Under the Devil's Law: "negative school" and education for evil in Kolyma Tales, by Varlam Shalamov

Abstract

SummaryIn Kolyma Tales, Varlam Shalamov recounts his experience in the world of Soviet labor camps. Countless characters make up this frame: the Blatar, a prisoner already formed by the laws of banditry; the porchak, a sporadic criminal, partially corrupted but not yet a blatar; the fraier, an ordinary man, naive in the world of crime and victim of other prisoners. Along with trained criminals, lawyers, engineers, political prisoners, intellectuals, men who do not come from the criminal world need to adapt to survive under laws they did not yet know. From the tension between these characters, new psychological laws emerge, new behaviors that govern the life of prisoners, limiting attitudes, leading actions and thoughts, leading ordinary prisoners to new experiences. In Chalámov's words, the experience in the countryside constitutes a "negative school", thus suggesting a new education for all who pass by there. The main objective of this project is to analyze the tensions between these characters, formed or not in the criminal world, in order to show how the new laws force the individual to a new education within the prison environment, thus reinforcing the classification of "negative school " given by the author. As part of the formation of the author-artist in Kolimá and as part of the main objective, this project also proposes the analysis of the literary genres present in the idea of the "new prose" in Kolyma Tales, since the genres short story and essay they are manifested in a very particular way in this work and are at the service of the faithful representation of the forced labor camp. This analysis of prose is understood as something fundamental to critically enter the maximum work of Varlam Shalamov.