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

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...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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