Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn: 11 Dec 1918 – 4 Aug 2008

BySteeljawscribe

Just a few noteworthy quote:

Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers — such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.

– I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.
– It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes… we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions – especially selfish ones.
– Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. – We could use the word “modernity” if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.
– Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
– Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
– Writers and artists can achieve more: they can CONQUER FALSEHOOD! In the struggle with falsehood art always did win and it always does win! Openly, irrefutably for everyone! Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, but not against art.  And no sooner will falsehood be dispersed than the nakedness of violence will be revealed in all its ugliness – and violence, decrepit, will fall.

Many obituaries today – but perhaps this is the best we’ve read thus far: Alexander Solzhenitsyn — an appreciation
…And it could be said he also anticipated the blogsphere:
We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.

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