solzhenitsyn

Today (the 3rd), Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at age 89. Read more here.

I was surprised to learn that Nobel Prize-winning Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, which I just visited a few weeks ago. Plus, he was exiled to a work camp in Kazakhstan in the 50s. He happened to be sentenced to this exile on July 7, 1945: exactly forty-three years before my birth. And he was treated for cancer in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where I've been to and played basketball. Gosh, it's like we're the same person or something.

But yes, his death is a loss to the literary and political world at large. I wish I were more well-read in his works. So far I've read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich twice, and a short story or two. But The Gulag Archipelago, Cancer Ward, and others are on my list. I think I own The First Circle.

If I had more profound words, I would share them. But I'll end with a couple quotes:

A great writer is, so to speak, a secret government in his country.

-from The First Circle

John Piper's take on his death includes this quote:

It was granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.... That is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: “Bless you, prison!” I...have served enough time there. I nourished my soul there, and I say without hesitation: “Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!” (The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956, Vol. 2, 615-617)