THE N.C. ESSAY
Page 3
1^' 'w'
AUGUST, 1914
Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s new
book describing the terrible
reverses suffered by the
Russians at the hands of the
Gernians in the opening batUes of
the first World War is the first
part of an epic novel Solzhenitsyn
is writing. It is a long book about
300,000 words. In this took we
have the first part of what
promises to answer to the classic
definition of an epic; the subject
is historical and imaginary; the
main purpose is to revel a nation
to itself; but at the same time
hold universal significance.
The book operates on 3 well
defined levels, the first being a
description of certain segments
of Russian society. Second, vivid
doseups of the Russian army’s
disastrous East Prussian cam
paign of August 1914 seen tiirou^
the eyes of the conunon soldiers.
Third, the Russian High com
mand who bungled the battle of
Tannenberg.
The two armies of the Russian
command advanced into Prussia
in two separate arms, planning to
encircle the German army like
the two arms of a vice and crush
inwards. The Russian armies
were commanded by Ren-
nenkampf and Samsonov.
Rennenkampf’s army stopped its
advance as Samsonov continued,
the Germans gambled, on hi^ly
reliable information that the two
Russian Generals hated each
other, and that Rennenkampf
would not move to help Sam
sonov, the gamble paid off, and
the result was Tannenberg.
In reveling the fighting,
Solzhenitsyn brings out two
themes: first the self-delusion
and gross incompetence of the
Russian High command.
Secondly, the unbelievable
bravery and endurance shown by
the over marched, underfed,
Russian troops flung virtually
untrained into modem warfare
that their Generals attempted to
use 1870 techniques upon.
For instance: field telephones
were never used on the efficient
basis that the Germans did. The
Russian army still depended
upon dispatch riders to carry
orders from corps to corps. The
dispatch riders frequently got
lost in the unfamiliar territory
and took days to deliver com
mands, and by then the whole
logistic situation had been
altered to demand new orders;
nevertheless, the outdated
commands were placed into
effect sometimes days after their
significance would be felt. The
ensuing result was a complex
maneuver of advance and
retreat. Hundreds of men wodd
be lost in an advance which would
be rescinded the next day for no
apparent gain but with much loss
of manpower and ammunition.
The Russian army never sent
their dispatches from
headquarters in code, thus the
German Generals were usually
provided with a copy of the days
orders. The supply system was
inefficient and usuidly three days
bdiind the advancing Russian
infantry; thus the men sometimes
went for days without food or
water.
Sol^emtsyn takes a chapter to
explain in detail the new and
terrifying experience of an ar
tillery barrage. This new
technique is deafing and
devastating lasting for hours
without relief while the men are
trapped in trenches not able to
alter their positions or fate
because the Russian artillery has
not moved into positon and will
not for another two days. Tlie
German army of 1914 was the
most advanced and well com
manded army in the World and
the author never overlooks this
decisive element.
Within ten days of crossing the
frontier into East Prussia,
Samsonov’s army was chopped
apart, Samsonov himself cut off
with the remnants of his staff, he
walked alone into a cleaming in
the forest and shot himself.
Rennenkampf, in quick retreat
was being destroyed from the
rear as he left no rear guard to
protect his retreat. It may be
presumptous of me but I read
that Napolean said once that an
orderly retreat is the hardest but
most important military
maneuver.
At the end of the book
Solzhenitsyn switches to describe
life in Russia, a stem tragic
contrast of civilian life and Oie
front line. The Tsarist regime is
seen in its stark incapacity to
govern a state in the face of the
twentieth century. The story ends
with the Chief of Staff, the Grand-
Duke Nicholas (the Tsar’s Uncle)
and his staff furiously justifying
their actions for the debacle at
Tannenberg and throwing hte
blame on the wretched, dead
Samsonov.
Lake other great historical
novelists, Solzhenitsyn, has
established a fictional observer
who can inhabit all levels of the
narration (Notably Pierre Butsov
in Tolstoy’s War and Peace).
This character, Cololenl
Vorotyntsev, is sent from
(^eral Headquarters to keep a
liason between Samsonov and
general headquarters. With his
roving commission, Voro^tsev
is weU equipped to see bravery
and cowardice of everyone from
privates to Generals. Since it is
he who is the only senior officer to
see the debacle of the second
army, the Grand- Duke asks him
to address the emergency con
ference of Generals. Voro l^t-
sev defends Samsonov, and
accuses the High command of
incompetence, specificly General
Zhilinsky, Samsonov’s im
mediate superior. The Grand-
Duke, who respect Vorotyntsev,
cannot tolerate such criticism of
a senior officer and orders him to
leave the conference. He clicks
his heels, salutes, and leaves the
room. With this the book ends.
Solzhenitsyn raises questions
about Russian involvement in
this war. What has it all been for?
Need it have been like thi^? Is
there any sense in our History?
Where did it all go wrong? ^y
must man exchange on deposite
for another?
It is easy to see why this book,
although widely circi^ted in the
Soviet Union is not published
there legally. August 1914 is, if
nothing else, an implicit rejection
of the Soviet party’s view of
history. Solzhenitsyn denies the
inevitability of history. He im
plies that “history” is a force not
independent of mankind, he takes
the Tolstoyan view of history as
an immediate result of in
terlocking events. Marxism,
defines history in the Hegelian
sense, as a force independent
from the sum of mankind.
At the more definite level, since
Solzhenitsyn never refers to the
subject of history in a definitive
^velopment of abstract ideas, it
is clearly Russia’s involvement
in World War I when she was
hopelessly unfit to rage modem
war. The book attacks the idea
that the common man is a mere
object to be utilized in trenches
by incompetent Generals as
nothing more than cannon fodder
for vague political ideologies. But
the existing soviet system is
strongly attacked for her vague
theories also and we must wait
for the ensuing parts of this
uncompleted epic to be sure of
Solzhenitsyn’s direction in
revealing the War of 1914 as the
direct i^uence of the Russian
Revolution.
August 1914 is a work that
brings to mind War and Peace in
its scope, but Solzhenitsyn is not a
writer to imitate Tolstoy; he
merely completes and carries on
the tradition of creative and
implicit rejection of political
myths that all mankind then and
now must swallow for the sake of
“history”.
Michael Burner
November 29,1972
DISNEY’S FANTASIA
If a list were made up of those
films that stand out as unique
artistic creations and with
qualities that speak to a universal
ear. Fantasia would have to be
included. When the film first
came out, the initial box office
reaction was slow, so Disney
shelved his original idea of
having a whole series of
animated films depicting pic
torial interpretations of per
formances of great music. If this
idea had indeed followed through,
a precedent would have been set
and would have provided a
vehicle to attune a larger
audience to serious music while
making it more accesible to the
average listener. However, that
turn of events never came about
so all we have is a grand
testament to an idea.
As we peruse tiirough the
various scenes presented to us in
Fantasia, one can’t help but
marvel at the masterful in
ventiveness of the animators. By
means of the tedious and
patience-inspiring job of drawing
and painting a frame at a time,
gestures and movements of rare
humor and subtlety have been
created, as in the Dance of the
Hours. As we wind our way
through the fascinating at
mospheres produced by the
Philadelphia Orchestra of 1939
with the announcer from the
Metropolitan Opera as narrator
and Stokowski with gleaming
white hair on the podium, one
gets a feeling of otherworldliness,
a feeling one finds with many
interesting but flawed works of
art.
One consistent criticism of it,
pertaining to form, is that there is
simply too much beautiful color
and imagery; that it tends to
inundate the senses with an
animation tidal wave and lacks
the element of contrast so
essential as a requisite for great
art.
Also, some of the pictorial
interpretations tend to lean
towards a kind of crude
literalness, notably “The Rite of
Spring” and “Night on Bald
Mountain,” that have a
regressive effect on the over-all
conception.
butchery of the music itself.
Besides general deletions and
rearrangements of the scores,
one can also find areas that have
been re-written. A good example
is “The Rite of Spring” by Igor
Stravinsky. Stravinsky had
received a take-it-or-leave-it
offer from the Disney’s New York
Office of five thousand dollars for
the use of“Rite of Spring” in the
pricture. If he refus^ the money,
he was informed, the music
would be used anyway, since it
was copyrighted in Russia, which
did not protect it here because the
U.S. had never signed the Berne
Copyright Convention. Faced
wiUi this deadlock, he gave
permission for the use of the
music.
“I saw the film with George
Balanchine in a Hollywood stu^o
at Christmas time, 1939,” he
wrote later. “I remember
someone offering me a score and,
when I said I had my own, the
someone saying, ‘But it is all
changed.’ It was indeed. The
instrumentation had been im
proved by such stunts as the
homs playing their glissandi an
octave higher in the ‘Danse de la
terre’. The order of the pieces
had been shuffled, too, and the
most difficult of them eliminated-
thou^ this did not save the
musical performance, which was
execrable. I wiU say nothing
about the visual compliment, as I
do not wish to criticize an
unresisting imbecility....”
Another weakness of the film is
the last segment where you have
‘Ni^t on Bald Mountain’ con
tinuing without pause into ‘Ave
Maria’. As a finale of sorts, it
makes an attempt at showing
that good wins out over evil in the
end. The resulting product proves
to be just a little contrived, with
the rationale that anything with
religious connotations would be a
sure-fire ‘artistic’ ending.
Be that as it may, its
drawbacks manage not to detract
from such delightful episodes as
the dancing hippos in “Dance of
the Hours” of Micky Mouse in
“The Sorcerers Apprentice”, or
some of the Nutcracker
sequences. “Fantasia” continues
to have a hypnotic attraction for
young and old alike and, as time
alone can tell, it will probably
remain a classic.
Clifford Young