A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich ( Russian Один день Ивана Денисовича, Odin den 'Ivana Denisoviča ) appeared in November 1962 in the Moscow magazine Novy Mir as the first work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn , who received the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature .
The novel describes a day in the life of a prisoner in a Soviet gulag . The publication in Solzhenitsyn's homeland was only possible because the Soviet Union settled on the XX. Party congress of the CPSU had detached from the personality cult around Josef Stalin . But unpleasant things - the Stalinist purges , massive forced labor and prison camps - were often played down and attributed to the overzealousness of people on the edge of their area of responsibility, so that even those members of the new leadership of the Soviet Union who had already been responsible during the time of Stalinism from could be acquitted of any guilt. Solzhenitsyn's novel came at a time marked by the climate of careful reappraisal of the crimes of the Stalin era.
The novel soon became known in western countries. Its American translation appeared just a year after its publication, which was quickly followed by a German version. Caspar Wrede filmed the book in 1970 with Tom Courtenay in the title role.
content
Drawing on the author's personal experience, the novel is in the tradition of Russian realism . The framework for the plot seems to have been chosen arbitrarily: any day, from the alarm signal to the extinguishing of the lights, in the life of any Gulag prisoner, representing the nameless multitudes of political prisoners. The main focus is on the realistic portrayal of the hardships and injustices of prisoner life in frosty Siberia, with the focus on the personal well-being of Ivan Denisovich, whose well-being depends on seemingly trifles: a piece of bread that he can hide, a small piece of metal, that can be sharpened into a knife, a pair of warm lined boots that he mourns. The daily center of its existence is the hungry waiting for the next scanty meal, usually nothing more than a thin watery soup and yet the only bridge to survival. Another focus of the narrative is the interaction between the individual inmates - talkative and silent, honest and lying, work-shy and hardworking - as well as the relationship between the inmates and the guards, both of whom are squeezed into an inhuman system.
features
What sets the novel apart from the mass of prison literature is the humanity it exudes. The inner world of the protagonist is portrayed with gripping liveliness. The way in which he tries to come to terms with his circumstances, his inner happiness, which is portrayed when he gets hold of an additional bowl of soup, touch the reader more than the mere description of humiliation and cruelty could have. Solzhenitsyn portrays the hardship of life in the camps without any reproaches. Despite all the inhumanity of this life, discreetly and yet impressively indicated, there is still room for a remnant of charity among the prisoners.
literature
- Richard Bartmann: The connection between the emotional world and the linguistic world of people in A Day of Ivan Denisovič by AI Solženicyn . Dissertation, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg 1978
- Alexis Klimoff (Ed.): One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. A Critical Companion . Northwestern Univ. Press, Evanston 1997. ISBN 0-8101-1214-0
- Loreta Medina (Ed.): Readings on One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich . Greenhaven Press, San Diego 2001. ISBN 0-7377-0563-9
- Robert Porter: Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich . Bristol Classical Press, Bristol 1997. ISBN 1-85399-470-7
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ German first edition: Alexander Solschenizyn: A day in the life of Iwan Denissowitsch. Novel . Knaur, Munich 1963