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p Sholokhov does not simply show the new features that were gradually becoming a part of life and people’s very nature, but paints a broad and sweeping picture of the fight between the old and the new in all its social and historical significance. He presents it as a ferocious class struggle between two clearly defined camps—on the one hand, the poor and middle peasants led by the Communists, embodying the creative strength of the people and their passionate dedication to the cause of building a new, better world, and on the other hand, the kulak and whiteguard camp, with Polovtsev and Ostrovnov at the head, representing the forces of the past. Now as a furious, ceaseless struggle within the heart of Kondrat Maidannikov, where the past is cut off at the very roots by the collective-farm plough. Or again that past will suddenly rear its head and peep through in the comic figure of Grandad Shchukar, to leave the battlefield shamefully, its head hung low, amid merry peals of laughter.

p Sholokhov has a wonderful sense of humour. His ability to see the funny side of life as well as the tragic is one of the most precious qualities of his talent.

p Lenin once said to Gorky: “A sense of humour is a splendid healthy quality.... There’s probably as much of it in life as sadness, no less—"  [323•* 

p Some critics have suggested that humour plays a purely subordinate role in Sholokhov’s works, that aware of the need to entertain his readers in a lighter vein, to let them “unwind” after tense, dramatic scenes, Sholokhov provides humorous relief just in the right places.

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p This is not the case however. Humour in fact plays a far more serious role in his works.

p In his superb examination of the nature of comedy and tragedy Karl Marx wrote: “History is thorough and goes through many phases when carrying an old form to the grave. The last phase of a world-historical form is its Comedy. The gods of Greece, already tragically wounded to death in Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, had to re-die a comic death in Lucian’s Dialogues. Why this course of history? So that humanity should part with its past cheerfully."  [324•* 

p The great importance of comedy and humour in literature lies in the fact that man parts with the past by laughing at it, and laughter clears the way for the present and lays the foundations for the future. Laughter educates man, helping him to free himself from many of the ugly traits of the past.

p In his Poetics Aristotle defined comedy as a form of art which portrays “the worst sort of people, not in all their imperfection, but in an amusing manner”. “Humour is a component of ugliness,” he went on. “It is ugly and monstrous, but without pathos.” The “worst type of person" is the way he is for the simple reason that the past is more deeply rooted in him than in others. In real life it is already so much over and done with, that it cannot bo connected with suffering, it has become ugly and monstrous, and laughable.

p Let alone exposing the old world and showing the need and inevitability for its fall, Sholokhov ridicules the past where men were often disfigured and crippled. This laughter is full of respect for the working people, and helps them to cast off the worn, frayed garments of the past, pull themselves up to their full height and get down to actively building the new life.

p Of all the comic old men in Sholokhov’s gallery Grandad Shchukar is without a doubt his greatest success. Pantelei Prokofyevich, Grandad Sashka and Avdei Brekh in And Quiet Flows the Don all pale beside him. Grandad Shchukar was like a walking compendium of all the features of the village boaster and fibber.

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p Pantelei Prokofyevich in And Quiet Flows the Don changes considerably in the course of the novel, to finally appear as a tragi-comical figure in Book Four. His boisterous, belligerent tone when it’s only a matter of talking, and his constant attempts to slip home from the war he is fed up with and doesn’t understand; his vain boasting about his son’s valour loaded with strong implications that he is a chip off the old block, arid his own cowardly desertion; his thrift, which once verged on meanness and miserliness, and his attempt to see things as worthless so as the easier to bear their loss in the vicissitudes of the Civil War—were all humorous touches to the character of Pantelei Prokofyevich. This humour was a facade hiding tragic exhaustion with the war, with the losses and hardships that had befallen the family, painful bewilderment and complete failure to understand what was going on.

p Grandad Shchukar on the other hand is a thoroughly comic figure. While the humorous in Pantelei Prokofyovich lay in the contrast between his thoughts and feelings and the reality of the Civil War years, there is not a shadow of suffering in Grandad Shchukar. The features of the past in Grandad Shchukar are not such as to create a dramatic clash between his personality and reality. On the contrary, his sympathies are wholly on the side of the new reality, which brought a wonderful improvement into his existence.

p The comic in Grandad Shchukar arises from the disparity between what he is in fact and what he imagines himself to be.

p A conflict arises between progressive ideals and those remnants of the past which are deeply rooted in man. Sholokhov presents this conflict in humorous form in the figure of Grandad Shchukar.

p Shchukar sees himself as a “martyr for Soviet power”, a “hero”, a bold, resolute, and on occasion passionate man, ready “when his blood’s up" to “slaughter” not only the cur which has ripped his coat to shreds, but Titok and Tilok’s wife too. His ideal is in the present and he would love to be like Davidov, Nagulnov and Ra/myotnov. He would like to copy active and worthy people, but his own life had been lived in other limes that were now over and done with. He had become the village iibber, an 326 astronomical boasler, and essentially a ralJicr empty porsoii. Wlial were the conditions that had moulded human nature so unsuccessfully?

p “liver since boyhood, my life’s had a twist in it, and it still lias,” Shchukar begins his life-story to Davidov. ’It’s like a wind carrying mo along, scraping me agin this, bashing me agin that, and some days it just about knocks me on I" (1, 299).

p Misfortune after misfortune had befallen Grandad Shchukar in his long life. lie didn’t even get as far as putting an old nag to use on the land. People reacted in different ways to the harsh reality: some became declasses, others, people like Demid the Silent, retired in gloomy solitude. Grandad Shchukar found refuge in hyperbolic bragging. At least in his boasting the old man found compensation for his joyless existence in real life. When entertaining the Cossacks with his amusing stories at village gatherings, or at the fence of an evening when they gathered for a smoke, the old man, though unaware of it himself, was regaining his self-respect in the attention he received and the grateful laughter of his audience. In his account of Shchukar’s life, Sholokhov is showing how and in what concrete historical conditions there arose such an absurd gap between what a man wanted to seem and what he in fact was.

p Grandad Shchukar had been a braggart and a fibber long before the Revolution. But he could only become a completely comic character without a trace of suffering in the new conditions of his village. It is no accident that he does not appear as a fully developed character in the novel until the major difficulties are already over, that is, when the collective farm has already been set up and the spring sowing is underway.

p Grandad Shchukar’s “ideal” altered considerably along with the changes that took place in life. In his tall stories set in pro-revolutionary days, he figured as the “efficient" farmer with his head screwed on the right way, astonishingly successful in all kinds of business deals and undertakings. Once the old order had been swept away Grandad Shchukar felt and understood that, the new times gave a poor peasant like him every opportunity for a really full life, lie is for Soviet power, and likes to think of himself as an activist. But ho has already lived long and 327 got too set in his ways to be able to change his personality. He even took it into his old head that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to join the Party. After all, he wasn’t born to spend all his life with stallions, and “all the Party men ... have got positions”, and carry brief-cases. “That’s what I’ve come for,” he tells Nagulnov. “I want to know what sort of position I’ll get, and so on. Just give me an example of what I’ve got to write and tell me how to write it.”

p Sholokhov skilfully creates an extremely humorous situation here: on the one hand there is Shchukar, a tongue wagging bumpkin, tangled up in a web of dark prejudices but fully convinced that as an activist, a “hero”, “a martyr for Soviet power”, he can expect to be taken seriously and to command full and undivided attention; on the other hand, there is the stern, gruff, and shorttempered Nagulnov. If Davidov had been there in the place of Nagulnov the clash would probably never have taken place. Davidov would have laughed and somehow found a way of explaining to Shchukar in terms he could understand why there could be no question of him joining the Party. Not so Makar. His high almost jealous regard for the Party and Communists made the very idea of someone like Grandad Shchukar joining the Party seem preposterous. At first he managed to check himself and changed the subject. “‘Did the priest call on you at Easter?’ he asks.

p “‘Course he did.’

p “‘Did you give him anything?’

p “’Well, o’ course! Couple of eggs and half a pound of bacon.’

p “‘So you still believe in God?’

p “‘Well, not so very strong, as you might say, but if I gets ill, or some sort of upset happens, or there’s a big clap of thunder, then o’ course I say a prayer, I turn to God’" (1, 399).

p The very order in which the questions come show how Makar is gradually getting worked up. Shchukar’s longwinded artless explanations make Nagulnov fume, and he finally explodes.

p “What the hell does the Party want with such a bumpkin?" he cries. “Are you trying to be funny? Do you think they take any old rubbish for the Party? The only job 328 for you is wagging that tongue of yours, telling a pack of lies. Get along, don’t make me upset, I’m a man with a nervous disorder. My health won’t allow me to talk calmly with you. Go, I said!”

p Grandad Shchukar knew full well that Nagulnov was likely to be as good as his word, and beat a hasty retreat.

p The whole passage brings a smile to our lips, but the crowning touch of humour is when Shchukar hurriedly closes the gate behind him, thinking regretfully: “Picked the wrong moment! Ought to have tried after dinner.” It isn’t so easy to shake Shchukar’s high opinion of himself. He wouldn’t be Shchukar if it were!

p The humour in this episode arises from the clash of two very different characters, both of which have certain comic features. In the case of Nagulnov this time it is his intention to be patient as he had intended and explain to Shchukar calmly and clearly why he cannot be accepted as a candidate for the Party and his outburst of characteristic wrath.

p An important element of a comic situation is the margin between a character’s words and deeds. Grandad Shchukar often refers to himself as “a terror”. “Get out of here, woman! Get out this minute!... Get out, or I may be a-doing a murder next! I’m a terrible man when I’m roused!”; “I’m a terror when I’m roused, you know”; “If it hadn’t been for that dog, Titok would never have escaped from me alive! I’m dangerous.” Shchukar considered “a terror" and expressions such as “like a hero”, and “a martyr for Soviet power" to be the most favourable and at the same time most apt epithets that could possibly be applied to him.

p But Shchukar chooses the most inappropriate moments to let slip what a terror he is. Thus he bravely drives the village leech from the room, threatening her with murder, just after being saved from her clutches by Davidov. In one breath ho mentions how Titok’s cur had almost torn the clothes off him, and how lucky the whole tribe of Titoks were to have escaped with their lives. Knowing that people take what he says with their tongue in their cheek, he piles detail on hilarious detail. He “recalls” how Titok’s wife set the dog on him. “‘Seize him!’ she shouts. ‘Seize him, Serko! He’s the worst of them all!’" 329 and makes himself out to be Davidov’s saviour: “So I hurled myself to the rescue like a hero and knocked that bar out of his hands. If it hadn’t been for me, it would have been all up with Davidov!”

p “You may be an old man, but you lie like a trooper!" Nagulnov interrupts him. “Some says as how you were running away from a dog and fell over, and he started twisting your ears like a pig’s,” put in another of his listeners. “Rubbish!" Grandad Shchukar would exclaim without batting an eyelid and skilfully change the subject.

p More often than not, Shchukar’s tales are about himself. Sholokhov uses the devise of “self-exposure” and the old man’s stories reveal most clearly the rift between what he is and what he would appear. It is sometimes as if he is making fun of himself, and joining in the general hilarity at his own expense.

p During the anti-Soviet “riot” by a large body of the Gremyachy peasants, Shchukar had hidden in a hayloft. On emerging he tells Davidov how it had been. While he was lying there he had felt someone creeping across the hay. “Oh, Mother! I thinks. They must be looking for me, they’re after my blood.... And then he treads right on my face! I make a grab with my hand—and it’s a hoof, and all in fur!... It’s the devil! I thinks. It was terrible dark in that hayloft and all evil spirits are fond of darkness. Now he’ll get hold of me, I thought, and tickle me to death. I’d rather be put to death by the women. The terrors I went through—there’s no counting them! If it’d been anyone else in my place, one of the cowardly kind, I reckon he’d have pegged out right away from failure of the heart and guts. That always happens when a man gets frightened too quickly. But I only went a bit cold and kept lying there.”

p The comic effect here lies in shameless exaggeration of the real danger, and the combination of the most primitive superstition—so out of tune with the image he has of himself as “an activist"—with abject cowardice. Still weak and trembling at the knees from his recent “shock”, the real Shchukar stands before us.

p We see how he really behaved, and this makes his boasting after the event—his attempt to show that in spite of all the “terrors” he went through he was not “one of the cowardly kind"—even more comical than usual. As for 330 the “terrors” (a goal which he imagined lo lie (he devil), they are so ridiculous and far-fetched that only someone like Shchukar who helieved in God and also stood in awe of “the dark powers" could possihly have been assailed by them. Shchukar’s adventure is presented with the most improbable details, yet everything is so “in character" that you accept it all and have a good laugh. What is highly improbable at first sight in fact contains a strong germ of truth. Exaggeration and selection of certain specific characteristics in such a way as not to destroy the character’s authenticity produces a highly comic effect.

p It is typical of Shchukar that he behaves as an onlooker rather than as a participant in events. “I’d better hide or they’ll go and kill Davidov and then get after me, and then who will there be to give evidence to the inspector about Comrade Davidov’s death?" he says with a grave, self-important air to Davidov, who is just about able to stand after being beaten up by the women. This position of an “observer” that Grandad Shchukar more often than not adopts adds to the comic nature of the hapless would-be “activist”.

p Shchukar has a very high opinion of himself as a speaker. He is convinced that his words are full of worldly wisdom and are the fruits of experience. “I may not talk much, but when I do it’s to the point. You can be sure that my words’ll not be in vain!" “Wise words, like mine, are silver...” he remarks during one of his regular “attacks of garrulity" which provokes an unceremonious “When are you going to shut up?" from Nagulnov, and “Finish off, Grandad! Your story’s not to the point,” from Davidov.

p Apart from his amazing capacity for getting into absurd predicaments, Shchukar has a rare ability for noticing the funny side of things, and the comic in life. His faded eyes frequently light up with a sly, merry, knowing twinkle.

p When Grandad Shchukar decides to “enlighten” everyone as to how Demid got nicknamed “the Silent”, he tells his story like a born artist, using his imagination to embroider on Irne fact. He skilfully creates a fine life-like episode—the priest’s questions at confession and Demid’s silence—and provides his own inventive commentary. Describing the priest’s amazement at not hearing a single 331 word in reply to his questions, Shchukar gives a masterly finishing loiich (o his story. The reverend got wild and “What a bang he gave Demid between the eyes with his little candlestick!”

p “‘That’s a lie! He didn’t hit me!’ came Demid’s rumbling bass.

p “‘Didn’t he really, Demid?’ Grandad Shchukar said in great surprise. ’Well, it’s all the same, he wanted to, I bet.’" This “he wanted to, I bet" better than anything else sums up Grandad Shchukar, that unquestionably talented story-teller and one of the nameless creators of folklore. The priest ought to have given Demid a bash with his candlestick, for otherwise the picture would not have been complete and would hardly have caused the roar of merry laughter that followed it.

p In Book Two Grandad Shchukar goes on for a long time by sheer inertia. Sometimes he simply repeats himself as for example in his ironic remarks about Nagulnov’s long, high-flown speeches. Sometimes his tomfoolery detracts from his characteristic comic seriousness or is “out of place" in plot development (as in the scene where Maidannikov, Dubtsov and Shaly are being accepted into the Party).

p Shchukar’s “adventures” which add nothing new and throw no further light on his character occupy an unwarranted amount of space. In this connection, his journey to fetch the land surveyor immediately springs to mind.

p Not until the epilogue, when he is overwhelmed with grief at the loss of his dear ones, Davidov and Nagulnov, does Shchukar become his “powerful” self again.

p Let it not be thought that we say this in the interests of “critical balance”, or in order to show the famous “objectivity”. The fact is, we think far too highly of Sholokhov not to mention what seems to have been written on a level well below what with his inexhaustible talent he is capable of.

p The novel closes tragically with the death of the main heroes, Davidov and Nagulnov.

p The place of the fallen is taken by their friends and associates. Ra/myolnov is chosen secretary of the Party group, Kondral Maidaunikov becomes chairman of the 332 collective farm. Varya Kharlamova will continue with her studies in the town, and then return to the village to tend the grave of her beloved Davidov, to live, overcome and build.

p The counter-revolutionary plotters are destroyed, and life in the Cossack village continues its advance towards socialism.

p And so we reach the last page. One feels one has spent a whole lifetime with Sholokhov’s heroes, and yet the action of the novel covers barely a year. A year is not long, but the book is so packed with events and we delve so deeply into human nature that a whole age seems to have passed before us.

For this we have to thank a truly talented writer, who has given us the incomparable joy of true art; the joy of getting to know and understand life, people and their thoughts and !eel ings—the joy of recognising goodness and beauty.

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