Next year, Harper Perennial will be publishing the first unabridged edition of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle in English.
Next year, Harper Perennial will be publishing the first unabridged edition of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle in English.
First Circle is one of my favourite Solzhenitsyn novels. I didn’t realize my old wornout paperback was an abridged version. I love the knack he had for portraying the ability of the human spirit to rise above adverse circumstances.
I should have written more in this post, but yeah, apparently several chapters were cut/censored from the original book due to Soviet threat. I have Gulag on my shelf, and I haven’t read it or First Circle.
Gulag is a fascinating yet daunting tome to undertake. I got through all three volumes about 20 years ago. He goes into excruciating detail describing the process by which every shred of human dignity, individuality and purpose are extracted from those inducted into the system. It is an analysis not a novel but within that framework he shares many accounts and examples that remain vivid in my imagination even after all these years.
As many of Solzhenitsyn’s novels do, First Circle zeros in on one island in the archipelago. The novel draws you into the life of a handful of prisoners in a technical prison. In order to draw upon their minds and not just their bodies, they are given comparatively good food and accommodations. Yet, as those in Dante’s first circle of hell, they are still prisoners in a brutal system. In this anteroom of the fiery furnace, the characters delve deeply into the moral dilemmas inherent in such a situation.
If you want to get the flavor of Solzhenitsyn without immersing yourself in an epic length novel, A Day In The Life of Ivan Denosivitch is about a quarter of the length of First Circle or Cancer Ward.
A good synopsis of his philosophy can be found in his
address to the Harvard Commencement from 1978. Of course, the leading intellectuals of the west were rather offended by statements like, “We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.”
The Mpls Red Star reports today that Alexander Solzinhetzin has died at age 89. Here is what I posted in their comments section:
My Favourite Author
The world has lost a truly great voice. While describing the horrific conditions necessary to enforce communism, he had a knack for demonstrating the ability of the human spirit to rise above adverse circumstances. His address at the Harvard Graduation cut through the fluff and got to the core issues of the day, much to the chagrin of Western liberals and intellectuals alike. May the results of his life’s work live on in his writings, warning and inspiring many generations to come.