06 August 2008

Writer Down

"A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny."
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian writer (1918-2008)

I've been out of town on a camping sojourn for the last several of days (more on that later)... just returned to this sad news: 
The great, great Russian writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, died on Monday, 3 August 2008. 
He was the author of such works as "One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich," "Cancer Ward," and the amazing "The Gulag Archipelago." And just how apropos is that quote above to our situation today...
A literary light, a humanist light, a compassionate light has been extinguished. 
R.I.P. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
KJT - Seattle (2008) (Picture courtesy of Wikipedia)

2 comments:

Lara said...

Sadness indeed. Have you read all three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago? Mentally stunning, at least to me.

KJT said...

Unfortunately, at this point I've only read the first volume. But I mean to finish them up at some point (he said miserably, as he looked at the unfinished tome War & Peace, and the yet unopened Remembrance of Things Past...)