Mikhail Sholokhov knew and loved his small homeland and could perfectly describe it. With this, he entered Russian literature. First came the Don Stories. The then masters drew attention to him (today's reader does not know any of them) and said: “Beautiful! Well done!" Then they forgot ... And suddenly the first volume of the work saw the light, which almost put the author on a par with Homer, Goethe and Leo Tolstoy. In the epic novel "The Quiet Flows the Don" Mikhail Alexandrovich reliably reflected the fate of the great people, the endless search for truth in the chaotic years of the civil war and the bloody revolution.
Quiet Don in the fate of the writer
The image of Grigory Melikhov captivated the entire reading public. Young talent would develop and evolve. But circumstances did not make the writer become the conscience of the nation and people. Sholokhov's Cossack nature did not allow him to break into the favorites of the rulers, but even those did not allow him to become in Russian literature what he was to become.
Many years after the Great Patriotic War and the publication of “The Fates of a Man,” Mikhail Sholokhov in his diary makes a strange, at first glance, entry: “They all liked my Man. So I lied? I do not know. But I know what I have not said. "
Favorite hero
From the first pages of The Quiet Don, the writer draws a diverse and wide river of life of the Don Cossack village. And Grigory Melikhov is only one of the many interesting characters in this book and, moreover, not the most important, as at first it seems. His mental outlook is primitive, like a grandfather saber. He has nothing to become the center of a large artistic canvas, except for a masterful, explosive character. But the reader from the first pages feels the writer's love for this character and begins to follow precisely his fate. What attracts us and Gregory from the very youthful years? Probably their biology, blood.
Even male readers are not indifferent to him, as if those women from real life who loved Gregory more than life. And he lives like Don. His inner masculine power draws everyone into his orbit. Nowadays, such people are called charismatic personalities.
But there are other forces in the world that require reflection and analysis. However, they continue to live in the village, not suspecting anything, thinking that they are protected from the world by their courageous moral virtues: they eat their (!) Bread, serve the Fatherland as their grandfathers and great-grandfathers punished them. It seems to all the stanchiks, including Grigory Melikhov, that a more just and sustainable life does not exist. They sometimes fight among themselves, because of women, mostly not suspecting that they are chosen by women, preferring powerful biology. And this is correct - mother nature herself ordered so that the human race, including the Cossack one, would not run dry on Earth.
War
But civilization has generated many injustices, and one of them is a false idea, clothed in truthful words. Quiet Don flows truthfully. And the fate of Grigory Melikhov, who was born on its banks, did not portend anything that would cause blood to run cold.
The village of Veshenskaya and the Tatar farmstead were not founded by St. Petersburg, and it was not he who fed. But the idea that life itself was almost bestowed on each Cossack personally not by God, but by his father and mother, but by some center, broke into the harsh but fair life of the Cossacks with the word “war”. Something similar happened on the other side of Europe. Two large groups of people went in an organized and civilized manner to each other in a war to fill the earth with blood. And they were inspired by false ideas, clothed in words about love for the Fatherland.
Unvarnished War
Sholokhov portrays the war as it is, showing how it cripples human souls. Sad mothers and young wives remained at home, and the Cossacks with peaks went to war. Gregory’s checker first tasted human meat, and in an instant he became a completely different person.
A dying German listened to him, not understanding a word in Russian, but understanding that universal evil was happening - the essence of the image and likeness of God was crippled.
Revolution
Again, not in the village, not on the Tatar farm, but far, far from the banks of the Don, tectonic shifts begin in the bowels of society, waves from which will reach hardworking Cossacks. The protagonist of the novel returned home. He has a lot of personal problems. He is full of blood and no longer wants to shed it. But the life of Grigory Melikhov, his personality interests those who, with their own hands, did not get a piece of bread for their food for decades. And on Wednesday some people bring Cossack false ideas, clothed in truthful words about equality, fraternity and justice.
Grigory Melikhov is involved in a struggle that is alien to him by definition. Who started this assault in which the Russians hated the Russians? The main character does not ask this question. His fate carries through life, like a blade of grass. Grigory Melikhov with surprise listens to a friend of his youth, who began to speak strange words and look at him with suspicion.
And Don flows calmly and majestically. The fate of Grigory Melikhov is just an episode for him. New people will come to its shores, a new life will come. The writer says almost nothing about the revolution, although everyone reasoned a lot about it. But nothing is remembered from what they said. The image of Don eclipses everything. And the revolution is also just an episode on its shores.
The tragedy of Grigory Melikhov
The main character of the novel by Sholokhov began his life simply and clearly. Loved and was loved. Vaguely believed in God without going into details. And in the future he lived as simply and clearly as in childhood. Not a single step Grigory Melikhov did not depart either from his essence or from the truth that he absorbed in himself along with the water that he drew from the Don. And even his saber did not dig into human bodies with pleasure, although he had innate abilities for murder. The tragedy was precisely in the fact that Gregory remained an atom of society, which can be either alien to him or split into components, or combined with other atoms. He did not understand this and strove to remain free, similar to the majestic Don. On the last pages of the novel we see him calmed, the hope of happiness is warm in his soul. The dubious point of the novel. Will the main character get what he dreams about?
The end of the Cossack lifestyle
An artist may not understand anything that is happening around him, but he is obliged to feel life. And Mikhail Sholokhov felt her. The tectonic shifts of world history destroyed the cute Cossack way of life, perverted the souls of the Cossacks, turning them into meaningless "atoms" that became suitable for building anything and anyone, but not the Cossacks themselves.
There are many didactic policies in volumes 2, 3, and 4 of the novel, but, describing the path of Grigory Melikhov, the artist involuntarily returned to the truth of life. And false ideas receded into the background and disappeared into the haze of centuries-old prospects. The triumphant notes of the final part of the novel are drowned out by the reader’s longing for the bygone that life, which with such incredible artistic power was painted by the writer in Volume 1 of The Quiet Don.
First as a basis
Sholokhov begins his novel with a description of the appearance of the child who founded the Melikhov family, and ends with a description of the child who should extend this family. “Quiet Don” can be called a great work of Russian literature. This work is not only opposed to everything that was later written by Sholokhov, but is a reflection of the core of the Cossack people, which gives hope to the writer himself that the life of the Cossacks on Earth did not end.
Two wars and a revolution are just episodes in the life of a people who recognize themselves as Don Cossacks. He will still wake up and reveal to the world his beautiful Melikh soul.
Cossack family life is immortal
The protagonist of the Sholokhov novel entered the very core of the attitude of the Russian people. Grigory Melikhov (his image) ceased to be a household character back in the 30s of the twentieth century. This is not to say that the writer endowed the hero with typical features of the Cossack. Just typical in Grigory Melikhov is not enough. And there is no special beauty in it. He is beautiful with his power, vitality, which is able to overcome all the superficial that comes to the shores of the free, quiet Don.
This is an image of hope and faith in the highest meaning of human existence, which is always the basis of everything. In a strange way, those ideas that devoured the village of Veshenskaya have sunk into oblivion, they have erased the Tatarsky farm from the ground, and the novel "Quiet Don", the fate of Grigory Melikhov, remained in our consciousness. This proves the immortality of Cossack blood and kind.