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.
If wifey & I’d had a son, he’d have been named “Aleksandr”
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.
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
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!!!!