The nature of scientific abuse in Candle in the Wind centers on the use of Alda, a lovable but over-sensitive and neurotic woman, as a guinea pig in experiments in “neurostabilization”. The result of this “brain-scrambling” is that Alda changes from being hyper-sensitive to insensitive, from painfully alive to comfortably numb. She escapes from suffering only by becoming less alive: the end result, as Solzhenitsyn was eager to stress, of “technological interference in the complex psychology of human beings. It is almost a discussion of a worldwide process, not so much an experiment on her. The rush, the onward push of technology destroys the human psyche.” Does this mean that Alda can be seen as an archetype of the modern world itself? “Yes, yes,” Solzhenitsyn stressed emphatically, “the modern world in the capacity as victim: the vulnerable part of modernity and the modern world.”24
What then would have been the solution to Alda’s, and the world’s, neurosis? Did Alda need love not mechanisms? “Yes,” Solzhenitsyn replied, “the solution would have been spiritual.”25 A spiritual solution. Whatever one may feel about Solzhenitsyn’s spiritual alternative to intrusive technology, it is not, contrary to Natalya’s claims, “wholly negative”.
If Natalya’s views on Candle in the Wind illumine the gulf separating her own aspirations from those of her husband, Solzhenitsyn’s descriptions of his “fictional” wife in the play are even more evocative of the sense of alienation in their marriage. Alex tells Alda that he was happy with few possessions and a tiny clay house before his wife appeared on the scene. “She was absolutely tireless and she was ashamed of our hut! She was ambitious as well and demanded that I erect a palace with a slate roof! She demanded that I earn more too. And that I take her to the city and the big stores.” He laments that his wife is typical of those who “think only of how best to grab and buy things and impress their neighbours” and attempts to explain why he is incapable of living that way: “To have to please someone, worry about someone, and let that determine my philosophy. I live only once and I want to act in accordance with absolute truth.” Accepting that as a husband he could never live up to materialist expectations, he adds: “My wife did a wise thing: she immediately found herself another husband who made good money.”26 Apart from the undercurrents of bickering, Solzhenitsyn’s purpose in writing the play was always that higher goal espoused by Pasternak two years earlier. Its principal concern is the meaning of life itself, the preservation of the light within, which is diminished by hedonistic materialism, nihilism, and the lust for life that is really a living death. Against this hell-bound path of least resistance are contraposed suffering—described by Alex as “a lever for the growth of the soul”—and poverty: “It’s not a question of how much you earn, it’s a question of how little you spend.”27
Perhaps the play is summarized most succinctly by Keith Armes in the introduction to his translation of the English edition: “Solzhenitsyn attempts to persuade a reluctant world of the dangers of materialism and of the worship of science. In doing so he proclaims that Christian faith which was later to inspire the Easter Procession and the Lenten Letter.”28
In spite of the suppression of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, the much-heralded cultural thaw in the Soviet Union following Khrushchev’s accession to power gave Solzhenitsyn hope that at last he could emerge from the shadows and his literature would see the light of day. “Finally, at the age of forty-two,” he wrote, “this secret authorship began to wear me down. The most difficult thing of all to bear was that I could not get my works judged by people with literary training. In 1961, after the twenty-second Congress of the USSR Communist Party and Tvardovsky’s speech at this, I decided to emerge and to offer One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.”29
In his speech to the Congress, Tvardovsky, editor of the literary journal Novy Mir, had spoken of the need to “show the labours and ordeals of our people in a manner that is totally truthful to life”,30 and even Khrushchev himself, in an attack on Stalin, had promised to erect a monument in Moscow “to the memory of the comrades who fell victims to arbitrary power”. “Comrades!” Khrushchev had implored. “Our duty is to investigate carefully such abuses of power in all their aspects. Time passes and we shall die, since all of us are mortal, but as long as we have the strength to work we must clear up many things and tell the truth to the Party and our people.”31
Solzhenitsyn did not trust Khrushchev, still believing that his own emergence from the shadows would be very risky and “might lead to the loss of my manuscripts and to my own destruction”,32 but Tvardovsky’s words offered hope, and he decided to present the manuscript of One Day in the Life to Tvardovsky for possible publication in Novy Mir.
On December 11, 1961, his forty-third birthday, Solzhenitsyn received a telegram from Tvardovsky inviting him to Moscow at Novy Mir’s expense. The dryness of the telegram concealed the delight with which Tvardovsky had read the manuscript. He had sat up all night reading it and declared to several friends the following day that a great writer had just been born. One friend recalled that he had never seen Novy Mir’s editor so enthusiastic as he was that day, insisting that he would do everything in his power to ensure Solzhenitsyn’s novel was published: “They say that Russian literature’s been killed. Damn and blast it! It’s in this folder with the ribbons. But who is he? Nobody’s seen him yet. We’ve sent a telegram…. We’ll take him under our wing, help him, and push his book through.” He told the novelist Vera Panova that “believe it or not, I’ve got a manuscript from a new Gogol”.33
A year later Solzhenitsyn expressed his gratitude to Tvardovsky: “The greatest happiness that ‘recognition’ has given me I experienced in December last year, when you found Denisovich worth a sleepless night. None of the praise that came afterwards could outstrip that.”34
At the conclusion of their meeting in Moscow, Tvardovsky insisted on drawing up a contract, stipulating the payment of an advance of 300 roubles to the author on signature, a sum equivalent to more than twice his annual salary as a schoolteacher. Solzhenitsyn had made his first major breakthrough as a writer.
Natalya could not believe her eyes when she saw the terms of the contract and burst into tears. Meanwhile, in a spirit of euphoria, Solzhenitsyn wrote to friends that the reception of his manuscript had “exceeded my wildest expectations” and that “the whole thing has knocked me sideways”.35
An unwelcome reminder that he was still walking on a knife-edge came at the beginning of 1962 when he returned to the offices of Novy Mir to hear the verdict on Matryona’s House. Although Tvardovsky liked the story, he feared that it was “a bit too Christian” for a Soviet journal. It was too subversive, and he dared not publish it. Nonetheless, he assured Solzhenitsyn that he wanted to publish it and stressed that he had no wish to browbeat his new-found prodigy into political submission. “Please don’t become ideologically reliable”, he quipped at the end of the meeting. “Don’t write anything that my staff could pass without my having to know about it.”36 It was clear that Tvardovsky and Solzhenitsyn were on dangerous ground, and both men realized that the courage of their convictions was being put to the test. As if to emphasize the point, Tvardovsky assured Solzhenitsyn that he was determined to publish One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and would do everything he could to overcome any opposition he might meet along the way.