Brain Pain discussion
The Tartar Steppe - Spine 2015
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Discussion - Week One - The Tartar Steppe - Chapter 1 - 10
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I relate to one of the overt motives in the book: Drogo's impulse to stay on at the fort because of the mystical impression of a landscape not yet seen, or a redoubt not yet visited, or a potential event. I get that way with doors, or I used to. In a very irrational move, I think that one reason I selected the first university I attended (though I transferred later) was because, while visiting the campus, I saw an intriguing doorway but didn't enter to see what was inside. Part of me just had to go there even knowing that nothing extraordinary would be there. The doorway was tantalizing. (It was a basement pub with a pool table, by the way).In rereading the book, I have some qualms. The author is rather blunt/direct in some sense. For instance, I remembered the atmosphere being mysterious and vaguely suggestive. Now I realize that the book creates that impression by routinely telling you that the atmosphere is mysterious and vaguely suggestive.
Still, the book has its effect. It's strangely suspenseful while not being suspenseful, i.e., even when you kind of already know what to expect in the next scene, you can feel dragged into it fatally, like the character.
Also notable: the protagonist is not extraordinary at the outset, and he seems rather contemptibly self-interested, weak-willed, and unprincipled. Not bad. Not good. Not such an idealist. A schlub. But one can feel his desire to be at least a few steps closer to extraordinary. Which I guess is kind of the point.
I think comparison to Kafka is inevitable. The book does have a bit of a less-overtly-absurd "Kafkaesque" quality. It shows itself as early as the evocative opening when Drogo meets Captain Ortiz across the ravine, and we get the sense of everything being a potential misstep... his impulse to shout across to Ortiz leads to the foolish "excuse" that he didn't recognize that he was addressing a captain because it was too far to see his rank (which is invalidated by the fact that he shouted "Captain!" to get his attention).
I read this last fall with my in-person book group, and with it we read some of the same author's short stories, including one called 'Le K', which was in some ways sort of a miniature of this story, though with maybe a harder edge of fear as motivation for its principal character. I think it made it hard for me to trudge through the entirety of this one. (A great review of the story collection on this site said, the moral of each story is, and then, he woke up and realized too late that he had wasted his entire life.)Unlike you, Zad, I thought his motivations for staying were more negative than positive: negative in the sense that he lacked something rather than that he was seeking something, not in the sense that they were good or bad. I can sort of relate to this state of mind: a sort of irrational inertia. I think many people stay in jobs they don't actually hate, but which aren't that great for this same reason. They just get there and then they are there and then they stay there because they are there.
I think, rather, that he found mystery and suggestion to fill his days because he stayed, not that he stayed because he found mystery and suggestion. Consequently, I felt very little suspense, even of the non-suspenseful kind, but rather a sort of familiar and comfortable dreamy inaction.
You have a good point, and Chapter 10 supports you:"Suppose the trumpets had sounded, suppose he had heard martial songs, suppose disturbing messages had come from the north--if that had been all there was to it Drogo would have left just the same; but he had within him dull sluggishness born of habit, military vanity, love for the accustomed walls which were his home. Four months passing with the monotonous rhythm of routine duties had been enough to entrammel him."
However, I'd say that there's more to it, there are multiple factors at play, and perhaps then there is a bit more nuance. He might not have stayed just because of the perception of honor or adventure (illusory or not), and he might not have stayed just due to inertia either (others like him manage to leave, and it was his first impulse to leave, though even on his first day he was partially enchanted... the ambivalence was there from the very start). It has to be a conspiracy of forces, the sense (rational or not) that it's his destiny to stay, or the honorable thing to do (a faith that has enchanted the old timers before his arrival) combined with the more base tendency to stay inert and rationalize the "easier" choice.
In any event, at the close of chapter 9, when he decided to reject the false medical report, I felt for a moment (as he did) that he was becoming a bit more noble for having made that choice... even though the very next chapter works to undermine that impression, or at least cast doubt on it.
There is a bit of a paradox in it all. How can "better the devil I know than the devil I don't" lead to the same conclusion as "I would rather choose the extraordinary than the ordinary"? But somehow they both can support his staying on at the fort. (I've gotten acclimated and really I didn't have anything much better to expect from my life in the city... I'm enchanted by the potential of the place and I will sacrifice even my youth and my life for that potential).
Of course, part of the fatality, from the P.O.V. of the reader, part of the sense of non-suspenseful suspense, comes from the fact that we know within a few chapters that he can't just walk away from the fort without finding out what's out on the Tartar Steppe, or there would be no book. Can we imagine a book where 1/3 of the way in, Drogo goes back to the city to do something more reasonable with his life?
I'm rather behind (chap III) and have no chance of catching up, but The Tartar Steppe has been a breath of fresh air after the morass of books I've been reading recently.Somewhere (GR? Wikipedia?) I read that this book captures the sentiment of Europe in the period between the two Great Wars. The sense of unfinished business, the anticipation of future conflict, and the fatigue of waiting for it to happen.
On the first two pages or so, Drogo seems hopeful about his new life as a lieutenant. But the turn to meaninglessness/insignificance is rather quick. Already on p. 3, his future seems to be sketched in the phrase "as if he were about to set our on a journey of no return".Life at the fort not only seems to be an unfulfilled and unfulfilling waiting for possible heroic deeds, but even seems to involve a loss of identity: "he had to be a man, had to laugh with them and tell swash-buckling stories about women and the soldier's life" (p. 47) rather than being truthful about his thoughts and feelings. But ironically, once given the opportunity to express these in a letter to his mother, he writes "on the whole...I am very happy and am keeping well."
"It was from the northern steppe that their fortune would come, their adventure...Because of this remote possibility...grown men lived out their lives pointlessly here in the Fort." (p. 60)
But this longing for great deeds and events takes over their lives, perhaps even becomes their lives: when Drogo arrives at the fort, it is described as rather small and insignificant, but when after four months the doctor gives him the opportunity to leave, it says "Never before had Drogo noticed that the Fort was so complicated and immense." (p. 73) It appears to have become a synecdoche for his life and his life's expectations.
I am curious to see where this is going.
Mod
I read the story as being a metaphor for a man's life in general. Working hard in school/military academy, finding that first job/post, learning the procedures and rules of the corporation/fort, dealing with supervisors/commanders, waiting for success/victory, etc.
Jim, I agree. And also the foreword seems to support this interpretation. But it is so dark; for a while I was hoping that the book wouldn't be this bleak. I just finished reading it and will write more (to avoid spoilers) on the pages for the appropriate weeks.
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