And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov

Published 1928 · 700 pages · 197,974 words · about 13 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, War Fiction

How hard is And Quiet Flows the Don to read?

And Quiet Flows the Don scores 47 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 45 out of 100
Cossack vocabulary, Russian terms in translation.
Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
Epic prose following many characters.
Abstraction: 45 out of 100
History and fate explored through Cossack life.
Information density: 55 out of 100
Dense with Revolution and Civil War history.
Narrative indirection: 45 out of 100
Multiple perspectives on same historical events.
Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
The Don, Cossack life, Grigory carry symbolic weight.
Ironic distance: 40 out of 100
Sholokhov writes with evident Cossack sympathy.
Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
History unfolds; Grigory's fate continues.
Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
Epic spanning years with many characters.

How And Quiet Flows the Don is regarded

And Quiet Flows the Don holds a literary regard score of 81 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Prizes

Where And Quiet Flows the Don sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (405 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, And Quiet Flows the Don scores 70 out of 100. A second mythos, tragedy, pulls at it with a weight of 0.25. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
And what had really happened? Men had clashed on the field of death, and, embraced by mortal terror, had fought, struck, inflicted blind blows on one another, wounded one another’s horses; then they had turned and fled, frightened by a shot which had killed one of their number.
Symbol: Formal
Not like an azure and blood-red blossom, but like wayside henbane is a woman’s belated love.
Mythos: Tragic Pathos (Irony phase 4) (irony iv)
In the years of trouble and pother, Brothers judge not your brother.
Genre: Novel + Anatomy

Where the story of And Quiet Flows the Don takes place

  • The Don Cossack lands, revolution and civil war, 1912-1922 (1912 to 1922), the main setting
  • Tatarsk village on the Upper Don, 1912-1918 (1912 to 1918)
  • Galician, Polish and Romanian fronts, 1914-1917 (1914 to 1917)
  • Petrograd and Rostov-Novocherkassk during Kornilov affair, Revolution and civil war, 1917-1918 (1917 to 1918)

7 things that are true of And Quiet Flows the Don, with the passage for each

  1. A Turkish captive wife brought home by Prokoffey is accused of witchcraft and trampled to death.

    On the kitchen threshold, in a pool of blood, her head flung back awkwardly, lay Prokoffey’s wife

  2. Natalia tries to kill herself with a scythe after receiving Gregor's four-word note.

    ‘Live alone. Gregor Melekhov.’

  3. Gregor receives a letter in 1914 telling his family he was killed, though he later turns out alive.

    I have to inform you that your son Gregor Pantalievitch Melekhov, a cossack in the Twelfth Don Cossack Regiment, was killed on the twenty-ninth of August

  4. Gregor beats Eugene Listnitsky with a knout after learning he slept with Aksinia.

    ‘That’s for Aksinia! That’s for me! For Aksinia! Another for Aksinia! For me!’

  5. Valet, a Red Guard, spares a German soldier at the front, calling himself a Social-Democrat.

    ‘Run, German! I’ve got no grudge against you! I won’t shoot!’

  6. Bunchuk shoots the captured officer Kalmikov at a water tower in Narva.

    The bullet struck him in the mouth.

  7. Podtielkov is hanged and survives the first drop, his toes touching the ground.

    His great body fell and dangled, but his feet touched the ground.

Scenes in And Quiet Flows the Don that Frye would name

21 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Pharmakos, untitled
‘Drag your witch out here! We’re going to try her …’ Prokoffey's Turkish wife is scapegoated for the cattle deaths and killed by the village crowd.
Sparagmos, untitled
Under Zharkov’s belly the rosy and blue intestines hung smoking. Body torn apart by an aerial bomb.
Pathos, untitled
she slashed her throat with its point. Natalia's attempted suicide is a sacrificial death scene.
Anatomy, untitled
The bourgeoisie is deluding the masses by cloaking the imperialist spoliation with the old ideology of a “national” war. Embedded Lenin article read aloud in the dugout.
Senex iratus, untitled
‘I’ll marry you! I’ll marry you to the village idiot!’ Pantaleimon blocks Gregor's love for Aksinia and forces a marriage.
Alazon, untitled
‘Maria Fiodorovna, Maria Fiodorovna! Get up quickly and get a samovar going, Ivan Avdeitch has arrived.’ Avdeitch the Bragger tells absurdly inflated lies; Kruchkov's later fake heroism is the same type.

Books that share these scenes with And Quiet Flows the Don

About the author

Mikhail Sholokhov