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Comment from Ratings:   Ya we need someone in Office who understands spiritual stuff more the just religious dogma. I hope Obama does with his, "We are the ones we have been waiting for." For the Hopi Indians he quoted, knew what was going on. If only the MEDIA-RIGHT-STORM knew half a truth which they claim too?

by Michael Dewey (4 articles, 1 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 203 comments) on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 2:29:46 PM
 

The older moralizing is false.

We need a nation that values smarts. 

by John Hanks (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1373 comments) on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 2:40:05 PM
 

Older is Often Newer

The very fine theologian, Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., ( I believe that's how you spell it, but "do not try this at home" ) came up with a nice formulation, one that became the publisher's title for an anthology of some of his essays, "God is new each moment." 

 I saw a related title along those lines, "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time" gracing another collection. Both these thoughts were consonant with the crucible-formed feeling of Solzhenitsyn, whose sympathies lay somewhere, between poles,  north of trivialization by novelty, and as more often south of ossification by tradition.  

But, for your "new" and "old," I suspect both these formulae of time and God would appeal to Solzhenitsyn, who wanted to save by grace and inform our world's orgiastic profusions of the "new" with the stable anchor of the old, and the deeper nurture of the ancient depths.

Although, I grant you that if he tended toward one of those poles, it was surely more toward the one too Northern, insofar as the "older moralizing"  does not quite fit, through some archaisms, the needs of newer circumstances, yet he was always a key figure on the stage of our modern circumstances in reminding us that newer is not always better, markedly so in our consumerist culture that is so heavily layered with concerns that are about as enduring as last year's electronic gadgets.

And the older tunes are more often than not variations on key and enduring themes, in all music that lasts.

 Yeats had it, "He who sings a lasting song thinks in a marrow bone," and certainly "Sanya''s" gulag years and lonely road would meet those qualifications.

Will his song be a lasting one? 

He fulfilled one of the core criteria of greatness, in light of what Romain Rolland said of another deeply suffering soul in "Beethoven The Creator:"

"In natures such as these, it is the excess of suffering that determines the salutary reaction."

For a math teacher, consigned to the trash heap of history in 1940s Siberia to rally from two bouts of cancer in his 30s with almost no help other than the ascetic's bitter tonics of sheer willpower, and to survive to rhapsodize to all of Russia and the world at large, about such plights, is Doestoyevskian in grandeur, all literary merits aside.

Such grandeur will always bear the moral force whence it was forged, older or newer aside, if only the utterance is a match for that force.  Or, in other words, that Goethe heard it sung, by himself: "When man in his agony grows mute, a god gave me to utter what I suffer."

I'd become more and more intrigued by Solzhenitsyn's contrarian positions, in the last few years, glossed over by a miffed American press when he first got here thirty some years ago, and, since I have been constitutionally incapable as I near my expiration date, of taking any position that isn't contrarian,  I'd grown to value his unique perspective.

All that came to a more or less screeching halt, a few years ago, when I read that he had called Daniel Ellsberg a "traitor" for betraying the "South" Vietnamese into the powers of the North, and consigning "thousands" to torture.  It seemed a cartoonish version of events, in terms of what Ellsberg revealed to us himself, of insider information, and a real lack of largesse, in terms of empathy, for a sincere and principled man who, like himself, had begun his career as a very "gung ho" supporter of his country's official perspective, only to become estranged from it in fundamental disenchantment.

If it hadn't been for the heroics of Daniel Ellsberg we would not know what we know today of America's "Fog of War" of the last fifty years, and true heroics they were, whatever the politics, as they were done in the very real face of the very real threat of permanent American gulag membership. 

And, what's more, Ellsberg had arguably come to his decisions from an even more highly placed position of trust than Solzhenitsyn ever knew, in an imperial system that was trampling the rights and lives of victims haphazardly and widely.  As aide to Col. Ed Landsdale, whom many had suggested was the model for Graham Greene's "Quiet American" ( he wasn't, but he might as well have been, for his sheer Madison Avenue worship of results over ethics in his brutal "ad" campaigns in Vietnam ).

To have known such insider status, and to realize the wrong he had perpetrated in his misplaced zeal, are suggestive of a Promethean integrity, individual and professional, and not the mere suggestions of "treason."

We would never have known the true story of "The Quiet American," a pivotal one in the development of current global politics, if it hadn't been for Ellsberg's seizing the hand  the government held, and cards that he revealed to his fellow citizens and the scrutinies of future histories  by tipping those five aces for all to see, in his release of the Pentagon Papers ( and please by all means, see the stirring cinematic account of this in the nearly-ignored-by-MSM "Pentagon Papers," released on DVD recently, with James Spader in a picture perfect incarnation of that key drama of such deeply branded American events ). 

Ellsberg's action revealed the fundamental hypocrisy of American Empire, always sold to the public as one thing, bright and shining, while in fact motivated by private concerns, dark and damning. ( Or, as Neil Young sang it sadly in "Rust Never Sleeps," ~~ "You pay for this, and they give you that." )

And all the ad copy in the world by the former Madison Avenue execs turned invaders, such as literally was Ed Lansdale, will not redeem that simple truth. ( H. Bruce Franklin put this tragic farce as neatly as one can in "By the Bombs Early Light," available online in a google of those terms. )

That is one truth, at least, than outweighs the whole world, and the whole canon of Solzhenitsyn, as far as it goes.  Far.

For him to malign Ellsberg in an age that needs BOTH the witness of the Solzhenitsyns and their "mirror images" in our system, was a disservice that stands out in his legacy almost as glaringly as did Sanya's twenty years in Vermont cordoned off from our country and its people by walls ridged with concertina wire, in Cavendish.  Did he even learn enough English in all that time to read our newspapers, let alone be in the position to judge someone who was the spitting image of his archetypal role, in our own land?  And yet he was able to "weigh" in with his judgment on the Pentagon Papers....

These are some of the contradictions in Solzhenitsyn's moral testament that will have to be sifted and sorted out through the coming years, but it is a reminder that literature and a life-time of loss such as he endured, are not enough in themselves to outweigh the world. 

As goes the Russian maxim, only the truth has that weight.  And since Solzhenitsyn's profile is so imposing, such truth will be the standard by which it is judged, more perhaps than other measures.

Das Vedanya, Sanya: whatever your limits or merits may be, may your deepest sufferings plant the seeds of the counsel you wished for us,.

One thing is clear: that was your deepest wish for us, in the "West," and may they be, at their best, "new for us each moment."

As the first English translator of "The Imitation of Christ" said it: "May they be a... Quick Springing Well of Ghostly Knowledge."  Your best.

R.I.Pacem~~

PAX: John Ervin

by muservin (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 50 comments) on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 1:25:07 PM
 

Does not compute

What is the spiritual crisis? People don't believe in enough ghosts? What are you talking about? Please say something that conveys meaning not gibberish.

by Dennis Etler (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 7 comments) on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 3:43:25 PM
 

The spiritual crises...

is about not recognizing the extraordinary nature of our place in time and space, along with that of our own existence--i.e., consciousness and the biological connectedness of every living thing on the planet. It also has to do with the insane notion that there is no more to life than meets the eye.

by Daniel Geery (26 articles, 73 quicklinks, 123 diaries, 740 comments) on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 7:05:17 PM
 

Well said

Nice piece Allen.

by Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo (144 articles, 1 quicklinks, 95 diaries, 1311 comments) on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 3:59:41 PM
 

American Public Twice (sort of) elected GW Bush__Spiritual?

I don't think the American public is smart enough to recognize anyone or anything more spiritual than a dumbed-down reality TV show. That has been my experience lately. Talk to people of their future and the need to make a wise choice for president this time (certainly not John McCain, Mc-Same,Mc-Slander! But here we are when almost half the public is flirting with again rewarding Republicans for their slander, their economic/social/military failures, their fear-mongering and their rip-off of the country for the last 8 years (White House) and 14 years (Congress). I wish they were a little MORE spiritual. Now, we have a brilliant man (Barack Obama) with brilliant solutions to national problems...and what do we get in the headlines? "McCain rising in the polls". It is enough to make a very spiritual PREACHER SWEAR. I think the American public is due for a good old fashioned booty-whomping. They don't understand how to pour you-know-what out of a boot as it would seem.

by JOHN LORENZ (17 articles, 89 quicklinks, 63 diaries, 211 comments) on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 4:16:21 PM
 

Values, values, values

I am all for values; who could not be?

The problem is that most people who advocate vocally for a return to values have usually a few annoying habits, like feeling up little boys, or having sex with prostitutes--nothing personal, of course, Mr. Roland.

Or like in the case of Soljenitsyne, endorsing dictators like Putin, being homophobic, antisemitic, and generally supporting Xtreme right  notions on most everything else.

While visiting France, he declared that the French Republic's motto: ''Liberty, Equality, Fraternity'' was unacceptable and disgusting. To me, this man was certainly  talented, but he was also a sour and gloomy bigot, and certainly not an example of authentically humanitarian values.

by francine (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 361 comments) on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 4:55:09 PM
 

Values?

''Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' 'is just as much a slogan as

"Land of the free and home of the Brave"

- boith mean absolutely nothing real.

by ibrahim turner (25 articles, 31 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 177 comments) on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 6:38:50 PM
 

To Mr. Turner

Mr. Turner.

If you consider those   statements above as something meaningless, invent something of your own. Cynicism never helps. And Francine was right: it is a bigotry to go to another country( namely France in this case) and use the  podium to insult the very core of its culture and its legacy. 

by Mark Sashine (53 articles, 19 quicklinks, 249 diaries, 3570 comments) on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 7:11:21 AM
 

Thank you Mr. Roland

Comment from Ratings:   It was the 70's before I started hearing of Mr. Solzhenitsyn and his writings, so wasted no time in delving into Gulag Archipelago I,II & III, then more books. He helped me understand something of the Russian heritage and thinking, which was far from what Washington was aware of. He brought a whole new vocabulary into my life and changed how I viewed what Washington was doing. He changed a lot of my thinking by his writings. I will miss him terribly. Thank you for sharing his insights and I would certainly agree with them. Something is about to happen and who knows what or when?

by Bubblechaser (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments) on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 5:23:30 PM
 

As a Russian

and as an immigrant I have to say that AS's writings were of utmost importance. ONly gradually, very slowly we recognized certain vices of his, like he surley was not a writer by craft ( there was no talent, just a very good capability of knowing the right topic), neither was he a great character like say, Shalamov. If we try to compare him with anyone such individual like Rush Limbaugh comes to mind, surely with a Russian twist. AS got his Nobel prize obviously not for his talent as a writer ( he had none) but for his political wiritings. None of his subsequent writings reveal anything significant neither by style nor by prowess. In the West, though he is lauded as some kind of a prophet. He revealed the real face of the Stalinist Russia. But unfortunately, the documentalism of his writings is undermined by his unbelievable hatred towards Russia as a country. Meanwhile what is true and a powerful feat Russia as a country managed on its own to get rid of that dictatorship and its faculties while for Germany it took a war, defeat and foreign occupation. In sorts, AS became an ' anti-prophet' and by the time of his death he reached total demise.

This is not to denigrate his life. I guess he achieved the maximum considering the curcumstances and the times he lived in. But his role as well as his personality are highly exaggerated.

by Mark Sashine (53 articles, 19 quicklinks, 249 diaries, 3570 comments) on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 6:09:54 PM
 

Solzhenitsyn was a liar

It matters NOT what this man wrote, for the censors went after him not for trying to explain the TRUTH, but for using Prepositional-Phrases in the original drafts, which is BANNED BY EVERYONE ON THIS PLANET>

Don't believe me?   What is the first little gem we are taught in English classes?  "NEVER begin a sentence OR end a sentence with a Prepositional-Phrase"  One day we will ALL wake up.  You CANNOT have a NOUN without a Prepositional-Phrase preceding it. If you CANNOT make a NOUN, you CANNOT have any FACTS>

When you figure out WHY this rule was put in place, for ALL languages, by the "owners of the banks" (Rothschilds), you may then figure out how to clean up this mess we're ALL in.

Solzhenitsyn was correct, there IS a new day coming where Spirit meets with Politics, but everything that WE read of his, IS NOT the words of Solzhenitsyn. The whole world will HAVE to learn to read and write "in the Truth", or be destined for destruction and perish.

by BlueyB