I didn't agree with many of the ideas he expressed in his later life, but he stood up to power when it was dangerous to do so, and I commend him for that.
A co-worker and I were chatting on Saturday about authors and his name came up (my friend mentioned him, not me) and I believe it was Sunday when word came out of his passing.. for me he is not a frequent topic of conversation so I felt an odd feeling thinking what were the odds of this!? I keep having experiences like this lately..I think I'm going to have to start being called "freaky Fran" :-)
Mimi, I was pleased to see your noting the passing of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. It is strange when someone so long out one’s thoughts has a last burst of prominence in the obituaries.
I haven’t read Solzhenitsyn since high school. I wasn’t that taken with “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, but I have the impression that the impact of that book was more from its contents merely being allowed to be uttered about the Soviet Union in the Soviet Union at the time it was published. I suppose at that time I was so accustomed to the literature of political atrocity that, though of course I was appalled by it, it didn’t particularly stand out from memoirs of Nazi atrocities, accounts of Indian genocide, and other reality-based horrors that fed an early, if rather one-sided, interest in history and historical fiction.
I found “The First Circle” more compelling, if only because, set in the “first circle” of the Stalinist hell, the dilemmas were much less matters of physical deprivation than spiritual corruption. At this late date I have to admit I remember very little in particular about it, except that it included a scathing indictment of an “epicurean” philosophy that was apparently very much the rage among the secular Soviet bureaucracy, and an expected rage at a world that was happy to deny such plain, Satanic evil.
Solzhenitsyn’s tenure in America seems to have made him few additional friends. But one needn’t have agreed with all his negative judgments on the West to have still felt some satisfaction that he was in no way bought off by his comfortable exile. Solzhenitsyn always seemed to me to represent an ambiguous alternative, a non-Western, non-liberal Christianity, perhaps more than a little parochially Russian, certainly more immersed in suffering and asceticism than most of us are willing to embrace. He was decidedly more Dostoevsky than Chekov. I wonder whether his death will kindle a new interest in him, or whether the fall of his particular nemesis will render his work merely “topical” on a point of recent history. From a quick look on Amazon it seems that some of his work is already out of print.
S. scored points in pointing out the soulessness prevalent in Western society, but he seemed a bitter man. Of course, he'd been through enough to make him bitter. He was most certainly not for sale. As far as I can make out, his preferred form of government seemed to be a theocracy. We're almost there in the US now, and it's not working out well.
Thank you, Mimi.
ReplyDeleteSo it goes. RIP.
ReplyDeleteI didn't agree with many of the ideas he expressed in his later life, but he stood up to power when it was dangerous to do so, and I commend him for that.
ReplyDeleteA co-worker and I were chatting on Saturday about authors and his name came up (my friend mentioned him, not me) and I believe it was Sunday when word came out of his passing.. for me he is not a frequent topic of conversation so I felt an odd feeling thinking what were the odds of this!? I keep having experiences like this lately..I think I'm going to have to start being called "freaky Fran" :-)
ReplyDeleteOK, then, from now on, you are "Freaky Fran". It has a ring to it.
ReplyDeleteMimi, I was pleased to see your noting the passing of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. It is strange when someone so long out one’s thoughts has a last burst of prominence in the obituaries.
ReplyDeleteI haven’t read Solzhenitsyn since high school. I wasn’t that taken with “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, but I have the impression that the impact of that book was more from its contents merely being allowed to be uttered about the Soviet Union in the Soviet Union at the time it was published. I suppose at that time I was so accustomed to the literature of political atrocity that, though of course I was appalled by it, it didn’t particularly stand out from memoirs of Nazi atrocities, accounts of Indian genocide, and other reality-based horrors that fed an early, if rather one-sided, interest in history and historical fiction.
I found “The First Circle” more compelling, if only because, set in the “first circle” of the Stalinist hell, the dilemmas were much less matters of physical deprivation than spiritual corruption. At this late date I have to admit I remember very little in particular about it, except that it included a scathing indictment of an “epicurean” philosophy that was apparently very much the rage among the secular Soviet bureaucracy, and an expected rage at a world that was happy to deny such plain, Satanic evil.
Solzhenitsyn’s tenure in America seems to have made him few additional friends. But one needn’t have agreed with all his negative judgments on the West to have still felt some satisfaction that he was in no way bought off by his comfortable exile. Solzhenitsyn always seemed to me to represent an ambiguous alternative, a non-Western, non-liberal Christianity, perhaps more than a little parochially Russian, certainly more immersed in suffering and asceticism than most of us are willing to embrace. He was decidedly more Dostoevsky than Chekov. I wonder whether his death will kindle a new interest in him, or whether the fall of his particular nemesis will render his work merely “topical” on a point of recent history. From a quick look on Amazon it seems that some of his work is already out of print.
S. scored points in pointing out the soulessness prevalent in Western society, but he seemed a bitter man. Of course, he'd been through enough to make him bitter. He was most certainly not for sale. As far as I can make out, his preferred form of government seemed to be a theocracy. We're almost there in the US now, and it's not working out well.
ReplyDelete