The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-02-16

ness, absolute rythmical realism,
these are the dominant features Of
his literary form. We must not
forget to mention his love of exact
detail, Of the minutest description
of customs, of the sentence caught
up in the street, all of which are
simply given back without any par
ticular commentary, exactly as some
historian would note it.
Pilniak's interest seems to con-
ccntrate itself chiefly on the man.
ners and customs of the Revolution,
and this chiefly in the country and
the provinces. The general play Of
action of his stories, is the small
town (Riasan the Apple. or Ordynir
TOWN. in "The Bare Year." which
he really does seem to thoroly know.
What is the chief thing that he oD-
serves? The swamp of the pas..
In the small, provincial town the
petty bourgeois leads a life not
much better than that of pig, be-
tween his counter, the well laid
table, and the warm, sweaty, dirty
bed under the saints pictures. He
is brutal towards the weak, hard and
of unbending will towards the OPP
pressed-servants, women and chill .
dren; self-satisfed, egotistical, ig-
norant, heir Of a thousand similar
years.
War took the the young men out
of the swamp of the small towns.
"As Donat came back, he had learned
nothing new, but the old was not
forgotten, and he wanted to destroy
the whole of it. He came in order
to create" He hated the old. The
dread of it occasioned by the mighty
shock Of Revolution is one of the
chief reasons of Revolution.
In this stagnating swamp Of the
times gone by the former rulers are
abandoned to ruin on account of
their weakened spirit, and their poor
blood. In a word, it is an histo-
rical Judgment that weighs over
them. The princes Ordynin
(whose fathers once founded the
town of Ordynin) are at present
syphilitic and are approaching their
end. The old father is waiting for
it, surrounded by his ikons, and prac-
ticing self-castigation. Egon is a
drunkard. stealing and selling his
sisters last clothes in order to drink
(this is the year 1919.
Chapter VII of the "Bare Year"
called, without tit.e," consists but
of three words: Russia, Revolution,
and snow drift" The beauty Of Rus
sia's landscape blends with the drift
of Revolution. One never knows how
to discern them in Pilniak's stories.
l do not think that it is even neces-
sary to do so. Pilniak compares old
Asiatic Russia to the Russia Of to-
day, which he sees rising out of the
drift, and we must admit that he
sees it extraordinarily well, and that
is his chief merit.
Listen to this conversation taking
place in a rolling train "ln
a hundred years people will speak
about the actual times as about the
period of life when the human spirit
rose to a glorious standard /.
well, but my shoes are very worn, l
really would like to go on a trip
abroad, to eat in some good res
taurant and to drink a decent
whisky" These are the terms in
which a young engineer is thought
fully speaking in Pilniak's book,
quite like reality in new Russia; it
is not the engineers that are life's
masters. This leads US to the boil
sheviks. Pilniak flatters the Revo-
luton just as little as the revolu-
tionaries. The gloomy pages as well
as the nightmare ones are indeed
not scarce in the course of his work.
You see in his book peasant women
paying with their own flesh and
blood for a place in a filthy train
full of bugs, a typhoid fever trans
port train, escaping out of the fam
inc region. A little further hys-
terical Checklist shooting down her
lover. Peasants are described buy
ing collins for the whole Of their
family in advance, as they are quite
sure not to be spared either by
famine or typhoid fever. The book
contains pages full of terror. one is,
however, not quite sure whether the
accents of it are real or pretended.
Western people are yet not fully
aware of the martyrdom that Russia