Varlam Shalamov

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Books and the Arts: 'Kolyma Tales'

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[The] stories included in Kolyma Tales represent the range of Shalamov's work, dealing with the basic matter of survival, the overlapping, if fiercely contentious, worlds of criminal prisoners and politicals, the precarious world of the jailors, the instances of defiance, flickerings of hope, release….

Shalamov's tone is flat, factual. Partly, of course, the flatness accentuates the horrors. Partly, however, the tone reflects the condition of the narrators. A man led from one place to another, likely to be shot, expresses no curiosity about his fate, no interest whatever beyond locating the stove in any room he enters, so that, for however long he may live, he can get a bit of warmth. (p. 35)

[Shalamov makes] clear that friendship, loyalty, compassion—traits we would like to think encourage survival—are incidental. "We all understood that we could survive only through luck." There are, to be sure, moments of kindness …, just as there are instances of humor, rebellion, and escape attempts. But mainly, beyond skill at self-preservation, beyond quick-witted bribes and lies, and certainly beyond superhuman work, there is luck. Shalamov's stories are disturbing because they leave us under no illusion that man can control his fate if circumstances are as they were in Kolyma. They disturb us because we like to think that something "human" in us, some spiritual quality, can endure under any conditions, and because he strips us of that illusion too. What endures, he says, what distinguishes man from animal, is not a soul, but an instinct for physical survival that made men in Kolyma last longer and work harder than any horse. (p. 36)

Josephine Woll, "Books and the Arts: 'Kolyma Tales'," in The New Republic (reprinted by permission of The New Republic; © 1980 The New Republic, Inc.), Vol. 183, No. 13, September 27, 1980, pp. 34-7.

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