The Gulag Archipelago: From Inferno to Paradiso

Abstract

It is apparent from the title of his novel The First Circle and from various details there and in other works that Alexander Solzhenitsyn is familiar with at least the imagery of Divine Comedy. One direct and several indirect references to it also suggest a Dantean subtext in his longest and most ambitious project, The Gulag Archipelago. Indeed, the loci of the Comedy—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—are transformed in the Gulag into metaphorical representations of the various stages in the development of man's consciousness—and especially Solzhenitsyn's consciousness—during the ordeals of arrest, inquest, imprisonment, and exile. The Inferno is surely the most prominent and in some ways the most memorable part of Solzhenitsyn's work. It is the phase in which most of the zeks live—the phase of unremitting hatred, cynicism, and selfishness caused by the cruelty and degradation of their experiences in prisons and labor camps. It is a life among rapacious thieves and police informers, a life in which only the self matters. The Purgatorio is the stage reached by those who, like Solzhenitsyn himself, begin to question the validity of all ideologies and who recognize and admire the strength of those whose personality derives from an uncompromisingly spiritual worldview. But in the Purgatorio the light of understanding is just beginning to penetrate the darkness; the process of spiritual rebirth is in an embryonic state. When a zek crosses the threshold of the Paradiso (as Solzhenitsyn clearly does—notably in Part IV), he attains a wisdom and understanding not yet accessible to the majority of men. He realizes that attachments to property, possessions, and even loved ones only add to the sufferings of the prisoners. He now knows that the life of the spirit, divorced from earthly preoccupations, is the only life that is eternal and inviolate. With that realization he has achieved the ultimate knowledge and the ultimate happiness. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol7/iss1/4 THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO: FROM INFERNO TO PARADISE David Matual Wright State University That Alexander Solzhenitsyn is familiar with at least the imagery of Divine Comedy is evident from the title of his novel, The First Circle.' In the second chapter, entitled Dante's Idea, the character Rubin draws a parallel between the first circle of hell, where the pagan sages of antiquity are confined, and the sharashka, or special scientific installation, where arrested Soviet scientists are forced to devote their knowledge and skill to the advancement of the Soviet state. There are also hints of Dantean imagery, however few and subtle, in Solzhenitsyn's longest and most ambitious work, The Gulag Archipelago. In Part III, for example, before his account of the historical development of the correctional labor camps, the author calls upon I. L. Auerbach to be our Virgil, i.e. to guide the reader through the maze of historical details about to be presented.' It will be recalled, of course, that Virgil is guide through the nether regions in the Comedy. Moreover, the mythological of the which exist only in the imagination of the zeks, with their two signs reading Do not be discouraged for those entering and Do not be too happy for those leaving are inevitably reminiscent of the famous sign over inferno: Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate. While the occasional references to The Divine Comedy have no compelling hermeneutical value for The Gulag Archipelago, they point, nevertheless, to the possibility of a Dantean model for the proper ordering and understanding of the spiritual evolution which some of the zeks undergo. True, most of the men and women of the archipelago are static figures, fixed in this or that phase of the spiritual process. But others, like Dante, are made to pass through 35 1 Matual: The Gulag Archipelago: From Inferno to Paradiso Published by New Prairie Press 36 STCL, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Fall, 1982) inferno, the site of torments, purgatorio, the place of cleansing and enlightenment, and paradiso, the realm of perfect knowledge and wisdom. The most notable and-for this study-the most interesting of these travelers is Solzhenitsyn himself, who, over the course of many years, proceeds from the unmitigated misery of the Soviet inferno, continues through the purgation of suffering, and ends at last in an exalted state of spiritual tranquility.' Each inhabitant of the archipelago, whether static or dynamic, is doomed to experience, if only for a short time, the horrors and anxieties of Solzhenitsyn's inferno. Though there is no fixed entrance to this twentieth-century hell (despite the myth of the gates with their portentous inscriptions), it affords easy access to everyone. Initiation into its terrors begins, as Solzhenitsyn demonstrates so powerfully in Part I, with the cataclysmic moment of arrest. But unlike Christian inferno, Solzhenitsyn's Stalinist hell does not presuppose the commission of serious sin or even the violation of man-made laws. Everyone without exception is subject to arrest, and it comes in the most varied ways and at the most implausible times.4 Once arrested, the anguished victim is then subjected to tortures, both physical and psychological, inflicted by interrogators during the inquest. After he has signed the obligatory confession of guilt, his agony assumes new forms-in prisons, transit stations, or forced labor camps. One of the most memorable passages in The Gulag Archipelago is devoted to the atrocities of the prison camps on the Solovetsky Islands, which Solzhenitsyn characterizes as the prototype of the entire archipelago, a cancer that metastasizes until it holds the entire nation in its power. During the first Five-Year Plan, it manifests itself in the building of the White Sea Canal and other construction projects with their ghastly tolls in human life. At the height of Stalin's terror the cancer becomes a vast network of labor camps (usually in the most inhospitable areas of the country), teeming with millions of prisoners tormented by NKVD demons. The atmosphere they breathe is polluted by falsehood and a never-ending stream of party propaganda, which Solzhenitsyn treats as one of the most onerous punishments imposed upon the condemned. They suffer too from subhuman living conditions: long hours 'of drudgery often in sub-zero temperatures; crowded barracks; inadequate clothing; malnutrition and disease. In addition to all these afflictions they must endure the company of venal informers and the depredations of rapacious thieves, who are given virtually free rein to do what they please to whomever they choose. 2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 7, Iss. 1 [1982], Art. 4 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol7/iss1/4 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1113