And Quiet Flows the Don

The stage interpretation of M. A. Sholokhov’s novel “And Quiet Flows the Don,” found by G. A. Tovstonogov, consists in the free movement of the novel from the present into the past and back into the present, heightening to the utmost the decisive moments in the life of Grigory Melekhov, who has gone through a long and painful path of searching and mistakes, insights and losses.

Together with other Cossacks weary of war, he returns home, to the Don. The peaceful days have receded into the distant past. The weariness acquired in war was breaking Grigory; he wanted to turn away from the hostile and incomprehensible world breathing hatred, wanted peace and quiet, wanted to live peacefully on his land, run a household, and raise children, but there was no peace: the Civil War was raging, drawing the inhabitants of the Don region into its bloody whirlpool. The paths of the “peasants” and the Cossacks crossed, brother went against brother, and it was impossible to determine on whose side the truth lay. In this terrible time Grigory tries to determine his path. He understands that there is no single truth — whoever overcomes whom devours him — but he sought another truth, suffered in soul, rushed between the Whites and the Reds, and became so smeared in others’ blood that he grew terrifying to himself. He closes his eyes, and fragments of disconnected memories arise in his mind: of the peaceful and calm life of his native hamlet, of the infinitely dear features and the durman-scented hair of his beloved Aksinya, the lawful wife of Stepan Astakhov, of his loving and unloved wife Natalya with the children and of her sudden death, of his brother Pyotr, killed by Mishka Koshevoy, and of everything that does not concern the war, because this war, dragging on for seven years, had sickened him beyond all measure.