Altynbaeva G.M., Gerasimova L.E.

Ways of combining factual and artistic materials in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. Pp. 152–160.

UDC 821.161.1-31.09″19″

DOI 10.37724/RSU.2025.88.3.014

 

Abstract. The relevance of this study is due to the need to understand the uniqueness of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s poetics and aesthetics, which differ from classical realistic writing. The article analyzes an important feature of Solzhenitsyn’s artistic method — the inseparable connection between its factual and artistic material. Based on The Gulag Archipelago as an experiment in literary investigation, various ways of combining the two aspects are shown and their functions are explained. The authors of the article argue that factual material (the history and truth of the Gulag) relates to the goal (“to open the mouths of the Gulag”), while artistic material relates to all methods of presenting “factual (unaltered) life material.” The authors of the article follow the writer’s direct statements, as he repeatedly explained to journalists how “the material dictates” both the form and the methods of presenting the truth of history and memory in the text, aimed at the reader’s attention and understanding. The textual levels at which Solzhenitsyn’s method in The Gulag Archipelago is specifically traced include the general narrative, but also the specific headings, the composition of each chapter and the overall structure of the book, inserted fragments (“text within text”), and “lyrical digressions.” The methods of combining factual and artistic material characteristic of Solzhenitsyn, presented in this study, are self-metadescription, rhetorical apostrophes, dialog with the reader; satire, irony, nominations, personification, metonymy, anthropomorphic images; portrait, comparison, parallelism; the cinema screen technique, stylistic techniques. The authors believe that the historical and metaphysical significance of The Gulag Archipelago is primarily determined by the personality of its author — a “young apprentice under God’s heaven.” The materials of the study can be used in studies of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s creative method and in of the peculiarities of Russian literature in the second half of the 20th century.

 

Keywords: The Gulag Archipelago, A. I. Solzhenitsyn, literature and documents, writer’s aesthetics, artistic method.

 

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