" Death—not as chasm "

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"Prisoner's Right"

Yoke of years that we lived in a prison

Grants no rights: we’re entitled to naught.

Not to pulpits. Nor lecterns. Nor glory.

Nor power. Nor halos of saints.

Nor in memoirs to mix with fatigue

Our colorless ashen complaints,

Nor: that armies of youths should now run astride life

By the path that we treaded for them.

All will go as ’t will go. There’s no point

To pound out the wheel’s rut in advance.

An illumined interior suffering core:

May, for everything, this be our one recompense.

It’s the loftiest gem of all earthly gemstones.

And, to carry it home undefiled,

Let of our phantom rights, then, the very least be:

Our secreted right to an equal revenge.

There’s a number. So endlessly long,

Comprehensible just to Chinese and to Russians,

All those fallen, extinguished, without guilt or trace:

In that number we’re nil upon nil upon nil. . . .

Our right is but one:

To be rancorless sons

Of our luckless and sad Russian land.

Let our grievances burn, rot, decay deep inside

To the outside we’ll spring living shoots: only then,

Looking up, will our Russia’s fatigued countryside

See the Sun it awaited so long.

"Acathistus" [1]

When, oh when did I scatter so madly

All the goodness, the God-given grains?

Was my youth not spent with those who gladly

Sang to You in the glow of Your shrines?

Bookish wisdom, though, sparkled and beckoned,

And it rushed through my arrogant mind,

The world’s mysteries seemed within reckon,

My life’s lot like warm wax in the hand.

My blood seethed, and it spilled and it trickled,

Gleamed ahead with a multihued trace,

Without clamor there quietly crumbled

In my breast the great building of faith.

Then I passed betwixt being and dying,

I fell off and now cling to the edge,

And I gaze back with gratitude, trembling,

On the meaningless life I have led.

Not my reason, nor will, nor desire

Blazed the twists and the turns of its road,

It was purpose-from-High’s steady fire

Not made plain to me till afterward.

Now regaining the measure that’s true,

Having drawn with it water of being,

Oh great God! I believe now anew!

Though denied, You were always with me. . . .

[1] Acathistus: in the Orthodox Church, a reading or song of praise.

[“Death—not as chasm”]

Death—not as chasm, but death as a crest,

A ridge onto which has ascended the road.

Up in the black sky that shrouds my deathbed

Gleams the White Sun of God.

Turning about I see in its white rays

Russia, my Russia, to her polar wreaths;

View her with that otherworldly gaze

Carved out on stelae1 by wise ancient Greeks.

I see you clearly, no rancor or spite:

Your lows. And your glory. And daily life’s fight.

No more shall I see you thus: crucified;

No more shall call Resurrection t’your side. . . .

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Translation by Ignat Solzhenitsyn