Our article will be devoted to the novel "And the day lasts longer than a century", a brief summary and analysis of which will be in the spotlight. This work was the first large-scale creation for Chingiz Torekulovich Aitmatov. Although the writer before this publication was widely known not only in the Soviet Union, but also in the West.
About the book and title
The novel was published in the magazine "New World" in 1980. Chingiz Aitmatov chose a line from the poem “Only Days” by Boris Pasternak as the name. “And the day lasts longer than a century” is the penultimate line of a very joyful love poem, but it takes on a completely different tone in the novel. Eternal day is not time, illuminated by happiness, but the funeral of a close friend of the protagonist. Thus, the famous line from the love story turns into a deeply philosophical one, and the discussion here is about the eternal loneliness of man in the vast world.
“And the day lasts longer than a century”: summary
The scene is the Toretam railway station, located near the Baikonur cosmodrome, by which trains constantly pass.
The iron sheet is surrounded on both sides by the great desert-steppe Sary-Ozeki. Nearby there is the Boranly-Buranny junction, where Edigey works as a switchman. He spends nights on a shift in a small booth. In one such duty, his wife Ukubala comes to him and talks about the death of his friend Kazangap.
Thirty years have passed since Edigheus was demobilized in the forty-fourth year after the shell shock. Then the doctor promised him that in a year he would recover, but at that moment any physical work was impossible for him. Then he and his wife decided to try to get on the railway, suddenly there is a place for a janitor or security guard.
It was then that Kazangap, whom the couple met by chance, called them to Boranly-Burany. When they first arrived, Edigheus did not suspect that all his remaining life would pass in this deserted, sparsely populated and waterless place. And all this time, Kazangap was nearby, constantly helping. Gradually, their families became friends, became like relatives.
Home
A heavy and oppressive precipitate is left by the events described in the work “And the Day Lasts More Than a Century”. A brief summary of it tells how Edigei, returning after a shift home, reflects on the upcoming funeral of his best friend. And then the hero feels the earth swaying under his feet. This rocket just climbed up at the cosmodrome.
The takeoff was due to the fact that during the past twelve hours the American Parity station stopped communicating, so it was necessary to find out what happened.
Edigey persuades the Kazangap family to bury a friend in the ancient Ana Beyit cemetery, which appeared in the time of mankurt.
Mankurts
He refers not only to the present, but also to the past in his work, Chingiz Aitmatov. “And the day lasts longer than a century” - a novel teeming with historical accents. So the reader learns about mankurts. Once upon a time, local people were ruled by the Zhuanzhuans, who very skillfully deprived the memory of their prisoners. They put a width on their head - a hat of leather. Initially, the skin was rawhide. In the sun, she gradually dried up and squeezed the unfortunate head. After this procedure, a person lost his memory and was called a mankurt. Such slaves were obedient and limp.
Once a woman named Naiman-Ana, whose son was driven into slaves, found her child, but they already managed to make him a mankurt. He grazed cattle when his mother approached him, begging her to remember, but her memory did not return.
The woman was noticed, but she managed to escape. Then the Zhuanzhuangs told the slave that this stranger had arrived to “rip off his head” (there was no worse threat for mankurts). Before leaving, they left arrows and a bow.
The mother returns again, wanting to convince her son. But she did not have time to reach him, when she received a mortal wound with an arrow in the chest. The white Naiman-Ana shawl turned into a snow-white bird, which was supposed to tell the son the truth.
The funeral
By morning, preparations for the funeral of Kazangap were over. The body was tightly wrapped in fabric and laid in a cart attached to the tractor. From the description of the burial rite, we can conclude that Aitmatov paid a lot of attention to the traditions of the steppe peoples (“A day lasts longer than a century” - a very reliable work).
Not a short way to the cemetery - thirty kilometers. Edigheus rode ahead of the procession and pointed the way. In the head of the protagonist constantly recalled memories of the past, work with Kazangap. The current generation did not appreciate the merits of the elderly (and for what only health was wasted?), But Edigey himself did not regret anything.
New planet
She does not shun the unknown and turns to the fantastic Aitmatov. “And the day lasts longer than a century” goes back to the theme of space and the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations.
A survey of Parity begins, it turns out that the astronauts who were here have disappeared. But there was a record that talks about contacts with the inhabitants of the planet Forest Chest. The aliens invited the astronauts to visit their planet, they agreed, but they did not inform anyone about this.
The crew of the Parity is returning, the astronauts tell how another civilization, more developed in technical terms, lives. There have never been wars on their planet, its inhabitants themselves are extremely friendly. Lesogrudniks are asking for permission to visit the Earth and build an interplanetary station on it, which humans are not yet able to create on their own.
This proposal was reported to a special commission, which should give an answer.
Long history
The story of the novel "And the day lasts longer than a century," returns to Edighean's life. The summary continues to describe the old man's memories. Now he comes to mind one old story told by Kazangap.
It was 1951, a family arrived with two children - both boys. The head of the family was called Abutalip Kuttybaev, he was the same age as Edigey and arrived in these places not from a good life. Abutalip during the war was captured by the Germans, then, in the forty-third, he managed to escape, and then he joined the Yugoslav partisans. He returned home, but no one knew about the time that a man spent in the camp. Then, political relations with Yugoslavia began to deteriorate, someone spoke about his past, and Abutalip was forced to quit.
The author seeks to show not only the realities of the harsh Soviet reality in his novel “And the day lasts longer than a century”, philosophical problems worry him much more. So, the question is raised about the restlessness, insecurity and loneliness of man. Nowhere is there a refuge for the traitor (it was believed that if he was captured, then he surrendered). And then he brought him and his family to the Boranly-Burannoy junction. Here it was hard for them: the climate is not the same, there is no economy. Edigheus pitied Zarip most of all. But thanks to local help, the Kuttybaev family took root. And Abutalip not only worked and took care of the house, but also began to write memoirs in which he recalled life in Yugoslavia.
A year passed, the examiner arrived at the departure, began to question what Abutalip was doing. And after some time, a passenger train stopped at Burannoye, which never stops here. Three people got off at the station; they arrested Kuttybaev. Two months later, it turned out that he was first under investigation, and after some time he died.
Every day the sons were waiting for the return of the father, Zarip plagued herself. Edigheus could not calmly look at it and was also tormented, because the woman was not indifferent to him.
Way
The main action connecting the novel “And the day lasts longer than a century” is the path of the funeral procession to the cemetery. He moves ahead of all Edigheus and recalls his terrible anger when Zaripa left. Then he lost his temper, beat his camel, and had an argument with Kazangap. But the friend kept prudence and gave him wise advice to go and bow to Zaripa and Ukubale for having saved him from troubles.
And now this wise man lies motionless, and they are going to bury him. But suddenly the procession stumbles upon a hedge of barbed wire. A soldier stands nearby and explains that only those with a pass can pass. And the Ana Beyit cemetery is going to be demolished and a new microdistrict will be built in its place. Ediguy persuaded to let pass, but it did not give anything. Therefore, Kazangap was buried near the cemetery, just at the place where Naiman-Ana died.
Ending
The work “And the Day Lasts More Than a Century” is drawing to a close. The summary describes the decision of the commission. After several meetings, it was decided that the cosmonauts should not be allowed to go to Earth from the Parity, not to invite aliens, and to protect the near-Earth space from intrusions with a missile hoop.
Edigheus from the funeral goes to the authorities to explain to them that it is impossible to destroy the cemetery, on which several generations of ancestors were buried. He almost reaches his destination when a rocket takes off into the sky. She is fighting and is designed to destroy everything that approaches the Earth. After the first, the second takes off, and after it - the third, and so dozens of missiles that form a protective hoop around the planet.
Edigheus in clubs of smoke and dust runs away, but the next day he wants to return again.
Aitmatov, “A Day Lasts More Than a Century”: Analysis
The main bearer of all the ideas and designs of the author was the main character - Edigey, a man who lived in the desert for almost forty years. But his life experience is valuable, which has absorbed all the vicissitudes and sorrows brought by the 20th century, and human sorrows: World War II, difficulties in the postwar years, bitter unrequited love. But the most difficult for him was the test of memory.
Memory and conscience, embodied in Edigheus, became the ideological basis of the novel "And the day lasts longer than a century." An analysis of the text indicates an abundance in the work of metaphorical images that carry philosophical meaning. Thus, the themes of loneliness, responsibility, memory, fear, moral principles are raised by Aitmatov with his characteristic ease and conciseness.