A peasant and his horse

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32494, 2 January 1971, Page 10

A peasant and his horse

Farewell Gul’sary. By Chingiz Aitmatov. Hodder and Stoughton. 790 pp. Chingiz Aitmatov is a novelist from the Kirgiz Republic in Soviet Central Asia. He is highly regarded in the Soviet Union, and in 1963 received a Lenin Prize for literature for a collection entitled “Stories of the Mountains and the Steppes.” The present novel was first published in 1966, and is a moving tale of a man and his horse, and the way in which their lives are interwoven. On a cold, frosty night, the old man Tanabai, finds himself stranded on a lonely road with his dying horse, Gul’sary. As he makes Gul’sary comfortable during his last hours, he reflects on their lives together. Tanabai first tamed the spirited young colt when he himself was a vigorous young man, renowned for his horsemanship. Under his expert guidance, Gul’sary becomes an outstanding pacer and something of a folk-hero in the mountain village. The two become inseparable, but others covet the horse, and before long Gul’sary has a new master, while Tanabai finds himself transferred to a shepherd’s position. His first lambing season is a disastrous one. A brief, false spring is followed by blizzards; many lambs are’ bom prematurely and die in the snow. Over - wrought with worry and sleepless nights, Tanabai assaults an inspecting officer from the collective farm and is expelled from the Party. Later, he meets up once more with his horse who is now nothing more than a drudge, his earlier prowess forgotten; and together the two eke out their days, waiting'for death. “Farewell, Gul’sary” is notable for its sympathetic understanding, not only of animals, but of the hardships of the mountain peasants, whose stubborn, stoical character and vitality he so much admires. In contrast, he does not disguise his contempt for the petty bureaucrats who try to impose on the peasants an inflexible book-learning that bears little relationship to the harsh realities of life in the mountains.