandad Shchukar together helped disclose the comic in his character, for there was a humorous dissonance between the “high” idealistic impulse which drove Makar to strive with such enthusiasm and obvious futility to master a “strange language" and his frank “base” passion for harmonious cock crowing.
p Davidov’s love for Lushka was likewise a “kink” which enables us to see into the man’s moral principles.
Andrei Razmyotnov’s fierce war against the village cats was a fortuitous, unnecessary kink, which adds nothing and is merely out of place. It merely casts a shadow on the true humanity of a character Sholokhov has moulded with such power.
Notes