“In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people
say like a cake, and eat only what you can stomach” (Deathless).
There are aspects of this book that I really enjoyed and
then there are things that I just could not stomach.
Regardless of how one feels about the overall plot, one
thing is undisputable: Valente is very familiar with the Russian folklore. She
makes lots of references to various folk stories and legends, weaves in
descriptions of magical creatures (e.g., the firebird) as well as specific
spirits, goblins and other demons prevalent in the Russian mythology and
folklore. However, because she comes through as extremely knowledgeable about
the Russian culture, the few mistakes that she does make, stick out as a sore
thumb. I noticed four: (1) volchitza is a she-wolf, not a little wolf; (2)
volchik is not a word, you would say volchonok or volchok to address a male
wolf cub; (3) Alexey is not a form of Alexander, it is a completely different
name; and (4) Marousha is not a valid diminutive for Marya.
I was also a bit thrown by her references to Pushkin. Yes,
he is the most famous of the Russian poets. He also did write several fairy
tales. However, there is no direct connection to his fairy tales in Deathless. Valente quotes one stanza
from his introduction to the poem Ruslan
and Ludmila in which Pushkin references Koschei, but that stanza has
nothing to do with the fairy tales he actually authored, and is rather meant to
generally introduce the magical world of the Russian folklore as the setting of
his poem. In addition, she attributes Viy
to Pushkin, and Viy is a story by
Nikolai Gogol. So the literary references made no sense to me.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about the plot.
Basically, Valente took the most famous Russian fairy tales featuring Koschei
the Deathless and Baba Yaga and retold them in the setting of the Soviet Russia
right before and during World War II. I was really fascinated by what she did
and enjoyed the book for about 150 pages or so. After that, I kept wondering
where she was going with the story line. For one, she tells us that the entire
magical world is engaged in an endless war: the Tsar of Death (Viy) keeps
battling the Tsar of Life (Koschei the Deathless). For someone who grew up on
Russian folktales such division of power makes no sense. Both Viy and Koschei
are forces of evil and in folklore both equally sow death and destruction. In
fact, the entire magical world appears to consist only of demons and evil
creatures: some of them are alive and are thus in Koschei’s army, but as soon
as they die, they join Viy’s ranks. What’s unclear to me is how humanity fits
into this and where are the forces of good. Russian folktales always have the
main human characters, say Ivan and Vasilisa, who have to battle or overcome
some evil force (such as Koschei), but they usually get magical help from
“good” powers. It could be a mother’s blessing that protects them or they might
get some advice from an old man or a woman who have magical powers. The battle in
the story is always between good and evil. Valente’s scenario was confusing and
the “good” component was completely missing.
Surprisingly, I did like the ending of the novel. It made
sense to me that Viy (or the Tsar of Death) has taken over Russia – sort of a
symbolism for godless and tyrannical Soviet regime. At the same time, the
magical creatures that are showing the budding signs of dissention are Baba
Yaga and Koschei, who are again by their nature evil, so I am not sure what
hope they can give to humanity. In addition, because Valente chose the setting
of WWII, is she saying that Soviet victory over Germany equates the victory of
death over life? This sort of reasoning is pretty scary and I don’t even want
to go there.
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