I’ve received an e-mail from a student who is doing her thesis on Solzhenitsyn’s great novel, The First Circle. I thought I’d share with visitors to the Ink Desk my response to her questions:

 

I wondered what is your reading of the novel, The First Circle, and did you happen to discuss it with Solzhenitsyn?  

Like almost all of Solzhenitsyn’s work, The First Circle is a meditation on suffering. It is also, like most of his fiction, a fragmented approach to autobiography. There is much of Solzhenitsyn in the character of Gleb Nerzhin. The novel illumines the edifying benefits of suffering, if such suffering is accepted in humility, and the corrupting nature of creature comforts, if such comforts are pursued for selfish, i.e. prideful, motives.  I did not discuss The First Circle explicitly with Solzhenitsyn but he did mention it in passing in our discussions.

 

Where and how do you think the novel fits with his spirituality and understanding of Christianity in his later years?  

The novel dovetails very well with Solzhenitsyn’s later spirituality. Indeed, it is evident that Solzhenitsyn was very happy with it as an expression of his mystical approach to suffering and as an enduring autobiographical reflection of his conversion and its permanence with regard to its shaping of his subsequent self and his interaction with the realities of life. 

 

Do you think this novel serves as a message to the West, or is it directed primarily to Russia? 

Like all great literature, and The First Circle is great literature, it has a perennial applicability to the human condition and is therefore as applicable to the West as it is to Russia.

 

Also, and more broadly, what was Solzhenitsyn like when you met him?  

Solzhenitsyn was a true delight. Although he had an aura of gravitas, which commanded respect, he also had an air of levitas, a great sense of humour, expressed with a recurring mischievous glint in the eye! One could sense the deep well of suffering, when one held his gaze, but this was always accompanied by an even deeper sense of serenity which bubbled to the surface in the form of good-natured humour. The two words that spring to mind when I recall his deep and penetrating china blue eyes is a mixture of wistfulness and whimsy!

 

It’s fascinating to me that you’ve personally spoken this incredible man.  What were his mannerisms, and how they reflect his experiences and trials, particularly when you discuss his eternal optimism?

I think this is answered above. I would add, however, that he was relaxed and conveyed the sense of a man at peace with himself and his God.