When I think of great Russian authors, the names Chekhov, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, and Tolstoy immediately come to mind. After reading “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” the book, and it's author Alexander Solzhenitsyn join the ranks of truly magnificent Russian writers. In order to fully understand his writing, I feel like I should share with you a little bit of Solzhenitsyn's life story. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born in December of 1918 in Kislovodsk, to his father, a soldier (who died six months before he was born while fighting in the first world war), and his mother who made her living as a shorthand-typist. Solzhenitsyn studied Mathematics and Physics, later on in life his studies would lead him to a post in the Russian army in the second world war. In 1944-1945 Solzhenitsyn was arrested because he had made disrespectful remarks about Stalin in letters to a friend. In July of 1945 he was sentenced to eight years in a prison camp, which for then was considered a light sentencing. Halfway through his time in the prison camps, he was moved to a 'special camp,' where only political prisoners were kept. Solzhenitsyn lived in exile from March 1953 until June of 1956. In 1954, Solzhenitsyn's cancer was treated, and cured, which enabled him to continue teaching Mathematics and Physics, as well as to continue writing novels for the rest of his life, which ended in in 2008. When reading a short autobiography, Solzhenitsyn said of his own writing, which by then had grown to a substantial size:
“During all the years until 1961, not only was I convinced that I should never see a single line of mine in print in my lifetime, but, also, I scarcely dared allow any of my close acquaintances to read anything I had written because I feared that this would become known. Finally, at the age of 42, this secret authorship began to wear me down. The most difficult thing of all to bear was that I could not get my works judged by people with literary training. In 1961, after the 22nd Congress of the U.S.S.R. Communist Party and Tvardovsky's speech at this, I decided to emerge and to offer One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.”
The censorship beneath Stalin was particularly cruel and rigid. If a work of writing did not sing Stalin's praises, or the glory of Russia, then it was silenced. If the writing spoke of the government in any terms other than respect and adoration, not only was the writing censored, but the author was as well. It got to the point where Russian authors would play games with the censors, to see how much anti-government they could pass with by shrouding it with metaphor and symbolism. Solzhenitsyn is no exception. His writing it truly magnificent, to state it rather bluntly. The plot is about a group of Russian prisoners, and the daily challenges they face in a Gulag. The narrative voice is free indirect discourse, which when applied with Solzhenitsyn's skill with the written word, made it difficult sometimes to differentiate between the narrator's voice and the main character Shukov's. Stylistically the writing is simple, and straightforward, further magnifying the voice of Shukov, as well as the other prisoners. Solzhenitsyn was able to bring to light the injustices and truths of life in a Russian Labor camp in the 1950's, and does so in a way that does not scare the reader away. Rather his writing draws the reader further into the horrific world he, as well as his novel's characters, lived in. It takes courage to write about the events such as the ones which occur in “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Furthermore it takes a true master of the written word to do so in a way which is poetic and beautiful, I hope Solzhenitsyn will be read by generations to come, as we can all learn so much from his writing.
A thought for the morning:
Time flies, books don't.
- BookBender
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