Essay “A true writer is the same as an ancient prophet.” A true writer is the same as an ancient prophet

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn - Soviet and Russian writer, publicist and social and political figure. Through his works, he helped the world understand the horrors that happened in the Gulags, the Soviet labor camps. In particular, Solzhenitsyn described his experience in the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and the art-historical essay “The Gulag Archipelago” - two of his main works. We offer you a list best books writer and the deepest quotes from Solzhenitsyn about life, man and Russia.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was not just a brilliant writer, but a passionate devotee of his work. He considered it his moral duty to write down true story USSR, despite the pressure of the totalitarian regime.

In 1974, the writer was expelled and Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia only in 1994. Before his deportation from the USSR Alexander Solzhenitsyn awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In his lecture during the award ceremony, the writer quoted a Russian proverb: “One word of truth will conquer the whole world.” It was these words that succinctly described Solzhenitsyn’s literary credo. In an authoritarian country, Solzhenitsyn, like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, became an important source of spiritual help for his huge circle of readers.

THE BEST WORKS OF ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN WITH QUOTES

Alexander Solzhenitsyn during the presentation Nobel Prize

ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH (1962)

First published in 1962 in the magazine New world» the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” has become a classic modern literature. This is the story of a labor camp prisoner Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, graphic description his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is a cruel, shattering portrait of the whole world of Stalin’s forced labor camps, of millions of people who abandoned hope for the future. The book will show you how important sometimes a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup is when safety, warmth and food are the only things that worry you in life.

Still from the film “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (1970, Norway - Great Britain)

Reading “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” you find yourself in a world of imprisonment, cruelty, hard physical labor and cold, where every day you have to stand against heavy natural conditions and inhumane system. This story is one of the most amazing literary documents, which arose in the USSR and largely influenced its further development. This story confirmed Solzhenitsyn's prestige as a literary genius whose talent was on par with Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Tolstoy.

Work is like a stick, it has two ends: if you do it for people, it gives you quality; if you do it for your boss, it gives you show off.

God crumbles the old month into stars.

Who is the prisoner main enemy? Another prisoner. If the prisoners didn't get into trouble with each other, the authorities wouldn't have any power over them.

The brigadier is a force, but a convoy is a stronger force.

Geniuses do not adjust their interpretation to the taste of tyrants!

Quotes from the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

GULAG ARCHIPELAGO (1973-1975)

Based on my own experience of imprisonment and exile, as well as the testimony of more than 200 other prisoners and materials from Soviet archives, Alexander Solzhenitsyn depicts to us the entire apparatus of Soviet repression. This is a kind of state within a state, where management has unlimited power. Through portraits of almost Shakespearean victims - men, women, children - we encounter the work of the secret police... and something more.

"The Gulag Archipelago" is considered Solzhenitsyn's main masterpiece. This is a canvas consisting of many details, on which the author has collected camps, prisons, transit centers and the KGB, informants, spies and investigators. But the most important thing to see here is the heroism at the very heart of the Stalinist regime, where the key to survival lies not in hope, but in despair.

Gulag Archipelago on the map

The universe has as many centers as there are living beings in it.

But the line dividing good and evil crosses the heart of every person. And who will destroy a piece of his heart?.. During the life of one heart, this line moves on it, now crowded by joyful evil, now freeing up space for blossoming good.

A person who is not internally prepared for violence is always weaker than the rapist.

Unlimited power in your hands limited people always leads to cruelty

And until there is no independent in the country public opinion- there is no guarantee that all the multimillion-dollar causeless destruction will not happen again, that it will not begin any night, every night - this very night, the first after today.

Whether we are a great nation, we must prove not by the vastness of the territory, not by the number of ward nations, but by the greatness of our actions.

The Panama Canal, 80 km long, took 28 years to build, the Suez Canal, 160 km long, took 10 years, the White Sea-Baltic Canal, 227 km long, took less than 2 years, wouldn’t you like?

Quotes from the art-historical essay by Alexander Solzhenitsyn “The Gulag Archipelago”

CANCER WARD (1967)

One of the greatest allegorical masterpieces of world literature. “Cancer Ward” is at the same time a study of people who are sick incurable disease, and a magnificent dissection of a cancer-stricken state through the prism of the author’s deep compassion for the people caught inside this mousetrap. Almost all the action takes place in the thirteenth (“cancer”) building of the hospital, where patients discuss among themselves different sides life.

In 1964, this story was banned from publication, but still, along with “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” “Cancer Ward” opened the world’s eyes to the atrocities that were happening right in front of them, awakening its conscience. As Independent correspondent Robert Service wrote after reading it: “In his fight against communism Solzhenitsyn preferred the rapier to the club.”

If you don't know how to use a minute, you will waste an hour, a day, and your whole life.

The hardest life is not for those who drown in the sea, dig in the ground or look for water in deserts. The hardest life is for the one who, every day, leaving the house, hits his head on the ceiling - it’s too low...

That's how to live - rejoice in what you have! He is a wise man who is satisfied with little. Who is an optimist? Who says: in general, everything is bad in the country, everything is worse everywhere, everything is fine here, we are lucky. And he is happy with what he has, and is not tormented. Who is a pessimist? Who says: in general, everything is great in our country, everywhere is better, but here it’s just by chance that it’s bad.

It is not the level of well-being that makes people happy, but the relationship of hearts and our point of view on our lives. Both are in our power, which means a person is always happy if he wants it, and nothing can stop him.

But even the first step against pain is pain relief, there is also pain.

Quotes from the story “Cancer Ward” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

IN THE FIRST CIRCLE (1968)

The story of this novel fits into three Moscow days in 1949. Main character- Gleb Nerzhin, whose prototype was Alexander Solzhenitsyn himself, a prisoner engineer who, together with his colleague, must invent a device capable of recognizing voices. The management sets completely unrealistic deadlines for completing this task, since they now have in their hands a magnetic recording with the voice of the person who gave secret information to the US representative. Nerzhin faces a difficult dilemma: continue working for a system he hates or go to the periphery of the Gulag.

Still from the TV movie “The First Circle” (2005, Russia)

It happens that thoughts that are unconditional at night in half sleep turn out to be untenable in the light of the morning.

Satiety does not depend at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat! So is happiness, so is happiness, Lyovushka, it does not at all depend on the volume of external benefits that we snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude towards them! This was said in Taoist ethics: “He who knows how to be content will always be satisfied.”

There are many smart things in the world, but few good ones.

Don’t be afraid of the bullet that whistles, if you hear it, it means it’s no longer hitting you. You won't hear the one bullet that will kill you. It turns out that death does not seem to concern you: you exist - it is not there, it will come - you will no longer be there.

War is death. War is terrible not because of the advance of troops, not because of fires, not because of bombings - war is first of all terrible because it surrenders everything that thinks to the legitimate power of stupidity...

Quotes from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novel “In the First Circle”

RED WHEEL (1983)

This novel Alexandra Solzhenitsyn entered the TOP 10 best literary works throughout history, according to the publication “ The Guardian" In this novel, the writer conducted research on how communism began. Defeat is shown here in dramatic tones tsarist army at the Battle of Grunwald while Lenin secretly decided to take advantage of this weakness of the tsarist regime. And this is how Solzhenitsyn describes everything tragic events until the final victory of the Red Army. The author himself called “The Red Wheel” a narrative in a measured time frame.

Everything seemed suppressed for a thousand years. And then a black Browning stuck out to them - and...

The truth about Bogrov is terrible for the government and all those in power! Because: it is impossible for the government, it is a shame to admit that all their famous powerful state security fooled by a lonely, clever revolutionary. A pure case of superiority of a brilliant mind!

What is important is the threat of terror, the systematic nature: we will come again! We'll get there! They must know that there is power coming to them! The point is not necessarily elimination, but intimidation.

Executioners love to decorate themselves with legends.

If only the revolutionary did not commit a crime against the holy spirit - against his party! Everything else will be forgiven him!

Let him lie - but in the name of truth! Even if he kills - but in the name of love! The party takes all the blame, and then terror is not murder, and expropriation is not robbery.

"Go, fight and die" - in in three words the whole life of a revolutionary.

Quotes from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s epic novel “The Red Wheel”

What a pity, but four and a half decades after the first publication of the famous essay Alexandra Solzhenitsyn“The Gulag Archipelago” begins to seem to us that it is unlikely that we will ever be able to see the Russian analogue of the Nuremberg trials. But, if at least one writer appears who will force modern Russians to look at modernity with horror, exactly as this period deserves, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn did this at the height of the power of the Soviet Empire and was able to outlast the USSR by as much as 17 years.

One of whose works is of particular interest to researchers today is Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The works of this author are considered primarily in the socio-political aspect. Solzhenitsyn is the topic of this article.

Book Topics

Solzhenitsyn's work is the history of the Gulag Archipelago. The peculiarity of his books lies in the depiction of man's opposition to the forces of evil. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a man who went through the war, and at the end of it was arrested for “treason to the Motherland.” He dreamed of literary creativity and sought to study the history of the revolution as deeply as possible, because it was here that he looked for inspiration. But life gave him other stories. Prisons, camps, exile and incurable illness. Then a miraculous healing worldwide fame. And finally - expulsion from the Soviet Union.

So, what did Solzhenitsyn write about? The works of this writer - long haul self-improvement. And it is given only if there is a huge life experience and high cultural level. A real writer always a little above life. It’s as if he sees himself and those around him from the outside, somewhat detached.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn has come a long way. He saw a world in which a person has little chance of surviving both physically and spiritually. He survived. Moreover, I was able to reflect this in my work. Thanks to his rich and rare literary gift, the books that Solzhenitsyn created became the property of the Russian people.

Works

The list includes the following novels, novellas and short stories:

"One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich."
"Matrenin's yard"
“The incident at Kochetkova station.”
"Zakhar Kalita."
"Young growth."
"Doesn't matter".
"GULAG Archipelago".
"In the first circle."

Before the first publication of his creations, he worked for more than twelve years literary creativity Solzhenitsyn. The works listed above are only part of it. creative heritage. But these books should be read by every person for whom Russian is their native language. Themes are not horror-focused. camp life. This writer, like no one else in the 20th century, was able to portray a truly amazing person with his tenacity, based on certain natural and deep ideas about life.

One day in the life of a prisoner

The camp theme became close to the Soviet people. The most monstrous thing about it is that it was forbidden to discuss it. Moreover, even after 1953, fear prevented people from talking about the tragedy that occurred in every third family. Solzhenitsyn’s work “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” introduced into society a certain ethics forged in the camps. No matter what situation a person finds himself in, he should not forget about his dignity. Shukhov, the hero of Solzhenitsyn's story, does not live every day of the camp, but tries to survive. But the words of the old prisoner, which he heard back in 1943, sank into his soul: “The one who licks the bowls dies.”

In this story, Solzhenitsyn combines two points of view: the author’s and the hero’s. They are not opposites. They have a certain common ideology. The differences between them are the level of generalization and breadth of material. Solzhenitsyn manages to achieve a distinction between the hero’s thoughts and the author’s reasoning with the help of stylistic means.

The readers of the literary magazine “New World” did not remain indifferent to Ivan Denisovich. The publication of the story caused a stir in society. But before you get to the pages periodical, it was necessary to go through a difficult path. And here, too, the simple Russian character won. The author himself autobiographical work claimed that “Ivan Denisovich” got into print because the editor-in-chief of “New World” was none other than a man from the people - Alexander Tvardovsky. And the country’s main critic, Nikita Khrushchev, was interested in “camp life through the eyes of a simple man.”

Righteous Matryona

Preserving humanity in conditions that are less conducive to understanding, love, selflessness... This is the problem that Solzhenitsyn’s work “Matrenin’s Dvor” is dedicated to. The heroine of the story is a lonely woman, misunderstood by her husband, adopted daughter, and neighbors with whom she has lived side by side for half a century. Matryona has not accumulated property, but at the same time she works for free for others. She does not harbor anger towards anyone and does not seem to see all the vices that overwhelm the souls of her neighbors. It is on people like Matryona, according to the author, that the village, the city, and our entire land rest.

History of writing

After exile, Solzhenitsyn lived for almost a year in a remote village. Worked as a teacher. I rented a room from a local resident, who became the prototype for the heroine of the story “Matrenin’s Dvor.” The story was published in 1963. The work was highly appreciated by both readers and critics. Chief Editor"New World" A. Tvardovsky noted that illiterate and simple woman named Matryona has earned the interest of readers thanks to her rich spiritual world.

In the Soviet Union, Solzhenitsyn was able to publish only two stories. The works “In the First Circle” and “The Gulag Archipelago” were published for the first time in the West.

Artistic research

In his work, Solzhenitsyn combined the study of reality and a literary approach. While working on The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn used the testimony of more than two hundred people. Works about camp life and the inhabitants of the sharashka are based not only on one’s own experience. When reading the novel “The Gulag Archipelago”, sometimes you don’t understand what it is - or treatise? But the result of the study can only be statistical data. Solzhenitsyn’s own experience and stories from acquaintances allowed him to summarize all the material he collected.

The originality of the novel

The Gulag Archipelago consists of three volumes. In each of them the author sets out different periods in the history of the camps. Using the example of special cases, the technology of arrest and investigation is given. The sophistication with which the employees of the Lubyanka institution worked is amazing. To accuse a person of something he did not do, intelligence officers performed a number of complex manipulations.

The author makes the reader feel like he is in the camp's place. The novel “The Gulag Archipelago” is a mystery that attracts and attracts. Acquaintance with human psychology, disfigured by constant fear and terror, forms in readers a persistent hatred of the totalitarian regime in all its manifestations.

A person who turns into a prisoner forgets about moral, political and aesthetic principles. The only goal is to survive. Particularly terrible is the turning point in the psyche of a prisoner brought up with idealistic, lofty ideas about his own place in society. In a world of cruelty and unscrupulousness, it is almost impossible to be human, and not to be one means to break yourself forever.

In the literary underground

For many years, Solzhenitsyn created his works and then burned them. The contents of the destroyed manuscripts were stored only in his memory. The positive aspects of underground activity for a writer, according to Solzhenitsyn, are that the author is freed from the influence of censors and editors. But after twelve years of continuously writing stories and novels that remained unknown, his solitary creativity began to stifle him. Leo Tolstoy once said that a writer should not publish his books during his lifetime. Because it is immoral. Solzhenitsyn argued that one can agree with the words of the great classic, but still every author needs criticism.

Story life of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn(11.XII.1918, Kislovodsk) is the story of the endless struggle against totalitarianism. Confident in the absolute moral correctness of this struggle, not needing comrades-in-arms, not fearing loneliness, he always found the courage to resist the Soviet system - and won in this seemingly completely hopeless confrontation. His courage was forged by the entire experience of life, which occurred during the most dramatic changes of the Soviet era. Those circumstances of Russian socio-historical reality of the 30-50s, which broke and destroyed the steel-hard characters of professional revolutionaries and brave red division commanders, only tempered Solzhenitsyn and prepared him for the main work of his life. Most likely, he chose literature as a weapon of struggle - it is by no means valuable in itself for him, but is significant insofar as it makes it possible to represent before the world on behalf of all those broken and tortured by the system.

Graduation from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University and entry into adult life fell on 1941. On June 22, having received his diploma, Solzhenitsyn came for exams at the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy, Literature (MIFLI), where he had been studying correspondence courses since 1939. The next session coincided with the beginning of the war. In October he was mobilized into the army, and soon enrolled in an officer school in Kostroma. In the summer of 1942 - the rank of lieutenant, and at the end - the front: Solzhenitsyn commands a “sound battery” in artillery reconnaissance. As an artillery officer, he travels from Orel to East Prussia and is awarded orders.

On February 9, 1945, Captain Solzhenitsyn was arrested at the command post of his superior, General Travkin, who, a year after the arrest, gave his former officer a reference, where he listed, without fear, all his merits - including the night withdrawal from the encirclement of the battery in January 1945 ., when the battles were already in Prussia. After the arrest - camps: in New Jerusalem, in Moscow at the Kaluga outpost, in special prison No. 16 in the northern suburbs of Moscow (Marfinskaya "sharashka", described in the novel "In the First Circle", 1955-1968). Since 1949 - camp in Ekibastuz (Kazakhstan). Since 1953, Solzhenitsyn has been an “eternal exiled settler” in a remote village in the Dzhambul region, on the edge of the desert. In 1956 - rehabilitation and rural school in the village of Torfoprodukt not far from Ryazan, where a recent prisoner teaches, renting a room from Matryona Zakharova, who became the prototype of the hostess " Matryona Dvor"(1959). In 1959, Solzhenitsyn “in one gulp”, in three weeks, created a story, upon publication called “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, which, after much trouble by A.T. Tvardovsky and with the blessing of N.S. himself. Khrushchev was published in “New World” (1962. No. 11). From the mid-50s the most fruitful period creative work of the writer: the novels “Cancer Ward” (1963-1967) and “In the First Circle” (both published in 1968 in the West) are being created, the previously begun work on “The Gulag Archipelago” (1958-1968; 1979) and the epic “ Red Wheel" (work on a large historical novel"R-17", which grew into the epic "Red Wheel", started in 1964).

In 1970, Solzhenitsyn became a Nobel Prize laureate; He does not want to leave the USSR, fearing to lose his citizenship and the opportunity to fight in his homeland, so the personal receipt of the prize and the speech of the Nobel laureate are postponed for now. At the same time, his position in the USSR is increasingly deteriorating: principled and uncompromising ideological and literary position leads him to expulsion from the Writers' Union (November 1969), a campaign of persecution of the writer unfolds in the Soviet press. This forces him to give permission for the publication in Paris of the book “August the Fourteenth” (1971) - the first “Knot” of the epic “The Red Wheel”. In 1973, the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago was published by the YMCA-Press publishing house in Paris.

In February 1974, at the peak of the unbridled persecution launched in the Soviet press, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and imprisoned in Lefortovo prison. But his incomparable authority among the world community does not allow the Soviet leadership to simply deal with the writer, so he is deprived Soviet citizenship and expelled from the USSR. In Germany, the first country to accept an exile, he stays with Heinrich Böll, after which he settles in Zurich (Switzerland). In 1975, the autobiographical book “A Calf Butted an Oak Tree” was published - detailed story O creative path writer from the beginning literary activity before the second arrest and deportation and an essay on the literary environment of the 60-70s.

In 1976, the writer and his family moved to America, to Vermont. Here he is working on full meeting works and continues historical research, the results of which form the basis of the epic “The Red Wheel”.

Solzhenitsyn was always confident that he would return to Russia, even when the very thought of it seemed incredible. But already in the late 80s, the return began to gradually take place. In 1988, Solzhenitsyn was returned to USSR citizenship, and in 1990, the novels “In the First Circle” and “Cancer Ward” were published in Novy Mir. In 1994, the writer returned to Russia. Since 1995, Novy Mir has published a new cycle - “two-part” stories, miniatures “Tiny Things”.

In the works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn, with all his diversity, three central motifs can be distinguished, closely related to each other. Concentrated in his first published work, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” they developed, sometimes separately from each other, but more often intertwined. The “pinnacle” of their synthesis was the “Red Wheel”. Conventionally, these motives can be designated as follows: Russian national character; history of Russia of the 20th century; politics in the life of a person and a nation in our century. These themes, of course, are not at all new to the Russian realistic tradition of the last two centuries. But Solzhenitsyn, a man and a writer who is almost panic-strickenly afraid not only of his participation in a literary group, but also of any form of literary neighborhood, looks at all these problems not from the point of view of a writer of one or another “trend,” but as if from above, in the most sincere way ignoring directions. This does not ensure objectivity at all, in artistic creativity, in essence, impossible - Solzhenitsyn is very subjective. Such open literary non-partisanship ensures artistic independence - the writer represents only himself and expresses only his personal, private opinion; whether it will become public depends not on the support of the group or influential members of the “trend,” but on society itself. Moreover, Solzhenitsyn does not adapt to “popular opinion”, knowing full well that it does not always express the ultimate truth: the people, like individual, may be blinded by pride or delusion, may make mistakes, and the writer’s task is not to indulge him in these mistakes, but to strive to enlighten him.

Solzhenitsyn never follows a path already laid by someone, paving exclusively own way. Neither in life nor in literature did he flatter anyone - neither politicians who, like Khrushchev, sought to make it Soviet writer, castigating the vices of the cult of personality, but not encroaching on the fundamental principles of the Soviet system, nor the politicians of the past who became the heroes of his epic, who, while affirming saving paths, were never able to provide them. He was even cruel, turning away and breaking for political and literary reasons with people who sent his manuscripts abroad, often at serious risk to themselves, or who sought to help him publish his things here. One of the most painful breaks, both personal, social, and literary, was with V.Ya. Lakshin, Tvardovsky’s collaborator on Novy Mir, a critic who offered one of the first readings of the writer and did a lot of possible and impossible things for the publication of his works. Lakshin did not accept the portrait of A.T. Tvardovsky in essays literary life“The calf butted the oak tree” and, of course, did not agree with the interpretation of his own role in literary situation 60s, how it took shape around the “New World”. Another breakup, equally painful and cruel, was with Olga Carlisle. In 1978, she published the book “Solzhenitsyn and the Secret Circle” in the USA, in which she spoke about the role that she played in organizing secret routes for transferring the manuscripts of “The Gulag Archipelago” and “In the First Circle” to the West and about the cruelty with which Solzhenitsyn spoke about her in “The Calf...”. All this gave many both at home and in the West grounds for accusing Solzhenitsyn of self-centeredness and elementary human ingratitude. But the point here is deeper - it is not at all about personal character traits. It's hard life position a writer deprived of the ability to compromise, the only thing that gives him the opportunity to fulfill his life purpose.