Novel
Сокі цаліны
Not translated into English
Tsishka Hartny · 1922
Opening lines
Ужо зусім звечарэла, калі Зося прывяла з пашы каня... На вуліцы было цемнавата, але жыццё і не думала заміраць: на прызбах там і сям сядзелі мужчыны і бабы, ведучы рэзвую гутарку, у якой часта прабіваўся вясёлы і бесклапотны смех, жарты і выгукі.
Evening had fully fallen when Zosia brought the horse back from the pasture... It was darkish in the street, but life had no thought of dying down: on the earthen benches here and there sat men and women, carrying on a lively conversation in which cheerful, carefree laughter, jokes and shouts often broke through.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from knihi.com
Synopsis
From the international crisis of 1914 to the first protest movements of late 1915, the novel follows the worker Ryhor Niazvyčny from a Belarusian village to Minsk, a front-line city, then to the factories of Petrograd and as far as Germany. The mobilisation in the small town of Smahin, the munitions factories, the military hospitals, the refugees and the propaganda make up the picture of a war that turns work into destruction, while Ryhor gradually awakens to politics and becomes a leader.
Context
The novel appears in books from 1922 to 1930; a reissue of 1932 corrects or removes its dialect words. Its language, nourished by the speech of the Kapyl region, was judged severely, by a report of 1934 and then by a history of Soviet Belarusian literature in 1965, which reproached it for a lack of stylistic culture, before linguists revisited that judgement. The collected works of 1989 devote an entire volume to it.
Who it is for
A long novel in Belarusian, in a language reputed to be difficult; no French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first completed epic work of the national literature on social life, and followed by several prose writers.
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