BOOKS
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stand. For his bias appears subtly (though not intentionally so)
;
it is
there only because the life of his
cause--and the fact that his cause is a
living thing-is there.
There are no heroes or villains in the book (ex–
cept that all his chief characters are at times heroic and at times fero–
ciously villainous, which seems characteristic of all figures in Russian
fiction). There is no propaganda, except for the occasional stumbling
and sometimes silly remarks of one character to another. (I recommend
to Mr. Eastman's attention the first bit of even this "propaganda," found
way on page 362, and where the Bolshevik is characterized as ''Gregor's
jaundiced, venomous neighbor." I recommend to the worried gentleman
the following excerpt:
" ' ... Hound! traitor!' Chornetsov (a defenseless prisoner) spat
through his teeth.
"Podtielkov (the armed victor, surrounded by his troops) shook his
head as if to avoid a blow... . Chornetsov strode towards Podtielkov ..•
Only the slowly retreating Podtielkov caught what he said.
" 'Your time will come! You know that!"
"'Well," Podtielbv hoarsely choked, fumbling for his sword hilt ..."
and cut down the unarmed man. And, Mr. Eastman, the courageous,
unarmed leader was a White general, the other a Bolshevik. Have you
heard anything about Sholokhov's being put in a concentration camp?)
There is no propaganda, as I say; there is only the
life
of the thing
of which Sholokhov writes, and in which he obviously believes so fully
and simply that it does not seem necessary to him-probably didn't occur
to him-to distort the picture in the slightest, to gloss over any of the
meanness and ferocity that marked on both sides the bloody civil war
in the Don country with which he ends his story.
Could that possibly be said of other present-day "causes"? Could one
imagine a good Nazi writer daring-<>r wanting-to portray a storm
trooper as anything not completely noble? For were he to do that, were
he for one moment to admit that his people were not of a finer breed than
others, what is left him? And is not that-the fact that
life,
flowing,
undistorted, exciting, is the material of the Soviet writer, whereas only a
dazzlingly-clothed, putrefying body is given as material for the writer
in present-day Germany-is not that the simple explanation for there
being no Sholokhovs appearing in Nazidom?
The translator, Stephen Garry, has done a very fine job.
WILLIAM RoLLINs,
JR.
