SOURCE: An interview, translated by David Marks, in Soviet Literature, No. 10, 1975, pp. 174-82.

[The following interview was conducted in East Germany in 1972 and later published in Sinn und Form and Literaturnaya Rossia. Below, Leonov discusses his writing process and the themes that interest him.]

[Opitz]: Leonid Maximovich, we should like to talk to you about your writing. First of all, may we ask you about the way your novels are conceived. What inspires you to write: experiences or images, ideas or observations?

[Leonov]: I must say that I do not think in political or philosophical categories. I lived in the times I described, I saw a lot including those people who were to fall victim to the crucible of change, who could not withstand its searing heat.

This is probably how all creation is conceived, not only in the case of writers. With Copernicus and Galileo, was it a formula, or was it not rather a kind of premonition which told them that something was not quite clear? It was this intuition which led them on. The intellect can only attain what the soul already knows. With me it always begins with a painful, insuperable obsession. I am haunted by some images or by some combination of words, and I have a vague feeling that here is where I must search. It can be a snatch of a phrase overheard in a conversation, or a feeling of some threat, defencelessness or incredible sorrow, which like a fan sucks in everything which makes up the writer's life. One evening my wife shook me by the shoulder and shouted: "You've got a daughter, you know! Can't you at least look at her!" It seemed to me that this was happening far away on another planet. You must sacrifice everything: the love for your daughter, your last twenty kopecks, a good salary—everything!

Did all of your novels have beginnings like these?

Yes. Talking of The Badgers, it was prompted by an exclamation. Pantelei Chmelev, one of the main characters in the novel, when he first saw the moon through a telescope, cried: "I'm looking at the moon, and it's all pitted!" All his life he had thought that the surface of the moon was smooth. Maybe something does exist, something else, unseen, hidden from our eyes? The surface may be smooth, but maybe something is hidden behind it, so we must continue searching. I began my search, and the result was a novel. Road to the Ocean began with the song: "Travel to the ocean, you're fifty years old, soon it will be too late". It goes on: "You're sixty years old…." This theme worked its way deep into my soul. Ocean is a fairy-tale whose secret we cannot penetrate, and at the same time it is the road to eternity.

Is not Skutarevsky written under the influence of those times, the trials of counterrevolutionaries, the members of "Industrial Party", and so on?

I was not very interested in trials, but I was interested in people and personalities. Take Petrygin, for instance, and also the invincible tenacity of man in flight. The theme of Arseni interested me less than might have seemed, though it does interest me still, and the Arseni theme appears again in my new novel.

You once wrote that the idea of the novel was born under the impression of Brueghel's picture The Hunters in the Snow …

Not all of Skutarevsky was conceived under the impression of the picture, but only the opening melody, the barely perceptible snatches of a melody, some quiet sounds.

In any case the great artist of the era of the first victorious bourgeois revolution gave a creative impulse to the writer of the era of the first victorious proletarian revolution?

I like Brueghel for the multi-plane quality of his paintings. A writer is not only judged on his material or on his plot, for any theme can be embodied in various ways. The milieu is also important. I can close a book and continue to wander through the places where the action unfolds, and you can do the same with Brueghel. I learnt much from him, including composition in two or three planes. Milieu is bound up not only with the theme and the plot, but also with colour. A page of a book should be seen not only as a text, but as a ladder which helps one to break into the writer's inner world. You can also wander through Brueghel's paintings, and as far as you go, even to the very horizon, you will meet interesting people. The pictures beckon you into the distance, and what immediately meets the eye is not the only interesting thing. I love Brueghel's paintings for their "literary" quality; you can read them like stories. I love Brueghel for the human smile you see in his pictures, for their mysterious aura. This is also why I like Hieronymus Bosch. In Brueghel's work algebra is subjected to harmony, just as in Dürer's. I like his Flandria, with its blend of the concrete and the apocalyptic. I like the musicality of The Hunters in the Snow, where the birds are as "organic" as a musical note. If you take away the birds you will ruin the whole picture. I find that I can "get inside" his picture and identify myself with one of the hunters: I feel close to these people. I do not like all of Brueghel's pictures: I like The Tower of Babel much less, but I very much like The Carrying of the Cross, and I am enraptured by the charming humour of Children's Games and the kind peasant hands in his other paintings. Brueghel's The Parable of the Blind figures in my short novel Evgenia Ivanovna. I did see a scene like that in real life, and I was greatly moved. For Brueghel it is very important how he embodies any idea he may have.

Tell me about the process of creation in your own case.

That is an old question. In the 20s on Gorky's initiative a special section was established in one of our magazines, devoted to world classic writers under the heading, "How They Worked". Today too young writers would find this interesting. A French critic once wrote of Flaubert that he would even get up at night in order to correct some inappropriate adjective. But another, more accurate adjective would give another characteristic to the hero, and so he had to change all the actions and all the behaviour of that person. That in turn affected the description of the milieu, the room and even the weather. There is nothing accidental in a work of art and there can be nothing superfluous. Flaubert would make more and more crossings-out until he had completely defaced the painstakingly-written text! And all because of one adjective! The writer's gift is a joy and a curse. After a long and intense search he may at last find the right detail, or draw the line which connects all twenty-five coordinates, but still he must cross everything out, change everything once more. It is simply hard labour.

I have never derived pleasure from my work. I have always wanted to get a book over with quickly, to get rid of it! If the author lets his characters out of his sight for even a single day they will devour him and everything around. They become ghosts which will torment their creator until he drives them into the book, from which they cannot escape. You might, for instance, write a five-word rejoinder, which for some reason you need to extend by two words. This extends the bounds of the narrative incredibly, and creates new possibilities. What does your character do at home, when no one can see him? What does he dream about in his sleep? What could he not confess, even to himself? Sometimes all this is not important for the novel itself, but just in case, for achieving an absolutely accurate diagnosis of the character. A hero, once created, is hard to deal with. He becomes an independent personality. He is unwilling to submit to my wishes, and puts up a stubborn fight. I might demand something of him, and though I know what he is thinking about, he will not say a word. You fight him like a real person. You live among images. In The Thief it is said that the whole world speaks only in the seven languages of the characters. Things can go to extremes. You remember Kurilov from The Road to the Ocean, the man who could quite easily have worked in the Politbureau? He was suffering from a very serious and extremely agonising illness: hypernephroma, a malignant tumour of the kidneys. You cannot imagine anything more painful than that pain. Recall Firsov, and what he said about the "naked man" and his hidden "sacred pimple". I undressed Kurilov, took everything from him, layer by layer, to see what sort of person he was, and he lives on without diminishing in stature.

Recently I suffered a kidney complaint and while I was in hospital I studied Kurilov's illness through and through. I sympathised so much that one day, as I was going upstairs, I had a real attack. The pain was unbearable and I could not move a muscle. Following long and fruitless investigations, the doctor asked me to show him exactly where the pain was. I showed him and he exclaimed: "My dear fellow, the kidneys are two fingers lower than that."

I had studied the illness thoroughly, and I felt it deeply, but its anatomical aspect quite escaped my attention.

Does this merging with your characters go parallel with your work on composing a piece?

Composition often presents many difficulties. After all, we live in very difficult times. There is so much information that we are overwhelmed. You have to be brief. It is sometimes difficult for me to read Walter Scott now…. It is as though you were slogging to America in a horse-drawn carriage, when you could get there and back twelve times in the same time. That is why sketches are vital to composition. For instance, Russian Forest has two lines: the Polya line from 1941 to 1942, and the Vikhrov line from 1886 to 1942. In order to describe these characters you could write as much as you like about each of them. Could Polya have gone to the Bolshoi Theatre, when she moved to Moscow? Of course she could: she had come from the country, thirsting for knowledge, and she had heard much about Moscow. But this would only be a dot, a cross along her line, while Vikhrov remains on the sidelines. On the other hand, could Vikhrov go grouse-shooting? That of course would be completely in keeping with his character, but it would do nothing to develop Polya's image. The essence of the novel is Vikhrov's relationship with his daughter, and so I found points which bring the two into contact. Where do the twenty-five roubles come from? A suspicion grows in Polya's mind: maybe he really is a bad man? Then other elements are brought into the narrative: Knyshev, Gratsiansky and finally the whole of Russia.

This is where you need a sketch to see how to distribute your material. I distribute the material for a new book among "various tiers" of my mind, though at this stage I still do not know what is superfluous and should be discarded. Before you write something you should take a bird's eye view at the material, look at the theme as a whole.

What sort of conditions do you write in?

I prefer to work in the mornings, usually till three or half-past three. I am over seventy, and people of that age tire more quickly. I used to work evenings as well, as many as eleven hours a day. But subconsciously the work goes on the rest of the day and night as well. You always work in two or three shifts. The melting process must not be interrupted. Vital corrections come in one's sleep, like the rattat-tat of a submachine-gun. This night-work reminds one of the experiment they used to do in physics lessons at school: particles of some substance are sprinkled onto a plate, and a violin bow is drawn along its edge. The vibrations make the particles form up in a certain order, and lines appear.

It is necessary to revise and re-write. Formerly I was not so thorough about this, and I underestimated certain possibilities of the word, but now I have become capricious and demanding. Re-writing melts down the raw material, and only when you are utterly in control of the material can you obtain a product of high quality. A good poem is not written at one go, and the poet takes at least three days moulding it and remoulding it in his mind before it pours out onto the paper.

Most of all I love working to quiet music which forms a kind of sound screen. My table must be tidy, there must be no distractions. Chekhov and Dostoevsky wrote with their desks pushed to the wall. The fewer things in the room the better. Creation is emanation, self-irradiation. If one's study is cluttered, there is no room for irradiation.

I am afraid of my working-table, and this fear has always been with me. Every finished page is a spoiled page for it could have served to create a great work. After a time there is so much finished paper that moving house or going on holiday becomes a complicated problem: I can never find anything, and the thing I need is not in its usual place, and this makes work difficult. But if the article has been cast, and if it gives the inimitable ring you longed to hear, then you feel that you have created something, have achieved something, and that is your reward. When I finish a novel I am overcome by a feeling of terrible fatigue. I am utterly exhausted, devastated.

Where do you find rest?

In the garden. It allows me to switch off entirely. If I had not become a writer I would probably have become a gardener. I love my good, mute friends. You must look after them well, though, for they are silent when they are not happy. Three times a day I go up to every plant to see how it is growing. The cacti are especially interesting, entirely wrapped up in themselves, growing in the desert, they give off no moisture and they need nothing from their environment: they have their own world. I have been growing orchids and many other interesting plants for many years. Do you know why it is good to spend time with flower-growers? You go up to a complete stranger, two or three Latin names pass between you, and it is immediately clear who the man is. I constantly used to give my cacti to botanical gardens, to the Academy of Sciences and Moscow University. Remember how in The Road to the Ocean Protoklitov gives his collection of clocks away? He sat the precedent and I simply followed his example. In the same way Firsov acquired a checked overcoat in The Thief, and I bought one myself much later.

What is particularly important for you when writing?

Do you remember the story of the Eastern tsaritsa whose husband told her after a feast that she had been drinking from the gilded skull of her own father? This woman thought up her revenge. She changed beds with her servant girl, and when the girl's lover came in the night, the tsaritsa welcomed him with caresses. Later she turned on the light, and the man grew afraid, for the price of loving the tsaritsa was death. She, however, persuaded him to save his life by killing the tsar.

I am carried away by powerful passions, by situations when the passions reach their fieriest heat, their culmination, and everything else ceases to have any meaning. Then the gnashing of teeth can be heard, and an incredible tension arises in relations between people. This is what one should write about, and it is what I have always tried to write about. A book like that will never leave a reader indifferent.

I do not like when everything is too direct, though. The actor Yershov was guilty of this sin in the Art Theatre's production of my play Untilovsk in 1928. Buslov's rebellion, expressed in his monologue, constitutes the very core of the play but still it should not be shouted. The actor should first speak very loudly, and then he should make an abrupt shift to a different tone where he speaks quietly. That has a much stronger effect. Untilovsk (a name composed of the English "until", the Russian word "util", which means "garbage", and which should remind one of "reptiles") is a mire which can such a man down. It is something like the shelf by a Russian stove, warm and cosy. Then there is the winsome Vaska, and Buslov has forgotten the lessons he should be giving, and the Komsomol choir. This is the situation he must get out of.

After the war we wanted to create a new theatre, a theatre in which the inner world of the hero would find a very accurate reflection. The actor must convey every psychological nuance very correctly. Unfortunately one of the main participants in this theatre died. He was the actor and director Mikhoels. He was a good actor and would have risen to this task. He should have played Rakhuma in The Golden Carriage, a part that needs to be played subtly and tactfully to make a stronger impact. It would be absolutely wrong to cast a jolly fat man for Rakhuma, for he is living in the hard postwar years, and things are going badly for him.

In your opinion, can literary studies help to reveal the intrinsic qualities of your work?

I always feel a bit uncomfortable with people who spend whole months and even years studying my books. Of course this work can be very meaningful if it does not become mere re-telling, but sooner or later the reader would understand the sense of the book without its help. Literary scholars would do better to write about the main themes in my books. Take "Buryga," one of my first short stories. In that story you can really find everything that moves me, everything that I only developed later: the forest, the circus, love of one's country, burning sadness, and the legend-like and mysterious powers of the forest. The poet is infected by his main theme and thereafter constantly returns to it.

Does that apply to the novel you are now working on?

It will contain many things. I do not like talking about unfinished work. You arouse curiosity, and it can turn out that you disappoint expectations. A writer should not tease his public, rather he should sit at his desk and work to produce a good book for them. But still, I will say that I have really been writing this book all my life. My first thoughts on it went into the weak, utterly bad story which I wrote in 1922. That story was not published, and I will never publish it. Going further back, I wrote a poem when I was seventeen, in which the autumnal tune rings out. It is saturated with the mood of homelessness and the motif of compassion. My first poems were generally bad, but I want to say in immodest justification that big trees bear fruit late. This motif appeared in various forms again and again, blended with quite different melodies, and rings out here and there in my books. I began intensive work on the new book in 1948 and 1949, and after writing Russian Forest and revising The Thief, I came back to these themes again and again, but I had to break off work for reasons of a personal nature. I came back to this book for the fourth time, and now I am working on it with utmost concentration and determination. If a theme can grip a person to such an extent, then there must be something real behind it. But the book will not be finished in the near future.

What is the theme of the book?

I am interested in the limits of the human mind's potential. I do not miss one article on astrophysics. We probably still have not true ideas of the laws of nature. Sometimes I feel that nature is like the Buddhist lama who gazes at people with indifference. Even when a beautiful girl walks along he just looks past her and preserves his imperturbability. Kurilov understood much as he was dying. Once I was visited by a student who wanted to write on the theme of death in Leonov. Well, of course, that is nonsense and stupidity, but I am concerned as to whether much is not revealed to a man at the moment of his death. I would like to create my own model of the world, but I do not know if I will be successful. My new book will also feature Katya, the little girl of whom Uvadyev, a character of my novel The Sot, dreams. Over the years Katya has grown up and has come to understand many things. When you picture for yourself the world of tomorrow you must first of all think of human personality. You must look forward and try and solve some of our problems, as if from the future. I am interested in democracy. It only makes sense if you awaken initiative in many people, and this is the basic problem of democracy. As the world already has three and a half thousand million people, and this number is growing fast, not every person can develop his abilities as he would like to. Everybody needs a minimum of well-being, and if someone wants his personality to blossom further: well, take a piece of paper, sit down and develop, express yourself, and then we will read what you have written.

We live in a critical period of history. The fate of the whole world depends upon decisions which people will make in the coming years, and that is why the writer's word is acquiring more weight. I have always striven to participate in unfolding the future for the whole of mankind, or, to put it more simply, I see myself as an interpreter standing between life and the reader. I take hold of phenomena which are taking place daily before the reader's eyes, but which he cannot always realise or assimilate, and I deduce a formula which I offer for him to work on.