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PART TWO

- He is now just upstairs? - Yes.

- One can't even hear the floor creak.

- He's working.

How good to live in silence.

He depends on very few things.

He is easy to get on with at home.

Unassuming. Always grateful for anything one does for him.

He can eat the same thing every day.

I never take advantage of his modesty.

He is easy to please for food and clothes.

What does he absolutely need? Plenty of sunlight,

when he is at work, and silence.

He really needs these two things.

He is frost-resistant. He can work when it's cold. I can't.

But there must be light and silence.

If there's any noise...

In Vermont the young

weren't allowed to play basket-ball till 1 p.m.

We had a net by the garage,

they were playing all the time.

Sometimes I played with them too.

But not before 1 p.m. After that we could play,

because his work was not so important then.

Now I think: Did Vermont ever exist?

Seems we never left Russia.

- Hello!

Good afternoon.

Yes.

All right.

On the first floor

are his bedroom and his two studies:

This one, the smaller, warmer in winter,

and the larger one, where he is working now.

This is the writer's desk.

Everything is in the right place.

Last spring's lilies of the valley

He likes them.

A radio.

He listens to classical music.

A gas-stove, a table.

He can boil potatoes for himself, make a cup of tea.

- Hello!

Yura, there's nobody there.

Nobody answers. They must be out.

No matter. Bye.

- I don't remember anything.

- Do you get a lot of mail?

- Yes, it's enormous. It's all in the basement, we can show you.

The old archive is huge and so is the new one.

- Do all the letters come to your Foundation?

- That depends. Many letters come to our city apartment.

We spent 2 years there, before this house was ready.

That address is reliable.

Here we didn't even know our post-code.

It's the countryside.

- What do they say?

- Now they write considerably less,

because stamps are too expensive.

About half the mail is requests

for material aid.

- For survival.

- And so we do help them.

We can't help everybody, but we do help former prisoners.

Those that suffer both from old age and

the injustices that wring their hearts, and ours too.

We help those first.

- You know some of them?

- Not many. It has changed, you know.

We helped the families of those who were imprisoned

under Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko.

Their gulag was heir to Solzhenitsyn's former one.

Their wives, children, parents often were

in a desperate situation.

The wives often lost their jobs,

the children, the old parents fell ill.

The breadwinner was in jail.

We then helped those prisoners.

Certainly, we knew many of them.

Everybody knew them. Prisoners were not as numerous as before,

but they were those who raised their voices in protest.

As much as they could.

They were relatively young,

many of them managed to get by one way or another.

Those whose health wasn't too ravaged, could work.

We don't help them anymore.

We help only those of them who lost touch with life.

Now we help Stalin's gulag prisoners,

the prisoners of Solzhenitsyn's time,

whom we had not helped during all the period

of our underground work under Brezhnev.

Our Fund's managers were being arrested, beaten, imprisoned.

- How do they find you?

There are rumours about, as usual.

We published something. People do know.

Besides, now...

we ask local administrations

to send us the lists they have.

- Of the destitute...

- No, of those who endured repression.

They have such lists.

We take the lists, for instance,

of the Volgograd or of the Stavropol region.

Say, 600 names. Those lists are very long.

There we have data such as the date of birth,

the dates of imprisonment,

some other basic information.

We select

the eldest people, or those who served

the longest term.

If there are any disabled, we note them down.

We get to half the list.

Supposedly the worst off. Then we send them letters,

with no promises,

just saying we'd like to learn more about them,

asking them to write to us, if they'd like to and can.

As a rule, people do answer, 85-90% of them do.

- And what do they write?

- Mainly they are amazed

that somebody should take any interest in them.

They write remarkable letters, one can't help crying

from fear, from pain, and joy

that we can help.

These letters help us understand their position.

For example, one may have children,

but doesn't know where they are.

So we make our choice according to their circumstances.

We don't help too many in each region, but we do help.

In more than 40 regions. Even more than that.

- Thousands of people?

- Yes, counting those who receive regular aid from us.

There is a one-time aid too.

Because the Fund is made of the money

raised from the publication of this book all over the world.

- Does the State help you in any way?

- Does it help us? Of course not.

- Never offered its help?

- Never helped, nor offered, and we never asked.

While I was talking with his wife,

the writer decided to tidy his study himself.

He refused any help.

- All right. Now I must look how things are there.

Yes. That's all right. Now everything will be all right.

All right.

Yes...

A very nice table

Now it's there just as...

...a memory of the old one. No more than that.

- To stand a while and think.

- Yes.

- Looking at the maple.

- There in Vermont the ceiling of my study was even higher.

There were six windows in the roof.

Plenty of daylight, but also beastly cold in winter.

- How did you heat it? - We didn't.

I tried to, but it was too expensive.

For half a year I didn't work there, I had another study.

I worked there only during the warm season.

Here the study is not so cold, one can work,

but anyway the smaller one is more comfortable. It's warmer.

You've come just in time,

it is just the end of the warm period.

Natalia Dmitrievna helps me a lot in my work.

She has herself typed all this...

The collected works.

- Including editorship. - Each character, each phrase...

- All the 20 volumes.

A unique edition... Of course, there aren't many copies.

And yet, I gave it to some regional libraries.

They were grateful.

So one can find it in regional libraries.

The "Red Wheel" was also sent to local libraries,

because it's not available.

- In what regions of Russia?

- I also sent copies to regional libraries,

I can't even tell you how many:

In Yaroslavl, Kostroma,

Ryazan, Voronezh,

to cite... Rostov

only towns familiar to me: Pyatigorsk, Taganrog...

- And Petersburg?

- They have it at the Public Library in Petrograd.

I never say Petersburg, I can't accept it.

I accept Petrograd.

- I prefer it too.

- They were quite right to rename it, when World War I began.

Why on earth do we have to have a foreign name for our capital?

- A "burg".

- Not even "Peter-burg",

Peter pronounced it as the Dutch do, "Peter-burkh".

Plus "Sanct" on top of it.

Who believes now it's about St. Peter?

Nobody used "Sanct".

Now they say "Saint Petersburg". Why should they? Just Petrograd.

The region's still "Leningrad oblast".

It could be Petrograd oblast.

Well, then.

Very valuable: The Great Academic Dictionary.

The Dahl Dictionary's essential too.

Other volumes... You see,

in the camp, you couldn't read any book,

as to my literary work, I kept it secret.

I was reading all the time:

We'd go, say, to roll-call, and wait 20 minutes,

I kept reading.

Everybody thought I was crazy: Reading a dictionary!

A rat would come to check. - What's this? - A dictionary.

So I acquired a lot of Russian.

You see?

I went through all four volumes.

Those notebooks I showed you

were my first, then the second, the third, the fourth extracts...

Out of them came the "Dictionary of Language Extension".

It took me 35 years.

The Dahl is priceless.

So, you learned the language?

- Yes... - You studied Russian again?

- Yes, that's how I did it. I made myself familiar with it

I always put down the expressions I heard, too. I always made notes.

Dialects from different regions help a lot.

For instance,

Ivan Denisovich speaks the Meshchera dialect,

that is,

from east of the Ryazan region,

southward from Vladimir.

The locality is called Meshchera.

In "Matryona's House" it's her natural language.

She didn't know I was taking notes when she was speaking.

I wrote what she said.

- Did any of your ordinary readers

ever tell you they appreciated the language?

- Readers? Oh, no.

I'm mostly criticised for inventing words.

We are so out of touch with authentic Russian,

that when I reinstate rich, clear, genuine Russian words,

they are seen as my inventions.

A few made it: "obustroit", "to arrange or complete".

The pamphlet where I used this word was condemned,

but the word itself was widely used and abused.

But you see, it's only a natural combination.

- There were other such cases,

when your words were accepted.

- You see...

- Now there are prepositions. 'PROvedat', to call on somebody.

'RAZvedat'. To find out.

And why not 'PREDvedat'?

"To pre-know"? To know beforehand?

Or 'PEREvedat', "to re-verify": I know what it is, but I check.

'PEREvedat', 'PREDvedat' can exist.

- But "to pre-know" is somehow incorrect.

- Why? It's absolutely valid.

Too few combinations are currently accepted.

We have 20 prepositions, even more.

And hosts of verbs.

Each of the prepositions can go with each verb.

And when I combine things that were never combined,

they start shouting.

I didn't invent anything.

I just combined things that already exist.

That's all for now.

I'm going up to work.

I sat in the corner of his study.

I watched him.

Everything was interesting.

Then I decided to come nearer his desk.

I sat by his side and watched him working.

I heard his breath.

In the days before

we had been talking for many hours, about many things,

but always returning to the theme most important for me.

I hear his voice and I see his eyes,

I will remember everything, from now to the rest of my life.

- This is where Russian literature

differs greatly from that of the West.

In the West, the plot's foremost,

it gets the most attention.

Dostoevsky focussed on the plot.

Maybe that was...

what opened his way to the West,

because here he was despised and slandered,

and died quite unknown.

He was discovered by the West,

and then we realised whom we had lost.

While in his lifetime he was downtrodden.

- It seems to me he has two kinds of plot:

The first is defined by the character's actions,

the second is the moral plot,

which seems to me more important than the action.

- I agree with you.

But can one call the moral object a plot?

It's not the right word.

It should rather be "the framework of the narrative,"

or "the pivot of the narrative."

The plot is a chain of events

and the reactions of the characters to them.

- Of course. You are right, one may call it "a moral plot".

And this was most important for Dostoevsky.

Still, he was concerned about the average reader,

this is why he didn't dismiss the common plot either.

- Perhaps he just needed money?

His life was hard, and he had to sell,

the rest was the power of his writing.

- You cannot put it all down to money.

He did have his readers in mind,

and how to make them read...

I agree with such a division: A common plot and a moral one.

Of course, he valued the moral plot very much,

but never neglected the common one.

This is important, it's rare in Russia.

- Had Raskolnikov not killed the old woman,

had the novel finished before he turned the door-handle,

it would have been "Crime and Punishment" as well...

- The moral plot was already over,

but not yet the common plot.

Yes, you are right. It's true.

- Were there in Russian literature any moral plots before his?

Who influenced him,

or did it begin with him?

- You know...

in some respect it was Karamzin.

Karamzin was very sensitive to moral plots.

His "History of the Russian State"

is permeated with moral judgement.

His fiction too.

Your question was rather unexpected...

Now I think it over once more...

Yes, Karamsin for prose.

On the one hand, Russian literature as a whole...

...stands aloft

because of its ethic principles, which have never been lost.

Ethical concerns.

This is its distinction in literature.

It's a pity it'll end up crushed and discarded.

They all want aestheticism,

which is only fit for making soap bubbles.

On the other hand,

it's strange that Russian literature,

partly because of Gogol,

whose pitiless vision

took in all vices,

partly with his influence

it overlooked...

...the constructive aspect of Russian history.

Who created this great power?

Who made it extend to Siberia

to the Pacific, to Alaska,

who introduced culture to Siberia?

By the end of the 18th century cultural activity was

highly developed in Siberia.

Why do we speak only about Oblomov,

Pechorin, Onegin,

the odd people, who can't hang on to anything?

Where are the men of action? The builders?

Russian literature overlooked them.

- When did this occur?

- There was no break.

It just flowed on, like a river.

I think it was Gogol's influence.

He opened the way to the satirical, the ironical,

Saltykov-Shchedrin. He was already...

- He was the quintessence of them all. - Pure mustard...

Pure mustard. Why?...

He drew us aside...

It wasn't by accident that Gogol

couldn't write the second part of "Dead Souls".

Suddenly it came out that with all his...

high moral convictions and motives

he was simply unable to see those people,

he understood they ought to exist, but he couldn't see them.

He tried to, but couldn't.

Such was his vision.

- But he was already conscious of it.

He was, but an artist can't take orders, even from himself.

If it doesn't work, it doesn't work and that's that.

For some reason or other it all went wrong.

He had such talent,

such a burning vision of all negative things.

Like an X-ray.

- By its nature, art is born

in complex and highly dramatic circumstances,

that's the way art is born, isn't it?

- Not necessarily. The atmosphere can be peacefully lyrical.

- No, I am speaking about great works,

about dramatic and tragic works.

- Big works can be born so,

but lyrics can come differently. Like small brooks.

- That depends on the author's fate.

- It may be a turbulent river or a water-fall,

it may also be a quiet lovely brook.

Drama is not a necessary condition

for literature and art.

- Is there anything new here,

something that has never been before?

- Since 1917, many new things.

Few we could write about.

If we did,

we were eliminated, those who described things as they were.

Those works were burnt...

I'll never forget

how I was brought to an interrogation,

in the middle of the room

there was a huge pile of manuscripts.

Somebody's apartment had been searched at night.

And there lay that heap, and the investigator about to deal with it.

An enormous heap, high, in the form of a cone.

A lot of manuscripts and books.

The investigator was sitting at his table away from me

and there was this mountain between us.

Aghast, I thought:

"Now all is doomed."

My war diaries were burnt. Five notebooks, all in all.

I was deprived of those memories.

All my notes from the front are gone.

Only five notebooks, but there!

Like a symbol, you see,

of all that disappeared.

So much was destroyed in Russia.

After 1917 our life changed immensely.

And the people have changed.

They aren't the same.

Our literature has given but a poor notion of the whole thing,

but it isn't to blame,

because all truth was suppressed,

and all manners of lies praising the Soviet regime

were encouraged and widely spread.

So we ignored a great deal,

and didn't realize in what condition Russia was by the 1990ies.

Why do we now have so many surprises?

Because for 70 years we knew nothing.

You spoke of cruelty.

There never was such cruelty as in Soviet times.

It might be called an achievement of the Soviet period.

If I don't eat you, you'll eat me.

If I don't betray you, you'll betray me.

One of us must be jailed.

And that's it. There were many such changes.

- Why don't we know

about what Rasputin is currently doing?

- Because he has been silenced,

in our country of freedom...

Why? I do know, I read his work.

He still writes good stories.

He doesn't appear publicly, because he's not invited.

Radio Svoboda even called him a fascist.

A fascist!

They are crazy, stark raving mad.

They simply don't let him have his say.

We need freedom of speech.

He's got none. Sometimes I meet him, I keep up with his work.

I'm very fond of him.

He has a tender soul,

a kind and pure one.

- I have a feeling that literature lives on the past.

The past is important.

The past we've lived.

Literature finds it difficult

to exist along with a rapid, overhasty life.

- No, it's pure physics:

Human nature has not enough time

to follow everything going on around it.

An artist has to be placed at some distance

from his object.

If he just sets down

his momentary impressions,

it will be more like an essay, a piece of reporting,

than a work of art.

Few authors are able to capture

pieces of reality instantly.

Chekhov could do that.

At once.

But the majority must have time

for their impressions to settle down.

And also,

at a certain age one begins to write

not about the historical past, but about one's personal past,

about the earlier years of one's own life.

Why are there so many memoirs?

So many people write about their youth.

When? In their old age.

In old age it often happens that

old remembrances

become more vivid.

There's some psychological law about it.

- We are talking about the age of the soul.

- Yes, we are.

- The age of the soul...

Is your soul older or younger than you? What's your feeling?

- This is interesting.

- Is it hard for you?

- An interesting question.

I can't tell. It's a difficult question.

We've lived together, my soul and my body,

the same length of time.

Of course, the soul was living mostly in another sphere,

at another speed.

Still, I would not call it old.

DIALOGUES WITH SOLZHENITSYN