When You Speak, We Will Listen
Der Spiegel interviewed Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great writer, Nobel laureate, and critic. I was made to read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in high school, and my amazement and admiration for Mr. Solzhenitsyn was cemented. The interview is quite good: despite his age, it is clear that Mr. Solzhenitsyn's fire has not yet flickered, and his keen mind seems still sharp. The interviewers comment early in the interview at the amount of work he still manages to accomplish, now well into his 80's.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky first awakened in me the love of Russia, in his The Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot (among others). It was this love that was refueled in Mr. Solzhenitsyn's work, but along side of it was, in my mind at least, no trace of the Romantic view that Dostoyevsky still had. Solzhenitsyn seemed to be able to write free of any manacle, to capture things as they were. His grasp of the heavings of history astounded me.
An Interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn: "I Am Not Afraid of Death"
(click through for some choice quotes!)
Solzhenitsyn: I have grown used to the fact that, throughout the world, public repentance is the most unacceptable option for the modern politician.
***
SPIEGEL: ...Communism was not the result of the previous Russian political regime; the Bolshevik Revolution was made possible only by Kerensky's poor governance in 1917. If one follows this line of thinking, then Lenin was only an accidental person, who was only able to come to Russia and seize power here with German support. Have we understood you correctly?
Solzhenitsyn: No, you have not. Only an extraordinary person can turn opportunity into reality. Lenin and Trotsky were exceptionally nimble and vigorous politicians who managed in a short period of time to use the weakness of Kerensky's government. But allow me to correct you: the "October Revolution" is a myth generated by the winners, the Bolsheviks, and swallowed whole by progressive circles in the West.
***
SPIEGEL: ...Looking back today, can you say to what extent [your book, The Gulag Archipelago] has contributed to the defeat of communism in the world?
Solzhenitsyn: You should not address this question to me -- an author cannot give such evaluations.
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[Solzhenitsyn] | [culture]Labels: Art | Culture, City of Man
