Before the Deluge

IN the early 1860’s Alexander Herzen, pioneer Russian liberal philosopher, thus described his country: “From all the corners of our enormous land, from the Don to the Urals, from the Volga to the Dnieper a moan is growing, a grumbling is rising — this is the first roar of the seabillow which begins to rage, pregnant with storm after a long tiresome calm.” This is the period — the crucial years from 1860 to 1880 — that Mr. Aldanov has selected for his sweeping historical novel of imperial Russia. Alexander II, the czar who was smart enough to emancipate Russia’s serfs but not sufficiently wise to institute the political reforms which might have averted his assassination and the revolutionary deluge of the twentieth century, is the central character of this story. Around him and his dramatic reign the author has created a series of weakly integrated tales which flow over the Russian frontier and take us into the Europe of Bismarck, Hugo, Marx, and Disraeli. In breadth of canvas the novel reminds one of Tolstoi’s War and Peace and in length it follows the tradition of the great Russian novelists — but that is where the similarities end.

Before the Deluge is not likely to precipitate a storm in the literary samovar as did Mr. Aldanov’s fifth Seal, in 1943, with its unflattering portraits of Soviet communists and Spanish republicans. For having eschewed the passionate controversies of contemporary politics, the author has treated the relatively safe period of almost a century ago with such Olympian aloofness as to leave both the student of history and the lover of fiction equally cold.

Mr. Aldanov writes with considerable skill and historical faithfulness: after having produced some halfdozen “period” novels, he has mastered the craftsmanship of synthesizing epic events entertainingly although not always convincingly. Miss Catherine Routsky, his translator, has apparently done adequate justice to his native Russian prose. But in his portrayal of characters, be they fictitious, or historic figures like Dostoevski, Bakunin, Wagner, Marx, or Gladstone, the author remains scientifically indifferent and coldly skeptical. Consequently, they are often wooden and frigid. The only somewhat sympathetic figure is Katia, the lowly circus performer, but one has to struggle through a few hundred pages of rambling narrative and follow her lover’s adventures in half a dozen capitals and two hemi spheres before realizing that her great romance is just another one of those boy-meets-girl affairs. This is definitely not a book to be read in one sitting.

Structurally, the story is confused and devoid of essential unity. Indeed, whatever plot there is seems to be used primarily as cement for tying together the character sketches of some of the dominant political and artistic figures of the age.

Students of the contemporary Soviet scene will find in this book a number of plausible and interesting parallelisms between the period of Stalin and that of Alexander II, when, as now, Russia was the main topic of conversation in European salons.

HENRY SHAPIRO