A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kiš

First published:Grobnica za Borisa Davidoviča, 1976 (English translation, 1978)

Type of work: Social criticism

Time of work: From the 1920’s to the 1970’s

Locale: The Soviet Union and Central Europe

Principal Characters:

• Boris Davidovich, a Russian revolutionary
• Edouard Herriot, the leader of the French Radical Socialists
• A. L. Chelyustnikov, a Russian revolutionary
• Karl Taube, a Hungarian revolutionary
• Fedukin, a secret police investigator
• Baruch David Neumann, a refugee from Germany and a former Jew

The Novel

A Tomb for Boris Davidovich consists of seven loosely related stories, which could be read separately. They all share one element, however, that gives them an organic unity. The first story, “The Knife with the Rosewood Handle,” takes place, for the most part, in Bukovina, a part of Romania (now part of the Soviet Union) in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Miksha, a handyman who “could sew on a button in ten seconds,” works for a Jewish shopkeeper until he is fired for skinning a skunk in his master’s yard. Afterward, Miksha becomes acquainted with a revolutionary, Aimicke, who introduces him to the underground. In their secret activity, they suspect that a police informer is in their midst. Miksha takes it upon himself to uncover and punish the traitor; he decides that the traitor is a young girl named Hanna Krzyzewska and murders her. Later, it turns out that it was Aimicke who was informing the police about the group’s activities. Miksha, who has fled to the Soviet Union, is arrested and induced to confess that he worked for the Gestapo, in the process implicating twelve Russian officials, who, with Miksha, receive sentences of twenty years of hard labor.

In the second story, “The Sow That Eats Her Farrow,” a disenchanted Irishman, Gould Vershoyle, leaves his homeland in search of a better place to live. He winds up fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. When he informs his commander of his suspicion that Moscow is masterminding the war (not knowing that his superior is a Soviet agent), Vershoyle is sent to the Soviet Union, where he perishes in the gulag in 1945.

In “The Mechanical Lions,” Edouard Herriot, the leader of the French Radical Socialists, is intrigued by the Soviet system of government and makes a visit to the Soviet Union in order to see whether religion is suppressed there. Everything during the visit is staged, and Herriot goes home convinced that there is indeed religious freedom in the Soviet Union. The man in charge of his visit, A.L. Chelyustnikov, is later arrested and makes a false confession implicating others. After serving his sentence, he visits Lyons and signs his name in a guest book as “an admirer of the work of Edouard Herriot.”

“The Magic Card Dealing” shows another European revolutionary, a Hungarian doctor named Karl Taube, who follows his political sympathies to the Soviet Union, where he is arrested and spends years in various labor camps. As a doctor, he saves the fingers of a man who cut them in order to gain his release. When this same prisoner wins a card game with another inmate, he arranges for the revenge murder of Taube by the loser.

The main story, “A Tomb for Boris Davidovich,” also deals with a revolutionary who has fought against the czarist regime from his early youth. He becomes an important official during the 1920’s, only to fall out of grace and land in prison, where he is mercilessly interrogated by Fedukin, a master at his trade. Davidovich is asked to sign a confession of treason and to implicate others, which he refuses to do. After attempting to commit suicide several times, he finally agrees to be shot as a traitor rather than be hanged as a common thief. He is not shot after all but is sent instead to a labor camp, where he dies in 1937 during an escape attempt.

In “Dogs and Books,” Danilo Kiš goes back in time to fourteenth century France during the pogroms against the Jews. Baruch David Neumann, a refugee from Germany and a former Jew, agrees to be converted to Christianity to save his life. Later, he recants, claiming that he agreed to conversion only under duress. After changing his mind several times, finding it impossible to renounce Judaism, he perishes under mysterious circumstances.

“The Short Biography of A.A. Darmolatov” (an obscure contemporary Soviet writer) is the most incongruous story in the novel. It is not quite clear why this man is depicted—whether because he was at one time connected with Davidovich, or because he has developed mental problems trying to be a successful writer under oppressive conditions, or because he has become a medical phenomenon by developing elephantiasis. It is also the only story in which there are no victims, Jews or others, and in which no one is arrested or forced to sign an involuntary confession.

The Characters

The main character of the novel is Boris Davidovich, a Jew and a revolutionary from the days of his early manhood. He presents a picture of the classical revolutionary: brave, resolute, bold, cool, resourceful, loyal to the cause, and blind to questioning of his ideology. It is not quite clear whether he joins the revolutionary struggle out of a sense of justice or in quest of action or adventure, but it does not matter; once he decides to participate he does so with resolution. This steadfastness may explain why Davidovich persistently resists the efforts of Fedukin to break him during the endless hours of interrogation and torture. It is symptomatic of Davidovich’s character that, once it is clear that he will die, he wants to die as an honorable man who has fought tenaciously for his cause rather than as a common thief. In this sense, he epitomizes the countless revolutionaries throughout the world who are convinced they are fighting for the right cause but are stymied in their efforts. Be that as it may, Davidovich is a classic example of a fighter who pays the ultimate price unjustly.

Karl Taube is another example of a revolutionary who pays this price, but in a somewhat different way. An intellectual who joins the struggle out of a clear, rational decision to help better the world, he becomes a victim of the whims of blind fate. He too is senselessly sacrificed by the leadership, for if they had not sent him to prison for no apparent reason, he would not be in the position to be murdered by common criminals there. Taube dies as a well-meaning but somewhat naive intellectual who tries to use reason in solving problems in a situation that is governed by passion and blind hatred.

This situation is not the same with two other characters who stand out in the novel—Chelyustnikov and Fedukin. Both serve the Revolution faithfully but with a different attitude. Chelyustnikov is a typical aparatchik (an organization man), who is not only unquestioningly loyal to the cause but also without any compelling intellectual reason. He does everything that the Revolution asks him to do, even when it requires of him to play the role of a fall guy. Nevertheless, one cannot escape the conclusion that he is doing it for purely opportunistic reasons or simply out of inertia. Otherwise, he would express his doubt in the righteousness of the cause, for which he has ample opportunities.

Fedukin, on the other hand, is in the revolutionary struggle for reasons that stem from the dark recesses of his character, out of his need to do evil and hurt people to satisfy his atavistic impulses. That is the only explanation for his zeal in torturing his victims, be they guilty or innocent, especially his former comrades. He is therefore a villain incarnate, without any alleviating circumstance or rational explanation.

One other character, Baruch David Neumann, deserves to be mentioned. Having lived in the fourteenth century, he has no apparent relation to the happenings of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, he suffers the same indignities and, eventually, death for a related reason—man’s intolerance for people of different mind and belief.

These and the other characters, however, are only sketchily developed because the author’s intention was not to create well-rounded characters but rather to show what they stand for as types.

Critical Context

A Tomb for Boris Davidovich is a typical thesis novel and thus represents the frequent phenomenon in contemporary literature of the heavily politicized novel. It is important for the reader to know that Danilo Kiš comes from an East European country, one where occurrences similar to those in the novel have taken place. In this manner, Kiš joins several writers, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Voinovich, Milan Kundera, and Josef Skvorecky, who have voiced similar concerns in their works. Kiš is less openly political than Solzhenitsyn and Voinovich, however, and more akin to Kundera. Kiš prefers to refer directly to historical and political events and to personalities and to deal with literature of facts, rather than to couch his works in tones of allegory and irony. He is direct and uncompromising when it comes to his main theses.

The novel provoked a great controversy and quickly became a literary cause celebre when it appeared, not only in Yugoslavia but also abroad. Kiš was accused of plagiarism, of lifting entire passages from archives and other sources, an accusation that he was able to refute easily by pointing out that he had used the collage technique deliberately and had quoted the sources used. The controversy lasted several years and divided the literary community, involving aesthetic judgments, political considerations, and emotional reactions. In the last analysis, it was more of a political argument than anything else, for it was clear that Kiš’s frontal attack on the remnants of Stalinism in Yugoslavia, adroitly couched in the depiction of a Soviet milieu, had struck sensitive nerves. The relatively free literary conditions in Yugoslavia, along with Kiš’s polemic verve, carried the day for him and for his novel.

Aside from this affair, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich can be considered a landmark in Kiš’s literary opus. It confirms his belief in literature based on fact and in the artistic treatment of nonliterary subject matter. It also marks a turning away from the personal concerns in his earlier works toward more universal themes. Much more than a political dispute, it is a testimonial to man’s yearning for freedom and dignity, which, together with Kiš’s artistic skill, has made this novel an important work in world literature.

Bibliography

Czarny, Norbert. “Imaginary-Real Lives: On Danilo Kiš,” in Cross Currents. III (1984), pp. 279-284.

Shishkoff, Serge. “Kosava in a Coffee Pot,” in Cross Currents. VI (1987), pp. 341-371.

Vitanovic, Slobodan. “Thematic Unity in Danilo Kiš’s Literary Works,” in Relations. Nos. 9/10 (1979), pp. 66-69.

White, Edmund. “Danilo Kiš: The Obligations of Form,” in Southwest Review. LXXI (Summer, 1986), pp. 363-377.

Zimmerman, Zora Devrnja. Review in World Literature Today. LIII (Autumn, 1979), p. 713.