Konstantine Simonov

"Now we will talk," said Konstantine Simonov, "but first let me tell you something about myself. Then each of you can tell me something about yourself." Speaking through an interpreter, the Soviet novelist talked of his years as a war correspondent, his career as a writer and editor and of his home and family in Moscow. Placing his hands on his knees, he then turned to one student after another and listened intently as each spoke of his plans, studies and family background.

These introductions, which immediately relaxed the atmosphere and made it almost intimate, are typical of Simonov's continual interest in other people, an honest concern which lies behind the force of his personal charm as well as the strength of much of his writing. One of the most versatile writers in the Soviet Union, an experienced critic and journalist, a poet, novelist and playwright, K. M. Simonov is best known in this country for his great war novel, Days and Nights, and for such lyrical poems as "Wait for Me" and "Do You Remember." During his brief visit to the University last week, Simonov, acting on his own initiative, spent Thursday evening talking to undergraduates in the Adams House common room.

Asked what he wrote about, the Russian answered simply, "I write about people in war."

"What is it you try and do when you write? Is there anything special you want to express, any social message?"

"I try to show life as it is. If what I write is true, then there will be some social meaning in it. When I write a novel I want to express my view of life. Whether it is the right or wrong view, it apparently contains some ideas and perhaps in some of these there is some truth."

Although he knows almost no English, Simonov has read a good deal of American literature in translation. While his reading seems to have centered around the more socially conscious novelists of the twenties and thirties--John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis--his favorite contemporary author is Ernest Hemingway. "Hemingway writes about many of the same things I'm concerned with. He shows how war is a tragedy, something terrible and unnatural, and yet something which can bring out what is good and noble in people."

This affinity for Hemingway is also evident throughout Days and Nights. With its terse, ungarnished lines, its relatively simple, folkish characters, and its love story, evolving in the midst of battle, this novel is especially reminiscent of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Yet, beneath the Hemingwayesque prose, characters, and situation, there runs a strong nationalistic strain which lends Days and Nights its own, special power and gives it a quality very different from that of the Hemingway novel.

When the conversation turned to Soviet films, Simonov became more animate. Asked how he liked The Cranes Are Flying, Simonov replied that, although he had no argument with it "in principal," he thought it was overdone. "Their suffering was a little too beautiful. It was not real."

Simonov then began to describe a film which he felt had been better done, Ballad of a Soldier. As he retold the plot, his hands, which are nearly always active, became powerfully expressive. He would push his fist forward with a twisting motion, suddenly pull a chunk of space toward himself with both hands; sometimes, when he was looking for a word, he would feel the air with his fingers in a "je ne sais quoi" gesture. Then he would explain, "I can't say it. I can just express it like this, with my fingers."

In the U.S.S.R., in addition to doing his own creative work, Simonov is also an active and very important member of the Union of Writers. As literary editor of the Union magazine, Novyi Mir, he was among the first who read and refused to publish Doctor Zhivago. "There were two reasons why I didn't like the book. First, it seemed to me that Pasternak considered the February revolution a good thing and that he thought the October revolution was evil. I think the October revolution was a good thing. So, from the standpoint of ideas, I disagreed. Then, the fact was, that to me, this was a very boring book. Pasternak is quite a talented poet and he has made some magnificent translations of Shakespeare into Russian; but, as a prose writer, he is very poor."

"Can we assume, then," someone asked, "that the book was withheld for the second reason?"

"No. It was because of the first reason that we didn't publish it. Why should I lie to you? We have to speak honestly to each other or it doesn't pay to talk at all. The book was withheld for political reasons. But please believe me, it was my sincere opinion that this was a bad book. As an editor I can't be condemned to publish what I don't like."

Asked earlier in he converation, "Are you a Marxist?" Simonov replied in a low voice, but with obvious pride, "I am a Communist" (i.e. a party member). When he was asked, however, whether or not he wrote Marxist books, he smiled and said "I never thought of describing my work in just that way. I was never particularly good in philosophy and so my books aren't very philosophical. Just the same, I can see no contradiction between my writing and my politics."

Looking at Simonov's work one finds Communism rarely mentioned. The emphasis is rather on nationalism and on people. Communism is affirmed indirectly, however, because the people and nation about which Simonov cares all accept it. One is reminded of a passage in Days and Nights in which a priest, the father of one of the soldiers is being described: "... he was a powerful man, and sometimes a rough one. But the father had never known hatred. He had not loved the demobilized Red Army soldier, Stepanyuk, who had opened a branch of "The Society of the Godless" in his village. He had not loved the president of the village soviet, who had wanted to close all the churches. He had not loved two or three more men, who in their turn had not loved him. But all these taken together, calling themselves Soviet Russia, he could not hate. He called it "Russia" himself, or sometimes "little Russia," and he loved its hills, its pastures, its woods; he loved his own village, Gorodisha; he loved the people who lived in the houses next to his." For Simonov, however, one suspects all these things are called Communist Russia, and this may partly explain his quiet pride in being a Communist. But what he is primarily concerned with is not the name, but the things themselves, the land and most especially the people.