Varlam Shalamov maxim summary. Maxim

Varlam Shalamov

Maxim

Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam

People emerged from oblivion - one after another. A stranger lay down next to me on the bunk, leaned against my bony shoulder at night, giving away his warmth - drops of warmth - and receiving mine in return. There were nights when no warmth reached me through the scraps of a pea coat or padded jacket, and in the morning I looked at my neighbor as if he were a dead man, and was a little surprised that the dead man was alive, stood up when called, got dressed and obediently followed the command. I had little warmth. Not much meat left on my bones. This meat was only enough for anger - the last of human feelings. Not indifference, but anger was the last human feeling - the one that is closer to the bones. A man who emerged from oblivion disappeared during the day - there were many coal exploration sites - and disappeared forever. I don't know the people who slept next to me. I never asked them questions, and not because I followed the Arabic proverb: don’t ask and they won’t lie to you. I didn’t care whether they would lie to me or not, I was beyond the truth, beyond lies. The thieves have a tough, bright, rude saying on this subject, permeated with deep contempt for the person asking the question: if you don’t believe it, take it for a fairy tale. I didn’t ask questions or listen to fairy tales.

What stayed with me until the end? Anger. And keeping this anger, I expected to die. But death, so close just recently, began to gradually move away. Death was not replaced by life, but by half-consciousness, an existence for which there are no formulas and which cannot be called life. Every day, every sunrise brought the danger of a new, deadly shock. But there was no push. I worked as a boiler operator - the easiest of all jobs, easier than being a watchman, but I did not have time to chop wood for the titanium, the boiler of the Titan system. I could have been kicked out - but where? Taiga is far away, our village, “business trip” in Kolyma, is like an island in the taiga world. I could barely drag my feet, the distance of two hundred meters from the tent to work seemed endless to me, and I sat down to rest more than once. Even now I remember all the potholes, all the holes, all the ruts on this mortal path; a stream in front of which I lay down on my stomach and lapped up the cold, tasty, healing water. The two-handed saw, which I carried either on my shoulder or dragged, holding it by one handle, seemed to me like a load of incredible weight.

I could never boil water on time, get the titanium to boil by lunchtime.

But none of the free workers, all of them yesterday’s prisoners, paid attention to whether the water was boiling or not. Kolyma taught us all to distinguish drinking water only by temperature. Hot, cold, not boiled and raw.

We did not care about the dialectical leap in the transition from quantity to quality. We were not philosophers. We were hard workers, and our hot drinking water did not have these important qualities of a jump.

I ate, indifferently trying to eat everything that caught my eye - scraps, fragments of food, last year's berries in the swamp. Yesterday's or the day before yesterday's soup from a “free” cauldron. No, our freewomen didn’t have any soup left from yesterday.

In our tent there were two rifles, two shotguns. The partridges were not afraid of people, and at first the bird was beaten right from the threshold of the tent. The prey was baked whole in the ashes of the fire or boiled after being carefully plucked. Down and feather - for the pillow, also commerce, sure money - extra income for the free owners of guns and taiga birds. Gutted and plucked partridges were boiled in three-liter cans, hung from fires. I have never found any remains of these mysterious birds. Hungry free stomachs crushed, ground, and sucked up all the bird bones without a trace. This was also one of the wonders of the taiga.

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Maxim

“People arose from oblivion - one after another. A stranger lay down next to me on the bunk, leaned against my bony shoulder at night, giving away his warmth - drops of warmth - and receiving mine in return. There were nights when no warmth reached me through the scraps of a pea coat or padded jacket, and in the morning I looked at my neighbor as if he were a dead man, and was a little surprised that the dead man was alive, stood up when called, got dressed and obediently followed the command...”

Varlam Shalamov Sentence

Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam

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Varlam Shalamov
Maxim

Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam

People emerged from oblivion - one after another. A stranger lay down next to me on the bunk, leaned against my bony shoulder at night, giving away his warmth - drops of warmth - and receiving mine in return. There were nights when no warmth reached me through the scraps of a pea coat or padded jacket, and in the morning I looked at my neighbor as if he were a dead man, and was a little surprised that the dead man was alive, stood up when called, got dressed and obediently followed the command. I had little warmth. Not much meat left on my bones. This meat was only enough for anger - the last of human feelings. Not indifference, but anger was the last human feeling - the one that is closer to the bones. A man who emerged from oblivion disappeared during the day - there were many coal exploration sites - and disappeared forever. I don't know the people who slept next to me. I never asked them questions, and not because I followed the Arabic proverb: don’t ask and they won’t lie to you. I didn’t care whether they would lie to me or not, I was beyond the truth, beyond lies. The thieves have a tough, bright, rude saying on this subject, permeated with deep contempt for the person asking the question: if you don’t believe it, take it for a fairy tale. I didn’t ask questions or listen to fairy tales.

What stayed with me until the end? Anger. And keeping this anger, I expected to die. But death, so close just recently, began to gradually move away. Death was not replaced by life, but by half-consciousness, an existence for which there are no formulas and which cannot be called life. Every day, every sunrise brought the danger of a new, deadly shock. But there was no push. I worked as a boiler operator - the easiest of all jobs, easier than being a watchman, but I did not have time to chop wood for the titanium, the boiler of the Titan system. I could have been kicked out - but where? Taiga is far away, our village, “business trip” in Kolyma, is like an island in the taiga world. I could barely drag my feet, the distance of two hundred meters from the tent to work seemed endless to me, and I sat down to rest more than once. Even now I remember all the potholes, all the holes, all the ruts on this mortal path; a stream in front of which I lay down on my stomach and lapped up the cold, tasty, healing water. The two-handed saw, which I carried either on my shoulder or dragged, holding it by one handle, seemed to me like a load of incredible weight.

I could never boil water on time, get the titanium to boil by lunchtime.

But none of the free workers, all of them yesterday’s prisoners, paid attention to whether the water was boiling or not. Kolyma taught us all to distinguish drinking water only by temperature. Hot, cold, not boiled and raw.

We did not care about the dialectical leap in the transition from quantity to quality. We were not philosophers. We were hard workers, and our hot drinking water did not have these important qualities of a jump.

I ate, indifferently trying to eat everything that caught my eye - scraps, fragments of food, last year's berries in the swamp. Yesterday's or the day before yesterday's soup from a “free” cauldron. No, our freewomen didn’t have any soup left from yesterday.

In our tent there were two rifles, two shotguns. The partridges were not afraid of people, and at first the bird was beaten right from the threshold of the tent. The prey was baked whole in the ashes of the fire or boiled after being carefully plucked. Down and feather - for the pillow, also commerce, sure money - extra income for the free owners of guns and taiga birds. Gutted and plucked partridges were boiled in three-liter cans, hung from fires. I have never found any remains of these mysterious birds. Hungry free stomachs crushed, ground, and sucked up all the bird bones without a trace. This was also one of the wonders of the taiga.

I have never tasted a single piece of these partridges. Mine – there were berries, grass roots, rations. And I didn’t die. I began to look more and more indifferently, without malice, at the cold red sun, at the mountains, the loaches, where everything: rocks, turns of the stream, larch, poplars - was angular and unfriendly. In the evenings, a cold fog rose from the river - and there was not an hour in the taiga day when I felt warm.

Frostbitten fingers and toes ached and buzzed with pain. The bright pink skin of the fingers remained pink, easily vulnerable. The fingers were always wrapped in some kind of dirty rags, protecting the hand from a new wound, from pain, but not from infection. Pus oozed from the big toes on both feet, and there was no end to the pus.

They woke me up with a blow to the rail. They were fired from work by hitting the rail. After eating, I immediately lay down on the bunk, without undressing, of course, and fell asleep. The tent in which I slept and lived seemed to me as if through a fog - people were moving somewhere, loud swearing arose, fights broke out, there was instant silence before a dangerous blow. The fights quickly died out - on their own, no one restrained, did not separate, the engines of the fight simply stalled - and a cold night silence set in with a pale high sky through the holes in the tarpaulin ceiling, with snoring, wheezing, groans, coughing and the unconscious swearing of the sleeping people.

One night I felt that I heard these moans and wheezes. The feeling was sudden, like an epiphany, and did not make me happy. Later, remembering this moment of surprise, I realized that the need for sleep, oblivion, unconsciousness became less - I got enough sleep, as Moisey Moiseevich Kuznetsov, our blacksmith, said, the smartest of smartest people.

There was persistent pain in the muscles. I don’t know what kind of muscles I had then, but there was pain in them, it made me angry, and didn’t let me distract myself from my body. Then something appeared in me other than anger or malice, which exists along with anger. Equal appeared

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Varlam Shalamov
Maxim

Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam

* * *

People emerged from oblivion - one after another. A stranger lay down next to me on the bunk, leaned against my bony shoulder at night, giving away his warmth - drops of warmth - and receiving mine in return. There were nights when no warmth reached me through the scraps of a pea coat or padded jacket, and in the morning I looked at my neighbor as if he were a dead man, and was a little surprised that the dead man was alive, stood up when called, got dressed and obediently followed the command. I had little warmth. Not much meat left on my bones. This meat was only enough for anger - the last of human feelings. Not indifference, but anger was the last human feeling - the one that is closer to the bones. A man who emerged from oblivion disappeared during the day - there were many coal exploration sites - and disappeared forever. I don't know the people who slept next to me. I never asked them questions, and not because I followed the Arabic proverb: don’t ask and they won’t lie to you. I didn’t care whether they would lie to me or not, I was beyond the truth, beyond lies. The thieves have a tough, bright, rude saying on this subject, permeated with deep contempt for the person asking the question: if you don’t believe it, take it for a fairy tale. I didn’t ask questions or listen to fairy tales.

What stayed with me until the end? Anger. And keeping this anger, I expected to die. But death, so close just recently, began to gradually move away. Death was not replaced by life, but by half-consciousness, an existence for which there are no formulas and which cannot be called life. Every day, every sunrise brought the danger of a new, deadly shock. But there was no push. I worked as a boiler operator - the easiest of all jobs, easier than being a watchman, but I did not have time to chop wood for the titanium, the boiler of the Titan system. I could have been kicked out - but where? Taiga is far away, our village, “business trip” in Kolyma, it’s like an island in the taiga world. I could barely drag my feet, the distance of two hundred meters from the tent to work seemed endless to me, and I sat down to rest more than once. Even now I remember all the potholes, all the holes, all the ruts on this mortal path; a stream in front of which I lay down on my stomach and lapped up the cold, tasty, healing water. The two-handed saw, which I carried either on my shoulder or dragged, holding it by one handle, seemed to me like a load of incredible weight.

I could never boil water on time, get the titanium to boil by lunchtime.

But none of the workers - from the freewomen, all of them were yesterday's prisoners - paid attention to whether the water was boiling or not. Kolyma taught us all to distinguish drinking water only by temperature. Hot, cold, not boiled and raw.

We didn't care about the dialectical leap

end of introductory fragment

Varlaam Shalamov is a writer who spent three terms in the camps, survived hell, lost his family, friends, but was not broken by the ordeals: “The camp is a negative school from the first to the last day for anyone. The person - neither the boss nor the prisoner - needs to see him. But if you saw him, you must tell the truth, no matter how terrible it may be.<…>For my part, I decided long ago that I would devote the rest of my life to this truth.”

The collection “Kolyma Stories” is the main work of the writer, which he composed for almost 20 years. These stories leave an extremely heavy impression of horror from the fact that this is how people really survived. The main themes of the works: camp life, breaking the character of prisoners. All of them were doomedly awaiting inevitable death, not holding out hope, not entering into the fight. Hunger and its convulsive saturation, exhaustion, painful dying, slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - this is what is constantly in the focus of the writer’s attention. All the heroes are unhappy, their destinies are mercilessly broken. The language of the work is simple, unpretentious, not decorated with means of expressiveness, which creates the feeling of a truthful story from an ordinary person, one of many who experienced all this.

Analysis of the stories “At Night” and “Condensed Milk”: problems in “Kolyma Stories”

The story “At Night” tells us about an incident that does not immediately fit into our heads: two prisoners, Bagretsov and Glebov, dig up a grave in order to remove the underwear from a corpse and sell it. Moral and ethical principles have been erased, giving way to the principles of survival: the heroes will sell their linen, buy some bread or even tobacco. The themes of life on the verge of death and doom run like a red thread through the work. Prisoners do not value life, but for some reason they survive, indifferent to everything. The problem of brokenness is revealed to the reader; it is immediately clear that after such shocks a person will never be the same.

The story “Condensed Milk” is dedicated to the problem of betrayal and meanness. The geological engineer Shestakov was “lucky”: in the camp he avoided compulsory work and ended up in an “office” where he received good food and clothing. The prisoners envied not the free ones, but people like Shestakov, because the camp narrowed their interests to everyday ones: “Only something external could bring us out of indifference, take us away from the slowly approaching death. External, not internal strength. Inside, everything was burned out, devastated, we didn’t care, and we didn’t make plans beyond tomorrow.” Shestakov decided to gather a group to escape and hand him over to the authorities, receiving some privileges. This plan was unraveled by the nameless protagonist, familiar to the engineer. The hero demands two cans of canned milk for his participation, this is the ultimate dream for him. And Shestakov brings a treat with a “monstrously blue sticker”, this is the hero’s revenge: he ate both cans under the gaze of other prisoners who were not expecting a treat, just watched the more successful person, and then refused to follow Shestakov. The latter nevertheless persuaded the others and handed them over in cold blood. For what? Where does this desire to curry favor and substitute those who are even worse come from? V. Shalamov answers this question unequivocally: the camp corrupts and kills everything human in the soul.

Analysis of the story “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev”

If most of the heroes of “Kolyma Stories” live indifferently for unknown reasons, then in the story “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev” the situation is different. After the end of the Great Patriotic War, former military men poured into the camps, whose only fault was that they were captured. People who fought against the fascists cannot simply live indifferently; they are ready to fight for their honor and dignity. Twelve newly arrived prisoners, led by Major Pugachev, have organized an escape plot that has been in preparation all winter. And so, when spring came, the conspirators burst into the premises of the security detachment and, having shot the duty officer, took possession of the weapons. Holding the suddenly awakened soldiers at gunpoint, they change into military uniforms and stock up on provisions. Having left the camp, they stop the truck on the highway, drop off the driver and continue the journey in the car until the gas runs out. After that they go into the taiga. Despite the willpower and determination of the heroes, the camp vehicle overtakes them and shoots them. Only Pugachev was able to leave. But he understands that soon they will find him too. Does he obediently await punishment? No, even in this situation he shows strength of spirit, he himself interrupts his difficult life path: “Major Pugachev remembered them all - one after another - and smiled at each one. Then he put the barrel of a pistol in his mouth and fired for the last time in his life.” The theme of a strong man in the suffocating circumstances of the camp is revealed tragically: he is either crushed by the system, or he fights and dies.

“Kolyma Stories” does not try to pity the reader, but there is so much suffering, pain and melancholy in them! Everyone needs to read this collection to appreciate their life. After all, despite all the usual problems, modern man has relative freedom and choice, he can show other feelings and emotions, except hunger, apathy and the desire to die. “Kolyma Tales” not only frightens, but also makes you look at life differently. For example, stop complaining about fate and feeling sorry for yourself, because we are incredibly lucky than our ancestors, brave, but ground in the millstones of the system.