Chapter 3 of The Nobel Lecture on Literature by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, translated by Thomas P. Whitney

3 

    I have climbed my way up to this lectern from which the Nobel Lecture is read, a lectern not granted to every writer and once only in a lifetime, not just up three or four specially erected steps but hundreds and even thousands of them -- unyielding, steep, frozen, out of the dark and the cold where I was fated to survive and where others, who possessed perhaps greater talent and were stronger than I, perished. I met on a few among them in the Gulag Archipelago scattered over a wide-spread multitude of islands. And beneath the millstone of police surveillance and mistrust I did to speak face to face with all those who were there either. Of some I only heard at second hand and about others I only guessed. Those who fell in that abyss who already had made a name in literature are at least known to us -- but how many were unknown, had never been published! And so very few, almost no one, managed to survive and return, A whole national literature remained behind, buried not only without coffins and graves, but even without underwear, naked except for an identification tag on the toe. Russian literature never ceased for one moment! Yet from outside it seemed a desert. Where a thick forest might have grown there remained, after all the timbering, only two or three trees which had missed being cut down.

    

    And today how am I, accompanied as I am by the spirits of those who perished, my head bowed as I let pass before me up to this lectern others who were earlier worthy of it, how am I here today supposed to divine and express that which they would have wished to say?

    This duty has long weighed upon me, and I have understood it. In the words of Vladimir Soloviev:

                 In chains, too, we must close the circle

                 Which the gods have drawn for us.

    In exhausting camp marches, rows of lanterns lighting the columns of prisoners in the darkness of subzero nights, more than once we felt in our throats what we would have liked to shout out to the whole world, if only the world could have heard some spokesman from among us. At that time it seemed so very, very clear that all our lucky envoy had to do was to raise an outcry and instantly the whole world would respond.  Our entire outlook, it terms of both material objects and emotional actions and reactions, was precisely defined And we sensed no lack of balance in the indivisible world. Those thoughts did not come from books and had not been taken over for the sake of harmony and good order: they had been formulated in prison cells and around timber-camp bonfires in conversations with people long since dead who had emerged tried and true from that life, who had matured in that existence.

    When the external pressure lessened, our outlook and my own outlook broadened, and gradually, if only through a peephole, the "whole world" could be seen and discerned. And, surprisingly for us, that "whole world" turned out to be something quite different from what we expected it to be. It did not live by what we had expected. It was proceeding to a destination we had not anticipated. When it came to a swampy bog, it exclaimed: "What a divine and lovely lawn!" When it encountered stocks made of concrete that  were going to be placed around the necks of prisoners, it exclaimed: "What a lovely necklace!" And where unquenchable tears poured forth for some, others danced to lighthearted music.

    So how has this come about? When has this abyss arisen? Were we all unfeeling? Or was the world unfeeling? Or was it due to the difference in languages? How does it happen that people are unable to understand each other's plain speech? Words resound and flow away like water -- without taste, or color, or odor. Without a trace. 

    To the extent that I have come to understand this, the content, meaning, and tone of my possible speech here have changed over and over again with the years ... the speech that I am delivering today.

    It is by no very little like that speech which I first conceived in the subzero cold of the camp nights.

A Poem a Day

Elizabeth to Her Cousin

by James Matthew Wilson

After Jacob of Serug

Blessed are you, O Maiden; blest

The fruit which dwells within your womb,

Beloved in that holy rest

Whose secret comes to sacred bloom.

And blessed is this virgin birth

Which shall uproot sin from the earth.

Who grants this favor to me now,

That you should come, O Blessed One,

Bearing the great who is made low?

By his own will this thing is done.

The mother of a king, and yet,

It’s at my wooden door we’ve met.

Let every mouth speak out your praise,

And all the seraphim stand shaken.

Your womb contains the brilliant rays

That from a living flame shall waken

This world, whose sleep in sin-black night

Gives way before new life and light.

The gardener who clears the thorns;

A lion’s cub whose jaws shall roar

Louder than all of Joshua’s horns,

And drive all craven wolves before:

Such is the sun that all shall see

Arise from you as from the sea.

But who am I that you should come

Bearing the one who made the world,

Who is its savior and its sum,

And yet within you now lies curled?

I am unfit, Ancient of Days,

To welcome you or speak your praise.

But, Lady blest and full of grace,

I see your beauty and rejoice;

The radiant flush upon your face,

A living water in your voice,

Disclosing what alone you know,

That light and word within you grow.

No angel spoke this truth to me,

But he who grows within me stirred

The moment that my eyes could see

You, still far off, and my ears heard

Your call, as down the hill you came,

Bearing that secret, ancient flame.