Posted on 04/27/2008 11:13:22 AM PDT by eleni121
Russia's greatest living novelist, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, is working feverishly to complete his collected works and is writing every day despite failing health, a missing vertebra and being unable to walk, his wife, Natalia, revealed yesterday.
(Excerpt) Read more at books.guardian.co.uk ...
Ping
FYI
Ditto.
I read the first volume of “The Gulag Archepelago” when it was first published in the 70’s. I was fairly “left leaning” at the time, and it was a very important book to me in that it revealed to me the manner in which the left (particularly the American left)was deceptive about the true nature of Soviet communism, and how it was camoflaging it’s own totalitarian impulse. I’ve since read the second volume, and “A Day In The Live of Ivan Denisovich.” He’s always been hard for me to follow, but very much worth the effort.
bookmark for later reading
“A Day in the LIfe of Ivan Iylliavich(sp)” is a great book. There was a made for TV movie that should be required viewing for all freedom loving people.
Another good made-for-TV film about how the USSR even treated
an American within their borders:
“Coming Out Of The Ice”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083749/
Pity it’s only on VHS.
I am not all that sure that "Freedom Loving People" should be required to view any movie. However, "A Day in the Life..." had a great impact on me in Jr. high and should be read by everyone.
I had to read that in high school, and I remember not being able to put it down. I think I'm going to buy another copy and re-read it.
If wifey & I’d had a son, he’d have been named “Aleksandr”
You are right—he’s every bit worth the effort.
He is a living treaure...and his words have inspired the hatred of him by the secular liberal establishment ever since he gave the famous address “A World Split Apart” at Harvard -—they have been trying to undermine him by hiring attackers ever since.
It needs to be read again and again.
A World Split Apart
Wonderful name...maybe you will still get the chance...
Some high school! Kudos to the teacher who assigned it.
Yeah, and those last three letters ‘ndr’ would be hell to pronounce without a vowel ion between ‘em!
The thing a lot of his critics miss about Solzhenitsyn is how acidly funny he is much of the time. He has a great sense of the absurd, and he is a master of sarcastic scorn.
A Day in The Life.... changed mine. It made me realize there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between International communism and fascism.
I had to read a few chapters of the first Gulag for a college course on totalitarianism. I was so fascinated I bought all three and read them all. I also read A Day in the Life. He is a masterful writer. Prayers up for his health.
How easy for me to live with You, O Lord!
How easy for me to believe in You!
When my mind parts in bewilderment
or falters,
when the most intellegent people see no further
than this day's end
and do not know what must be done tomorrow,
You grant me the serene certitude
that You exist and that You will take care
that not all the paths of good be closed.
Atop the ridge of earthly fame,
I look back in wonder at the path
which I alone could have never found,
a wonderous path through despair to this point
from which I, too, could transmit to mankind
a reflection of Your rays.
And as much as I must still reflect
You will give me.
But as much as I cannot take up
You will have already assigned to others."Prayer", from Solzhenitsyn's Pictorial Autobiography
Alex...this prayer is sublime! Thank you much for reminding us.
TPartyType: Thanks for putting up the sound file.
Here is a written version of his magnificent speech.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html
He is a great man, a great writer, and one of the few intellectuals who changed the world for the better and will be remembered for hundreds of years long after the pipsqueaks of this era are gone.
Bump!!!!
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