Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: the Russian Soul in the West by David P. Deavel & Jessica Hooten Wilson

Author:David P. Deavel & Jessica Hooten Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: 2020-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

That he is free from guilt because he has not actively partaken in the violence—and will not-is, at the very least, an equivocation. He may not have kindled the fire himself, but his voice was one of the many that called for the houses to be set aflame. Later it will prove outright false when he rapes a young German woman. The example of Pilate is more fitting than the narrator realizes. He is like Pilate not because he is innocent of the death of Christ. He is like Pilate precisely because he refuses to save innocent people from horrific deaths when he has the power and opportunity to do so, thus making him as guilty of innocent blood as the Jews who shouted for Christ’s crucifixion.

This becomes clear as the Red Army rolls on and does more than merely set houses on fire. When the narrator comes upon a wounded mother—her daughter dead from being raped by “how many . . . ?” the narrator wonders; “A platoon, a company?-the woman asks him to shoot her. The poet obviously feels sympathy for her. He notices her “hazy and bloodshot” eyes and laments that there will be no doctors or hospitals to care for her or ease her pain, but he does nothing for her. “Am I one of theirs?” he asks. “Some schnapps would do me good, I feel,” he continues. “But what would cheer me even more—/ Is to go looking for some plunder!” (39).

In another scene, a beautiful blonde German strides “erect and quite unshyly / Along the path beside the highway, / Keeping her proud head unbent” (78–79). She’s stopped by a sergeant, who orders her to hand over her briefcase. The briefcase is emptied on the snow and a photo of her fiancé in an SS uniform is discovered. The sergeant brings the photo to the narrator. At first, he attempts to diffuse the situation: “What about it? Give it back to her. / I don’t see anything . . .” But when the sergeant shows him the photo with the swastika and seems to press his case, the narrator responds apathetically:

“True . . .” “And so the fiancé’s

In the SS?” . . .

“The devil knows what it means to them. . . .”

I give a quick wave of my hand.

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