Sunday, August 3, 2008

Do Svidaniya

Goodnight to one of the 20th century's most straightforward and affecting writers. Read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch if you haven't already--it's quietly devastating in a way only the great Russian novelists can be, appealingly simple but spiritually rich, like Tolstoy's later fiction. And its now-late author, in his stubborn Orthodoxy and distrust of the secular West, was always Dostoevsky's greatest heir.

3 comments:

allcedars said...

my brother told me that he died yesterday. so sad. he lived an interesting life.

I started studying Russian a few days ago. I LOVE it.

Tim Rhodes said...

I was also sad to hear about this... I haven't read "One Day..." but I plan on it soon!

Michial Farmer said...

I'm not sure how sad we should be--Solzhenitsyn was almost 90 years old, and he died free and, best I can tell, happy. But yeah. It's a shame there won't be another "Ivan Denisovich" in our future.