If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.

Cliff at one end of Clifton Beach. Clifton Beach. March 2011.

A busy week this week means that I've only got through the one book (still a few pages left on the current). But what a book!

Оди́н день Ива́на Дени́совича.

[Ahem]

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's classic description of life in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s, describing a single day of an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. Seemingly as much known for its actual publication (a significant event in Soviet literary history), it's also a cracking read.

Essentially an exploration of authoritative oppression and camp survival, Solzhenitsyn used his first-hand experience in the Soviet Gulag, having been imprisoned from 1945 to 1953 for criticising Joseph Stalin.

Oddly enough, for the subject matter One Day in the Life... is actually an uplifting read. I'd very much recommend it to anyone.

Comments

smudgeon said…

Sounds like my kind of read. It is amazing they managed to get it published during the Soviet era...and with Kruschev's blessing!

I tried reading The Gulag Archipelago last year, but found it tough going at the time. Perhaps I should give this one a go first.

15 April 2011 at 09:34

Kris McCracken said…

It’s a great read. Very accessible, far more so than The Gulag Archipelago. Anne Applebaum’s Gulag is a really great exploration of the theme, and written with access to the Soviet archives. It’s long, but rewarding.

The Secret Speech and the Khrushchev thaw must have been an amazing time for many Soviets. I would imagine it made the coming of Brezhnev, the Prague Spring etc etc all the more difficult to bear.

15 April 2011 at 09:56

Roddy said…

I at first thought you were off Sydney heads when I saw the photo.
I shall try to come by a copy of Solzhenitsyn's book. It was banned when I first heard of it.

15 April 2011 at 22:25

Kris McCracken said…

You don't see nice images like that is NSW.

16 April 2011 at 20:15

Roddy said…

Beauty my son is in the eye of the beholder. Close your eyes too anywhere and you can find beauty.

17 April 2011 at 14:11

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

This will hurt me...

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