Vasily Shukshin (1929–1974)
Auteur van Stories from a Siberian Village
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- Gangbare naam
- Shukshin, Vasily
- Officiële naam
- Shukshin, Vasilii Makarovich
Шукшин, Василий Макарович - Geboortedatum
- 1929-07-25
- Overlijdensdatum
- 1974-10-02
- Graflocatie
- Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, Russia
- Geslacht
- male
- Nationaliteit
- Russia
- Land (voor op de kaart)
- Russian Federation
- Geboorteplaats
- Srostki, Biysk Okrug, Siberian Krai, Russia, USSR
- Plaats van overlijden
- Volga River (aboard ship)
- Woonplaatsen
- Moscow, Russia, USSR
- Opleiding
- All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (1960)
- Beroepen
- actor
writer
screenwriter
film director
sailor, Soviet navy
school teacher of Russian language and literature (toon alle 7)
school director - Prijzen en onderscheidingen
- Lenin Prize (1976, posthumous)
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- 38
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- 3
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- 160
- Populariteit
- #131,702
- Waardering
- 4.3
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- 1
- ISBNs
- 32
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- 9
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- 1
This book contains 25 short stories of life in Siberia from his childhood, with some of them autobiographical. They average about 10 pages each in length, but I found this was long enough to develop interesting sketches of people and events, and despite their short length, Shukshin was able to imbue these stories with meaning and introspection. As he put it, “I primarily see art not as an experiment, but primarily as the opportunity for an essential conversation”, and also, “The main thing is to say a lot through a little, to touch the reader to the quick as forcefully as possible.” I often see Russian authors clumsily or inaccurately compared to the giants in their country’s literary pantheon, so it’s with hesitation that I draw a 19th century parallel for Shukshin, but I found him to combine the rusticity of Turgenev in his characterizations with some of the existential brooding of Dostoevsky.
His reputation was somewhat tarnished by critics in post-Soviet Russia because he had found a way to survive as an artist under Communism, and perhaps he did have to censor himself as a result, but what I found was not only skill and humanity as a writer, but also honesty and integrity. He stated that the sacred duty of the artist was to tell the truth about life, and I think he did that, even when it painted his own actions in a negative light.
There is an earthiness and immediacy of language in his writing, and the coarseness, simple joy, and occasional cruelty of the Siberian peasant emerges. A recurring theme is the desire for freedom in the face of constraints, which are on several levels – general restrictions on liberty imposed by the government, economic difficulties, and the effects of one’s own humble origins that were steeped in folk traditions but also in ignorance and vodka. To be free and to transcend all of this was a theme in Shukshin’s life, and it’s in his stories as well. It’s no wonder to me that he was fascinated by Stepan Razin, leader of the 1670 peasant revolt against Tsar Alexi. At the same time, there are elements of sentimentality for people or for his past, which, while not clinging, represent a force in the opposite direction, not wanting to be completely free. His characters occasionally consider the transience of life, and have interior monologues that ponder life and search for meaning, but not in an overwrought way. Overall, it’s a great combination.
There was solid consistency across the stories, but these were my favorites:
I Believe! (1971)
Meditations (1967)
Stenka Razin (1960)
All by Themselves (1962)
Alyosha at Large (1972)
I raise a glass to you, Vasily Shukshin. Поехали!
Quotes:
On God, from ‘I Believe!’:
“Now I’ll say God exists. There’s a name for him – Life. That’s the God I believe in, not the one we’ve cooked up. What kind of God is that – kind, soft, hornless, wishy-washy: a regular calf! See what we’ve gone and cooked up! There isn’t such a God! There is, however, a severe, mighty God – Life! It offers both good and evil together.”
On Remembering, from ‘Meditations’:
“Now Matvei was nearly sixty already – then he’d been just twelve or thirteen, and ye he remembered that night as if it had been yesterday. Horse and boy merged into one and flew into the black night. And the night flew back at them, striking their faces in dense waves heavy with the scent of grasses dampened by dew. A wild ecstasy gripped the boy; the blood pounded in this temples and hummed. It was like flying – as if he’d taken off from the earth and started to fly. He couldn’t see anything around him: neither the earth nor the heavens, not even the horse’s head- there was just the roaring in his ears and the sensation that the entire world that night had been torn from its place and was rushing to meet him.”
And then later:
“But as soon as he would remember that black, deafening night, when he flew on his horse, his heart would ache anxiously and sweetly. No, there was something to life, after all, something terribly poignant. It made you want to cry.”
This one in ‘All by Themselves’ captures Shukshin’s philosophical spirit:
“Antip turned the last peg on his balalaika, tilted his small head toward his shoulder, and gave a strum…He struck up a song. And into the warm and empty gathering gloom of the izba poured the quiet, light music of the distant days of their youth. And other evenings came to mind, and it was both nice and sad at the same time, and thoughts about something essential in life were awakened, but in such a way that you couldn’t really say what that essential thing was.”
Lastly, a note on the connection discovered to the book I read previously, which was Thornton Wilder’s ‘The Cabala and The Woman of Andros’; this one I found quite striking. In ‘I Believe!’ Shukshin quotes Roman comic dramatist Terence (190-159 BC) in saying ‘Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto’ (‘I am a man; I count nothing that is human indifferent to me’). I was unfamiliar with Terence and may have otherwise not have really registered this attribution, but it turns out that he was also the author of ‘Andria’, the play that Wilder had modernized in ‘The Woman of Andros’.… (meer)