Dark Horses

It is three years since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn delivered his startling commencement address at Harvard University, and the controversy he generated has diminished as interest in his charges has become attenuated. But of course nothing has been resolved. Solzhenitsyn’s speech touched almost every raw nerve in the Western intellectual tradition. It managed both to please and to offend, in some degree, liberals, democrats, and consumer protectionists; it succeeded in soothing and arousing, in equal measure, conservatives, monarchists, and the Puritan remnant still sneaking in the hills. In his brief talk, the Russian novelist made us recognize once again what hybrid things Western systems of belief are, how inherently irreconcilable their parts: how almost every modern philosopher is a being secretly divided against himself.

Solzhenitsyn at Harvard: The Address, Twelve Early Responses, and Six Later Reflections (Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1211 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036; $9.50), edited by Ronald Berman, is a collection of quite varied pieces written in answer to Solzhenitsyn’s strictures upon the weakness of Western societies. Among these are columns by George Will, Mary Mc-Grory, and James Reston; editorials taken from NR and the New York Times; and lengthier essays by Richard Pipes, Sidney Hook, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Michael Novak, and Berman himself. Solzhenitsyn is an elephant, and Berman hunts him with elephant guns.

CW

About the Author

Chilton Williamson Jr.

Featured Tags

Manage following

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It is three years since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn delivered his startling commencement address at Harvard University, and the controversy he generated has diminished as interest in his charges has become attenuated. But of course nothing has been resolved. Solzhenitsyn’s speech touched almost every raw nerve in the Western intellectual tradition. It managed both to please and to offend, in some degree, liberals, democrats, and consumer protectionists; it succeeded in soothing and arousing, in equal measure, conservatives, monarchists, and the Puritan remnant still sneaking in the hills. In his brief talk, the Russian novelist made us recognize once again what hybrid things Western systems of belief are, how inherently irreconcilable their parts: how almost every modern philosopher is a being secretly divided against himself.

Solzhenitsyn at Harvard: The Address, Twelve Early Responses, and Six Later Reflections (Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1211 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036; $9.50), edited by Ronald Berman, is a collection of quite varied pieces written in answer to Solzhenitsyn’s strictures upon the weakness of Western societies. Among these are columns by George Will, Mary Mc-Grory, and James Reston; editorials taken from NR and the New York Times; and lengthier essays by Richard Pipes, Sidney Hook, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Michael Novak, and Berman himself. Solzhenitsyn is an elephant, and Berman hunts him with elephant guns.