We Have Ceased to See the Purpose - (Center for Ethics and Culture Solzhenitsyn) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Following his exile from the USSR in 1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lived and traveled in the West for twenty years before the fall of Communism allowed him to return home to Russia. The majority of the speeches collected in this volume straddle this period of exile, contemplating the materialism prevalent worldwide -- forcibly imposed in the socialist East, freely chosen in the capitalist West -- and searching for humanity's possible paths forward. In beautiful yet haunting and prophetic prose, Solzhenitsyn explores the mysterious purpose of art, the two-edged nature of limitless freedom, the decline of faith in favor of legalistic secularism, and -- perhaps most centrally -- the power of literature, art, and culture to elevate the human spirit.These annotated speeches, including his timeless 'Nobel Lecture' and 'Harvard Address,' have been rendered in English by skilled translators, including Solzhenitsyn's sons. The volume includes an introduction to the speeches, brief background information about each speech, and a timeline of the key dates in Solzhenitsyn's life."

Book Synopsis

This collection brings together ten of Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's most memorable and consequential speeches, delivered in the West and in Russia between 1972 and 1997.

Following his exile from the USSR in 1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lived and traveled in the West for twenty years before the fall of Communism allowed him to return home to Russia. The majority of the speeches collected in this volume straddle this period of exile, contemplating the materialism prevalent worldwide--forcibly imposed in the socialist East, freely chosen in the capitalist West--and searching for humanity's possible paths forward. In beautiful yet haunting and prophetic prose, Solzhenitsyn explores the mysterious purpose of art, the two-edged nature of limitless freedom, the decline of faith in favor of legalistic secularism, and--perhaps most centrally--the power of literature, art, and culture to elevate the human spirit.

These annotated speeches, including his timeless "Nobel Lecture" and "Harvard Address," have been rendered in English by skilled translators, including Solzhenitsyn's sons. The volume includes an introduction to the speeches, brief background information about each speech, and a timeline of the key dates in Solzhenitsyn's life.

Review Quotes

" As America is increasingly overshadowed by a new global dystopia, we might consult a poet who outlasted its predecessor." --The Catholic World Report

"[Solzhenitsyn] is one of the few genuine heroes among artists, standing courageously against the Soviet tyranny, refusing to surrender his humanity or conscience. . . . Many of [his] criticisms [of the West] came in speeches he delivered, none as famous as his 1978 commencement address at Harvard, but nearly all as poignant in his diagnosis of what ailed western democratic capitalist society." --The Interim

"This is a collection of 'essential' speeches because they display Solzhenitsyn's view of art, politics, and culture in a form that is compressed but which opens up the mind and soul of readers. They do so because they concentrate on the most essential question sand truths for our time and any time: those that deal with what is transcendent." --The European Conservative

"Solzhenitsyn's speeches direct us to art, especially literature, in order to find hope. . . . [He] challenges us to move beyond acting according to the bare minimum of legalism and the media-saturated, materialistic lifestyle that chokes out our immortal souls; he encourages us to seek the divine ground." --VoegelinView

"True, Solzhenitsyn is suspicious of the popular will. But listen to his message a bit more carefully, and notice that his harshest criticism is directed not at the ordinary people--not at the mass of voters in a democracy--but at the leaders who conspire to shape their opinions. He is particularly devastating, in fact, in his attitude toward the mass media." --Catholic Culture

"A lesser-known aspect of Solzhenitsyn's legacy is the speeches he gave during his 20 years of exile in the West. Many will recall his controversial 'Harvard Address' in 1978. . . . Yet he gave many other speeches equally prescient and prophetically perceptive." --Chronicles

"We Have Ceased to See the Purpose . . . shows Solzhenitsyn steadily developing a grand theory of history amid the contemporary goings-on that occasioned his speeches." --Law & Liberty

"Beauty will save the world, Solzhenitsyn keeps repeating, after Dostoyevsky. One of the world's greatest artists and citizens, Alexander Solzhenitsyn did all he could to make this prophecy come true." --Wall Street Journal

"Solzhenitsyn's diagnosis leaps from the page and reaches across the decades to our recent political and cultural miasmas." --Civitas Outlook

"In We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the estimable musician and conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn collects and annotates the ten most stirring public addresses of his father, Russian Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn." --Claremont Review of Books

"Solzhenitsyn's most significant orations . . . He spoke not only to condemn 'bestial Communism' but also to explain what he perceived as the weaknesses and flaws of the modern West. . . His diagnosis has lost none of its resonance today." --National Review

"This new collection of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's speeches invite a new generation of students and other readers to hear his provocative and prophetic arguments on key cultural, political, literary, and moral questions." --Matthew Lee Miller, author of The American YMCA and Russian Culture

"The totalitarianism from which Solzhenitsyn had escaped loomed as the West's likely future. . . . He thought it his duty to warn us, but nobody listened. Today, his warnings seem prescient." --Commentary

About the Author

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), Nobel Prize laureate in literature, was a Soviet political prisoner from 1945 to 1953. His story One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) made him famous, and The Gulag Archipelago (1973) further unmasked Communism and played a critical role in its eventual defeat. Solzhenitsyn was exiled to the West in 1974. He ultimately published dozens of plays, poems, novels, and works of history, nonfiction, and memoir, including In the First Circle, Cancer Ward, The Red Wheel epic, The Oak and the Calf, and the Between Two Millstones memoirs.

Ignat Solzhenitsyn is a pianist and conductor based in New York City. The middle son of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, he is translator and editor of several of his father's works in English.