The originality of the disclosure of the “camp” theme (based on “Kolyma Stories” by V. T. Shalamov). Kolyma stories Shalamov maxim summary

The plot of V. Shalamov's stories is a painful description of the prison and camp life of prisoners of the Soviet Gulag, their similar tragic destinies, in which chance, merciless or merciful, an assistant or a murderer, the tyranny of bosses and thieves rule. Hunger and its convulsive saturation, exhaustion, painful dying, slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - this is what is constantly in the focus of the writer’s attention.

Funeral word

The author remembers his camp comrades by name. Evoking the mournful martyrology, he tells who died and how, who suffered and how, who hoped for what, who and how behaved in this Auschwitz without ovens, as Shalamov called the Kolyma camps. Few managed to survive, few managed to survive and remain morally unbroken.

Life of engineer Kipreev

Having not betrayed or sold out to anyone, the author says that he has developed for himself a formula for actively defending his existence: a person can only consider himself human and survive if at any moment he is ready to commit suicide, ready to die. However, later he realizes that he only built himself a comfortable shelter, because it is unknown what you will be like at the decisive moment, whether you simply have enough physical strength, and not just mental strength. The engineer-physicist Kipreev, who was arrested in 1938, not only withstood a beating during interrogation, but even rushed at the investigator, after which he was put in a punishment cell. However, they still force him to sign false testimony, threatening him with the arrest of his wife. Nevertheless, Kipreev continued to prove to himself and others that he was a man and not a slave, like all prisoners. Thanks to his talent (he invented a way to restore burnt-out light bulbs, repaired an X-ray machine), he manages to avoid the most difficult work, but not always. He miraculously survives, but the moral shock remains in him forever.

To the show

Camp molestation, Shalamov testifies, affected everyone to a greater or lesser extent and occurred in a variety of forms. Two thieves are playing cards. One of them is lost to the nines and asks you to play for “representation”, that is, in debt. At some point, excited by the game, he unexpectedly orders an ordinary intellectual prisoner, who happened to be among the spectators of their game, to give him a woolen sweater. He refuses, and then one of the thieves “finishes” him, but the sweater still goes to the thieves.

At night

Two prisoners sneak to the grave where the body of their deceased comrade was buried in the morning, and remove the dead man’s underwear to sell or exchange for bread or tobacco the next day. The initial disgust at taking off their clothes gives way to the pleasant thought that tomorrow they might be able to eat a little more and even smoke.

Single metering

Camp labor, which Shalamov clearly defines as slave labor, is for the writer a form of the same corruption. The poor prisoner is not able to give the percentage, so labor becomes torture and slow death. Zek Dugaev is gradually weakening, unable to withstand a sixteen-hour working day. He drives, picks, pours, carries again and picks again, and in the evening the caretaker appears and measures what Dugaev has done with a tape measure. The mentioned figure - 25 percent - seems very high to Dugaev, his calves ache, his arms, shoulders, head hurt unbearably, he even lost the feeling of hunger. A little later, he is called to the investigator, who asks the usual questions: name, surname, article, term. And a day later, the soldiers take Dugaev to a remote place, fenced with a high fence with barbed wire, from where the whirring of tractors can be heard at night. Dugaev realizes why he was brought here and that his life is over. And he only regrets that he suffered the last day in vain.

Rain

Sherry Brandy

A prisoner-poet, who was called the first Russian poet of the twentieth century, dies. It lies in the dark depths of the bottom row of solid two-story bunks. He takes a long time to die. Sometimes some thought comes - for example, that the bread that he put under his head was stolen from him, and it is so scary that he is ready to swear, fight, search... But he no longer has the strength for this, and the thought of bread also weakens. When the daily ration is placed in his hand, he presses the bread to his mouth with all his might, sucks it, tries to tear it and gnaw it with his scurvy, loose teeth. When he dies, he is not written off for another two days, and inventive neighbors manage to distribute bread for the dead man as if for a living one: they make him raise his hand like a puppet doll.

Shock therapy

Prisoner Merzlyakov, a man of large build, finds himself in general labor and feels that he is gradually giving up. One day he falls, cannot get up immediately and refuses to drag the log. He is beaten first by his own people, then by his guards, and they bring him to the camp - he has a broken rib and pain in the lower back. And although the pain quickly passed and the rib has healed, Merzlyakov continues to complain and pretends that he cannot straighten up, trying to delay his discharge to work at any cost. He is sent to the central hospital, to the surgical department, and from there to the nervous department for examination. He has a chance to be activated, that is, released due to illness. Remembering the mine, the pinching cold, the empty bowl of soup that he drank without even using a spoon, he concentrates all his will so as not to be caught in deception and sent to a penal mine. However, the doctor Pyotr Ivanovich, himself a former prisoner, was not a mistake. The professional replaces the human in him. He spends most of his time exposing malingerers. This pleases his pride: he is an excellent specialist and is proud that he has retained his qualifications, despite a year of general work. He immediately understands that Merzlyakov is a malingerer, and anticipates the theatrical effect of the new revelation. First, the doctor gives him Rausch anesthesia, during which Merzlyakov’s body can be straightened, and a week later, the procedure of so-called shock therapy, the effect of which is similar to an attack of violent madness or an epileptic seizure. After this, the prisoner himself asks to be released.

Typhoid quarantine

Prisoner Andreev, having fallen ill with typhus, is quarantined. Compared to general work in the mines, the position of the patient gives a chance to survive, which the hero almost no longer hoped for. And then he decides, by hook or by crook, to stay here as long as possible, in the transit train, and then, perhaps, he will no longer be sent to the gold mines, where there is hunger, beatings and death. At the roll call before the next sending to work of those who are considered recovered, Andreev does not respond, and thus he manages to hide for quite a long time. The transit is gradually emptying, and Andreev’s turn finally reaches. But now it seems to him that he has won his battle for life, that now the taiga is saturated and if there are any dispatches, it will be only for short-term, local business trips. However, when a truck with a selected group of prisoners, who were unexpectedly given winter uniforms, passes the line separating short-term missions from distant ones, he realizes with an internal shudder that fate has cruelly laughed at him.

Aortic aneurysm

Illness (and the emaciated state of the “gone” prisoners is quite equivalent to a serious illness, although it was not officially considered such) and the hospital are an indispensable attribute of the plot in Shalamov’s stories. Prisoner Ekaterina Glovatskaya is admitted to the hospital. A beauty, she immediately attracted the attention of the doctor on duty Zaitsev, and although he knows that she is on close terms with his acquaintance, prisoner Podshivalov, the head of an amateur art group (“serf theater,” as the head of the hospital jokes), nothing prevents him in turn try your luck. He begins, as usual, with a medical examination of Glowacka, with listening to the heart, but his male interest quickly gives way to purely medical concern. He finds that Glowacka has an aortic aneurysm, a disease in which any careless movement can cause death. The authorities, who have made it an unwritten rule to separate lovers, have already once sent Glovatskaya to a penal women's mine. And now, after the doctor’s report about the prisoner’s dangerous illness, the head of the hospital is sure that this is nothing more than the machinations of the same Podshivalov, trying to detain his mistress. Glovatskaya is discharged, but as soon as she is loaded into the car, what Dr. Zaitsev warned about happens - she dies.

The last battle of Major Pugachev

Among the heroes of Shalamov’s prose there are those who not only strive to survive at any cost, but are also able to intervene in the course of circumstances, stand up for themselves, even risking their lives. According to the author, after the war of 1941–1945. Prisoners who fought and were captured by Germans began to arrive in the northeastern camps. These are people of a different temperament, “with courage, the ability to take risks, who believed only in weapons. Commanders and soldiers, pilots and intelligence officers..." But most importantly, they had an instinct for freedom, which the war awakened in them. They shed their blood, sacrificed their lives, saw death face to face. They were not corrupted by camp slavery and were not yet exhausted to the point of losing strength and will. Their “fault” was that they were surrounded or captured. And Major Pugachev, one of these not yet broken people, is clear: “they were brought to their death - to replace these living dead” whom they met in Soviet camps. Then the former major gathers equally determined and strong prisoners to match himself, ready to either die or become free. Their group included pilots, a reconnaissance officer, a paramedic, and a tankman. They realized that they were innocently doomed to death and that they had nothing to lose. They've been preparing their escape all winter. Pugachev realized that only those who avoid general work could survive the winter and then escape. And the participants in the conspiracy, one after another, are promoted to servants: someone becomes a cook, someone a cult leader, someone who repairs weapons in the security detachment. But then spring comes, and with it the planned day.

At five o'clock in the morning there was a knock on the watch. The duty officer lets in the camp cook-prisoner, who has come, as usual, to get the keys to the pantry. A minute later, the guard on duty finds himself strangled, and one of the prisoners changes into his uniform. The same thing happens to the other duty officer who returned a little later. Then everything goes according to Pugachev’s plan. The conspirators break into the premises of the security detachment and, having shot the duty officer, take possession of the weapon. Holding the suddenly awakened soldiers at gunpoint, they change into military uniforms and stock up on provisions. Having left the camp, they stop the truck on the highway, drop off the driver and continue the journey in the car until the gas runs out. After that they go into the taiga. At night - the first night of freedom after long months of captivity - Pugachev, waking up, remembers his escape from a German camp in 1944, crossing the front line, interrogation in a special department, being accused of espionage and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. He also remembers the visits of General Vlasov’s emissaries to the German camp, recruiting Russian soldiers, convincing them that for the Soviet regime, all of them who were captured were traitors to the Motherland. Pugachev did not believe them until he could see for himself. He looks lovingly at his sleeping comrades who believed in him and stretched out their hands to freedom; he knows that they are “the best, the most worthy of all.” And a little later a battle breaks out, the last hopeless battle between the fugitives and the soldiers surrounding them. Almost all of the fugitives die, except for one, seriously wounded, who is cured and then shot. Only Major Pugachev manages to escape, but he knows, hiding in the bear’s den, that they will find him anyway. He doesn't regret what he did. His last shot was at himself.

Retold

Varlaam Shalamov is a writer who spent three terms in the camps, survived hell, lost his family, friends, but was not broken by the ordeals: “The camp is a negative school from the first to the last day for anyone. The person - neither the boss nor the prisoner - needs to see him. But if you saw him, you must tell the truth, no matter how terrible it may be.<…>For my part, I decided long ago that I would devote the rest of my life to this truth.”

The collection “Kolyma Stories” is the main work of the writer, which he composed for almost 20 years. These stories leave an extremely heavy impression of horror from the fact that this is how people really survived. The main themes of the works: camp life, breaking the character of prisoners. All of them were doomedly awaiting inevitable death, not holding out hope, not entering into the fight. Hunger and its convulsive saturation, exhaustion, painful dying, slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - this is what is constantly in the focus of the writer’s attention. All the heroes are unhappy, their destinies are mercilessly broken. The language of the work is simple, unpretentious, not decorated with means of expressiveness, which creates the feeling of a truthful story from an ordinary person, one of many who experienced all this.

Analysis of the stories “At Night” and “Condensed Milk”: problems in “Kolyma Stories”

The story “At Night” tells us about an incident that does not immediately fit into our heads: two prisoners, Bagretsov and Glebov, dig up a grave in order to remove the underwear from a corpse and sell it. Moral and ethical principles have been erased, giving way to the principles of survival: the heroes will sell their linen, buy some bread or even tobacco. The themes of life on the verge of death and doom run like a red thread through the work. Prisoners do not value life, but for some reason they survive, indifferent to everything. The problem of brokenness is revealed to the reader; it is immediately clear that after such shocks a person will never be the same.

The story “Condensed Milk” is dedicated to the problem of betrayal and meanness. The geological engineer Shestakov was “lucky”: in the camp he avoided compulsory work and ended up in an “office” where he received good food and clothing. The prisoners envied not the free ones, but people like Shestakov, because the camp narrowed their interests to everyday ones: “Only something external could bring us out of indifference, take us away from the slowly approaching death. External, not internal strength. Inside, everything was burned out, devastated, we didn’t care, and we didn’t make any plans beyond tomorrow.” Shestakov decided to gather a group to escape and hand him over to the authorities, receiving some privileges. This plan was unraveled by the nameless protagonist, familiar to the engineer. The hero demands two cans of canned milk for his participation, this is the ultimate dream for him. And Shestakov brings a treat with a “monstrously blue sticker”, this is the hero’s revenge: he ate both cans under the gaze of other prisoners who were not expecting a treat, just watched the more successful person, and then refused to follow Shestakov. The latter nevertheless persuaded the others and handed them over in cold blood. For what? Where does this desire to curry favor and substitute those who are even worse come from? V. Shalamov answers this question unequivocally: the camp corrupts and kills everything human in the soul.

Analysis of the story “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev”

If most of the heroes of “Kolyma Stories” live indifferently for unknown reasons, then in the story “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev” the situation is different. After the end of the Great Patriotic War, former military men poured into the camps, whose only fault was that they were captured. People who fought against the Nazis cannot simply live indifferently; they are ready to fight for their honor and dignity. Twelve newly arrived prisoners, led by Major Pugachev, have organized an escape plot that has been in preparation all winter. And so, when spring came, the conspirators burst into the premises of the security detachment and, having shot the duty officer, took possession of the weapons. Holding the suddenly awakened soldiers at gunpoint, they change into military uniforms and stock up on provisions. Having left the camp, they stop the truck on the highway, drop off the driver and continue the journey in the car until the gas runs out. After that they go into the taiga. Despite the willpower and determination of the heroes, the camp vehicle overtakes them and shoots them. Only Pugachev was able to leave. But he understands that soon they will find him too. Does he obediently await punishment? No, even in this situation he shows strength of spirit, he himself interrupts his difficult life path: “Major Pugachev remembered them all - one after another - and smiled at each one. Then he put the barrel of a pistol in his mouth and fired for the last time in his life.” The theme of a strong man in the suffocating circumstances of the camp is revealed tragically: he is either crushed by the system, or he fights and dies.

“Kolyma Stories” does not try to pity the reader, but there is so much suffering, pain and melancholy in them! Everyone needs to read this collection to appreciate their life. After all, despite all the usual problems, modern man has relative freedom and choice, he can show other feelings and emotions, except hunger, apathy and the desire to die. “Kolyma Tales” not only frightens, but also makes you look at life differently. For example, stop complaining about fate and feeling sorry for yourself, because we are incredibly lucky than our ancestors, brave, but ground in the millstones of the system.

First reading of “Kolyma Stories” by V. Shalamov

To talk about the prose of Varlam Shalamov means to talk about the artistic and philosophical meaning of non-existence. About death as the compositional basis of the work. About the aesthetics of decay, decomposition, separation... It would seem that there is nothing new: even before, before Shalamov, death, its threat, expectation and approach were often the main driving force of the plot, and the fact of death itself served as the denouement... But in “Kolyma stories" - otherwise. No threats, no waiting! Here death, non-existence is the artistic world in which the plot usually unfolds. The fact of death preceded the beginning of the plot. The line between life and death was forever crossed by the characters even before the moment when we opened the book and, having opened it, thereby started the clock counting down artistic time. The most artistic time here is the time of non-existence, and this feature is perhaps the main one in Shalamov’s writing style...

But here we immediately doubt: do we have the right to understand precisely the artistic style of a writer whose works are now read primarily as a historical document? Isn't this blasphemous indifference to the real destinies of real people? And Shalamov spoke more than once about the reality of destinies and situations, about the documentary background of the “Kolyma Tales”. And I wouldn’t say so—the documentary basis is already obvious.

So shouldn’t we first of all recall the sufferings of the prisoners of Stalin’s camps, the crimes of the executioners, some of them are still alive, and the victims are calling for vengeance... We are going to talk about Shalamov’s texts with analysis, about the creative manner, about artistic discoveries. And, let’s say right away, not only about discoveries, but also about some aesthetic and moral problems of literature... Do we have the right to use this material, Shalamov’s, camp, still bleeding material? Is it possible to analyze a mass grave?

But Shalamov himself was not inclined to consider his stories a document indifferent to artistic form. A brilliant artist, he apparently was not satisfied with how his contemporaries understood him, and wrote a number of texts explaining precisely the artistic principles of the Kolyma Tales. “New prose” he called them.

“In order for prose or poetry to exist—it’s the same—art requires constant novelty.”

He wrote, and to comprehend the essence of this novelty is precisely a literary task.

Let's say more. If “Kolyma Tales” is a great document of the era, then we will never understand what it communicates if we do not comprehend what its artistic novelty is.

“The work of the artist is precisely the form, because otherwise the reader, and the artist himself, can turn to an economist, to a historian, to a philosopher, and not to another artist, in order to surpass, defeat, surpass the master, the teacher,” wrote Shalamov .

In a word, we need to understand not only and not so much Shalamov the prisoner, but first of all Shalamov the artist. It is necessary to understand the soul of the artist. After all, it was he who said: “I am the chronicler of my own soul. No more". And without understanding the soul of the artist, how can a person understand the essence and meaning of history, the essence and meaning of what is happening to him? Where else are these meanings and meanings hidden, if not in great works of literature!

But it is difficult to analyze Shalamov’s prose because it is truly new and fundamentally different from everything that has existed in world literature so far. That is why some previous methods of literary analysis are not suitable here. For example, retelling - a common method of literary criticism when analyzing prose - is not always sufficient here. We have to quote a lot, as happens when it comes to poetry...

So, first let's talk about death as the basis of artistic composition.

The story “Sentence” is one of the most mysterious works of Varlam Shalamov. By the will of the author himself, it was placed last in the body of the book “Left Bank”, which, in turn, generally completes the trilogy of “Kolyma Tales”. This story is, in essence, the finale, and, as happens in a symphony or novel, where only the finale finally harmonizes the entire previous text, so here only the last story gives the final harmonious meaning to the entire thousand-page narrative...

For a reader already familiar with the world of “Kolyma Tales,” the first lines of “Sentence” do not promise anything unusual. As in many other cases, the author, at the very beginning, puts the reader on the edge of the bottomless depths of the other world, and from these depths the characters, the plot, and the very laws of plot development appear to us. The story begins energetically and paradoxically:

“People arose from oblivion - one after another. A stranger lay down next to me on the bunk, leaned against my bony shoulder at night...”

The main thing is that from oblivion. Non-existence and death are synonyms. Did people emerge from death? But we are already accustomed to these Shalamov paradoxes.

Having picked up “Kolyma Tales”, we quickly cease to be surprised at the vagueness or even the complete absence of boundaries between life and non-existence. We get used to characters emerging from death and going back to where they came from. There are no living ones here. There are prisoners here. The line between life and death disappeared for them at the moment of arrest... No, the word itself arrest- inaccurate, inappropriate here. An arrest is part of the living legal lexicon, but what is happening has nothing to do with the law, with the harmony and logic of law. Logic fell apart. The man was not arrested, he have taken. They took him quite arbitrarily: almost by accident - they could have taken someone other than him - a neighbor... There are no sound logical justifications for what happened. Wild chance destroys the logical harmony of existence. They took it, removed it from life, from the list of residents, from the family, separated the family, and the emptiness left after the removal was left to gape ugly... That’s it, there is no person. Was it or wasn’t it – no. Alive - disappeared, disappeared... And the plot of the story includes a dead man who came from nowhere. He forgot everything. After they dragged him through the unconsciousness and delirium of all these senseless actions performed on him in the first weeks and called interrogation, investigation, verdict - after all this, he finally woke up in another, unknown to him, unreal world - and realized that he would forever . He might have thought that it was all over and that there was no return from here, if he had remembered exactly what had ended and where there was no return. But no, he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember his wife’s name, God’s word, or himself. What was is gone forever. His further circling around the barracks, transfers, “hospitals”, camp “business trips” - all this is already otherworldly...

Really, in the understanding that people enter into the plot of the story (and, in particular, into the plot of “Sentence”) from death, there is nothing that would contradict the general meaning of Shalamov’s texts. People arise from oblivion and seem to show some signs of life, but it still turns out that their state will be more understandable to the reader if we talk about them as dead:

“A stranger lay down next to me on the bunk, leaned against my bony shoulder at night, giving away his warmth - drops of warmth, and receiving mine in return. There were nights when no warmth reached me through the scraps of a pea coat or padded jacket, and in the morning I looked at my neighbor as if he were a dead man, and was a little surprised that the dead man was alive, stood up when called, got dressed and obediently followed the command.”

So, leaving neither warmth nor a human image in memory, they disappear from the narrator’s field of vision, from the plot of the story:

“A man who emerged from oblivion disappeared during the day—there were many coal exploration sites—and disappeared forever.”

The hero-narrator himself is also a dead man. At least the story begins with us meeting the dead man. How else can we understand the state in which the body does not contain heat, and the soul not only does not distinguish between truth and lies, but the person itself is not interested in this distinction:

“I don’t know the people who slept next to me. I never asked them questions, and not because I followed the Arabic proverb: “Ask not and you will not be lied to.” I didn’t care whether they would lie to me or not, I was beyond the truth, beyond lies.”

At first glance, both the plot and theme of the story are simple and quite traditional. (The story has long been noticed by critics: see, for example: M. Geller. The world of concentration and modern literature. OPI, London. 1974, pp. 281-299.) It seems that this is a story about how a person changes, how a person comes to life when several the conditions of his camp life are improving. It seems that we are talking about resurrection: from moral non-existence, from the disintegration of personality to high moral self-awareness, to the ability to think - step by step, event by event, act by act, thought by thought - from death to life... But what are the extreme points of this movement? What, in the author’s understanding, is death and what is life?

The hero-narrator no longer speaks about his existence in the language of ethics or psychology - such a language cannot explain anything here - but using the vocabulary of the simplest descriptions of physiological processes:

“I didn’t have much heat. Not much meat left on my bones. This meat was only enough for anger - the last of human feelings...

And, keeping this anger, I expected to die. But death, so close just recently, began to gradually move away. Death was not replaced by life, but by half-consciousness, an existence for which there are no formulas and which cannot be called life.”

Everything is shifted in the artistic world of Kolyma Tales. The usual meanings of words are not suitable here: they do not make up the logical ones so familiar to us. formulas life. It's easy for Shakespeare's readers, they know what it means be So what - not to be, they know what the hero chooses between and what, and empathize with him, and choose with him. But for Shalamov, what is life? what is anger? what is death? What happens when a person is tortured less today than yesterday - well, at least they stop beating him every day, and for that reason - that's the only reason! - death is postponed and he passes into another existence, to which no formulas?

Resurrection? But is that so? are resurrected? The hero’s acquisition of the ability to perceive the surrounding life, as it were, repeats the development of the organic world: from the perception of a flatworm to simple human emotions... There is a fear that the delay in death will suddenly be short; envy of the dead, who already died in 1938, and to living neighbors - chewing, smoking. Pity for animals, but not yet pity for people...

And finally, following the feelings, the mind awakens. An ability awakens that distinguishes a person from the natural world around him: the ability to recall words from memory stores and with the help of words to give names to creatures, objects, events, phenomena - the first step towards ultimately finding logical formulas life:

“I was frightened, stunned, when in my brain, here - I remember this clearly - under the right parietal bone - a word was born that was completely unsuitable for the taiga, a word that I myself did not understand, not only my comrades. I shouted this word, standing on the bunk, turning to the sky, to infinity:

- Sentence! Maxim!

And he started laughing...

- Sentence! - I yelled straight into the northern sky, into the double dawn, I yelled, not yet understanding the meaning of this word that was born in me. And if this word has returned, been found again - so much the better, so much the better! Great joy filled my entire being...

For a week I didn’t understand what the word “maximum” meant. I whispered this word, shouted it, scared and made my neighbors laugh with this word. I demanded from the world, from the sky, a solution, an explanation, a translation... And a week later I understood - and shuddered with fear and joy. Fear - because I was afraid of returning to that world where I had no return. Joy - because I saw that life was returning to me against my own will.

Many days passed until I learned to summon more and more new words from the depths of my brain, one after another...”

Risen? Returned from oblivion? Have you found freedom? But is it possible to go back, go back all this way - with arrest, interrogations, beatings, experiencing death more than once - and be resurrected? Leave the other world? Free yourself?

And what is liberation? Rediscovering the ability to formulate logical formulas using words? Using logical formulas to describe the world? The very return to this world, subject to the laws of logic?

Against the gray background of the Kolyma landscape, what fiery word will be saved for subsequent generations? Will this all-powerful word denoting the order of this world be LOGIC!

But no, “maximum” is not a concept from the dictionary of Kolyma reality. Life here doesn't know logic. It is impossible to explain what is happening with logical formulas. Absurd case is the name of the local fate.

What is the use of the logic of life and death if, sliding down the list, the finger of a stranger, unfamiliar (or, conversely, familiar and hates you) contractor accidentally stops on your last name - and that’s it, you’re not there, you ended up on a disastrous business trip and a few days later your body, twisted by the frost, will be hastily thrown with stones in the camp cemetery; or it turns out by chance that the local Kolyma “authorities” themselves invented and themselves uncovered some kind of “conspiracy of lawyers” (or agronomists, or historians), and suddenly you remember that you have a legal (agricultural or historical) education - and now your name is already on the firing squad list; or without any lists, the glance of a criminal who lost at cards accidentally caught your eye - and your life becomes the bet of someone else’s game - and that’s it, you’re gone.

What a resurrection, what a liberation: if this absurdity is not only behind you, but also ahead - always, forever! However, we must immediately understand: it is not the fatal accident that interests the writer. And not even the exploration of a fantastic world, entirely consisting of an interweaving of wild accidents, which could captivate an artist with the temperament of Edgar Poe or Ambroise Bierce. No, Shalamov is a writer of the Russian psychological school, brought up on the great prose of the 19th century, and in the wild collision of accidents he is interested in precisely certain patterns. But these patterns are outside the logical, cause-and-effect series. These are not formal logical, but artistic laws.

Death and eternity cannot be described by logical formulas. They simply defy such description. And if the reader perceives Shalamov’s final text as a major psychological study and, in accordance with the logic familiar to modern Soviet people, expects that the hero is about to return to normal life, and just look, suitable ones will be found from him formulas, and he rises to expose the “crimes of Stalinism”, if the reader perceives the story this way (and with it all the “Kolyma Stories” as a whole), then he will be disappointed, since none of this happens (and cannot happen in Shalamov’s work!). And the whole thing ends very mysteriously... with music.

The tragedy of “Kolyma Tales” ends not with an accusatory maxim, not with a call for revenge, not with a formulation of the historical meaning of the horror experienced, but with hoarse music, a random gramophone on a huge larch stump, a gramophone that

“...played, overcoming the hiss of the needle, played some kind of symphonic music.

And everyone stood around - murderers and horse thieves, thieves and fraters, foremen and hard workers. And the boss stood nearby. And the expression on his face was as if he himself had written this music for us, for our remote taiga business trip. The shellac record was spinning and hissing, the stump itself was spinning, wound up in all its three hundred circles, like a tight spring twisted for three hundred years...”

That's all! Here's the finale for you. Regularity and logic are not synonyms at all. Here the very absence of logic is natural. And one of the main, most important patterns is that there is no return from the otherworldly, irrational world. In principle... Shalamov has repeatedly stated that it is impossible to resurrect:

“... Who would have figured it out then, whether it took us a minute or a day, or a year, or a century to return to our previous body - we did not expect to return back to our previous soul. And they didn’t return, of course. Nobody returned."

No one returned to a world that could be explained using logical formulas... But what then is the story “Sentence” about, which occupies such an important place in the general corpus of Shalamov’s texts? What does music have to do with it? How and why does her divine harmony arise in the ugly world of death and decay? What secret does this story reveal to us? What key is given for understanding the entire multi-page volume of “Kolyma Tales”?

And further. How close are the concepts? logics life and harmony peace? Apparently, it is these questions that we have to look for answers to in order to understand Shalamov’s texts, and with them, perhaps, many events and phenomena both in history and in our lives.

“The world of barracks was squeezed by a narrow mountain gorge. Limited by the sky and stone...” - this is how one of Shalamov’s stories begins, but this is how we could begin our notes on artistic space in “Kolyma Stories.” The low sky here is like a punishment cell ceiling - it also limits freedom, it also puts pressure... Everyone has to get out of here themselves. Or die.

Where are all those fenced spaces and closed territories that the reader finds in Shalamov’s prose located? Where does or did that hopeless world exist, in which the profound lack of freedom of everyone is conditioned by the complete lack of freedom of everyone?

Of course, those bloody events took place in Kolyma that forced the writer Shalamov, who survived them and miraculously survived, to create the world of his stories. The events took place in a famous geographical area and deployed in a certain historical time... But the artist, contrary to widespread prejudice - from which, however, he himself is not always free - does not recreate either real events, much less “real” space and time. If we want to understand Shalamov’s stories as an artistic fact (and without such an understanding we cannot comprehend them at all - we cannot comprehend them either as a document, or as a psychological phenomenon or a philosophical discovery of the world - in any way), then if we want to understand at least something in Shalamov’s texts, then first of all it is necessary to see what the meaning of these “sort of physical” categories - time and space - is in the poetics of the Kolyma Tales.

Let’s be careful, nothing can be missed here... Let’s say, why at the very beginning of the story “To the Exhibition”, when designating the “scene of action,” did the author need an obvious allusion: “We played cards at Naumov’s horse-driver”? What is behind this appeal to Pushkin? Just irony, shading the gloomy flavor of one of the last circles of the camp hell? A parodic attempt to “reduce” the tragic pathos of “The Queen of Spades” by jealously contrasting it with... no, not even another tragedy, but something beyond the limits of any tragedy, beyond the limits of the human mind and, perhaps, something generally beyond the limits of art?..

The opening phrase of Pushkin’s story is a sign of the easy freedom of the characters, freedom in space and time:

“Once we were playing cards with the horse guard Narumov. The long winter night passed unnoticed; We sat down to dinner at five o’clock in the morning...”

We sat down for dinner at five, or could have been at three or six. The winter night passed unnoticed, but the summer night could have passed just as unnoticed... And in general, the owner could not have been the horse guard Narumov - in the rough drafts the prose is not at all so strict:

“About 4 years ago we gathered in P<етер>B<урге>several young people connected by circumstances. We led a rather chaotic life. We dined at Andrie's without appetite, drank without cheerfulness, went to S.<офье>A<стафьевне>to infuriate the poor old woman with feigned legibility. They spent the day somehow, and in the evening they took turns gathering at each other’s place.”

It is known that Shalamov had an absolute memory for literary texts. The intonational similarity of his prose to Pushkin’s prose cannot be accidental. This is a calculated move. If in Pushkin’s text there is open space, the free flow of time and the free movement of life, then in Shalamov there is a closed space, time seems to stop and it is no longer the laws of life, but death that determines the behavior of the characters. Death is not an event, but as a name to the world in which we find ourselves when we open the book...

“We played cards at Naumov’s horse-driver’s. The guards on duty never looked into the barracks of the horsemen, rightly believing that their main service was monitoring those convicted under the fifty-eighth article. Horses, as a rule, were not trusted by counter-revolutionaries. True, the practical bosses quietly grumbled: they were losing their best, most caring workers, but the instructions on this matter were definite and strict. In a word, the horsemen were the safest place, and every night the thieves gathered there for their card fights.

In the right corner of the barracks, on the lower bunks, multi-colored cotton blankets were spread out. A burning “stick”—a homemade gasoline-powered light bulb—was screwed to the corner post with wire. Three or four open copper tubes were soldered into the lid of a tin can - that’s all the device was. In order to light this lamp, hot coal was placed on the lid, the gasoline was heated, steam rose through the tubes, and the gasoline gas burned, lit with a match.

A dirty down pillow lay on the blankets, and on both sides of it, with their legs tucked in Buryat style, sat the “partners” - the classic pose of a prison card battle. There was a brand new deck of cards on the pillow. These were not ordinary cards: it was a homemade prison deck, which was made by masters of these crafts at an unusual speed...

Today's cards were just cut out from a volume of Victor Hugo - the book was forgotten by someone in the office yesterday...

Me and Garkunov, a former textile engineer, were sawing wood for the Naumov barracks...”

There is a clear designation of space in each of Shalamov’s short stories, and always - always without exception! - this space is deafly closed. One might even say that the sepulchral enclosure of space is a constant and persistent motif of the writer’s work.

Here are the opening lines introducing the reader to the text of just a few stories:

“All day long there was a white fog so thick that you couldn’t see a person two steps away. However, there was no need to walk far alone. Few directions—the canteen, the hospital, the watch—were guessed by an unknown, acquired instinct, akin to that sense of direction that animals fully possess and which, under suitable conditions, awakens in humans.”

“The heat in the prison cell was such that not a single fly was visible. The huge windows with iron bars were wide open, but this did not provide relief - the hot asphalt of the yard sent hot air waves upward, and it was even cooler in the cell than outside. All clothes had been stripped off, and hundreds of naked bodies, blazing with a heavy, damp heat, were tossing and turning, leaking sweat, on the floor—it was too hot on the bunks.”

“The huge double door opened and a distributor entered the transit barracks. He stood in a wide strip of morning light reflected by the blue snow. Two thousand pairs of eyes looked at him from everywhere: from below - from under the bunks, directly, from the side, from above - from the height of four-story bunks, where those who still retained their strength climbed up a ladder.”

“The “Small Zone” is a transfer, the “Big Zone” is a camp of the Mining Department - endless squat barracks, prison streets, a triple fence of barbed wire, guard towers that look like birdhouses in winter. In the “Small Zone” there are even more towers, locks and latches...”

It would seem that there is nothing special there: if a person writes about a camp and a prison, then where can he get at least something open-ended! That's all true... But what we're looking at is not the camp itself. Before us is only a text about the camp. And here it depends not on the security, but only on the author, how exactly the “art space” will be organized. What will be the philosophy of space, how the author will make the reader perceive its height and extent, how often he will make him remember towers, locks and latches, and so on and so forth.

The history of literature knows enough examples when, by the will of the author, life, seemingly completely closed, closed (even if in the same camp zone) easily communicates with life flowing within other boundaries. Well, there are some ways from the special camp where Solzhenitsyn’s Ivan Shukhov was imprisoned, to Shukhov’s native Temgenevo. It’s okay that these paths - even for Shukhov himself - are traversable only mentally. One way or another, having gone through all these paths (say, remembering the letters received with the hero), we learn about the life of Ivan’s family, and about affairs on the collective farm, and in general about the country outside the zone.

And Ivan Denisovich himself, although he tries not to think about the future life - he would like to survive in today's life - is still connected with it, the future, albeit with rare letters, and cannot give up the temptation to think briefly about the tempting business that It would be worthwhile to start painting carpets using stencils after my release. In Solzhenitsyn’s work, man is not alone in the camp; he lives in proximity to his contemporaries, in the same country, in the neighborhood of humanity, according to the laws of humanity - in a word, although in deep captivity, a man lives in the world of people.

It’s different with Shalamov. The abyss separates man from everything that is usually called “modernity.” If a letter arrives here, it is only to be destroyed to the drunken laughter of the warden even before it is read; after death, letters are not received. Deaf! In the other world, everything takes on otherworldly meanings. And the letter does not unite, but - not received - separates people even more. Why talk about letters, if even the sky (as we already recalled) does not broaden one’s horizons, but limits his. Even doors or gates, although open, will not open up the space, but will only emphasize its hopeless limitations. Here you seem to be forever fenced off from the rest of the world and hopelessly alone. There is no continent in the world, no family, no free taiga. Even on a bunk, you are not living next to a person, but to a dead person. Even the animal will not stay with you for long, and the dog to which you have become attached will be shot dead by a security guard... At least reach for a growing berry outside this closed space - and you will immediately fall dead, the guard will not miss:

“...ahead there were hummocks with rose hips, blueberries, and lingonberries... We saw these hummocks a long time ago...

Rybakov pointed to the jar, which was not yet full, and to the sun descending towards the horizon and slowly began to approach the enchanted berries.

The shot clicked dryly, and Rybakov fell face down between the hummocks. Greyshapka, waving a rifle, shouted:

- Leave where you are, don’t come closer!

Grayshapka pulled back the shutter and fired again. We knew what that second shot meant. Greyshapka knew this too. There should be two shots - the first is a warning.

Rybakov lay unexpectedly small between the hummocks. The sky, the mountains, the river were huge, and God knows how many people could be placed in these mountains on the paths between the hummocks.

Rybakov's jar rolled far away, I managed to pick it up and hide it in my pocket. Maybe they will give me bread for these berries...”

Only then do the sky, the mountains, and the river open up. And only for the one who fell, burying his face between the taiga hummocks. Freed! For another, a survivor, the sky is still no different from other realities of camp life: barbed wire, the walls of a barracks or cells, at best the hard beds of a camp hospital, but more often - bunks, bunks, bunks - this is the real space of Shalamov’s short stories.

And here, as the cosmos is, so is the luminary:

“A dim electric sun, fouled by flies and enclosed by a round grating, was attached high above the ceiling.”

(However, the sun - as it appears in the text of “Kolyma Tales” - could become the topic of a separate, very voluminous study, and we will have the opportunity to touch on this topic.)

Everything is deaf and closed, and no one is allowed to leave, and there is nowhere to run. Even those desperate ones who decide to escape - and run! — with incredible efforts it is possible to only slightly stretch the boundaries of the grave world, but no one has ever been able to completely break or open them.

In “Kolyma Stories” there is a whole cycle of short stories about escapes from the camp, united by one title: “The Green Prosecutor”. And all these are stories about unsuccessful escapes. It’s not that there aren’t any successful ones: in principle, they cannot exist. And those who fled - even those who fled far away, somewhere to Yakutsk, Irkutsk or even Mariupol - all the same, as if it were some kind of demonic obsession, as if running in a dream, always remain within the confines of the grave world, and the running goes on and on , continues, and sooner or later a moment comes when the boundaries, which had been stretched far, instantly tighten again, are pulled into a noose, and a person who believed himself to be free wakes up in the cramped walls of a camp punishment cell...

No, this is not just a dead space fenced off with barbed wire or the walls of a barracks or poles in the taiga - a space into which some doomed people find themselves, but outside of which more fortunate people live according to different laws. This is the monstrous truth that everything that Seems existing outside of this space is actually involved, drawn into the same abyss.

It seems that everyone is doomed - everyone in the country, and maybe even in the world. Here is some kind of monstrous funnel, equally sucking in, sucking in the righteous and thieves, healers and lepers, Russians, Germans, Jews, men and women, victims and executioners - everyone, everyone without exception! German pastors, Dutch communists, Hungarian peasants... Among Shalamov’s characters, not a single one is even mentioned - not a single one! - about whom one could say that he is certainly outside these limits - and safe...

Man no longer belongs to the era, to modernity - but only to death. Age loses all meaning, and the author sometimes admits that he himself does not know how old the character is - and who cares! All time perspective is lost, and this is another, most important, constantly recurring motif of Shalamov’s stories:

“The time when he was a doctor seemed very far away. And was there ever such a time? Too often that world beyond the mountains, beyond the seas seemed to him like some kind of dream, an invention. The minute, the hour, the day from getting up to going out was real - he didn’t think further, he couldn’t find the strength to guess. As everybody".

Like everyone else... There is no hope even for the passage of time - it will not save! In general, time here is special: it exists, but it cannot be defined in familiar words - past, present, future: tomorrow, they say, we will be better, we will not be there and not the same as yesterday... No, here today is not at all not an intermediate point between “yesterday” and “tomorrow”. “Today” is a very uncertain part of what is called the word Always. Or more correctly to say - never...

The cruel writer Shalamov. Where did he take the reader? Does he know how to get out of here? However, he himself apparently knows: his own creative imagination knew, and, therefore, overcome conditioned closedness of space. After all, this is exactly what he states in his notes “On Prose”:

“The Kolyma stories are an attempt to raise and resolve some important moral questions of the time, questions that simply cannot be resolved using other material.

The question of the meeting of man and the world, the struggle of man with the state machine, the truth of this struggle, the struggle for oneself, within oneself - and outside oneself. Is it possible to actively influence one’s destiny, which is being ground by the teeth of the state machine, by the teeth of evil? The illusory nature and heaviness of hope. An opportunity to rely on forces other than hope.”

Perhaps... opportunity... Yes, really, does it exist where, say, the possibility of looting - pulling a corpse out of a shallow grave, barely covered with stones, stealing his underpants and undershirt - is considered a great success: the underwear can be sold , trade for bread, maybe even get some tobacco? ("At night ").

The one in the grave is a dead man. But aren’t those in the night above his grave, or those in the prison camp, in the barracks, on the bunks, really dead? Isn’t a person without moral principles, without memory, without will, a dead person?

“I gave my word a long time ago that if I was hit, that would be the end of my life. I'll hit the boss and they'll shoot me. Alas, I was a naive boy. When I weakened, my will and my reason weakened. I easily persuaded myself to endure it and did not find the mental strength to retaliate, to commit suicide, to protest. I was the most ordinary goner and lived according to the laws of the psyche of goons.”

What “moral questions” can be resolved by describing this closed grave space, this time that has stopped forever: by talking about beatings that change a person’s gait, his plasticity; about hunger, about dystrophy, about cold that deprives one of reason; about people who have forgotten not only their wife’s name, but who have completely lost their own past; and again about beatings, bullying, executions, which are spoken of as liberation - the sooner the better.

Why do we need to know all this? Don’t we remember the words of Shalamov himself:

“Andreev was a representative of the dead. And his knowledge, the knowledge of a dead man, could not be useful to them, while still alive.”

The cruel artist Varlam Shalamov. Instead of immediately showing the reader direct answers, direct, happy exits from the abyss of evil, Shalamov places us deeper and deeper into this closed other world, into this death, and not only does not promise quick release, but, it seems, does not seek to give any at all - at least in the text.

But we no longer have life without a solution. We are seriously drawn into this hopeless space. Here you can’t get away with talking about the documentary, and therefore the temporary, passing problems of stories. Even if Stalin and Beria are gone and the order in Kolyma has changed... but the stories, here they are, live on. And we live in them along with the characters. Who will say that the problems of “War and Peace” have now been removed due to the remoteness of the events of 1812? Who will put aside Dante's Tencines because, supposedly, their documentary background has long lost its relevance?

Humanity cannot exist otherwise than by solving the great mysteries of great artists. And we cannot understand our own life, which seems to be far from Kolyma reality, without solving the riddle of Shalamov’s texts.

Let's not stop halfway.

It seems that we have only one chance left to escape from the abyss of Shalamov’s world - a single, but true and well-mastered technique in literary criticism: to go beyond the limits of literary fact and turn to the facts of history, sociology, and politics. The very possibility that Vissarion Belinsky suggested to Russian literary criticism one hundred and fifty years ago and which has since fed more than one generation of literary scholars and critics: the possibility of calling a literary work an “encyclopedia” of some life and thus securing the right to interpret it one way or another, depending on how we understand “life” itself and the historical “phase” of its development in which the critic places us together with the author.

This possibility is all the more tempting since Shalamov himself, in one of his self-comments, speaks about the state machine, in another he remembers in connection with the “Kolyma Tales” the historical events of that time - wars, revolutions, the fires of Hiroshima... Maybe if We will weave the Kolyma reality into the historical context, will it be easier for us to find the solution to Shalamov’s world? Like, there was such a time: revolutions, wars, fires - the forest is cut down, the wood chips fly. After all, be that as it may, we are analyzing the text written following based on real events, not the author’s imagination, not science fiction. Not even an artistic exaggeration. It’s worth remembering once again: there is nothing in the book that does not have documentary evidence. Where did Varlam Shalamov find such a closed world? After all, other authors who wrote about Kolyma reliably tell us about the normal, natural, or, as learned psychologists say, “adequate” reaction of prisoners to historical events that occurred simultaneously with the terrible events of Kolyma life. No one has ceased to be a man of his time. Kolyma was not cut off from the world and from history:

"- Germans! Fascists! Crossed the border...

- Our people are retreating...

- Can't be! How many years have they been repeating: “We won’t give up even five of our lands!”

The Elgen barracks do not sleep until the morning...

No, now we are not sawyers, not carters from a convoy, not nannies from an orphanage. With extraordinary brightness we suddenly remembered “who is who”... We argue until we are hoarse. We try to grasp the perspectives. Not your own, but common ones. People, desecrated, tormented by four years of suffering, we suddenly recognize ourselves as citizens of our country. For her, for our Motherland, we now tremble, her rejected children. Someone has already got hold of the paper and with a stub of a pencil writes: “Please direct me to the most dangerous section of the front. I have been a member of the Communist Party since the age of sixteen...”

(E. Ginzburg. Steep route. N.-Y. 1985, book 2, p. 17)

Alas, let’s say right away, Shalamov does not leave us even this last chance. Well, yes, he remembers historical events... but how!

“It seems to me that a man of the second half of the twentieth century, a man who survived wars, revolutions, the fires of Hiroshima, the atomic bomb, betrayal, and the most important thing that crowns everything(italics mine.— L.T.), - the shame of Kolyma and the ovens of Auschwitz, man... - and after all, everyone’s relative died either in the war or in the camp - a person who survived the scientific revolution simply cannot help but approach issues of art differently than before.”

Of course, both the author of “Kolyma Tales” and his heroes did not cease to be people of their time, of course, in Shalamov’s texts there is a revolution, and a war, and a story about the “victorious” May 1945... But in all cases, everything is historical events - both great and small - turn out to be just an insignificant everyday episode in a series of other events, the most important- camp.

“Listen,” said Stupnitsky, “The Germans bombed Sevastopol, Kyiv, Odessa.

Andreev listened politely. The message sounded like news of a war in Paraguay or Bolivia. What does Andreev have to do with this? Stupnitsky is well-fed, he is a foreman - so he is interested in such things as war.

Grisha the Greek, the thief, approached.

— What are machine guns?

- Don't know. Like machine guns, probably.

“A knife is more terrible than any bullet,” Grisha said instructively.

“That’s right,” said Boris Ivanovich, a surgeon from the prisoners, “a knife in the stomach is a sure infection, there is always a danger of peritonitis.” A gunshot wound is better, cleaner...

“A nail is best,” said Grisha the Greek.

- Stand up!

We lined up in ranks and went from the mine to the camp...”

So we talked about the war. What does the camp prisoner have in it?.. And the point here is not some biographical grievances of the author, who, due to a judicial error, was removed from participation in the main event of our time - no, the point is that the author is convinced: it was his tragic fate that made him a witness to the main events. Wars, revolutions, even the atomic bomb are only private atrocities of History - a grandiose unseen in centuries and millennia spill of evil.

No matter how strong it is - to the point of prejudice! — the habit of Russian public consciousness to operate with the categories of dialectics; here they are powerless. Kolyma stories do not want to be woven into the general fabric of “historical development.” No political mistakes and abuses, no deviations from the historical path can explain the comprehensive victory of death over life. On the scale of this phenomenon, all sorts of Stalins, Berias and others are just figures, nothing more. The idea here is bigger than Lenin’s...

No, the reality of Shalamov’s world is not the “reality of the historical process” - they say, yesterday it was like this, tomorrow it will be different... Here nothing changes “with the passage of time”, nothing disappears from here, nothing goes into oblivion, because the world of “Kolyma Tales” is itself nothingness. And that is why it is simply broader than any conceivable historical reality and cannot be created by a “historical process.” From this non-existence there is nowhere to return, nothing to resurrect. An idyllic ending, like in “war and peace,” is unthinkable here. There is no hope left that there is another life somewhere. Everything is here, everything is drawn into the dark depths. And the “historical process” itself with all its “phases” slowly circles in the funnel of the camp, prison world.

In order to make any kind of excursion into recent history, the author and his heroes need not strive beyond the camp fence or prison bars. The whole story is nearby. And the fate of every camp inmate or cellmate is its crown, its main event.

“Prisoners behave differently during arrest. Breaking the mistrust of some is a very difficult matter. Little by little, day by day, they get used to their fate and begin to understand something.

Alekseev was of a different type. It was as if he had been silent for many years - and then the arrest, the prison cell returned to him the power of speech. He found here an opportunity to understand the most important things, to guess the passage of time, to guess his own destiny and understand why. Find the answer to that huge, gigantic “why” that hangs over his entire life and destiny, and not only his life and destiny, but also hundreds of thousands of others.”

The very possibility of finding the answer appears because the “passage of time” has stopped, fate ends as it should - with death. At the Last Judgment, revolutions, wars, executions float into the prison cell, and only comparison with non-existence, with eternity, clarifies their true meaning. From this point on, history has a reverse perspective. In general, isn’t non-existence itself the final answer - that only, terrible answer that we can only extract from the entire course of the “historical process” - the answer that leads to despair the simple-minded, deceived by crafty agitators, and makes those who think deeply I have not yet lost this ability:

“... Alekseev suddenly broke free, jumped onto the windowsill, grabbed the prison bars with both hands and shook it, shook it, swearing and growling. Alekseev’s black body hung on the bars like a huge black cross. The prisoners tore Alekseev’s fingers from the bars, straightened his palms, and hurried, because the sentry on the tower had already noticed the fuss at the open window.

And then Alexander Grigorievich Andreev, general secretary of the society of political prisoners, said, pointing to a black body sliding from the bars:

Shalamov’s reality is an artistic fact of a special kind. The writer himself has repeatedly stated that he strives for new prose, for the prose of the future, which will speak not on behalf of the reader, but on behalf of the material itself - “stone, fish and cloud”, in the language of the material. (The artist is not an observer studying events, but a participant in them, their witness- in the Christian meaning of this word, which is a synonym for the word martyr). Artist - “Pluto, rising from hell, and not Orpheus, descending into hell” (“On prose”) And the point is not that before Shalamov there was no master capable of coping with such a creative task, but that there was no still on earth “the most important, crowning all” evil. And only now, when evil had swallowed up all the previous crafty hopes for the final victory of the human mind in its historical development, the artist was able to rightfully declare:

“There is no rational basis for life - this is what our time proves.”

But the absence of a reasonable (in other words, logically explainable) basis in life does not mean the absence of what we, in fact, are looking for - truth in the artist’s texts. This truth, apparently, is not where we are accustomed to looking for it: not in rational theories that “explain” life, and not even in the moral maxims that so habitually interpret what is good and what is evil. How close are one concept to another? logics life and harmony peace? Perhaps it is not the earthly word “logic” that will shine against the background of the Kolyma night, but the divine one – LOGOS?

According to the testimony of Mikhail Geller, who carried out the most complete edition of “Kolyma Stories,” a letter from Frida Vigdorova to Shalamov was circulated in samizdat at the same time as Shalamov’s texts:

“I read your stories. They are the most brutal I have ever read. The most bitter and merciless. There are people there without a past, without a biography, without memories. It says that adversity does not unite people. That a person thinks only about himself, about surviving. But why do you close the manuscript with faith in honor, goodness, human dignity? It’s mysterious, I can’t explain it, I don’t know how it happens, but it’s like that.”

Remember the mysterious whirling of the shellac record and the music at the end of the story “Sentence”? Where does this come from? The sacrament to which Shalamov introduces us is art. And Vigdorova was right: comprehend This sacrament is not given to anyone at all. But the reader is given something else: when joining the sacrament, he strives to understand himself. And this is possible, since not only the events of history, but also all of us - the living, the dead, and the unborn - all the characters in Shalamov’s stories, the inhabitants of his mysterious world. Let's take a closer look at ourselves there. Where are we there? Where is our place? The discovery of the Self by a simple person in the radiance of art is similar to the materialization of sunlight...

“A beam of red sun rays was divided by the binding of the prison bars into several smaller beams; somewhere in the middle of the chamber, the beams of light again merged into a continuous stream, red and gold. In this stream of light, motes of dust were thickly golden. Flies caught in the strip of light themselves became golden, like the sun. The rays of the sunset beat directly on the door, bound in gray glossy iron.

The lock clinked - a sound that any prisoner, awake or sleeping, hears at any hour in a prison cell. There is no conversation in the cell that could drown out this sound, there is no sleep in the cell that could distract from this sound. There is no thought in the cell that could... No one can concentrate on anything so as to miss this sound, not to hear it. Everyone's heart skips a beat when he hears the sound of a lock, the knock of fate on the cell door, on souls, on hearts, on minds. This sound fills everyone with anxiety. And it cannot be confused with any other sound.

The lock jingled, the door opened, and a stream of rays burst out of the chamber. Through the open door, it became visible how the rays crossed the corridor, rushed through the window of the corridor, flew over the prison yard and crashed on the window panes of another prison building. All sixty residents of the cell managed to see all this in the short time the door was open. The door slammed shut with a melodious ringing sound, similar to the ringing of ancient chests when the lid is slammed shut. And immediately all the prisoners, eagerly following the throw of the light stream, the movement of the beam, as if it were a living creature, their brother and comrade, realized that the sun was again locked up with them.

And only then did everyone see that a man was standing at the door, receiving a stream of golden sunset rays onto his wide black chest, squinting from the harsh light.”

We intended to talk about the sun in Shalamov's stories. Now the time has come for this.

The sun of “Kolyma Tales,” no matter how bright and hot it may appear at times, is always the sun of the dead. And next to him there are always other luminaries, much more important:

“There are few sights as expressive as the red-faced figures of the camp authorities standing next to each other, red-faced from alcohol, well-fed, overweight, heavy with fat, in shiny, like a sun(hereinafter italics are mine. - L.T.), brand new, smelly sheepskin coats...

Fedorov walked along the face, asked something, and our foreman, bowing respectfully, reported something. Fedorov yawned, and his golden, well-maintained teeth reflected Sun rays. The sun was already high...”

When this obliging sun of the guards sets, or the autumn rain clouds cover it, or an impenetrable frosty fog rises, the prisoner will be left with only the already familiar “dim electric sun, polluted with flies and chained with a round lattice...”

One could say that the lack of sunlight is a purely geographical feature of the Kolyma region. But we have already found out that geography cannot explain anything to us in Shalamov’s stories. It's not a matter of seasonal changes in sunrise and sunset times. The point is not that there is not enough warmth and light in this world, the point is that there is no movement from darkness to light or back. There is no light of truth, and nowhere to find it. There are no reasonable reasons and no logical consequences. There is no justice. Unlike, say, Dante's Hell, the souls imprisoned here do not suffer reasonable punishments, they do not know their guilt, and therefore know neither repentance nor hope of ever, having atone for their guilt, changing their situation...

“The late Alighieri would have made the tenth circle of hell out of this,” Anna Akhmatova once said. And she was not the only one inclined to correlate Russian reality of the 20th century with pictures of Dante’s horrors. But with this ratio, it became obvious every time that the latest horrors in the camps were stronger than those that seemed extremely possible for the greatest artist of the 14th century - and you can’t cover it in nine circles. And, apparently understanding this, Akhmatova does not look for anything similar in literary texts already created, but evokes the genius of Dante, brings him closer, makes him a recently departed contemporary, calling him “the late Alighieri” - and, it seems, only such a contemporary is able to comprehend everything recently experienced by humanity.

The point, of course, is not to follow a rational, even numerical order, in which nine circles of hell appear to us, then seven - purgatory, then nine heavens... It is the rational ideas about the world, revealed by the text of the "Divine Comedy", the structure of this text are questioned, if not completely refuted, by the experience of the 20th century. And in this sense, Varlam Shalamov’s worldview is a direct negation of the philosophical ideas of Dante Alighieri.

Let us remember that in the ordered world of the Divine Comedy the sun is an important metaphor. And the “carnal” sun, in the depths of which reside the shining, emitting light, pouring flame souls of philosophers and theologians (King Solomon, Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi), and the “Sun of Angels”, which the Lord appears to us. One way or another, Sun, Light, Reason are poetic synonyms.

But if in Dante’s poetic consciousness the sun never goes out (even in hell, when there is dense darkness all around), if the path from hell is the path to the luminaries and, having gone out to them, the hero, on occasion, does not forget to notice how and in what direction his shadow lies , then in Shalamov’s artistic world there is no light or shadow at all, there is no customary and generally understandable boundary between them. Here, for the most part, there is a thick, deathly twilight - a twilight without hope and without truth. In general, without any source of light, it is lost forever (and was it even there?). And there is no shadow here, because there is no sunlight - in the usual sense of these words. The prison sun and the camp sun of “Kolyma Tales” are not at all the same thing as simply Sun. It is not present here as a natural source of light and life for all, but as some kind of secondary inventory, if not belonging to death, then having nothing to do with life.

No, there still comes a moment—rarely, but it still happens—when the bright and sometimes hot sun makes its way into the world of the Kolyma prisoner. However, it never shines for everyone. From the dull twilight of the camp world, like a strong ray directed from somewhere outside, it always snatches out one person’s figure (say, the “first security officer” Alekseev, already familiar to us) or one person’s face, reflected in the eyes of one person. And always - always! - this is the figure or face, or eyes of the finally doomed.

“...I was completely calm. And I had nowhere to rush. The sun was too hot - it burned my cheeks, unaccustomed to the bright light and fresh air. I sat down by the tree. It was nice to sit outside, breathe in the elastic wonderful air, the smell of blooming rose hips. My head was spinning...

I was confident in the severity of the sentence - killing was a tradition of those years.”

Although we have quoted the same story twice here, the sun that illuminates the face of the doomed prisoner is not at all the same as that which was reflected in the sheepskin coats of the guards and in the gold teeth of the guards a few pages earlier. This distant, as if unearthly light falling on the face of a man who is ready to die is well known to us from other stories. There is a certain peace in it, perhaps a sign of reconciliation with Eternity:

“The fugitive lived in the village bathhouse for three whole days, and finally, cut, shaved, washed, well-fed, he was taken away by the “operatives” for investigation, the outcome of which could only be execution. The fugitive himself, of course, knew about this, but he was an experienced, indifferent prisoner, who had long since crossed that line of life in prison when every person becomes a fatalist and lives “with the flow.” There were guards and “security guards” near him all the time; they didn’t allow him to talk to anyone. Every evening he sat on the porch of the bathhouse and looked at the cherry blossom sunset. The fire of the evening sun rolled into his eyes, and the eyes of the fugitive seemed to be burning - a very beautiful sight.”

Of course, we could turn to the Christian poetic tradition and say that it is the directed light of love that meets the soul leaving this world... But no, we perfectly remember Shalamov’s statement: “God is dead...” And one more thing:

“I lost my faith in God a long time ago, at the age of six... And I am proud that from the age of six until I was sixty, I did not resort to his help either in Vologda, or in Moscow, or in Kolyma.”

And yet, despite these statements, the absence of God in the artistic picture otherworldly the Kolyma world is not at all a simple and self-evident fact. This topic, with its contradictions, constantly worries the author and again and again attracts attention. There is no God... but there are believers in God, and it turns out that these are the most worthy people I met in Kolyma:

“The irreligion in which I lived my conscious life did not make me a Christian. But I have never seen more worthy people than religious people in the camps. Corruption gripped the souls of everyone, and only the religious held out. This was the case fifteen and five years ago.”

But at the same time, having spoken about the mental fortitude of “religious people,” Shalamov seems to pass by, not showing much attention to the nature of this fortitude, as if everything is clear to him (and, presumably, to the reader) and this way of “holding on” interests him little . (“Is there only a religious way out of human tragedies?” asks the hero-narrator in the story “Unconverted”).

Moreover, Shalamov, as if by a specially calculated technique, removes traditional ideas about God and religion from his artistic system. The story “The Cross” serves precisely this purpose - a story about an old blind priest, although he does not live in Kolyma or even in a camp, but still in the same Soviet conditions of constant deprivation, humiliation, and outright bullying. Left with an old and sick wife, just like himself, completely without funds, the priest breaks and cuts up a gold pectoral cross for sale. But not because he lost faith, but because “that’s not what God is in.” The story does not seem to belong to the “Kolyma Tales” either by its setting or plot, but by subtle artistic calculation it was included by the author in the general body and turns out to be extremely important in the composition of the volume. When entering the other world, it is like a sign of prohibition for any traditional humanistic values, including those of the Christian sense. When it is said that there is no rational basis in this life, this means the Divine Mind too - or even such a mind in the first place!

But at the same time, here’s a completely different twist on the topic: one of Shalamov’s lyrical heroes, an undoubted alter ego, bears the name Krist. If the author is looking for a “non-religious way out,” then what exactly draws him to the Son of Man? Is there really a thought here about an atoning sacrifice? And if there is, then whose sacrifice is the author, the hero, all those who died in Kolyma? And what sins are atoned for? Isn’t it the same temptation, dating back to Dante’s times (or even more ancient - from the times of St. Augustine, or even from Plato’s, pre-Christian times?) temptation to build a just world order - according to human understanding, fair - a temptation that turned into “the shame of Kolyma and the ovens of Auschwitz” ?

And if we are talking about redemption, then “in whose name”? Whose if God is not in the artistic system of Varlam Shalamov?

We are not talking about an ordinary person, not about the religious views of one of thousands of Kolyma residents, finding out who had an easier time surviving in the camps - a “religious” or an atheist. No, we are interested in the creative method of the artist, the author of “Kolyma Tales”.

Shalamov wrote, as if objecting to doubters or those who were unable to discern this triumph. But if good triumphs, then what is it, this very good? It’s not science to fasten your fly in the Kolyma frost!..

Shalamov consciously rejects the literary tradition with all its fundamental values. If at the center of the artistic world of Dante Alighieri is the Light of the Divine Mind, and this world is arranged rationally, logically, in justice, and Reason triumphs, then at the center of Shalamov’s artistic system... yes, by the way, is there anything here at all that could be called center, system-forming beginning? Shalamov seems to reject everything that he offers him as such began literary tradition: the concept of God, the idea of ​​a rational structure of the world, dreams of social justice, the logic of legal law... What remains for a person when there is nothing left for him? What remains to the artist, when the tragic experience of the past century forever buried the ideological foundations of traditional art? Which new prose he will offer to the reader - is he obliged to offer?!

“Why am I, a professional who has been writing since childhood, publishing since the early thirties, who has been thinking about prose for ten years, cannot bring anything new to the stories of Chekhov, Platonov, Babel and Zoshchenko? - wrote Shalamov, asking the same questions that are tormenting us now. — Russian prose did not stop with Tolstoy and Bunin. The last great Russian novel is Bely's Petersburg. But “Petersburg,” no matter what colossal influence it had on Russian prose of the twenties, on the prose of Pilnyak, Zamyatin, Vesyoly, is also only a stage, only a chapter in the history of literature. And in our time, the reader is disappointed in Russian classical literature. The collapse of her humanistic ideas, the historical crime that led to Stalin’s camps, to the ovens of Auschwitz, proved that art and literature are zero. When faced with real life, this is the main motive, the main question of time. The scientific and technological revolution does not answer this question. She can't answer. The probabilistic aspect and motivation provide multifaceted, multivalued answers, while the human reader needs a “yes” or “no” answer, using the same two-valued system that cybernetics wants to apply to the study of all humanity in its past, present and future.

There is no rational basis for life - this is what our time proves. The fact that Chernyshevsky’s “Favorites” are sold for five kopecks, saving waste paper from Auschwitz, is symbolic to the highest degree. Chernyshevsky ended when the century-old era completely discredited itself. We do not know what stands behind God - behind faith, but behind unbelief we clearly see - everyone in the world - what stands. Therefore, such a craving for religion is surprising for me, the heir of completely different beginnings.”

There is a deep meaning in the reproach that Shalamov throws at the literature of humanistic ideas. And this reproach was deserved not only by Russian literature of the 19th century, but also by all European literature - sometimes Christian in outward appearance (of course, it is said: love your neighbor as yourself), but seductive in essence in its tradition of dreams, which always boiled down to one thing : to take away from God and transfer into the hands of human creations of History. Everything is for man, everything is for the good of man! It was these dreams - through the utopian ideas of Dante, Campanella, Fourier and Owen, through the “Communist Manifesto”, through the dreams of Vera Pavlovna, which “plowed” Lenin’s soul - that led to Kolyma and Auschwitz... This sinful tradition - with all possible consequences sin - Dostoevsky also saw. It is not for nothing that at the very beginning of the parable of the Grand Inquisitor, the name of Dante is mentioned as if by chance...

But art is not a school of philosophy and politics. Or at least not only or even not so much school. And the “late Alighieri” would still rather create the tenth circle of hell than the program of a political party.

“Dante’s poetry is characterized by all types of energy known to modern science,” wrote Osip Mandelstam, a sensitive researcher of The Divine Comedy. “The unity of light, sound and matter constitutes its internal nature. Reading Dante is, first of all, an endless labor, which, as we progress, moves us further away from our goal. If the first reading only causes shortness of breath and healthy fatigue, then stock up on a pair of unwearable Swiss shoes with nails for the next one. I seriously wonder how many soles, how many ox soles, how many sandals did Alighieri wear during his poetic work, traveling along the goat paths of Italy.”

Logical formulas and political, religious, etc. doctrines are the result of only the “first reading” of literary works, only the first acquaintance with art. Then art itself begins - not formulas, but music... Shocked by the dependence of Kolyma reality on texts that seem to have nothing to do with it, realizing that the “shame of Kolyma” is a derivative of these texts, Shalamov creates “new prose”, which from the very The beginning does not contain any doctrines or formulas - nothing that could be easily grasped on a “first reading”. It seems to remove the very possibility of a “first reading” - there is no healthy shortness of breath, no satisfaction. On the contrary, the first reading leaves only bewilderment: what is it about? What does music have to do with it? Is the shellac plate in the story “Sentence” really the system-forming metaphor of “Kolyma Tales”? It is not the Sun, not Reason, not Justice that he places at the center of his artistic world, but just a hoarse shellac record with some kind of symphonic music?

Masters of the “first readings,” we are not immediately able to discern the relationship between the “late Alighieri” and the late Shalamov. Hear the kinship and unity of their music.

“If we learned to hear Dante,” Mandelstam wrote, “we would hear the maturation of the clarinet and trombone, we would hear the transformation of the viola into a violin and the lengthening of the horn valve. And we would be listening to how the foggy core of the future homophonic three-part orchestra was formed around the lute and theorbo.”

“There are thousands of truths in the world (and truths-truths, and truths-justices) and there is only one truth of talent. Just as there is one kind of immortality - art."

Having completed the analysis, we ourselves must now seriously question our work or even cross it out completely... The fact is that the very text of the “Kolyma Tales” - the text of those publications to which we turned in our work - raises doubts. It’s not that anyone isn’t sure whether Varlam Shalamov wrote these or those stories—this, thank God, is undeniable. But what genre is the entire collection of his “Kolyma” works, how large is his text, where is its beginning and where is its end, what is the composition - this not only does not become clear over time, but even seems to become more and more incomprehensible.

We have already referred to the nine-hundred-page volume of the Paris edition of Kolyma Tales. The volume opens with the “Kolyma Tales” cycle itself, here called “The First Death”. This cycle is a harsh introduction to Shalamov’s artistic world. It is here that we first find both a dull closed space and stopped time - nothingness- Kolyma camp “reality”. (It is here that death-bed indifference, the mental dullness that comes after torture by hunger, cold, and beatings are first spoken of.) This cycle is a guide to that Kolyma nothingness, where the events of the next books will unfold.

A guide to the souls of the inhabitants of this hell - the prisoners. It is here that you understand that surviving (staying alive, saving life - and teaching the reader how to survive) is not at all the author’s task, which he solves together with his “lyrical hero”... If only because none of the characters already did not survive - everyone (and the reader along with everyone) is immersed in Kolyma oblivion.

This cycle is, as it were, an “exposition” of the author’s artistic principles, well, like “Hell” in the “Divine Comedy”. And if we are talking about the six currently known cycles of stories as a single work - and this is precisely what everyone who has interpreted Shalamov’s compositional principles is inclined to do - then it is impossible to imagine any other beginning of the entire grandiose epic than the cycle entitled in the Paris volume (and which, by the way, is subject to further discussion) “The First Death.”

But now a volume of Shalamov’s stories “Left Bank” (Sovremennik, 1989) is finally being published in Moscow... and without the first cycle! It couldn't be worse. Why, what were the publishers guided by? No explanation...

In the same year, but in a different publishing house, another book of Shalamov’s stories was published - “The Resurrection of the Larch”. Thank God, it begins with the first cycle, with “Kolyma Tales” itself, but then (again, it couldn’t be worse!) greatly and completely arbitrarily cut down, by half or more, “The Shovel Artist” and “The Left Bank”. Moreover, here they have changed places both in comparison with the Paris edition, and in comparison with the just published collection “Left Bank”. Why, on what basis?

But no, only at first glance it seems unclear why all these manipulations are being carried out. It’s not difficult to figure it out: different sequences of stories mean different artistic impressions. Shalamov is being strenuously adjusted to the traditional (and repeatedly refuted by him with such force and certainty) principle of the Russian humanistic school: “from darkness to light”... But it is enough to look back a few dozen lines to see that this principle, in the opinion of Shalamov himself , there is something decidedly incompatible with his “new prose.”

I. Sirotinskaya herself, the publisher of both books, seems to express the right thoughts: “The stories of V.T. Shalamov’s works are connected by an inextricable unity: this is fate, soul, thoughts of the author himself. These are branches of a single tree, streams of a single creative stream - the epic of Kolyma. The plot of one story grows into another story, some characters appear and act under the same or different names. Andreev, Golubev, Krist are the incarnations of the author himself. There is no fiction in this tragic epic. The author believed that the story about this transcendental world is incompatible with fiction and should be written in a different language. But not in the language of psychological prose of the 19th century, which is no longer adequate to the world of the 20th century, the century of Hiroshima and concentration camps.”

It's like that! But artistic language is not only, and often not so much words, as rhythm, harmony, and composition of an artistic text. How can one, understanding that “the plot of one story develops into another story,” fail to understand that the plot of one cycle also develops into another! They cannot be arbitrarily shortened or rearranged. Moreover, there is a sketch by the writer himself order arrangement of stories and cycles - it was used by Parisian publishers.

Thinking with respect and love about Shalamov, we extend our respect to those to whom the will of the artist bequeathed to be his executors. Their rights are unshakable... But managing the text of a brilliant artist is an impossible task for one person. The task of qualified specialists should be to prepare the publication of a scientific edition of “Kolyma Stories” - in full accordance with the creative principles of V. Shalamov, so clearly set out in the recently published (for which I bow to I.P. Sirotinskaya) letters and notes...

Now that there seems to be no censorship interference, God forbid that we, contemporaries, should offend the artist’s memory with considerations of political or commercial circumstances. Life and work of V.T. Shalamova is an atoning sacrifice for our common sins. His books are the spiritual treasure of Russia. This is how we should treat them.

M. "October". 1991, no. 3, pp. 182-195

Notes

• 1. “New World, 1989, No. 12, p. 60
• 2. Ibid., page 61
• 3. Ibid., page 64
• 4. Shalamov V. Resurrection of larch. "Thermometer of Grishka Logun"
• 5. Shalamov V. Resurrection of larch. "Brave Eyes"
• 6. A.S. Pushkin. PSS, vol. VIII (I), p. 227.
• 7. Ibid., vol. VIII (II), p. 334.
• 8. Shalamov V. Kolyma stories. "Carpenters"
• 9. Shalamov V. Kolyma stories. "Tatar mullah and clean air"
• 10. Shalamov V. Kolyma stories. "Bread"
• 11. Shalamov V. Kolyma stories. "Golden Taiga"
• 12. Shalamov V. Kolyma stories. "Berries"
• 13. Shalamov V. Kolyma stories. "Sherry brandy"
• 14. Shalamov V. Kolyma stories. "At night"
• 15. Shalamov V."About prose"
• 16. Shalamov V. Resurrection of larch “Two meetings”
• 17. Shalamov V. Kolyma stories. "Typhoid quarantine"
• 18. "New World", 1989, No. 12, p. 60
• 19. Shalamov V. Shovel artist. "June"
• 20. Shalamov V.
• 21. Shalamov V. Shovel artist. "First Chekist"
• 22. "New World", 1989. No. 12, p. 61
• 23. By the time the article was published - approx. shalamov.ru
• 24. In the book. V. Shalamov “Kolyma Tales” Preface by M. Geller, 3rd ed., p.13. YMCA - PRESS, Paris, 1985
• 25. Shalamov V. Shovel artist. "First Chekist"
• 26. Shalamov V. Left Coast. "My process"
• 27. See L. Chukovskaya. Workshop of human resurrections... "Referendum". Magazine of independent opinions. M. April 1990. No. 35. page 19.
• 28. Shalamov V. Left Coast. "My process"
• 29. Shalamov V. Shovel artist. "Green Prosecutor"
• 30. “The Fourth Vologda” - Our Heritage, 1988, No. 4, p. 102
• 31. Shalamov V. Shovel artist. "Courses"
• 32. The plot of the story is based on the events in the life of the writer’s father T.N. Shalamov.
• 33. "New World", 1989, No. 2, p. 61
• 34. In the book. O. Mandelstam. Word and culture. — M. Soviet writer 1987, p. 112
• 35. Ibid., page 114
• 36. "New World", 1989, No. 12, p. 80
• 37. I. Sirotinskaya. About the author. In the book. V. Shalamov “Left Bank.”— M., Sovremennik, 1989, p. 557.
• 38. We are talking about the publication: Shalamov V. Kolyma stories. Foreword by M. Geller. - Paris: YMKA-press, 1985.

Current page: 1 (book has 1 pages in total)

Varlam Shalamov
Maxim

Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam

* * *

People emerged from oblivion - one after another. A stranger lay down next to me on the bunk, leaned against my bony shoulder at night, giving away his warmth - drops of warmth - and receiving mine in return. There were nights when no warmth reached me through the scraps of a pea coat or padded jacket, and in the morning I looked at my neighbor as if he were a dead man, and was a little surprised that the dead man was alive, stood up when called, got dressed and obediently followed the command. I had little warmth. Not much meat left on my bones. This meat was only enough for anger - the last of human feelings. Not indifference, but anger was the last human feeling - the one that is closer to the bones. A man who emerged from oblivion disappeared during the day - there were many coal exploration sites - and disappeared forever. I don't know the people who slept next to me. I never asked them questions, and not because I followed the Arabic proverb: don’t ask and they won’t lie to you. I didn’t care whether they would lie to me or not, I was beyond the truth, beyond lies. The thieves have a tough, bright, rude saying on this subject, permeated with deep contempt for the person asking the question: if you don’t believe it, take it for a fairy tale. I didn’t ask questions or listen to fairy tales.

What stayed with me until the end? Anger. And keeping this anger, I expected to die. But death, so close just recently, began to gradually move away. Death was not replaced by life, but by half-consciousness, an existence for which there are no formulas and which cannot be called life. Every day, every sunrise brought the danger of a new, deadly shock. But there was no push. I worked as a boiler operator - the easiest of all jobs, easier than being a watchman, but I did not have time to chop wood for the titanium, the boiler of the Titan system. I could have been kicked out - but where? Taiga is far away, our village, “business trip” in Kolyma, it’s like an island in the taiga world. I could barely drag my feet, the distance of two hundred meters from the tent to work seemed endless to me, and I sat down to rest more than once. Even now I remember all the potholes, all the holes, all the ruts on this mortal path; a stream in front of which I lay down on my stomach and lapped up the cold, tasty, healing water. The two-handed saw, which I carried either on my shoulder or dragged, holding it by one handle, seemed to me like a load of incredible weight.

I could never boil water on time, get the titanium to boil by lunchtime.

But none of the workers - from the freewomen, all of them were yesterday's prisoners - paid attention to whether the water was boiling or not. Kolyma taught us all to distinguish drinking water only by temperature. Hot, cold, not boiled and raw.

We didn't care about the dialectical leap

end of introductory fragment

Varlam Shalamov

Maxim

Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam

People emerged from oblivion - one after another. A stranger lay down next to me on the bunk, leaned against my bony shoulder at night, giving away his warmth - drops of warmth - and receiving mine in return. There were nights when no warmth reached me through the scraps of a pea coat or padded jacket, and in the morning I looked at my neighbor as if he were a dead man, and was a little surprised that the dead man was alive, stood up when called, got dressed and obediently followed the command. I had little warmth. Not much meat left on my bones. This meat was only enough for anger - the last of human feelings. Not indifference, but anger was the last human feeling - the one that is closer to the bones. A man who emerged from oblivion disappeared during the day - there were many coal exploration sites - and disappeared forever. I don't know the people who slept next to me. I never asked them questions, and not because I followed the Arabic proverb: don’t ask and they won’t lie to you. I didn’t care whether they would lie to me or not, I was beyond the truth, beyond lies. The thieves have a tough, bright, rude saying on this subject, permeated with deep contempt for the person asking the question: if you don’t believe it, take it for a fairy tale. I didn’t ask questions or listen to fairy tales.

What stayed with me until the end? Anger. And keeping this anger, I expected to die. But death, so close just recently, began to gradually move away. Death was not replaced by life, but by half-consciousness, an existence for which there are no formulas and which cannot be called life. Every day, every sunrise brought the danger of a new, deadly shock. But there was no push. I worked as a boiler operator - the easiest of all jobs, easier than being a watchman, but I did not have time to chop wood for the titanium, the boiler of the Titan system. I could have been kicked out - but where? Taiga is far away, our village, “business trip” in Kolyma, is like an island in the taiga world. I could barely drag my feet, the distance of two hundred meters from the tent to work seemed endless to me, and I sat down to rest more than once. Even now I remember all the potholes, all the holes, all the ruts on this mortal path; a stream in front of which I lay down on my stomach and lapped up the cold, tasty, healing water. The two-handed saw, which I carried either on my shoulder or dragged, holding it by one handle, seemed to me like a load of incredible weight.

I could never boil water on time, get the titanium to boil by lunchtime.

But none of the free workers, all of them yesterday’s prisoners, paid attention to whether the water was boiling or not. Kolyma taught us all to distinguish drinking water only by temperature. Hot, cold, not boiled and raw.

We did not care about the dialectical leap in the transition from quantity to quality. We were not philosophers. We were hard workers, and our hot drinking water did not have these important qualities of a jump.

I ate, indifferently trying to eat everything that caught my eye - scraps, fragments of food, last year's berries in the swamp. Yesterday's or the day before yesterday's soup from a “free” cauldron. No, our freewomen didn’t have any soup left from yesterday.

In our tent there were two rifles, two shotguns. The partridges were not afraid of people, and at first the bird was beaten right from the threshold of the tent. The prey was baked whole in the ashes of the fire or boiled after being carefully plucked. Down and feather - for the pillow, also commerce, sure money - extra income for the free owners of guns and taiga birds. Gutted and plucked partridges were boiled in three-liter cans, hung from fires. I have never found any remains of these mysterious birds. Hungry free stomachs crushed, ground, and sucked up all the bird bones without a trace. This was also one of the wonders of the taiga.

End of introductory fragment.

Text provided by LitRes LLC.

You can safely pay for the book with a Visa, MasterCard, Maestro bank card, from a mobile phone account, from a payment terminal, in an MTS or Svyaznoy store, via PayPal, WebMoney, Yandex.Money, QIWI Wallet, bonus cards or another method convenient for you.