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UBC: The Gulag Archipelago
Jan. 4th, 2010 11:40 amSolzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I. The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, I-II. [Arkhipelag GULag.] Transl. Thomas P. Whitney. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973.
This is only the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, meaning of course that vols. 2 & 3 have been added to my infinitely expanding book list. It is, in no particular order: massive, passionate, funny, bitter, astounding, appalling, fascinating, heart-breaking. Periodically, especially in the chapters about Soviet trials, my suspension of disbelief would break, which is a really weird thing to have happen when you're reading nonfiction.
The universe has been conspiring recently to make me wish I could read Russian, and Solzhenitsyn only makes it worse; there are places in The Gulag Archipelago where I can SEE that something beautiful and clever and subversive is happening in the language, but English doesn't flex in the right direction to convey it.
Also, although of course Gogol was a Tsarist author, something about reading Solzhenitsyn made me understand him better.
And this is the epigraph for something, although I don't know what yet: "if you live in a graveyard, you can't weep for everyone" (584).
I do have less scattershot ideas about this book, but they aren't articulatable yet, so for now, this will have to do.
This is only the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, meaning of course that vols. 2 & 3 have been added to my infinitely expanding book list. It is, in no particular order: massive, passionate, funny, bitter, astounding, appalling, fascinating, heart-breaking. Periodically, especially in the chapters about Soviet trials, my suspension of disbelief would break, which is a really weird thing to have happen when you're reading nonfiction.
The universe has been conspiring recently to make me wish I could read Russian, and Solzhenitsyn only makes it worse; there are places in The Gulag Archipelago where I can SEE that something beautiful and clever and subversive is happening in the language, but English doesn't flex in the right direction to convey it.
Also, although of course Gogol was a Tsarist author, something about reading Solzhenitsyn made me understand him better.
And this is the epigraph for something, although I don't know what yet: "if you live in a graveyard, you can't weep for everyone" (584).
I do have less scattershot ideas about this book, but they aren't articulatable yet, so for now, this will have to do.
