| The purpose of this study is to consider the role of autobiography in Solzhenitsyn's writings, paying special attention to Solzhenitsyn's creative uses of the resources of the autobiographical genre to accomplish his self-appointed literary mission: to save the world by telling the story.;Solzhenitsyn's philosophical affinity to autobiography is grounded in a concern with the self, fundamental to autobiography as a genre. Solzhenitsyn is convinced that how we perceive our lives influences how we live them; that how we fashion the story of our lives determines how we fashion our lives.;Solzhenitsyn's reliance on an autobiographical mode of storytelling grows out of his obsession with bearing witness to the crucial historical events of which he has been a part. For Solzhenitsyn, autobiography is the way of fusing himself morally with what he has witnessed.;InThe Calf Butted the Oak, his official literary autobiography, Solzhenitsyn attempts to legitimize his role as an artist and to empower his art, and he creates a biographical legend appropriate to this task. This autobiography is an unusual variant of a saint's life, in which the "saint" rather than an anonymous vita author, tells his own story.;The image Solzhenitsyn creates of himself in The Gulag Archipelago is that of a sinner. Here Solzhenitsyn's self-portrait is designed to reveal his own guilt and subsequent repentance as a way to spur others to repent. In addition, Solzhenitsyn creates a composit autobiography, presenting the accounts of 227 eyewitnesses in the form of multiple autobiographies, re-created by Solzhenitsyn as witness and conduit for their stories. Solzhenitsyn attempts to preserve the integrity of each of these other voices, while simultaneously allowing his experiences to stand for the experience of all Russia.;In The First Circle, as in his other fiction, Solzhenitsyn concentrates on self-perception and self-definition as they affect an individual's behavior, and through his characters explores the potential of his ideas and actions.;Solzhenitsyn believes that an individual's consciousness of himself controls his life and ultimately the destiny of his nation. Therefore, the project of working out an autobiography has immense moral and political significance. |
