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Title: First Circle: A Novel by Aleksandr I. Whitney, Thomas F., Translator Solzhenitsyn ISBN: 0-8095-9000-X Publisher: Borgo Pr Pub. Date: December, 1990 Format: Hardcover List Price(USD): $39.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.94 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The First Circle
Comment: What makes The First Circle such a great book (the best I've read by Solzhenitsyn) is how he reduces a political system and economic ideology to individual choices. It was a system built upon greed, jealousy, selfish pragmatism and fear, the vanity of Stalin, the petty rivalry between commanding officers, the desperate connivance of a prisoner who will turn against his fellow man in order to better his own lot. In other words, humanity.
The consequences were also human: the loss of the prime years of a man's life, a life without the love of a woman, a father worrying about the fate of his young daughter thousands of miles away. Solzhenitsyn does a masterful job of rendering the real world behind philosophy and ideology, the world the USSR lost sight of when they placed ends before means.
In the end, what is perhaps most frightening is that the face of evil is so banal.
Rating: 5
Summary: The perfect novel.
Comment: The theme of this book is not prison camps: it is nothing more narrow than life itself. And it is almost as rich in characters and stories within stories (here Solzhenitsyn is very like Tolstoy) as life: constancy in love, artistic integrity, the whimspy of fate, literacy in Medieval Novgorod, the prison in the Count of Monte Cristo, snow, how to sew, the law of unintended consequences.
A few major abiding themes run like threads throughout the book, providing unity: First, the life of the "zek," the prisoner in Stalin's camps. Second, loneliness: not just of prisoners longing for a woman or lost loved ones, or of persecuted wives trying to make lives for themselves, but ultimately of each person. Every conversation carries a different meaning for the people involved. The author "gets inside of peoples heads" in an amazing way -- from the janitor Spiridon to the "Best Friend of Counter-Intelligence Operatives," Joseph Stalin himself. Third, and on a deeper level, integrity, both artistic and moral.
Fourth, and I don't know if this was the conscious intent of the author or not, the book reminds us of the unity of Western civilization. Aside from mentions of Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Pushkin, and Lermontov, (which, I might add, also describes the company Solzhenitsyn belongs in, with honor), the book is honeycombed with references to the great thinkers and artists of European civilization -- from the ancient Greeks and the Gospels, to Dante, the Holy Grail, Bach and Beethoven. The Marxist Rubin even quotes Luther. Primarily, no doubt this is a reflection of the fact that the prisoners in the "sharashkas," the top-secret scientific work camps, were educated men, unlike, say, the hero of his shorter novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. (The contrast Solzhenitsyn draws to their well-paid Neanderthal captors is just one form of the irony that is his most distinctive and powerful stylistic weapon. But even the Neanderthals, including Stalin himself, are portrayed not as cardboard villains, but with insight and imagination.) These references also remind us that, as much as Solzhenitsyn has been accused of being a "Slavophobe," as if that were an insult, the Russian culture he loves is an integral part of Western civilization. This iconic dialogue of the ages, similiar to the works of great Chinese painters, also adds another layer of delight to the book.
The final and greatest thread that unifies this work is the idea of achieving humanity, of becoming what a person ought to be, of heroism. The prisoners are poets, eccentric, and philosophers (though there are also scoundrels, and everyone is tempted that way), beaten down by life and the forces of disolution within, trying to preserve their souls, or civilization, from the barbarians who are their masters. In describing the simple heroism of some of his characters, Solzhenitsyn achieves brilliance. In my opinion, First Circle is the greatest of his works, and one of the most powerful pieces of writing of the 20th Century, at least. And it is not about the Gulag, primarily: it is about what it means to be human, and the choices we all face.
Aside from the characters and stories, many of the scenes are wonderful (again like Tolstoy): of Rubin standing in the courtyard at night in the snow when he hears the train whistle, of the party at the prosecutor's house, of the arrest of the diplomat. If life is sometimes too strange for fiction, (and it is) there are also pieces of fiction that seem truer than life. First Circle is a marriage of style and substance made in heaven, or at least, the highest circle of hell.
author, Jesus and the Religions of Man
Rating: 5
Summary: First volume of The Gulag Archipelago
Comment: I recommend that you read the entire Gulag Archipelago; The First Circle is a particularly specific work, dealing with the mind-numbing and devious prison for intellectually valuable polical prisoners during Stalinist Russia. A sort of think-tank was created by falsely accusing and imprisoning brilliant people. What occurred was not the total degradation of a labor camp, but the mind-numbing passivity of those whose future is not in their own hands. The First Circle refers to Dante's First Circle of Hell; the best circle, but hell nonetheless.
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Title: Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ISBN: 0374511993 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1991 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956 by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn ISBN: 0060007761 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 22 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Alexander Tvardovsky ISBN: 0451527097 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: August, 1998 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: August 1914 : The Red Wheel - I by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, H. T. Willetts ISBN: 0374519994 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 15 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: November 1916: The Red Wheel/Knot II by H. T. Willetts, Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, T. Solzheni ISBN: 0374223149 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: February, 1999 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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