I do not have it yet; however, I imagine I will be thinking it thirty years from now. For those not aquatinted with the works of The Novelist, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, he is a majestic man of words. A mathematician by education, he was serving as an artillery officer in the Red Army during the Second World War when he was arrested for a political crime and sentenced to eight years in the gulags of Siberia. His crime? He insulted the "leader" of our red ally in a private letter with his friend.
(I wonder why people fear Obama's request that others send the email addresses of his detractors to the White House? Regardless, I digress.)
After surviving the eight years of siberian, hard labor, he lived in exile within Russia. But, in his incarceration he learned two things: the vile happenings of the soviet prison system and the saving power of Jesus Christ. Fortunately for us all, he wrote about them both.
Solzhenitsyn does not hit the reader over the head with the message of salvation; however, in his fictional characters he allows us to observe how the true men around him behaved and how the Baptists, through their beautiful spirit, brought him to the Logos.
But, The Novelist does not write about Christ alone, or even predominately, instead he writes of beauty and brotherly love; He writes of joy in a warm bowl of soup; He speaks of happiness in four ounces of daily bread; and he speaks of the lovely power of a cigarette. All-the-while we we trudge through the circles of the Siberian hells: first to last; one novel after another. And via these hells he gives me knew knowledge, like how to eat my food to best appreciate what I have, and awakens in me latent longings long suppressed: Like a love for Christ and cigarettes.
I have got to read Solzhenitsyn! Dostoevsky - as you know - also went through the Siberian nightmare. What a cosmic scandal these places even exist! He says:
ReplyDelete"In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, unendurable cold. All the floors were rotten. Filth on the floors an inch thick; one could slip and fall... We were packed like herrings in a barrel... There was no room to turn around. From dusk to dawn it was impossible not to behave like pigs... Fleas, lice, and black beetles by the bushel..."
Dostoevsky supposedly wrote House of the Dead, based on his experiences there.
But then Solzhenitsyn found Christ in all of that shameless sewage. It staggers reason and confounds the imagination.
As soon as I have more time, I've got to buckle down and read his stuff.
I love the bit about the cigarettes. I'm wondering what he says. I can't imagine all the things I'd find more meaningful after making it through such a beastly place. The whole world would have a different color. The senses would probably be close to transfigured. You might begin to see things in slow motion. But the memories would be difficult.
It sounds like Solzhenitsyn joins the ranks of those who preach the Gospel clandestinely, yet powerfully. It's message comes to those whose hearts are already on the hunt, or which are already the hunted. For in the end, God is the hunter; we, the prey. He is the tireless suitor; we, the promiscuous whore. Yet He is not far from each one of us.
Totalitarianism scares me. I just can't believe Solzhenitsyn was caught because a letter of discontent was intercepted. It's the same with Dostoevsky. He was a part of the Petrashevsky Circle, a group of intellectuals that hated their government. Needless to say, he was discovered! And the rest is history.
No comment on Obama. If it quacks like a communist, well . . .