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Mikhail Sholokhov and His Personages in Their “Tragic Search for Truth”

Before the 110^th anniversary of Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov, which is celebrated on May, 24, 2015, the Presidential B.N.Eltsyn Library presented on the portal rare materials revealing the depth of the writer’s personality and the magnitude of his art. The book collection of Sholokhov’s works includes lifetime editions of the writer’s works, literary studies and his photo portraits.

The stories and novels by Sholokhov is a unified epic canvas about the fates of the people at different stages of the country’s history. The beginning was “Tales from the Don”, the central link was “And Quiet Flows the Don” with “Virgin Soil Upturned” to continue. The great feat of the people in the Great Patriotic War was narrated about in the chapters of the novel “They Fought for Their Country”.

In 1965, the writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in the field of literature “in recognition of his artistic power and integrity as creator of an epic on the historic years of the Russian people”. So the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” was appreciated.

The need of Sholokhov for truth no matter how hard it may be and a real “Voltaire’s” sense of justice were noted by everyone who was lucky to communicate with the writer. During the days of writing “And Quiet Flows the Don”, thanks to these properties of his talents Sholokhov managed, with the help of the artistic analysis and a living Don language, which the writer used skillfully, to show in his works a terrible contradiction between the eternal, epic, and temporary, transient, that gives his story about the life of Cossacks a tragic and at the same time a life-asserting character.

A war in his books was always an antithesis to the norm – a hasteless and wise people’s existence, for which the writer’s native stately quiet Don became a symbol.

Alexey Kochetov