Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1918–2008

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, rightly called “one of the great souls of the age,” passed away last night in Moscow. Best known for his piercing depictions of Soviet labor camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) and the three-volume Gulag Archipelago (1973–1978), Solzhenitsyn exposed the pervasive horrors of Russian communism to the Western world. His ideas did not spring from the sterile, marble halls of the academy: After serving as a commander in the Red Army during World War II, Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in Soviet work camps, followed by what was supposed to be permanent internal exile. He was named the Noble laureate in Literature in 1970, an award formally conferred in 1974, after he was deported from the U.S.S.R. Solzhenitsyn spent the next two decades writing at Stanford University, returning to Russia after the fall of communism, where he continued to incisively critique communism, Western modernity, and his country’s newfound democracy. His life project, one might say, was to reveal physical and spiritual captivity, to free the soul from barbed wire.

Solzhenitsyn’s thirty-volume Complete Works are forthcoming in Russian, but in the meantime, you might recall a series of his “Miniatures” that First Things published a few years ago. Prose-poems they are sometimes called, giving a glimpse into this great soul of our age. There is, for instance, this note of somber hope, the humble “Rooster Song” of a master:

Rooster Song

With the depopulation, abandonment, and extinction of our villages, we have forgotten, and younger generations have never even heard, the many-voiced rooster roll call of midday. In sunny summertime, from one yard to the next, across the street, and farther, beyond the village outskirts, how marvelous is this chorus of triumphant life.

Little else can bestow such tranquility upon the soul. Not drowned out by any noisy bustle, this vivid, vibrant, succulent, stalwart cry conveys to us that throughout these parts there reigns a blessed peace, an untroubled calm. That’s how today has unfolded so far, and why shouldn’t it continue? Carry on, everyone, your benign pursuits.

Right here, somewhere, he saunters about proudly, all white and orange, with his sumptuous, knightly scarlet comb.

Comports himself gloomlessly.

If only we could.

The chorus of triumphant life —this last Miniature, on the communion of humanity, is especially poignant:

Remembrance of the Departed

It is an act bequeathed to us in deep wisdom, by men of holiness. We come to understand its purpose not in vigorous youth, amidst the company of loved ones, family, friends; but with age.

Parents have passed; peers now pass as well. Where go they? It seems unguessable, unfathomable, beyond our grasp. Yet as with some foreordained clarity, it dawns for us, it glimmers—no, they have not vanished. And no more shall we learn of it, while we live. But a prayer for their souls—it casts from us to them, from them to us, an impalpable arch of measureless breadth yet effortless proximity. Why, here they are, you can almost touch them. Both unknowable are they and, as ever, so familiar. Except, they have fallen back in years: Some were older than we, but now are younger.

Focusing, you even inhale their answer, their hesitation, their warning. In exchange, you send them your own earthly warmth: Perhaps we too can help somehow? And a promise: We shall meet.