Regarded as the definitive novel by Russian author Mikhail Sholokhov (1905–1984), Quiet Flows the Don was both a significant contribution to the corpus of work that earned Sholokhov the Nobel Prize in 1965 and a source of extensive and long-standing controversy over allegations that the novel had been plagiarized.
In terms of narrative, Quiet Flows the Don portrays Cossack life within the River Don region, combining artful realism and pathetic fallacy of the environment in the novel. The Don is one of the major rivers found in Russia. It flows southeast of Moscow to the Sea of Azov, a distance of 1,220 miles (1,950 km). The main city on the Don is Rostov. The author’s description of the Don’s life seems to act as a mirror for the Cossacks’ everyday lives that descend into civil war and political anarchy. Similarly, the microcosm of the Don valley marked by its violent social and cultural interplays between Cossacks and other integrated nationalities reflects the macrocosm of the brutal conflict raging between the warring forces of the “Reds” and “Whites.”
The main narrative of Quiet Flows the Don is focused on the life of a Cossack named Grigory Melekhov, a hero who is imbued with a tragic flaw from the outset of the novel. Critical scholarship considers that he was modeled on a historical figure named Kharlampii Ermakov, one of the first rebellious Cossacks to refuse to accept the authority and rule of the Communists in 1919. By 1929 he had suffered imprisonment and was summarily executed by firing squad.
In keeping with traditional characters found in classical tragedy such as Oedipus Rex and Agamemnon, Sholokhov’s character Melekhov has his fate destined beforehand. He initially supports the Cossacks and then the Communists before committing himself to a force of Nationalist rebels during their conflict against the powers he had earlier supported. He first supports the Whites, then the Reds, and finally joins nationalist guerrillas in their conflict with the Red Army. Back at home he is destroyed by a former friend, a hard-line Communist.
Another line of the plot is the story of Grigory’s tragic love. In the narration natural description has a central place. Sholokhov’s prose appears ornamental and heightened by prolific use of color, emotive identification, figures of speech, and a keen eye to descriptive detail. Peter Seeger’s famous song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” was inspired by a lullaby from the first volume, The Don Flows Home to the Sea. A Cossack woman sings: “And where are the reeds? The girls have pulled them up./Where are the girls? The girls have taken husbands./Where are the Cossacks? They’ve gone to the war.”
Controversy has smoldered over the authenticity of the Sholokhov’s writing of Quiet Flows the Don. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and other writers have alleged that much of the novel was plagiarized from a work by Fyodor Kryukov, a Cossack and anti-Bolshevik, who died in 1920 of typhoid fever. Several studies have been published on this subject by R. A. Medvedev and Herman Ermalaev, and make for interesting detective work for aspiring scholars. Additional information is in Brian Murphy’s studies of Tikhiy Don in the New Zealand Slavonic Journal (1975–77) and the Journal of Russian Studies, no. 34 (1977). In 1984 Geir Kjetsaa and others published their research The Authorship of the Quiet Don in which computer studies support the authorship of Sholokhov.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Draugsvold, Ottar G., ed. Nobel Writers on Writing. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2000.
Kjetsaa, Geir. The Authorship of The Quiet Don. Atlantic Heights, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1984.
Medvedev, Roy A. Problems in the Literary Biography of Mikhail Sholokhov. Translated by A. D. P. Briggs. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Stewart, David Hugh. Mikhail Sholokhov: A Critical Introduction. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977.
Wilson, Colin et al., eds. The World’s Greatest True Crime. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004.
Yakimenko, L. Sholokhov: A Critical Appreciation. Translated by Bryan Bean. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973.
Categories: Literature, Novel Analysis, Russian Formalism
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