Chapter 1 of The Nobel Lecture on Literature by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, translated by Thomas P. Whitney

     

    By some happy Providence, I live a 30-minute drive from "the largest used bookstore in Washington state." It's one of my favorite places; floor-to-ceiling books, rooms of books, hallways with books, books in piles and stacks, boxes of books and books overflowing those boxes, shelves and shelves of books, books, books.  A dream. Every time I go I find something interesting, and this last time, tucked away in the General Literature section, was this little find - The Nobel Lecture on Literature by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, translated by Thomas P. Whitney. 

    Since finishing The Brothers Karamazov, all Russian artists have held a new interest for me. There is something different about Russian literature that is difficult to pin down, but is so intriguing. In this talk, Professor Gary Saul Morson describes the distinguishing traits of Russian literature - among other things, the description of those tiny, imperceptible movements within us that bring about a decision or a change of mind. So of course, when I saw this small book by a well-known Russian author (whose works I have not yet read), I was happy to pay the $6 to bring it home.

the dustjacket description

    It is beautiful. Beautiful and moving. I not only agree with everything I've read, I love the way it is said. I wish I could read it in the original Russian, but Mr. Whitney's translation is such that it feels like I am hearing from Solzhenitsyn himself. Every paragraph is quotable, so I thought, why not share it? There are 7 chapters, and they are each shorter than a typical Substack post. For the next 7 days, I'll post one chapter a day. It will be good to end the year with a profound consideration of art by one who knows of what he speaks.

                                                                                                                                                               

    1

    "Like that bewildered savage who has picked up a strange object...perhaps something thrown up by the sea, perhaps disinterred from the sands or dropped from the heavens...and object intricate in its convolutions, which shines first with a dull glow and then with a bright shaft of light...who keeps turning it over and over in his hands in an effort to find some way of putting it to use, seeking some humble function for it, which is within his limited grasp, never conceiving of a higher purpose...         So we, too, holding art in our hands, vaingloriously considering ourselves to be its master, undertake brazenly to give it direction, to renovate it, to reform it, to issue manifestoes about it, to sell it for money. We use it to play up to those who possess power. We employ it at times for amusement - even in music hall and night clubs - and also, at times, grabbing holding of it however we can, for transient and limited political and social needs. But art is not desecrated by our carryings-on. it does not lose sight of its own origins because of them. And each time and in each mode of use it sheds on us a portion of its secret inner light.      But can we embrace all that light? Who is there so bold as to proclaim that he as DEFINED art? That he has enumerated all its facets? Yet perhaps in ages past someone did comprehend and define it for us, but we grew impatient: we listened in passing and paid no heed and discarded it immediately in our eternal haste to replace even the very best with something else just because it is new! And then, later on, when what is old is restated, we forget that we heard it before.     One artist imagines himself the creator of an independent spiritual world and takes on his shoulders the act of creating that world and its population, assuming total responsibility for it - but he stumbles and breaks down because there is no mortal genius capable of bearing such a load; just like man, who once declared himself the center of all existence but was incapable of crating a balanced spiritual system. And then, when failure occurs, it is all blamed on the eternal disharmony of the world, on the complexity of the shattered contemporary soul, or on the stupidity of the public.       Another artist realized that there is a supreme force above him and works away gladly as a small apprentice beneath God's heaven, even though his responsibility for everything he writes or draws and for the souls which perceive it is all the more strict. But still: it was not he who created this world, nor is it he who provides it with direction, and he has no doubts of its foundations. The artist is only give to sense more keenly than other the harmony of the world and all the beauty and savagery of man's contribution to it - and to communicate this poignantly to people. And even in the midst of failure and down at the lowest depth of existence - in poverty, prison, illness - the sensation of a stable harmony will never leave him.     However, all the irrationality of art, its blinding twists and turns, its unpredictable discoveries, its soul-shaking impact on people art too magical to be contained within the world-outlook of an artist, in his conception or in the work of his unworthy fingers.     Archaeologists have not yet discovered any stage of human existence without art. Even in the half-light before the dawn of humanity we received this gift from Hands we did not manage to discern. Nor have we managed to ask: Why was this given us and what are we to do with it?     And all those prophets who are predicting that art is disintegrating, that is has used up all its forms, that it is dying, are mistaken . We are the ones who shall die. And art will remain. The question is whether before we perish we shall understand all its aspects and all its ends.     Not all can be given names. Some of them go beyond words. Art opens even the chilled, darkened heart to high spiritual experience. Through the instrumentality of art we are sometimes sent - vaguely, briefly - insights which logical processes of thought cannot attain.     Like the tiny mirror of the fairy tale: you look into it and you see - not yourself - but for one fleeting moment the Unattainable to which you cannot leap or fly. And the heart aches..."

                                                                                                                                                               

A Poem a Day

The Christmas Tree

by Cecil Day-Lewis

Put out the lights now!

Look at the Tree, the rough tree dazzled

In oriole plumes of flame,

Tinselled with twinkling frost fire, tasselled

With stars and moons—the same

That yesterday hid in the spinney and had no fame

Till we put out the lights now.

Hard are the nights now:

The fields at moonrise turn to agate,

Shadows are cold as jet;

In dyke and furrow, in copse and faggot

The frost’s tooth is set;

And stars are the sparks whirled out by the north wind’s fret

On the flinty nights now.

So feast your eyes now

On mimic star and moon-cold bauble:

Worlds may wither unseen,

But the Christmas Tree is a tree of fable,

A phoenix in evergreen,

And the world cannot change or chill what its mysteries mean

To your hearts and eyes now.

The vision dies now

Candle by candle: the tree that embraced it

Returns to its own kind,

To be earthed again and weather as best it

May the frost and the wind.

Children, it too had its hour – you will not mind

If it lives or dies now.