The Enduring Solzhenitsyn

Here is an appreciative review of Between Two Millstones, Book 2, that appeared at the University Bookman a few days ago. It approaches things from a rather different angle than previous reviews.

There are countless takeaways from Book 2 of Between Two Millstones, as well as its predecessor. The set forms the intellectual autobiography of one of the truly great men of the twentieth century, a man whose absence in history would have resulted in much darker and more dire outcomes for all people of this good earth. As with the prophets of old, he was mocked and derided in his own time, and as with those prophets, the passage of time provides the greatest testimony to his importance. It is imperative to study men like Solzhenitsyn, to learn the lessons of their lives and life’s work lest we doom ourselves to tread those same lonely vales. We must remember them, that we may stoke the smoldering fires of our human potential.
— Jeremy Kee, The University Bookman

Happy 103rd Birthday, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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?…
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Reflection in Water