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Lessons of an unnoticed play
https://doi.org/10.31425/0042-8795-2020-5-178-195
Abstract
The article analyzes A. Solzhenitsyn's little known play The Light Which Is in Thee [Svet, kotoriy v tebe] (The Candle in the Wind [Svecha na vetru]), conceived and written in 1960. The play is a concentration of the most important ideas further developed in the writer's subsequent output. Other works are considered with regard to the play: The Gulag Archipelago [Arkhipelag Gulag], The Oak and the Calf [Bodalsya telyonok s dubom], Matryona's House [Matryonin dvor], Nastenka, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich [Odin den Ivana Denisovicha], and A Letter to the Soviet Leaders [Pismo vozhdyam Sovetskogo Soyuza]. The article attempts to identify typical traits of Solzhenitsyn's thinking and style as revealed in the works created after The Light Which Is in Thee. The author finds that the play serves as a warning because it depicts an imaginary country that resembles today's Russia. The play raises contemporary global issues: the development of science and a machine civilization that is unrestrained by morality, the primacy of the material over the spiritual, and the degradation of society, whose main goal is to achieve the maximum of material wealth.
About the Author
M. O. SmirnovRussian Federation
Mikhail O. Smirnov - literary critic, independent researcher.
13 Vvedensky St., Moscow, 117342
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Review
For citations:
Smirnov M.O. Lessons of an unnoticed play. Voprosy literatury. 2020;(5):178-195. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.31425/0042-8795-2020-5-178-195
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