TRAGEDY AND PARABLE

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33095, 9 December 1972, Page 10

TRAGEDY AND PARABLE

tenet, ttodi, and Stoughton. 188 pp. GST) 1)6611 the white-rh-rkl Soviet literary translated” 1 ffito P fe h Gul’sary,” was consi&J a mode! f cultural orthodoxy. sur . prising and encouraging t cleared, as it were, Piiccian Marine Department. SurpfE® because the tragic little tale is against official brutality; £ n ® ging, because there may b? of change stirring in censors. up there. circles No doubt the gentle, outback._:„. Br of the plot and the languaf’l softened the first impact of theJ-jf tooth, for the scene is set frontier province of Kirgizkaya, Aitmatov was born and grew up.fr time is the present, for there are dis? rumours of cosmonauts. The steams of the title comes no nearer th, within binocular range, as it plies o Lake Issik Kul. But it is the Grail o, the boyish dreams of the central character. “He dreamed of turning into a fish so that everything on him would be fishlike: body, tail, fins and scales—only his head would stay his own. A big round head on a thin neck, with protruding ears and a nose covered with scratches. And the same eyes that he’d had before—not exactly the same, of course, because they’d be able to see like a fish’s . . . He’d wave his fin (to his grandfather) and say, ‘Goodbye, I’m swimming out to the Issik-Kul and the white steamship. I’ve got my sailorpapa out there’.” He did not know where his father or mother were. They had gone to the big city and left him in the care of his

grandfather and grandmotfr. The former is a delightful charade known as “efficacious Momun.” He i everybody’s friend, everybody’s helpe everybody’s standby, especially thalof his grandson. Only Orozkul, his sorn-law, failed to love and appreciate c»r old Momun. But he hated everyobdy Orozkul, as forest warden, mb the only representative of State auiority in the neighbourhood, and a wrched pompous, drunken, dishonest, epresentative he was. It is he wh< precipitates the final tragedy; for h4ialfclumsily, half intentionally manoevres Momun into shooting a beautifuldeer which has strayed out of the foresiand which the little boy, in common with the other simple people, had idenfied with “Homed Mother Deer,” the mythical guardian spirit of their <be In a drunken orgy, the people ofthe tiny village skin and cook the eer while the little boy lies sick and lisillusioned. His two myths, that ofthe deer and that of the white steams'ip act compulsively on him. He tottrs out of bed and swims down the rrer to find the ship and his father. lis death is not explicit, but implied, bft also to be implied is the identity of fie being that has destroyed the mjth by which these tribal people largdy ive, and has bedevilled their simde ves. * Die book concludes with an interert- ' discussion, reported by the tvo Jjlators, on the official reception to ea ]ook, as compared with Aitmatov’s gin*, 'y o . He is criticised very sad£. for paving given the story a anorf ln £ *j. hard to see how artistl ort en< hng would have been Aitmar cred ’b>. e - In some measure ending cov ? rs himself by leaving the having “pagination, and by stigmatiL of minor characters tran’slato? roz ! <ljl . as a “fascist.” The sages in the narrative pasever leav«l liant: the dialogue, however, ieav^ mething tQ desired