Join David, Heidi, and Tim as they dig into Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s classic prison novel—one of the most influential books of the last century. This week we chat about the context of the book, the way Solzhenitsyn manages to create stakes even though the reader knows the ending, the way everyday things become beautiful, and much more. Happy reading!
This book very much reminds me of reading my grandfather’s journals. He was a POW in World War II, and held in a Russian POW camp. His journals are full of poetry, drawings, home addresses of others in the camp, the account of being shot down over the water, but also the shadows of despair. A few pages dedicated to an accounting of all of the food they had. An entry “received a letter from home today, life is again worth living“. It truly is a life lived in suspension, almost a purgatory. Without an end date in sight, you cling to sanity through crafting an every day life; all the while lapping at the edges of your consciousness are memories and desires of home.
That was a good pod-cast, helping me see things I wasn't seeing. I think it was David that said something about the narrator's laying out of the day. After reading maybe half of the assignment, and discovering that the sun had not yet risen on Ivan's day of initial illness, I was somewhat astonished.
I came across some interesting things about Solzhenitsyn while reading an essay in Reality And The Vision, edited by Philip Yancey. (Really good essays in this book.) The most interesting parts in this essay for me were quotations of Solzhenitsyn's. I was surprised to find he included what he called "My petty interferences" interrupting his writing, including people housework children, etc. "(most of all, my own native undisciplined self...). Like Ivan, he wants to keep charging ahead, keep going. Another quotation, after the KGB sees manuscripts: "They could take my children hostage -- posing as 'gangsters,' of course. (They did not know that we [meaning, my wife and I] had thought of this and made a superhuman decision: our children were no dearer to us than the memory of the millions done to death, and nothing could make us stop that book.)" (From The Oak and the Calf, the only book of his I made it through until this podcast.
Sometimes his tone reminds me of that of George MacDonald, like, when speaking to the hierarchical atheists. The essayist calls it facing down the bully, a tactic honed in "eight years in the labor camps."
"I myself see Christianity today as the only living spiritual force capable of undertaking the spiritual healing of Russia. But I request and propose no special privilege for it, simply that it should be treated fairly and not suppressed." He was converted (Russian Christian Orthodoxy) in the prison camp. I can't help thinking of what is going on with the Russian Orthodox Church in the matter of Ukraine today.
What he says about art and artists is pretty superb. Two kinds of artists: One "imagines himself the creator of an independent spiritual world [... and another acknowledging] a higher power above him... joyfully works as a common apprentice under God's heaven."
"The writer must be a truth teller," from the Nobel Prize lecture. Art has always won against lies: "Lies can stand up against much in the world, but not against art... one word of truth outweighs the world."
I personally like that the lengthy Gulag book (which I have not read) "sustains a tone of outraged sarcasm and unrelieved hostility toward the Soviet régime." That is what the essayist wrote about it (Karen Burton Mains). Solzhenitsyn wrote: "Hitler was a mere disciple, but he had all luck: his murder camps have made him famous, whereas no one has any interest in ours at all." This is sarcasm directed at the West, as well.
Thank you for doing this book, so mundane, such an artistic representative of his "Moral Vision." (The essay's subtitle.)
This book very much reminds me of reading my grandfather’s journals. He was a POW in World War II, and held in a Russian POW camp. His journals are full of poetry, drawings, home addresses of others in the camp, the account of being shot down over the water, but also the shadows of despair. A few pages dedicated to an accounting of all of the food they had. An entry “received a letter from home today, life is again worth living“. It truly is a life lived in suspension, almost a purgatory. Without an end date in sight, you cling to sanity through crafting an every day life; all the while lapping at the edges of your consciousness are memories and desires of home.
That was a good pod-cast, helping me see things I wasn't seeing. I think it was David that said something about the narrator's laying out of the day. After reading maybe half of the assignment, and discovering that the sun had not yet risen on Ivan's day of initial illness, I was somewhat astonished.
I came across some interesting things about Solzhenitsyn while reading an essay in Reality And The Vision, edited by Philip Yancey. (Really good essays in this book.) The most interesting parts in this essay for me were quotations of Solzhenitsyn's. I was surprised to find he included what he called "My petty interferences" interrupting his writing, including people housework children, etc. "(most of all, my own native undisciplined self...). Like Ivan, he wants to keep charging ahead, keep going. Another quotation, after the KGB sees manuscripts: "They could take my children hostage -- posing as 'gangsters,' of course. (They did not know that we [meaning, my wife and I] had thought of this and made a superhuman decision: our children were no dearer to us than the memory of the millions done to death, and nothing could make us stop that book.)" (From The Oak and the Calf, the only book of his I made it through until this podcast.
Sometimes his tone reminds me of that of George MacDonald, like, when speaking to the hierarchical atheists. The essayist calls it facing down the bully, a tactic honed in "eight years in the labor camps."
"I myself see Christianity today as the only living spiritual force capable of undertaking the spiritual healing of Russia. But I request and propose no special privilege for it, simply that it should be treated fairly and not suppressed." He was converted (Russian Christian Orthodoxy) in the prison camp. I can't help thinking of what is going on with the Russian Orthodox Church in the matter of Ukraine today.
What he says about art and artists is pretty superb. Two kinds of artists: One "imagines himself the creator of an independent spiritual world [... and another acknowledging] a higher power above him... joyfully works as a common apprentice under God's heaven."
"The writer must be a truth teller," from the Nobel Prize lecture. Art has always won against lies: "Lies can stand up against much in the world, but not against art... one word of truth outweighs the world."
I personally like that the lengthy Gulag book (which I have not read) "sustains a tone of outraged sarcasm and unrelieved hostility toward the Soviet régime." That is what the essayist wrote about it (Karen Burton Mains). Solzhenitsyn wrote: "Hitler was a mere disciple, but he had all luck: his murder camps have made him famous, whereas no one has any interest in ours at all." This is sarcasm directed at the West, as well.
Thank you for doing this book, so mundane, such an artistic representative of his "Moral Vision." (The essay's subtitle.)
That is amazing. Thank you for adding so much context I really want to read Reality and the Vision now!
Enjoyed the episode. However, while there is only one way to say Denisovich, there is an English and a Russian pronunciation of Ivan.