Russian Literature: Influences and Impressions XI – The Characteristics of Sholokhov's Writing
As a novel of up to 1.4 million words, "Quiet Don River" can be favored by the world-class literary works that have passed at present, not only thousands of Nobel Prize judges, but also its own unique literary and artistic creation. The previous article introduces Sholokhov's depiction of the protagonist of the novel, and this one continues to introduce how he reflects the psychology and behavior of the characters through the description of natural scenes.
First, the theme of the idea
1. The suffering of the Cossacks
With the help of the novel's description, "The Quiet Don" examines revolution and war from the perspective of "human nature", cursing war, doubting revolution, questioning Soviet power, and the Cossacks had to endure squeezing and testing under the grinding wheel of revolution and war. As a result of the revolution, the Cossacks went to the front to fight, most of them died in the battlefield, the only things left in the hometown were orphans, widows, and old people, the originally beautiful, rich and peaceful Don River plain was deserted, the solid, rich, happy and free life disappeared, the harmonious and happy family disintegrated, and everywhere there was a scene of decline and decline. The ancient Cossack song quoted by Sholokhov at the beginning of the book is a true portrayal of the suffering life of the Don region and the Cossacks caused by revolution and war:
Our glorious land is not ploughed with a plough...
Our land is ploughed with horses' hooves,
The glorious land is planted with the heads of the Cossacks,
The quiet Don River is full of young widows,
Our father, on the quiet Don River, is full of orphans,
The rolling waves of the quiet Don River are Daddy's tears.
Oh, the quiet Don, our father!
Oh, quiet Don, why is your flowing water so muddy?
Ah, how can the flow of my quiet Don River not be muddy!
Cold springs flow outward from the bottom of my quiet Don,
Silvery white fish stirred up my quiet Don River. [6]
- Cossack folk song
"Quiet Don River" quotes many Cossack folk songs and folk songs, and uses a lot of ink to describe the ever-changing natural scenery of the Don River in all seasons, these folk songs and natural scenery are the author's artistic means to portray the psychology of the characters and reflect the feelings of the characters, and also the deep sympathy and heartfelt feelings for history, society and the fate of the people.
The war divided the Cossacks, who were originally in unison and in the same spirit, into two camps, and the original relatives and friends became enemies who did not share the same heaven, fighting each other mercilessly and not recognizing each other: although Koshevoy married Gregory's sister, he killed 2 of his brother-in-law, shot his brother Petro, and killed his brother Gregory, and Petro's wife, Dalia, shot ivan the father...). These people were originally friends of Qingmei Bamboo Horse, and when they grew up, they became in-laws. But the war deprived them of their humanity and kinship and turned them into murderers of mutual harm, as Koshevoy said, "We are all murderers." One sentence tells the greatest tragedy of the civil war and its destructiveness, reveals and condemns the war and the people who started the war, and sends out the question "Originally born of the same root, why is it too urgent to fry each other?" The pain of the torture.
2. Engraved person psychology
Sholokhov's depiction of the psychological contradictions of the characters is both nuanced and penetrating. For example, the landlord's son Evgeni lived with Aksinya after gregory entered the war, although he thought it was shameful and immoral to do so, but he also thought that he had risked his life on the battlefield, and if the bullet was slightly to the right, he would have penetrated his head, so he felt that life was short, why not have fun in time. This reflects the sense of brevity, fragility and illusion of life in war, as well as its serious impact on the moral concepts of society. The protagonist Gregory's whole life is vacillating in confusion and pain. He fought bravely and fearlessly, but when he hacked an Austrian soldier to death with his own hands for the first time, he felt guilty, "his steps were chaotic and heavy, as if he were carrying an incapable burden on his shoulders, and the mood of hatred and doubt crushed his soul", he said to his brother Pietro: "I have died of pain in my heart, and now I am like a half-dead man, and my conscience makes me very sad." The inextricable pain made him "a man become emaciated." In your fierce struggle, he hated the rule of the landlords and capitalists, but was alien to the nascent Soviet power. The confusion and bitterness, regret and wandering in finding the right path and thinking about the direction of history, as well as the deep-seated grief of losing a loved one, are intertwined to reflect the great pain of the individual and the times full of tragedy [9]
3. Peace, humanity, land, labor
Through war and revolution, family and society, love and gender, ecology and farming, these four main lines construct the basic framework and development of Cossack society, reflecting their lives and ideas during the October Revolution, as well as the difficult passage through the great changes in history, depicting the tortuous journey of Gregorians in their pursuit of a better life in the tide of history. Loving the land, celebrating labor, calling for humanity, and calling for peace are the ideas expressed by the author through his works. War makes the land barren, the families scattered, and the society decays, not only destroying the human body, but also corroding the human soul and turning the human beast into a "beast". [1]
Sholokhov was both a socialist and a loyal son of the Don Cossacks, whose faith was monism, but his nature was pluralism, and he stood at the point of unity and pluralism with fearless spirit and literary ingenuity, seeking the "greatest common denominator" of truth, looking for a fit between Cossack society and the socialist model. The adherence to the spirit of the Cossacks, the pursuit of the cossack ideal social model, is the fate of Gregory, the reason why he "can never dock". Gregory's exploration runs through the torrent of the Second World War and revolution, and everything that happens unexpectedly is unpredictable, and it is natural and inevitable. If war was a means of success for the Cossacks of their predecessors, then in Gregorians' generation it was the path to the abyss and the means of ending suffering. [7]
2. Characteristics of literary depiction
1. The spirituality of life and all things
Sholokhov's Don River has a wide river with rolling waves and flocks of fish, as well as shady rows on both sides, idyllic scenery, farmhouse courtyards, lively farmhouse festivals, endless grasslands and meadows singing and laughing labor; cossack towns, church squares, generals' manor houses and mountain hunting grounds. The typical objective environment is the spatial scope of the existence and activity of the typical characters, and the successful objective environment depiction can express the style of the times, show the customs and customs of the land, render the spatial atmosphere, give the characters the spirituality of life, and reveal the psychological characteristics of the characters. All the scenes depicted by the writer: astronomical geography, human history, customs and customs, war and peace... It makes the character image more vivid and personalized, deeply infects the reader, stimulates their reading interest and aesthetic taste. The writer's brush strokes have the following characteristics:
(1) Delicacy. After describing the many characteristics of various scenes, it is more intense in the subtleties, meticulously depicting and exploring the shadows, using slow motion, close-up, pushing and pulling and other film techniques to enlarge the subtleties into close-ups. For example, the description of the Melekhov family: the yard full of spring grass, full of silver morning dew. He put the cattle in the street. Daria ran to milk the cows wearing only a shirt, her two white bare legs splashed with dew like fresh milk. A trail of smoke-colored footprints was left on the grass in the yard. The dew is silver, the dew on the bare legs is like fresh milk, the footprints are like a string of smoke... Such a rich imagination, the color of the gods, and the nuanced description are like a vivid oil painting of a small village courtyard and a young girl's morning dew unfolding in front of people.
(2) Three-dimensional sense. The depiction of the scene comes to life. For example, the moonlight on the rolling waves of the Don River diagonally paves a road that no one can take. The morning fog on the river is thick, but the sky is full of stars. The horse moved its feet carefully behind. The slope to the water's edge is not easy to walk. There are ducks on the other side. In the muddy waters of the shore, a catfish that preys on small fish is churning. Gregory stood at the water's edge for half a day, a sweet emptiness in his heart, carefree and relaxed. The riverbank exudes a faint smell of damp decay. Drops of water kept falling from the horse's lips. He walked forward, looking toward the sunrise, where the pre-dawn darkness had vanished. In just a few strokes, it successfully depicts the morning at the edge of the Don River with sound, movement, smell and color. This exquisitely crafted color of life, with a fragrant fragrance, a soft sound at night, and a rhythmic rhythm of nature, makes the reader feel like he is there and hears it.
(3) Pluralism. The multi-layered, all-round meticulous and rich description is like multimedia. For example, the scene of the thunderstorm hitting the village is described, there are the sounds of villagers rushing to close the windows, the old lady who "hurried home", "the wind swirls gray dust, like a giant pillar moving on the school yard", there are harrier eagles and crows in the sky; there are also the huge waves of the Don River that "set off layers of waves and lapped at the riverbank", the lightning above the green forest, the grassland that "seems to be silent as if waiting for something"... So that the reader is immersed in the scene, as if he hears his voice, he feels the three-dimensional beauty of multiple dimensions.
(4) Highly generalized. It often uses few words and short pages to clearly and unambiguously depict the scenery of the four seasons and the beauty of day and night. For example: the Don River grassland in the summer and autumn of the river basin: at night, the sky is wide, the moon is shining, the Milky Way and the constellations are twinkling, "the night wind is bitter and dry, the bitter wormwood is strong", "the dry grass is everywhere, and everywhere is an endless, silver-white quail fighting sound and the loud call of the grasshoppers." During the day, "it is a hot, stuffy, white fog", and the sky blue harrier swirls and the sun is fierce. "The endless feather thatch rises and falls like a wave, and even the ancient castle is magically and faintly flashing blue in the sky as far as the eye can see, as if in a dream."
(5) Perspective conversion. In order to describe it more vividly, the method of visually switching between the characters and the writer in the book is often used. For example, when the young Bolshevik Benchuk returned from the front line to his hometown of Novycherkask, the writer led the reader to look out over the town, a dark cloud "facing the gleaming church dome", the windows of the general's palace in the city "but shining with a blinding light", the streets "a row of Cossack soldiers on foot" and "the bumps of the carriage cut through the transparent silence of the morning". The writer then gives the perspective of observation to Benchuk coming down from the train, sees "a gendarme on the platform" and two "laughing young girls" who are "pacing back and forth", then walks to the city, walks to the "street on the outskirts of the city", sees his "small house that has not been repaired for a long time", and then enters the house to see everything in the house. Through the perspective of the writer and the characters in the book, from top to bottom, from far and near, from the outside to the inside, the reader is presented with a broad and broad, majestic and thick all-round scene. [8]
2. The montage of words
The writer has made bold innovations in the writing methods that set off the description, using the editing combination of different times and exotic regions, through careful editing and combining scenes, triggering contrasts and associations, deepening the theme and character image, and achieving the effect of rendering the environmental atmosphere and setting off the image or mood for the characters. Therefore, special emphasis is placed on relevance and selectivity, similar to the film montage technique. Illustration requires more skill and creative imagination than objective realism, and the writer is familiar with and comfortable with this.
The most classic thing in the novel is the description of the combination of different time and space editing.
(1) Chapter 16 of the fourth part describes the weather scene before and after the arrival of the noon storm in Guadi outside the Tatar village, setting off Natalia's inner pain and despair, and the psychological process from overturning the river to gradually calming down.
(2) When the prostitutes learned that Gregory was about to marry, she was extremely upset. The writer describes the heartbreaking spectacle of the wheat field: the wheat in the field has been pumped, the wheat grain is filled with pulp, and suddenly "a flock of cattle has broken into the wheat field, and the poor heavy ears of wheat have all been trampled on the ridges." Take the metaphor of a ruined "mature love." Years later, when she once again met Gregory, who had returned from the battlefield on the banks of the Don River, the feelings that had been sleeping in the depths of her soul for many years suddenly reawakened, and her old feelings were revived and she longed to relive her dreams. The writer uses snowdrifts on the steep banks of the Don, sunshine, winds, waves... Describing her as "the emotions she has accumulated over the years are like this snowdrift in the sun, out of control."
(3) When the war finally took the life of a prostitute, the writer described the scene of the wildfire wasteland: "In the spring, when the snow has melted and the grass that has been lying under the snow for a winter has dried, the wildfires of spring are burning on the grassland. The spring wind chased wildfires, greedily devouring the dried alfalfa, over the tall stems of donkey thistles, skimming past the brown mugwort and burning along the lowlands. After the wildfires burned, the grasslands for a long time emitted the pungent scorched smell of the land that had been scorched by the wildfires. Surrounded by green grass, thriving, on the blue sky, flocks of larks are flying, flocks of geese returning from spring are foraging on the fat grass, and small bustards preparing for summer are building nests. The scorched black, dead land burned by wildfire shone with ominous black light. The birds do not nest on it, and the beasts hide far away and go around. Only the gust of wind hurried through the scorched earth, rolling up gray embers and pungent black smoke and dust to carry off into the distance. The choice of a combination of exotic scenery at a different time sets off Gregory's state of mind that he feels that he is "pitch black" in front of him and has lost all the value of life. [8]
3. Melt into the scenery
The writer is handy to borrow the scenery lyrically, melt the feelings of the scene, and express the writer's own feelings through the thoughts, words and deeds of the characters in the book. By depicting the harmonious coexistence between man and nature, placing the characters in the background of nature, and depicting the ups and downs of the characters' inner feelings with the help of the color changes of natural landscapes, so that people and nature constitute an interdependent and cross-referential unity. The object of depiction is objectively existent, but it is soaked with the writer's rich subjective imagery. Readers express their feelings through the scenery or the sad and joyful moods and love-hate feelings of the characters in the book, just like a self-substituted emotional color picture.
For example, Gregory's faithful couple, the proud Aksinya, has a beautiful face like a flower and a fiery emotion like fire. Her love for Gregory was also as fiery as fire, and in Gregory's heart it had become the whole world and the whole life. When she died, Gregory saw a black sky and a black sun above her, expressing his painful and desperate mentality, embodying the tragic extreme of artistic beauty.
Another example: Gregory in Budyonny's cavalry army wanted to atone for his sins through heroic battle, but because of historical problems, he could not be trusted, so he had to return home from demobilization. When he rode through the autumn grasslands in an ox cart, there was not the slightest joy in his heart, and the grassland in his eyes was as calm as death, as if he had been demonized, and no sound could be heard around him, no birds flew, and a sad silence enveloped all things, "This road winds down into the valley, and then reaches the top of the high hill, as if there is no end, and the extreme look is -- there is such a silent, large grassland everywhere around." The prairie scene in his eyes reflected his mood at the moment.
The eighteenth chapter of the eighth volume of the novel: "In the early spring when the snow has melted and the grass that has been overwhelmed in winter begins to dry up, the spring wildfires begin to occur on the grasslands, and the flames chased by the wind are like flowing water, desperately swallowing the dry pastures, crossing the high stems of the donkey thistle, sliding down the brown mugwort head, rolling down, and after the wildfire is extinguished, the grasslands for a long time emit the pungent scorched and cracked land of wildfire, blowing gray ashes and pungent black dust into the distance." "Through the description of this large section of natural scenery, the author expresses his subjective feelings about the Don Cossacks after the war and revolution, and the tragic life and ending of the protagonist Gregory." The snow has melted", the "tender grass" that "happily glows blue" and the "lark" that "flies up and down in the blue sky" show the beginning of a new cossack life; the "overwhelmed dry grass", the "scorched black dead soil" and the "pungent scorched smell" that "wildfire burns" set off the protagonist's desperate and self-destructive situation in a real, deep and touching way.
Whether the writer writes about the steppes along the Don River, the cloud-shrouded forest swamps, or the cossack villages after the war, he can accurately convey the emotions of the characters in the book. For example, Gregory walked down the battlefield, with a joyful mood, let his horse gallop back to his hometown, and when he passed the village of Aldering Ridge, he saw: the snow-capped mountain top sprinkled with dazzling sunshine, and the cloudless blue sky flashed with sugar-like Venus. The village of Aldering is like a large quilt made of flower cloth at the foot of the mountain. On the left is a bend of the turquoise Vineuha River, and on the right are dots of looming villages and German settlements. On the other side of the river bay is the blue-lit town of Ternosque. To the east of the town is a low hill where a ravine stretches upstream. On the hill stood a fence of telephone poles that went to Kasha snow. On a rare clear and cold day, the sun shoots out a rainbow of hazy pillars of light around it. The harsh north winds on the steppe rolled up the snow and made a rustling sound. But the vast grasslands at the edge of the horizon are very quiet, and only the grasslands at the end of the eastern horizon are steaming with smoke and shrouded in a purple mirage. It is through the description of the natural beauty of The Yangling Village that the emotional color is lyrical, expressing the true emotions of the author and the protagonist who hate war and yearn for beautiful peace and pastoral life. [8]
4. Artistic structure
Literary critics believe that the deep structure of literary works is "meaning mode rather than action mode", which is the framework given by the author to the philosophical aesthetic contemplation of the work, which is closely related to the interpretation of philosophy and imaginary time and space. The vocabulary-laden, somewhat tongue-twisting, specialized language is too written and has little practical significance for those of us who are purely appreciative. Let me talk about my personal feelings from a more intuitive point of view.
The cossack society of the writer's half-peasant and half-army is composed of four intertwined lines: war and revolution, family and society, love and gender, ecology and agriculture. If there is a similarity with the four lifelines of Stavrianos' structural system of human destiny, it can also be said that the author touches on grand narratives such as "The Cossacks of the 20th Century and the Historical Destiny of Mankind" and thinks about the general situation of mankind. [7]
The idyllic pastoral song of the Cossacks' half-peasant and half-army was broken by the First World War, and Gregory joined the army on the front line, passively entering a "civilized" society full of the weak and the strong, cheating and deceitful, seeing the ugliness of mankind in the "civilized" society, and also coming into contact with various "theories" that changed society. For example, Lagugin's analysis of the "uneven distribution of the cake" theory of Russian society in the 20th century, Benchuk's "theory of the people's election of Soviet power", the fanatical Cossack autonomist Izvanlin's concept of autonomy ... When he told His comrades-in-arms about His revolutionary doctrine, he replied, "What we need is our own power, not someone else's power." He frowned and said, "You always think only one thing. He questioned Izvanlin's vision of a Cossack regime without Russians in the Don region: "How can we live without Russia?" We have wheat, nothing else, no coal, no minerals, no timber, no metallurgical industrial products, what good is it for us to break away from Russia? Gregory considered that it was not enough to establish a Cossack regime, that Cossack society must coexist and prosper with the new regime, and that what needed to be explored was the mode of cossack social life and the new regime, not the "cossack road of resistance" as some commentators called it.
War seemed to Gregory to be the way to make a success, and the only way to end all suffering and enter a new life and a new society, so when many Cossacks returned to the familiar peasant life, he joined the First Cavalry Army in the autumn of 1917. But with the excessive and erroneous policies of the Soviet regime, "some principles hostile to Cossack life" began to proliferate, and the view of nature and equality was affected, and he angrily believed: "There is no truth in the world that makes everyone warm and comfortable." The natural material wealth that nature provided to Cossack society that he had sworn to defend to the death—land, bread, the right to subsistence—seemed to drift apart, the relationship of trust between Cossack society and Soviet power that he had once sought crumbled, the common understanding between the two sides was far away, the model of harmonious coexistence between Cossack society and the new regime that he had longed for disappeared, and the lost Cossacks finally embarked on the road of no return. [7]
Although "Quiet Don River" is written about historical turmoil, social turmoil, and ethnic ups and downs, the smoke and fire between the lines, the sword is raging, reflecting the ruthless class antagonism and struggle; but it is good at expressing a colorful life through love, portraying vivid and vivid characters, revealing the subtle secrets of the psychological changes of the characters, accurate and exquisite, meticulous and meticulous words read with vigor and poetry, full of poetry, full of rich lyrical atmosphere.
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