Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918, one year after the Communist revolution and one year after the apparitions at Fatima. He father was an artillery officer in WWI and died three months before he was born. He was sent off to state schools were he was indoctrinated into Communistic atheistic materialism: there is no god and humans are nothing more than producers and consumers. He became a good Party member and studied to become a mathematician. He longed to be a writer. During WWII he became an artillery officer and earned two decorations. In a letter to a friend he commented on the poor use of grammar by Lenin in a radio speech and it earned him an eight-year prison term. He possessed an excellent memory, so he set out to write an epic poem of ten to twenty lines a day, memorize them, adding them to the previous lines. He also began collecting stories from fellow prisoners and committed these stories to memory as well. When he was finally released, he wrote his epic poem, now thousands of lines long, and his books on the Russian gulag prison system. He abandoned his atheism and became an Orthodox Christian.
Solzhenitsyn spent 1945 – 1953 in the gulag prisons. Once released, he went to a tiny village to teach mathematics where no one paid attention to him. He began writing his manuscripts using a tiny handwriting to conserve paper that he could not afford and to better conceal his work. He hid his documents. He developed an inoperable cancer and was sent home to die. He prayed that if spared he would write about the camps. The cancer went away, never to return. He began wring the seven volume work Gulag Archipelago. In the early 1960’s Khrushchev began the “Russian Thaw” and allowed relaxation of controls on the press. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published in a Russian magazine and then outside of the country. It became an international hit. He was awarded the Noble Prize for literature in 1970, but could not accept the award for fear of exile. In 1974 he was finally exiled to the west. He settled in Vermont and spent the last 20 years of his life finishing his works. The Greeks had Homer, the Romans had Vigil, the middle ages had Dante, the renaissance had Shakespeare and our century has Solzhenitsyn.
Description
When the manuscript for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich landed on the desk of the editor at Russia’s premier literary magazine, he was both thrilled and terrified. This was a masterpiece and had to be published, but it could not be published because it spoke the truth. He sent it to his boss for approval who sent it to his boss who sent it to committee. All agreed it was brilliant. All agreed not to publish it. Ultimately, it went to Khrushchev himself who allowed it to be published. It became an instant hit in Russia, and then the world. The year was 1962. The book was about an average camp, on an average day in the life of an average prisoner. It is a book filled with code Russian readers would understand. The totalitarian regime with its bright camp lights blotting out God’s scarlet sky and stars. The sun directly overhead indicating noon only to be informed by the guard that the state has decided it is one o’clock. Bribes to anyone who had any authority over them. Oppression at every turn. Readers understood that their entire country was a camp and like Ivan, prisoners too.
Our hero, Ivan Denisovich, is not an extraordinary man. He lives in the midst of a world where there is not enough to eat, in a world where you are dependent on the kindness of those around you, yet he feels no envy for the packages of food the others have received. It is a small thing, but an enormous thing. It is a basic decency that cannot be crushed out of some men. In the midst of the horror and darkness we get glimpses of not just man at his worst, but man at his best. Like the stars shining in the dark sky. This basic decency and dignity is everywhere in the novel. The Soviets could not crush it out. They tried. There is noting the state can do to crush out art, as art elevates. They tried. If you love life, then you can love life in the camps. This is life too. Whatever is going on in the bigger world is happening here too. This is not an entertaining book. It does educate. This novel teaches that there is something higher: have courage; speak the truth, and be willing to suffer no matter whatever God sends.
In order for a Catholic writer to reach a wide audience with his Catholic message, he must rarely mention the faith. There are many for whom the mention of religion sends them out of the room, the very ones who may most need the message most. And for those whom religion is a topic of interest, they only want something light and moving. Thus, The Loved One meets both of these obstacles: it is Catholic without saying it is Catholic and carries messages of deep religious meaning. Evelyn Waugh was invited to Hollywood to negotiate the making of Brideshead Revisited into a movie. The talks failed. While there he was taken to visit Forest Lawn Cemetery, the famous final resting place of the movie industries brightest stars. It told him everything he needed to know about Tinsel Town. It inspired the book. He sets out to make five points: Over excitement (exaggeration), the Anglo American impasse (we have nothing in common), no such thing as an American (we are all foreigners), the European raiders, and memento morte (thought of death.) He warns his readers in the beginning of the book not to read the book. Do not take his advice. Read the book.
Artists are the first in a culture to sense change. They see the small hints of coming storms long before they appear over the horizon. His first inclinations of changes in the Catholic Church began with the changes to the Holy Week rites under Pius XII. His deep faith and artistic sensibilities gave him pause. During the years of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) his suspicions turned into fear. He saw the rock begin to shake. It shook him too. He stopped writing. When asked why he no longer wrote, he replied that Vatican II knocked it out of him. If there was ever a clear link between the inspiration that the beauty and truth of the Catholic Faith provides to the artist, it was the loss of the great writer Evelyn Waugh and the deformity of the Catholic Church in the wake of the Council. He loathed the changes being made to the Latin Mass, years before the rise of the Novus Ordo Mass. He began to drink. He prayed that he would not fall into apostasy. He prayed to be spared witnessing the scourging of the Church. He died Easter Sunday 1966 after Mass and lunch with his family.
