Sublime

Here my cry would be heard by 200 or twice 200, but what about the 200 million? Vaguely, unclearly, I had a vision that someday I would cry out to the 200 million.

“Bless you, prison,” the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago. “Bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”

Alexandre Soljenitsyne dans L’Archipel du Goulag. « Bénie sois le rôle que tu as joué dans mon existence. Car là, couché sur la paille pourrissante de la prison, j’ai compris que le but de la vie n’est pas la prospérité, comme on voudrait nous le faire croire, mais la maturité de l’âme humaine. »

In the course of his imprisonment, Solzhenitsyn looked at the guard who treated him most cruelly. He realized that if fate had made him a prison guard instead of a prisoner, perhaps he would have been cruel, too. He came to realize that the line between good and evil passes not between tribes or nations but straight through every human heart.

“Rub your eyes and purify your heart — and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well.” — Aleksander Solzhenitsyn once wrote.

Peu après, Alexandre Soljenitsyne publia L’Archipel du goulag, dont nous avons beaucoup parlé dans les chapitres précédents. Comme nous le disions (et cela vaut la peine de le répéter), ce livre a réduit à néant la crédibilité de la morale du communisme, d’abord en Occident, puis au cœur même du système soviétique.