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The Danes have Discovered the World of the Don Cossacks

The exhibition “M.A.Sholokhov. The Life and Art” had a successful run in the Russian Centre of Science and Culture in Kopenhagen (the Kingdom of Denmark) in October.

The Russian Centre of Science and Culture, functioning as an overseas office of the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Cooperation, solves the issues of promoting the Russian culture and the Russian language in Denmark; it introduces the art, music, literature, theatre, cinema and science of the Russian Federation to the visitors.

The Russian Centre of Science and Culture is located in an old building of the late XIX century in the centre of Kopenhagen near the main City Hall Square.

Serghei Morgunov, Director of the Centre, speaking at the vernissage, thanked the National M.A.Sholokhov Museum-Reserve for the opportunity for the Russian compatriots and Danish people to learn more about the life and work of the outstanding writer M.A.Sholokhov and about the Don country glorified in his works, the most beautiful part of Russia with its difficult fate and original culture.

It was the Don land that gave Sholokhov his strength to live and create. He carried his love for the native people, the old River Don, through all his life having written magnificent pages and having created powerful images. The exhibition told about the life, work, hobbies of the Nobel Prize winner, about the activities of the Museum-Reserve of M.A.Sholokhov as a unique “Open Air Novel”. It helped the visitors to discover for themselves the world of Sholokhov and his personages. The visitors were introduced a film “A Reserve on the Bank of the Quiet Don” and fragments of the films on the writer’s works, old Cossack songs “sung” on the pages of the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”.

The visitors of the exhibition were attracted by the photos, the copy of the Diploma of the Nobel Prize in the field of literature of 1965, which M.A.Sholokhov was awarded “in recognition of his artistic powers and his integrity as creator of an epic on the historic years of the Russian people”; his manuscripts of the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” edited by the author, ethnographic objects reflecting the culture and life of the Cossack stanitsa, the atmosphere of the time, when the great XX century novel was being written.

The Danish people learned about the writer’s visiting their country many times beginning with 1934. There, from 1932 till 1940, all the four books of the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” were published in translation by Anna Chemerinskaya-Kon. Otto Lindhard, Director of the “Gyuldendal” Publisher said: “Sholokhov enjoyed an exceptional love in Denmark. None of the foreigners is so popular as he”.

One of the pictures shows Mikhail Alexandrovich in Kopenhagen at the premiere of the film “The fate of a Man”, another one shows the writer meeting with the well-known woman-writer Karen Bliksen.

Danish writers and publishers also visited Sholokhov in Vyoshenskaya: in 1933, Mikhail Alexandrovich received Sigmund Lunda, in the May of 1959 – Hans Kirk, Eugene Longbyu, Hans Scherfig and Eric Horkier, and in 1960 – Otto Lindhard.

The museum-workers presented books about the work of M.A.Sholokhov, booklets about the Museum-Reserve for the library of the Russian Centre of Science and Culture. The party, warmed and lighted by the art of M.A.Sholokhov, was joined by the Russian compatriots living in Denmark, Danish and Bulgarian friends, mass media representatives with Nikolay Morozov, ITAR-TASS correspondent, among them.

We hope that after visiting the exhibition “M.A.Sholokhov. The Life and Art” many visitors would like to read the works of the great writer again, to travel to Vyoshenskaya to see with their own eyes the River Don, the boundless steppe, Cossack villages, the countrymen of Grigory and Aksinya, listen to the songs of the Quiet Don, to discover the bright and passionate world of the Don Cossacks.

The exhibition “M.A.Sholokhov.The Life and Art” had a successful run in many countries: in the Russian House in Lima (Peru), in Buenos-Aires (Argentina), in Havana (Cuba) at the XIX International Havana Book Fair.

Elena Tolstopyatenko