Travels of a Terrifying Futility
The Age, September 1, 1979
Review of Igor Kaczurowsky’s Because Deserters are Immortal by Caroline Egerton
It comes a s no surprise to learn that Igor Kaczurowsky is a poet. His spare, clean prose, the measured rhythm of his words convey better than oceans of description the frozen spaces which his deserter hero traverses, both in body and in mind.
Because Deserters are Immortal tells a simple story. A young Ukrainian finds himself trapped in Soviet Russia, far from his native village, in 1941. He receives his call-up papers. He knows the German front is very close, that resistance is pointless, and has no inclination to lay down his life for a government which has exterminated his entire family. Evading the commissars, he falls into the hands of the advancing Germans. With regret, but little surprise, he discovers that each side is equally brutal. In the wild, snow-bound country, escape is not difficult. But where can a man go without food or friends, clothing or shelter?
The deserter’s solitary journey is symbolic as well as real. He meets a full complement of rogues, thieves, brutes, kind hearts, broken and indifferent ones. His travels have a terrifying futility. Shades of Kafka – nothing makes sense. He is fleeing, but from what? Cruelty is everywhere in equal measure. He seeks home, but what is home when the family is dead, friends dispersed, the buildings and fields destroyed by advancing or retreating armies in a war in which all people are losers?
Yet the deserter trudges doggedly on, enduring the impossible because he has no other choice. He has all the toughness of the eternally persecuted. Ultimately Igor Kaczurowsky rejects the existential philosophy of alienation and despair in favour of a more ancient credo – redemption through suffering.
One must be grateful that Because Deserters are Immortal has been translated into English. Modestly described as a Ukrainian masterpiece, it deserved to rank high in the literature of the world. It is a short, haunting novel which movingly transcends all boundaries of time and place.
