Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The First Circle

[silverseason]

I'm halfway through now, coming up on chapter 49, and would like to check in again. In a long, multi-layer novel like this, it is so easy to be struck by something while reading but then get distracted by later parts. Anyway, what I want to say is that I admire Solzenitsyn's technique in handling all the many people and subplots.

In the chapter I have just finished, The Ark, we have a vision of the zeks in their closed world, especially on Sunday evening. "During this period, the prisoners were locked from outside by heavy iron doors, which no one opened, and no one entered, no one summoned them, or picked on them. During these short hours the outer world would not penetrate inside to disturb anyone." These are prisoners, not free to leave for that outside world, and yet this locked-in Sunday evening feels peaceful, secure! You understand this when you reflect on where we have just been in the narrative: the students living with uncertainty about their futures; the persecuted wives of the prisoners during the visit; the well-brought-up girl Clara who is slowly beginning to understand the system; the bureaucrats agreeing to impossible deadlines to placate the higher-ups. All live in fear, prisoners of a system which could grind up any of them for an infraction or for no reason at all.

If the novel were set only within the Sarashka, it would feel impossibly closed in. So we go outside to offices and student dormitories and the theater. The fear and uncertainty are so great everywhere that there is not security in any of these places. The Zeks, locked in on Sunday evening, are secure: they have certainty.

 

[Robert]

Good point - had missed this - I guess the Mavrino prison is probably a parallel with the luxusrious lifestyle to wicn Innokenty's family has become accustomered and the other prisons are the prisoner's family's homes. Also ties in with the circles of Dante's inferno.

On a separate note - does anyone else think Nerzin is a self portrait?

I read something on the web that said Nerzin was modeled after a friend.

 

[Robert]

I'm halfway through now, coming up on chapter 49, and would like to check in again. In a long, multi-layer novel like this, it is so easy to be struck by something while reading but then get distracted by later parts. Anyway, what I want to say is that I admire Solzenitsyn's technique in handling all the many people and subplots.

In the chapter I have just finished, The Ark, we have a vision of the zeks in their closed world, especially on Sunday evening. "During this period, the prisoners were locked from outside by heavy iron doors, which no one opened, and no one entered, no one summoned them, or picked on them. During these short hours the outer world would not penetrate inside to disturb anyone." These are prisoners, not free to leave for that outside world, and yet this locked-in Sunday evening feels peaceful, secure! You understand this when you reflect on where we have just been in the narrative: the students living with uncertainty about their futures; the persecuted wives of the prisoners during the visit; the well-brought-up girl Clara who is slowly beginning to understand the system; the bureaucrats agreeing to impossible deadlines to placate the higher-ups. All live in fear, prisoners of a system which could grind up any of them for an infraction or for no reason at all.

If the novel were set only within the Sarashka, it would feel impossibly closed in. So we go outside to offices and student dormitories and the theater. The fear and uncertainty are so great everywhere that there is not security in any of these places. The Zeks, locked in on Sunday evening, are secure: they have certainty.

The security of the prisoners follows what Bobynin said. "For a person you've taken everthing from is no longer in your power. He's free all over again."

 

[oskylad]

One of the recurrent questions raised in this book begins in the first chapter, where Volodin thinks to himself: "If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?"

Nerzhin picks up the thread in chapter nine, when he is asked to work in cryptography. He realizes this would take all his mental energies, and "What would be left to think with? What would be left for learning about life?"

He recognizes the comparative luxury of staying in the sharashka, where you can "lay down in a bed under a white sheet, with a feeling of contentment"; but concludes: "... why live a whole life? Just to be living? Just to keep the body going? Precious comfort! What do we need it for if there's nothing else?"

As we continue with our reading, it will be interesting to see how the several characters answer for themselves what life is all about.

 

[oskylad]

The security of the prisoners follows what Bobynin said. "For a person you've taken everthing from is no longer in your power. He's free all over again."

In chapter 24, Sologdin says "... you ought to find out where you are, spiritually understand the role of good and evil in human life. There is no better place to do it than prison."

Prison can have the value of helping to concentrate the mind, by depriving one of many of the options in life. For some people, time in prison has helped bring focus. For others, the monastery. Both go against the grain of our modern society, which considers choice as the greatest good.

 

[Robert]

I finally finished The First Circle. I try not to read this kind of book very often because hypocrisy, abuse of power and man’s inhumanity to man are the kinds of things that I feel very strongly about and I have to be careful that the material doesn’t cause me to be irritable.
<O</O
Now that I am done with the book, I am even more convinced that the gulag systems are a microcosm of Stalinist Russia. Liberties at every level are limited by the extreme paranoia that exists at the highest level, possibly caused at least in part by the Russian revolution which was still fresh in the memory of the Soviet government.
<O</O
<O</O
I find it disturbing that people are willing to take advantage of a system to destroy other people, other families for their own gain. I can’t even imagine turning in an innocent family to that government just so they can get the house. But then again, by their standards there are no innocent people, simply people that haven’t been caught yet. It's even more disturbing when I consider that people are still capable of doing things like this.
<O</O

I enjoyed the discussions of the prisoners of the sharashka and I wonder if those same men would have the same convictions if they were a successful member of the soviet society? Perhaps being locked up has given them a better perspective of true Stalinist Russia. Innokenty Volodin experienced a whole different side of things after he was finally arrested. We saw too some of the zeks as they begun to change their mind about the idea of working R&D in exchange for better working conditions and the possibility of an early out.<O</O
<O</O

I will recommend this book those that I know, but I will also recommend that it be followed by something a little more cheerful. <O</O

 

[Libra]

Chapter 30 got me back in the book after a long gloom.
It was enjoyable chapter of flirting between Larisa and Sologdin.
He tried realllllyyyy hard to maintain his feelings but in the end gave in.

The bus drive to the visits was also good . All the feelings and thoughts that went through Nerzhin made you feel his thoughts as though you were him.


chapter 38-Gerasimovich looking at his wife at the visit and thinking how homely she looked annoyed me, I was screaming in my head "how dare you".
She is been trying to live the best she can with everything that was going on and he's thinking "homely"

His wife on the other hand, thought he looked good and that she looked more like the prisoner.
Don't women always try to see the best in others?
We don't see the imperfections but always try to find the good qualitys?

 

[Robert]

I really need to keep notes. There was something about chapter 38 that I found very sad in those but I don't have the book with me, so I won't be able to figure it out until later. Thinking......... oh! Something about the way Natalya Pavolovna was treated because of her husband.

The flirting between Larisa and Sologdin was fun. I found myself hoping something would happen between those two despite the fact that Sologdin is married. I think it was just hoping something decent and human would happen.

 

[Libra]

She was shunned and ridiculed,and was fired because of her husband.
It was very hard for her to find another job, nobady would hire her.
A lot of women would divorce, change names, keep away from their families.
There was no chance for them for a better life with the connection to their husbands, that's why I was mad about the "homely" thought.

 

[Robert]

That's it! The injustice of it all!

 

[oskylad]

The flirting between Larisa and Sologdin was fun. I found myself hoping something would happen between those two despite the fact that Sologdin is married. I think it was just hoping something decent and human would happen.

The decent thing was what happened between the Nerzhins and between the Gerasimoviches. Especially the women. They remained faithful despite intense pressure to throw their husbands aside for a better life. I found myself thinking how few of us in our time would remain faithful under far less difficult circumstances.

What occurred between Larisa and Sologdin was not decent, albeit all too human.

 

[Libra]

Although not decent, under the circumstances and human nature like you said, it's hard to judge.

 

[Robert]

I know, I know. Sologdin is married.

I look at it this way. Sologdin has been separated from his wife for years and Larisa's self esteem has suffered from the lack of romance. Each of them must hunger for companionship and this little meeting meets some very basic psychological needs.

 

[oskylad]

I look at it this way. Sologdin has been separated from his wife for years and Larisa's self esteem has suffered from the lack of romance. Each of them must hunger for companionship and this little meeting meets some very basic psychological needs.

It looked to me that there was a lot more than companionship going on.

Shchagov, on the other hand, offered the right kind of companionship at the right time in Chapter 47. I liked Shchagov a lot.

 

[oskylad]

It looked to me that there was a lot more than companionship going on.

Or perhaps I should say - a lot less.

 

[oskylad]

Shchagov, on the other hand, offered the right kind of companionship at the right time in Chapter 47. I liked Shchagov a lot.

I need to backtrack on Shchagov. I liked how he fought in the war, and how after the war he realized the injustice he and the other soldiers faced. Much the same confronts our soldiers today.

But I forgot he was engaged to another woman who would give him "a fair piece of the pie", and his attraction to Nadya was thereby extracurricular. He did offer her companionship, but at a price.

 

[Libra]

chapter 40- claras take on literature writers .

"-Mayakovsky-very correct but awkward.

-Saltykov-was proggresive, but you could die yawning if you tried to read him through.

-Turgenev-was limited to his nobleman's ideals.

-Goncharov-was associated with the begining of Russian capitalism.

-Tolstoy-came to favor patriarchal peasantry.

-Pushkin-shone like a sun.

and an exert from p.292 that I liked:
"your will is a treasure, but the devils keep a watch over it"


ineresting read up to now.

 

[silverseason]

I finished The First Circle a couple of days ago. I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book immensely, especially the conversations of the Zeks and the way Sohlzenitsyn introduces his many characters. During the final third I became increasingly depressed by the scope of the system of fear and repression -- the organized inhumanity.

I had to take a recess and read an Alexander McCall Smith (The Villa of Reduced Circumstances) to cheer myself up.

Now I'm ready to resume the discussion. During the time I was reading The First Circle, I was also listening to a reading of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. It has been a strange juxtaposition and called to my mind the parallels between the enforced beliefs in the Soviet Union at that time and the enforced beliefs of an authoritarian religion.

In Chapter 60, when Sologdin and Rubin have their philosophical duel about dialectics they sound like a couple of theologians. They cannot conclude which of the basic laws embodies motion and shows the direction of development or what they can do with a "negation of a negation." It's great fun, but then we have the chilling knowledge that mistakes in the definitions or arguments -- mistakes defined by authority as it pleases -- can lead straight to the gulag.

They come back to this in Chapter 64. Rubin, the convinced communist, when pushed to say whether the ends justify the means, any means, says:

I don't believe in it for myself. But it's different in a social sense. Our ends are the first in all human history which are so lofty that we can say they justify the means by which they have been attained." When injustice is done, they can attribute it to the necessity of history. Sounds like religion to me.

 

[oskylad]

During the time I was reading The First Circle, I was also listening to a reading of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. It has been a strange juxtaposition and called to my mind the parallels between the enforced beliefs in the Soviet Union at that time and the enforced beliefs of an authoritarian religion.

I haven't read Dawkins, so am not sure what he has to say about the enforced beliefs of authoritarian religion. I am aware there are many excuses human beings have used to justify inhumanity toward their fellows.

I would guess that, throughout history, religious injustice has been small potatoes compared to injustices done in the name of one's nation, tribe, or class. At least during the last century, the political philosophies of Communism and Fascism proved to be the height of injustice.

Perhaps religious authoritarianism has earned its bad name because it goes against the very soul of faith. Micah asks: "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" Yet we add many other requirements and then impose them on others.

It was interesting that Volodin began to question what life was about when he read his mother's letters and diaries in Chapter 55. She said: "Never consider yourself more in the right than others. Respect other opinions, even those opposed to yours." She also said: "What is the most precious thing in the world? Not to participate in injustices. They are stronger than you. They have existed in the past and they will exist in the future. But let them not come about through you."

That's what sounds like religion to me.

 

[Libra]

I am finally done with this book.
I must say it was hard for me at times to read it. I could not understand some things, I would go back and read them over again.

The last 10 chapters were powerful. My feelings would go from being scared for some characters , to hapiness thinking they would go home.

Overall, I am glad I kept with it.