Myth in the Works of Chingiz Aitmatov

Nina Kolesnikoff. in the Works of Chingiz Aitmatov. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999. 133 pp. $34.00, cloth. Since the 1970s myth and legend have played a predominant role in Aitmatov's writings. And, as Nina Kolesnikoff points out, myth's role might have been too predominant. While Aitmatov's oeuvre has reflected his Kirghiz heritage from the very start, he employed elements of Central Asian epic and song traditions only sporadically early in his career. However, his pre-1970 writings are treated only briefly here. Professor Kolesnikoff goes on to devote separate chapters to The White Steamship (Belyi parokhod, 1970) and to Spotted Dog Running Along the Seashore (Pegii pes, begushchii kraem moria, 1977), works she extols as Aitmatov's most successful in the use of mythology. Her point, and it is well taken, is that in these works a single dominant myth, recounted relatively briefly in each case, mirrors the realistic action of the narrative and, what is more, serves to mediate between the past and the present. The ancient tale permeates every aspect of the work: the plot and the characters; the moral (a central concern in Aitmatov's exploitation of myth); and the elemental struggle that is at the core-between good and evil in the first story, between people and the forces of nature in the second. While in The White Steamship both the legend of the Deer-Mother and the chief characters are Kirghiz, in the later story the myth and the heroes belong to the Nivkhi, a small nationality from Eastern Siberia. This reaching out beyond his Kirghiz origins becomes more and more typical for Aitmatov's later writing. Consider, for example, the use of Kazakh legends in The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years (I dol'she veka dlitsia den, 1980), the significance of the Gospels for The Place of the Skull (Plakha, 1986) and the importance of Greek myth, along with Biblical allusions, in The Mark of Cassandra (Tavro Kassandry, 1994). While some of Aitmatov's sources are clear (e.g., the New Testament, the Cassandra story), in other instances he draws upon less familiar regional legends and literary works. Kolesnikoff s study provides a notable service in suggesting sources for specific motifs in these longer works as well as in tracing the manifestations of myth throughout Aitmatov's later writings. Throughout, the volume contains valuable remarks on the ways in which Aitmatov modifies and interprets his sources, on the moral and ethical issues raised by the use of myth, and on the manner in which folkloric and mythic elements open up his works temporally, spatially, and thematically. The book offers an important perspective from which to view many of Aitmatov's major writings. But its approach at times sees more limited than need be. Chapter 1, Myth and Literary Criticism, offers a thoughtful if perhaps too brief introduction to the problem of defining myth as well as to the use of myth in modem literature. However, few of the topics discussed here seem to inform the later chapters, where the more theoretical sections of the analyses frequently fall back on elucidating binary oppositions in the text as reflecting the influence of myth. With all the contemporary scholarship on this topic, there would seem to be occasion for further probing into the complex relationships between myth and literature. …

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