Remembrance of the Departed

Fifteen years ago today, on 3 August 2008, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at his home outside Moscow at the age of 89. In remembrance, we share with you one of his late Miniatures, Remembrance of the Departed.

“REMEMBRANCE OF THE DEPARTED

It is an act bequeathed to us in deep wisdom, by men of holiness.

We come to understand its purpose not in vigorous youth, amidst the company of loved ones, family, friends; but with age.

Parents have passed; peers now pass as well. Where go they? It seems unguessable, unfathomable, beyond our grasp. Yet as with some foreordained clarity, it dawns for us, it glimmers — no, they have not vanished.

And no more shall we learn of it, while we live. But a prayer for their souls—it casts from us to them, from them to us, an impalpable arch of measureless breadth yet effortless proximity. Why, here they are, you can almost touch them. Both unknowable are they and, as ever, so familiar. Except, they have fallen back in years: some were older than we, but now are younger.

Focusing, you even inhale their answer, their hesitation, their warning. In exchange, you send them your own earthly warmth: perhaps we too can help somehow?

And a promise: we shall meet.”

— translated by Stephan Solzhenitsyn

Ignat Solzhenitsyn Speaks at Benedictine

Ignat Solzhenitsyn spoke recently at Benedictine College on his father’s legacy, reading passages from Solzhenitsyn’s works, including his Miniatures, and answering questions from the audience.

Happy 103rd Birthday, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn in exile at Kok-Terek, Kazakhstan, 1954–55

On the great author’s birthday, we share with you today one of his perfect, profound “miniatures”, Reflection in Water. Take a moment to read these few lines slowly, and you will be much rewarded.

“On the surface of swift-running water you cannot make out the reflections of objects near or distant. Even if it is not muddy, even if it is free of foam, reflections in the ceaselessly wavering ripples, the boisterously shifting race are deceptive, vague, incomprehensible.

Only when, from stream to stream, the current has reached a placid estuary, or in still backwaters, or in small lakes with never a tremulous wave, can we see in the mirror-smooth surface the smallest leaf of a tree on the bank, every fiber of a fine-combed cloud, and the intense blue depths of the sky.

So it is with you and me. If, try as we may, we never have been and never shall be able to see, to reflect the truth in all its eternal fresh-minted clarity, is it not because we are still in motion, still living?…”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Reflection in Water