THE LIFE-AFFIRMING VISION OF THE SOLZHENITSYN HERO. (RUSSIAN TEXT) (ALEKSANDR ISAEVICH SOLZHENITSYN)

The purpose of this research is to reveal the importance of the theme of life-affirmation in the works of Solzhenitsyn and to demonstrate the artistic devices that the author employed to convey this theme.; The expression "life-affirmation" is understood in its literal meaning inherent in the roots of its component words: "life" and "to affirm". As a philosophical concept the "affirmation of life" denotes a world vision that rests on the belief in the triumph of life over death.; The Solzhenitsyn hero is a carrier of a life-affirming vision. He is forced into a borderline situation of the life-death conflict that takes place in various "circles" of the Soviet "inferno". He is always confronted by the unavoidable choice between crucial alternatives: the betrayal of his moral principles that poses a threat of spirital death and the heroic struggle to safeguard his moral integrity that requires from him a supreme effort of self-assertion. The life-affirmation of the Solzhenitsyn hero and his spiritual self-assertion are closely interrelated.; The Solzhenitsyn hero suffers from an acute sense of deprivation. The cruel system denies him the very essentials of human existence: freedom, woman's love, family, and even physical health. The hero is a "crippled oak" hanging over the precipice. He hangs on in determination to survive and to remain true to himself. The power of life-affirmation and self-assertion of his personality sustains him in the single combat with the inhuman system. He wins because in his life-affirming vision he substitutes the Soviet deadening reality with the higher reality of his inner world of self-fulfilling spiritual existence. He "compensates" his outward deprivation with the richness of his spiritual life.; In the life-affirming vision of the Solzhenitsyn hero the nature, objects, forms, colors and sounds become personified and animated with hidden meanings, relationships, sensations and they "speak" to him in their own language.; Solzhenitsyn employs artistic devices that intellectually and emotionally bring the reader into the inner world of the hero and reveal the richness of his spiritual life. Due to those artistic devices (that are based on the universality of human emotions and associative reactions) the reader senses the hero's life-affirming optimism and is able to view his inner world not as an indifferent witness of the life-death conflict but as an emotionally involved participant, who, in various ways is also faced with the problem of moral choice in the contemporary world.; The horrible relapses into barbarity and the recurring instances of mass degeneration of human spirit in the twentieth century, pose with justifiable immediacy the problem of moral choice that the Solzhenitsyn hero confronts, and throws into sharp relief the philosophical significance of the life-affirmation theme of Solzhenitsyn's works.