Vasilyeva T.E.

Lesosibirsk branch of Siberian State University of Technology. Russia

In the Depth of Russia

Modern literature is rich in names of popular writers, but to the readers related to Siberia and Krasnoyarsk the name of Victor Petrovich Astafyev is especially dear.

He interest to Astafyev is a personal interest of a great number of our contemporaries.

His works are studied at schools and included in reading books; one can hardly find a language his works haven’t been translated into. The number of copies his books are published in our country and abroad is enormous.

I think that no other writer treats national and moral norms in such a clear and definite way as Astafyev does. These norms never become outdated, they penetrate our souls, form them, teach to apprehend absolute values. We love Astafyev for kind feelings his books evoke, for the unique aesthetic pleasure we experience while reading, for the natural way he enters our lives, just like necessity, sadness, happiness, indignation, tears do.

What’s the source of it all? He doesn’t give detailed instructive answers to our questions, «How should we live? » «What’s the sense of life? » Instead, he addresses identical questions to himself. «What did Fate give me happiness for? » «Am I worth it? » «Have I always done everything for the others to be happy? » «Is there a chance that I have spent my life which I got at such a high price for nothing? » Have I always been honest to myself? » «Can I be sure that I have never snatched a piece of bread from the hands of my fellow? And that I have never pushed he weak off the road?» [1].

Yet while reading one finds answers to these questions in one’s own self, one starts trying to live a cleaner life, to ponder over one’s every word and action.

Almost all his life story went into his books. «I was born in a village bania lit by lamplight. My grandmother told me how it had happened» [2]. This is how the biography of Mishka Yerofeev, the central character of the novel «Star fall», begins. The author’s biography could begin in the same way. It was he who was born like that, in bania under the lamplight at night of the 2^nd of May 1924 in a big village Ovsianka on the bank of the Enisei.

He hadn’t been seven yet when he lost his mother. She drowned in the Enisei. Since then the river would run like a scar across all his books, he would spent the best hours and days of his life on it and would describe them in his books; and each time he would make mention of his mother. Not a single time would he try to resurrect Lydia Ilyinichna in his books though he would portray in them all his relations, near and distant.

His mother remained in his life a light shadow, a reminiscence, a touch, and he has never tried to burden this image with details of everyday life.

In his autobiographic sketch «The participant» he wrote: «If I were given a chance to live my life again from the very beginning I would choose the same one saturated with events, joy, victories, failures, delights and sad losses… The only thing I would ask Fate about is to let my mother live. I missed her all my life. I miss her especially terribly now…» [3].

If he hadn’t been an orphan he would not have written his «Last bow». In that book he made all his relations and village fellowmen gather in order to become warm sitting beside them and to warm us, his readers, by his reminiscences of his own childhood, his family and neighbors.

Our feelings when we read about his father, Piotr Pavlovich Astafyev, with his ungovernable temper, are contradictory: it’s sympathy alongside with resignation and pity. Victor Astafyev’s story about his father is a combination of pity and courageous frankness: «My dad, a village dandy, could play accordion a little, hunted a little, worked as a hairdresser a little and talked very big» [4].

Father was not either ashamed of his children vagabonding or depressed with it. And yet, no matter how reckless he was, his son Vit’ka inherited from him a lot: gay courage in front of hard circumstances, capability to make them into a «plot», and to invent a long exciting story out of a routine event. Victor Astafyev’s grandfather on his father’s side was like that, too.

However, the best pages of his books and in particular of his «special» book «The last bow» are devoted not to his parents but to the people who have mostly influenced his worldview since childhood. The main figure among them is his grandmother Katerina Petrovna.

The village people had their reasons to call her «general». But it was his grandma’s ability to turn her face to light in a hard minute that imprinted in Vit’ka Potylitsyn’s soul. People in the village are hungry, the family has nothing to eat, yet she brings into the house a puppy thrown out by somebody; her grandson deceived her, but she kept her promise to bring him a honey-cake horse all the same; she sewed him long shirts with a pocket, he spoiled them completely right away, but she was thankful to God that he had remained alive. And she always felt that her grandson took after her.

Grandfather, Ilya Evgrafovich, a Russian peasant, he loved his grandson, defended him when grandmother was cross with him and taught him how to live and work, too. Through his grandmother, grandfather, uncles and aunts, through daily routine, toil and troubles Astafyev came to know Russian community tradition, his own healthy roots in his motherland ground and its stern Siberian beauty.

His childhood, hard and happy in the same time came to an end. His dad got married and started changing places where he worked and lived one after another. Viktor’s relations with his stepmother were grave. «Once I rushed at her with a knife. Since then she did not have a single moment of doubt that very soon I would cut their throats and escape» [5].

Instead, he made a character of his sunlit book «Mountain pass», Il’ka Verstakov, escape. Soon after Vit’ka Potylitcyn had frightened his stepmother with a knife, his never-cast-down dad and dad’s young wife heard a rumor that in the popular city Igarka one could quickly make fabulous money and decided to move there.

Vagabonding, life in the orphanage, anguish in relations with his parents, hatred to his stepmother, indifference of relatives. This page of his life as a teenager we read in the autobiographic book «The last bow»; but a complete picture of his life in Igarka one can find in the book «Theft», where Vit’ka Potylitcyn is presented, with very small modifications, by its main character, Tolia Masov.

In his autobiographic sketch Astafyev writes: «In those years everybody in Igarka felt a creative itch… At schools handwritten journals were issued. Pupils wrote, illustrated, bound them themselves. Once the newspaper «Zapoliarie Bolshevik» published four lines from my poem. This event made me so proud that I started to do at school even worse. Actually it couldn’t be worse. I had been already sitting in the fifth form for the third year» [6].

That very year a new teacher of Russian language and literature, Ignatii Dmitrievich Rozhdestvenski came to school № 12. He often made children write compositions on a free topic. Once Vitia wrote how in summer he had lost his way in taiga. That composition of his was praised and got into a school journal.

Many years later Victor Petrovich would recall his first literary success and write a children’s story «Vasiutka’s lake».

After he had spent six years in the orphanage, Astafyev started to earn his daily bread. He operated a machine, was a clerk, a stable-man, drove horses in sel’sovet. And then the war began and he left for the place where he was born, for Krasnoyarsk.

There he entered a FZO (a factory-and-workshop school). Nobody asked him what profession he would choose. All the teenagers were stood in a row, and those who were bigger and built stronger were selected to make up trains.

What kind of studies it was and what kind of work we all know from such chapters of the «Last bow» as «The thunder of the war is heard somewhere» and «Soya sweets».

In the very first issue of the FZO newspaper his verse thundered: «The war has come and confused everything, it turned the life upside down», signed «Unconquerable».

Not everything from his war years has got into his books. Yet something about his participation in this awe-inspiring and just action we read in his short stories and books about the war: «Shepherd and shepherdess», «Star fall», «A handful of ripe cherries». He was wounded in hard battles and spent a lot of time in hospitals.

For his participation in the war Victor Petrovich was awarded the order of Red Star and the medals «For courage», «For the victory over Germany», «For the liberation of Poland».

But the writer’s soul is still disturbed by reminiscences of war years, in the same way as his body still feels the pain of old wounds. There is pain and hatred not only for the enemy, but also for the criminals who ruled our country and didn’t have pity for its people, army, children: «Reminiscences of the war. Happy is that who doesn’t have them; and I’d like to wish all people of good will not to know what war is, not to see, not to carry hot coals in their hearts, coals which burn health, nightsleep, normal relations with people and with the world away» [7].

Well, it has always been like that in his life, its every period was bitter and sweet at once, hopeless and in the same time lit with a distant hope. The life of an orphan – and his grandfather’s family with its strong ties, and his grandmother’s love and pity in his childhood; vagabonding, homelessness in Igarka and a sudden feeling of happiness and delight evoked by the first in his life visit to the cinema, the theater or by a good line. In the same way the war with all its terrible consequences brought him to his first love. In war years he met his destiny, his wife.

There was the happiness of their children birth and awe and grief of their two daughters’ funerals, and the life of their two orphaned grandchildren. Hunger, cold, illness – and courage, wisdom, faithfulness of his only wife who devoted all her life to him. There was the happiness of the first family house they built with their own hands. And the joy of his first book – they shared it, he and his Mania. He gave her everything. Happiness, suffering, love, pain, joy. They had everything all people have. «Husband and wife. A woman and a man who had never met before and hadn’t even suspected that there existed miniature living particles going round the axis together with the Earth in the incomprehensibly immense cosmic space united to become relatives of relatives, to outlive their own parents, to meet parents’ destiny themselves, to continue themselves in their children, to come together to the grave and there to tear away from each other with sorrow and suffering nobody can see» [8].

In the fall of 1945 they both were demobilized from the army and arrived in the city Chusovoi in the western Urals. His heavy wounds deprived him of his profession: he had only one eye left, and his hand didn’t obey him. All his jobs were got by chance and one couldn’t rely on them: he was hired a locksmith, an unskilled worker, loader, washer of cattle bodies. Their life was not very comfortable or happy. But once he was present at the gathering of the literary circle organized by the newspaper «Chusovoi worker». At night right after that gathering, at one sitting he wrote his first story «A civil man» which was published in that newspaper. It happened in 1951.

Since then, editing a literary column of that newspaper in 1951-1955, he began his literary career. There he published correspondences, articles, sketches and stories. Then his works were published in Perm newspapers «Zvezda» («Star»), «Molodaia gvardiia» («Young guards»), «Smena» and some other editions.

In 1953 his first book, a collection of stories, «Until spring comes», appeared. Soon a story «Star fall» was published. His older friend and apprehensive reader Nickolai Aleksandrovich Makarov said: «One can put «Star fal» on the same level with the best poetic works».

In 1958 Astafyev became a member of the Writers’ Union of the RSFSR.

In 1959 he entered Higher literary courses organized by the Writers’ Union of the USSR.

Then he worked and lived in Perm and Vologda.

In 1959 his novel «Snow is melting» devoting to the life of modern countryside was published.

The stories «Mountain Pass» (1959), «The Old Oak» (1959), «Star fall» (1960), «Grass Grows in the Entrenchments» (1965) and others brought him recognition of the readers.

In 1967 the first part of his autobiographic story «The last bow» appeared. The author finished writing it not long ago. If «Mountain Pass», «Theft» and «Star fall» had been collected in «The last bow», we would have seen the fate of a Russian man as an integral whole. He shared the most difficult decades of his life with his motherland. He devoted all his life to one goal; he sacrificed everything for it and subordinated his life to it. This goal is to serve to literature. This is what he himself says about it: «I am sure that literary work is a very complicated type of activity which wouldn’t endure any mischief or amateur approach; and the writer can’t have an easy time. In literature when one lives for himself it equals death» [9].

A Russian writer, if Fate takes him far from his native place would do his best either to come back or, at least, to visit this place every year.

Our Astafyev lived in Perm and Vologda but did not stay there. First he started visiting Siberia and his native Ovsianka regularly, and then he moved there. He built a house for himself right across the street from his grandmother’s house never to leave this beloved land of his childhood.

He praised it with a masterpiece canvas of his «Tzar-fish» where Siberia is portrayed with free spacious touches, tenderly and in every detail.

His works draw attention of readers belonging to various social and age groups both in our country and abroad.

Such books as «The Last Bow», «Theft», «The Shepherd and the Shepherdess», «Tzar-Fish» and «The Rod that Can See» were awarded State prizes of the RSFSR and the USSR.

Books by Astafyev have been translated and published in many countries, France, the Netherlands, Japan, the USA, and Greece among them.

For many years theaters in Russian towns and cities have been staging his plays «Bird-cherry Tree», «Forgive Me», «A. Sad Detective-story» (the State prize of the USSR, 1981).

Severall films (Seagulls Don’t Fly Here», «Taiga Story», «Star fall», «The Thunder of the War is Heard Somewhere», «Born Twice», and «My Beloved») were made after his books.

A documentary about Astafyev was produced at Leningrad studio of documentary films by M. Litviakov.

Well-known critics wrote books about him (N.A. Makarov’s «In the depth of Russia», N.N. Janovski’s «V. Astafyev’s literary work», V.Ia. Kurbatov’s «What’s behind me», «A moment and eternity» among them).

Thus, true and honest selected works of V. Astafyev meet moral needs that appeared in this or that period of time and still appear in the society.

Literature:

1. Astafyev, V. Starfall / V. Astafyev. – Krasnoyarsk, 1997. – T. 2. – S. 183.

2. Look there. – S. 189.

3. Astafyev, V. The participamt / V. Astafyev. – Krasnoyarsk, 1997. – S. 35.

4. Astafyev, V. Last bow / V. Astafyev. – Krasnoyarsk, 1997. – T. 5. – S. 384.

5. Look there. – S. 386.

6. Astafyev, V. Last bow / V. Astafyev. – Krasnoyarsk, 1997. – T. 1. – S. 18.

7. Look there. – S. 25.

8. Astafyev, V. A sad detective story / V. Astafyev. – Krasnoyarsk, 1997. – T. 9. – S. 123.

9. Astafyev, V. Plots and Fate / V. Astafyev. – Krasnoyarsk, 1997. – S. 46.