Miniatures (or “Prose Poems”) 

- Miniatures (1958-63)
- Miniatures (1996-99) 

Solzhenitsyn’s miniatures provide the strongest reminder that his literary output is not restricted to the long works on which his acclaim primarily rests.  And the label of prophet is too one-sided to capture the range of his genres.  Although initially known in English as prose poems, these Krokhotki (the Russian title) are literally “tinies,” or miniatures.  Solzhenitsyn composed a series of them in 1958-1960.  A couple of years later, he penned “A Prayer,” which he views as belonging to the same genre.  Then, as he has remarked, he simply could not write in this genre again until after he returned to his native soil in the mid-1990s. 

These miniatures take their inspiration from Russia, but they invite universal application.  Typically, they begin with a single observation or experience and end in thematic elucidation.  In contrast to Solzhenitsyn’s fiction, the miniatures have mood and tone as their controlling and unifying literary elements.  Their mood is pensive, often melancholy, sometimes nostalgic; their tone is usually gentle, with affirmations outweighing reproaches.  Setting, especially rural landscape, also is prominent.  Solzhenitsyn contrasts, as dark background and bright foreground, the soulless sterility of modern, particularly Soviet, life and the spiritual sustenance available from nature and the past.  Human beings once lived in respectful harmony with nature, accepting with equanimity the all-encompassing rhythms of life and death.  The affirming attitudes that modernity has mutilated can be renovated.

Of the various recurring themes, the most basic is the embrace of the life force as such.  Ex-prisoners feel revived in the sheer act of breathing freely.  The mystery of life and the authority of nature are on display in the freely frolicking puppy, the insubstantial duckling that scientists are powerless to recreate, the felled elm tree that sends out a new shoot, the lightning bolt that cleaves a tree down to its roots.  Contemplative observations of nature disclose parallels to human traits; ants return home to a burning log as patriots are drawn to their suffering homeland, and the personified larch tree symbolizes the human virtues of solidarity, soft-heartedness, and inner toughness.  By contrast, the Soviets show no respect for the fittingness between man and nature; they expropriate the lovely Lake Segden for the ruling class’s private indulgence.  Even more vehemently they attack the past as a source of spiritual support.  They desecrate the old churches that punctuated the countryside and the church bells that kept time and souls in tune.  Churches, when not destroyed, are converted into cowsheds, tractor garages, clubhouses.  A dammed river destroys a cathedral and part of the town that had survived marauding foreigners over eight centuries, though the partially submerged bell tower with a cross on top juts straight up toward heaven as a sign, despite all, of enduring hope.  Shorn of belief, modern man can act only as if “we” will never die and starts the day not with spiritual devotions but with bodily exercises.

Although the two cycles of miniatures are bound together in continuity, the second set inclines toward greater explicitness in stating moral themes.  In one new subset Solzhenitsyn searchingly addresses Russia’s third—and current—“Time of Troubles” as it emerges from Communism.  Another subset introduces reflections on death and dying, as befits the author in old age.  All these exquisite gems reward unhurried, meditative reading. 

– by Edward E. Ericson, Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney, The Solzhenitsyn Reader

A Selection of Miniatures

Prayers

There are two prayers that Solzhenitsyn placed among his miniatures.  In “A Prayer,” composed shortly after One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich made him famous, he serenely acknowledges that God’s gracious providence governs his ongoing career; thus, it shows better than anything else his personal relationship with God.  The behind-the-scenes story is fascinating.  One of his helpers, Elizaveta Voronyanskaya, released this text without permission.  Although he scolded her at the time, the widely reproduced prayer elicited many grateful reactions.  Moreover, it was a key factor in his being awarded the Templeton Prize, and he recounts that composing the Templeton address deepened his understanding of himself.  Voronyanskaya played a similar role in the appearance of The Gulag Archipelago by disregarding Solzhenitsyn’s instruction to destroy her copy, which the KGB then located.  With his hand forced, Solzhenitsyn ordered the work published, and it went on to exert its world-historical influence.  About Voronyanskaya, he concludes, “For both willful acts I can only be grateful to her—she had served as an instrument of God’s will.”

After Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994, he wrote “A Prayer for Russia”; he felt a need for such a prayer, and he prayed it every day.

Available Formats

The Solzhenitsyn Reader
Includes all thirty-two of Solzhenitsyn's miniatures
Hardcover
Amazon

Paperback
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Stories and Prose Poems
Includes sixteen of the eighteen early miniatures (all but “Means of Locomotion” and “A Prayer”).
Paperback
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E-book
Kindle | Apple Books | Nook