Fazil Iskander’s Novel Sandro of Chegem in the Light of the Abkhazian Code “Apsuara”, by Olga Kozel

Olga Kozel is a writer, journalist and literary scholar. She graduated from the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute and completed postgraduate studies at the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, defending in 2006 a dissertation on the prose and poetics of Fazil Iskander.

Kozel has worked for Cosmopolitan, Trud, and Vechernyaya Moskva, and serves as Head of the Press Office of the Russian Spiritual Theatre GLAS. She is a member of the Union of Journalists and the Moscow Union of Writers.

Today, no one would venture to dispute that Fazil Iskander’s prose constitutes a distinctive, wholly individual world of images, concepts, and narrative lines, unified by the author into a single artistic system. For several decades now, this system has been the subject of debate, one of the central themes being its conditional division into “Russian” and “Abkhazian” components.

To accept the very possibility of such a division, one must first examine the causal assumptions that encourage us to separate what is unified and harmonious into disparate, supposedly non-complementary parts.

On the surface, the reasons appear obvious: we are dealing with Russian-language prose written by an Abkhaz author who never wrote in his native language. The situation of bilingualism (as in the case of the “dual-language” Chingiz Aitmatov and certain writers of the North) is entirely absent here, although all the prerequisites for it seemed to exist. From Iskander’s biography we know that he was born and raised in Abkhazia, in a family that spoke both Abkhaz and Russian. He knew both cultures thoroughly, and in his artistic system their components are fused into a unified whole: although there is no formal bilingualism, there is a synthesis of two cultures.

It is significant that the “place of action” in his prose is not only the protected Abkhazian “Chegem” — a kind of cultic image of an Abkhaz earthly paradise — but also many Russian cities, for example Moscow. Yet even in the latter case, these Russian cities are seen through the eyes of an Abkhaz. Many of his works contain elements of the Abkhaz code of etiquette, Apsuara, examined not only from an Abkhazian but also from a Russian perspective. At the same time, the poetics of Iskander’s prose belong unmistakably to the Russian classical tradition.

All this points precisely to the impossibility of dividing the writer’s artistic system into Russian and Abkhazian parts. We must acknowledge the existence of a phenomenon: the creative work of a major writer situated at the intersection of two cultures, absorbing elements of both Russian and Abkhazian traditions. If such a formulation is accepted, many questions (incidentally, questions resistant to academically grounded solutions) will fall away of their own accord.

Yet this formulation does not imply that a deeper literary analysis, identifying traditionally Russian and Abkhazian elements, lacks interest.

In particular, it is instructive to consider elements of the Abkhazian code Apsuara in Iskander’s most monumental work, the novel Sandro of Chegem. Traditionally, the code Apsuara has been defined as a set of rules governing Abkhaz etiquette. In reality, this definition is too narrow; it fails to capture the essence of a concept that is central in many respects to Abkhaz culture, as is clear even from the translation of the word itself. Apsuara (literally “Abkhazianness”) encompasses not only etiquette but the spiritual core of the nation.

Apsuara is, in a sense, a Sacred Book for the Abkhaz.

By way of illustration, let us recall an excerpt from a well-known poem by the Abkhaz poet Taif Adzhba:

…We have no cause to envy the rich man:
Wealth is never enough for him.
But I wish to remain a human being —
Thank you, Apsuara!

The ancient law is filled with grandeur,
It is close to the young and the old alike.
And if the fire should vanish from the world,
Apsuara will replace it.

And let it continue thus for hundreds of years,
Through storms, snows, and foul weather.
My Apsuara, my little flag,
You beat like a pulse within my wrist!

The code Apsuara may conditionally be divided into three parts:

1. Customs connected with clan, hearth, and kinship relations.
   
2. Customs connected directly with etiquette.
   
3. Customs connected with blood revenge.
   

The novel Sandro of Chegem is a work written by an Abkhaz about Abkhaz. As noted above, Apsuara is an inseparable spiritual and moral foundation of the national consciousness upon which the mentality of an entire people rests. Consequently, a large-scale work such as Sandro of Chegem cannot be perceived apart from it.

To test the validity of this assertion, let us turn to several chapters of the novel.

As an example of the first part of the code (customs connected with clan, hearth, and kinship), we may examine the chapter “The Feasts of Belshazzar”. In this chapter, while describing in detail a government banquet in Abkhazia, the author offers a vivid artistic portrait of the Soviet “Belshazzar” — Joseph Stalin. Let us consider one artistic device used to cast the leader in an unmistakably negative light.

Listening to the song performed by the Abkhaz Song and Dance Ensemble, “Fly, Black Swallow, Fly”, Stalin, imagining an idyllic return to the Caucasus, thinks of his mother:

“…Chickens, drunk on grape pressings, wander about the yard, listening to their strange condition; the peasant, awaiting him, bows respectfully; his mother, hearing the creak of the cart, looks out from the kitchen and smiles at her son. A kind old mother with a wrinkled face. At least in her old age honour and comfort have come at last: Kind one: Be you damned!”

He then recalls insulting village gossip about his mother and clearly does not forgive her for it.

Viewed through the prism of Apsuara, the character appears in the most negative light imaginable within the Caucasian consciousness.

First, the very word “mother”, according to Apsuara, is sacred, and its conjunction with a curse constitutes sacrilege.

Second, for all Caucasians, and for the Abkhaz in particular, the dignity of the clan is of immense importance; here the chastity of women carries far greater weight than wealth or noble origin. In other words, the son of a woman about whom dishonourable rumours circulate will always bear her shame. In the Caucasus, a man born of such a woman is perceived as inseparable from that disgrace. The fact that Stalin was Georgian rather than Abkhaz is irrelevant: Georgians not only recognise the moral law of neighbouring Abkhazia, but regard it in many respects as binding upon themselves, especially in matters concerning clan and kinship.

It is also worth noting another artistic device Iskander employs in portraying leaders. They frequently appear under characteristic designations: Lenin as “The One Who Wanted Good”, Stalin as “The Big-Moustached One”, Lakoba as “The Deaf One”, and so forth. This too is directly connected with Abkhaz etiquette, whereby animals are given descriptive substitute names to deceive evil spirits: a horse becomes “The Hoof-Striker”, a fox “The Cunning One”, and so on. Here, however, we may speak of a double wisdom: at the time in which the novel’s events occur, calling certain people by their real names was extremely dangerous, and so the characters resorted to such Aesopian language.

To illustrate the novel’s connection with the second part of Apsuara, we may turn to an episode from the chapter “A Big Day of the Big House”.

Here, among other things, the return of a married daughter beneath the roof of her parental home is described:

“The mother, who had run up together with her sons, embraced her daughter and, kissing her, clung to her. Then the grandmother approached her granddaughter with dignity, passed her hand several times near her face, which meant: ‘May your illnesses fall upon my head!’ — and then embraced her.”

The final phrase should not surprise us. According to Apsuara, such expressions are typical in receiving guests and are spoken not only to relatives. Caucasian hospitality—long proverbial—occupies a special place in the code: a guest is not only an invited person but anyone who crosses the threshold. There are strict rules governing seating at table: younger men sit far from elders; a son may not sit with his father; a son-in-law with his father-in-law; a nephew with his maternal uncle, and so forth. Women serve the feast but do not sit at table with the men. However, if a guest raises a toast to the mistress of the house, she may sit down briefly and drink wine, though she does not eat. There is also a ritual of “washing of hands”, somewhat similar to the episode described by Iskander: the guest’s hands are “washed” while saying, “Wash your hands — and may I take upon myself all your troubles!” Every Abkhaz home has an asasaairtа, a place where guests are received. The principal dishes — meat and wine — are served by the host himself, and the meat must come from a freshly slaughtered animal; to serve meat killed the previous day would bring shame upon the household. When it is time to sleep, one of the women enters the guest’s room, straightens his blanket, and wishes him good night.

+ Sandro of Chegem, by Fazil Iskander

+ Abkhaz Abkhazian Mark Twain, by Susan Jacoby (New York Times - May 15, 1983)

+ Forbidden Fruit and Other Stories, by Fazil Iskander

Equally vivid and varied are customs connected with weddings, funerals, childbirth, bride abduction, and so forth.

The third part of the code, customs connected with blood revenge, is also reflected in Sandro of Chegem. To observe this, we may examine an episode from the chapter “Uncle Sandro at Home”. It should first be noted that blood revenge has survived in Abkhazia, albeit not in its former form, to the present day. Not in its former form, because a portion of Abkhaz who consider themselves progressive (we refrain from commentary here) have long renounced it and resolve conflicts by other, ostensibly more peaceful means. Yet Apsuara prescribes revenge. It is required, above all, for the murder of relatives, and only afterwards — and not always — for insult. Even here, however, etiquette applies.

“Kill the enemy with honour!” commands Apsuara. Killing with a stick is unacceptable, as is an ambush “from around the corner”. The body of the slain must be wrapped so that heat or wild animals do not desecrate it, and the relatives must be informed. In former times, those who killed a “blood enemy” often went into the mountains as abreks, escaping both the law and potential retaliation.

Returning to the novel, the episode in question describes a dispute between “old” and “new” Abkhaz regarding blood revenge. The representative of the “old” — Uncle Sandro — attempts to persuade two young Abkhaz men to avenge their father. He fails, which clearly testifies to the ambiguous perception of the third part of the code by the younger generation.

“Uncle Sandro,” says the elder of the two, “but we shall be arrested for it.”

“Goat’s head,” I reply to him, “of course you’ll be arrested — if they catch you. But think: as the Twentieth Congress showed, Party men sat for ten or fifteen years for nothing. And you — you refuse to sit for your own father? You renounce him?”

The characters do not, of course, renounce their father. They simply question the necessity of blood revenge — something their ancestors would never have done. The latter followed Apsuara blindly; the former seek to measure their actions against the spirit of the age and their own common sense, remembering that actions are not only what we do, but also what shapes us.

The examples cited here of the significant role of the Abkhazian code Apsuara in the artistic system of Fazil Iskander are far from exhaustive within the novel Sandro of Chegem.