Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian Literary Master, Dies at 89
AUGUST 4, 2008 TAGS:
The Russian writer whose life and work chronicled the misdeeds of the Soviet Regime, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, died Sunday, August 3. He was 89. As Tolstoy told the truth of the soul and Dostoyesvki of the psyche, Solzhenitsyn revealed the underlying repression of the Soviet Union: of life in the gulags and prison camps.
His 1962 novel, “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” elevated Solzhenitsyn to the mantle of the Russian masters. As the New York Times retells in its obituary:
“Over the next five decades, Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s fame spread throughout the world as he drew upon his experiences of totalitarian duress to write evocative novels like “The First Circle” and “The Cancer Ward” and historical works like “The Gulag Archipelago.”
Mr. Solzhenitsyn was heir to a morally focused and often prophetic Russian literary tradition, and he looked the part. With his stern visage, lofty brow and full, Old Testament beard, he recalled Tolstoy while suggesting a modern-day Jeremiah, denouncing the evils of the Kremlin and later the mores of the West.”
His literary history traces the rise and fall of the Soviet Regime, its various leaders, the politics of totalitarianism and its drain on the life of a nation. Nikita Khruschev allowed “Ivan Denisovich” to be published in a popular journal because he believed that it would help the liberal strains of the party. As soon as hard-liners retook control of the party, Solzhenitsyn was silences, his manuscripts confiscated, and his character impugned as a traitor.
He won the 1970 Nobel Prize for literature. Solzhenitsyn did not attend the Nobel banquet, for fear of reprisal from his government which would strip him of his citizenship and force him into exile. However, the text of his speech he would have given was circulated widely around the world. It was a clarion call for the power of the arts to change the world and to represent the truth in a way that no weapon ever could.
The full text of the speech can be found HERE. It concludes with a Russian proverb:
“ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD.
And it is here, on an imaginary fantasy, a breach of the principle of the conservation of mass and energy, that I base both my own activity and my appeal to the writers of the whole world.”
Some Selected Reading from across the Web:
The Christian Science Monitor quoted former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on its way to a sweeping account of Solzhenistyn's life and historical significance.
"Until the end of his days he fought for Russia, not only to move away from its totalitarian past but also to have a worthy future, to become a truly free and democratic country. We owe him a lot."
London's Telegraph makes the case that Solzhenitsyn, "did more to demolish the moral and intellectual case for Communism than any of its critics, writer or statesman, poet or legislator of the world, acknowledged or not."
NPR's Weekend All Things Considered assembled an 8-minute reflection on his greatest literary works.
Even Slate.com columnist and contrarian gadfly Christopher Hitchens identifies integrity and idealism in Solzhenitsyn:
"Barely deigning to notice the sniggering, pick-nose bullies who followed him and harassed him, he carried on "as if" he were a free citizen, "as if" he had the right to study his own country's history, "as if" there were such a thing as human dignity."
But he also sees Solzhenitsyn's transformation into "a classic Russian Orthodox chauvinist," starting with his 1978 address at Harvard, where he famously excoriated the materialism of the west.
The New York Times, followed their multi-page obituary with a news piece that details the generational difference in the reverence afforded to Solzhenitsyn by Russians. The story quotes Andrei V. Vasilevsky, the current editor of the journal that first published “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.”
"Mr. Vasilevsky said on Monday that young people considered figures like Mr. Solzhenitsyn to be artifacts, and that Russian society in general is no longer interested in towering cultural or social figures."
The Chicago Tribune quotes New Yorker editor David Remnick, whose history of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lenin's Tomb, won the Pulitzer Prize. According to Remnick:
"No writer that I can think of in history really was able to do so much through courage and literary skill to change the society they came from...And to some extent, you have to credit the literary works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn with helping to bring down the last empire on Earth."
His 1962 novel, “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” elevated Solzhenitsyn to the mantle of the Russian masters. As the New York Times retells in its obituary:
“Over the next five decades, Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s fame spread throughout the world as he drew upon his experiences of totalitarian duress to write evocative novels like “The First Circle” and “The Cancer Ward” and historical works like “The Gulag Archipelago.”Mr. Solzhenitsyn was heir to a morally focused and often prophetic Russian literary tradition, and he looked the part. With his stern visage, lofty brow and full, Old Testament beard, he recalled Tolstoy while suggesting a modern-day Jeremiah, denouncing the evils of the Kremlin and later the mores of the West.”
His literary history traces the rise and fall of the Soviet Regime, its various leaders, the politics of totalitarianism and its drain on the life of a nation. Nikita Khruschev allowed “Ivan Denisovich” to be published in a popular journal because he believed that it would help the liberal strains of the party. As soon as hard-liners retook control of the party, Solzhenitsyn was silences, his manuscripts confiscated, and his character impugned as a traitor.
He won the 1970 Nobel Prize for literature. Solzhenitsyn did not attend the Nobel banquet, for fear of reprisal from his government which would strip him of his citizenship and force him into exile. However, the text of his speech he would have given was circulated widely around the world. It was a clarion call for the power of the arts to change the world and to represent the truth in a way that no weapon ever could.
The full text of the speech can be found HERE. It concludes with a Russian proverb:
“ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD.
And it is here, on an imaginary fantasy, a breach of the principle of the conservation of mass and energy, that I base both my own activity and my appeal to the writers of the whole world.”
Some Selected Reading from across the Web:
The Christian Science Monitor quoted former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on its way to a sweeping account of Solzhenistyn's life and historical significance.
"Until the end of his days he fought for Russia, not only to move away from its totalitarian past but also to have a worthy future, to become a truly free and democratic country. We owe him a lot."
London's Telegraph makes the case that Solzhenitsyn, "did more to demolish the moral and intellectual case for Communism than any of its critics, writer or statesman, poet or legislator of the world, acknowledged or not."
NPR's Weekend All Things Considered assembled an 8-minute reflection on his greatest literary works.
Even Slate.com columnist and contrarian gadfly Christopher Hitchens identifies integrity and idealism in Solzhenitsyn:
"Barely deigning to notice the sniggering, pick-nose bullies who followed him and harassed him, he carried on "as if" he were a free citizen, "as if" he had the right to study his own country's history, "as if" there were such a thing as human dignity."
But he also sees Solzhenitsyn's transformation into "a classic Russian Orthodox chauvinist," starting with his 1978 address at Harvard, where he famously excoriated the materialism of the west.
The New York Times, followed their multi-page obituary with a news piece that details the generational difference in the reverence afforded to Solzhenitsyn by Russians. The story quotes Andrei V. Vasilevsky, the current editor of the journal that first published “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.”
"Mr. Vasilevsky said on Monday that young people considered figures like Mr. Solzhenitsyn to be artifacts, and that Russian society in general is no longer interested in towering cultural or social figures."
The Chicago Tribune quotes New Yorker editor David Remnick, whose history of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lenin's Tomb, won the Pulitzer Prize. According to Remnick:
"No writer that I can think of in history really was able to do so much through courage and literary skill to change the society they came from...And to some extent, you have to credit the literary works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn with helping to bring down the last empire on Earth."
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COMMENTS (2)
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Anonymous wrote on August 20, 2008 8:40am
Solzhenitsyn's philosophical cause was righteous, in part, because of it's intrinsic protest of empire--any empire--whether that empire be Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, British, Soviet, U.S. or East Asian. With the daily deaths of such men, the malignancy of globalization is free to sap the last vestiges of individual freedom across the planet. Modern generations, it has been eulogized with Solzhenitsyn's absence, have paid scant heed to his warnings--and it is they who will ultimately pay dearly for their obliquity. Solzhenitsyn--in keeping with most great men--held no fear of death, and with good reason, for the prospects of the living today indeed appear bleak. [Report Comment]
Anonymous wrote on August 18, 2008 7:56pm
If indeed Solzhenitsyn was, as Hitchens said, "...a classic Russian Orthodox chauvinist," then we can certainly use a few more of them in our midst, given the historic moral decay transpiring throughout virtually every aspect of Western society. "The 20th Century Dostoyevsky," said Pravda of Solzhenitsyn. So true. The world will dangerously darken with his passing. [Report Comment]
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