Encouraged by Solzhenitsyn’s ready acceptance of the affinity between his own creative vision and that of Tolkien, I ventured to read him two quotes from Tolkien that appeared to encapsulate the spirit of his own work:
[T]he essence of a fallen world is that the best cannot be attained by free enjoyment, or by what is called “self-realization” (usually a nice name for self-indulgence, wholly inimical to the realization of other selves); but by denial, by suffering. [“Absolutely… absolutely”, Solzhenitsyn whispered.]
Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament…. There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man’s heart desires.8
“Is that Tolkien?” Solzhenitsyn asked, eyes widened in surprise. “Yes, again correct.”
As those piercing eyes met mine across the table, another image from Tolkien entered my head. This time the quote remained unspoken, but the image of Treebeard, the wizened voice of wisdom in The Lord of the Rings, with his “deep eyes… slow and solemn, but very penetrating”, filled my mind. For an instant, Solzhenitsyn’s eyes and those of Treebeard were united: “One felt as if there was an enormous well behind them, filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present: like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake.” Like Pippin, I felt that those eyes were considering me with the same slow care they had given to their own inside affairs for endless years.
“I recently started writing, once more, small prose poems”, Solzhenitsyn continued, breaking the spell. “One of these is called ‘Aging’, growing old. It’s only a few lines. The conclusion, the point that emerges from those few lines is that growing old is not a path downward, but in fact movement up.” This, of course, is opposite to the vision of the materialists, who see the aging process only as evidence of physical decay, heralding nothing but the unmentionable approach of death. This in turn had led to the modern idolization of youth, with further detrimental effects on society. “The old possess a collective experience. There’s no substitute for experience. Youth may only have premonitions, guesses, but it does not yet possess the foundations upon which to build that up. Therein lies the advantage of an advanced age.”
Inevitably, the subject of advanced age brought the conversation back to thoughts of retrospection. In his autobiography, The Oak and the Calf, Solzhenitsyn had hinted at the role of providence in his life. To what extent, did he believe that his life’s labors had served a purpose greater than the sum of their parts?
There are two questions here. The first question is how do I view providence, and I have already said today that I am deeply convinced that God participates in every life, and the other issue is that people understand this in varying degrees. Some clearly recognize this, others do not. In addition, life does not necessarily have to be externally significant. It can be the most humble of lives, but it can always feel this contact with God. So the fact that I have this feeling is no exception. It is simply another example of this. That is the first question. The second question about whether what I have done is more than the sum of its parts. That which I have done is divided into the books I have written; each book has its own weight and its own meaning, and the concept of a “sum” does not readily fit in with this artistic creativity. The second would be my sort of societal actions. My societal actions have sum, and they have had an influence on the process both in my homeland and in the West…. Currently, I consciously step back from this, because I do not see in my own homeland the ability to be able to influence the course of events, in the conditions of which I was telling you concerning the cultural atomization of the country. The other method is to write books addressing the problems directly, but books aren’t going to penetrate anywhere. For instance, this book, Russia in Collapse, is sold in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and who knows when it will penetrate into the provinces. It is impossible to determine. And my age demands that I finish the work that I have previously begun, which is what I am now doing.
As Solzhenitsyn entered the twilight years of his life, it seemed that an air of resignation had swept away any last remaining plans, desires, or ambitions. There was little he still wished to achieve. “I only want to finish those works which I have already begun and not more than that. Of course, I would try to influence the course of events here in Russia, but I don’t see the ways of doing so. I have already had two mild heart attacks.”
The melancholy atmosphere evaporated with the very suggestion that Solzhenitsyn’s prodigious productivity could be coming to an end. The mention of retirement triggered one of those infectious chuckles, accompanied as ever with the reassuringly boyish glint of the eye. “I’m afraid that I will not be able to finish everything, and after death, I think I will still have enough unpublished material for several volumes… so now is not the time to retire!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
TROUBLOUS TIMES
As the dust settled on the ruins of the Soviet Empire, and as Russia struggled to emerge—battered, bruised, but perhaps not entirely broken—from the ruins, the enormity of Solzhenitsyn’s legacy was finally coming of age. Within the first ten years of its publication, The Gulag Archipelago had sales of more than thirty million and had been translated into at least thirty-five languages. It, and its author, could not be ignored. Loved or loathed, the man and his work straddled the final years of the Soviet Union like a colossus of outraged conscience. Thirty years later, as the Soviet corpse sank beneath the soil of Russia, Solzhenitsyn had earned his place of honor in the pantheon of those who fought the monster when it was still very much alive, and not only alive but deadly.
In exposing the bloody nails with which Lenin and Stalin had nailed Russia and its people to the communist cross, Solzhenitsyn had become a nail in the communist coffin. “[Y]ou have still not realized that with the appearance of The Gulag Archipelago, that hour in history has struck which will be fatal to you”, wrote the Russian dissident L. L. Regelson, in an open letter to the Soviet leaders shortly after the Gulag was published.1 In similar vein, the Frankfurter Allegemeine, a leading German newspaper, attested to the ominous nature of the Gulag’s publication: “The time may come when we date the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet system from the appearance of Gulag.”2
These appraisals of Solzhenitsyn’s legacy are remarkable for the fact that they were written by those who do not share his religion or his politics. The praise, when given, is often given grudgingly. Others are not so charitable, belittling Solzhenitsyn’s importance in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.3 It is a sad reflection of the present age and its meretricious Zeitgeist that Solzhenitsyn is often held in scorn in spite of his irrepressible courage in single-handedly defying tyranny. In a cowardly age, courage is evidently undervalued.