Солженицын

The issue of the point of view in the composition of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s novel «The First Circle» is regarded in the article by means of the structural analysis of its components based on the methodology by B. A. Uspensky.

The article dwells on Solzhenitsyn’s lexical preferences, on what words he considered «unbearable» and why. In Solzhenitsyn’s attitude to the word aesthetic aspects (meaning, sound, color, smell) and ethic ones (belonging to the rogue or slaughterer world, being Russian, a possibility of coming from Christ’s lips) can be singled out.

Based on his own recollections and on documented sources the author reconstructs the history of how A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s short novel «One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich» was perceived by the members of Saratov University literary club of the first half of the 1960s, under the supervision of a wonderful philologist T. I. Usakina, Assistant Professor of the Chair of the Russian literature of Saratov State University.