Alexander Solzhenitsyn, author of those weighty novels, has here produced in narrative verse a rather terse poem, drawn from his battle experiences in the closing days of WW II, composed in his head and memorized in his prison camp days. One understands why, once the Byelorussian offensive sweep had reached the Baltic, so many of its officers and men were sent away; they had seen the fat richness of the West: paper, good pencils, shoes, clothing, schnapps—a world where even servant girls wore shoes, very unlike Mother Russia. This is one of the preoccupations of the youngish officer who speaks. The other is the memory of the first Great War, where Russian divisions were slaughtered, chewed up, in order to divert German soldiers from the Western Front, enabling the French to win the first battle of the Marne—and save Paris. The bitterness the narrator feels about those memories enables him to condone, at least to close his eyes to, the cruelties of his own men—rape of course, and looting and burning, even such gratuitous violence as shooting a baby in his carriage: one Kraut the less. (There was one little German boy who got away, winging and dodging into the woods in spite of the fire of a dozen Russian rifles.) "Amid the violence of the crowd,/ In my heart no violence calls./ I'll not fire one stick of kindling,/ Yet I'll not quench your flaming halls./ Untouched I'll leave you. I'll be off/ Like Pilate when he washed his hands./ Between us, there is Samsonov,/ Between us many a cross there stands/ Of whitened Russian bones." Robert Conquest defends his translation in a rather lengthy and explicit afterword, and no doubt he has accomplished his task creditably. The racy ballad meter belies the seriousness of the subject; the choice was Solzhenitsyn's own, but at times it demeans the poem. Nevertheless, this is a work of great interest, because of the poet's fame, because of the difficult circumstances of its composition, and because of its inherent contradiction; these are the battlefield recollections of a pacifist.
Pub Date: June 1, 1977
ISBN: 0374513910
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1977
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Elegant essays marked by surprising shifts and unexpected connections.
Largely autobiographical meditations and wanderings through landscapes external and internal.
National Book Critics Circle Award–winner Solnit (River of Shadows: Edward Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, 2003, etc.) roams through a large territory here. The book cries out for an explanatory subtitle: “field guide” shouldn’t be taken as a literal description of these eclectic memories, keen observations and provocative musings. Four of Solnit’s essays have the same title, “The Blue of Distance,” but the first segues from the blue in Renaissance paintings to a turquoise blouse the author wore as a child, then to the blue of distance seen on a walk across the drought-shrunken Great Salt Lake. The second presents Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish explorer who wandered for years in the Americas, and then several white children taken captive by Indians; their stories demonstrate that a person can cease to be lost not only by returning, but also by turning into someone else. The third blue essay explores the world of country and western music, full of tales of loss and longing. The fourth introduces the eccentric artist Yves Klein, who patented the formula for his special electric blue paint and claimed to be launching a new Blue Age. How does it all fit in? Don’t ask, just enjoy, for Solnit is a captivating writer. Woven in and out of these four pieces and the five others that alternate with them are Solnit’s immigrant ancestors, lost friends, former lovers, favorite old movies, her own dreams, the house she grew up in, harsh deserts, animals on the edge of extinction and abandoned buildings. All become material for the author’s explorations of loss, losing and being lost.
Elegant essays marked by surprising shifts and unexpected connections.Pub Date: July 11, 2005
ISBN: 0-670-03421-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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