Life and Fate: P.2, Ch.1-31, the Nazis, Viktor

1/ There’s been something before, but in this part, Vasily Grossman writes more about the environment of deep distrust and paranoia (is this one a saboteur? is that one an informer?) and the culture of fear in the Soviet Union.

The quarrel between Viktor Shtrum and his daughter Nadya, as she points out his fear and hypocrisy, is an excellent scene.  

“The air was thick and heavy, almost unbreathable. Everything that lies half-buried in almost every family, stirring up now and then only to be smoothed over by love and trust, had now come to the surface. There it had spread out to fill their lives. It was as though there were nothing between father, mother and daughter save misunderstanding, suspiciousness, resentment and anger.

Had their common fate really engendered nothing but mistrust and alienation?” (P.2, ch.9) 

I find it interesting that he portrays Viktor as being scared and trying to deceive himself, to shield himself from the truth—Viktor I’ve been told is a self-insertion, like Tolstoy’s Pierre and Levin—was Grossman like this?

I also like the scene where Novikov, Lyudmila’s lover, is talking to Getmanov and blurts out something he’s not supposed to say—especially not to someone like Getmanov. On the scene level, Grossman is very good. 

2/ In this part, we get to see some German characters.

The scenes of the German soldiers in the hospital are perfectly fine, but I can’t help thinking that there’s something false, something unnatural in Peter Bach’s thoughts about Hitler and Nazism, and in the conversation between Mostovskoy (an Old Bolshevik and a prisoner in the concentration camp) and Liss (an SS representative on the camp administration). I think Grossman successfully depicts a wide range of views in Soviet society—Bolshevik, Menshevik, “good communist”, dissident, and so on—but when he tries to get in the head of a Nazi, it sometimes comes across as not very convincing. 

For example: 

“Liss looked at him and pursed his lips.

‘Do you think the world looks on us with horror and on you with hope and love?’ he asked. ‘No, the world looks on us both with the same horror!’” (P.2, ch.14) 

That is the conversation between Liss and Mostovskoy. 

“‘[…] What is the reason for our enmity? I can’t understand . . . Is it that the Führer is a mere lackey of Stinnes and Krupp? That there’s no private property in your country? That your banks and factories belong to the people? That you’re internationalists and we’re preachers of racial hatred? That we set things on fire and you extinguish the flames? That the world hates us – and that its hopes are centred on Stalingrad? Is that what you people say . . . ? Nonsense! There is no divide. It’s just been dreamed up. In essence we are the same – both one-party States. Our capitalists are not the masters. The State gives them their plan. The State takes their profit and all they produce. As their salary they keep six per cent of the profit. Your State also outlines a plan and takes what is produced for itself. And the people you call masters – the workers – also receive a salary from your one-party State.’” (ibid.)

I don’t buy that. It sounds false, coming from an SS officer.

The thoughts of Eichmann, a Nazi we later see, are more convincing:

“The owners and directors of the different firms and offices informed him that the post had already, unfortunately, been filled – and then Eichmann would hear on the grapevine that the job had been given to some putrid little man of obscure nationality, a Pole perhaps, or an Italian. He had wanted to enter Berlin University, but the same discrimination had prevented his application from being accepted. He had felt the examiners lose interest the moment they set eyes on his full face, his blond crew-cut, his short straight nose, his light-coloured eyes. They seemed interested only in people with long faces, dark eyes, narrow shoulders and hunched backs – in degenerates. Nor had he been alone in being rejected by the capital; it had been the fate of many.” (P.2, ch.29)

3/ Reviews of Life and Fate tend to focus heavily on the context of the book, the important historical events and social issues it covers, and Vasily Grossman’s ideas about the individual, creating the impression that the writing itself is boring and bland, but the descriptions are good and once in a while I come across an interesting sentence.

For example:

“Life went on like an iceberg floating through the sea: the underwater part, gliding through the cold and the darkness, supported the upper part, which reflected the waves, breathed, listened to the water splashing . . .” (P.1, ch.62) 

I like this: 

“Krymov slid down to the bottom of a bomb-crater and looked up: the blue sky was still over his head and his head was still on his shoulders. It was very strange; the only sign of other human beings was the singing and screaming death that came flying over his head from both sides. It was equally strange to feel so protected in this crater that had been dug out by the spade of death.” (P.2, ch.19) 

I especially like “the singing and screaming death”. 

This is an unusual image: 

“It began to get light, but not over the factory . . . It was as though the earth itself were belching out black dust, smoke, thunder, lightning . . .” (P.2, ch.22)

The entire scene is so good—Vasily Grossman makes you see and feel everything that is happening, he makes you feel as though you’re there. 

“Time no longer flowed evenly. It had gone insane, tearing forward like a shock-wave, then suddenly congealing, turning back on itself like the horns of a ram.” (ibid.) 

Sometimes Grossman may describe a character and the image jumps out at you: 

“[Suslakov] had the tired face of a man who works at night and his cheeks seemed to have been kneaded from grey dough.” (P.2, ch.25) 

Life and Fate is translated by Robert Chandler. 

4/ In my previous blog post, I wrote that the main characters of the novel, meaning the Shaposhnikovs and Viktor Shtrum (married to Lyudmila Shaposhnikova), felt like supporting characters.

In Part 1, which is more than 1/3 of the book, the Shaposhnikovs are not particularly more prominent than other characters—Grossman does include a long letter from Viktor’s mother and write at length about Lyudmila’s grief and Yevgenia’s struggle with the bureaucrats—but they’re absent for such long sections that they don’t feel central. Viktor especially is barely there in Part 1.

Then at the end of Part 1, he makes an important discovery at work, and in Part 2 becomes more prominent in the story, as he and his colleagues and their families return to Moscow from Kazan and Grossman writes more about Viktor’s work. Now we know more of Viktor’s thoughts: about work, about politics seeping into his lab, about fear and submission, about his friends and colleagues, about Lyudmila, about his marriage, about Sokolov’s wife Marya Ivanovna, and so on. 

But I still feel like Viktor isn’t an interesting character in his own right, with (the illusion of) an independent existence, with his own thoughts and feelings. I still feel like he’s a character created so we know what it feels like to be a Jewish physicist under Stalin’s regime, what it feels like to live in a society where the totalitarian regime controls all aspects of life and everyone can denounce anyone and everyone submits out of fear.

All these themes are important and the way Vasily Grossman handles them is very good, I just wish Victor were more interesting and compelling as a character.

I haven’t written much, as I’ve been having an awfully sad Christmas.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas though.