Like most Americans (and Russians, for that matter), I learned a lot from Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. Russia was a mysterious country when I was growing up, and for most of my childhood the only thing I knew about the place was that they might blow me up and that children in Russia didn't get to decide what they were going to do when they grew up, as I got to do. For these very reasons, I couldn't get enough of Russian literature once I tried some. Crime and Punishment, War and Peace, The Master and Margarita, and, indeed, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Russian novels are a treasure, and I have long treasured them. But, like most Americans, I, too, had a very shallow understanding of Solzhenitsyn. When he came to the US, took up residence in Vermont, and began criticizing the US and the modern world, I was surprised, put off, and then lost interest in what the old man had to say.
But recent obituaries have reminded me that Solzhenitsyn was exactly the thing that a writer has to be -- that his life demonstrated a few essential truths about what writers do, and so, along with everyone else, I would like to pay him tribute.
1. When you read three great novels in a row -- To the Lighthouse, Taras Bulba, Robinson Crusoe -- you are never in danger of mixing them up. Each is utterly distinct, not only in setting and time period, characters and themes, but also in approach. When the writer takes up his subject, he or she does so in his or her own way. He or she can't help it. A novel is a package of idiosyncrasy, individuality. It is the closest a reader comes to reading another person's mind and experiencing something outside of himself or herself.
2. Writers are free. Even writers who don't think about freedom, or don't have to fight for their freedom, are free. They can't help being free, because self-expression is a voluntary act. As soon as any writer begins volunteering for that freedom, he gets in the habit, and can't stop. In this way, he or she CAN become a symbol of freedom in a repressed society, but he or she doesn't have to -- play, pleasure, and enjoyment are other aspects of freedom, and writers give us those, too.
3. A writer makes something of circumstances. What strikes me most forcibly about Solzhenitsyn is that he had a particular life to work with -- his own. Like other Russian writers such as Natalia Ginzburg or Nadezhda Mandelstam, he suffered experiences that we in the west can hardly imagine, and they inspired him. In another era and another time, might he have written drawing room comedies? Maybe. But he did the very same thing that Oscar Wilde did -- he looked around, felt his life coalesce into a story, and he wrote it down. He was true to his unique experience, and so when we read his books, they continue to live for us.
4. He didn't conform to anyone's program. No one could make an ally of Solzhenitsyn, at least for very long. He was prickly, he was opinionated, he was independent, he was peculiar. For this, and this alone, I thank him and honor him.
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky: Tolstoy's Stories
Tolstoy has been better served by translators than other Russian writers, but there is still the challenge of coming closer to the original, of catching more of its specific stylistic qualities than previous translations have done.
For those interested the 1970 movie staring Tom Courtney as the story's protagonist is a remarkably close in its adherence to the book, itself not a very big book lengthwise, but huge on impact and in exposing the harsh reality of an idealogy feeding on its own foundation.
This is not a defense of out-of-control capitalism, but a statement of how untold millions were betrayed and killed, mangled and oppressed by a pseudo-scientific political philosophy swallowed whole and peddled by many people who should have known better.
The Playdo Institute
Handel Glassberg, President
I didn't know he wrote much about the West....sounds interesting now I'm going to go looking for it.
Funny thing, I used to despise the idea of the Soviet Union in part because of the way their media kept its people in the dark about the rest of the world outside its borders. And now....that sounds hauntingly familiar and here and now.
Without his writing about the Gulags and the monsterous Bolsheviks, Americans would still not know that what was done to the Russian people (and the nations which were held captive by the Bolsheviks such as people of BelaRus, Ukraine, Lithuania, etc) far eclipsed the numbers of the holocaust.
Our history classes contained NOTHING about that and in my opinion that was because there were financial and politcal reasons to make Hitler the greatest monster and it was not convenient to teach that Stalin and the Bolsheviks murdered 60 million - FAR surpassing Hitlers numbers.
The costant building of holocaust to the exclusion of events such as the genocide in Ukraine remains so today.
The poster who claims that he and Regan were "right" says it all.
When S came to the US he knew nothing about the country and never attempted to learn much.
He preached an ancient stew of religiousity and self-righteousness without real depth or insight.
In no way can he be compared to the great Russian writers who preceded him.
Too few people read Solzhenitsyn in Russia or anywhere, he did not write Harry Potter after all thus his level remains unavailable to modern, spoiled, average minds.
Solzhenitsyn was the "darling" of the right wing...until they realized that he, Solzhenitsyn, was no friend of theirs. It points to the unique curiosity of the repeated misunderstaning by American politicos of their adversaries. Do you, for example, think little George or the Q!ueen of Chevron know anything about tribal cultures in the Islamic world?
Solzhenitsyn's book definitely touched me; Ivan's humanity and relatability were definite literary achievements. Another case where we'll just have to separate the art from the artist, and accept him as the flawed and gifted man he was.