thousand different birds. In the sky, immovable, hung the hawks, their
wings outspread, and their eyes fixed intently on the grass. The cries
of a cloud of wild ducks, moving up from one side, were echoed from
God knows what distant lake. From the grass arose, with measured
sweep, a gull, and bathed luxuriously in blue waves of air. And now
she has vanished on high, and appears only as a black dot: now she has
turned her wings, and shines in the sunlight. Deuce take you, steppes,
how beautiful you are!"*

*Translated by Isabel Hapgood.

The whole book is dominated by the gigantic figure of old Taras Bulba,
who loves food and drink, but who would rather fight than eat. Like so
many Russian novels, it begins at the beginning, not at the second or
third chapter. The two sons of Taras, wild cubs of the wild old wolf,
return from school, and are welcomed by their loving father, not with
kisses and affectionate greeting, but with a joyous fist combat, while
the anxious mother looks on with tears of dismayed surprise. After the
sublime rage of fighting, which proves to the old man's satisfaction
that his sons are really worthy of him, comes the sublime joy of
brandy, and a prodigious feast, which only the stomachs of fifteenth
century Cossacks could survive. Then despite the anguish of the
mother--there was no place for the happiness of women in Cossack
life--comes the crushing announcement that on the morrow all three
males will away to the wars, from which not one of them will return.
One of the most poignant scenes that Gogol has written is the picture
of the mother, watching the whole night long by her sleeping sons--who
pass the few hours after the long separation and before the eternal
parting, in deep, unconscious slumber.