The Prophetic Calling of Solzhenitsyn

By now, Solzhenitsyn has become something like a fad, particularly on campuses. I am not sure I welcome that, even though at this moment I am doing my share to further it. A fad is a kind of emotional self-indulgence feeding on our soul’s complacent surface agitation; this is a most inadequate response to a person who is giving his entire self in a way in which we have not seen self-giving for a long time. A book by Solzhenitsyn’s friend and admirer Zhores A. Medvedev, Ten Years after Ivan Denisovich, may recall us to that earnest soul-searching which alone is a worthy reaction to Solzhenitsyn’s work and passion. For that man is not merely a gifted writer, a giant of world literature, but also foremost among those “which hunger and thirst after righteousness,” and “which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” His is both a literary achievement and a path of suffering, combining into an historical event of transcending importance.

Medvedev offers his book as an “hommage” to Solzhenitsyn, as the French would put it, a Festschrift commemorating the tenth anniversary of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which established Solzhenitsyn’s fame. The writer was then an unknown schoolteacher in Ryazan, recently rehabilitated after an eight-year term in labor camps and an additional three years of exile. A friend got the unheralded manuscript into the hands of Aleksandr Tvardovsky, the editor of Novy Mir, the Soviet literary journal. Tvardovsky opened the manuscript casually in bed that night, then, getting more excited on every page, got up again and read it through the night. What so aroused him must have been first the sheer power of the writer’s creativeness, his sovereign mastery of the Russian language, the force of the characters, and the sparsity of the style. These, however, did not alone account for the enormous effect of the book. One Soviet reviewer, a Stalinist who later turned viciously against Solzhenitsyn, put it this way: “But why is it that upon reading this remarkable story not only is one’s heart wrung with grief but a light penetrates one’s soul? It is because of the story’s profound humanity . . .”

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Gerhart Niemeyer

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

By now, Solzhenitsyn has become something like a fad, particularly on campuses. I am not sure I welcome that, even though at this moment I am doing my share to further it. A fad is a kind of emotional self-indulgence feeding on our soul’s complacent surface agitation; this is a most inadequate response to a person who is giving his entire self in a way in which we have not seen self-giving for a long time. A book by Solzhenitsyn’s friend and admirer Zhores A. Medvedev, Ten Years after Ivan Denisovich, may recall us to that earnest soul-searching which alone is a worthy reaction to Solzhenitsyn’s work and passion. For that man is not merely a gifted writer, a giant of world literature, but also foremost among those “which hunger and thirst after righteousness,” and “which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” His is both a literary achievement and a path of suffering, combining into an historical event of transcending importance.

Medvedev offers his book as an “hommage” to Solzhenitsyn, as the French would put it, a Festschrift commemorating the tenth anniversary of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which established Solzhenitsyn’s fame. The writer was then an unknown schoolteacher in Ryazan, recently rehabilitated after an eight-year term in labor camps and an additional three years of exile. A friend got the unheralded manuscript into the hands of Aleksandr Tvardovsky, the editor of Novy Mir, the Soviet literary journal. Tvardovsky opened the manuscript casually in bed that night, then, getting more excited on every page, got up again and read it through the night. What so aroused him must have been first the sheer power of the writer’s creativeness, his sovereign mastery of the Russian language, the force of the characters, and the sparsity of the style. These, however, did not alone account for the enormous effect of the book. One Soviet reviewer, a Stalinist who later turned viciously against Solzhenitsyn, put it this way: “But why is it that upon reading this remarkable story not only is one’s heart wrung with grief but a light penetrates one’s soul? It is because of the story’s profound humanity . . .”