It was my first job out of college. I was a copy editor at a newspaper in Texas. Turnover was high, and within a few short months I was No. 2 on the copy desk. One of my tasks was sorting through all of the stories from wires services and deciding what should be included in the newspaper.
One day, in late 1973, we received a notice from The New York Times News Service. A manuscript of worldwide importance was soon to be published, and it promised enormous impact on world politics. A few weeks later, we learned what the manuscript was: The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a detailed and documented account of life in the Soviet Union’s huge network of labor camps.
Solzhentisyn had emerged as a writer during a small sliver of freedom in the early 1960s. His novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich had been published (or approved for publication) by the Soviet magazine Novy Mir in the early 1960s (translated into English in 1963). Two other manuscripts (Cancer Ward and The First Circle) had circulated in Russia via samizdat and then smuggled out to the West. The Soviets were not pleased when Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. When the non-fiction Gulag was published in early 1974, the Soviet Union responded almost immediately by expelling the writer from the country. He made his way first to Germany, and eventually settled in Vermont, where he continued to write fiction and non-fiction and edit the next two volumes of Gulag.
While the managing editor of my newspaper wasn’t sure if this was really all The New York Times was claiming it to be, I had a better understanding. I had read Solzhenitsyn’s three novels in English while I was in college. And I knew this could pose major problems for Henry Kissinger and then-President Nixon in their efforts to achieve détente with the Soviet Union. I convinced the managing editor to publish the story on the front page of the newspaper.
Solzhentisyn, a soldier in the Red Army as it advanced on Nazi Germany, had been arrested by the Soviets in eastern Germany in 1945. His correspondence with a friend had included poorly disguised criticisms of Joseph Stalin—not exactly the wisest thing to do at the time. He spent almost a decade in the labor camps before being released.
It was his time with the Red Army in what had been Prussia that eventually gave birth to a long poem, published as Prussian Nights in Russian (in Paris) in 1974, in German in 1976, and in English in 1977. The poem is not exactly a celebration of the achievements of the Soviet army; the word “condemnation” is not too strong. The army indiscriminately raped and pillaged its way across Prussia on its march to Berlin. Everything and anything was allowed; this was payback time for what the Nazis had done to Russia. What many of the Red Army soldiers proved was that they were no better than their Nazi counterparts.
The poem, translated into English by the historian and poet Robert Conquest, is a hard work to read. The text reads easily enough; it is what the text says that makes this an emotionally difficult work. Here’s a section called 22 Horingstrasse:
Zweiundzwanzig, Horingstrasse.
It’s not been burned, just looted, rifled.
A moaning, by the walls half muffled:
The mother’s wounded, still alive.
The little daughter’s on the mattress,
Dead. How many have been on it?
A platoon, a company perhaps?
A girl’s been turned into a woman,
A woman turned into a corpse.
It’s all come down to simple phrases:
Do not forget! Do not forgive!
Blood for blood! A tooth for a tooth!
The mother begs, “Tote mich, Soldat!”
Her eyes are hazy and bloodshot.
The dark’s upon her. She can’t see.
Am I one of theirs? Or whose?…
Doctors? Hospitals? Not for you.
Where druggists stood there’s melted glass.
The day turns gray. The snow melts too…
The italicized words were official slogans used by the Soviet High Command. Rape and pillage were official policies. And all a mother can do, the corpse of her daughter next to her, is to beg the soldier to put an end to her life. Solzhenitsyn’s point: We victorious Soviets are no better than the Nazi enemy we have defeated.
It is an age-old characterization of what can happen to armies (and civilian populations) in war. Victory doesn’t necessarily connote moral superiority.
When it was published in 1977, Prussian Nights received mixed reviews. The New York Times called it clumsy. The New York Review of Books cited its power, despite its “shortcomings.” Some recognized its literary merits for what they were—the critic Clive James cited its creative power in “re-establishing objective truth in a country whose government had devoted so much murderous energy to proving there could be no such thing.”
The poem stands with the rest of Solzhenitsyn’s works in exposing myths created by the Soviet Union, myths designed to hide ugly realities of Soviet life and history. And it says, with a kind of resigned defiance, that governments cannot ultimately annihilate the human spirit.
Image by Juan Ignacio Garay. Sourced via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young, author of the novels Dancing Priest and A Light Shining, and the recently published Poetry at Work (T. S. Poetry Press).
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Barbara Backus says
So interesting! I, too, had read Solzhentisyn’s The Cancer Ward and The Gulag Archipelago many years ago and so I appreciate your reminder of this influential writer.
Maureen Doallas says
It’s interesting to me that a translation is called “clumsy”; unless the critic was reading the original text, how would he know to ascribe such a description to Solzhenitsyn?
Also notable from the poem is what has not changed in these many, many years before and since that poem: the institutionalization of rape in war. It remains one of our world’s ugliest legacies.
Larry Bole says
The NY Times reviewer, Carl R. Proffer (a translator of Russian literature) called the poem clumsy in the original Russian: “a clumsy and disjointed 1400 line narrative which can be called poetry only because it is written in meter and rhyme. Sent to any publishing house of émigré Russian journal bearing any name but Solzhenitsyn’s, it would be rejected unhesitatingly.”
” Solzhenitsyn has no gift for metaphor. The only comparison that isn’t a clichÈ is bizarre: ink as crocodile lymph. His descriptions are flat and verbose. The frequent use of exclamations and italicized or capitalized is a vain effort to make up for the punch that the poem otherwise lacks. … The one theme that might have given interest and intensity is the regret of the narrator … But this theme, too, is smothered by the interminable descriptions of fires and ordnance.”
Mr. Propper also criticizes the translation separately. In his criticism of the translation, he refers to “…Solzhenitsyn’s clumsy but regular trochaic tetrameter…”
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/01/home/solz-prussian.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Ray_Proffer
L. L. Barkat says
Haunting. Difficult. That picture is the perfect choice. I can’t get away from the questions in her eyes.
I liked hearing about your early work (looking at what was coming in over the wires). A poet was going to tutor you (and us) in the future.
Larry Bole says
The New York Review of Books review is not completely available online without a subscription, but some of it is. Here is some of what the reviewer, Helen Muchnic (also a Russian translator) has to say about the poem:
“It is called “A Poem” but “A Verse Narrative” would be more appropriate, for Solzhenitsyn, a great writer in prose—those who read his novels in translation cannot realize that, in addition to his other merits, he is a stylist and an innovator in his use of language—is not, and does not claim to be, a poet. Nevertheless, Prussian Nights is not the doggerel to which Mr. Conquest’s lamentably poor translation has reduced it, not the limping, creaking, tiresome chronicle he has made of it, but, for all its shortcomings, a powerful and moving work. Mr. Conquest has not succeeded in giving “a true and fair echo of the original” as, in a sensitive and appreciative “Translator’s Note,” he says he hoped to do.
“In this, although admittedly inferior, piece, Solzhenitsyn is, just the same, the historian, moralist, and realist he is in his prose works…”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1977/oct/13/on-the-western-front/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Muchnic
Larry Bole says
It is not clear to me if Clive James, mentioned in the article above as a critic who cited the poem’s “creative power,” could read the original Russian.
Mr. James does say, in his review, that “The pictorial quality of the whole poem is an eye-opener.”
Mr. James’ gives an example of this eye-opening quality, when he says that, in the poem, “…a bulk sugar store burns with lilac flames — an entirely modern observation.”
But in spite of these positive remarks by Mr. James regarding the poetry of the poem, my impression is that most of his praise of the poem is predicated on the poem’s anti-Stalin (and by extension, anti-Communist) point of view. Much of the review strikes me as having an anti-Soviet Union cold war slant.
Of course, everyone is entitled to make up their own mind.
http://www.clivejames.com/pieces/shadows/solzhenitsyn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_James
Larry Bole says
I will say that the section of the poem cited by Glynn Young in the essay above is very powerful.
Soldiers commit atrocities in war. I strongly suspect that Stalin was not the first leader in history to urge his soldiers to commit atrocities as official policy, and certainly not the last leader to do so, as various armed conflicts since WWII have demonstrated.
And more often than not, it’s women who are forced to bear the brunt of these wartime atrocities.
And, for that matter, women seem to bear the brunt of male-instigated peace time atrocities as well.
According to the UN, 70% of women worldwide will be subjected to some type of violence in their lifetime.
http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/briefingpapers/endviol/
Larry Bole says
One last comment tonight. If the passage from “Prussian Nights,” quoted above, isn’t included in the anthology “Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness,” edited by Carolyn Forche, it ought to be!
Larry Bole says
Giving the subject of Solzhenitsyn more thought:
The only Solzhenitsyn I have read (a long, long time ago) is “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” I hardly remember any details from the story, but I remember being affected by it.
When Solzhenitsyn immigrated to the United States (after being deported from the Soviet Union), it was touted as a coup of the cold war, demonstrating the superiority of the West to ‘Godless’ Communism.
But I remember when the bloom went off the Solzhenitsyn ‘rose’, when he delivered his infamous diatribe against the West, “The Exhausted West,” delivered as the Harvard U. 1978 Commencement speaker.
For those interested in background:
http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/04/greatest-hits-solzhenitsyn
I believe copies of the speech can be found online.
P.S. I always think that any essayist, such as Glynn Young, when using information basically gleaned from a Wikipedia entry, should make it clear from whence the information is being taken.
Glynn Young says
Larry, leaving six or seven comments on a blog post is one thing, and this is the second time you’ve done it. Suggesting someone is guilty of plagiarism is something else again. So I will explain where this article came from.
I read all of Solzhentisyn’s works either a few years after they were published in the 1960s or when they were published once he went into exile. You say you read “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” a long time ago and don’t remember any details. I read it, too, and “Cancer Ward,” and “The First Circle,” and “August 1914,” and all three volumes of the “Gulag Archipelago,” and “The Oak and the Calf,” and “Lenin in Zurich,” and “Apricot Jam,” and his commencement speech at Harvard in 1978, and several other works. I’ve read four biographies about Solzhenitsyn. And I read “Prussian Nights” — several times. The part of the poem I quoted in the article has been a favorite part since I first read the English translation in 1977 — that’s 37 years ago.
The editor asked me to take take a look at doing articles on periods of poets (like the Victorians) and national poets (like the Russians). The article — not an essay, an article, and there’s a difference — is one on a favorite Russian writer, one I was extremely familiar with. I wrote the article from memory. I checked a few things, like the names of Clive James. I remember the controversy when it happened in 1977, just like I remember the controversy in 1978 over the Harvard speech when Solzhenitsyn criticized the Western news media and they decided he was a right-wing crank. And the only other thing I checked was to find a link to samizdat — I knew how several of his works had circulated secretly in the Soviet Union in the 1960s.
So that’s where the article — not the essay — came from. And this is the last time I will respond to your comments.
Larry Bole says
I was just struck by the similarity between a small part of the article and the Wikipedia entry for “Prussian Nights” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_Nights ) but I recognize that common phrasing is unavoidable in describing certain things, so I apologize for casting unwarranted aspersions. I really don’t care about issues of plagiarism so much as the frequency these days of sources of information not being cited. I appreciate that you searched out the original reviews.
I didn’t realize that multiple posting on a particular article was in bad taste, but I keep forgetting that Tweetspeak is mostly a ‘poetry appreciation’ site. Since subscribing to the Tweetspeak newsletter, I have only commented on a few articles that have interested me, so it’s not like I’m commenting “gee, that’s wonderful” all over the place.
It would probably take more than a lifetime to read all that has been written about the cruelties that humans inflict on each other, so, for better or worse, reading more Solzhenitsyn has not been near the top of my reading list. Yes, the Russians could be as bad as the Germans when it comes to WWII atrocities (and as far as that goes, at times even exceptional Americans can be as bad as anyone else). All propaganda, not just Russian propaganda, should be subjected to criticism, and the more hypocritical the propaganda is, the more it should be criticized.
I have no doubt that Solzhenitsyn’s reputation as a novelist and memoirist is extremely well-deserved, but it’s probably a good thing that his reputation doesn’t depend on his poetry. My impression is that he is not considered a major Russian poet, just as Boris Pasternak, although he too wrote poetry, is not considered a major Russian poet so far as I’m aware.
For the record, I have read a number of the major 20th-century Russian poets whose work can be found in English translations (although not much written since the 1970s, but who can keep up with it all?).
When I have the time, I should search through the Tweetspeak archives to find the articles about the major 20th-century Russian poets, rather than the minor 20th-century Russian poets. Zolzhenitsyn’s reputation does not automatically elevate his poetry to the status of being major poetry.
For the record, here is another passage from “Prussian Nights” that Carl Proffer quotes in his NY Times review:
Victory’s voice with all its joys
–Heartwarming but ear-splitting noise–
Mounts, with a new lot breaking loose:
Howitzers–they’re 152’s.
Having rendezvous to keep
Behind their tractor-type transporters,
They don’t stop nighttime and don’t sleep
(No weight checks here to hold them up.)
Whirling down the left-hand file,
Studebakers, to support us,
Are hauling lighter three-inch cannons:
“Hey, there, stovepipe! Grab our tail!”
Dodges–the three-quarter-ton ones–
Rush the forty-fives to fight. . . .
According to Proffer, this is a “characteristic passage.”
I only commented in the first place because I was wondering if, as one commenter queried, the reviewer who called the poetry ‘clumsy’ could read the original Russian. I suspect, without having read the entire poem, that Helen Muchnic is probably correct (I think it was Helen Muchnic) in asserting that the poem would be more rightly described as being a “verse narrative”. I’m not going to quibble about what may distinguish a ‘poem’ from a ‘verse narrative’ but I understand the point she is making. I suspect that Solzhenitsyn used a verse-form in order to aid memorization, which is probably why versification originated in the first place, as an aid to memorization.
This too will be my last comment on the article, unless someone wants to engage in further discussion.
L. L. Barkat says
Larry, hey there.
I think you are a writer at heart who, believe it or not, would do quite well to write on Wikipedia, so you could really dig into a subject. Or maybe… do you have a site of your own where you write? One of the great rules of thumb I always follow (and it is pretty standard practice in the commenting world I frequent) is that when I have long comments or multiple comments on a subject, it might be time for me to write an article.
A big part of poetry appreciation is the freedom to discuss it, and we definitely encourage that at Tweetspeak. I’m thinking it’s a matter of scale and tone, maybe the difference between attending a smart party versus a smart debate event.
Anyway, you are always welcome here. Maybe remember to put your party clothes on when you come? I’ll be the one in the far corner offering you a tall drink and a smile.