It's each nation's 'living memory'

 

“Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience … from generation to generation.  In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

 

 Born in Russia on this date in 1918, Solzhenitsyn spent nearly half his life in prison, in work camps, or in exile for writing with honesty and a genuine willingness to stand for those ordinary people depicted in the works he created.   After being exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974, he lived for a number of years in the U.S. where he continued to turn out amazing literature before he was finally able to return to Russia in 1994.  He died in 2008.

 

I’ve been reading The Century Trilogy by Ken Follett and one of the interesting side stories in Book 3 is about a Soviet dissident imprisoned in Siberia who not only finds a way to write down the experience but also how to smuggle the story out to a publisher.   That is the story of Solzhenitsyn whose historic novels The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch provide a deep understanding of the horrors that faced ordinary people daring to confront the evil of totalitarianism. 

Awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature” Solzhenitsyn gave this advice to writers willing to stand for social justice: “Own only what you can always carry with you; (and) know languages, know countries, know people.  Let your memory be your travel bag.”