“Rejoice that you are in prison. Here you can think of your soul”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan
Denisovich (published November 1962) is a slender book, telling us a very
simple story in a simple format. It’s easy to finish it in a single sitting
(and I’d recommend that to have an immersive reading experience). Yet
Solzhenitsyn’s story tells us something deep about history, inhumane political
system, and human dignity which fat historical textbooks utterly fail to
convey. Early in the novel, the titular character Ivan Denisovich Shukhov
wonders, “Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?” Solzhenitsyn’s
austere yet powerful narration serves as a bridge of empathy, transporting us
into a cold, inhumane world to feel the hunger, humiliation, hopelessness,
powerlessness, and also small delights of one gulag prisoner.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is enriched by
Solzhenitsyn’s sharp realism, devoid of sentimentality or strong emotions. The
emotions are a luxury, only we readers could afford. Because the man living in
the earth-bound hell can only focus on how to get through the day which
involves avoiding punishment, fighting the cold, and overcoming the hunger.
It’s a document of human suffering although it’s chiseled with words that are
fundamentally life-affirming. In the midst of an unbelievably cruel reality, a
man survives keeping his dignity intact. It’s what makes Solzhenitsyn’s novel
one of the finest literature; not just a book for history students interested
in gulags and Stalinist era.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published nearly
a decade after Stalin’s death, the publication sanctioned by then Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev in an effort to debunk Stalin's personality cult (the ‘thaw’
went on for a brief period). The novel’s description of life inside the forced
labor camps naturally shook the Soviet Union. Although after Khruschev’s
removal from power in 1964, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn faced numerous threats, he
released his masterwork ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ – a three-volume
literary-historical account of the vast ‘slave labor economy’ – in the year
1973. Before that in 1970, Solzhenitsyn received Nobel Prize [the Soviet
disinformation campaign against the writer only escalated after Nobel Prize and publication of
Gulag Archipelago].
The brilliance of the novel lies in the character
Solzhenitsyn chooses to narrate his single day. Unlike the writer, who himself
spent 8 years of his life in such camps (between 1945 and 1953), Ivan
Denisovich Shukhov isn’t an intellectual, constantly predisposed to
philosophical thinking. Solzhenitsyn doesn’t extrapolate his ego to create
Shukhov. This distance or removal was what makes it an ingenious literary work,
and not simply a memoir-turned-novel. Comrade Shukhov or convict SHCHA-854
belongs to the 104th gang of the gulag’s 9th hut. The
gulag was one of the cold-blooded schemes designed by Soviet Supreme leader – the
Red Tsar -- to meet the needs of both Soviet industry and economy. Zek is the
word used in the novel to describe a gulag inmate. When the novel opens in
1951, Shukhov has already spent 8 out of his 10 year prison-term. He is a decent man
who like the majority of members in the camp did nothing wrong to deserve the harsh sentence. He
wants to take one day at a time, starting his day by getting up from his
sawdust-filled mattress in which he hides a small daily ration of bread.
Shukhov goes through the day by circumventing web of
invisible snares – from punishing climate, furious guards to fellow wrathful
inmates – and hopes to finish it in the same sawdust-filled mattress, nibbling
the black, stale bread. Shukhov takes us through the unwritten rules that must
be followed to survive a typical work-day in the camps. Apart from the things
Shukhov must do to keep himself warm in order to gain extra mouthful of soup or a bite
of bread, we get a sense of the zek’s palpable fear, boredom plus small
victories and joys (“That bowl of soup—it was dearer than freedom, dearer than
life itself, past, present, and future”). Solzhenitsyn’s unadorned prose not
only allows us to attune to Shukhov’s emotionality, but also to his sensory
experiences. Even if I had never smoked in my life, I could feel the warmth
Shukhov receives after taking a puff from the cigarette or the way he counts
his bread makes us share his sense of triumph (“…got four hundred grams of
bread, and another two hundred, and at least two hundred in his mattress…. He
was really living it up!”). The description of hunger and the feelings
recounted by the meager nourishment really gets to you (“The belly is an
ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more
tomorrow”, Shukhov wryly observes).
 |
| Alexander Solzhenitsyn |
Soviet journalist and writer Vitaly Korotich has remarked,
“We were absolutely isolated from information, and he [Solzhenitsyn] started to
open our eyes………. The Soviet Union was destroyed by information, only
information. And this wave started from Solzhenitsyn's One Day.” Even though
the power ‘One Day’ held in Soviet slowly waned, while the Stalinist policies are continuing to be embraced and championed by the contemporary Russian establishment,
the novel remains as much more than a damning indictment on the staggering
injustices of Stalinism. It’s a celebration of human dignity, and the power of
the human ability to adapt and empathize. Overall, it’s a study of the spark of
humanity that survives through subhuman condition.
P.S.: Please read H. T. Willetts’ translation, the one translated from canonical Russian
text and authorized by the author himself.
No comments:
Post a Comment