19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A classic, April 27, 2003
Gogols Taras Bulba is a good example of how a literary work can return to topicality with a vengeance; not so much news that stays news, as it were, as news that re-emerges as news. Accompanied by a brief introduction by professional geo-pessimist Robert D Kaplan (reprinted in the April 2003 Atlantic magazine), this novella confronts the reader with an account of a pre-modern mindset which is only too relevant to understanding current international events.
Set sometime in the 17th century, Taras Bulba describes the life of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, a people so accustomed to war that it has become the focus of their existence. Taras is a Cossack colonel, an old fighter who has survived into middle age and fathered two sons, now themselves on the verge of manhood. Far from slipping into complacent quiescence, however, he is as warlike as ever, and his sons return home from their seminary studies rouses him to return from semi-retirement to full-time work (i.e. raiding and pillaging). His overriding motive is to initiate his sons into full Cossack manhood. The military or personal consequences are irrelevant. What matters is that his sons must learn war.
After an interval at their stronghold, the Sech, an all-male enclave where the Cossacks practise the arts of peace (i.e. getting roaring drunk), Taras is able, with little difficulty, given the nature of his audience, to foment a campaign against the neighbouring (and therefore enemy) Poles. This situation exemplifies a clash-of-civilizations scenario wherein the Orthodox Cossacks are engaged in chronic conflict with the Catholic Poles on the one hand and the Muslim Turks and Tatars on the other. Taras war goes swimmingly at first (the Cossacks kill many of their enemies), and later not so well (their enemies kill many of the Cossacks).
Gogols account is a subtle blend of folk tale and modern storytelling. The traditional picture would have shown the Cossacks in brighter, more heroic colours, their cause justified by the outrages of their wicked enemies, and their defeat brought about by treachery and betrayal. In Gogols more nuanced presentation, Taras is an out-and-out war-monger and the Cossacks are shown in full, their weaknesses and vices detailed together with their nobility, strengths and virtues. The sorry fates of those lower in the social order, specifically Cossack women and Jews, are not allowed to escape the readers attention, even though these observations are accompanied by a casual anti-Semitism. At the same time, however, Gogol also preserves the magical atmosphere of the folk tale: the horses are swift, the warriors are fierce, the young women are beautiful and the doomed are doomed.
In the end, Taras sons reap the full measure of what their father has sowed. Taras shares their tragedy, of course, but so do all the Cossacks. The geopolitics of endless sporadic warfare have made them a culture where military prowess is the supreme human attribute. In such a context, Taras most natural and benevolent paternal instinct to see his sons become fully established members of the community is diverted into starting an unnecessary war which ends in disaster. Yet in the aftermath Taras does not even think of changing his ways. Rather he intensifies them, draining the bitter cup of war to its dregs. There is no other way: a Cossack cannot become a peacenik.
As Kaplan points out, the mentality of a Taras Bulba is only too relevant to the modern world. Just as recent events have shown that infectious disease is not a vestige of an archaic past, so the various ancient tribalisms, ethnic, national and religious group identities, and the diabolical passions they engender, only recently dismissed as obsolete, are now boiling up again as vigorously as ever. The role of religion in the story is particularly noteworthy. Although the Cossacks place great store by their faith a rock rising from the depths of a stormy ocean its role in their lives is purely totemic. It is the symbol which identifies them and distinguishes them from their enemies. The actual doctrines of this faith specifically its injunctions against violence are entirely ignored; the devoutly Christian Cossacks can throw Jews into the river or skewer Polish newborns without a second thought. Religion, we see, is both remarkably protean and plastic in its interpretations, and whether a faith becomes the talisman of war or peace seems to depend mostly on the culture, circumstances and interests of its adherents.
The world of Taras Bulba, while it may appeal to our desire to be free of the burdensome complexities of modern reality (which likely accounts for the enthusiastic back-jacket blurb by Hemingway), is at least as oppressive as our own, and not simply by virtue of the ever-present threat of violence, but also because of the stultifying force of an all-encompassing group identity, inescapable except through heavy drinking or unconsciousness, and the remorseless sacrifice of humanity to the fighters ethos. Those of us who no longer have to live this way should be thankful.
Modern Library has produced a handsome hardcover edition, but the full price for a novella of only 140 pages will probably only appeal to cosmopolitan sophisticates. The wretched of the earth will have to wait for the paperback version.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Barbarians Abound, September 2, 2004
I love Gogol. I love him when he is funny and I love him when he is sad. After reading Taras Bulba, I also love his "adventure" story. The book is decidedly anti-Semitic in tone but I think this is mostly a reflection of the subject matter. I see it as a kind of a show the demon for what it is. Russian society and especially the Cossacks were not the friendliest place for Jewish people. As is obvious in Taras Bulba, they also had little love for the Poles, the Turks and the Tartars. At this crossroads of the world, hatred was abundant. The fact that Gogol pulled no punches with his descriptions illustrates his honesty. Unfortunately, the Cossack mentality of either being with me or against me seems to inform the modern world as well.
What is really interesting for me is the comparison of Taras Bulba with And Quiet Flows the Don and Tolstoy's Cossacks. All three are very different illustrations of Cossack life, from bias but honorable villains in Gogol to stories of heroes in Tolstoy to Sholokov's sad demise of a way of life. Any way you look at it, the Cossacks are an interesting subject matter. So, that all being said, I suggest you read this book. It is short and fast and works on multiple levels.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
That violence and that mentality are still with us, July 13, 2006
"Taras Bulba" is a magnificent story which portraits the life of the Ucrainian Cossacks who lived by the river Dnieper in the XVI Century. Taras Bulba is an old and hardened warrior who feels a little rusty by the lack of action. When his two sons return from school at Kiev, he eagerly takes them to the "setch", the camping and training island of the Cossacks. There they spend their time drinking and remembering old glories. It happens that the Cossacks are going through an uneasy truce with their Turkish hegemones and the Tartar horsemen. Taras Bulba, always the warmonger, harangues the Cossacks, engineers a change in leadership and leads them to attack the Catholic Poles (with religious arguments and some information that the Poles have shut down Orthodox churches and vexated priests). The Cossacks ride West, razing down everything they meet with extraordinary brutality, and they set siege on a walled city. It is there where the drama surfaces: Andrew, Taras's younger son, finds out the woman he loves is inside the city, and through her maid he learns that they are starving. He goes into deep agony, a moral dilemma, and finds himself in an impossible situation. I won't spoil the rest for you, but believe me this is one of the cruellest and bloodiest tales you'll ever read. It brings to life religious and racial hatred in all its crudity and absurdity. It reminds you of Tolstoi's story about the old Chechenian warrior, Hadji Murad (especially now that Shamil Basayev was killed). But even for all its brutality and sadness, it is masterful.
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