친기스 아이트마토프와 발렌틴 라스푸틴의 두 갈래 길

Abstract

The two prominent Soviet writers, Chingiz Aitmatov and Valentin Rasputin, share a good deal of similarity, despite of their difference in the ethnic origin. This may be because they were bom in the Eastern part of the former Soviet Union, Kirghiz republic and Irtutsk in Siberia. But in spite of their external similarity, they show us a big artistic difference in the world of their works. This fact may expose us the two different paths which the former Soviet writers may have taken under the dominance of Socialist Realism.

At the center of their art, the two writers place man and his relationship to his fellow man, to society, and to nature. But their problems and conflicts are of a universal nature and transcend the narrow confines of the remote countryside. Valentin Rasputin continuously pays attention to the same topic, the problem of provincial society and people under change. Aitmatov also treats the same problem, but his description of the village under change is greatly different from that of Rasputin. who is always in the stream of village prose. Unlike Rasputin, Aitmatov is never considered as a village prose writer, because the evolution of his creative mastery reaches to the Cosmos, to the Bible.

Among the many examples which show the difference of the two writers, the themes of women, children, and folklore are prominent. At the center of Aitmatovs early stories, up to "Proshchai, Gul'sary!", there are always women, such as Dzhamilia, Asel Altynai. There is much in common between the fate of the women protagonists in Aitmatovs early prose. Most of them break with tradition and with the established pattern of life of the Kirghiz village woman. Their actions express the eternal striving for personal freedom and the desire for happiness, but most fail to achieve the desired contentment and tranquility. Therefore, the theme of the women in the early prose writings is concluded as the tragedy of women in the patriarchal society. The women in Rasputins writings are tragic, too. The major protagonists in all the stories are simple peasant women except Nastena. Since Rasputin values most in Russian women her goodness, tranquility, conscientiousness, and the feeling of an involuntary responsibility and gui1t for all and everything that happens in this world, Rasputins women are

good, devoted, selfless, and ready for self-sacrifice.