Happy 103rd Birthday, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Solzhenitsyn in exile at Kok-Terek, Kazakhstan, 1954–55
On the great author’s birthday, we share with you today one of his perfect, profound “miniatures”, Reflection in Water. Take a moment to read these few lines slowly, and you will be much rewarded.
“On the surface of swift-running water you cannot make out the reflections of objects near or distant. Even if it is not muddy, even if it is free of foam, reflections in the ceaselessly wavering ripples, the boisterously shifting race are deceptive, vague, incomprehensible.
Only when, from stream to stream, the current has reached a placid estuary, or in still backwaters, or in small lakes with never a tremulous wave, can we see in the mirror-smooth surface the smallest leaf of a tree on the bank, every fiber of a fine-combed cloud, and the intense blue depths of the sky.
So it is with you and me. If, try as we may, we never have been and never shall be able to see, to reflect the truth in all its eternal fresh-minted clarity, is it not because we are still in motion, still living?…”